It’s impossible to describe Action Bronson in a way he hasn’t already thought of. First and foremost though, Action Bronson is a principled MC, a Queens legend respected for his idiosyncratic pen and vivid raps, now a decade into his career and still deepening his skillset. “TRUST WHEN I SAY IT AIN’T SAFE FOR ANY OF THESE ANIMALS THE ANCIENT APEX PREDATOR IS BACK ON THE PROWL.” – ACTION BRONSON

ALDOUS HARDING / WARM CHRIS Aldous Harding Announces Details Of A New Studio Album, The Follow-Up To 2019'S Acclaimed Designer. For Warm Chris, The New Zealand Musician Reunited With Producer John Parish, Continuing A Professional Partnership That Began In 2017 And Has Forged Pivotal Bodies Of Work (2017'S Party And The Aforementioned Designer). All Ten Tracks Were Recorded At Rockfield Studios And Includes Contributions From H. Hawkline, Seb Rochford, Gavin Fitzjohn, John And Hopey Parish And Jason Williamson (Sleaford Mods).

From Orpheus to Icarus, depths to heights, and the thresholds in between. I’m interested in the moment when something becomes something else, when somewhere becomes somewhere else. That membrane that separates inside from outside. Retreating as we do in to the underlands , to molt our plumage, to exorcise our inside problems and emerge like newborn foals shaking, naked, squinting in the light. Don’t you know that I’m an irrepressible optimist working with a fatal flaw? The ghost that refuses to appear in the clock across the hall. You can set the table and call to her, but she decides when to visit. So, we imbue objects with crazy power to forget that we’ve been abandoned at a truck stop on the Ohio turnpike. To forget that we took a scouring pad to the places where art, music and community thrive. Promise to resist until you die and never fall apart again. - ANDREW BIRD
• Produced by Mike Viola
• Recorded at United Recording
• Featuring musicians: Alan Hampton, Madison Cunningham, Abe Rounds, Jimbo Mathus, Mike Viola

"Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us.

Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen’s Big Time were forged in such a whiplash.

“I can’t say that I’m sorry / when I don’t feel so wrong anymore,” the record begins, her voice softer and more open than ever, as if she’s singing through a hard won smile. “All the Good Times”, a twangy banger with nods to JJ Cale, starts the album on a triumphant and bright note. The title song, “Big Time”, follows and continues the warm optimism. “Guess I had to be losin’ to get here on time,” she sings, a fearless love song co-written with her partner.

Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she’d been avoiding for some time.

“Some experiences just make you feel as though you’re five years old, no matter how wise or adult you think you are,” she writes of that time. After that tearful but relieving conversation, she celebrated with her partner, their friends, oysters, and wine. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me.”

Three days later, her father died; his funeral became the occasion for Olsen to introduce her partner to her family. Though she was fearful their presence as a newly out queer couple would be “an additional symbol of loss,” those days went peacefully, yet only two weeks later Olsen got the call that her mother was in the ER. Hospice came soon after, and a second funeral came quickly on the heels of the first. Another trip back to St. Louis, another grief to face, another deepening and intensification of this still-new love.

The shards of this grief—the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents—are scattered throughout the album. “It’s a hard time again,” she sings on “This is How It Works”, pushing against the irrevocability of death, “Tell me a story that will make me forget.” “Go Home”, which begins with an almost numbed calm, slowly builds up to a wailing that comes up straight from the ground: “I want to go home, go back to small things. I don’t belong here. Nobody knows me.”

“You can’t plan grief, you can’t organize it or schedule it or know how you’ll feel when it comes. It just happens, and when it does sometimes it’s not what you thought it would be.” Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album.

Loss has long been a subject of Olsen’s elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she. If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She’s working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice—both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

Playful bits of Tammy Wynette and Kitty Wells are here, too, but so are the complex orchestrations of her genre-bending 2019 record, All Mirrors. While that record was full of dramatic shifts and twists, here the surprises come in their simplicity—a slow swell of strings, instrumentation that cycles like a storm, or sparkling horns in a light-flooded break-up ballad.

While the spritely nature of her last EP, Aisles, may have signaled Olsen’s turn deeper into the electronic direction of her last All Mirrors, there’s hardly a synth in sight here. Jonathan Wilson, served as co-producer and also mixed the tracks, while Drew Erickson played piano, organ, and scored the string arrangements. Emily Elhaj, Olsen’s longtime bandmate, was a consistent collaborator as well, on the bass throughout.

“And I can’t fit into the past that you’re used to, I refuse to,” she sings as a wraithlike piano scaffolds her hopeful voice on “Ghost On”. “Forget the old dreams,” she rejoices on “Go Home”, “I got a new thing.” Darkness inherently suggests depth, but it takes a much wiser writer to find meaning and complexity in the luminous place that Big Time occupies. “Chasing the Sun” ends the record in a smiling, romantic place, a verdant crescendo rising as she pines: “Write a postcard to you / when you’re in the other room/ I’m just writing to say that I can’t find my clothes / If you’re lookin for something to do.”

The burning of her earliest work is still here, of course, but this time she’s “freed from the longing / for one moment to last” and she’s ready to “walk through the fires / of all earthly desires.”

—Catherine Lacey
Oaxaca, February 2022"

Once Twice Melody is the 8th studio album by Beach House. It is a double album, featuring 18 songs presented in 4 chapters. Across these songs, many types of style and song structures can be heard. Songs without drums, songs centered around acoustic guitar, mostly electronic songs with no guitar, wandering and repetitive melodies, songs built around the string sections. In addition to new sounds, many of the drum machines, organs, keyboards and tones that listeners may associate with previous Beach
House records remain present throughout many of the compositions.

Beach House is Victoria Legrand, lead singer and multi-instrumentalist, and Alex Scally, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. They write all of their songs together. Once Twice Melody is the first album produced entirely by the band. The live drums are by James Barone (same as their 2018 album, 7), and were recorded at Pachyderm studio in Minnesota and United Studio in Los Angeles. For the first time, a live string ensemble was used. Strings were arranged by David Campbell.

The writing and recording of Once Twice Melody began in 2018 and was completed in July of 2021. Most of the songs were created during this time, though a few date back over the previous 10 years. Most of the recording was done at Apple Orchard Studio in Baltimore. Once Twice Melody was mixed largely by Alan Moulder but a few tracks were also mixed by Caesar Edmunds, Trevor Spencer, and Dave Fridmann.

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is a sprawling double-LP exploring the deepest elements and possibilities of Big Thief. To truly dig into all that the music of Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchick, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia desired in 2020, the band decided to write and record a rambling account of growth as individuals, musicians, and chosen family over 4 distinct recording sessions.

Bog Body's looming form has thawed from the dregs of sordid earth to reveal their debut full length album Cryonic Crevasse Cult on Profound Lore Records. Following in the footsteps of their 2018 demo Through The Burial Bog and 2020's mini-album The Gate Of Grief, Bog Body traverses beyond the seracs and into the crevasses of black death, transcending the cultic guts of black metal's early forefathers with a subsonic war doom incursion for their debut album that's as much a dirge as it is pandemonic fervor.Recorded at Strange Weather Studios in New York by Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Algiers), mixed by Evan Mersky (Triumvir Foul, Witch Vomit), mastered by Dan Lowndes (Cruciamentum), and featuring artwork by Chase Slaker (Mortiferum).

Bonobo will release new album Fragments, due on January 14, 2022 via Ninja Tune. Fragments is the most emotionally intense record that he - aka Simon Green - has ever had to make. It’s no surprise that it’s also his masterpiece. The album features Jamila Woods, Joji, Kadhja Bonet, Jordan Rakei, O’Flynn and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Born first out of fragments of ideas and experimentation, the album ultimately was fused together in a burst of creativity fueled by both collaboration and Green’s escape into the wild.

Strutting out of Doylestown, PA, Ceramic Animal forge glam, post-punk, psych rock and '70s pop into an original and exciting sound. The band's music and ambition impressed Dan Auerbach, who signed them to his Easy Eye Sound label and invited them down to Nashville to write and record their fourth album, Sweet Unknown. Together, they created an album that marries the glitter-stomp of T. Rex with the slow rush of Tame Impala and the extravagant melodicism of Todd Rundgren.

'Lil G.L. Presents: Jukebox Charley' is the 4th installment in Charley Crockett's 'Lil G.L. Presents' series of releases, which focus on heartfelt renditions of songs from some of Charley's biggest musical influences. This newest cover record is packed with songs originally written by greats such as Tom T. Hall, Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck, George Jones and more. Look out for Charley Crockett in your local independent record store.

Vinyl LP pressing. Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts' anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.. The album sounds streamlined and intentional, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. At the center of all these elements is Darcy, whose characteristically wry voice shifts from detached to decisive to distressed, throughout the album's course. Both enigmatically dense in meaning but precisely intricate in sound, Deep in View is an album that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an art object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.

Limited red colored vinyl LP pressing. 2022 release. A toast to victories and killing enemies with more success. Mátalos Con Más Éxitos is a bottle of expensive champagne to pop in the face of the opposition. With Buck Dudley at the helm of production and Crimeapple providing the narrative for a celebration of more life and more wins.

The filthiest sewers of England have sprung a new fetid leak in the form of CRYPTWORM's debut full length. From it's opening cascades of suitably chunky riffs and vocal offal to the boisterously bouncing drums, each sense can be truly repulsed as the stench (and worse yet, flavour) of rotten viscera fills the air through a sonic spew of sputum. Taking their previously lower tempos into 2022, their is also a gnarly range of drumming that picks up into hammering blasts to ensure the skull is totally obliterated had it somehow survived the relentless headbanging grooves. Through the album we see the rib-splitting heaviness grow as each of the fantastically ferocious elements of the bands 2 EP's and split seem to be pushed further into overdrive. The faster parts are even more frantic, the slower parts more drudging and the crawling mids ooze slimy soundscapes that only the most vomitous snarls could penetrate them. Primitive yet full of dynamics (though only the most grotesque ones), this is Death Metal that will have every orifice in ecstatic convulsions as the cadaver mutates to the rhythmic destruction throughout. The alliance of Cryptworm with Me Saco Un Ojo and Pulverised has proven once again to unleash some of the dirtiest Death Metal to exhume England's mausoleums and pull the rest of the globe in with them.

Upon arrival during the fraught summer of 2020, Flower of Devotion felt like Dehd’s necessary prescription for us all. That was, of course, a moment of unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty, when just contemplating the future could seem overly optimistic. But Dehd captured and shared the precarious balance between real life and real hope, a feat mirrored by instant pop melodies and infectious punk energy. The Chicago trio had the audacity to look ahead when many of us didn’t, to imagine improvement through mere existence. It was an album we needed. We need its follow-up, the triumphant Blue Skies, even more.

Dehd’s fourth album (and first for Fat Possum) is also the band’s second consecutive breakthrough, loaded with the most compelling, compulsive, and expansive songs of their career. Blue Skies offers another jolt of timely hope, only with twice the power. These 13 hits feel like flashlights in the dark, acknowledging how difficult everything from love and sex to living and dying can be while supplying the inspiration of their own experiences. “There’s a hole in my window/I was wondering how the rain was getting in,” Emily Kempf sings during the magnetic “Window,” acknowledging the problem before jubilantly exclaiming she’s moving toward something new. “Blue skies!”

The rapturous reception of Flower of Devotion gave Dehd access to more resources — budgets, studios, producers. Rather than seek something new, however, they invested in themselves, their process, and their deep belief in what they have always done. They booked the same studio where they had recorded Flower of Devotion but tripled their stay, giving themselves time to play with arrangements and delight in a wonderland of drum machines and synthesizers.

Through Dehd’s career, Jason Balla has been building his chops as a producer, so this was a chance to indulge and explore. Eric McGrady, meanwhile, considered how much more he could deliver as a drummer, adding layers to the thump of his past. And Emily, who admits that the process of making records has always been emotionally draining, focused on harnessing her indomitable energy, funneling her power into these songs without being overpowered by them. Dehd gave themselves runway to make mistakes and the space to make a statement. Blue Skies is their poignant, redemptive, and deeply fun testament to trusting and pushing yourself.

These 33 minutes run like a series of interconnected singles, each song so hooky and strong that you’ll be hard-pressed to name a favorite. The triumphant “Bad Love” is a surge of self-liberation, Emily leading the charge through an anthem about admitting your faults, seeking forgiveness, and finding a way forward. “I got a heart full/I got a heart full of redemption,” she offers at the start, a moment that suggests Springsteen writing with The Go-Go’s. A Tom Verlaine quiver to his voice, Jason takes a nighttime walk in the city as anxiety closes in during the irrepressible “Stars,” calming himself with a concrete reminder he’s still here. And there’s Eric’s splendid “Hold,” a chiming wonder with elastic bass lines and cascading piano parts that interlock beneath his hypnotic voice. He affirms the impact of simple acts of love.

But even when they sound ebullient, Dehd has never shied from troubles, the balance that has made them so magnetic. Above wafting synths and marching drum machines, “Memories” feels first like an electro dirge, memorializing lost friends. Such moments — and there are several clouds amid these Blue Skies — are pointed signals of our collective woe. Dehd presses ahead, though, into a future that offers something else if not always something better. What hope, after all, is more dependable? They end “Memories” in a refrain of pure persistence: “I’m doing all I can.” Blue Skies gets real. Blue Skies never wallows.

Toward the end of 2021, Dehd shared stages with Julien Baker, their first substantive chance to take Flower of Devotion on the road. Every night after their set, fans would tell the band how those songs had helped during the toughest times of the last two years. Those listeners had recognized what makes Emily, Jason, and Eric so compelling — they put their individual experiences on the page, then project them together with heart and empathy into instant hooks. Those post-show admissions could be a lot to process for the band, but they provided galvanizing confirmations that they’d made the right decision with Blue Skies. They would keep pulling light out of the dark with songs that feel so fucking good to hear right now.

The writing is sharper and smarter on Blue Skies. The harmonies and rhythms are more sophisticated and considered. The moods are deeper, the swings between them more inspiring. But this is still Dehd, just more wild and wonderful than ever before. “This is all we get,” Emily shouts with relish on the record’s last lines, during a song about the ways geologic deep time should free us all to live more. “Best to take the risk.” Heard, loud and clear.

Limited violet colored vinyl LP pressing. 2022 release. Philadelphia's Devil Master's roots in ritual magick have never been more prominent than on Ecstasies Of Never Ending Night. Recorded live to analog tape by Pete DeBoer (Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice), Ecstasies expands on the warped riffing and dark atmospheres that have already propelled Devil Master as one of the underground's most unique and unfettered bands. From the band's blackened punk maelstrom of "Acid Black Mass" to the spiraling death rock of "Abyss In Vision" and the layers of refined atmosphere on the closer "Never Ending Night", lead guitarist Darkest Prince of All Rebellion shines across a collection of fiery, tumultuous riffs - Lyrically, vocalist Disembody Through Unparalleled Pleasure laces Ecstasies with life-affirming blasphemy and existential dread. Ecstasies of Never Ending Night witnesses Devil Master at it's core. Vocalist Disembody Through Unparalleled Pleasure has assumed the role of bassist, strengthening the songwriting alongside Darkest Prince and founding member/rhythm guitarist Infernal Moonlight Apparition. Fresh blood was required and found in drummer/keyboardist Festering Terror in Deepest Catacomb (a.k.a. Chris Ulsh of Power Trip and Iron Age). Ecstasies of Never Ending Night proves to be a crucial addition to the pantheon of evil satanic metal. In the end, magick reigns!

SICK! Is my humble offering of 10 songs recorded in the wake of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic and it's subsequent lockdowns. Before the virus I had been working on an album I named after a book I used to read with my mother ('The People Could Fly'). Once the lockdowns hit, people couldn't fly anymore. A wise man said art imitates life. People were sick. The People were angry and isolated and restless. I leaned into the chaos cause it was apparent that it wasn't going anywhere. these songs are what happened when I would come up for air. Peace and love to Zelooperz the enigma, The Armand Hammer, and my good friends Alchemist and Black Noi$e. Peace and love to u. TRACKLISATING: 1. Old Friend 2. 2010 3. Sick! 4. Vision (feat. Zelooperz) 5. Tabula Rasa (feat. Armand Hammer) 6. Lye 7. Lobby (int) 8. God Laughs 9. Titanic 10. Fire in the Hole.

Elvis Costello & The Imposters release The Boy Named If, an album of urgent, immediate songs with bright melodies, stinging guitar solos, and a quick step to the rhythm. Costello says, “The full title of this record is ‘The Boy Named If (And Other Children’s Stories).’ ‘IF’ is a nickname for your imaginary friend; your secret self, the one who knows everything you deny, the one you blame for the shattered crockery and the hearts you break, even your own.” Produced by Costello and Sebatian Krys.

Fly Anakin's debut studio album 'Frank' draws influence from the classic R&B and soul his dad played him as a child, showcasing a gift for songwriting alongside the breathless raps he's become known for. Recorded at the same time as 'FlySiifu's', it features Pink Siifu on the DJ Harrison produced 'Black Be The Source', as well as link ups with another Richmond hero and Anakin mentor Nickelus F, and fellow Mutant Academy members Big Kahuna OG and Henny L.O.. Production by Madlib, Evidence, Jay Versace, DJ Harrison, Ohbliv, Foisey, THERAVADA, Graymatter and Like of Pac Div.

Jasmyn is the new solo project created by Jasmyn Burke, former singer-song- writer and frontwoman of the critically acclaimed Canadian band, Weaves. Having two JUNO nominations for Alternative Album of the Year and two SOCAN Songwriting Prize nominations, Burke has established herself as one of Canada’s most exciting and fresh voices.

With this new project, she has decided to use her own name, Jasmyn, to mark the start of exploring her own unique sound as a solo artist. Collaborating remotely with Los Angeles-based producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten) on a body of work she had compiled over months of being in lockdown. Finally in the Spring of 2021, Jasmyn went to LA to record with Congleton, exploring themes of finding patterns in life and how to perhaps change them.  

On the general direction of her new album In the Wild, Jasmyn said, “This was written during the Fall of 2020; The world was feeling pretty heavy, and I felt myself wanting to write music that created a mood of happiness and space to grow. I feel like I have grown and changed as a person over the last few years and wanted to write songs that created a sense of confidence and well-being.”

With Weaves receiving worldwide support from the likes of Rolling Stone Magazine, NPR, Pitchfork, and more, Jasmyn is excited to share a new side of herself, perhaps her most honest and raw work to date.

Kendrick Lamar released his first album in 5 years, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Available on physical CD on
May 27, 2022.

The story begins with Kevin Morby absentmindedly flipping through a box of old family photos in the basement of his childhood home in Kansas City. Just hours before, at a family dinner, his father had collapsed in front of him and had to be rushed to the hospital. That night Morby still felt the shock and fear lodged in his bones. So he gazed at the images until one of the pictures jumped out at him: his father as a young man, proud and strong and filled with confidence, posing on a lawn with his shirt off. This was in January of 2020. As the months went on and the world dramatically changed around him, Morby felt an eerie similarity between his feelings of that night and the atmosphere of those spring days. Fear, anxiety, hope and resilience all churning together. The themes began twisting in his mind. History, trauma and the grand fight against time. Having the courage to dream, even while knowing the tragedy that often awaits those who dare to dream. While his father regained his strength, Morby meditated on these ideas. And then, he headed to Memphis. He moved into the Peabody Hotel and spent his days paying tribute and genuflecting to the dreamers he admired. In the evening, he would return to his room and document his ideas on a makeshift recording set-up, with just his guitar and a microphone. The songs, elegiac in nature, befitting all he had seen, poured out of him. Produced by Sam Cohen (who also worked on Morby's Singing Saw and Oh My God), This Is A Photograph features musical contributions from longtime staples of Morby's live band, as well as old friends and new collaborators alike. If Oh My God saw Morby getting celestial and in constant motion and Sundowner was a study in localized intent, This Is A Photograph finds Morby making an Americana paean, a visceral life and death, blood on the canvas outpouring. As Morby reminds us early on, time is undefeated. So what do we do while we're still here? This is a photograph of that sense of yearning.

On his first album in partnership with Verve Records, Kurt Vile pulls his talents as a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer in unexpected directions — and the result is a vibrant, yet meditative record propelled by laid-back charm and curious spirit.

Let's Eat Grandma released their second album, I'm All Ears, in 2018. It came out to a blaze of critical glory, thrilled fans who'd been with them since I, Gemini, and won them interested new listeners as they widened their musical scope. The band's new album, Two Ribbons, tells the story of the last three years from both Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton's points of view. As a body of work, it is astonishing: a dazzling, heart-breaking, life-affirming and mortality-facing record that reveals their growing artistry and ability to parse intense feeling into lyrics so memorable you'd scribble them on your backpack. The band has been through a lot in the last three years, and Two Ribbons is the artefact that signals some kind of progression out of very distressing times; a story of loss, change, and of survival; a proof of life.

Vinyl LP pressing. Includes digital download. Emotional Eternal, the third studio album from Melody's Echo Chamber, is a deeply human collection of songs full of prolonged moments of sonic transcendency. A record that clearly exhibits it's maturity but still regards the world with a childlike wonder. Having swapped Paris for the clean air of the Alps, Melody hopes "the record has that uplifting quality. I made some big and impactful decisions and changes to my life. It took me to where it is peaceful, and I think the record reflects this."

Lauded London 6-piece Melt Yourself Down take a different approach for their fourth studio album 'Pray for Me I Don't Fit In'. Created for misfits, by misfits, the album sees the band embrace a celebratory punk agenda. Having realised they are never going to fit the mould, the group deliberately draw on their myriad influences, speaking all languages musically and lyrically. Led by the potent sounds of Sax pioneer Pete Wareham, the punchy sax hooks pay homage to the traditional horn sections of the late '60s and early '70s era of Jazz, Soul and Rock 'n' Roll, while showcasing African pentatonic scales and dance-inducing rhythms with raw '70s rock and punk. The album sees vocalist Kushal Gaya celebrate his diversity - tonally, texturally, and emotionally while embracing lyrical depth. Recorded and produced by band favourite Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode & Nadine Shah), delivering his distinct musical depth, resonance, and dark drive so essential to Melt Yourself Down's sound, this album is the band's most cohesive work to date.

Messa's rising trajectory hits the stratosphere on their immense new album Close. Soaring up out of the Italian Doom Rock underground in 2014, Messa have been rapidly garnering a frenzied throng of devotees, in thrall to their monumental and broad-ranging sound craft. Releasing two widely celebrated cult records, the latest of which Feast For Water in 2018 was a critical breakthrough success, with Rolling Stone calling the album "captivating, wringing maximum drama out of it's savvy stylistic clash," Messa have had everyone on tenterhooks, waiting for what was next. Close draws us further into Messa's spellbinding textures and immersive dynamics. Described as "Stevie Nicks fronting Black Sabbath," singer Sara's colossal voice omnipotently carries the listener on an emotional rollercoaster ride where the sonic cauldron of Iommi guitars gives way to Arabian oudh and progressive solos in a masterful style-clash that well befits Messa's incendiary reputation. The hushed Fender Rhodes piano intro on opener "Suspended," picks up where Messa left off on their previous album but then collapses gloriously into Jazz guitar and widescreen impassioned crushing riffs, lighting our way for the odyssey ahead.

We don’t typically look to pop albums to answer our cultural moment, let alone to meet the soul hunger left in the wake of global catastrophe. But occasionally, an artist proves the form more malleable and capacious than we knew. With Laurel Hell, Mitski cements her reputation as an artist in possession of such power - capable of using her talent to perform the alchemy that turns our most savage and alienated experiences into the very elixir that cures them.

Her critically beloved last album, Be the Cowboy, built on the breakout acclaim of 2016’s Puberty 2 and launched her from cult favorite to indie star. She ascended amid a fever of national division, and the grind of touring and pitfalls of increased visibility influenced her music as much as her spirit. Like the mountain laurels for this new album is named, public perception, like the intoxicating prism of the internet, can offer an alluring façade that obscures a deadly trap—one that tightens the more you struggle. Exhausted by this warped mirror, and our addiction to false binaries, she began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities behind them.

She wrote many of these songs during or before 2018, while the album finished mixing in May 2021. It is the longest span of time Mitski has ever spent on a record, and a process that concluded amid a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland throughout the isolation of a global pandemic, during which some of the songs “slowly took on new forms and meanings, like seed to flower.” Sometimes it’s hard to see the change when you’re the agent of it, but for the lucky rest of us, Mitski has written a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love.

Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Molly Tuttle will release her anticipated Nonesuch Records debut, Crooked Tree, April 1 (on CD and digital. LP will be May 13) with her new bluegrass collective Golden Highway.

Recorded live at Nashville’s Oceanway Studios, Crooked Tree was produced by Tuttle and Jerry Douglas and features collaborations with Sierra Hull, Old Crow Medicine Show, Margo Price, Billy Strings, Dan Tyminski and Gillian Welch. The album explores Tuttle’s love of bluegrass, which she discovered through her father, a music teacher and multi-instrumentalist, and her grandfather, a banjo player. Across these thirteen tracks, all of which were written/co-written by Tuttle, she honors the bluegrass tradition while also pushing the genre in new directions.  

“I always knew I wanted to make a bluegrass record someday,” Tuttle says. “Once I started writing, everything flowed so easily: sometimes I’ve felt an internal pressure to come up with a sound no one’s heard before, but this time my intention was just to make an album that reflected the music that’s been passed down through generations in my family. I found a way to do that while writing songs that feel true to who I am, and it really helped me to grow as a songwriter.”

In celebration of the new music, Tuttle and Golden Highway—Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass) and Kyle Tuttle (banjo)—will embark on an extensive headline tour beginning tonight with shows at Seattle’s Tractor Tavern (two nights), Portland’s Mississippi Studios (two nights), Los Angeles’ Roxy, Salt Lake City’s State Room, Boulder’s Fox Theatre, Asheville’s The Grey Eagle and Nashville’s Station Inn, among several others. Full details can be found at mollytuttlemusic.com/tour.   

In addition to Tuttle (vocals, guitars), Douglas (dobro), Keith-Hynes (fiddle) and Leslie (mandolin), Crooked Tree also features musicians Darol Anger (fiddle), Ron Block (banjo), Mike Bub (upright bass), Jason Carter (fiddle), Viktor Krauss (upright bass), Todd Phillips (upright bass) and Christian Sedelmyer (fiddle) with additional harmony vocals from Tina Adair, Lindsay Lou and Melody Walker.

Nilüfer Yanya runs head first into the depths of emotional vulnerability on her anticipated sophomore record PAINLESS. Recorded between a basement studio in Stoke Newington and Riverfish Music in Penzance, the record is a more sonically direct effort, narrowing her previously broad palette to a handful of robust ideas. Yanya's debut album Miss Universe (2019) earned a Best New Music tag from Pitchfork and saw support tours with Sharon Van Etten, Mitski & The XX. Indie Exclusive Cloudy Blue LP.

Bronco is the new album from country artist and songwriter Orville Peck. A consummate storyteller, the country rock inspired Bronco plays upon the horse theme so often found in Orville’s work, but this time with an exploration of freedom, breaking free from that which binds us and all that is wild and untamed. Bronco builds upon and follows Peck’s previous album Pony and EP Show Pony, which explored themes of love, loss and loneliness but advances the story arc in a bolder, newer and warmer trajectory.

“This is my most impassioned and authentic album to date,” says Peck. “I was inspired by country rock, 60s & 70s psychedelic, California and even bluegrass with everything being anchored in country. Bronco is all about being unrestrained and the culmination of a year of touring, writing in isolation and going through and ultimately emerging from a challenging personal time.”

Want to get a bead on Paul Cauthen?

Good freakin' luck -- especially on his third album, COUNTRY COMING DOWN.

COUNTRY COMING DOWN has been in motion awhile, actually. The title track, one of several co-writes with good Nashville pal Aaron Raitiere, has been around since before Cauthen's dark sophomore album ROOM 41. Its sense of campfire calm and "damn near off the map" idyll set a bar, for both music and lifestyle, that Cauthen aspired to, while the rest of the new album, recorded at Modern Electric Sound Recorders in Dallas with regular collaborators Beau Bedford (Texas Gentlemen) and Jason Burt (Medicine Man Revival), shows that Cauthen was able to get there without losing any of the playful "hot dog holly golly dagnabit" good-time spirit that rolls off his tongue like a tumbleweed in the west Texas panhandle.

If you want to know what COUNTRY COMING DOWN sounds like, tuck into the album's sonic array, an austere, sinewy attack that puts Cauthen's vocals dead center in the ride. "We've really unleashed Big Velvet in this situation, which I love," he says. Nowhere is that more true than "Country As Fuck," with a taut groove and loping gait tailor made for a 21^st century honky tonk. Cauthen, Bedford and Burt play with that template throughout COUNTRY COMING DOWN, punctuating "Caught Me At a Good Time" with a sharp guitar solo, "High Heels" with a tasteful Wurlitzer break and the satiristic "Country Clubbin'" with a disco beat and chorus of female backing vocals.

His muse fully engaged, Cauthen is looking towards doing more of that in the future, with a few conceptual ideas up his sleeve about what he might do next.  No matter what direction he takes, however, he won’t be abandoning that cabin in the hills or the "Country Clubbin'" life; Cauthen will just be adding more to the mix he's stirred together.

"It's just about looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing that what you've done to this day has been in good standing, with good morals and a good compass in life, driven the right way," he says. "Legacy is all we have -- that, and try to be a good person as well. If you get all that together, then you can do whatever the fuck you want and it'll be alright."

WHO CARES? is the eagerly anticipated new album from Rex Orange County. This new album was announced and launched with the single, and video, “KEEP IT UP.”

WHO CARES? was made in close partnership with musician Benny Sings, over the course of a few sessions in Sings’ Amsterdam studio. After spending the bulk of 2020 quarantined back home in the UK due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Rex made the trek to Amsterdam that fall to record with Sings. What started as sessions without expectations turned into an incredibly productive 48-hour window of recording with Benny, prompting a follow-up trip to Amsterdam. The subsequent 10 days of work together produced his fourth album, made in close partnership with Benny, that is a playful record by an artist in a playful mood. The album also finds Rex reunited with Tyler, The Creator, who contributes a verse to "OPEN A WINDOW," which marks the first time the two have collaborated since Tyler's 2017 album Flower Boy.

WHO CARES? is Rex’s first studio album since 2019’s critically acclaimed album, PONY.

Robert Glasper’s highly anticipated third installment to the Black Radio album series. Black Radio III, much like both of its predecessors, is a cultural moment that celebrates black love and resilience, features an eclectic group of talented collaborators, and is composed by Glasper who the New York Times proclaims is “probably the most prominent jazz musician of his generation”. An innovative and essential addition to Glasper’s seminal Black Radio series.

MOTOMAMI is the new album from Grammy Award winning recording artist, producer and songwriter Rosalía. The album has been declared as “One of the Most Anticipated Albums of 2022” by multiple global press outlets including BBC, El Pais, NME, NYLON, Pitchfork, TIME and Wall Street Journal amongst others. Rolling Stone en Español wrote, “It’s a brave record… Genres are a thing of the past; there’s room for everything here… what modern music should be: art and flavor, dembow, champeta, flamenco, bachata, hip-hop, piano melodies……MOTOMAMI feels like a freight train from the future, hurtling right at us at full speed and no brakes. Rosalía is the power source behind it all.”

MOTOMAMI features the previously released songs “LA FAMA,” “SAOKO,” and much, much more. “LA FAMA” (feat. The Weeknd), is a powerful and cautionary song that finds Rosalía and The Weeknd singing to each other in Spanish about how charming and seductive fame can be, making her a dangerous and shallow lover. And “SAOKO” is a shining example of the spirit ofMOTOMAMI—grit and grace, strength and vulnerability, fierce femininity, and an unapologetic, brave attitude.

Album formatted collection of underheard Sonic rarities from the legendary band's 2000-2010 era, most for the first time on any physical format. Essential for the band's hardcore fans and for enthusiasts of instrumental rock.

Coming February 11th: Spoon's tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is alive, vital and inarguably the band's heaviest work to date. The first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown, Austin, in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years ' both in and out of shutdown ' these songs feel like a culmination of Spoon's career while marking a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more vivid.

Nearly sixty years after they first played together, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, longtime friends and collaborators, reunite with an album of music from two Piedmont blues masters who have inspired them all their lives: GET ON BOARD: THE SONGS OF SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE MCGHEE.

With Taj Mahal on vocals, harmonica, guitar, and piano and Cooder on vocals, guitar, mandolin, and banjo-joined by Joachim Cooder on drums and bass-the duo recorded eleven songs drawn from recordings and live performances by Terry and McGhee, who they both first heard as teenagers in California.

TAJ MAHAL & RY COODER - GET ON BOARD

Some forty years into one of music’s most impactful partnerships, Tears For Fears have arrived together at The Tipping Point – the group’s ambitious, accomplished and surprising first new studio album in nearly two decades. This limited exclusive picture disc vinyl features the iconic album artwork and a shot of the band. 

Dropout Boogie (INDIE EX) - The Black Keys

This is the indie exclusive White LP - limited to 4982 pieces.

As they've done their entire career, The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney wrote all of the material for their new album,Dropout Boogie, in the studio, and the album captures a number of first takes that hark back to the stripped-down blues rock of their early days making music together in Akron, Ohio, basements. After hashing out initial ideas at Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville, the duo welcomed new collaborators Billy F. Gibbons, Greg Cartwright, and Angelo Petraglia to the sessions, marking the first time they've invited multiple new contributors to work simultaneously on one of their own albums.

BLACK KEYS / DROPOUT BOOGIE (INDIE EXCLUSIVE)

Before Dan Klein's unfortunate passing, The Frightnrs agreed to keep a promise he asked of them - continue making music together. Part of that promise has been made manifest here...Daptone Records is proud to present ALWAYS! - the raw, soulful new long player from The Frightnrs. The road to Always began with a period of intense songwriting back when The Frightnrs and producer Victor Axelrod (Ticklah) were working on the group's debut, rocksteady masterpiece, Nothing More to Say. In addition to the scorchers heard therein, Axelrod and The Frightnrs agreed many of the recordings were too sweet to tamper with in order to fit the rocksteady mold. Some were created at their headquarters in Queens with Dan on the mic, some were elaborations on older ideas, others were brand new creations made at the finish line. Thanks to the vocal stems they had captured in this golden period, Dan Klein's other-worldly voice lived on, giving The Frightnrs all the raw material they needed for an entire album's worth of new, original music. So with that, The Frightnrs and Axelrod returned to the studio and painstakingly conceptualized, tracked, re-tracked and mixed them into a complete album with their beloved friend singing lead. The fruits of this arduous process lay bare the undying love and respect between musical brothers.The last song written for this album, "Why Does it Feel Like a Curse", married two song concepts with one of Dan's original vocal performances - creating a beautiful, flawless composition that not only serves as a highlight reel of their editing skills and songwriting prowess, but also as a kind of metaphor for The Frightnrs journey.  The perfect ending for ALWAYS.

"On Silver color vinyl. Toro y Moi’s seventh studio album, Mahal, is the boldest and most fascinating journey yet from musical mastermind Chaz Bear. The record spans genre and sound—encompassing the shaggy psychedelic rock of the 1960s and ‘70s, and the airy sounds of 1990s mod-post-rock—taking listeners on an auditory expedition, as if they’re riding in the back of Bear’s Filipino jeepney that adorns the album’s cover. But Mahal is also an unmistakably Toro y Moi experience, calling back to previous works while charting a new path forward in a way that only Bear can do.

Mahal is the latest in an accomplished career for Bear, who’s undoubtedly one of the decade’s most influential musicians. Since the release of the electronic pop landmark Causers of This in 2009, subsequent records as Toro y Moi have repeatedly shifted the idea of what his sound can be. But there’s little in Bear’s catalog that will prepare you for the deep-groove excursions on Mahal, his most eclectic record to date.
The second the album begins we’re immediately transported into the passenger seat, jeep sounds and all, ready for the ride Chaz and company have concocted for us. Seeds of some of Mahal’s 13 songs date back to the more explicitly rock-oriented What For? from 2015. Mahal was mostly completed last year in Bear’s Oakland studio with the involvement of a host of collaborators, Sofie Royer and Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Neilson to Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo and the Mattson 2.

“I wanted to make a record that featured more musicians on it than any other record of mine,” he explains. “To have them live on that record feels grounded, bringing a communal perspective to the table.” As a result, Mahal is lush and surprising at every turn, from the cool-handed “The Loop,” which recalls Sly and the Family Stones, to the elastic psych rock of “Foreplay” and the dizzying Mulatu Astatke- recalling of “Last Year.”
Lyrically, the album zooms in on generational concerns, picking up where the Outer Peace standout “Freelance” effectively left off. Bear seems to be surveying the ways in which we connect with technology, media, each other, and what disappears as a result. Cuts like the squishy “Postman” and the “Magazine” take a deep dive into our relationship with media in a changing digital world. “It’s interesting to see how we adapt to this new age. We’re so connected, but we’re still missing out on things,” Bear ruminates while discussing the album’s themes.

It’s not all introspection. Bear cools things down near the album’s end with the Mattson 2-featuring “Millennium,” a laid-back jam with tricky guitar licks about ringing in new times even when everything else seems upside down. “It’s about enjoying the new year, even when it’s been shitty,” Bear explains. “There’s nothing else to do.” Finding a sense of joy in the face of adversity is embedded in Mahal’s DNA, right down to the jeepney that literally and figuratively brings the music out into the community. “We know that touring is messed up for now, and large gatherings are a fluke,” he explains. “It’s about the notion of us going out to the people and bringing the record to them.” And with the wide-open atmosphere of Mahal, Toro y Moi stands to connect with more listeners than ever before."

Trombone Shorty returns with Lifted, his first album in 5 years and the follow-up to his Blue Note debut Parking Lot Symphony, featuring special guests including vocalist Lauren Daigle & guitarist Gary Clark Jr. An album that captures the energy of his legendary live shows, Lifted combines classic New Orleans sounds (funk, gospel, street rhythms, Mardi Gras Indian chants & second lines) with modern lyrics, melody & beats to create something fresh & unique. Part Jimi Hendrix, part James Brown and all New Orleans, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews is the bandleader and frontman of Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, a hard-edged funk band that employs brass-band beats, rock dynamics & improvisation in a jazz tradition.

A Tzompantli, in bygone days, was a rack used to display human skulls, often of enemies or sacrifices, in several Mesoamerican civilizations. In 2022, Tzompantli is a beyond-crushing death doom war march built on a bedrock of Native / Indigenous themes, rituals and history, illuminating the splendor, brutality and despair within. Nearly three years after the band's self-released EP, Tzompantli's debut full length presents the first smoke-conjured specter to manifest materially. Tlazcaltiliztli, a ritual ceremony that translates to "nourishing the fire and sun with blood", is imbued with the spirit of Native inspiration that dwells deep within the heart and soul of the project and is skillfully weaved into a traditional bludgeoning framework of spine-severing savagery and melancholic anguish. On the ritualistic "Eltequi" (to cut the chest open and extract the heart as an offering) the band's unification of native / folk instrumentation and heaviness becomes one in the same, opening vast new horizons for where this sound can go.Tlazcaltiliztli is dedicated, and an offering, to the indigenous peoples, nations and tribes of the North, South, East and West of the American continents. It marks a fearsome and spirited new vision for the death metal underground.

After releasing two of the hottest singles of the year, Wet Leg's Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers were catapulted from their confines on the Isle of Wight to sold out venues across the UK and packed-out tents at festivals causing giddy excitement wherever they went. Now, the duo is thrilled to unveil news of their debut album. The album is called Wet Leg.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Includes digital download. 2022 release. Wiki has become a fixture of New York City hip hop since, at 17 years old, he founded the boundary defying group Ratking, whose aggressive style represented a new generation of city kids and artists, hungry for innovation and raw energy. Half God is produced entirely by Navy Blue, one of the most refreshing young, acclaimed rapper/producers to break out in recent years, for a project that pushes each of their talents to new heights. Wiki's storytelling as the city's young OG has never been more vivid and Navy Blue's production pushes further into every sonic corner he's explored today, providing a perfect canvas for Wiki's signature voice. There's also guest features from Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, Duendita, Navy Blue, Jesse James Solomon and Remy Banks. When painting lyrical pictures of New York scenes, one gets a sense of Wiki's skill as a storyteller and visionary. He has solidified his role in carrying the torch for NYC's master MC's; representing for the freaks, weirdos and underbelly culture.