Air Traffic create brilliant, occasionally brutal, pop music.

Debut album ‘Fractured Life’ earned the band a cult following and critical acclaim from NME, The Fader and The Sunday Times who called it "an often mentioned, rarely sighted thing: an emotional rollercoaster ride, get on it. 5/5".

Closing 2017 with a brand new single, their first in 10 years, and the promise of more material to follow, this Bournemouth UK based four-piece may go on to soundtrack the lives of a whole new generation.

Alberta Cross are led by Swedish-born singer and guitarist Petter Ericson Stakee and based between Brooklyn, Berlin and London. Their four highly acclaimed albums have led them to grace arenas and stages around the world with everyone from Neil Young to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, travel the world appearing at the likes of Coachella, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock Festival and soundtrack Californication, Sons of Anarchy and the Late Show With David Letterman.

With new record 'What Are You Frightened Of' due early 2020 and new single 'Find A Home Out There' already amassing over 3 million streams, Alberta Cross' flame is burning brighter than ever.

Returning from a self-imposed musical exile following a triumphant run of early releases, haunted Swedish songwriter Alice Boman brings forth new single ‘Dreams’. A bleary-eyed, emotion-packed reflection on the dissolution of hope, it’s a track that’s strengthened by the silence it emerges from. “You need to take a break from it,” says Alice, looking back on her whirlwind early rise. “It really does help. It’s all about listening to your gut.”

Alice Boman’s voice hits with the emotional force and haunting fragility of Nina Simone.

The purest approach produces the most authentic outcome.

Amtrac favors a tactile assembly of alternative electronic music reliant on handcrafted nuance akin to that of a band. The Kentucky-born and Los Angeles-based artist, DJ, producer, remixer, multi- instrumentalist, and founder of Openers carefully fuses textures and styles into an unabridged, unfiltered, and undeniable sonic trip on his aptly titled second full-length, Oddyssey [Openers/RCA Records]. As such, he imparts a piece of himself on every moment—from the production and composition to the vocals and performance.

From the front porches, alleys, and rivers of Richmond, Virginia, comes Andy Jenkins carrying a crisp, newly cut album, Sweet Bunch. Hatched in the tradition of Southern culture–unhurried in his art, unworried by external demands, yet weirdly ahead of the curve by the time he arrives–Andy is a distinctive and joyously idiosyncratic songwriting talent developed for years in obscurity.

Sweet Bunch springs into the world fully-formed, the work of a confident, timeless as well as contemporary singer-songwriter, offering beautiful and basic melodies with lyrics exploring the fluidity between the banal and the sublime. His work feels natural, complete within itself, untrained musically but adherent to its own forms and intricate in its own ways. Spring peepers line the path; the author feeds her peacocks strutting among vines and ruins; a photographer waits for the right light and color in frame. Each song presents a rich, new tableau of sound, glowing worlds to discover, rooted in an unnamed sense of place.

Andy Shauf will release The Neon Skyline, his most direct and emotionally-rich work yet, on January 24th via ANTI-, with a North American and European tour immediately following.

The interconnected songs on The Neon Skyline, all written, performed, arranged and produced by Shauf, follow a simple plot: the narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up. As with Shauf’s last solo album, 2016’s The Party, The Neon Skyline is densely layered with an abundance of charming moments. His characters are all sympathetic here, people who share countless inside jokes, shots, and life-or-death musings when the night gets hazy.

Angel Olsen will release Whole New Mess, her first solo album since her 2012 debut, on August 28th 2020 via Jagjaguwar. A super intimate and vulnerable emotional portrait that shows her grappling with a period of personal tumult, Whole New Mess presents Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest.

Considered alongside All Mirrors, Whole New Mess is a poignant and pointed reminder that songs are more than mere collections of words, chords, and even melodies. They are webs of moods and moments and ideas, qualities that can change from one month to the next and can say just as much as the perfect progression or an exquisite chord. In that sense, these 11 songs—solitary, frank, and unflinching examinations of what it’s like to love, lose, and survive—are entirely new. This is the sound of Angel Olsen, sorting through the kind of trouble we’ve all known, as if just for herself and whoever else needs it.

ANIMA!’s enchantingly iconic vocal and cerebral beat boutique has fast become an alt-electronic favourite alongside their founding inspirations Sylvan Esso to Little Dragon. Originating from California and Cape Town; Arielle Vakni and Vicente Espi combine to create a masterful sound world with an uplifting universality.

When Anna Burch introduced herself on her 2018 debut Quit The Curse, it was with a
concentrated wash of energetic, serotonin-boosting pop. Two years later, Burch’s follow
up If You’re Dreaming takes us down a different path than its predecessor, shedding
some nervous energy in favor of a deeper exploration of an internal world.

If You’re Dreaming was tracked with producer Sam Evian in his home studio in the
Catskill mountains of upstate New York. The end goal was to present
not just an assortment of new songs, but craft an album that moved dynamically
through an interconnected emotional arc. With recurring themes of isolation, weariness and longing, these songs deliver that
emotional arc with a delicate but uncompromising execution.

Even at its most introverted, If You’re Dreaming is always warm and present. Daring and clear-headed, these songs cut deeper in their subtleties. If You’re Dreaming
moves with intention, taking its time revealing new layers of sophistication and growth
in Burch’s always charming songcraft.

If Only There Was a River is the first full-length studio album from Anna St. Louis. The songwriter, who originally hails from Kansas City, began writing songs after moving to Los Angeles five years ago and has previously released a cassette of recordings on Woodsist / Mare Records, appropriately titled “First Songs”. The tape received notice from NPR: All Songs Considered, Pitchfork, and Stereogum.

Annie Hart is best known as one-third of Au Revoir Simone, the beloved all-female synth trio that counts David Lynch as a superfan. But with the eight tracks on her solo debut, "Impossible Accomplice" (Uninhabitable Mansions, July 28), Annie will emerge as an electrifying artist and producer in her own right.

On the eponymously titled final song of her debut album Land of No Junction, Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances (pronounced Ee-fa) sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre – a centre that cannot hold – where maps are constantly being rewritten.

The songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. Land of No Junction is shot through with a sense of mystery – an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates with smokey luminescence.

Navigated by the richness of Aoife’s voice, along with the layers gently built through her collaborators’ instruments (strings, drums, guitars, keys, percussion) gives a feeling of filling up space into every corner and crack. A remarkable coherent sonic world: buoyant and aqueous, with dark undercurrents. Where nostalgia and newness ebb and flow in equal measure.

Recognized for her ethereal voice and substantive songwriting, Aoife O’Donovan is also known for her collaborations. Called “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by the New York Times, O’Donovan is one of the most sought after vocalists and songwriters of her generation and her career has allowed her to collaborate with some of the most eminent names in music across a wide variety of genres.

Co-founder of the bands Crooked Still and I’m With Her (with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz), O’Donovan is the featured vocalist on The Goat Rodeo Sessions, the Grammy-winning album by Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. O’Donovan also sings in the house band on the radio variety show Live From Here.

Thriving on the energy shared with the audience, their shows are an open expression of communal experience and that rarely felt but precious emotion – joy.

Formed in Melbourne in the late 1990's, Architecture in Helsinki have finally arrived at a place that feels like home. A home that’s not a geographical space, but a state of mind.

A sound of innocence and melodies laced with synth folk that wakens your inner child.

Brooklyn indie pop trio Au Revoir Simone consists of Heather D'Angelo (vocals/drum machine/keyboard), Erika Forster (vocals/keyboard), and Annie Hart (vocals/keyboard). Forming in 2003 they took their name from a line in Tim Burton's 'Pee Wee's Adventure' and soon after, embarked on their own casio infused hypno-folk adventure.

BARBAROSSA is the nom de plume of London-based multi-instrumentalist James Mathé.

Mathe’s musical journey started with folk-tinged balladry that saw him become part Fence Collective, and subsequently a band member for the likes of Jose Gonzalez, Johnny Flynn and Junip. With debut album 'Bloodlines', however, Mathé started to infuse his song writing with electronic flourishes, and now with the follow-up 'Imager', he has completed his transformation into a fully fledged electronic soul pioneer.

During the past 2 years, Esben & Pernille have slaved in their Copenhagen-based studio to realize their vision of the sophomore album.

‘Dive’ is the infectious new single from Blondage, the Danish duo consisting of Pernille Smith-Sivertsen and Esben Andersen formerly known as Rangleklods. The track is the first off the debut EP, set to be released later this year via Tambourhinoceros (Palace Winter, Cancer, CTM etc).

Blue Hawaii have been recording and releasing music for almost a decade. You would think it’d be clockwork by now, but their fourth record, “Open Reduction Internal Fixation”, has proved to be anything but. Spanning genres as diverse as trance, acoustic, UK garage, trip-hop and house, its core elements are lighthearted and groovy.

Blue Hawaii is a two person electronic project consisting of Ra and Ag, who met doing parties and shows in Montreal and continue to create together despite living in separate cities - split between Montreal and Berlin. “Open Reduction Internal Fixation” is their fourth LP and continues the thread of dreamy electronic pop and dance floor playability.

Been awhile since you checked in with Born Ruffians? Fortunately for you, the Ruffians are veritably bubbling over with new music at the moment. The spiky, psych-y SQUEEZE arrives on Oct. 2, 2020, a mere six months after the release last April of the bold ‘n’ brassy JUICE. Not that SQUEEZE itself is particularly distracted from present-day realities. Although written well before the global pandemic lockdown with which JUICE’s spring release expertly coincided, the new album’s nine songs were birthed in the shadow of Brexit and Donald Trump, and lead singer Luke Lalonde found himself switched-on by present day circumstances. Now more than ever, Born Ruffians simply lean into the material and act like the confident and experienced and altogether singular rock ‘n’ roll combo that they are.

“There's something about this record,” Benson says, describing his Third Man Records debut album DEAR LIFE. “A friend of mine called it ‘life-affirming.’ I thought it was a joke at first but then realized, well, it’s about life and death for sure. I don’t know if that’s positive or optimistic or whatever, but that's what's going on with me.”

Brendan Benson finds himself in an enviable spot as he enters the third decade of a remarkably creative, consistently idiosyncratic career – an accomplished frontman, musician, songwriter, producer, band member, husband, and dad. Benson’s seventh solo album, and first new LP in almost seven years, DEAR LIFE is this consummate polymath’s most inventive and upbeat work thus far, an 11-track song cycle about life, love, family, fatherhood, and the pure joy of making music.

Bella Union are delighted to announce the signing of young up’n’coming Norwegian five-piece BROEN. The band have already been championed by the likes of The Guardian, Consequence of Sound, BBC Radio 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne, and now Bella Union’s Simon Raymonde, who welcomes them to his label. Combining elements of R’n’B, rap, jazz, improvisation, psychedelia, dub and electronica, Broen ignore the usual genre conventions to create their own unique sound. They have built up a reputation of being one of Norway’s finest live bands, presenting something completely out of the ordinary. Sparkle-laden costumes and signature dance moves are rivalled only by their own live prowess and musicianship. They cannot be described by drawing lines to similar acts, but simply by drawing a line towards them.

Buke and Gase make pop music in the most insane way possible. Aron Sanchez (boy) + Arone Dyer (girl) build their own instruments & develop songs through long periods of ecstatic improvisation, then laborious editing and post-production. A cult favorite of their fellow musicians, the duo have collaborated with or acted as hand-picked support for a who's who of music icons: Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson, Shellac, Battles, Reggie Watts, Swans, Deerhoof, Owen Pallett & Mike Patton’s metal supergroup Tomahawk. The National have taken them on multiple tours, signed the band to their label Brassland and had Arone sing the introductory vocal on "The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness," the lead single from their Grammy-winning Sleep Well Beast album.

Electronic and Hip Hop phenomenon C2C broke into mainstream culture in 2013, bringing turntablism to the masses with their critically acclaimed album Tetra. C2C consists of 20syl and Greem (Hocus Pocus) and Pfel and Atom (BeatTorrent). The four DJs’ dominated the DMC World Championship 2003-2006, and after a decade of teamwork, dropped their debut EP, Down the Road, in 2012, followed by their groundbreaking album Tetra.

On stage, C2C’s impressive scenography expresses the band’s love for graphic design and visual arts. Their epic performances and original sound catapulted the quartet from Europe's biggest stages to Coachella.

In 2014 Dan Snaith aka Caribou released Our Love to overwhelming critical acclaim and top 5 ‘Album of the Year’ positions from the likes of The Guardian, Mixmag, Loud & Quiet and NME. Now Caribou returns with his seventh studio album Suddenly, an album about family and the changes we go though as those relationships evolve. Our Love was an open-armed exploration of the concept of love in its grandest form, both as an expression of gratitude to his fans and as an examining of that one thing that matters most in life. Suddenly however takes that concept and winnows it down, directly applying it to real life and the people to whom that love means the most.

Cartel Madras is a Calgary-based hip-hop sensation shaking things up across the music industry. Hailing from South India, sisters Contra and Eboshi are rappers now being hailed by fans and eager listeners-on as they develop varying narratives for coloured woman and deliver them in explosive and captivating ways. Sexuality, identity, freedom, race, colour, and gender some of the recurring themes that listeners can expect to explore through their music. Guaranteed to bring the party, their signature sound fuses the rap stylings of the South and trap and filters it through a strong female, though not necessarily feminine, voice.

Chaos Chaos is an experimental pop duo made up of sisters Asya and Chloe Saavedra formerly of Smoosh. The girls grew up living in Seattle, Sweden, New York, and are now based in Los Angeles where they record, engineer and produce their music. As kids, Asya and Chloe began their career in Seattle in the beginnings of the indie rock scene, performing with the likes of Pearl Jam, Death Cab For Cutie, Nada Surf, Cat Power, and Sleater Kinney. Together they have been releasing albums for 15 years and have had music featured on TV shows (Rick And Morty, Lucifer). As individuals they have branched out; Asya scored the music for the Trover Saves The Universe game, and Chloe has toured with Lee Ranaldo and performed on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

The sisters are musical chameleons, exploring many styles and influences in their recordings. Their newer music is heavily pop based, but at their shows one can expect to see a much more live instrument-based and improvisational rendition of their work. The girls are currently writing new material for their next album.

Danish indie band Choir Of Young Believers made their debut in 2007, seeing them win a host of awards in their homeland, and memorable performances at Roskilde. Signed to Ghostly Int, they have toured with the likes of Mew, Depeche Mode in recent years, and featured in a host of US TV shows including Beverly Hills 90210 and Numbers. In 2012, after finishing up a highly successful US tour, they released their second album “Rhine Gold”, while the song “Hollow Talk” from their debut album was featured as title track on the very popular TV show “The Bridge”. The new album, inspired by Talk Talk, Enya and Frank Ocean, was released in February 2016.

Haley Fohr is a vocalist, composer and singer-songwriter based in Chicago, Illinois. Her musical endeavors focus around our human condition, and her 10-year career as Circuit des Yeux has grown into one of America’s most successful efforts to connect the personal to the universal. She is most distinctly identified by her 4-octave voice and unique style of 12-string guitar. Her mysterious “Jackie Lynn” project landed her on the cover of Wire Magazine in August of 2016. Her recent works include an Original Soundtrack for Charles Bryant’s silent film Salomé (1923), commissioned by Opera North, and a critically acclaimed 2017 album Reaching For Indigo, released on Drag City Records

In any discussion regarding songwriters and lyricists of 21st century indie music, Alec Ounsworth and his moniker, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, will feature prominently. Few have been as consistently brilliant, eclectic, and intimate; fewer still remain defiantly independent, refusing to sign deals that compromise artistic vision. That is what characterizes Ounsworth’s oeuvre, especially the lifetime project he initiated sometime in the early 2000s, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And with each release since its landmark self-titled debut, he has refined and broadened his sound, indulging an ever wider set of influences.

Prolific and enigmatic as ever, his recent works marry the quirky, left-field spirit of the early years with a well-earned confidence, and grander sense of scale and ambition. Always heading down new avenues of song arrangement and organic connection to his audience, after nearly two decades Ounsworth remains one of music’s most distinctive voices.

For nearly a decade the story of Com Truise has relied on science fiction and abstract fact. Seth Haley’s singular style of melodic beat music subsists as hazy machinist nostalgia, a mainframe downloaded cosmology. Yet with each release, alongside sonic refinement, comes an increasingly visible vapor trail to Haley’s own ontology. His long-awaited 2017 LP Iteration brought to completion a conceptual space saga while also reflecting seismic life changes for the producer and designer. With mini-LP Persuasion System, Haley leaves the past narrative behind, settling into a new period marked by change — on this planet, in the present — putting forth his most grounded and visceral work to date.

It was an independent and melancholic way of creating pop-infused electronics that led Georg Conrad and Marius Bubat to their status as a highly sought after club duo, following the release of their debut album In Technicolor (2013). But as more ardent perfectionists than hyped-up egomaniacs, COMA‘s journey in the clubscene wasn‘t easy. Their second album, This Side Of Paradise (2015), subverted the expectations of the dance music world to become a multilayered and atmospheric kraut-pop record.

After installing drums and video projections, their live show became a beautifully blurred kaleidoscope of eccentric pop and dance music. Whilst taking a break from touring in the last 2 years COMA have been working intensively on a third full-length, due in late 2019.

Through her folkloric mystique, otherworldly psychedelia, and a dash of enigmatic punk, Ahomale by Combo Chimbita catapults the sacred knowledge of our forebears into the future. Their second studio album and Anti- Records debut sees the visionary quartet drawing from ancestral mythologies and musical enlightenment to unearth the awareness of Ahomale, the album’s cosmic muse. Comprised of Carolina Oliveros’ mesmeric contralto, illuminating storytelling and fierce guacharaca rhythms, Prince of Queens’ hypnotic synth stabs and grooving bass lines, Niño Lento’s imaginative guitar licks, and Dilemastronauta’s powerful drumming, the lure and lore of Combo Chimbita comes into existence.

Crooks on Tape is John Schmersal (Enon, Brainiac), Rick Lee (Enon, Skeleton Key, Butter 08), and Joey Galvan. The unscripted band was born out of a simple notion: convene, improvise, and record every moment.

In 2010, the Los Angeles trio assembled a rotating fortress of instruments, synthesizers, samplers, and loopers. Crooks recorded hundreds of hours of material, largely instrumental in its original performance. Fingerprint is the first evidence of this undertaking and a window into the band’s sound. The debut record you hear is analogous to tiny snapshots of an altered crime scene.

Cubzoa is the solo project of Brighton based musician and producer Jack Wolter. Originally from the Isle of Man, Jack left the Island and spent his early twenties in Cornwall where he studied fine art. Wolter makes music born from the lo-fi bedroom producer era, soaked in handmade textures and melodies inspired by experimental indie, post and alt rock music. With three self-produced/released EP’s uploaded to Bandcamp over the last few years, Wolter is currently working on recording new music whilst carrying out his residency at Bella Union Studios. Jack and his sister Lily are also the core of the band Penelope Isles who are promoting their debut album for Bella Union.

Cut Copy is a GRAMMY® nominated, ARIA award-winning musical act with 1,000+ sold out headline shows spanning several continents to date.

Initially the bedroom recording project of Dan Whitford, Cut Copy evolved into a full-fledged band with guitarist Tim Hoey, drummer Mitchell Scott, and bass player Ben Browning. The quartet’s studio albums include In Ghost Colours, which Pitchfork named as one of the best albums of 2008 and among the top albums of the 2000s, and 2011’s Zonoscope, which won two ARIA Awards and was nominated for a GRAMMY®. The band’s fifth and latest album, Haiku From Zero, is arguably the most sonically diverse, perfectly produced, and all-round timeliest record of their career. Cut Copy have managed the clever hat trick of simultaneously expanding their sound while also refining it.

Never one to rest on his laurels or do what’s expected, Dan Mangan has, yet again, transformed his sound. From the traditional stripped-down acoustic folk of 2010’s Nice Nice Very Nice, to the sweeping orchestration and avant-jazz arrangements of 2012’s Oh Fortune, Dan Mangan works best when he’s moving forward, challenging himself. His latest, Club Meds, released in 2015 by City Slang, is a departure, both sonically and thematically. The music is darker, more complex, but just as affecting as anything he’s ever done, with the richness and honesty of his singular voice ascending over the music.

Since his first release in 2011, Dan Snaith's Daphni alias has become a fixture in the world of underground dance music. 

From his debut album 'Jiaolong' in 2012 to his 2017 release of both a fabriclive mix composed entirely of his own unreleased tracks and edits and his second album 'Joli Mai', via various remixes and edits in between, Daphni tracks have populated the DJ sets of many of dance music's most forward thinking DJs.

Dawn Landes is a Nashville based singer-songwriter whose music you might have heard if you watch The Good Wife, House or Gossip Girl. Along with releasing five albums since 2005 (and an EP inspired by yé-yé, ‘60s French pop music), she’s a frequent collaborator with contemporaries such as Sufjan Stevens, Norah Jones and composer Nico Muhly. She has appeared with the Boston Pops, the NYC Ballet and on the TED main stage performing songs from her forthcoming musicalROW about fellow Louisville native Tori Murden McClure’s quest to become the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

Dawn's 5th and most recent album "Meet Me at the River" (Yep Roc) was recorded with legendary producer Fred Foster (Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton) and features Bobby Bare, Charlie McCoy and other A-list players.

Norway's Death By Unga Bunga supply their own blend of punchy rock and roll, joyful power pop, and wavy psychedelia that reels you in and doesn’t let go. The band has made it their mission to give fans songs with irresistible hooks, a sense of humor, and guitar licks for days. With the release of their breakthrough album Pineapple Pizza, they won over fans and earned critical acclaim from outlets including Paste and Stereogum.

Death by Unga Bunga's latest chapter kicks off with the release of their hard-hitting lead single “Not Like the Others”. With more music at the ready, listeners should buckle up for rock and roll that will fill your soul and make you forget about the troubles of modern life.

Born in Brazil and based in Berlin, Dominique Dillon de Byington aka Dillon has always had a clear vision of her art. She already has released two studio albums which she regards as one body of work. In 2016, both albums were brought together with the live album Live at Haus der Berliner Festspiele in which Dillon is accompanied by an all Female choir, performing the tracks which she and her collaborator & co-producer Tamer Fahri composed. In November 2017, Dillon carves a new chapter with her third studio album titled Kind on PIAS, which Dillon refers to as an ‘album of love’ and, which this time, is entirely separated from her previous work.

Swedish Diskopunk emerged in early 2016 with the release of their debut single “Antonio America”. With the power of slutty glitter makeup, violent disco dancing and the absolute conviction that every song is a smash-hit this five piece dance/pop group has been making noise within the Swedish live scene through their overcharged live display. Upon releasing their second single “Fire” months later the hit-making-megalomania was backed up as the single proceeded to rack down millions of streams with it’s tight and playful take on disco-pop.

The group describes Its sound as a drug infused ABBA; Grandiose and chord driven pop songs punched up with beat driven post-punk elements like obnoxious cowbells, full on guitar riffs and the extensive use of percussion. Combining glossy disco aesthetics with the dirty raggedy underground-scene puts Diskopunk in the midst of opposing worlds, or in the midst of a perfect one. New music out 2018.

DIVA is Matt Didemus alter ego, one half of Canadian synth-pop duo Junior Boys.

Didemus' aims to "explore the outer reaches of visceral club music, equal parts dancefloor introspection and sonic extrospection," according to a press release. Its first record will be a sampler featuring tracks from Iron Galaxy & Sexlife, together with own DIVA material.

English songsmith Douglas Dare returns with his third and most stripped back studio album to date, Milkteeth, released on 21 February 2020 with Erased Tapes. Produced by Mike Lindsay — founding member of Tunng and one half of Lump with Laura Marling — in his studio in Margate in just twelve days, Milkteeth sees Douglas become confident and comfortable enough with his own identity to reflect on both the joys and pains of youth. In doing so, he has established himself as a serious 21st century singer-songwriter with an enduring lyrical poise and elegant minimalist sound.

Dr. Dog is a psychedelic rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their sound has been compared to The Beatles, The Band, and The Beach Boys, but are so much more than this set of associations that crop up in nearly every piece about them. The band has released 6 critically acclaimed albums and has built a 'cult like' fan base. Dr. Dog's legendary live performances weave rollicking indie rock with breezy harmonies to create an all together joyous experience. "Their live shows are full of electric enthusiasm and sharp proficiency that illuminates how they became so well-loved." Rolling Stone

A heady air of dislocation envelops Drab City’s debut album, where songs of innocence and experience merge with dub, hip-hop, dream-pop and jazzy soundtrack vibes to intoxicating effect. Drab City are fixated on social alienation, violent revenge, and (perhaps) romantic love as salvation; topics not new in music, but listening to Drab City in 2020, one is struck by how uncommon they’ve become.

So a folk singer and a electro-bassist walked into a bar at a Halifax guitar rock festival, and what happened next? They got drunk, danced, fell in love, formed a band, got married, danced some more, abducted a drummer named Joel, ran away to London, England, and never looked back.

Bodyparts is their third studio album, released on September 22, 2012 by Universal Music Canada. The album was nominated for Dance Recording of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2013.

Blending wiry post-punk with unpredictable art-rock, Drahla have established themselves as a formidable and distinctive band across their three sold out 7” singles and the ‘Third Article’ EP. So far they have earned support from a litany of radio shows, magazines and tastemakers, including the likes of BBC 6 Music, DIY, and Loud & Quiet. Formed in late 2015, Drahla quickly found their identity in Yorkshire’s fertile music scene with their minimal yet robust bass-heavy sound. Their reputation as a fervent live act is ever-growing, typified by them being asked to share stages with the likes of METZ, Ought, Parquet Courts, The Cribs, Cloud Nothings and more.

The band’s early releases and live reputation caught the attention of influential US indie label Captured Tracks who signed the band in 2018. Drahla are currently readying their debut album release for the label due out this summer.

Eleanor Friedberger creates love songs. Hellos and goodbyes, infatuation, pre-occupation, loss – but not simply about romantic love.

"They’re also love songs to music: how you feel on stage when you do something spontaneous and it works, how you feel when you hear someone sing a song for the first time, what it's like to watch a friend perform, how you can feel close to someone you barely know because you both happen to love the same record, or playing the same song forty times in a row, not being able to rest until you own every song recorded by your favorite singer, or every version of your favorite song.“

It is the kick-off of a new chapter in his music career! Before the Swedish singer and songwriter will release his new upcoming EP "HIM" via Universal Music, ELIAS presents his first new song "I Give You The Best". The single and the accompanying video, directed by Daniel Eskils (a.o. Boys Noize, Mando Diao etc) are just the beginning... He's just in his early twenties and has a voice that - as so often quoted, but here definitely a fact - is simply unique and unforgettable. ELIAS was inspired by very different styles, especially soul, gospel and R & B, which he combines with pop and urban sounds to create an extraordinary mix. ELIAS brings a depth, melancholy and thoughtfulness into his songs and touches all senses with a rare sensitivity: ELIAS presents his very own definition of pop music.

Erika Spring began writing music as part of a multimedia project in her schooldays. After graduating, she moved to New York and she soon found she was collaborating on songs after work with a couple of similarly synth-minded girlfriends, eventually forming officially as the band, Au Revoir Simone.

Setting out on her own, she has taken elements of her band’s sound and spun them into her own brand of bittersweet, sun-bleached pop. Breathing vocals over mesmerizing keyboard phrases, Erika produces an effect that approaches the supernatural, with tough, spring-loaded beats lending gravity to the otherwise hazy, delirious songs.

Erika Wennerstrom is best known as the lead singer and songwriter of Heartless Bastards. After spending the past decade touring with her band, Heartless Bastards, and pushing their unique brand of rock ‘n’ roll into new shapes over five acclaimed albums Erika is taking some time off to explore new directions and work on her upcoming solo album.

When Ex Hex exploded onto the scene with their unfettered brand of rock and riffage, the power trio for our generation had finally arrived. Made up of Mary Timony (guitar, vocals), Betsy Wright (bass, vocals), and Laura Harris (drums), the group’s 2014 debut Rips was a gleaming collection of tightly wound gems that scored Best New Music honors from Pitchfork, the top spot on Magnet Magazine’s Best of 2014 list, and No. 11 in that year’s Pazz & Jop critics poll. Near-constant touring throughout 2015 and 2016 established the band as a force to be reckoned with: an audacious three-piece distilling rock music to its essence with formidable skills and a reputation for frenzied and unabashedly fun live shows.

On It’s Real, the group’s forthcoming second album, Ex Hex’s commitment to larger-than-life riffs and unforgettable hooks remains intact, but the garage-y, post-punk approach that defined Rips has grown in scale and ambition. What started as a reaction to the blown-out aesthetic of Rips would test the sonic limits of the power trio and lead the band on a quest for a more immersive and three-dimensional sound. Vocal harmonies are layered ten tracks deep, solos shimmer and modulate atop heaving power chords, and the codas linger and stretch toward new frontiers of sound. On first listen, you might think you’ve unearthed a long-lost LP carved from the space where crunch-minded art rock and glitter-covered hard rock converge, an event horizon at the intersection of towering choruses and swaggering guitars.

Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger formed The Fiery Furnaces in New York City in 2000. Their debut album Gallowsbird's Bark (Rough Trade Records) was released to critical acclaim in 2003. In the following seven years, they released eight more albums and toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Japan. The band's last performance was nearly a decade ago at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. In the meantime Eleanor and Matthew have released eight solo albums, collectively. They are very pleased to return to the stage in their hometown Chicago, at Pitchfork Music Festival this July.

A year ago, Wasner left her native Baltimore and started anew in Durham, North Carolina. She left the place she grew up, her family, and a community - where she started Wye Oak with Andy Stack - that shaped and loved her.

On If You See Me, Say Yes, you can feel the intensity of this moment and it's one we can all relate to - when you're poised on the precipice, diving into the new, while looking back at what you left behind. So many of these new songs are built around these ecstatic moments when it feels like something is spilling open, or breaking through.

Described as Icelands best kept secret they create captivating electro pop that infilrates to the tips of your fingers to your toes. What started out as a studio project in 2005 has blossomed into a screaming monster of a live show that's been dancing through the continent. FM Belfast will leave you sweaty with a smile on your face, as long as you accept to tag a long. Everyone is invited to participate in the party workout.

Francis Lung is a singer/songwriter, producer and multi instrumentalist from Manchester. He began writing and stockpiling music after the demise of his former band WU LYF in 2012. The unique brand of Power Pop featured on his recorded output spans genres as diverse as Disco, Soft Rock and Alt. Country whilst gliding seamlessly between them.

He released his first EP "Vol I" on his own imprint ‘Songs Records’ in 2015 which The Line OF Best Fit called ‘A masterful anthology of tender, classic songwriting. The “Vol II” EP followed in 2016 which Noisey praised for its ’lilting melodies, thoughtful, complex arrangements and aching post-punk atmospherics thrown in for good measure”.

Originally born of heartbreak and heartache Friska Viljor formed after endings, their journey has now taken them to new beginnings.

Over the past 4 years they have taken leaps through genres, from suffering and sorrow, to hope and happiness, in constant evolution using instrumentation from mandolin, ukelele and glockenspiel to accordion, clarinet and saw. The new direction delves into euphoric choruses as they explore the childhood nostalgia, soul searching and a touch of apathy.

Brighton-based Fujiya & Miyagi have been making expansive, experimental and multifaceted electronic-driven music for twenty years now. As an outfit they have been as successful in their investigations into bleep as they have elongated Krautrock wig outs, and creating breathy electro pop as fiercely as they do post-punk-indebted scratchy dance. Their new album, Flashback, is to be released in May 2019 and it finds a group re-connecting with the potent music of their youth and connecting it with their well-learned musical chops as adults.

As visionary fashion designer Raf Simons puts it: “GOOSE is new energy.” And fifteen years after bursting onto the scene with Bring It On, the band’s debut album on UK label Skint, the Belgian four-piece is far from running out. In fact, since opening their own playground Safari Studios in their hometown of Kortrijk, they’re recording new tracks, remixes, and collaborations at a faster pace than ever before.

Because if there is one thing GOOSE knows a thing or two about, it’s bridging gaps – between rockers and ravers, pillheads and pissheads, minimalists and maximalists. The band has been bringing together polar worlds since 2006 and making it seem like they were always meant to be together – all the while rewriting its DNA on almost every single occasion.

“I’d like to be as un-mysterious as I possibly can,” Graham Van Pelt says. He’s about to release Time Travel, his first record in the four years since he moved from Montreal to Toronto, and he’s no longer Miracle Fortress, or Inside Touch, or any of the aliases he’s used to record over the years. He’s just Graham Van Pelt.

With the perspective of leaving a longtime home, of watching old friends change and familiar places become unrecognizable, came a recommitment to an emotional honesty in Van Pelt’s songwriting. Time Travel’s eight songs are a tangle of friendships and feelings. Moving backwards and forwards in time, they occupy a space of elegant melancholy.

Immersing himself in the work of house music legends like Larry Heard, Vincent Floyd and Maurizio and the fragile disco of Arthur Russell, along with contemporaries like Jessy Lanza and Kelly Lee Owens, Van Pelt built the album from the bottom up, rooting every track in the crude sequencer of the Roland SH-101 synth, a decades-old dance music totem. The result are melodies that are simple but affecting, anchored to deep, wandering basslines. Time Travels was engineered by twin brothers Mark and Matt Thibideau, whose techno roots deepened the grooves throughout the record.

I’m drawing on the urgency of the moment,” reflects Grant-Lee Phillips. “The things that eat away in the late hours…” That urgency inspired the headlong rush of Widdershins – available February 2018 – in which Phillips invests the insight, nuance, and wit that has distinguished his songcraft over the past three decades in a riveting dissection of today’s fraught social landscape. With more than two decades' experience first as frontman of the acclaimed Grant Lee Buffalo then and accomplished solo artist, Phillips awakens comfort and hope by shining light into darker corners. “I hope to express my faith in people, my faith in the good ideas we’re capable of, and that regardless of what opposition we face, the fact that we can surmount these things,” he concludes.

"When a close friend took an in-advance listen to Hachiku’s debut album, I’ll Probably Be Asleep, she had one question for bandleader Anika Ostendorf: “‘why are you so angry?’”

It’s not the first reaction that most people would have to the Melbourne-based outfit, whose dream-pop jams — all dewy guitars, rickety drum-machines, and layered ambience, topped off with Ostendorf’s oft-breathy voice — would seem to contain no sharp edges.

But, following Hachiku’s self-titled 2017 debut EP, Ostendorf found herself dealing with darker themes; which reflected the 25-year-old growing up, changing, and feeling mounting frustrations.

Meg Duffy grew up in a small town in Upstate New York and they cut their teeth as a session guitarist and touring member of Kevin Morby’s band. The Hand Habits project emerged after Meg moved to Los Angeles; it started as a private songwriting outlet but soon evolved into a fully-fledged band with Meg at the helm. Hand Habits’ debut album, Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void), released by Woodsist Records in 2017, was entirely self-produced and recorded in Meg’s home during spare moments when they weren’t touring.

Two years later, Hand Habits has returned with their sophomore album, placeholder, the name stemming from Meg’s fascination with the undefinable. As a lyricist, Meg is drawn to the in-between, and the songs on this new album primarily confront the ways in which certain experiences can serve as a stepping stone on the road to self-discovery.

Hannah Cohen has arrived home. From the title of her new album to the depth and beauty of the music, the Woodstock, NY-based singer-songwriter’s third album for Bella Union, Welcome Home, displays a new level of confidence and comfort with the many creative tools at her disposal. Cohen’s remarkably evocative voice is surrounded by dreamy, swooning incantations, from the rippling ‘This Is Your Life’ and the slow-burning, forthright statement of ‘All I Want,’ to the soul swagger of ‘Get in Line’ and dramatic vocal leaps of ‘Wasting My Time.’

Produced by Cohen’s partner Sam Owens, the producer/writer who performs as Sam Evian, the artist began developing the material that became Welcome Home in 2017. Taking her time with the songs, she wrapped herself in the fulfilling quiet of a new home, and a new creative partnership that supported the clarity in her writing and vocals. Listeners will find echoes of folk and R&B, radiating with vocal-powered pop production, electronic accents, and bursts of pulsing guitar/bass/drums energy. Irresistible echoes of soul enchanters such as Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers and their friend and sometime collaborator Nick Hakim blend with the reflective shadings of singer/writer forebears such as Carole King and Harry Nilsson.

The ever evolving Happyness. Founded in 2013, the group - consisting of core members Jonny Allan and Ash Kenazi - have acquired consistency in the ways they express their creativity; be it the standard album release formula (their two LPs ‘Weird Little Birthday’ and ‘Write In’ have each accrued critical acclaim) or through Kenazi’s recurring South London based drag clubnight ‘BDE’.

Their signature alt-rock stylings are laden with vulnerable vocals and charmingly laid-back guitar riffs, treading similar paths to that of predecessors Yo La Tengo and Grandaddy.

It’s been a quick rise for Swedish indie pop quartet Hater. Malmö based group recently signed to Fire Records (The Chills, The Lemonheads, Half Japanese, Jane Weaver, Death and Vanilla, Josephine Foster, Virginia Wing, Vanishing Twin) releasing double LP ‘Siesta’ (2018) and EP ‘Red Blinders’ (2017).

Touring extensively around Europe in the last few years, they could recently be seen playing arenas and concert halls with Ben Howard. While festival performances have included End Of The Road, Eurosonic, Ment, Roskilde and Sea Change. In 2018 they headed to the US for SXSW which saw them on NPR’s Austin 100 “Their songs epitomize jangling grace as singer Caroline Landahl coos with maximum approachability.” Now, following last year’s run of Austin dates, they head back to the US to tour for the first time in 2019.

Settled in the space between dreamy folk and electronic melancholy – Haux is the smoky-eyed silhouette of Woodson Black.

Growing up in the Berkshires, Woodson found his voice while wandering the quiet woods and rural landscapes. He narrated life through film photographs, developing a pastoral aesthetic that would go on to inspire Haux.

HEALTH formed in Los Angeles in 2006, playing their first shows at The Smell, L.A.’s legendary DIY venue, which also hosts some of the earliest performances of No Age, Mika Mika and Abe Vigoda. “We just sat in a dark room with no windows and tried to figure out how to write a song,” HEALTH’s singer and guitarist Jake Duzsik says of the band’s early days. “Through a process of tug-of-war and cooperation, we started building these weird songs together.”

The latest album, DEATH MAGIC, was released in 2015 on Loma Vista Recordings. Co-producer and multi-instrumentalist John Famigietti described it as “bigger than anything we’ve done before but still uniquely our sound.” The album received critical praise from The New Yorker, Pitchfork (BEST NEW TRACK) and The FADER, while The Los Angeles Times heralded the band as “"One of the city's best live acts and inventive arrangers of raw noise and eerie vocal melodies... the first hints of DEATH MAGIC suggest a new fidelity, heaviness and precision, along with a marked clarity in singer Jake Duzsik's vocals.”

HEALTH has played sold out shows and festivals around the world ranging from Coachella to Primavera to Austin Psychfest, and toured with Nine Inch Nails and Gary Numan.

Heartless Bastards have spent the past decade in motion, boldly pushing their unique brand of rock ‘n’ roll into new shapes over four acclaimed albums and nearly non-stop roadwork. Now, with RESTLESS ONES, the band sets out once again, blazing a path to a place of shifting moods, seasoned songcraft, and unbridled spontaneity. Heartless Bastards’ fifth studio recording and follow-up to 2012’s breakthrough ARROW, the album finds singer/songwriter Erika Wennerstrom exploring as-yet-unvisited avenues of sound and sensation, her bravery and ambition readily apparent in the emotional timbre and the sheer physicality of her songs.

Helado Negro returns with This Is How You Smile, an album that freely flickers between clarity and obscurity, past and present geographies, bright and unhurried seasons. Miami-born, New York-based artist Roberto Carlos Lange embraces a personal and universal exploration of aura – seen, felt, emitted – on his sixth album and second for RVNG Intl.

Following Lange’s personal-as-political 2016 album Private Energy, re-released as Private Energy (Expanded) in 2017, This Is How You Smile finds vitality in turning the privacy dial further inward. On “Please Won’t Please,” the album’s first offering and opening track, Lange sets the scene with a spare drumbeat that moves the music forward in a more maligned than militant march, his voice tenderly permits himself weariness: “We light ourselves on fire, just to see if anyone believes.” Something must be reserved, “will anyone rescue what’s left of me.” This Is How You Smile only grows and glows brighter from there; an album that meditates on the slow, eternal love of family, and gently proposes revisiting those feelings as a way to relate to and beyond our core of familiarity.

There’s no discernible pattern to Helena Deland’s latest release. On the third and fourth volumes of From The Series of Songs “Altogether Unaccompanied”, the Montréal-based artist has amassed a collection of memories in song form, more like a box of old photos or unsent letters than a traditional EP.

“The songs are to be considered as their own little things,” she says about her unconventional release structure. “They are part of something larger, yes, but they live on their own.” As a listener, however, there is an undeniable cohesion to Vol. III and IV, and to the previous iterations of the project: each song is nostalgic, intimate, and indelible.

“I’m learning to be really patient,” she says, “I can’t really force writing. When I’m ready to write a song the words and melody are usually there.”

In an era in which the magnitude of cultural sickness is coming to light, Henry Jamison has had some time to reflect. On his second record, Gloria Duplex, the Vermont songwriter deconstructs ideas of masculinity from boyhood to adulthood and what it means to be a white, middle class male in America today.

Recorded over a two-week period in New York City during January 2018, Gloria Duplex features an all-star cast including producer Thomas Bartlett (Sufjan Stevens, The National, St. Vincent,) string arranger Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Phoebe Bridgers) and mixer Patrick Dillett (Rhye, David Byrne, Glen Hansard).

Born William Fussell in Adel, Georgia, Honey Harper was raised in Atlanta before moving to London, England with his wife in 2015. In 2017, after years of playing in a shoe-gaze band and an art-pop solo project, he decided to return to his roots in country music and released Universal Country, a critically acclaimed 4-track EP with Montreal's Arbutus Records. Since then he has been digging in and recording Starmaker, which he describes as a "celestial honky-tonk" combining the already famous ideology of Gram Parson's Cosmic Country with an aesthetic to match. The blending of the ethereal, floating FM synthesizers combined with pedal steel and a classic country twang bring about a marriage reminiscent of Brian Eno's "Apollo" with a George Jones greatest hits compilation.

Horse Feathers feels like a secret you don’t really want to share. Over twelve years and five albums, a passionate fan base has experienced this band as a precious commodity that they want to keep close to their hearts. One reason for this can be found in lead singer Justin Ringle’s distinctive voice, at once vulnerable and piercing, and in the quality of the music: gorgeous, lush string arrangements surrounding stark, visceral lyrics whose bite makes a piquant juxtaposition to the surrounding beauty.

How To Dress Well is the stage name of songwriter and producer Tom Krell. Krell’s burgeoning career began in 2009 when, having just moved from Brooklyn to Berlin, his songs began to emerge online via a hugely prolific string of free, digital EPs posted in anonymity on his blog. Combining a gorgeous falsetto with fractured R&B-influenced beats, an instinctive ear for subtly devastating melody and elements of noise, sound collage and avant-garde composition, Krell's debut album Love Remains offered a beautiful window into a startlingly realised artistic imagination.

I Break Horses is the musical project led by Maria Lindén. From her Stockholm base, in 2011 the Swedish artist delivered an extraordinary debut album in the shape of 'Hearts.'

In 2014, the eagerly awaited follow-up album, entitled Chiaroscuro, was released.

In this age of constant connectivity, switching off has become one of the great luxuries of modern life, and it’s one of the reasons Jaakko Eino Kalevi has called his album ‘Out of Touch’. He explores what he calls this “essential, blissed out” state on his second album for Domino – his first since 2015’s self-titled release – as he meditates, in classic Jaakko fashion, on the merry-go-round of the daily grind. Written and produced by Jaakko in 2017 in studios in Helsinki and Berlin, where he’s lived for four years, these ten songs are among the richest he has composed. Ranging in style from the soft swagger of ‘China Eddie’ and Motown psych of ‘This World’ to the Aegean dub of ‘Conceptual Mediterranean Part 1’ and irresistible pop of ‘People in the Centre of the City’, each song is characterised by that familiar JEK warmth and melodic flair.

Jackie Lynn is a fictional persona of American singer/songwriter Haley Fohr, better known for her experimental indie folk project Circuit des Yeux.

According to Lynn's backstory, she was born in Franklin, Tennessee in 1990 and moved to Chicago just before her 20th birthday. She met a man referred to as Tom Strong, and they began a multi-million-dollar cocaine business. In 2016, Thrill Jockey released a self-titled Jackie Lynn album with songs relating to the story. Featuring contributions from members of Bitchin' Bajas and Cave, the album departs from Circuit des Yeux's typical work, with minimalist arrangements incorporating acoustic guitars, synthesizers, and drum machines, as well as more straightforward songwriting.

Jacques Greene is the artist name of Philippe Aubin-Dionne. The Montreal-born and raised DJ/producer is one of dance music’s most captivating and enigmatic talents. Producing for vocalists Katy B, Tinashe and How To Dress Well and remixing Radiohead, Autre Ne Veut Shlohmo, and many others, Jacques Greene has expanded his collaborations to include fashion with cult Canadian designer Rad Hourani and art institutions including London’s Tate Modern.

Jacques Greene’s sparkling original productions include the genre defining ‘Another Girl’, a house anthem with future RnB leanings that would go on to inspire countless imitations.

It’s impossible to describe the myriad musical influences and inspirations that inform the sound of Jaga Jazzist without tumbling down a rabbit hole of genre confusion such is the sonic magnitude and diversity of the Norwegian supergroup’s compositions. The band has consistently confounded categorisation from its inception. However, the direction of travel has been obstinately consistent: moving forward... always moving forward.

Jaga Jazzist return with their new album “Pyramid” on 24 April 2020, where the legendary Norwegian eight-piece takes a deep dive into post-rock, jazz and psychedelia influences. It’s their first album since 2015’s “Starfire”, their ninth album in a career now spanning four decades, but it marks the group’s debut on Brainfeeder, the LA-based imprint curated by Flying Lotus. On “Pyramid”, Jaga Jazzist have crafted a suitably cosmic sound to match their new label home, all the while nodding to forebears spanning from 80s jazz band Out To Lunch and Norwegian synth guru Ståle Storløkken, to contemporaries Tame Impala, Todd Terje and Jon Hopkins. Each of the album’s four longform entries evolves over carefully plotted movements, the tracks’ technicolour threads dreamily unspooling.

Jape began in 2003 as a solo project of Dublin musician Richard Egan. Over the years, the band has evolved to become one of Ireland’s most exciting and energetic live acts.

Jape’s music blends meticulously crafted lyrics with upbeat electronic rhythms. Using an innovative mix of live instruments, hardware samplers and sequencers, the band create a sound that encompasses many different styles and spans genres, a sort of gothic pop. They have been covered by The Raconteurs and won the prestigious Choice Music Prize in 2008.

This Chemical Sea is their fifth studio album and was released in January 2015, via Faction Records.

Swedish singer/songwriter Jäje Johanson, who goes by the stage name Jay-Jay Johanson, infuses the measured, slow-burn aesthetics of downbeat and trip-hop with the metallic pulse of electro-pop, resulting in his own signature brand of film noir-imbued electronic melancholy. Born and raised in the city of Trollhättan.

“It’s self-titled.” The three-word answer is all that Jen Cloher requires to describe her recently completed fourth album, a letter in triplicate addressed to themes of Love, Music and Australia (the beautiful and the terrible). Jen likes best to tell the truth.

Jen Cloher is the culmination of a period of artistic and personal growth in which the artist took her rightful place as the punk-rock figurehead of Melbourne’s famous DIY music scene. The NIDA Graduate is an outspoken advocate for artist rights and the co-founder of the incredible Milk! Records label (Courtney Barnett, Loose Tooth, Fraser A. Gorman, Jade Imagine, East Brunswick All Girls Choir). Cloher’s fascinating life-story and compelling political voice is enough justification to pay her attention, but it’s the music that will have you returning again and again.

Over the course of her fruitful career in music, she has collaborated with U.S. Girls, Owen Pallett, Doug Paisley, Fucked Up, and Kath Bloom; she has toured with Destroyer, Steve Gunn, Cass McCombs, Kurt Vile, Iron & Wine, and M. Ward, among others. Daniel Romano has even recorded a song called “Jennifer Castle.” But never before has she sounded so certain of her uncertainty, or so possessed by the urgency of her explorations.

Angels of Death was produced by Castle and longtime collaborator Jeff McMurrich. Although augmented by notable other players at subsequent sessions, the core band comprised Paul Mortimer on lead guitar, David Clarke on acoustic guitar, Jonathan Adjemian on organ/piano, Mike Smith on bass (he also wrote the string arrangements), Robbie Gordon on drums, and Castle on guitar and vocals. Much of it, and most of Jennifer’s vocal tracks, were recorded live in the church over one cold weekend; “the moon,” Castle reflects, “was a member of the band.”

Jenny Hval has in recent years made a name for herself as a recording artist and writer both in her native Norway and abroad. Multidisciplinary and transgressive are words often employed to describe her art, but Jenny Hval’s polyphonic artistry is in fact seamlessly interwoven between musical, literary, visual and performative modes of expression. Her artistic voice is altogether present, accessible and obscurely complex at the same time.

Jesca Hoop is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, a Californian who is now an adopted daughter of Manchester. Her career has spanned five albums of finely crafted song writing, sung from a unique intelligence and an unparalleled voice, culminating in 2017’s hugely acclaimed ‘Memories are Now’.

Having spent much of the last eighteen months on tour, highlights of which include a triumphant sold out show at Union Chapel, appearances at Glastonbury and Latitude Festivals amongst many others, and appearing as special guest at Jose Gonzales’ Royal Albert Hall show, Jesca is currently working with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, This is the Kit, Aldous Harding) on her next collection of songs.

The Texas-born, L.A.-based singer and songwriter Jess Williamson makes deeply felt songs that orbit around her powerful voice, a voice that’s strong and vulnerable, big room flawless, quietly ecstatic, and next-to-you intimate. In her most recent work, Sorceress, that voice is surrounded by a deep-hued kaleidoscope of dusty ‘70s cinema, ‘90s country music, and breezy West Coast psychedelia.

Jessica Pratt is not a loud performer. She does not have to be. In a club of a few hundred, even the bar staff are known to go quiet while she's on stage. Her third album, Quiet Signs, feels like a distillation of this power. The album leads off with ‘Opening Night’ , a nod to Gena Rowlands' harrowing, brilliant performance in the John Cassavetes film of the same name, as well as to where this spare, beautiful collection of songs falls within the course of the California artist's career

Jessy Lanza is a producer and singer who comes from Hamilton Ontario, but studied music at Concordia in Montreal. Her debut album which she recorded with partner Jeremy Greenspan from Junior Boys 'Pull My Hair Back', came out in 2013 to almost universal praise.

The first single from her album 'Oh No' - 'It Means I Love You' was released in January 2016 to an excited audience and was immediately picked up for 'Best New Music' at Pitchfork, and was featured on 'New Music Friday' with Apple.

Joan Shelley is a songwriter and singer who lives near Louisville, Kentucky not far from where she grew up. 'Like the River Loves the Sea' is her fifth album. She draws inspiration from traditional and traditionally-minded performers from her native Kentucky, as well as those from Ireland, Scotland, and England, but she’s not a folksinger. Her disposition aligns more closely with that of, say, Roger Miller, Dolly Parton, or her fellow Kentuckian Tom T. Hall, who once explained—simply, succinctly, in a song—“I Witness Life.”

The Swedish Grammy Award winning rock duo Johnossi today release their new single Longer The Wait, Harder The Fall (BMG). It’s taken from their forthcoming sixth album due for release early 2020. It´s been almost three years since their last album Blood Jungle (2017) was released. They are now returning with their signature sound; a more raw vibe compared to their latest effort.

The single and forthcoming album is produced and mixed by Pelle Gunnerfeldt (The Hives, Viagra Boys, Refused etc). Together with Pelle and their longtime touring musician and keyboard player Mattias Franzén they isolated themselves in an old mansion in the countryside north of Stockholm during the full month of September. The complete album was recorded in these big salons. A recording process that was quite the opposite compared to the last album where the band experimented a bit with using more pop leaning producers. Longer The Wait, Harder The Fall as well as all other songs on the album is written by John and Ossi together with above mentioned Mattias as a tight and close unit.

Jonah Tolchin has wrestled with a wellspring of emotions in his 26 years, and in the process, has consistently found the means of integrating his sentiments into his songs. It’s been a relatively brief progression as far as his career is concerned, but the maturity and musical progression he’s tallied in that short time has been shared in sync with his coming of age.

On Fires for the Cold, Tolchin lays bare the conflicts and quagmires that have engulfed him over the course of the last few years. The ending of a marriage and an upheaval in his mindset left him shattered, confused and struggling to find the solace that had eluded him for too long a time.

José González has a recognisable trademark sound incorporating delicate, autumnal classical guitar with wistful, melodic vocals.
José González is of Argentinian descent and grew up listening to Latin folk and pop music citing Cuban singer songwriter Silvio Rodriguez as one of his favourite.

José González‘s newest record, Vestiges & Claws is his first in seven years, released in February 2015 and produced by González. It consists of years’ worth of musical sketches that in other hands might naturally sprawl wildly in sound and style, but on Vestiges & Claws González has created a collection of songs that cohere just about perfectly, ensuring his position as one of the most important artists of his generation.

Like a baseball player who quietly hits 30 home runs every year or a golfer who regularly finishes in the Top Ten, Josh Rouse's continued streak of excellence is easy to ignore and maybe even downplay a little” -- Tim Sendra, Allmusic.com. Josh Rouse was born in Nebraska, and eventually landed in Nashville where he recorded his debut Dressed Like Nebraska (1998). His breakthrough album, 1972 (2003) Rouse expanded his palette to the warmer sound of albums back then, as well as the more communal feel of the soul music of the eponymous year. After relocating to Valencia, Spain, Rouse has released a steady stream of high quality songs and albums. Subtitulo (2006) contained the international hit "Quiet Town". On El Turista (2010) he experimented with writing and singing some  songs in Spanish. In  2014, he won a Goya Award (the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar) for best song for "Do You Really Want To Be In Love," from the film 'La Gran Familia Española.

Joyero is the new songwriting project of Andy Stack of Wye Oak (Sounds like Joy Arrow. OrJoy Air, Oh!). In addition to his role as one half of Wye Oak, Stack has gained notoriety in recentyears as a multi-instrumental collaborator with Lambchop, EL VY, Helado Negro, MadelineKenney, and Thor Harris, among others. Listen to Joyero’s brand-new single, “Salt Mine”, out onMerge Records, and stay tuned for more.

The pleasure of finding something new in what we already know. The strange face of someone close. The outsider we all carry inside. The unexplored path in our usual location. A secret, a hiding place, a surprise. This is what Juan Pablo brings us. He’s the persona that Juan Wauters embodies to tell another side of his story. Not long ago, Wauters released La Onda de Juan Pablo, an album that allowed him to reinvent himself and start writing a separate chapter in his exciting career. Now, as a companion and as a prequel, he releases Introducing Juan Pablo.

Introducing… is a bit timeless: at the time the album was made, Wauters left it on stand-by. That’s why its title emphasizes it origin: to present Juan Pablo and, simultaneously, to reveal his inner journey. Wauters explains, “The album was written and recorded before La Onda de Juan Pablo. At that time, I was away from an audience. When I finished it, I didn’t release it. I wasn’t ready to go out and play it live. In fact, I didn’t want to play live at all. I was going through an introspective moment. Then everything changed when I made La Onda….” Juan recalls the need to rethink himself: “I’d been recording and playing live continuously, without pausing to think what it really means to be a solo artist. I looked inside myself and, at the same time, I tried to see myself from the outside.”

Junior Boys is the duo of Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus.The first release Birthday/Last Exit came in 2003 — a four-track EP with a remix by Fennesz. The High Come Down EP followed in 2004 with a Manitoba (now Caribou) remix and word began to spread. Their debut album, Last Exit, was released in 2004 on KIN Records. A reissue on Domino featured the Manitoba mix of Birthday, a Fennesz mix of the same track, and a new track. After the release of It's All True in 2011, the duo pursued solo and side projects, which included Jeremy Greenspan's working on music by Caribou and Jessy Lanza. In October 2015, the duo announced their fifth studio album and first release in five years, Big Black Coat.

Junip brings you dynamic, melodic and shadowy rock. Like walking through a foggy city finding the sun light little by little.
Swedish band Junip was formed in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the late '90s by Elias Araya (drums), José Gonzalés (guitar, vocals) and Tobias Winterkorn (organ, moog). Junip's sound can be familiar to those who have listened to José Gonzalez’s critically acclaimed records, but added to the mix on top of his nylon stringed guitar and distinctive voice are organs, analog–cut synths and drums.

K-X-P esoteric space rock band from Helsinki, Finland. They mix electronics, kraut, noise, pop melodies and even techno into a hypnotic and minimalistic groove with references to bands like Spacemen 3, Vangelis, Mr. Fingers, This Heat, 23 Skidoo, Suicide and Neu!

K-X-P can be considered as "a perfect synthesis of disco glitterball and skull drinking" (Q Magazine). The music has been described as "incredibly rhythmic, and their grooves - paranoid dark disco and motorik - deep” (Pitchfork)

Timo Kaukolampi is the shamanistic leader of space rock outfit K-X-P. In the shadows of his hood and cape he’s been working on his solo material following the trails of cosmic disco, rave, ethnic percussion, ambient and early days of Goa trance when DJ’s spinned obscure proto techno tracks together with Belgian EBM. From the echoes of these influences becomes his original sound that will see the first light of day in 2017.

Timo’s electronic experiments has been praised by DJ’s like Optimo, James Holden, Erol Alkan and John Dickweed with his music and remixes released on labels like Kompakt, Bugged Out, Smalltown Supersound, Tellé, Resist Music, Relish among his own imprint "Öm" on Svart Records.

Operating around 4/4 kick drum his live electronic sets contains analog synthesizers and drum machines forming a spaced out cuckoo’s nest made out of cables pulsating a soundtrack-like, thunderous soundscape ripping PA system apart. Sound is elemental like nature, moving tectonic plates. Destruction of the form followed by re-creation.

Interplanetary energy beams. Deep meditation.

Who is Kitt Philippa? They are human, they are searching and in music they find hope. Although raised on classical, the songs are strangely urban and often conveyed with digital sleight. An organ scholar and an experimentalist, KP plays piano, guitar, clarinet, prayer bowl and bicycle wheel.

The 2018 emergence of Kitt Philippa with new single ‘Human’ and follow up single 'Grace' has been championed by Mary Anne Hobbs (BBC 6 Music), Tom Robinson, Phil Taggart (BBC Radio 1), Huw Stephens, RTE 2FM, Today FM, Hotpress, The Line of Best Fit and Nialler 9. Throughout 2018 KP showcased their new material to audiences across Ireland and the UK at HWCH, Latitude, Stendhal, Other Voices including support slots with SOAK, Villagers, Lisa Hannigan, Hilary Woods, Wye Oak. Kitt Philippa closed out 2018 by winning 'Single of the Year' [by public vote] at the Northern Ireland Music Prize for their single 'Human'.

Labeled "Delightful as $#!@" by NOW Magazine and "Naive enough to be charming" by Exclaim, Toronto’s Kiwi Jr. deliver an exciting 12-string guitar attack and book smart lyrics. Happy customers of Kiwi Jr. also enjoyed: Modern Lovers, Pavement, and the Kinks.

Kllo is a collaboration between Melbourne cousins Chloe Kaul and Simon Lam. They first emerged in 2014 with a sound beyond their years; fully formed, fusing elements of R&B, UK garage, and 2-step with modern sensibilities and wide-eyed sincerity.

The duo's first two EPs, Cusp (2014) and Well Worn (2016), have received millions of streams, making them a fixture on festival stages across Australia (Bigsound, Splendour in the Grass) and Europe (Great Escape, Primavera Sound, among others) as well as Artists-to-Watch features, like BBC Radio 1, Spotify, Elle Magazine, and VICE — the latter saying Kllo is poised to "very politely take over the world."

2017 brings Kllo’s full-length debut, Backwater, a refined, coming-of-age account. Songs were written partially on the road and developed back in Melbourne at Lam’s bungalow, a haven that harbors creative spontaneity and catharsis. The album depicts inner adjustment to outer change: being far from home, treading through perpetual uncharted territory while yearning for the comforts of the familiar.

La Force is Ariel Engle, vocalist and newest member of Broken Social Scene. Balancing grace and ferocity, she creates a dusky universe of godless devotional music that comes straight from the beating heart.

La Force is a meditation on the liminal, disruptive state of motherhood; the never-ending tightrope walk of life, and death; and the re-discovery of self. Borrowing its identity from the tarot card representing Strength – depicting a woman with gentle dominance over a lion – ‘La Force’ captures the tender / powerful essence of the music.

Proving that depth and fun don't need to be mutually exclusive, La Luz are an all-female quartet who fuse the harmonies of doo wop and girl group pop with the splashy guitars of surf music, the low-budget keyboards of '60s garage rock, and the simple but snappy rhythms of first-era rock & roll with lyrics that speak from the heart and the soul. The Seattle-based quartet won critical acclaim for its 2013 debut album, It's Alive, and the group has been recording and touring at a steady pace ever since.

Even in the Tremor marks Aly Spaltro aka Lady Lamb’s latest full- length album following 2015’s After and it’s a remarkable achievement because, among other things, it’s the rst time in her career that Spaltro is singing explicitly about herself. “I’ve never let myself be this exposed before,” she says, “but this whole album is about facing who you are and ghting your way toward self-acceptance.” Between confessing a tantrum in a batting cage (“Little Flaws”), telling the story of her parent’s kiddie-pool baptism (“Young Disciple”) and singing openly about untangling her girlfriend’s wet hair (“Deep Love”), this album is deeply rooted in the people and places, extraordinary and mundane, that have shaped Spaltro into the self-determining artist she is today.

Oregon singer/songwriter Laura Gibson is a remarkable lyricist with an unforgettable voice, writing about timeless questions of the human condition. In past she has collaborated with Calexico, The Dodos and Colin Meloy (of The Decemberists), and her fourth album will be released in April on City Slang Records. "Gibson's voice is 100 per cent her own." 8/10 - NME

"Curiously beautiful... The songs crackle and sparkle with instrumentation -- including vibes, woodwind, marimbas, pump organ and piano -- with layers of Gibson's distinctive voice, girlish and pretty, but cracked and splintered like glass." **** 4 stars - Mojo

Le Ren’s close-to-the-bone, heartbreak folk songs seem, at first, to tap into a shared musical memory. A melody swirls forward and you’re just sure it’s known to the back of your mind; was it in from a movie you saw, some classic mid-60s setpiece? Maybe it’s something you heard as a kid, in the backseat of your mom’s Cutlass, or the shotgun seat of your own. But before you can zero in through the fog, your heart is torn apart by her voice — rich, direct and mellifluous — steering you through these slowburn tunes about real-life loss.

Jocke Åhlund and Frans Johansson had both long been fixtures on the Stockholm rock scene by the time they finally began to collaborate with each other by forming Les Big Byrd in 2011. They’d been wanting to work together for years, and had never quite found the time, with a quick glance over their CVs quickly making it clear why. Åhlund co-founded cult hardcore outfit/genre-benders Teddybears with his brother Klas in 1991, and went on to play guitar in Caesars and form another duo, Smile, with Björn Yttling of Peter, Björn and John. He found room in between to flex his commercial pop muscles, too, writing and producing for amongst others Giorgio Moroder and his compatriot Robyn. Johansson, meanwhile, had played bass in Swedish Grammy Award-winners Fireside since the early nineties and worked as a touring bassist with The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

Their latest album, Iran Iraq IKEA, is a bright, bold and ambitious collection that takes Åhlund and Johansson’s long-standing influences and imbues them with a skyward trajectory and a sense of creative freedom. It’s the sound of a group with combined decades of experience freeing themselves up to reinvent themselves whilst remaining true to the sounds that they’ve always treasured.

Marrying a complex new sound (incorporating industrial, minimalism and prog) influenced by Bristol’s vital avant-garde scene, LICE present a new set of satirical doctrines and focus on lyrical experimentation.

Debut album 'WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear' (Jan 2021) is a concept album structured as an experimental short story, taking cues from Brian Catling, William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Its core argument is that, through reworking the prevailing forms of satirical song lyrics, we can build more nuanced popular discourse around the implicit forms of bias that ail us – the song lyric being the most widely disseminated and commonly ‘engaged with’ form of creative writing there is.

Lido Pimienta is a Toronto-based, Colombian-born interdisciplinary musician and artist-curator. She has performed, exhibited, and curated around the world since 2002, exploring the politics of gender, race, motherhood, identity and the construct of the Canadian landscape in the Latin American diaspora and vernacular.

Her most recent album La Papessa was self-released, and the winner of the 2017 Polaris Music Prize, building momentum on a busy year that has included collaborating and performing with A Tribe Called Red, touring with Austra, publishing a graphic novel, creating visual artworks and contributing to art talks and exhibitions.

Released through Bella Union on November 9th, My Name Is Safe in Your Mouth more than lives up to Moss’s promise of fresh, bold adventure. Sonically spare yet sumptuous in its emotions, elemental power and expansive melodies, the record is a richly felt, vividly realised trip into the interior from the Duke Spirit singer. A serene-to-stormy series of deep dream-pop meditations on devotion and selfhood, creativity and parenthood, it treats unknown territory not as something to fear but as a seed-bed of possibility.

LIME are a four-piece band going against the genre norms, fusing together catchy melodies with razor-sharp wit.

Latest single Fever is a lens into the mind of generation Z, dissecting the vanity that pervades throughout modern living, and turning up the heat by asking “why?”. It’s the kind of track that might have swirled around late-night New York parties at the turn of the millennium, with slinky saxophone and lo-fi disco-infused guitars dancing alongside Karen O and The Strokes – only this time LIME are bringing an updated twist of electronica to the mix. The vocal delivery owes more to contemporaries such as Courtney Barnett and Cate Le Bon, with its laid-back style disguising a sharper take on modern life.

Lost Horizons is the new band of Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde & Richie Thomas of instrumental 4AD band Dif Juz. The two have been friends since the 80s but both disappeared from making-music for 20 years until a chance meeting and a get-together 'jam' in a rehearsal room. Improvisations begin and collaborations ensue.

The debut album 'Ojalá' in 2017 featured guest vocals from the likes of Ghostpoet, Liela Moss, Marissa Nadler and The Innocence Mission's Karen Peris. The intervening years have seen the two return to the studio to create a second volume of music with guests equally as diverse. The new album will be released in Feb 2021.

Lucero has long been admired in their hometown of Memphis, where they have hosted “The Lucero Family Block Party” every spring for a number of years.

The band’s ninth studio album, Among the Ghosts, is their first for noted Nashville indie label Thirty Tigers. It was recorded and co-produced with Grammy-winning engineer/producer and Memphis native Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Drive by Truckers) at the historic Sam Phillips Recording Service, the studio built by the legendary producer after outgrowing his Memphis Recording Service/Sun Studio.

De-Sciscio was born and raised on the outskirts of Swindon. "My dad used to call me Tom Cat, because I only used to come in for food," he says. Introduced to the guitar by his grandad, Luke began writing and recording music in his teens, "My theory was that I knew what I wanted to do, so I just got on with it," he says.

At 27, he now has significant experience to draw upon, not to mention a catalogue of work that would shame most veterans. "It was never about releasing them or 'making it' – my belief is that if you're creating something you love, you have already made it. And I just knew that I would go crazy if wasn't writing." Another belief was that his songs would reach appreciative ears, even if it took a lifetime to happen.

Anyone discovering Good Bye Folk Boy will be met by music that sounds as if it arrived in a dream. There's a focus and an intensity to songs such as Winsome, Plumb Loco and Two Way Doors, but the homespun production – or absence of production, to put it another way – gives each of the 11 songs a breezy quality that is impossible to replicate.

This October, Madeline Kenney will release her sophomore album, Perfect Shapes -- a wholly unexpected leap forward in both composition and musicality. The record was produced by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and reflects a deeply collaborative and introspective process, apparent both in arrangements and lyricism. Dealing with subjects of femininity, societal pressures, expectation, value and self-worth, Kenney stands tall in a moment of musical bravery and personal clarity.

Giampaolo Speziale and Federica Caiozzo met in early 2015 in Rome and, in what Federica describes as a "moment of surrender", decided to start making music together on a road trip through Austria, Germany and Poland. The duo gathered thirty improvised musical ideas and spent eight days recording with their friend and drummer Alberto Paone in a Roman studio.

In June of 2015, Giampaolo and Federica decided to break from their previous musical incarnations and moved from Rome to London, taking with them a hard drive of songs, a battered suitcase and vinyl copies of Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left and Stevie Wonder's Hotter Than July.

Man Duo is the second coming of Jaakko Eino Kalevi and Long-Sam: cherished producers and good friends from Helsinki whose 2012 debut Amateurs de Vérité refracted outsider electronics through the prism of psychedelic folk. Now the pair are back with a new name and a new album, Orbit, that takes the exotic pop we’ve come to associate with both artists far beyond the dancefloor and out into the cosmos.

There is an undeniable connection between the South and occurrences of extra-terrestrial form.

A discovery of records long stashed away at various dilapidated thrift stores in Alabama lead the entities of Man or Astro-Man? to the scratched-up sounds of Link Wray, The Ventures, Dick Dale, Duane Eddy, The Marketts, The Safaris, and other instrumental guitar oriented music of the late fifties and early sixties.

Mariam The Believer is the nom de guerre that Mariam Wallentin, the singer from the duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums, has chosen for herself.
In this solo adventure Wallentin leaves the mix of minimalistic blues, pop and rock impro that has been the characteristic of Wildbirds & Peacedrums behind, and steps down into a dark hole filled with vibrant creativity. An oriental ambience fuses with the warm silhouettes of experimental pop and unpolished soul in a way that nourishes both body and mind.

Marie Davidson & L'Œil Nu - Biography

A trio of old friends and long-time musical collaborators, Marie Davidson, Pierre Guerineau and Asaël R. Robitaille share many things in common (with the former two also being married to one another, and writing & performing together as the group Essaie pas.) Each of them has made waves in electronic and experimental corners of the music industry; often working together, for labels like DFA, Cititrax, Holodeck, Orange Milk and Mind Records. But they’re also devotees of classic pop songwriting, and they created Marie Davidson & L'Œil Nu to celebrate and reimagine those shared musical touchstones.

If there’s a mood that encapsulates L'Œil Nu, it’s the one to be found at 3AM, after a long night of drinks, when it’s time to start putting on the classics. This, for Marie, Pierre and Asaël, means Fleetwood Mac, Rush or soundtracks from French cinema, and it was in one such moment that the germ of the idea for L'Œil Nu was planted. Later evolving and growing to encompass something bigger: to be a band, to write songs and to approach music from a pop perspective.

This year marks the release of Mass Gothic, the Massachusetts-bred, New York-based singer/songwriter’s self-titled Sub Pop debut.

Written and recorded at home over four months during the winter of 2014-2015, it's a stunning reminder of not just Heroux's own remarkable talents as a singer and songwriter, but how unbridled creativity can both sound and feel as well.

Currently based in Baltimore, the duo formed in San Francisco in the mid 1990s, and self-released their debut album in 1997. Marrying the conceptual tactics and noisy textures of object-based musique concrete to a rhythmic matrix rooted in electronic pop music, the two quickly became known for their highly unusual sound sources: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, cigarettes...

These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms, and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by them and their large circle of friends and collaborators. The result is a model of electronic composition as a relational network that connects sources and outcomes together; information about the process of creation activates the listening experience, providing the listener with entry points into sometimes densely allusive, baroque recordings.

Matteo Vallicelli is an Italian drummer and composer, best known as the live drummer of The Soft Moon, Death Index, and as a founding member of many renowned Italian punk bands. This winter he debuts his first solo project, 'Primo', on Captured Tracks.

Heavily influenced by the pulsating techno scene of the German capital, Vallicelli began experimenting with synthesizers and drum machines. Recording sounds onto his computer and cassette tapes led him to create a massive collection of loops and samples, sometimes in protracted home sessions where he wouldn’t leave his apartment for days.

Mega Bog is the moniker of song-dribbler Erin Birgy, a Pacific Northwest rodeo child with an unmistakable laugh who was allegedly cursed upon conception.

Over the past 8 years the band has stretched and wandered in a crescendo towards musical freedom. Now based in New Mexico, Birgy has adopted a band of wiggly jazz cartoons lifted from bands like Big Thief, iji, Big Eater, Pillwonder, Causings, Hand Habits, Heatwarmer, Little Angry and others.

Melodies always lush, erotic, and free. Chords always dissonant, abstract and evolutionary. Dizzying fusion of lounge, pop and bouncing rocks under poetic tantrums of love gone all the way wrong. Listen closer.

Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Michael Nau crafts reflective indie rock tinged with folk, psychedelic, and vintage pop influences. He's known for leading the like-minded projects Page France and Cotton Jones from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s before beginning to record under his own name in 2016. Though his prior solo releases also featured some version of a backing band, 2018's Michael Nau & the Mighty Thread rendered his dreamy weekender tunes with a stronger, full-band sound. The 2019 solo album Less Ready to Go incorporated classic soul and reggae influences into his increasingly stylized retro sound.

Maneuvering between grandiose retro motifs and a surprising sincerity, Michelle Gurevich’s songs are tragicomic, melody-driven, sentimental and suspended in shadowy glamour.

Having released 3 albums under the moniker of Chinawoman, she now continues as Michelle Gurevich with her 4th and latest release – New Decadence. Produced in the same manner as her previous releases, she combines dark realism with humour in smoky and intimate ballads delivered with cutting and fatalistic lyrics.

Mikal Cronin is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Los Angeles, CA. Since 2011 he has released three full length albums under his own name, and after a 4 year break he’s back with fresh sounds and oh so excited to share them. Since he started making music, he’s been a part of some amazing projects with artists such as Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, King Tuff, Shannon & the Clams and many more. He has been playing bass in Ty Segall’s touring band for the past 8 years, who he’s been buds with since high school. Mikal lives in Los Angeles with his cat Ernie.

Power Chords, Mike Krol’s new Merge release, wields the same influences as 2015s Turkey—Misfits, The Strokes, early Weezer, Ramones—but turned up on the gravity and the gain. Indeed, Krol has gone somewhere new; yes, he bludgeoned himself with over-analysis and self-loathing, but along the way he stumbled upon a trove of intricate guitar lines and artfully mutating melodies.

Music ruined Krol’s life. And then saved it. In chronicling that process, Krol has made his best record—painful, voyeuristic, and angry, but ultimately transcendent and timeless. It is the sound of Krol giving in to a force greater than himself, as though the chords are playing him rather than the other way around.

Molly Burch was exposed to the arts at an early age. Growing up in Los Angeles with a writer/producer father and a casting director mother, Burch's childhood was filled with old Hollywood musicals and the sounds of Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. After finding her voice in adolescence, Burch packed up for the University of North Carolina in Asheville to study Jazz Vocal Performance.

Searching for a bigger pond, Burch moved to Austin, Texas in an effort to stand on her own two feet. There, Burch began to write her own music in earnest, with the lovelorn Everly Brothers and Sam Cooke as her songwriting guides. We're all lucky Molly started writing music simply to complement her voice, as we've discovered a great new American songwriter in the process.

Having impressed the online tastemakers with their early releases that continuously entered the top of the Hype Machine chart, Mt. Wolf are set for their debut album release in May 2017. Now grouped as a formidable 3 piece, with singer and guitarist Sebastian Fox, guitarist Stevie McMinn and drummer Alex Mitchell, the band's hallmark splicing of electronic and acoustic elements and layered sounds has not been lost in their new EP recordings, earning them comparisons to the likes of London Grammar, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros.

Murray A. Lightburn is a composer, musician, performer and music producer. He’s best known as the lead singer and principal songwriter of internationally-known Montreal chamber rock band, The Dears. Formed in 1995, their orchestral, dark pop sound and dramatic live shows cemented The Dears at the foundation of the then-emerging Canadian indie rock renaissance.

The Dears released their two volume epic Times Infinity in 2015 and 2017. The project kept M.A.L. busy touring throughout the world, while giving him space to contemplate his solo album project, Hear Me Out, and perform several shows on his own.

Of his solo performance, XS Noise wrote: “Murray Lightburn proved he could take himself in any musical direction he wishes without dividing or disappointing fans.”

No one ever got anywhere by standing still. As an artist, you must move to grow. It’s a sentiment Nadia Reid knows well. Leaving her beloved New Zealand for America to record her third album with strangers, what she didn’t expect was a family awaiting her; teaming up with Spacebomb, her evocative travel tales push explorations of love, personal growth and deep reflection beyond boundaries she ever thought possible.

“Out of My Province is definitely a travelling album; they are road songs,” tells Nadia, of the album, written during a period of intensive touring following the release of her critically acclaimed LP, Preservation. “I felt inspired while I was moving and playing most nights. Sometimes good. Sometimes hard – there was this term I came up with called ‘digging for gold’ where some nights, you’d need to dig deeper for that feeling. During that time I felt really alive and useful.”

Ninos Du Brasil is a project whose origins and background have remained shrouded in mystery. Dedicated to a bold and unlikely mixture of noise, batucada, samba and electronic, their sporadic live appearances have already become legendary and mythological.

Be it a punk squat in Belgium or the famous Venice Biennale of Architecture, Ninos Du Brasil, without fail, rally the troops, from every walk of life, and create some of the biggest festival style parties on the dance floor.

The Swedish artist and songwriter is about to follow up her Grammy nominated debut album from 2012. The first single that was released is ”I’m in Love."

She is the sought after chart-topping, award-winning writer for some of the biggest artists in the world, but she also writes her own songs that are closer to her heart. For the first time, she is ready to share those songs with the world.

Emotion vs. technology.

Soul vs. machines.

Beauty vs. dissonance.

Dystopia or paradise?

Love or regret?

Nostalgia vs. right now.

Paranoia.
Acceptance.

These are among the various binary flavors that Jason Chung explores on Parallels, the fourth full album released under Chung’s distinctive moniker, Nosaj Thing. Master-fully dimensional, Parallels represents the acclaimed Los Angeles-based electronic producer/composer/performer’s most diverse, vital work yet. As such, Chung sees Parallels represents a kind of redemptive rebirth. The album’s compellingly elusive, uncategorizable sonics developed out of what he terms a personal & musical “identity crisis.”

The half-Irish half-Catalan composer Núria Graham published her debut album "First Tracks" in 2015 with only 16 years. In just over two years, she released "Bird Eyes" + "In The Cave" (EP) and almost next her second feature "Does It Ring a Bell?" (2017), an album that positioned her on the national scene as an essential artist to understand homemade folk-pop. But during these last two years Núria has had no rest. After a tour that took her to the stages of the most relevant festivals and venues in the country with incursions into Portugal, Berlin, France and London; and after having won a place as a composer and guitarist for Amaia's band, Núria Graham finally has new material. Something we were all waiting for. "Marjorie" is the name of her next album that will be released in 14th of February 2020.

Over two critically lauded albums, that uncannily beautiful, acrobatic contralto, wedded to Ólöf’s liquid, finger-picked guitar or South American charango, intermittently ornamented by various degrees of chamber orchestration, has won legions of fans around the globe, abetted by a vigorous, peripatetic touring schedule.

All of which is good going for a singer who started her musical life fighting chronic stage nerves only to deliver her deeply personal songs in that most magical yet, let’s face it, hardly universally accessible mother tongue, Icelandic.

Operators is Dan Boeckner's (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, Divine Fits) brand new analog/electronic/dance project, and we are excited to announce the release of their debut offering, EP1: an upbeat, aggressively melodic collection of synth driven pop songs.

Dan Boeckner has shown his diverse musical taste over the years; consequently, his decision to focus his attention on a new, electronic dance project shouldn't be surprising as it feels like nothing more than a natural progression from the first synth he bought for the debut Wolf Parade EP, to the primarily stark, digital sounds of Handsome Furs, and now the organic, melted, deeply dance driven Operators. 

On just two self-released singles – ‘I’m On Top’, and the haunting, hedonistic-house of ‘One Of The Girls’ – Otha made an immediate, immersive introduction in 2018, gaining early support from Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear, The Sunday Times and The Guardian.

Born and raised on the west coast of Norway, Othalie started collaborating with her boyfriend (and now hubby) Tyler, who was based out of Vancouver. Juggling a degree in economics with the challenge of making beats – and a relationship – work long-distance, Otha’s sound seems to draws on a rich vein of Scandinavian pop (“I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to ‘Body Talk’: it’s the ultimate album, and only contains bangers”) as much as it does elements of shoegaze, disco, new wave and rave.

While you may know Paul Jacobs as a founding member and drummer of Montreal buzz band Pottery, his solo project existed long before its formation. Paul Jacobs has been constantly evolving his sound for several years, seeing how far he can push himself artistically. Paul has transformed what was originally a solo project into a full seven member band that has quickly become one of Montreal’s premiere live acts. Their shows feature wild and manic energy; a true purge of raw emotions.

Peggy Sue are London-via-Brighton indie duo Rosa Slade and Katy Young. Founded in 2007, the band have released three albums on Wichita Recordings, culminating in 2014's critically acclaimed 'Choir Of Echoes', and toured with the likes of Jack White, Local Natives and First Aid Kit.

After a three year break - during which Slade and Young have been performing with all-female singing group Deep Throat Choir - new single 'Slow Fade' is an apt comeback – a melancholy celebration of patience. Upcoming fourth album sees the band borrowing from the perfectly-constructed pop songs of the 1960s and the understated, noisey guitar experiments of 90s indie bands such as The Breeders and Blur.

For every sibling band forged in rivalry, many others mount an unassailable genetic argument for keeping the music in the family. The latter is assuredly the case with Penelope Isles, a brother-sister-centred alt-rock quartet from Brighton (via Isle of Man) whose debut album, Until the Tide Creeps In, was released through Bella Union last summer. Formed around the chemistry between dual songwriters Jack and Lily Wolter, the quartet’s expansive DIY mix of translucent dream-pop, fuzz-rock guitars and indie-psych flushes comes lovingly dipped in exquisite harmonies and lustrous melodies: a combination so intuitive, you’d think it was in their blood.

Sometime in 2016, just as the Polish singer and producer Tobiasz Biliński began to find success through the dim and fractured electropop of Coldair, he knew it was time for a radical change. He needed something new, a restart—the unabashedly radiant and unapologetically complex pop of Perfect Son, delivered in 10 perfect shots on Biliński’s Sub Pop debut, Cast.

On Cast, Perfect Son steps boldly into the light without sloughing off emotional weight or depth. With powerful, sweeping production that recalls the best pop beats of Matthew Dear and arcing melodies that conjure the majesty of Jonathan Meiburg, Perfect Son animates sensations of lust, belonging, and newfound trust with tumescent electronic arrangements that threaten the safety of any sound system.

It's hard to survive in the music business, but Peter Bjorn and John have done that and then some. The Swedish indie-pop trio have been triumphing via their pitch-perfect alchemy of varying sounds and styles for two decades now, and their ninth album Endless Dream is but the latest proof of the unique creative chemistry that Peter Morén, Björn Yttling, and John Eriksson have successfully worked with for so long. Every PB&J album sounds like falling in love with music for the first time, and the deceptively light confections contained on Endless Dream is the trio's latest romance.

Petite Meller is a singer-songwriter, philosopher and composer who emerged in 2013 with her ”social pop”, unique styling and spectacular videos. Her all out spectacle videos “the flute”, “barbaric” "Backpack", "Milk Bath", and ”NYC Time" are little homages to Hitchcock, Tarkovsky and Antonioni.

Petite's signature blush and hand bandage represents the purpose of her music - to heal and overcome.

Phoria are headed up by the master of electronics and composition Trewin Howard, he is joined by piano/synth player Ed Sanderson who he has known all his life and three others (guitarist/synth player James Cheeseman, drummer Seryn Burden, guitar/bass/synth player Tim Douglas), who he feels he has known forever. Phoria start to make sense with this strong backbone and incredible bond in place. At one point, they stopped trying to be a conventional band and started to be something else; they decided to be applied technicians in a self-created sonic laboratory named Phoria. 

Overseen, produced, and recorded by Caribou’s Brad Weber, Pick a Piper is his collaboration with Angus Fraser, Dan Roberts, and others. Over the course of two EPs and a self-titled album, the project has combined dance-music structures, a palette evocative of the natural world, and an increasingly heavy focus on electronics and production technique to create a sound poised between the organic and the synthetic. Pick a Piper continue to work on their follow-up to their 2013 self-titled album.

Piroshka is the Hungarian for Little Red Riding Hood, and gives a subtle nod to a certain red hairdo that stood out in the 1990s Brit-guitar-pop scene. It's also the alter ego of four notable talents – Miki Berenyi (Lush), KJ ‘Moose’ McKillop (Moose), Mick Conroy (Modern English) and Justin Welch (Elastica). Making gorgeous bittersweet, euphoric pop that is much more than the sum of the four parts, Piroshka’s music combines physical force with sublime delicacy and lyrics that reflect the brutal times we are currently living under. The band will be making their live debut in November 2018.

Plants and Animals work on instinct. They’ve been playing together for 20 years, so they basically started as kids. They were a big part of the mid-’00s Montreal music renaissance, when you couldn’t walk through the neighbourhood at 4pm on a Tuesday without spilling your coffee on the fitted jeans of a who’s who. They ran around sweaty all night and blew bubbles from the roof over Parc Avenue when they finished their first album. They became known for a ferocious live show and still are. They have just finished their fifth album. They’re parents now, and have been so for long enough to move beyond euphoria into anxious realness and bigger love. The world is a different place than it used to be.

Plants and Animals are Nicolas Basque, Warren Spicer and Matthew Woodley. The Jungle is their shortest album yet and almost certainly their boldest. Eight acts in a world full of noise.

Life split into multiple paths for Plàsi, but he always found a way back to music. Four years since his emergence, the Swedish-Greek singer, songwriter, producer, and artist born Mikael Bitzarakis reached a crossroads of reflection. Threaded together by intimately organic soundscapes and entrancing vocal transmissions, he wholeheartedly embraced his purpose on the 2020 EP, Where I Belong.

Plàsi introduced himself on the 2016 EP, Now & Then, followed by his full-length debut, People, in 2018. Signing to Nettwerk, he built his own mythos with 2019’s Mystery EP, with the title track being praised as “an acoustic folk gem” by The Line of Best Fit and “a sensationally moving folk piece” by Earmilk, among others. Beyond amassing over 40 million total streams, he supported the likes of Henry Jamison, José González and Hollow Coves on the road, in addition to his first European headline tour and performances at festivals such as Iceland Airwaves and Eurosonic.

In the midst of a brief break from tour, he retreated to the Julian Alps in Slovenia with bandmates and producers Linus and Hannes Hasselberg. Holing up in a remote mountainside cottage, they spent four full days recording what would become Where I Belong.

Fronted by vocalist and guitarist Mia Berrin, the Brooklyn-based band unites punk inclinations with a raw, visceral vulnerability. It’s quiet grrrl punk reminiscent of Rilo Kiley, Mitski and PJ Harvey that would rather growl than yell.

They first released the EP Hate It Here in 2017 and followed it up with Ow which earned praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Stereogum, Fader, Vulture, The AV Club and more. Berrin’s music reveals internal discord -- she’s intent to cast off the “nice girl” narrative, and that means turning herself inside out to show that the inside isn’t so put-together after all.

Also integral to Berrin’s self-excoration is her existence as a queer woman of color, two identities that come with their own preconceived notions. With lyrics centering on mental health, abuse, trauma, and healing, Pom Pom Squad pursues radical self-acceptance through periodic self-exposure and self-undressing.

Entering their eighth year as a band, Priests remain an inspired anomaly in modern music. A band on its own label, Sister Polygon Records—jolting the greater music world with early releases by Downtown Boys, Snail Mail, Sneaks, and Gauche—they are living proof that it is still possible to work on one’s own terms, to collectively cultivate one’s own world.

Bred in punk, Priests play rock’n’roll that is as intellectually sharp as it is focused on pop’s thrilling pleasure centers, that is topical without sloganeering. The high-wire physicality of their live shows, the boldness of their Barbara Kruger-invoking visual statements, their commitment to cultural, political, and aesthetic critique—it’s all made Priests one of the most exciting bands of their generation, subversive in a literal sense, doing things you would not expect.

Hydrogene-blond mane and squealing synthesizers: RAZOR SHINES sitting in an auditorium to study classical music is a hard thing to imagine now, even for the singer from Toronto herself. Her real strength lies in pop and she realized this sooner than her parents agreed. When they stopped supporting her financially, she started dancing at a strip club. Now, she lets her experiences push her music. The future of pop belongs to women like RAZOR SHINES.

River Whyless, the Asheville, NC quartet, is named in spirit of the band’s ongoing love affair with the natural world. Since forming the band in 2009, musicians Ryan O'Keefe, Halli Anderson, Alex McWalters and Daniel Shearin have toured extensively, playing hundreds of shows from coast to coast and into Canada.

The band’s music has been described as folk-rock, nature-pop, and baroque-folk, but in the end the members of River Whyless hope only to lend craft to their passions.

Robyn Hitchcock is one of England's most enduring contemporary singer/songwriters and live performers. A surrealist poet, talented guitarist, cult artist and musician's musician, Hitchcock is among alternative rock's father figures and is the closest thing the genre has to a Bob Dylan (not coincidentally his biggest musical inspiration).

Since founding the art-rock band The Soft Boys in 1976, Robyn has recorded more than 20 albums as well as starred in ‘Storefront Hitchcock’ an in concert film recorded in New York and directed by Jonathan Demme.

Blending folk and psychedelia with a wry British nihilism, Robyn describes his songs as ‘paintings you can listen to’.

Roddy Woomble is widely regarded as one of Scotland’s finest songwriters.

Known for his enigmatic lyrics, warm baritone voice and consummate gift for a tune, Roddy has released five solo albums to date - 'My Secret Is My Silence' (2006), ‘Before The Ruin’ (2008, with Kris Drever and John McCusker), 'The Impossible Song & Other Songs' (2011), 'Listen To Keep' (2013), and ‘The Deluder’ (2017). Roddy’s first poetry collection ‘Instrumentals’ was released in 2016.

For the past two decades Roddy has also been the frontman of much loved Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild, releasing eight studio albums, and touring worldwide as a headline act, but also in support to R.E.M., Pearl Jam and U2 amongst others.

Rodrigo Amarante is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger. He is part of the bands Los Hermanos, Orquestra Imperial, and Little Joy, and released his first solo record, Cavalo, in Brazil in late 2013 and worldwide in May 2014. He also wrote and performed the (bolero style) narcocorrido "Tuyo", the theme song for the Netflix Original Series Narcos (2015) and Narcos: Mexico (2018), and wrote the score for the film "7 Days In Entebbe" (2018).

Since releasing his debut album ‘Little Giant’ in 2014 and sophomore album ‘Paperweights’ in 2016, Panes has racked up an excess of 100 million plays on Spotify and over 6 million total YouTube views. He has been described by Uncut as a ‘Britfolk pin up’ whose music ‘taps a deep well of folk heritage.’ Q Magazine has said Panes finds ‘a positive message in thoughts best left in the dark of night.’ Panes’ music is succinct, honest songwriting, from a place of deep personal expression, resonating with universal truths and values. His is a deep voice, one that sounds aged beyond its years, and yet, it’s telling of timeless stories, endless heartache and forever love. It asks that we all find the right way to see the world around us. 

Rozi Plain has been making music since her brother taught her a few chords on the guitar aged 13. Raised in Winchester, she spent a few years studying art and painting boats in Bristol, where she began collaborating with long-term friends Kate Stables (This Is The Kit) and Rachael Dadd among many others on a thriving local scene. It was there that Rozi made her first two albums, 2008’s Inside Over Here and 2012’s Joined Sometimes Unjoined, each works of deliciously sad and beautiful pop full of heart-wrenching harmonies dotted with unexpected instrumental flourishes.

Almost permanently on tour, Rozi has taken her joyous live show on the road countless times around Europe, the UK and the USA, in partnership with alt-folk luminaries from Devendra Banhart to James Yorkston and the Pictish Trail.

It’s a good record. But I can’t really listen to it anymore. It kind of broke my brain. It took a year, and there were a lot of times I thought it was going nowhere, a lot of botched sessions. It was all my fault, no one else’s. I was just totally unprepared. I went in with over-confidence, I went in there like ‘Yeah, I’m ready to go!’ but I was just kind of bullshitting. I went in expecting to make a fucking masterpiece, but I kept hitting a brick wall.

I was under a lot of stress because I was trying to make an anti-folk record and I was having trouble doing it. I wanted to make something deep-fried and more me-sounding. I didn’t want to be jammy acoustic guy anymore. I just wanted to make something weird and far-out that came from the heart finally. I was always trying to make something like this I guess, trying to catch up with my imagination. And I think I succeeded in that way – it’s got some weird instrumentation on there, and some surreal far-out words...

Apparently wistful, but plumbed out with mysteries of the fall, this Utah native now Los Angeles based, Sam Burton’sdebut solo record, I Can Go With You (Tompkins Square, 2020) has generated expectant curiosities on both sides ofthe Atlantic. The ballad-centric offering will set you thinking of Bert Jansch, Tim Buckley and Gram Parsons, but for awandering new generation looking to get engaged by something/anything. As he sings on Illusion: “That’s a prettyarrow, you know I need an illusion. I have no need for one like mine.”

A man. A guitar. And a song. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? It is.

Scott Matthews’ new record, The Great Untold, is a career-defining masterpiece. The sixth studio album by the Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter is the one that many have craved: it is a masterclass in honesty, instinct and reflection. His ten-song cycle is the sound of a man comfortable in his own skin, putting his neck on the line with a collection of otherworldly songs.

Formed in 2005, Screaming Females are Marissa Paternoster (guitar), Mike Abbate (bass), and Jarrett Dougherty (drums). They have released seven full-length albums and toured across the world.

Out October 18th 2019, Singles Too is a complete collection of Screaming Females’ non-album recordings, gathering the band’s early 7” singles, digital-only b-sides, rarities, and one pretty great remix. The tracklist -- which is arranged chronologically -- provides a roadmap of the band’s progress through 15+ years, seven albums, and countless tours. Singles Too is a rarities comp, yes, but it’s a very, very compelling one, gathering Screaming Females most obscure original material together with it’s best-known performances of other people’s songs. A deep dive, an introduction, and a history lesson all at once.

Irish alt-folk and electronica alchemist Seamus Fogarty will release his new album The Curious Hand on October 6th. It is his first for Domino and follows his debut full-length God Damn You Mountain (Fence/Lost Map) and 2015’s EP Ducks and Drakes.

Originally from County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, Fogarty now resides in London, and the capital provides the canvas for The Curious Hand. Fogarty’s method of lifting sounds wholesale from his environment and tucking them into the folds of his songs like keepsakes, renders himself at once, artist and archivist as well as twisting the notion of the folk singer’s role as collector and custodian of stories, traditions and cultural curio.

The Curious Hand was produced by Seamus and Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Wild Beasts) who also plays on the album. Other notable players include Emma Smith on a plethora of instruments (violin, clarinet, bass to name a few), Rozi Plain (backing vocals), Aram Zarikian (drums) and Seamus’ brother John Fogarty (accordion).

Across the spectrum of avant garde pop music, Canadian cult songwriter Sean Nicholas Savage is renowned for his bitter sweet ballads, and beautifully raw live performances, his singing delicate and brave, full of energy and space. Each new record is an adventure in sensitivity and nuance. Although set against a variety of pop culture models, an intimate poetic relationship with the listener remains in stone throughout the last decade. Sentimental, like a misty romantic drama that makes you long for a life you never lived, and yet understand to your soul, Savage’s catalogue is packed with wonder, hope and roller rink echoes.

Shana Cleveland is a musician, illustrator, and writer living in California.

Night of the Worm Moon is the 7th full length record she’s released with one of a few projects. She is writing this in 3rd person.

About Night of the Worm Moon:

Shana Cleveland has been beguiling listeners for years in her role as the superlative frontwoman for elastic surf rockers La Luz. Now Cleveland is evolving her sound on the new solo full-length Night of the Worm Moon, a serene album that flows like a warm current while simultaneously wresting open a portal to another dimension.

There is an entire sub-genre of poetry devoted to rivers and their persistent, meditative flow. Emily Dickinson’s “My River Runs to Thee” compares them to the cycle of life, while Alfred Tennyson’s “The Brook” deems them eternal and Kathleen Raine’s “The River” muses on the dream-state they evoke. For transcendent folk-pop artist Shannon Lay, the river is all of the above: It’s the metaphor driving her latest album, the exquisitely uplifting August (Sub Pop Records, out August, 23rd)—which doubles as an aural baptism renewing her purpose for making music. “I always picture music as this river. Everyone’s throwing things into this river, it’s a place you can go to and feed off of that energy,” she says, “and feel nourished by the fact that so many people are feeling what you’re feeling. It’s this beautiful exchange.”

Shopping formed in early 2013 by members Rachel Aggs (guitar), Billy Easter (bass) and Andrew Milk (drums), who’ve all done time in a plethora of notable UK DIY bands including Trash Kit and Wet Dog. They pull from a well of 70’s post-punk with a voraciousness seldom seen these days, bringing to mind the jagged aggression of Gang of Four, the voracious yelp of The Slits and the dance inducing funk thrust of Delta 5 and ESG.

Formed in Stockholm by childhood friends Adam Olenius (vocals), Ted Malmros (bass), and Carl von Arbin (guitars), Shout Out Louds found an international audience during the early 2000s with their peppy Swedish pop. The lineup began taking shape in 2001, with drummer Eric Edman and keyboardist Bebban Stenborg climbing aboard shortly thereafter. Shout Out Louds wasted little time writing songs, the first three of which formed the basis of their first demo tape. The music caught the ear of Filip Wilén, owner of Sweden's Bud Fox Recordings, and he quickly signed the group to his label.

Sinkane is the project of the Sudanese-born musician Ahmed Gallab. Gallab cut his teeth as a youngster in the punk DIY landscape of middle America, and then found himself touring far and wide as a member of Yeasayer, Caribou, Eleanor Friedberger, Born Ruffians, and Of Montreal.
He has emerged from it all as Sinkane, a project that identifies a renaissance within the space and spirit of the outposts of contemporary music. With an aesthetic range seamlessly shifting from soul to rock, and from jazz to pop, Sinkane's vibe is timeless and the sound is now.

If dreams can be realised then they can, in turn, become something tangible, something that can be built upon and altered, something that can be held on to.

It took Joel Wästberg some fifteen years of self-encouragement to finally release his music. Growing up in a small town on the western coast of Sweden, that dream drifted and faded before finally coming to fruition with the release of his 2016 EP ‘Says Hi’ and subsequent debut album ‘Digging A Tunnel’.

A couple of years on from that initial release, the Gothenburg-based producer returns with a brand-new collection of songs titled ‘Holding On To A Dream’. Written, recorded, and produced by Wästberg – then mixed, once again, by Henrik Alser in a small cabin in the isolated Swedish countryside – ’Holding On To A Dream’ is personal but not private, a detailed account of Wästberg’s own life, of relationships found and lost, but also a collection of universal themes: love, fear, and our endless attempts to connect with other people.

They came from the trees.

Now settled in fertile east London, Snapped Ankles maintain the feral energy of the forest. Fight or flight. Primal motorik rhythms, the rush of white noise and post-punk angles; an aural onslaught played out on homemade log synths, electrified guitars and sticks beating hell on taut animal skin.

Snapped Ankles have flourished in the sub-tropical climes of warehouse and squat parties, moving onto performance art collaborations with filmmakers and shows in unlikely locations such as barber shops, games arcades and the forests they once called home. They plough a singular furrow at improbable angles. The woodwose have discovered electricity and they’re not afraid to use it.

Son Lux is the grand genre-less dream of Los Angeles composer Ryan Lott brought to roiling, vivid life with the help of two New Yorkers, guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. Each is a writer, producer, and performer with omnivorous taste and a penchant for wild improvisation—a band whose mix of electronic pop, unusual soul, and outright experimentalism feels more inviting than ever on the project's fifth album, 'Brighter Wounds'.

The songs therein leave behind Son Lux's typically universal themes for deeply personal fare. While making 'Brighter Wounds,' Lott became a father to a baby boy and lost a best friend to cancer. Days of "firsts" were also days of "lasts," and the normal fears that accompany parenthood were compounded by a frightening new reality—Lott's son arrived shortly after Election Day. These songs draw on all of that: warm reflections of a fading past, pain wrenched from a still-present loss, and a mix of anxiety and hope for a future that is promised to no one.

After fifteen years of writing and performing with projects like Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Moonface, Swan Lake, and Frog eyes, this prolific songwriter has now decided to release and tour the music he makes under his own name - Spencer Krug.

First gaining attention in the mid 2000s as co-leader of Montreal's rock’n’roll Wolf Parade, then soon after as the voice and mind behind the chaotic Sunset Rubdown, Krug eventually used the now defunct Moonface as an outlet for his more experimental and sporadic solo material. And while he still writes and sings for the recently reactivated Wolf Parade, there remains in him a need to express something less rock-oriented, something more quiet and strange and introverted. So, returning to his first and favorite instrument, the piano, Krug has ventured back into his own fantastic world of pseudo-classical balladeering; poetic lyricism laced with twisted pop sensibility and jazz mimicry. Using this template, he now releases his solo work, and tours a variety of new songs as well as those from older projects, as Spencer Krug.

"For most people who create art I would assume there is some kind of deep unanswerable hole in your soul as to why you're making it..." So says Stef Chura ahead of the release of Midnight, her gritty, vehement new album, recorded and produced by Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest - and her first new collection of songs for Saddle Creek, out June 7th. Illuminating that search for answers with a fevered sense of exploration, Midnight is a bold leap forward from Messes, Stef's contagious debut album, with every aspect of her new work finding bold ways to express itself as it rips through twelve restless and relentless new tracks.