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.

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.

ANAMAI is the experimental folk project of Anna Mayberry (HSY) and David Psutka (Egyptrixx, Hiawatha).

Existing in the unsettled space between ancient past and imagined future, ANAMAI explores the contradictory nature of intimacy by releasing quiet confessions in a vast, amorphous lake of noise. Naked, resonant minimalism; ethereal and liquid. ANAMAI's debut album Sallows is out now on Buzz Records.

The Party is the ANTI- Records debut for this Canadian songwriter, who grew up in small-town Saskatchewan.

Recording began with a band in Germany in early 2014, but Shauf—who is endlessly rewriting lyrics and rearranging songs, building them up and then stripping them back to their basics—decided to start anew back home in Regina. There, he set up shop at Studio One, located in an old CBC building, and was left to his own devices. The Party is not exactly a concept record, but it was a way for the singer-songwriter to get out of his own head. An after-party record, more like it.

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.

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.

Each song on Bayonne’s Drastic Measures is orchestral in texture, unfolding in countless layers and kaleidoscopic tones. With great intensity of detail, the Austin-based artist otherwise known as Roger Sellers deepens that sonic complexity by weaving in elegantly warped samples of the field recordings he’s gathered for over a decade. But in its powerful melodies and pristine arrangements, Drastic Measures ultimately bears a pure pop lucidity even in its most grandiose moments.

Driven by the dynamic percussion and luminous piano work signature to Bayonne’s sound, Drastic Measures takes its title from a track that embodies the album’s central theme: the instability inherent in an artist’s life, and the often-futile attempt to attain balance. With its unrelenting urgency and heavy-hearted lyrics (“Common sense should tell me that the ones I’ve sinned against say goodbye”), “Drastic Measures” looks at the disorienting effects of constant touring.

Hailing from Vancouver/Montreal, The Belle Game weave intricate soundscapes into shadowy, dark-pop rumblings. Their “show-stopping" debut album Ritual Tradition Habit is a journey through 12 beautifully layered tracks; among them the acclaimed spooky ballad, 'River.'

Having been named by Paste Magazine as one of the 10 Great New Bands from CMJ, and played with the likes of Gotye, Karkwa, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Born Ruffians, Bahamas, The Belle Game is currently working on a new LP, set for release in 2016 and produced by Kevin Drew (of Broken Social Scene) and Dave Hamelin.

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's Tenderness searches for the meaning of closeness in our highly-connected world. Central to the record is the contradictory power of technology: people are at once alienated and brought together by its use. With immediacy of communication we can feel close without ever having to be truly tender to each other. 

After taking a 4 year break from writing and producing with each other, Ra and Agor rekindled their creative flame in 2016, writing music about an unrequited relationship Ra was experiencing with someone mostly online, constantly battling these contradictory feelings of distance and closeness. As record flows from one song to the next with skits, phone calls, acoustic demos, real life samples and quiet left-turns, she discovers that happiness is derived not from others but from something immaterial within herself. She finds validation without the need for the other—a valuable lesson whether in real or virtual reality.

Ten years ago, on the very first song on their very first album, Born Ruffians revealed their ambitions to start their own country. They didn’t really offer details about how they would go about legally annexing land, drafting a constitution or establishing a native currency, but we did know this much: it had a population of three—singer/guitarist Luke Lalonde, bassist Mitch DeRosier and drummer Steve Hamelin.

What started as an impromptu jam session in Wiesbaden in 2008 has emerged as an entire musical universe within a few years. Brandt Brauer Frick embodies perhaps the most exciting fusion of classical instruments and club music to date. The blurring of boundaries has become their trademark – even if these are self-imposed ones – allowing them to reach a broad range of scenes and audiences worldwide. 

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.

Caribou is the one-man project of Dan Snaith. He seamlessly blends electronic production with psychedelic pop pastiche. After the acclaimed grammy-award-winning album "Swim" in 2010, he is now back with "Our Love", released Oct 2014.

Our Love is formed around a mixture of digital pop production, hip hop inspired beats, muted house basslines and a love of shuffling garage that can be traced all the way back to the time of Start Breaking My Heart which are, of course, all filtered through Dan's own unique perspective. The warm analogue sounds of classic soul should not be overlooked either, for they weave themselves most intensely into the records DNA.

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.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s 2005 self-released ground breaking debut album is hailed as one of “The 50 Most Important Recordings Of The Decade” by NPR.
In the ensuing years, Ounsworth has continued pushing himself creatively, releasing 3 additional acclaimed CYHSY full-lengths (for which he again wrote all of the music and lyrics) and issuing two solo projects, and touring all over the Globe. All of these experiences have helped Ounsworth refine his vision for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, as the group heads into its twelfth year and the release of its fifth and perhaps finest album, The Tourist.

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.

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.

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.

Death By Unga Bunga epitomize everything that’s fun and great about rock 'n’ roll. Catchy riffs, wild solos and great songs. Fast, loud and funny! Clever hooks, dumb/smart lyrics and all round songwriting panache amped up the expectations for new album "So Far So Good So Cool", a title which handily summarizes their career thus far.

With rave reviews all round, the self produced power pop / garage rock gem has taken the band in a circle pit around the world. The riffs are catchier, the solos are wilder and the songs are faster, louder and funnier than ever.

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.

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

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.

Full Time Hobby's Dralms is Christopher Smith’s latest project, which, over the past year, released two celebrated EPs; Crushed Pleats and Pillars & Pyre, now unleash their debut Shook in Oct 2015. The sound of Dralms has a gravitational pull much like Vancouver, Canada, where singer Christopher Smith resides. When trying to describe musical similarities, reviewers have looked in the directions of Talk Talk, Radiohead, The Antlers, Pink Floyd and Spiritualized, but those references only hint at Dralms’ indeterminable qualities. Clash described Dralms’ music as “a contagious, thrilling fare with a unique melodic sense.“

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.“

EMA began with the urge to self-exile. After the success of Past Life Martyred Saints and 2014’s prophetic The Future’s Void, EMA retreated to a basement in Portland, Oregon – a generic apartment complex in a non-trendy neighborhood, with beige carpeting and cheap slat blinds.

She returns with a portrait of a world both familiar and alien: The Outer Ring, a pitch-black world of half-empty subdivisions, American flags hung over basement windows, big-box stores and strip malls and rage. In a year dominated by working-class alienation, EMA — a Midwesterner who has never lost her thousand-yard stare — has delivered an album that renders American poverty and resentment with frightening realism and deep empathy.

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.

Esther Vallee is a dream wave warrior whose music is laced with pop-consciousness from an unconscious part of this life - meaning all the dark parts and the means to process them. She has created a world for herself where the light better damn well inhabit the dark. She is your angel for backwards-looking escapism, her soundscape of sultry soul banging that collage electro sounds with bounces of dark electropop are just exciting.

Ewert and The Two Dragons are an indie-folk band from Tallinn, Estonia formed in spring of 2009. The line-up consists of vocalist Ewert Sundja, guitarist Erki Pärnoja, drummer Kristjan Kallas and Ivo Etti on bass, guitar and other instruments.

Critics have titled them as "the crown jewel of Estonian music", Finnish music magazine Rumba was stunned by their performance at the biggest Baltic music festival Positivus, calling them "the best band at the entire fest" where they were on the line-up alongside Muse and Scissor Sisters.

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.

Field Division is the musical project of Evelyn Taylor and Nicholas Frampton. The American duo conjure up a cinematic blend of classic songwriting, inspired by the 1960’s and 70’s folk rock pioneers, and transcendent modern dream pop. After releasing their debut EP, ‘Reverie State’ in 2014, Field Division spent two years living on the road whilst recording their first full-length LP (out in 2018). The new album, co-produced with Mckenzie Smith of Midlake, expands upon the ethereal soundscapes of their music while exploring the darker and more personal sides of their songwriting.

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.

Get Well Soon is the project of classically trained singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Konstantin Gropper from Germany.

Get Well Soon blends music from all over the world, morricone-like soundtracks to tango, classical montages and and haunting panoramic mood mosaics. It has drawn comparison to Beirut, Patrick Wolf & Tom Waits. Get Well Soon on stage is a six piece band with many instruments.

Their fourth full-length studio album entitled 'Love' was released in early 2016.

“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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

ionnalee is the solo project of audiovisual project iamamiwhoami’s creator and front person Jonna Lee.

ionnalee represents both a new beginning and the continuation of a story still unfolding. a decade into her solo career, Swedish pop maverick Jonna Lee steps outside of the pioneering audio/visual world she spearheaded and helped create in the shape of the enigmatic audiovisual project iamamiwhoami, via a rawer, more upfront solo project lead by punchy lead single, SAMARITAN, and a visual alliance with COMME des GARÇONS.

Jacques Greene is the enigmatic, young artist who broke out of a generation of independent electronic labels Uno, 3024, Night Slugs and LuckyMe as a genre-defining producer and DJ (via 2011’s ’Another Girl’ – one of Pitchfork’s Songs of the Decade, 2013 favourite ’On Your Side’ ft. How To Dress Well and 2016’s club anthem ’You Can’t Deny’). Jacques Greene crafted a musical blueprint that inspired a generation who were raised at the intersection of contemporary music in the 90s: hip hop, RnB, house and techno.

For those who think they know Jaga Jazzist, the story of this Norwegian supergroup and Starfire - its fifth full-length studio album, hot on the heels of the acclaimed 20th anniversary vinyl box, '94-'14 - begins with a pop quiz:

Jaga Jazzist is:

(a) A jazz band;

(b) A rock band;

(c) A progressive rock band;

(d) A hip hop group;

(e) A rap group;

(f) A reggae group;

(g) A polka band;

(h) A comedy band;

(i) An electronica group;

(j) A classical ensemble;

(k) A choral ensemble;

(l) All of the above;

(m) None of the above.

The answer is, indeed, both (l) and (m) because across two decades Jaga has been all of these things but, at the end of the day, is really none of them. A point made all the more clear with Starfire - which, in some ways, returns to earlier roots while, at he same time, introducing new elements and, as ever, moving forward...always moving forward.

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.”

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.

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 will release the follow up to her 2015 LP 'Over and Even' this spring. It was recorded at The Loft in Chicago with Jeff Tweedy producing and again features guitarist Nathan Salsburg, this time with Jeff Tweedy, Spencer Tweedy and James Elkington accompanying Shelley on 11 new songs. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.

'Over and Even' was an album of the year at NPR Music and in the Los Angeles Times. Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars, calling it “a masterfully turned set of folk reflections.”

As vocalist/guitarist John Engelbert somewhat sheepishly admitted in Johnossi's first online bio, "We're not one of those bands that has been struggling in a basement for ten years, dying to catch a break. Things came easily for us." Indeed, after Engelbert and drummer Oskar "Ossi" Bonde formed the pop/rock duo in their native Stockholm, Sweden, in 2004, they played only four gigs before signing with a local label and recording a debut album. Although Engelbert played an acoustic guitar exclusively, his arsenal of effects and overdriven amplifiers put Johnossi in the same stylistic ballpark as other guitar-and-drum duos like the Black Keys, White Stripes, and Mr. Airplane Man.

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.

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)

Kane Strang’s first proper album, Blue Cheese, picks up on the rough disaffection of his earlier demo collection, A Pebble and a Paper Crane, which he recorded in a WWII bomb shelter in Germany.

Back in his hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand, Strang spent two curious months alone, housesitting for his parents. Re-nested, yet still isolated, Strang composed all of Blue Cheese over those quiet days. He has since amassed a band and has started playing his distinct psych-pop live.

Bella Union’s enigmatic vocalist Karl Blau charts a new vision of country music with Introducing Karl Blau. A Northwest indie hero, Blau channels darkness and hope in a cinematic collection of Nashville country hits from the 1960’s and 70’s. Produced by Tucker Martine, the record features performances by Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Laura Veirs, Jon Hyde, Eli Moore (Lake), Steve Moore (Earth, SunnO), among others.

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'.

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.

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

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.

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.

LITTLE SCREAM’S music is — like her moniker — full of perfectly satisfying contradictions. It is at once familiar and completely distinct; effortlessly absorbing multiple genres into a sparkly and cohesive landscape.

'Cult Following' - released on Merge Records - is a record that deserves to be listened to from start to finish, with each song having been constructed to meld seamlessly into the next. There may be those who listen only to the record’s obvious catchy hit, but they would be missing out on the depth of stunners like “Wishing Well” and “Someone Will Notice.” Like a classic novella, you must pass through all of the record’s stages to fully experience a triumphant hero’s journey.

Emil Svanängen born 1979 is a Swedish musician and composer working under the pseudonym Loney Dear.

Originating from the dark winters and light summer nights of Scandinavia, his music captures heavy emotions and intense energies of something painfully beautiful. In his thought through albums he explores the concept of music itself – through making, releasing and performing.

Emil’s music consists of perfectly composed layers, recorded (one by one) by himself and often performed like that, just by him, his expressive voice and a bunch of instruments. Casually he engineers an entire concert alone, playing sounds with his feet while juggling a bass drum and still being very much present in that moment. Perfection mixed with vibrating flaws makes his music easy to take in and hard to let go.

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.

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.

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.

Merchandise is a band fighting against the easy categorization reserved for abbreviated biographies.

Formed as a trio in Tampa, Florida in 2008, the band has undergone ceaseless revision and reinvention. The project is equal parts punk misanthropy, maudlin balladeering, fine art, low humor, classical study, psychedelic spacecasing, mad science and pop genius.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

Núria Graham is already unique: it is lovely to perceive hints of the atmosphere of Mac DeMarco, of the darkness of Angel Olsen and of Cass McCombs’ subtle beats, but now they are almost anecdotal. What really matters is her ability to drive the songs with only her voice and her guitar (electric) together with the meticulous coproduction by Joan Pons (El Petit de Cal Eril), who makes the songs almost ethereal allowing them to reveal all their magic at leisure.

Even the obvious hits Cloud Fifteen and Smile In The Grass are more than they seem at first glance, slowly making their way into the listener’s head to stay there forever.

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.

London-based project patten is renowned for hi-tech immersive AV shows and multi-platform approach, tracing a boundary-irreverent path through outlets ranging from design as 555-5555, to installation, film, software programming, music, live performance, and publishing. Their recent work includes AV shows at the ICA and Tate Modern in London, ongoing art direction for Dan Snaith’s Daphni albums, simultaneous 3049 installations at London's Tenderpixel and Amsterdam's Sonic Acts, live tour visuals for LA’s The Glitch Mob and establishing the 555-5555 web forum following their creative agency of the same name. Their new album is a deep dive into modern instrumental dance music - lovingly produced stark new strains of footwork, trap, hip-hop and techno push their alchemical productions to the next level with sonics to make soundsystems weep. With a brand new mind-melting dancefloor-focused live AV show, patten continues pushing the boundaries and rules of modern dance music.

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.

Like breaking open a rock to discover a crystal inside. Shimmering, intimate and beautifully destructive, this is the experience of Penelope Isles. Siblings Jack and Lily Wolter make music that reveals a curiosity and sensitivity to the world around them. The four-piece band from Brighton via the Isle of Man have a sound that unfolds both dramatically and softly. Nostalgic, but undeniably new, Penelope Isles’ debut LP ‘Until The Tide Creeps In’ is released March 2019 on Bella Union Records. For the lovers of early Arcade Fire, Grandaddy and Mogwai.

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.

Peter Bjorn and John return with their eighth full-length studio album this fall when they release Darker Days in October. Written almost immediately after the release of 2016’s Breakin’ Point, the band decided to strip away the noise and take it back to a simpler time where it was just the three of them, playing music together and releasing albums every other year. The 11 songs on Darker Days reflect this move, showcasing each member’s unique songwriting style while sounding resolutely like a band that has played together for nearly 20 years.

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 are a Montreal-based trio that began playing together as kids, emerged on the international scene in 2008 and have developed a varied cult following ever since. Emerging on the international scene in 2008, the band have developed a varied cult following ever since, built this on the shoulders of their self-produced records, their intense live show, or both — depending on who you ask. April 2016’s “Waltzed In From the Rumbling” is their first album in nearly four years... It is Plants and Animals' most soulful and inventive collection of music yet. Eleven soundtracks for leaps taken, ships sailed, dark water and pink skies.

With stripped productions and meaningful words, the Swedish-Greek singer-songwriter creates an intimate act that stays close to the audience. Since he released his first single in 2016, his music has spread internationally on the different streaming channels and earlier this year his debut album “People” got out. His deep lyrics about humanity mixed with more personal stories are often surrounded by melancholic atmospheres and calming harmonies.

Plàsi, originally Mikael Bitzarakis, was born on the island of Crete but mainly raised in Sweden with his mother where he moved by the age of four. After attending the music school Rytmus, he continued with studies in Stockholm, Milan, and Vienna where his songwriting ignited. His stage name is the Ancient Greek word for creation (πλάση), and two main sources of inspiration are Passenger and José González.

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.

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.

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.

Scott Fagan’s 1968 debut album South Atlantic Blues reintroduced the world to one of the great lost folk singers of the 1960s, and an extraordinary story to rival that of Rodriguez. Fagan, the father of Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, was mentored by legendary songwriter Doc Pomus, almost signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records and played on the same bill at the Cafe Au Go Go as a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix.

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.

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).

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.

sir Was is the musical journey of Joel Wästberg, documenting a wealth of unique & idiosyncratic influences.

Demonstrating a seemingly effortless marriage of organic instrumentation, synthetic sounds and head-bobbing beats, he shows himself as a master of balance. Perfectly weighted songs merge graceful melody and deep beats with his unique production style. The end result is beautifully emotive, atmospheric tracks eschewing genre classification.

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.

Swearin’ is the kind of band that comes around, at best, once a decade. Thankfully for us, they’ve come around twice.

After releasing two beloved full-lengths, 2012’s Swearin’ and 2013’s Surfing Strange , the Philadelphia band quietly put things on hold. It was due, at least in part, to the band’s main songwriters, Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, ending their romantic relationship. And though Swearin’ tried to soldier on, it became far too stressful to keep going. But after a few years apart, those bad feelings disappeared. And when the band’s three members—Crutchfield, Gilbride, and drummer Jeff Bolt—found themselves in a room again, the conversation inevitably turned back to Swearin’.

Though it may have taken them a while, Swearin’ finally made the third album they always wanted. Fall into the Sun is as riotously affirming as their early work, but it’s buoyed by the kind of learned perspective that only comes with age. For long-time fans, it’s a record to be treasured. And for newcomers, it’s an equally warm introduction.

Tanlines - singer/guitarist Eric Emm and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Cohen - will release their eagerly anticipated sophomore album, Highlights, on True Panther Sounds on May 19th, 2015.

Produced by the band and Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, Highlights began in a basement in Pittsburgh and ended in a church in Brooklyn. It trades world music sounds for a more alive, realized approach, the result of Emm and Cohen wanting to break from their ‘two guys, one screen’ writing style.

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down is an indie pop band led by the distinctive-voiced Thao Nguyen, whose songwriting tends toward the musically playful and lyrically heavy-hearted. Raised in the City of Falls Church, Virginia, Nguyen took up the guitar and songwriting as a pre-teen, and was part of a country-pop duo in high school. In 2005, she released a solo album, Like the Linen, which revealed her somewhat raspy, punky voice and folky indie pop style.

THE ALBUM LEAF has been making its mark as a soft-spoken innovator steadily and surely since 1999. One year after forming the influential San Diego instrumental group Tristeza, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist Jimmy LaValle founded THE ALBUM LEAF, a solo studio project turned full-fledged live band. The diversity of THE ALBUM LEAF’s music is second only to the diversity of the music that has inspired LaValle through the years – the artist has named everything from German Ambient/Pysch bands like Can, Cluster and Harmonia to traditional mariachi music, electronic music and Brian Eno as some of his primary influences – and it’s clear that THE ALBUM LEAF is unafraid of thinking outside the box, both as an individual artist & within the larger scope of modern music.

IN HEAT NOT SORRY is The Altered Hours' first full length album, recorded at the Funkhaus studio in Berlin and released through Art For Blind and Penske Recordings.

Having worked with Fabien Leseure on the Sweet Jelly Roll EP (A Recordings) in 2013, the group returned to Berlin the following year to record their debut album IN HEAT NOT SORRY, with Leseure again at the controls. In many ways the album's sound and atmosphere encapsulates the band's ongoing fascination with testing and sometimes disrupting the balance between tranquility and chaos.

The Besnard Lakes are a Canadian indie rock band from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Formed in 2003 by the husband and wife team of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, two of their four albums have been nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. Their fifth studio album 'A Coliseum Complex Museum' was released on Jagjaguwar in January 2016.

The Dears’ songwriting milieu is influenced equally by nineties rock and a broad tableau of gospel, soul, and pop music. Since 1995, they have released 5 full-length albums and 2 EPs and have toured the world over, including performances on Letterman (twofold), Jimmy Kimmel, Jonathan Ross and at Glastonbury, T in the Park, Wireless, Montreal Jazz Fest, Siren Festival, Coachella, Austin City Limits, V Fest (UK & Canada), Les Inrocks (France), Pop Montreal, CMW, CMJ, NXNE and countless appearances at SXSW.

Armed with a sack of harmonicas, a mess of foot percussion and a Telecaster, Shawn “The Harpoonist” Hall and Matthew “The Axe Murderer” Rogers kick out raw and primal blues; continuing in the tradition of a ‘decades - deep blues style', while electrifying the genre a with a lightning bolt of new life. Their sound pays homage to influences ranging from Robert Johnson to Jack White, but its smothered in greasy, gritty soul, and punched with funk. Early on in their career, Hall and Rogers made the choice to limit their sound to whatever they could play between them, using only their mouths, hands and feet, and eventually the sound became larger than the band itself.

The Radio Dept. was formed in 2001 by Johan Duncanson and Martin Carlberg. The name was stolen from an art pop band Johan had had with a couple of highschool friends during the later part of the 90s. (A little later bass player Lisa Carlberg and drummer Per Blomgren joined the band as they started rehearsing in the way bands so often do.) In 2002 Swedish music magazine Sonic drew attention to the band as the song Why Won’t You Talk About It was featured on their accompanying CD-sampler, which was also how Labrador discovered the band. After having released a 7” on their own label Slottet, the debut four track ep “Against The Tide”, they were signed to Labrador.

The Ruby Suns, the band-ish pseudonym of nomadic Californian-New Zealander Ryan McPhun, return after four years with a brilliant and ambitious new record Sprite Fountain.

It began in earnest upon moving to Oslo, Norway from Auckland in 2013's twilight with impending fatherhood tapping him on the shoulder. A slowly ripening thing, it was made amidst child rearing and touring with NZ pals Lawrence Arabia and remixing, recording and touring with Norwegian acts like Snasen, Heyerdahl and Beezewax.

The Soft Moon announces his signing to Sacred Bones and confirms details of his fourth studio album ‘Criminal’, set for release on February 2nd, 2018.

‘Criminal’ is a confessional work. Through the stark lens of shame and guilt that has followed Luis Vasquez since a violent childhood growing up within the humming ambient sprawl of 80s Mojave Desert, here he documents the gut-wrenching sound of going to war with himself. Battling with his own sanity, self-hatred, insecurity, self-entitlement and grappling with the risk of these things transforming him into a person he despises, Vasquez has laid his feelings bare with this: his confession and most self-reflective work to date.

“Whoosh is a silly word,” says Gus Lord of the Stroppies. “There is something completely nonsense about it, especially when removed from any kind of context. For me it conjures up images of something absurd and transient - two things fundamental in the experience of listening to or making good pop music.”

Whoosh may indeed be a silly word but it almost onomatopoeically captures the sound and essence of The Stroppies first proper debut album, one that breezes along with boundless energy, a refrained pop strut, infectious grooves and the sort of jangling guitar melodies that sound like a prime-era Flying Nun band.

During the summer of 2014 This Is Head decided it was time to record their third album. They wrote, recorded, rewrote, played and recorded some more, early till late, through warm afternoons into cool summer nights.

For them, this record is a document of an intense week of abundant creativity mixed with writer’s block. A week of tired ears on stubborn heads and ultimately the crystallisation of our ideas. That’s how it was for us, for those of you listening perhaps it will be something else.

This Is The Kit is the beloved musical project of one Kate Stables, born in Winchester, England and now at home in Paris, France. Bashed Out, her band's much lauded third album, is the result of an extended period collaboration with the record's producer Aaron Dessner (The National, Sharon Van Etten, Local Natives), won over Elbow frontman Guy Garvey as well as his fellow BBC 6Music & Radio 1 DJs (Lauren Laverne, Marc Riley, Cerys Matthews, Huw Stephens, Phil Taggart).

Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders, Tunng’s founding forefathers, have found the pair re-igniting their spark on new record Throws through a magical Icelandic adventure of man chats, drinks-til-dawn, and a little ‘Northern Falsetto’. The result is a brilliantly varied record that couldn’t be further from the pair’s earlier incarnation, combining the dramatic Icelandic elements, synths, old guitars and an off-key piano to create a sound combing the traditional folk rooting of ‘Silence In Between,' and ‘Knife’s glitchy electronica, which all capture Reykjavik’s movement, energy, and throws of passion.

Building on the sparse minimalism and mesmerising songwriting of earlier releases, Tiny Ruins' third long-player 'Olympic Girls' comprises a taut and agile quiver of songs, dancing with explorative instrumentation and a pop sensibility that springs with life.

The album is a sophisticated ode to the possibilities of freedom, its title track replete with rich imagery of figure skaters, prison cells and stuccoed motels. Glittering with promise, it’s an urgent challenge to push further, to look harder – as the chorus of second single, the eponymous Olympic Girls dictates, “We were only inches away / still have a long, long way to go.”

The lives we lead can feel like a simulation as the line between our reality and augmented futures continues to blur. Following the ever-emotive Boo Boo, Toro y Moi’s new album Outer Peace is a time capsule that captures our relationship to contemporary culture into one comprehensive, sonic package.

Shortly after the release of his 2015 record What For?, Toro y Moi (also known as Chaz Bear) packed up his belongings, leaving the comfort of his Oakland base for the relative solitude of Portland to write Boo Boo. Apart from the familiarity of his surroundings, Bear focused on what would become his next sonic statement. In doing so, he was struck by the reign that technology holds over our day to day lives and its ability to obscure the consumption of creativity. His change of environment resulted in freedom from disturbances and, in those quiet and tranquil spaces, the creation of music acted as a protest in favor of peace.

Sebastian Murphy, a San Francisco juvenile delinquent with Swedish roots, cuts a deal avoiding three strikes and you're out and gets deported from the US. With no possibility of returning home he suddenly find himself living in the freezing cold streets of Stockholm. Making small change doing street live caricatures of tourists. 

Meanwhile, in the southern part of town two friends with a penchant for staying up late and speaking both rapidly and loud, Benjamin and Henrik are hammering out their next vision; Can a punk band rely solely on repetetive drum patterns and driving bass lines without falling down the rabbit hole that is pretentious post-punk drool? Well, yeah. 

Vive la Void is the new solo project of Sanae Yamada, co-founder and keyboard player of Moon Duo. Yamada wrote and recorded the self-titled debut album over roughly a two-year period, during windows of downtime in Moon Duo's substantial touring and recording schedule. The dense, shape-shifting atmospheres of the seven songs grew out of late-night basement experiments in the layering of synthesizer tracks, a process that also led to meditations on the changeable nature of memory and perception. The result is an undulating blend of ethereal swirl, low end thrumming, and electric crackle, buoyed by Yamada’s understated but captivating vocal melodies and her striking lyrics.

After We Were Promised Jetpacks finished touring 2014’s Unravelling, they decamped home to Scotland and took a breath. They reverted back to their original four members and dealt with several behind the scenes changes. They celebrated a few marriages and tried to remember who they were when not on the road. A decision was made. No more touring until a new album had been written.

The More I Sleep The Less I Dream contains the essence of what the band have grown into, both as artists and as people. They’ve taken their experiences, both from their ten years as a touring band and from the changes in their personal lives, and forged them into an album that represents a new phase for the band.

Three alternative rock wiseasses and snack food connoisseurs, the trio—Sonia Sturino [vocals, guitar], Annie Hoffman [bass], and Cam Jones [drums]—first congregated in their adopted hometown during 2014. Sonia had recently relocated from Toronto and holed up in a house with Cam and a bunch of other dudes before witnessing Annie play live and asking her to join the band. As they released two independent EPs, Gloomy Tunes and Crushed, they stirred up a palpable buzz (between consuming sour spaghetti and causing trouble). Gigs followed with everyone from CHVRCHES and Silversun Pickups to Beach Slang and Juliana Hatfield as they made their 2017 debut at SXSW and earned praise from Vanyaland, CBS, If It’s Too Loud, and many more. A wiry, whimsical, and wild fusion of disarmingly pop hooks and fuzzed-out riffery that wouldn’t be out of place on the Reality Bites soundtrack or in a modern Brooklyn bar fueled this quiet rise.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Turn on your radio and hide.

When Saints Go Machine are a hard band to pin down, four young men doing things with electro pop that no one has done before. The Danish four-piece formed in 2007 and have a complicated mix of influences. There’s dance music in there, for sure, but also post punk, some experimental electronica in the Aphex Twin mould, and, crucially, a healthy dose of pop. You could describe the end result as a heady mix of Caribou, The Knife/Fever Ray and Arthur Russell. But, really, it doesn’t sound like anything else out there.

Whyte Horses are a perfect psychedelic pop group. They shape-shift from Turkish psyche to Brazilian trip music, from acid house to electronica to punk rock to guitar classic in a heartbeat. The best music is made by fanatics. The kind of people who are immersed in its wonder and dream in technicolour and are obsessed by the never ending panoply of electric noise.

The band is the brainchild of Dom Thomas, a music chronologist who scours the planet for obscure and rare vinyl genius. This obsession is their musical DNA and Whyte Horses are the sound of people who are on the quest for the perfect record and have decided to make one themselves.

Liberated abandon of their primitive soul strikes an immidiate and invigorating chord hard in the lister.

Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Weliin create their music with constant spontinaiety and exploration into sounds, rythms and instruments as well as a desperation and obsession to create timeless music that addresses the basicalities and essense of life.

Dramatic arrangements, fractured melodies and solemn lyrics give Wolf Parade their distinctive sound.

Made up of Spencer Krug (vocals, keyboards), Dan Boeckner (voals, guitar), Arlen Thompson (drums), Dante DeCaro (guitar, bass, percussion) and Hadj Bakara (sound manipulation, keyboards) the band was formed in 2003 in three weeks. The band have gone on secure a local following word wide.

Wovenhand is a band led by dedicated life-musician and lyricist David Eugene Edwards. Over the last two decades, his prolific work in both Wovenhand and the legendary 16 Horsepower has influenced and inspired a generation of musicians throughout the expansive alternative music world.

Wovenhand cannot be described in traditional terms. Their sound is an organic weavework of neo-folk, post rock, punk, old-time, and alternative sounds, all coming together as a vehicle for David's soulful expression and constant spiritual self exploration. Sometimes sad and sorrowful and at other times uplifting, Wovenhand are always unforgettable in spirit and sound.

Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have been playing music together and apart in Baltimore for most of their lives. On stage, they perform with raw energy and sophistication, creating a surprising amount of noise for two people. Their music can be classified as 21st-century folk music, imbued with dense shoegaze guitars, nearly melodic rhythms, and impeccable splashes of electronic color.

The winter of 2014/2015 took Young Galaxy from their studio in Montreal to Gothenburg and back. The band’s brilliant new full length Falsework completes the sound they have been mining on their past two albums Shapeshifting (2011) and Ultramarine (2013) with producer Dan Lissvik (Studio, Atelje). The album is undeniably synth pop without the simplicity and was informed and inspired by 80’s electro, acid house and r&b, music that was well ahead of its time. Falsework was made using machines from the past to sound like music from the future.

What are the dreams of a youth that never makes time to rest? For Yung frontman Mikkel Holm Silkjær, a Danish DIY figurehead who has left a catalogue of cassettes and self-produced songs in his wake, the goal seemed to be recording, and living, as fast as possible. Since he began to record music as a teenager (his father put him behind a drum set when he was 4), slow hasn’t been his preferred speed. Writing and performing songs filled with gritty guitar and driving rhythms that snap like a live wire, he’s been busy channelling the electric drive of youth, creating brief, flashing sonic portraits of his life in Aarhus, the country’s gritty, industrial second city.

Introducing Zooni - an art pop band from Brighton with a powerful yet fragile mix of poetic lyrics and transcendent textures. Peter Martin, George Godwin, Ben Clark and Matt Glasbey wash hypnotic beats with delicate piano and angular guitars. The band have gained a reputation for their atmospheric live show, creating an intricate and enlightened approach to the alternative rock format. They emerge with a striking blend of Nick Drake, Grizzly Bear and Portishead.

Zooni were discovered by Mercury and Brit award winning producer, Charlie Andrew. They Will release music through Square Leg Records in 2019.

The enigmatic Fi-Lyon, M. Zebra and Girafa # are Zulu Zulu, a group that has not left anyone indifferent since they emerged in the Majorcan scene. Their music mixes African rhythms with pop melodies, progressive rock and psychedelic sparks. Above all these sounds appear guttural voices that invoke the language of the spirits of music, compelling the public to approach the magic of the musical ether. In early 2017, they released “Zebra Defense” with the label Foehn Records, with which Zulu Zulu managed to take the great leap and get the attention of the public and press across the country.