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

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

The purest approach produces the most authentic outcome.

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

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.

Like generations of Puerto Ricans before them, Raquel Berríos and Luis Alfredo Del Valle of experimental pop duo Buscabulla moved to the mainland United States to hustle for their dreams, but a longing for their island ran deep, never escaping their thoughts during the decade they resided there.

It was in New York City that the Buscabulla sound was forged, enthralling growing audiences with its elevated bedroom productions and unique juxtaposition of stylistic highs and lows: Raquel’s textured, high-pitched vocals counterpointed by Luis Alfredo’s poignant bassline; minimalist melodies that evoke throwback salsa and R&B; and whispery re-imaginings of catchphrases from 90s reggaeton and every-day island vernacular.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Whether it’s the early, more electronic-driven post-rock beginnings (‘Tripper' 2004) or excavating field recordings at an abandoned settlement not far from the North pole (‘Piramida’ 2012), these Danish pop adventurers express boundless enthusiasm with each radical new undertaking. Efterklang’s fifth studio-album ‘Altid Sammen’ (2019) finds the band exploring not only the native Danish tongue, but veering slightly away from their established orchestral splendor to seek out more of a free-form intimacy. Over the years the band’s has become a true force of nature when taking the stage to perform live – Efterklang’s engaging concerts are as beautiful as they are raw and communal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Marie Davidson & L'Œil Nu - Biography

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

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

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

They came from the trees.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stockholm post-punk heroes Viagra Boys have announced a new album Welfare Jazz, available January 8th via YEAR0001. The album is produced by Matt Sweeney (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Run the Jewels), Justin and Jeremiah Raisen (Yves Tumor, Kim Gordon, Sky Ferreira) as well as past collaborators Pelle Gunnerfeldt and Daniel Fagerström (The Hives, The Knife).

Ever the band drenched in satire, they return with their brand of horn-filled, searing post-punk and rejection of standard genre trope’s to deftly lay waste to society’s normalization of toxic masculinity, racism, misogyny, classism, and self-obsession. Even the album’s title has a layer of satirical depth; the transliteration from Swedish of the term used for the government’s financial support of jazz musicians cuts to the quick of institutionalized classism and prioritization.

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.