St. Vincent’s first self-produced record, All Born Screaming is Annie Clark at her most unfiltered. All Born Screaming is an invitation to test the limits of what is possible–and to then keep going;  Brought to life with the aid of a highly curated dream lineup of friends — Rachel Eckroth, Josh Freese, Dave Grohl, Mark Guiliana, Cate Le Bon, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Stella Mogzawa and David Ralicke — the album is an unadulterated expression of St. Vincent’s singular vision.

Beyoncé - Cowboy Carter - Country Vinyl LP

The 13th studio album from Old 97’s arose from what vocalist/guitarist Rhett Miller refers to as a “de-evolution”. “As much as I want us to calm down and grow up, the songs that felt right for this record were mostly big and loud and brutal and dirty.”  

Produced by Tucker Martine and featuring appearances from Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5) —American Primitive is gloriously rowdy, revealing a band more attuned than ever to the raw, reckless energy of timeless rock-and-roll

Gary Clark Jr.’s forthcoming album entitled JPEG RAW, his fourth studio release,
marks a grand step in his musical evolution…. A powerful and expansive artistic statement.

While retaining the deep and true resonance of his blues foundations and guitar virtuosity with subtlety yet conviction, he reaches well beyond this time.

The emphasis here is on song and studio craft without losing the rawness of his young legend. (Rolling Stone Magazine called him, The Chosen One).

The music is dense and adventurous with a more cohesive synthesis of his eclectic musical  palette.  Hip samples, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Boy Williamson decorate flourishes of African,  World Music, even Jazz while merging with blues , rock, R&B and rap; familiar areas he has ventured before, this time with more unity forging a fresh new style.  Clark’s lyrics are  pointed, deeply personal, outspoken and socially conscious with occasional forays into  rap and spoken word from Clark himself.  The sonics are immersive verging on modern groove-oriented psychedelia with hip-hop driven beats in verses giving way to anthemic choruses, rich with power-chording and wide fuzz riffage.

Songs like “Maktub”, “JPEG RAW”, “This Is Who We Are”, “Hyperwave” and the epic 10-minute Habits, break fresh ground defying categorization in the ever corporatized, predictable “alt” music world.  The co-written Stevie Wonder duet, “What About The Children” feels like an immediate classic that could have lived on Innervisions or Talking Book if not for Clark’s fuzzed out riff and hip-hop pocket.

Clark has always had swagger and sex in his sound and very dangerous hands when wielding 6 strings. JPEG RAW is all of that and breaks new ground that is both thrilling and inspiring on every level.

Throughout the past 4 years since our last studio album, we’ve seen a huge shift in our careers and what honestly has felt like a powerful movement in the weather. It has felt like a “Norther” storm-front that we’ve been trying to hold on through. As a band, it took right around 10 years of heavy touring throughout the U.S. before we caught any kind of large ‘break’; and our hope is that these 13 tracks are a perfect culmination of what makes up our unique sound. The entire album was recorded over the course of about 8 months, with only 2-3 day gaps to record at a time, in between shows and travel. We hope the sound is large enough to blur genres, while staying completely genuine to the sounds that our earliest fans keep coming back for. From honest, singer-songwriter ballads, to powerful folk and Celtic-rock instrumentation; we hope there is something here that resonates with everyone. We are Shane Smith & The Saints from Austin, TX and this is our brand new album, “Norther”.

Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra, they/them) announces their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, due February 23, 2024 on Nonesuch Records. The record represents a new phase of beginning in Segarra’s lauded evolution as a storyteller. Created during a period filled with grief, when they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and the history of activist groups like ACT UP and Gran Fury, discovering a stronger, singular style of writing that felt like a long-awaited revelation. In each song, lyrics serve as memory boxes for Segarra to process their trauma, identity and dreams for the future. Segarra uses their lyrics as a way to immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, to illustrate the many shapes and patterns of time’s passing, and honor both the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves. Though the record was made in North Carolina and produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee), the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based Segarra brings listeners to places far beyond, evoking vivid experiences of small shops and buffalo stampedes in Santa Fe, childhood road trips and Florida storms, struggles of addiction in the Lower East Side, days-long journeys to outrun the cops in Nebraska, and more. 

The followup to their acclaimed Nonesuch debut, Life on Earth—which landed on Best of 2022 lists from the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR Music, Mojo, Uncut, among others—The Past Is Still Alive sees Hurray for the Riff Raff reunite with Brad Cook, while further expanding their creative cast of collaborators. Anjimile, Conor Oberst and S.G. Goodman all join Alynda Segarra on vocals at various points throughout the LP, with a band of musicians including Cook, Libby Rodenbough, Matt Douglas, Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, Phil Cook, Yan Westerlund and Mike Mogis, who also mixed the album. 

The “nature punk” of Life on Earth marked a departure for Hurray for the Riff Raff, as they contemplated surviving and thriving amidst a world in crisis The Past Is Still Alive brings the focus back inwards. The arrangements are raw, the melodies direct and indelible, and the lyrics personal, yet largely rooted in family and community. There are love songs to real characters, locations and mythic figures like Sky Red Hawk (“Buffalo”), the first trans woman Segarra ever met (“Hawkmoon”), queerness and sacred spaces (“Colossus of Roads”), leaving home behind (“Snake Plant”), short-lived romances and the wisdom gained through chaos (“Vetiver”). Elsewhere, in the self-portraits painted on “Alibi,” “Ogallala” and other album highlights, Segarra reflects on the land they have traveled, the hardships witnessed and bravery gained while running away from everything and everyone they knew at age seventeen, hopping freight trains and hitchhiking across the country with a band of street urchins. 

In recent months, Hurray for the Riff Raff debuted a stage adaptation of their beloved 2017 album, The Navigator, based on their quest to reclaim their Puerto Rican identity. They also toured with Bright Eyes and First Aid Kit, performed for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and NPR Music’s 15th Anniversary Concert, played festivals like Pitchfork and more. Next spring, they will bring the music of The Past Is Still Alive on the road, for a headline tour across the US, UK and EU, that they have partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes to supporting This Must Be the Place and their work to distribute Naloxone - the lifesaving medicine that reverses an overdose – at events across the nation.

Dume is a 16-song album (2 LPs) by Neil Young with Crazy Horse from 1975, recorded during the Zuma recording sessions. It includes tracks and outtakes from Zuma. This album is included as CD #8 CD in Neil Young’s Archives Volume II. This is the debut release on vinyl. The D2C/Indie format includes a litho of the album cover.

Offering fuzzy grunge-pop with doses of shimmering synths and emo angst, Ned Russin co-fronted Title Fight before halting in 2018 & Ned began playing music as Glitterer. Now a full band, Glitterer returns with Rationale combining 90s grunge, capital-R riffs a la The Stooges, & a keyboard lead that gives self-depre-cating melodrama., After relying more on synths for the entirely solo, home-recorded Glitterer LP in 2017, he involved collaborators on the crunchier Looking Through the Shades in 2019. This trend toward driving indie rock grit with ‘90s influences continued on 2021’s Life Is Not a Lesson and now Rationale.

I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME's second album, GLOOM DIVISION, is a glimpse into the mind of Dallon Weekes. Produced by Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, MGMT), the album is the follow-up to iDKHOW’s Razzmatazz (ft. the #1 Alternative Radio single "Leave Me Alone"), & an EP ft. the gold record "Choke.” The most autobiographical work to date from Weekes (formerly of Panic! At The Disco), GLOOM DIVISION leaves listeners with the same sense of euphoric fascination that sparked the album’s creation.

“I’ve been wanting to make a record like this for a long time. The band, Franny and I produced it ourselves in my living room with no adults present. It’s all acoustic, not an electric lick on the album…banjos and mandos and string basses and stripped-down drums. I put a ton of work into the tunes and I’m pretty proud of this batch. Had a little help from my old co-writing pal Jaida Dreyer on a couple, also wrote a good one with my screenwriter buddy, Brian Koppelman. Lots of gambling songs and lots of minor keys. And my band guys absolutely killed it too, they’re all badasses.

I’m dedicating the record to my old compadre, Ian Tyson, who passed away a few months back. I’ve named the album for him as well. ‘El Viejo’, or ‘the old one’ is what our mutual friend Tom Russell took to calling him in later years. The title track is a pretty special one for us.

We had a blast making this thing, and we hope you enjoy it too.” 

- Corb Lund 

Laetitia issues a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth: we’re urged to finally evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation. Her songs score the complexities and harmonies within this directive: organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums, and a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir, working intricate chord/tempo/and dynamic changes, as Laetitia’s empathic presence leads the way.

Traumatic Livelihood is the highly anticipated debut album from Jazmin Bean. The non-binary, London-based artist continues their evolution, by inviting listeners into their unparalleled universe of alternative, infectious pop. Traumatic Livelihood is emotionally laden, and explores themes of consent, addiction, and relationships. It pairs otherworldly visuals with music that represents the sound and spirit of Generation Z’s genderless subculture – unapologetic and impossible to define.

It was January 2016, in the middle of New York City’s biggest blizzard on record, when the Nashville rock-country band Those Darlins found themselves stranded in Brooklyn, trying in vain to finish their farewell tour. The group had spent ten years touring and recording together; it was time for something new. As the snow blanketed the East Coast, turning entire cities into crisp white silence, frontwoman Jessi Zazu and drummer Linwood Regensburg thought about their own blank slate in front of them. They had a plan: Take a month off, get some much-needed rest after this grueling run of gigs, then get straight back to work on a new album. The blank page never stayed blank for Jessi Zazu for very long; she was always relentlessly doing, bursting with ideas, whether she was painting or writing, mentoring young musicians in her community or leading grassroots activism initiatives. There were more songs to be sung, more notes to be played, more issues to shine a light on.

But just as the pair were set to begin their next project, Zazu was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the project was put on hold. When they returned to it in earnest that summer, after finding out that her cancer had spread, they believed that having a creative outlet again would help. “I don’t know if she felt the same way or not,” Regensburg says, “but watching this situation play out in my head, it was like I was equating it to some kind of hero journey. This person, who I believe to be invincible, overcomes a dire circumstance and the writing and recording of the music is all just part of the legendary comeback story. But that’s not what ended up happening, unfortunately.”

A year after that snowstorm, as winter stretched into the spring and summer of 2017, Zazu and Regensburg would work under the moniker Mama Zu in fits and spurts, getting as much done as they could any time she felt well enough. When the pair first began collaborating, they had come up with a process of collaboration in which Zazu would send Regensburg a recording of lyrics she had written—sometimes in fragments, sometimes as a core of what the song would be—and he would build a demo around it. After she got sick, they found that the process synced with her treatment schedule. Zazu could send Regensburg a voice memo on a Monday, do chemo on a Tuesday, and in the following days that it took for her to recover, Regensburg could build a demo to send to her for feedback, ping-ponging back and forth until they felt they had enough to finish the tracks in the studio. By late summer, the pair had recorded and mixed an album to near-completion. Tragically, though, final work on the album was halted after Zazu passed away that September at the age of 28. The unfinished album was put back on the shelf. “After she died, I didn’t want to touch it,” Regensburg says. “I didn’t want to play the songs or listen to the songs, let alone finish them. It just seemed like such a daunting task with a lot of layers—there was a lot of work left to do, but then there was also this exhausting underlying emotional component that pops in and hangs around the moment I’d open a session.”

Years passed. Distance grew. Healing began. By 2020, Regensburg felt ready to finish what they had started,  he says, “both for her sake and for my own sanity level. I was the only person left with this project.” Working on their songs again was therapeutic, even if doing so brought on a new set of challenges as he both polished nearly-finished tracks and rebuilt songs out of disparate parts, from the drum track on an older, alternate recording to a simple phone demo. “It was a way of spending time with her, and kind of the only capacity in which I could,” he said. “But then, I was also left with a lot of creative choices without her. Even though I had played most of the instruments, it had still been a totally collaborative thing; if there was a part I played that she didn’t like, she was clear about that. If someone’s gone, you can still talk to them, but you can only assume what their feedback might be. So I was stuck with a lot of musical choices that I’d be working under the context of, I hope you like what I did here.”

The resulting album, QUILT FLOOR, out February 23rd on Thirty Tigers, is bursting at the seams with life, ferocious and fierce. The glory of QUILT FLOOR is that there’s no note of sickness or sorrow to be found in it; where all of Zazu’s songwriting was personal, rather than turn inward, her gaze—even during her greatest battle—was fixed firmly on the world around her. Colored by the aftermath of a new era in America, a period in which many were both grieving and galvanized, Zazu’s songwriting has perhaps only grown more relevant as time has passed. Men who behaved badly are returning from their supposed exile. People have forgotten how to treat others with kindness; if we’re not the main characters of our own stories, we’re the background players of someone else’s content. It seems as if, at any given moment, part of the world is on fire. There’s plenty of fury to be had at the present, but what good is it without faith in the future’s potential for change? Rejoice! Our times are terrible, as the artist Jenny Holzer once proclaimed—an ethos Zazu had in spades.

"My first EP, June McDoom, was hugely inspired by the minimal sound of the 60s and 70s folk era. I wanted to reimagine a couple of those songs more stripped down as a follow up to that first EP. Judee Sill's songwriting and arrangements have impacted me deeply, and so I hoped to honor the music she made by recording a version of her song, “Emerald River Dance” – one of my favorite songs for many years and a song I still sing at most of my shows. The first time I heard “Black is the Color” was Tia Blake's version that she recorded in 1971, and then Nina Simone's performance inspired me to try and record a rendition of my own. While writing "On My Way" and "The City," I always imagined versions of those songs stripped down with three-part harmonies, which I was finally able to do here with dear friends, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Kate Davis, who have both been big inspirations to me throughout the years. One of my close friends, Sam Weissberg – who I met while studying in jazz school when I first moved to New York City – worked with me and arranged the harp and strings for each song. I produced the songs and tracked the remaining instruments and vocals with Evan Wright at our new studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that we share with our friend, Nick Hakim (who also provided backing vocals on “On My Way”)." 
- June McDoom

REMO DRIVE, the longstanding project of brothers Erik and Stephen Paulson, want you to feel something. Following a six-year run of pristine emo-influenced rock ‘n’ roll records comes Mercy, the band’s fourth album and third for Epitaph. It’s the band’s most lyric-focused offering to date, a record about reinvention, trusting yourself, and wearing your heart on your sleeve even when it’s painful or vulnerable.

Sonically, Mercy is also a major departure for REMO DRIVE. It’s less indebted to the emo and pop punk that foregrounded the duo’s career and instead invested in thorny, baroque indie pop byway of Father John Misty and Fleet Foxes. It was produced by Phil Ek, a legendary Seattle-based indie rock producer who has previously worked with those two bands as well as the Shins and Band of Horses, among others. REMO DRIVE worked with Ek over the course of ten days. “It was refreshing to work with Phil,” says Erik, “It made music feel like how it did when we were younger. He was like fuck it, let’s go, let’s have fun.”

Mercy is a study in intimacy, in being real with yourself, in entering an exciting new creative chapter where you are making the art you really want to make. That’s where REMO DRIVE is today.

Sir Rod Stewart and Jools Holland with his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra present the exquisite Swing Fever - a 13-track sparkling salute to the timeless songs of the big band years, reignited by two giants of their craft.
For the first time, Britain's new partners in swing have united on record to share their peerless dexterity on a tribute to such truly great songs as 'Ain't Misbehavin’, 'Frankie And Johnny’, 'Sentimental Journey' and 'Lullaby Of Broadway’.

Polaroid Lovers is the 7th studio album from four-time GRAMMY winner Sarah Jarosz. Produced by Daniel Tashian, Polaroid Lovers is a bold creative statement that sees Jarosz exploring new sonic territory. The 11 songs on the album, all co-written by Jarosz with songwriters including Tashian, Jon Randall, Ruston Kelly, and Natalie Hemby, touch on themes both personal and universal: love, longing, and finding one’s place in the world.

Five years ago it seemed like Uncle Lucius had run its course. They had torn a swath out of the Texas roots music scene over a 13 year run, worn out 5 vans and recorded 4 albums, and grown a reputation at home and abroad as a thrilling, dynamic live act. Long-time fans were certain they'd be a massive global hit. The only question was when. Growing families demanded their fathers' attention, and years of touring started to feel like circles around a drain. The tide went out, and they folded up their sails.

The audience had other ideas. Interest in the band continued to grow during their absence from the touring circuit. Pro athletes used their songs for walk on music, and top-rated television shows (Yellowstone) featured their music during pivotal scenes.

"We should have broken up years ago," they joked.

They never intended to reunite. Some things are not up to us. intention is well & good, but some people are made to play together, meant to create together. And intuition was their intention, all along.

The tides had transferred, the forces realigned. Uncle Lucius was a dream, first materialized over dank nights at the Horseshoe Lounge, drinking cheap beer with Dixie while the jukebox moaned. It crystallized on endless highway drives and onstage fever dreams. It felt like part of the past, but where one van breaks down, another van comes rolling up.    

After a five year hiatus, the band will be bringing their methods of soul, joy, and thunder to select stages across the country. All we've got is now.
On December 8th, the newly-reformed band will release their 5th album since 2015. Like It's The Last One Left carries on the Texas band’s deep rock and blues traditions while covering topics like mental health, love, and self-care.

ALL OVER YOU is a forgotten gem, remastered, resequenced, and presented here for the first time on vinyl, nearly 25 years to do the day after its original release. Recorded raw with a band pulled from the ranks of Austin’s legendary Antone’s Nightclub, this session finds an older, laid-back Lester revisiting his classic Excello sides and distilling them to their essence. The remastered album features a bonus live recording of the Lightning Slim track, “Nothing But The Devil.” The audio was remastered from original source material and pressed at GZ Vinyl in the Czech Republic.

The Golden Crystal Kingdom is the new album from Texas troubadour and singer-songwriter Vincent Neil Emerson. This 12 track collection is produced by Shooter Jennings, and expands the artist’s repertoire into the storied influence of electrified folk legends like Leon Russell and Link Wray.

His first two LPs, Fried Chicken & Evil Woman and Vincent Neil Emerson, from 2019 and 2021 respectively, established him as a refreshing voice in the alt-country landscape. He became an in-demand name, touring across the country, whispered about as an inheritor of his icons like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Steve Earle.

On The Golden Crystal Kingdom, Emerson retains his diamond sharp storytelling while imbuing the work with a freewheeling rock aesthetic, creating an album as fun as his live shows and as cathartic as his early work.

This new collection is a career spanner jampacked with 25 songs across two LPs, with each era of Willie’s illustrious six decade career chronicled. It includes massive hits like “On The Road Again,” “Always On My Mind” and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” next to a number of his 21^st century gems, including latter day classics like “Ride Me Back Home” and “Roll Me Up.” It features classic collaborations with the likes of Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Julio Iglesias, Willie’s early versions of songs made famous by others in the early 60s like “Crazy” and “Night Life,” alongside interpretations of others’ songs that he made his own from Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” to Arlo Guthrie’s “City Of New Orleans” to Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe.”

Originally released in the fall of 2003, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place was a watershed moment for Explosions In The Sky, and a landmark album for underground and experimental music. Its iconic sound would become a touchstone in film and television as it inspired a generational sea change towards introspective art rock in lieu of traditional orchestral score. Artfully remastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place – Anniversary Edition is packaged in a stunning triple gatefold with restored and expanded original artwork, housed in a heavyweight slipcase. Exquisitely pressed onto colored vinyl for the first time ever, this is the soundtrack to our everyday lives in full panoramic wonder.

Originally released at the tail end of summer in 2001, Explosions In The Sky's second album, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever was a visceral, speaker-destroying escalation from the modest minimalism of their debut, How Strange, Innocence. Remastered with subtle grace by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever – Anniversary Edition is beautifully packaged with restored original full-color artwork and heavyweight full-color inner sleeve. Exquisitely pressed onto colored vinyl for the first time ever, this is Those Who Tell the Truth at the absolute peak of its ineffable power.

As they set to work on their highly awaited sophomore album, Black Pumas broadened their palette to include a dazzling expanse of musical forms: heavenly hybrids of soul and symphonic pop, mind-bending excursions into jazz-funk and psychedelia, starry-eyed love songs that feel dropped from the cosmos. The debut was nominated for 7 Grammys and reached one million album equivalents. Chronicles Of A Diamond arrives as the fullest expression yet of their frenetic creativity and limitless vision.

For Forever, The American Analog Set's 7th full length (and their first album in 18 years) has arrived after nearly a decade of writing and recording. For Forever folds time and space. While the sounds and stories will be recognizable to fans, they arrive with considerable bruises incurred on the journey from Set Free until now. For those unfamiliar with The American Analog Set, this should be a simultaneously dark and vibrant introduction. Troubled lyrics permeate throughout, and the accompanying sounds are occasionally damaged and snarling. Not all things languid and dreamlike from past records have been abandoned or forgotten, but the dreams represented here are darker. While the previous eras of the band are referenced, they are carried forward and incorporated without a hint of patronizing nostalgia. For Forever is a document of a group that acknowledges their past while they advance into new territories and evolve.

Special 20th anniversary edition of Daniel Johnston's Mark Linkous-produced landmark album. Features updated packaging and remastered audio.

Will Johnson’s ninth solo album, No Ordinary Crown, hums with palpable motion. Travelers, runners and conductors fill its lyrics, and gesticulating storms and emotional highs and lows seep through the instinctual quality of its rock ’n roll performances. It’s also cabled by ephemeral momentum.

The songs were conceived in stolen moments and brief windows of time between the responsibilities of family and a multi-hyphenate career. The singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, painter and novelist describes the demo process as “fairly jagged,” a gathering and stitching of audio snippets recorded via cell phone and dictaphone over a year and half. “I finalized the songson short tours where I could hear my thoughts a bitmore clearly,” he says.

Bluegrass is a brand new studio album that captures a dozen classic Willie Nelson compositions--including "On the Road Again," "Yesterday's Wine," "Still is Still Moving to Me," "Good Hearted Woman" and more--freshly interpreted by Willie and an ensemble of crack players. In a seven decade career that has seen him explore genres from one end of the musical spectrum to the other, this is his first full album dedicated to genre. Willie and longtime producer Buddy Cannon, picked personal and fan favorite compositions from across his career to perform anew for this salute to the Appalachian old-time string band music which profoundly influenced Willie's songwriting sensibilities and the direction of American country music in general. Using his own catalog as source material, Willie chose songs combining the kind of strong melodies, memorable storylines and tight ensemble-interplay found in traditional bluegrass interpretations of the roots of American folk songs. With Bluegrass, Willie uncovers new truths in his own songs.

The moment the needle drops on Bite, the new A Giant Dog record, one’s conception of what an A Giant Dog record sounds like bends like space and time around a starship running at lightspeed. The biggest point of departure is that Bite is a concept album, concerning characters who find themselves moving in and out of a virtual reality called Avalonia.

A Giant Dog’s first album of original songs since 2017’s Toy, Bite finds the band—Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen, Danny Blanchard, Graham Low, and Andy Bauer—at their peak as musicians, challenging themselves with more complex arrangements and subject matter that forced them out of their heads and into those of the characters who occupy this supposed paradise. “We had to find ourselves within, or project ourselves into, the principal characters. We developed them, got to know their minds, emotions, and motivations, and then expressed those in nine songs,” Ellis explains.

Themes of addiction, gender fluidity, living ethically in a capitalist society, physical autonomy, avarice, grief, and consent bubble beneath the promised happiness of Avalonia. This is evident in songs like “Different Than,” where Ellis sings, “My body can’t explain the things my mind don’t comprehend” as if societal gender pressure is squeezing its protagonist out of their skin.

The songs on Bite are full of bombast, at turns calling to mind the spacefaring operatic rock of Electric Light Orchestra and the high drama of an Ennio Morricone film score. The album’s narrative sweep is epic in scope, its characters facing impossible odds and certain doom, existing as comfortably with the sci-fi grandiosity of Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak as it does with the high fantasy of Dio and Iron Maiden.

Appropriately, A Giant Dog came to this narrative armed to the teeth with new ideas, unleashing synthesizers and string sections to create what Ellis describes as orchestral, symphonic, futuristic punk. To achieve this, they left their home turf of Austin, Texas, for La Cuve Studio, just outside of Angers, France. Living in the French countryside, A Giant Dog laid down their vision of the future against a decidedly pastoral back-drop. On walks from Angers to La Cuve, Ellis says that they “would see many things, and also nothing at all. Swans on the river. Romani people living in little trailers, with a side hut built for their dog. A juggler on a unicycle—not fucking with you.” “We thought we wouldn’t be allowed back in France after this trip, to be honest,” they continued. “Five loud, stomping, clapping, rowdy Americans who ran through the
streets of Angers for three weeks in November 2022.”

The experience capped two years of planning and writing, fleshing out the universe of Avalonia beyond the bounds of most concept albums. The resulting nine songs do not merely occupy this space: They’ve lived in it, and they want out.

Rejected Unknown is a 2001 album released by the acclaimed musician, Daniel Johnston. This is the first time the record has been pressed to vinyl in over 20 years.

"The main themes on Rejected Unknown are the themes Johnston has explored throughout much of his career: hopeless longing, unrequited love, and as might be gathered from the album's title, fear of rejection. This fear probably took on very real terms for Johnston as he was finally dropped from Atlantic Records after being held for years in contractual limbo. Rejected Unknown is unmistakably Johnston's album; he sings and plays piano and guitar, and even adds some percussion to the oddly quirky pop songs."

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, this series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.

‘Live at Radio City Music Hall’ features performances by Nubya Garcia and Khruangbin.

It's only fitting that Khruangbin’s first-ever official live releases would be albums paired with their tourmates: artists whose music they love and admire, friends who’ve become family along the way. Khruangbin’s series of live LPs traces just one small slice of the band’s flight plan through the years: it’s a taste of some of their most beloved cities, stages and nights. Each release comes with a limited-edition unique album cover exclusive for the recording’s home turf, just a little something extra for the fans that bring a little something extra. Most of all, this series ignites both sides of the band’s magic: the warm, prismatic feeling of their albums and the bewitching energy of their performances.‘Live at Stubbs’ features performances by Kelly Doyle, Ruben Moreno, The Suffers and Robert Ellis and Khruangbin.

After more than a decade of non-stop touring, acclaimed Austin songwriting duo, Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins, quietly stopped touring as Wild Child. Headed in different sonic directions, the pair didn't know if they would ever make another Wild Child record. Then, what felt like the "end of the world" brought them back together. Pandemic lockdowns closed stages and drained bank accounts. As artists from all backgrounds took their shows to the internet, Wild Child was no different. Wilson and Beggins got together to practice for a series of online performances for devout fans, and within 30 minutes they wrote the first single for what would accidentally become Wild Child's fifth album, End of the World.

Mixed by Matt Pence (Jason Isbell, Elle King) and including contributions from guitarist Charlie Wiles (Paul Cauthen, John Moreland, Orville Peck), End of The World sees the pair find catharsis in art amid compound disasters. As Wilson describes it, “I just started signing about things that were freaking me out. Wearing a mask for a year. Global warming. There's no heat, no water. It was like a dirge to begin with. But by the end we were all screaming and laughing that, yes, this might be the end of the world, but we're all together right now, making music in my living room by candlelight. It's all OK."

Indie Exclusive * First repress since the original in 2001. Copies on Discogs sell for well over $100. Weird Revolution is the eighth studio album by the band, released on Surfdog Records and Hollywood Records. It is in large part a rerecorded version of an earlier album, tentatively entitled After the Astronaut, that was abandoned in 1998. The Surfers teeter on the brink of conventional rock values. However, throughout the album, singer Gibby Haynes drives the proverbial truck into the ditch with rambling psychotic speeches.

- The Western Chill collector's edition is a specially designed box containing multiple pieces for the ultimate Robert Earl Keen fan.

- Contains a double sleeve album (14 songs total), a graphic novel that tells the tale of how Western Chill was written, a full music video DVD of all the songs that are on the LPs and a songbook with lyrics, notes and chords so the purchaser can play along.

- All four items are artfully packaged together in a 13.5 x13.5 box with magnetic closure.

A Rothko-esque color field set to music, The Window Is The Dream ventures even deeper into Horn’s inner space than her stark, acclaimed debut Optimism, which earned her an ‘artist to watch’ tag from The Guardian upon its release last year. For her second record, Horn travelled to upstate New York to record with a few musical touchstones in mind: the electro-primitivism of the Silver Apples, austere rhythm kings This Heat and The Raincoats’ time-bending Odyshape, however the resulting 10 songs are an entry into a world which is very much her own.

Prolonging the Magic, CAKE’s third studio album, is being released for the first time on 180 gram black vinyl. Remastered audio of the 13-track album includes “Never There,” “Let Me Go” and “Sheep Go To Heaven”.

Amongst the nearly 150 albums that Willie Nelson has released, he has a number of amazing full-album tributes to songwriters from Kris Kristofferson and George Gershwin to Ray Price and Cindy Walker. Adding to that list is a new studio album dedicated to songwriting legend Harlen Howard who has scores of country hits including a number that crossed over to pop and even R&B charts. A member of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall Of Fame, Howard wrote hits for Ray Charles (“Busted”), Buck Owens (“I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail”), Conway Twitty (the title track), Bobby Bare (“The Streets Of Baltimore”) and so many more. Produced by longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon and featuring a murderers’ row of crack Nashville musicians, I Don’t Know A Thing About Love is an amazing addition to Willie’s unparalleled catalog.