News

Sharpie Smile, the unconventional songwriting duo of Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner, descend from the altostratus this summer with their debut album, The Staircase. Ahead of a nationwide tour kicking off this June, the former Kamikaze Palm Tree tricksters are dropping a new single/video today for the title track and closing song, “The Staircase.” 

Dylan and Cole dance into an ethereal fever dream on “The Staircase”: waves of abandonment and isolation swirling about in impressionist images and mist-light... (read more)

Bitterviper is the brand-new quartet of Nikos Veliotis (cello), Taku Unami (synthesizer), Sarah Hennies (percussion), and David Grubbs (guitar, piano), four individuals who separately are responsible for some of the most striking and wildly idiosyncratic music of the past couple of decades—not to mention the duo collaborations between Grubbs and Unami (the albums Comet Meta and Failed Celestial Creatures) and Veliotis and Grubbs (The Harmless Dust). Their self-titled debut album, Bitterviper, is out July 25th on Blue Chopsticks.

Athens-based... (read more)

In the wake of Rafael Toral’s much-acclaimed return to guitar voicings and improvisations, 2024’s Spectral Evolution, comes a new set of CD masters for his first two albums: Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field. These new versions — alongside represses for the 2018 vinyl versions for both — arrive June 27.

In 1987, Rafael Toral began making his own compositions and solo recordings using electric guitar in an enhanced signal path. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet... (read more)

Like a sweet spring breeze after a long, cruel winter, Cory Hanson’s blowing through town again. And like the wind, I Love People — our lone wanderer’s fourth album, out July 25 — comes from parts unknown. Need a ride? Long as you’re ready to find yourself wherever it dies down, jump on! The first single, “Bird on a Swing,” arrives today with a music video.

Followers of Cory’s twin arcs as solo singer and Wand member will be intrigued to learn... (read more)

Time is ticking, and Faun Fables’ new album only gets closer every second! Counterclockwise is their most engrossing collection of “songtelling” to date: a true family album, etched exquisitely and studded with fine-hewed jewels of song, recorded by Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl with their daughters, Edda, Ura, and Gudrin. A new song wheels out from their home today: “Widdershins”.

“Widdershins” is an ornately decorated folk epistle that shares an existential fundament of Faun Fables’ worldview — along with... (read more)

Ty Segall is back in the saddle and riding towards new horizons with his 16th studio album, Possession, out May 30th, and today presents its title track. For the journey, Ty’s struck up the orchestra in his head to map out an abiding view of the American frontier, with lyrical fables co-written by his longtime collaborator, filmmaker Matt Yoka. Ty lassos in strings, horns, and his own piano playing to round up his delirious guitar hooks and vocal melodies, resulting in some of his... (read more)

Drag City's Alasdair Roberts and Scottish Gaelic singer Màiri Morrison have joined with Pete Johnston and his Canadian all-star band for their new collaborative LP.  Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia is a collection of newly crafted arrangements of traditional Scottish songs pulled from the pioneering work of folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989).

Watch an all-new acoustic version of lead single "Màiri nighean Dòmhnaill" here, as Màiri and Ali tenderly reveal the spirit of the original composition, drawn from... (read more)

Sharpie Smile’s debut album has one question for you: is your heart good enough to take The Staircase?

Sharpie Smile is Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner. They met in 2015, a pair of musically-adept nonconformist teenagers that started writing music together for a project called Kamikaze Palm Tree. With Dylan on drums and Cole on guitar, they produced two albums of thorny, ear-wormy art rock, touring the country and fitting in session work for Cate Le Bon, A. Savage,... (read more)

With their first collaboration cemented and reverberating throughout the halls, the duo of Lia Kohl and Whitney Johnson are set to tour Europe this summer! Later this month, they'll play across the Midwest to start up the For Translucence trip, with an album release celebration in Chicago at Three Top Lounge on April 24.

For Translucence is the debut album from Whitney Johnson and Lia Kohl. Their dialogue, found initially in free improvisation on viola and cello, has evolved over time into a neophonic... (read more)

We're drifting back to Matthew Young's world with a brand-new album: Undercurrents! Collecting eight oddly dissimilar pieces that somehow fit together perfectly, Young's latest work was recorded intermittently since the late 1970s, songs both old and new. Settle in with the second single out today, "The Summer Girls".

Undercurrents displays a wide range of Young’s various sonic pallets: similar to Recurring Dreams (1981, reissued 2014) the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like Traveler's Advisory (1986, reissued 2010), the album... (read more)