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Saturday, May 31, 2025

New releases from Yellowcard, Garbage, Caamp, Mt. Joy & Gigi Perez, Grace Potter


Yellowcard: Better Days


Here's the title track from the Florida alt-rockers' first full album in nearly a decade, due in October. Blink-182's Travis Barker produced and added his drums to every song. The band describes this number as an "unflinching reflection on gratitude, perspective and purpose."

Garbage: Hold


With the release of Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, the band's eighth studio album, we're adding this track that Melodic Magazine calls "a rallying cry for a generation lost in grief and rage - a standout track that feels tailor-made for the times." Written during frontwoman Shirley Manson’s recovery from hip surgery, the LP is "steeped in reflection and resilience, anchored by a refusal to succumb to despair," writes Under the Radar.

Caamp: Mistakes


Just months after dropping an EP, Somewhere, but three years after its last LP, the Ohio group is back this week with a full album, Copper Changes Color. This song is said to be inspired by frontman and primary songwriter Taylor Meier’s time in New York City, and seems to describe the early stages of getting to know a potential romantic partner: "Can I get to know you, honey / And all of your lovely mistakes? / I've got more than a few to show you."

Mt. Joy, Gigi Perez: In The Middle


This Philadelphia group broke big with its third album, 2022’s Orange Blood. They return with Hope We Have Fun, which includes guest spots by Nathaniel Rateliff and Gigi Perez. Frontman Matt Quinn says he co-wrote this song with Perez at a songwriter retreat, without knowing that she'd just had her own breakout with “Sailor Song.” “I probably would’ve been really nervous if I knew that she was this star songwriter and singer, so I think it just really worked in our favor,” Quinn says. “It was just two people working on a song together.”

Grace Potter: Before The Sky Falls


In a post announcing her new release, Medicine, Potter says: "Seventeen years ago, I stepped into the studio with the legendary T Bone Burnett to create an album that captured a raw, authentic sound. That album was shelved and remained unheard - until now." Glide Magazine reports that "Potter’s label was unhappy with the softer direction, which they saw as off-brand for the rock star persona they were building." Eight of the songs were reworked and re-recorded for 2010's Grace Potter and The Nocturnals. Our pick for the New Music bin is a song that was never previously released.

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Refreshing our New Music Bin - 15 tracks added to our Marvelous Mix

Due to circumstances that may or may not have been beyond our control, we've missed a few weeks of updates to the New Music portion of our giant playlist. So to catch up, we've selected 15 tracks from recent upcoming releases to freshen up our mix. 

James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy


Kate Klim: Snow Globe


Stereophonics: Make It On Your Own


Lucius: Impressions (feat. Madison Cunningham)


My Morning Jacket: Lemme Know


Mumford & Sons: Truth



Wolf Alice: Bloom Baby Bloom


Nation of Language: Inept Apollo


Suzanne Vega: Flying With Angels


Anna Katrina: Riptide


The Head & The Heart: Beg Steal Borrow


Goose: Give It Time


Tune-Yards: How Big Is The Rainbow


Sports Team: Moving Together


Ayasanabee: Home


Sunday, May 4, 2025

Suzanne Vega, The Beths, OK Go, Adult Leisure, Turnstile land in our New Music Bin


Suzanne Vega: Speakers' Corner


It's surprising to realize that Flying With Angels is just the 10th studio album in a discography that begins with 1985's Suzanne Vega. But the songs are as sharply observed and beautifully crafted as ever. This opening track slyly comments on today's political situation by emphasizing with someone ranting on a streetcorner - "The doomsday prophet / Whose words have all come true."

The Beths: Metal


It's good to hear again from this Auckland, N.Z., quartet. Since 2022's Expert In A Dying Field, vocalist Elizabeth Stokes says she has "been on what one might call a 'health journey.' For parts of the last few years, I kind of felt like my body was a vehicle that had carried me pretty well thus far but was breaking down, something I had little to no control over." This single, she says, is "about being alive and existing in a human body."

OK Go: Love


We dip once more into And the Adjacent Possible to feature this track that Rolling Stone calls "a charming, yet hard-charging tune that pairs crunchy guitars with a tender message: “In this grand ballroom of nothingness / We soar, we sail to the only song there’s ever been: Love.”

Adult Leisure: See Her


The band from Bristol put out an EP in 2023, and now is prepping its debut album, Things We Don't Know Yet. It will include this new single that features guest saxophone from John Waugh, known for collaborations with The 1975 and Sam Fender. The song is billed as "a sarcastic take on the breakdown of a relationship and the biting realisation that you're happier now that it's over."

Turnstile: Never Enough


This is the title track from the upcoming fourth album by this Baltimore group. Pitchfork says the "experimental hardcore band sinks deeper into its stylistic hallmarks" on the track, and "sound[s] rigid and fluid at once, playing into blasted guitars and dreamy interludes that tempt escapism." (Photo by Atiba Jefferson)

Sunday, April 27, 2025

What's New: Sunflower Bean, My Morning Jacket, Faded Paper Figures, The Darcys, Free Range


Sunflower Bean: Nothing Romantic


This indie trio, formed in Brooklyn in the mid-teens, took a break after 2022's Headful of Sugar - "walking away with no promise of coming back, moving to different states, floating in the abyss," as the band puts it. "Yet there was also a language that pulled us back together, the dream that there was more we needed to say together." They reunited and put out an EP last year, and now follow with their fourth album, Mortal Primetime. AllMusic says the LP showcases "the group's hard-won maturity and broad musical influences, balancing guitar-heavy rock with AM pop and introspective singer/songwriter ballads."

My Morning Jacket: Half A Lifetime


We pull another solid track from Jim James & co.'s 10th album (annoyingly titled is). New Noise Magazine says has "upbeat and funky energy" as its lyric "dives into the longer journeys of life and all the little moments that suddenly add up."

Faded Paper Figures: Forget All The Days We Died


This trio is working on its seventh album of synthpop - Triangles - while balancing their "day jobs" as a physician (Heather Alden), an English professor (R. John Williams) and a composer for film and TV (Kael Alden). We've been including their music in our mix for nearly a decade, and we're happy to present this early taste of the LP due in the fall.

The Darcys: Dreaming


Now based in LA, this duo from Toronto released Rendering Feelings last fall, so we're late picking up this track, but it was just issued as a single. Jason Couse and Wes Marskell say this song is "about the irreversible damage we’re inflicting on the planet and how our individual efforts to create change often fall on the deaf ears of those in power. ... If anything, we probably should have called the song Nightmares."

Free Range: Concept


The sophomore album from this Chicago indie-Americana band, Lost & Found, is a set of songs about that time of life when you’re transitioning out of adolescence and into adulthood, grappling with self-discovery and self-acceptance, and feeling alone but seeking connection. So lead singer Sofia Jensen tells Paste Magazine. This track is one of the higher-energy, rocking numbers on the LP. 

Sunday, April 13, 2025

New Music: Arcade Fire, Garbage, Valerie June, Aurora, Current Swell


Arcade Fire: Year of the Snake


The lead single from the just-announced LP Pink Elephant is "all about how times are weird and bad, but feeling uncomfortable can be positive," writes Stereogum. "It’s the season of change / and if you you feel strange / It’s probably good," says the chorus. Win Butler and his spouse/bandmate Régine Chassagne produced the album with Daniel Lanois at the couple’s studio in New Orleans. (Photo by Danny Clinch)

Garbage: There's No Future In Optimism


Ahead of a new album, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, comes this single inspired by being in Los Angeles in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. The lyrics, say band leader Shirley Manson, "are an action against that title. Because if we allow our fatalism or our negativity to really take over, we will crumble." (Photo by Joseph Cultice)

Valerie June: All I Really Wanna Do


The singer-songwriter from Tennessee, "who began her career as a blues singer, has moved pretty far away from that with her fourth album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles," writes Glide Magazine. "Call it Americana, but there are heavy tinges of pop and indie, with lighter hints of gospel and neo-soul. Here, she explores the many aspects of love but celebrates the joy of being alive." This number features "an array of keys from piano to glockenspiel to organ behind June’s layered vocals.".

Aurora: The Flood



The Norwegian art-pop singer follows her fifth studio album, last year's What Happened To The Heart?, with this new single. "This is a song about the invisible enemy. What brings you anger, what brings you worry and sadness. What makes you crawl into yourself instead of meeting the world fully."

Current Swell: If You Want My Time


This Victoria, BC-based indie-rock band returns six years after it's most recent LP, Buffalo, with this new single. Canadian Beats calls it "a heartfelt and infectious track that captures the balance between love’s deep affections and everyday frustrations. Wrapped in catchy melodies and nostalgic warmth ... Blending elements of rock, roots-rock, and indie-rock."