Smut is the project of lyricist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, drummer Aidan O’Connor, and bassist John Steiner. Roebuck, Ruschman and Min started the band a decade ago in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since then, they’ve played alongside Bully, Wavves, and Nothing. After years in the Cincinnati DIY scene, they made their Bayonet Records full-length debut, 'How the Light Felt'. The record was a revelation. Pitchfork called it “a rigorous, decade-spanning study,” and a “well-oiled spin on late-’80s guitar pop.” Under the Radar called it “pop perfection,” that “blends subtle hooks with wistful lyrics.” It was a record that explored grief through the lens of melancholic dreampop, using drum machines and layered, intricate melodies.

'Tomorrow Comes Crashing', Smut's first record with O'Connor and Steiner, sees the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love. Galvanized with a new lineup, Smut focused on creating a record that possessed the same towering intensity as the records that first got them into music: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, Relationship of Command. The outcome is ten of their most intense, bombastic, and focused songs to date.

Catharsis bursts through the seams throughout 'Tomorrow Comes Crashing'. 'Syd Sweeney', inspired by the actress, is the record's centerpiece. It's about how profoundly strange it can be to be a woman, to be misunderstood by people who don’t even know you. The song is driven by chugging guitars and big, rolling drums. In other words: stadium rock about perception. Paramore meets Dookie. “She connects to the youth and the girls in the water/All she amounts to is someone’s daughter,” sings Roebuck in one particularly poetic moment. The song comes to a thrashing metal-inspired breakdown. It’s ecstatic.

To make the record, Smut recorded “as live as they could,” alongside Aron Kobayashi-Ritch(Momma) in a studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, over the course of ten days. “We have so much energy right now,” says Roebuck. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married, with the rest of the band by their side. The recording was a true labor of love — driving from Chicago with all their equipment, returning from 12 hour studio days to sleep on friends' couches and floors, Roebuck completely blowing her voice by the end. Smut has always been DIY. Because they love it. Because they have to do it–there’s no other option. 'Tomorrow Comes Crashing' is the culmination of that DIY spirit: making a record that completely encompasses the intensity, moodiness, and emotion of their journey so far.

TRACK LISTING

1. Godhead
2. Syd Sweeney
3. Dead Air
4. Waste Me
5. Ghosts (Cataclysm, Cover Me)
6. Burn Like Violet
7. Touch & Go
8. Crashing In The Coil
9. Spit
10. Sunset Hymnal

Benét thinks of his new indie rock album, 'Make ‘Em Laugh', as a game of Clue. He’s trying to map out exactly when and how a relationship failed. “I was left behind romantically and I was really feeling that,” he says. “I was wondering, ‘Am I going to be okay?’ How did I get to a place where we’re not cool? Was it all me?’” You can certainly hear moments of heartache, resentment, and regret on 'Make ‘Em Laugh'.

On 'Damn', he fixates on how much he misses someone, and on 'Need', he comes to terms with the realization that a partner can’t meet his emotional needs. But despite these moments of pain, a sense of soaring optimism drives the album forward. 'Make ‘Em Laugh' is a document of discovery and self-realization, and is full of questions rather than answers. Open-hearted inquiry is a skill he learned in therapy, which he started going to while working on the project. “You're not going to know everything,” he says. “This world does not give you cheat sheet answers. But as long as you know what you want to know, you can get a bit of freedom from just asking.” Benét’s ability to traverse many complex and conflicting emotional states informs the sound of the music too: the album is dynamic, vibrant, and genre fluid.

His warm vocals shine on contemplative indie-rock tracks like 'Pieces Of Me' and 'Demon'. On 'Too Scared to Say', he employs autotune to convey a sense of swirling confusion, a sentiment that intensifies on experimental electronic track 'Slimmer'. Benét and featured singer AnnonXL trade off verses as the production transforms from crystalline and gentle to thrillingly noisy and energized. Benét also really enjoyed working with the artists featured on the album. He discovered Margaux’s music when she performed at the Brooklyn venue Baby’s All Right, where he works, and was excited to realize that fans had already been connecting their work in the YouTube comments on his videos. Faye Webster is his best friend, and someone who he feels matches his aptitude for asking astute questions about relationships. And AnnonXL’s whirling, vibrant verse on 'Slimmer' was so good that it pushed Benét creatively. “When AnnonXL sent their versein, I hadn’t finished the second part of the song yet,” he says. “I heard what they sent and was like, ‘Oh, I gotta go harder!’”

'Make ‘Em Laugh' may have begun as a way to process a breakup, but, as a body of work, it looks far beyond the specifics of just one relationship. This is music that wonders about the big life questions that connect us all and that finds solace in community. If the album is a game of Clue, it’s one that captures all the insights and stories of the myriad players in the room as much as it focuses on the outcome of the game itself.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wonder
2. Pieces Of Me
3. Damn
4. Hope You Do
5. Too Scared To Say
6. Radio Silence Feat. Margeaux
7. Slimmer Feat. AnnonXL
8. Birds Eye
9. Need
10. Demon
11. Make 'Em Laugh Feat. Faye Webster

'“No second-guessing, no overthinking. The way I want to live my life is by doing the things that are important to me, and I think everyone should live that way,” says Mei Semones of her strengthened self-assurance. Through continuously honing in on her signature fusion of indie rock, bossa nova, jazz and chamber pop in a way that highlights her technical prowess on guitar, the 24-year-old Brooklyn-based songwriter and guitarist is quickly establishing herself as an innovative musical force. Since the release of her acclaimed 2024 'Kabutomushi' EP, a series of lushly orchestrated reflections on love in its many stages, Mei has gone on to tour extensively across the US, cultivate a dedicated following, and write and record her highly anticipated debut album, 'Animaru'. Meaning “animal” in Japanese, Animaru is the embodiment of Mei’s deeper trust in her instincts – a collection of musically impressive tracks that see Mei sounding more adventurous, more vulnerable and more confident than ever before.

Mei’s newfound assertiveness comes in part from her experiences in the past year, as 2024 was a transformative year for the Mei Semones band. They shared bills with the likes of Liana Flores, Elephant Gym and Kara Jackson, among others, and Mei transitioned to doing music full-time. Amidst the frequent touring, Mei and her five-piece band recorded the album in the summer of 2024 at Ashlawn Recording Company, a farm studio in Connecticut operated by their friend Charles Dahlke. To these sessions, she brought a batch of tracks that, not unlike Kabutomushi, are sophisticated declarations of non-romantic love: love of life ('Dumb Feeling'), love of family ('Zarigani'), love of music and her guitar ('Tora Moyo'). Animaru exemplifies Mei’s enchantingly wide range as a songwriter and musician, including some of the most challenging and most straightforward songs Mei has ever written.

The simpler moments on 'Animaru' are equally as captivating as when Mei is shredding on guitar or her bandmates are carrying out an intricate arrangement. 'Donguri', a stripped-down jazz duo performance between acoustic guitar and upright bass, is the simplest song Mei has ever written, brought to life by Mei sweetly chronicling (mostly in Japanese) what she imagines life would be like as a woodland creature living in the forest. The album’s penultimate track also encompasses themes relating to the titular “animaru.” Translating to “crayfish,” the bright, effervescent 'Zarigani' is a nostalgic expression of love for her twin sister, with Mei singing “We’ll always have each other / I love you like my guitar / I love you like no other.” Family is one of the top loves of Mei’s life, with her mom, Seiko Semones, making all of her album and single artwork. Despite Animaru being a statement of Mei’s autonomy and confidence at this point in her life, it's the various loves that she surrounds herself with – her family, her friends, her band, her music – that empower her to do things her own way.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dumb Feeling
2. Dangomushi
3. Tora Moyo
4.I Can Do What I Want
5. Animaru
6. Donguri
7. Norwegian Shag
8. Rat With Wings
9. Zarigani
10. Sasayaku Sakebu

Recommended if you like: Deerhoof, The Beets, Devo, Pixies, Cindy Lee, B-52s.

Being Dead knows how to make an entrance, within the first several seconds of EELS, the duo’s new record, the bright, hard-strummed guitar line on “Godzilla Rises” conjures cinematic immediacy, a creature emerging from the depths of the ocean in campy, freaky stop motion, fittingly so. Being Dead’s records are mosaics, technicolor incantations, each song its own self-contained little universe. And while the dreamlike EELS probes further into the depths of the duo Being Dead’s psyche, it is, most importantly, in the year of our lord 2024, a 16-track record that is genuinely unpredictable from one track to the next: a joyous and unexpected trip helmed by two true-blue freak bitch besties holed up in a lil’ house in the heart of Austin, Texas.

They decamped to Los Angeles for two weeks to record with GRAMMY-winning producer John Congleton, writing songs for the record until days before they left. The radical shift in process was welcome - a good balance and a challenge, Congleton helping them find new ways to work and helping peel back the layers on the core of their songwriting. Being Dead has grown from a duo to a trio live, including bassist Ricky Motto (who is immortalized finally on record here, particularly in the giggles on “Rock n’ Roll Hurts”)

The resulting EELS is a darker record, tapped more into the devilishness within, but it’s also a more raucous, rougher ride sonically. There’s heartbreak, excitement, enchantment, dancing we move through it all at a high-octane pace. Falcon Bitch and Smoofy never want to do the same thing twice on any song, and they don’t. From the pummeling garage rock distortion of “Firefighters” to “Dragons II,” which appears in its demo form taped on a hand recorder, it’s unexpected but intuitive, and, most importantly, singularly Being Dead.

Like its animal namesake suggests, the songs on EELS are malleable, the record like slithering through murky waters or strange half dreams, mysterious and beautiful in how it moves, reflective in a wavering sheen. Dipping into each song feels like uncovering a new cavern, plunging into depths unknown but fully open to what will be revealed. On the album artwork, an illustration by the artist Julia Soboleva, there are some weird disparate spectral creatures, a stark glimmer against a cloudy darkness. It’s a fitting encapsulation of Being

Dead, exuding a welcoming, playful energy even if something foreboding lurks just beyond the pale more out of frame that’s left to uncover, no path unexplored, strange and beautiful in the light.

TRACK LISTING

1. Godzilla Rises
2. Van Goes
3. Blanket Of My Bone
4. Problems
5. Firefighters
6. Dragons II
7. Nightvison
8. Gazing At Footwear
9. Big Bovine
10. Storybook Bay
11. Ballerina
12. Rock N' Roll Hurts
13. Love Machine
14. I Was A Tunnel
15. Goodnight
16. Lilypad Lane

'In ‘All This and So Much More’ Tasha is an artist flung open. For Tasha, the last few years have been propulsive, dynamic, bursting at the seams. They've included painful encounters with grief; a sudden break up; new flirtation; new hair; the glitter of world travel and not least, a role in Tony-nominated Broadway musical ‘Illinoise’ which adapts Sufjan Steven’s ‘Illinois’ for the stage. If ‘Tell Me What You Miss The Most’ was an introspective meditation on love with a few moments of glancing toward what’s next, ‘All this and So Much More’ is Tasha turned outward, flourishing, telling us what it’s like to take life by the chin and look it in the eye.

Take, for example “Eric Song.” This was the first song to be written on the album, penned while Tasha grappled with the sudden, tragic death of Eric Littman, the co-producer of her last album. Though the instrumentation is a familiar 3/4 guitar strum, lulling us into a comforting waltz, Tasha’s voice is breathy with grief, adding depth and dimension to the hushed sound. “No, I’m not alone after all / You must be near / Facing this soaring sprawl,” she sings, transforming the experience of loss into a talisman of love and courage meant to help usher in a new self.

Said a different way, ‘All This and So Much More’ is a full-throated ode to all of the ups and downs of becoming. In the opening track, “Pretend,” when Tasha sings about “feelings outgrowing this little life,” we get the sense, both lyrically and sonically, of someone in the throes of growth. This is an album crafted with a big, ambitious sound (in part, thanks to the production of Gregory Uhlmann)—cinematic droning, orchestral woodwinds, dazzling arrays of jangling guitar, all lining up to capture a sweeping moment in Tasha’s life. Written over the course of 2022 and 2023, right on the cusp of Tasha being cast in Illinoise, the songs in this

album invoke friendship, heart ache, flirtation, doubt. From the social anxiety of “Party” (“Do they think I’m funny? / Did they like my jokes last night?”) to the questing for meaning in “So Much More,” Tasha brings us along on a journey of finding out that the person you wanted to be was inside of yourself, just waiting to bloom all along.

She sums it up neatly in her final track, “Love's Changing,” charging us with a brilliant, sweeping vision of the future, singing: “Suddenly the world is bigger than it ever felt before / Feel the weight of my future sinking in / See the joy I’m running toward." In ‘All This and So Much More,’ Tasha asks us to consider abundance in its truest form. Our lives, a deluge of possible experience if only we will surrender to it, all the way from the citric ache of heartbreak to the chest bloom of new adventure.

“'Michigan' is both instant and lovably rugged, shining boldly with an unexpected gleam that redefines expectations of wherever Tasha chooses to go next.” Gold Flake Paint.

TRACK LISTING

Pretend
The Beginning
Be Better
Good Song
Michigan
Party
Nina
Eric Song
So Much More
Love's Changing

Recommended if you like: Hand Habits, Slow Pulp, Frankie Cosmos, Lomelda, Lucy Dacus, Big Thief.

“Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison makes achieving sonic bliss look easy.” Consequence of Sound

Produced by Ryan Albert of Babehoven; features vocals from Babehoven, Richard Orofino, h. Pruz. Mixed by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp.

'The way Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison writes songs feels like somewhere between a mirror and a memory. Spacious, full-bodied folk songs, they are an ode to things that are good no matter how small; they sometimes feel like the ghost of a Mary Oliver poem. Bloomsday’s new record, 'Heart of the Artichoke', is a relic of unfettered creativity and community. They recount the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure.

Like earlier Bloomsday songs, the work here is threaded with warmth; it’s simmering, crisp and deeply human, an encapsulation of the present moment. Recorded across 10 days in June 2023 in upstate New York at duo Babehoven’s studio and co-produced by Babehoven’s Ryan Albert, with mixing by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp. The record was built out with a wide ranging group of collaborators, including inventive drumming from Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Babehoven’s Maya Bon, Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.), and Chris Daley. It was an insulated and collaborative experience: all family dinners on the back porch, bonfires, feeling a full sense of joy, of friendship, of purity in the artistic self.

Collaboration is an integral part of Bloomsday’s musical process. Garrison is malleable in the studio, their songwriting generous and spacious. But in listening to the record, there’s a sense that Garrison leaves room for the players, for the listener; for songs to find the shapes they’re meant to take. Garrison’s role as maestro is crucial, singular – it’s a collaborative, exploratory spirit harnessed by Garrison’s intuition, and by an honest commitment to carve out creative space for play, to delve into what’s known – or pushing past that, into unknown. “The ghosts of the past still come up and haunt me,” Garrison says, “but I sit in what I have and see it. All of these songs are about loved ones, about personal struggles with getting out of my head and being present.” Heart of the Artichoke was written from a healed, matured place – written in a moment of safety from chaos. It’s a prayer for the present, an appreciation of tenderness and what happens once we give ourselves the space to really see, and really feel – becoming free and whole – an ode to the way healing allows us to bloom.

TRACK LISTING

1. Where I End And You Begin
2. Virtual Hug
3. Dollar Slice
4. Artichoke
5. Look After
6. Night Swim
7. Carefully
8. Bumper Sticker
9. Object Permanence
10. Old Friend

For Fans Of: Angel Olsen, Sam Evian, Youth Lagoon, Kevin Krauter, Whitney, Tame Impala, MGMT. Through his project Lionlimb, New York-based singer/songwriter/producer Stewart Bronaugh crafts unfurling soundscapes that feel mysterious and otherworldly, yet timeless and nostalgic at the same time. He presents his most ambitious vision of these inner vistas on his new album, Limbo, arriving May 24th on Bayonet Records. Inspired by a palette of '70s Italian film soundtracks, '60s girl group music, and funk and soul ballads, Bronaugh brings these influences together to invent an immersive sound all his own with help from close collaborator Joshua Jaeger, whose live drums bring a rawness to Limbo's meticulously layered production. Led by the smoldering single "Dream of You," featuring Angel Olsen, Limbo taps into universal themes of romance, longing, and loss, while still offering a hazy escape from our present reality. Bronaugh penned the songs with "classic" songwriting in mind, transforming his personal struggles with grief and addiction into love songs. Using images inspired by nature (like the sun, moonlight, hurricanes, and deep water), he expresses being overtaken by a force greater than himself, as the psychedelic production evokes a sense of being plunged into this vast landscape. Limbo benefits from its eclectic influences, as Bronaugh overlays sitar-sounding guitar on top of funky basslines, melodramatic string arrangements, and fuzzed out guitar, making for music that could easily belong on Twin Peaks just as much as a Western cowboy film. An album of duets, Limbo features a host of female vocalists Angel Olsen, Ewa Synowiec, Justine Orrall, Bri Abram, Zoey Huynh, and Taylor Belle who each add a textural counterpoint to Bronaugh's understated vocal performance. "I think about vocals as just another instrument," he explains. "When we first tried to have someone else sing, I liked it, because I felt more akin to a producer than a songwriter." There's a dreamy quality to how these singers trade off with Bronaugh, both parties expressing his inner emotions. Limbo is a culmination of Bronaugh's years of production experience, as he composed, produced, and mixed the project almost entirely by himself, with additional recording from Robin Eaton. Always inspired to make bold and experimental choices that capture his instincts in the moment, Bronaugh's production style is informed by "wanting to do the weird thing that engineers wouldn't approve of," as he describes it. "My favorite part of making music is the mistakes." 

TRACK LISTING

Sun
Hurricane
Underwater
Hiss
Dream Of You (feat Angel Olsen)
Runaway
Two Kinds Of Tears
Nowhere To Hide
Til It's Gone
You Belong To Me

RIYL: Estelle, Mamalarkey, Crumb, Men I Trust, Faye Webster, Clairo, Taphari, Childish Major, Samia, McKinley Dixon, Arlo Parks, Anjimile.

"Benét does a great job of using the instrumentals in their music to better capture the feeling they want to convey." - Flood Mag.

'Can I go again?', the debut full-length album by Richmond, VA-based singer-songwriter Benét (Benét Nutall) is a diverse collection of contemplative, tightly-crafted indie-pop, rock, and soul tracks as emotionally resonant as they are immediate and infectious. These tracks are equally worthy of processing heart break, gaming with your friends, or finding strength in solitude growth in time requires an embrace of seriousness as well as unbridled, shameless joy.

Benét’s debut EP, 'Game Over' (2021), was an honest effort at self-reflection through electronic dance and disco atmospheres the titular question of their debut album serves as a reset on the arcade game with more knowledge, maturity, and assurance as Benét moves into more organic instrumental accompaniment and refined songwriting. The ebullient and sharp guitar riffs and driving bassline of “Insensitive” lift Benét’s vocals as they sing about feelings of nervousness, desire, and ultimately overcoming both with assuredness. Benét gets to flaunt satisfying personal growth in “Overpowering” over a smooth bassline and strutting beat. “No Alarm” offers another look at Benét’s lyrical vulnerability, moving back and forth between self-consciousness in the verses and a shimmering string emphasized certainty in the chorus.

Benét’s music has always been influenced by the environments around them and the people who they choose to create with. The album is a result of roughly three years of writing and recording at various times with different groups of friends and musical partners in Richmond, VA with Jacob Grissom, Christian Lewis, Neal Perrine, and John Trainum, in Philadelphia with Kyle Pulley and Danny Murillo, and in New York with Carlos Truly.

'Can I go again?' is about taking and recognizing time, growing deliberately, and expressing delight and nervousness with confidence. Benét uses Can I go again? To work through their own place amidst inspiring, confusing, difficult, and beautiful human connectivity and present these unforgettable, catchy, emotional songs with the hope the audience can listen and do the same.

TRACK LISTING

1 The Real Me
2 Missn’ Out
3 Overpowering
4 No Alarm
5 Things Change
6 Insensitive
7 Facts
8 If It Happens Again
9 Lose U
10 Try (Alt Version)

Joe Sutkowski (Dirt Buyer)’s new album is a documentation of making it to the other side. Sutkowski grew up in New Jersey, and although he lives in Brooklyn now, he remains “an emo kid at heart,” garnering inspiration from bands like My Chemical Romance and Muse, the latter of whose theatrical, dramatic performances inspired the band’s own vocal forward, soaring takes. Initially working together as a duo while Sutkowski and Ruben Radlauer (Model/Actriz) were at school in Berklee, the band’s self-titled 2019 debut album was recorded on an IPhone in their practice room on just drums and guitar, and the quietly striking, nuanced stylings earned them accolades far beyond the “fake record label” the two made up to originally release their music.

The band’s new album, Dirt Buyer II, was recorded in February 2020, and represents a foray into heavier material that marks a deeper shift for the band. Now working as a trio, Sutkowski is flanked by Tristan Allen on bass and Mike Costa on drums, a fellow Berklee grad who cut his teeth playing in bands across Boston including past collaborations with Sutkowski. Half-recorded while the band was on tour with Surf Curse, the record finds Sutkowski reaching out for places, people and beliefs to ground him. Throughout the album he attempts to wrap his head around the idea of fate and how you can brush up against other people and then leave them behind. The songs themselves play with this concept of light and dark intertwined. Oscillating between urgency and cathartic release and more stripped-back elegies, Sutkowski faces the reality that while the people he’d rather forget can still live on through music, he is able to move on at the same time.

Half-recorded in his mother and uncle’s upstate house where he turned the living room into a studio, he contemplates the beauty and disaster around him all refracted through visceral visual imagery of how the physical earth meets the unknown to converge in something greater than ourselves. “This is all a living chronicle of all I want to do, which is feel good and be happy,” he admits. “I’m a completely different person now a better version of myself.” Processing the past, Sutkowksi has emerged with newfound belief, fully intact and with a new path forward to the future.

RIYL: My Chemical Romance, Muse, Model/Actriz, Home Is Where, Microwave, Peaer, Pile, LVL UP, Cloud Nothings.

TRACK LISTING

1. Dirt Buyer II Theme
2. Heavy
3. Sand
4. Gathering Logs
5. Fentanyl
6. Tears My Heart In Two
7. Shame
8. Heartache
9. Wicked Branches
10. Heaven
11. Sounds Heard Through The Glass
12. On & On

Recommended If You Like: Wild Nothing, DIIV, Real Estate, New Order, WAVVES, Mac Demarco, Best Coast, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Craft Spells.

Brooklyn bedroom-pop trailblazers Beach Fossils’ new album 'Bunny,' is a triumphant return for one of the 2010s most influential NYC bands. 'Bunny' is a precise blend of the luscious dream-pop atmospheres they notoriously honed on their earliest projects, the post-punk vigor expressed on 'Clash the Truth,' and the warm, sophisticated songwriting of 'Somersault.' Composer Dustin Payseur peppers the album equally with descriptions of the joy of fatherhood and the existential pleasure of smoking cigarettes out of a car window with friends - 'Bunny' features Beach Fossils' most personal lyrics to-date. This is a collection of new favorite tracks for fans of every era of Beach Fossils. Releasing on Payseur and his partner Katie Garcia’s own label, Bayonet Records, 'Bunny' will prove to be the culmination of a decade's worth of growth and experience.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: Here at Piccadilly HQ, it's well known that we're purveyors of jangly indie - with Beach Fossils being one of the bands we've always come to champion over recent years. However, when we first heard 'Bunny' floating along the shop speakers, we knew we were in for something special.

Lead single “Don't Fade Away” is Beach Fossils at their very best - a perfect indie-pop track whose infectious melody you'll be humming non-stop. Similarly with “Sleeping On My Own” and “Tough Love”, tracks that have so much jangle they'll scratch any C86 (or should I say C23) itch. Elsewhere on the album, “Anything Is Anything”, “Feel So High” and “Numb” all skirt the line of treading into shoegaze, with the latter culminating in an expansive and rousing wall of sound. “Run To The Moon”s slide guitar results in Slowdive-meets-country (yes it works), whilst “(Just Like The) Setting Sun” is a shimmering slice of dream-pop. As for “Dare Me” and “Seconds”, both fit nicely into the garage/post-punky sound Beach Fossils carved out on their second record ‘Clash The Truth’.

With Beach Fossils' music in the past, there was always a sense that Dustin Payseur was making music that explored the nostalgia of a period he wasn't able to experience firsthand. But with 'Bunny', Payseur is able to look back at Beach Fossils as a whole and reminisce on a nostalgia that he himself created. In turn, this results in a flawless Beach Fossils record that is undoubtedly their best yet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sleeping On My Own
2. Run To The Moon
3. Don’t Fade Away
4. (Just Like The) Setting Sun
5. Anything Is Anything
6. Dare Me
7. Feel So High
8. Tough Love
9. Seconds
10. Numb
11. Waterfall

Inspired by a love of artists such as Bill Evans, Lester Young, Chet Baker and Vince Guaraldi, Dustin Payseur reimagines some of his greatest hits from the Beach Fossils catalog alongside a group of formally trained jazz musicians. A rich and mellow mix of piano, saxophone, upright bass and brushed drums explore the contours of familiar songs, soaring Payseur’s melancholic harmonies to new heights.

Recommended if you like: Chet Baker, Norah Jones, Kamasi Washington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Wild Nothing, DIIV, Kevin Krauter.

"improvisational jazz, classical music, and Stereolab... his songwriting owes more to loop-based composition than garage-bound woodshedding." – Pitchfork.

TRACK LISTING

01. This Year
02. May 1st
03. Sleep Apnea
04. What A Pleasure
05. Adversity
06. Down The Line
07. Youth
08. That's All For Now

Kevin Krauter’s newest album, ‘Full Hand,’ determines to be a vulnerable and honest statement from an artist exploring the boundaries of their craft. Following his 2018 debut, Krauter’s second full-length album picks up where ‘Toss Up’ left off but at a noticeably more intentional pace. 

On his sophomore album, Full Hand, Indiana musician Kevin Krauter tackles complicated emotional states and ideas through elliptical songwriting that is at once poetic and truthful. “A lot of the lyrics touch on how I was raised religiously, touch on me understanding my sexuality more and more in recent years,” Krauter says, “just growing up and becoming more confident in myself...that process of looking inward and taking stock of myself.” It’s not especially uncommon for artists to probe deep into their own psyche to uncover what makes them tic, but Krauter’s light touch feels like something all his own.

On the album’s first single, “Pretty Boy,” he sings, “Look ahead, say I see me now / Smiling at what used to stress me out / Cause it won’t be too long, but I’ll take my time with it / It won’t be too long till I come back home.” There’s a palpable sense of joy in Krauter’s acceptance of dire, stressful moments, and a liberation that comes from hearing him realize that the present will eventually be the past, and he’ll be able to look back and find peace. 

TRACK LISTING

01. Intro
02. Opportunity
03. Patience
04. Surprise
05. Kept
06. Intermission
07. Pretty Boy
08. Piper
09. Full Hand
10. Treasure
11. Green Eyes
12. How

“Clash the Truth is Payseur evolving, the band shifting in a direction that’s probably unlike what they previously imagined themselves moving toward.” CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND // “Beach Fossils have found a balance that’s better than anyone could have hoped for.” EXCLAIM // Beach Fossils’ sophomore album, Clash the Truth, is modern post-punk triumph that’s left a lasting impression on the music scene it was born out of. After releasing their self titled debut and the beloved EP, What a Pleasure, songwriter and composer Dustin Payseur began recording dissonant and introspective demos reflecting on his southern upbringing and young adulthood in New York. The tracks that would eventually make up Clash the Truth involved Payseur taking his songwriting in a new direction, employing jagged instrumentals, existential lyrics, and socially conscious subject matter. The darker themes of Clash the Truth still come out vibrant through bright guitar tones, locomotive drumming, and Payseur’s inventive home recording techniques. Referencing the sounds of Factory Records releases, New York’s no wave scene, and 90’s avant-pop, Beach Fossils expanded their sound past the perimeters of bedroom dream pop. 

TRACK LISTING

01. Clash The Truth - 2:03
02. Generational Synthetic - 2:45
03. Sleep Apnea - 2:26
04. Careless - 3:03
05. Modern Holiday - 1:21
06. Taking Off - 3:09
07. Shallow - 3:17
08. Burn You Down - 2:57
09. Birthday - 2:52
10. In Vertigo - 3:20
11. Brighter - 0:33
12. Caustic Cross - 2:41
13. Ascension - 1:30
14. Crashed Out - 3:25 (Demos)
15. Clash The Truth - 2:11
16. Generational Synthetic - 2:48
17. Sleep Apnea - 2:22
18. Burn You Down - 3:07
19. Birthday - 3:08
20. Caustic Cross - 2:37
21. Vertigo - 2:31