A decade ago, three employees of Jj’s Market and Cafe became Styrofoam Winos. Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel bonded over their mutual adoration for Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and dollar bin country records. They amplified each other's enthusiasm, freaking out over every new song they came across. After a friend moved and left behind a drum set, all three Winos learned to play the drums. Early experiments in group songwriting were born from jam sessions and erasure poetry, blacking out words in old books to generate new poems. They all sang lead and swapped instruments regularly. Seeing Michael Hurley for the first time left a lasting impression and provided the band with one of its creative north stars. Years later, Snock himself would send the Winos his blessing to release their cassette of covers of his songs.

Styrofoam Winos have always gone with the flow, which makes 'Any River' an apt title for their new album, the follow-up to 2024's 'Real Time'. Their playful approach is bolstered by the chops of seasoned musicians who have performed many hundreds of concerts, both together and as touring members of Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, MJ Lenderman and the Wind, and as solo artists. This is one of their key strengths that can’t be overstated: they are extremely good musicians! When three talented people develop such a deep level of chemistry, the result is nothing short of majestic. Each song on 'Any River' came out of jam sessions at Turner and Nikrant’s home studio, and a shared Google doc of lyrics soon followed. They recorded in Louisville—their first album made outside of Nashville—with Roadhouse bandmate and Equipment Pointed Ankh mastermind Jim Marlowe. Marlowe's understated production kept the band’s unique synergy on full display.

This leads to another essential point about this band. They manage to strike a perfect balance between reverence and irreverence for the musical traditions they're working within. Their knowledge of the canon is scholarly, but such knowledge is always followed by a wink. No moment on the record encapsulates this more than the trumpet solo on ‘New Friend’. It’s a deft performance, but the way Kenkel dips down below the tonic before resolving the solo’s final notes is hysterical. Performed live, he plays the solo note for note on a kazoo while playing the drums at the same time. This music is that of experienced shapeshifters, defying easy categorization while remaining instantly recognisable.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pearls
2. BBQ
3. Somebody Wants to Send You a Message
4. I Felt You
5. New Friend
6. Swimminin
7. Next Thing
8. Off My Mind
9. Just For You
10. You'll Never Take Me Alive
11. Gettin’ Down

The realest-deal storyteller in indie-rock today is the Tampa-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Thomas Dollbaum, and 'Birds of Paradise' is his most powerful and dynamic work yet. Following up his critically acclaimed 'Wellswood' (Big Legal Mess, 2022) and 'Drive All Night' EP (Dear Life Records, 2025), 'Birds of Paradise' is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones and former selves. These songs find Dollbaum searching for acceptance in the transient in-between places: Florida's pine flatwoods, backroads leading to I-95, where birds fly across the water. And even though the ghosts of his alt-country predecessors Townes and Molina are definitely present, on 'Birds of Paradise', Dollbaum emerges from their shadows—waving to the past, sounding all the more like himself.

This moment—this album—is long overdue. Both of Dollbaum’s previous releases had taken way too long to record, due to circumstances out of his control, leaving him frustrated. And after having been away from his home for eight years, the place he had left was no longer the place he remembered, and the unchanging of the natural world felt like a constant he wanted to write about. With a sense of immediacy, he wrote 'Birds of Paradise' in three months. Called up the musicians he trusted and admired the most—Nick Corson, Josh Halper, and Jake Lenderman—and asked them to meet him at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi with producer/engineer Clay Jones. They learned and tracked the album in four days, capturing lightning in a bottle, a sonic revelation Dollbaum’s writing has always been waiting for.

With the help of Lenderman, Halper, Corson, and Jones, 'Birds of Paradise' is Dollbaum’s hard-won breakthrough. Alive and echoing like the poems and short stories you can’t shake: coyotes howl, birds fly south, kids chase rabbits through the sugar cane, and cigarettes are four dollars a pack. 'Birds of Paradise' reminds us where we come from—the things inside ourselves we’ve forgotten—we just needed Dollbaum to show us. Here’s how to look back without fear or shame. Here’s authenticity.

TRACK LISTING

1. Visitation
2. Dozen Roses
3. Rabbits
4. Coyote
5. Waterbird
6. Big Boi
7. Pulverize
8. King’s Landing
9. Scrub Jay
10. Blue Meets Blue

Dear Life Records and Dinked are proud to present an limited edition deluxe repress of MJ Lenderman's breakout album Boat Songs (DLR031). A little over three years after its release, 'Boat Songs' is now commonly read as the keystone to the 2020s renaissance of alt-country (or whatever you want to call it), and features some of his most enduring hits and live set staples.

“The thing about loving your own frailties is that it deepens your ability to love the rest of it, too. Lenderman renders suffering and joy in the same gentle, unhurried deadpan, dragging all those heightened feelings back down to the ground where they can sprout” - Pitchfork

“There are few eternal truths in this world, but drinking beer with your buddies is always a good time. Asheville’s MJ Lenderman understands this. His third LP Boat Songs doesn’t get bogged down with intellectualism or make apologies for its love of Southern ephemera. These 10 tracks of countrified indie rock sound primed to soundtrack plenty of beer-battered bull sessions” - Flood Magazine.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Hangover Game
You Have Bought Yourself A Boat
TLC Cage Match
Toontown
SUV

Side B
Under Control
Dan Marino
You Are Every Girl To Me
Tastes Just Like It Costs
Six Flags