O Terno’s 2019 DIY masterpiece of modern Brazilian pop, , is now widely available on vinyl for the first time. The album (which features Devendra Banhart and Shintaro Sakamoto) had its first limited domestic vinyl pressing evaporate instantly, necessitating this essential Psychic Hotline pressing and an opportunity to introduce O Terno ("The Suit" - they both have three pieces, get it?) to a wider audience with their fourth and finest album.

At its core the band is made up of Tim Bernardes (lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and piano player), Guilherme “Peixe” D’Almeida (bass) and Gabriel “Biel” Basile (drums) though all three play a part in producing, with Bernardes stepping forward to mix this record as well as composing and arranging ’s orchestral elements.

A distinct departure from their previous albums - more sixties pop and less indie and psych rock - is the product of the band working in a familiar studio (RISCO) surrounded by a creative community. In the

studio, they followed the open-source formula mapped out by The Beatles, The Kinks, Os Mutantes, Harry Nilson and others: write a good song (the hardest part), create a simple, yet elegant arrangement for bass, drums and guitar/piano, adorn the song with complementary instruments and melodies, and record it well, employing studio wizardry selectively and intentionally. As a result, the album sounds both retro in its analog texture and minimalist production, but contemporary in Bernardes’ songwriting and vocal style, which owes as much to Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Grizzly Bear as to Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso or John Lennon.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tudo Que Eu Não Fiz
2. Pegando Leve
3. Eu Vou
4. Atrás / Além
5. Nada / Tudo
6. Pra Sempre Será
7. Volta E Meia
8. Bielzinho / Bielzinho
9. O Bilhete
10. Profundo / Superficial
11. Passado / Futuro
12. E No Final

Nathaniel Russell is a multi-disciplinary artist from Indiana who creates drawings, paintings, prints, murals, objects, videos, and music, often with friends and fellow artists. And in 2023, he packed up his car and drove from his home in Indiana all the way to North Carolina to record new music with his long-time friend Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso, The A’s) at Betty’s, the wooded studio haven of Sylvan Esso, where recent releases from The Tallest Man on Earth, Caroline Rose, Wednesday, The A’s, The Mountain Goats, Flock of Dimes, Indigo de Souza, and many more have been born.

This record began with a funny and sad idea Russell had about a funeral. “I imagined a picture of a funeral with a merch table. It was an idea full of darkness and sweetness to me. Immediately I thought about what my merchandise would look like, what it would be. I began to think about what the record for sale at my funeral would sound like. I started to think about the songs I have made up and sung to and with my friends, family, and myself over the years. I noticed how the songs I had sung the longest seemed connected to others from a different time. I had changed some words and how I played them but they were all of me and my time on earth. I heard how these things fit together. Of course I now needed to see this project become a reality.”

Songs Of was produced by Meath, engineered by Alli Rogers, and features additional performances from Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone) and Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso, Made of Oak).

TRACK LISTING

1. Wonderful To Be In Love
2. Silver
3. Nude Beach
4. Everybody Ever
5. Bloodsucker
6. Nightwalker
7. Wish I Was Born An Animal
8. Stop Let’s Listen
9. Sleeping Grass
10. Off On

In honor of the record’s ten year anniversary, North Carolina-based indie label Psychic Hotline will release a deluxe reissue, complete with previously unreleased material. Featuring essential singles "Coffee", "Hey Mami,” and "H.S.K.T.", the expanded edition also includes remixes from J Rocc, Rick Wade, Helado Negro, Dntel, and more. The deluxe 2LP package sports an all-over foil inversion of the original album’s iconic foil “SE” logo.

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn’s debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo’s sound – a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath’s voice.

Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim and Grammy nominations, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn’s writing since then: “a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance” arriving as “a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don’t suffer the longstanding complications of that term.” And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there’s still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.

TRACK LISTING

DISC ONE
01 Hey Mami
02 Dreamy Bruises
03 Could I Be
04 Wolf
05 Dress
06 H.S.K.T.
07 Coffee
08 Uncatena
09 Play It Right
10 Come Down

DISC TWO
11 Hey Mami (Rick Wade Remix)
12 H.S.K.T. (Dntel Remix)
13 Coffee (Helado Negro Remix)
14 Hey Mami (Charles Spearin Remix)
15 H.S.K.T. (Hercules And Love Affair Remix)
16 Coffee (J Rocc Remix)

With his new album Y’Y (pronounced “eey-eh, eey-eh”), Amaro Freitas steps into a new realm of musical creation. A realm rooted in magic and possibility, and tempered by a sense of stewardship for the earth’s bounties. Side A serves as an expression of connection to the earth and to the ancestors, paying homage to the forest and the rivers of Northern Brazil with both the music and the album title, Y’Y, a word written in the Sateré Mawé dialect, an ancestral indigenous code that means water or river. And by bringing to life lessons he learned in the Amazon about the incandescent power of enchanted spirits who intervene on behalf of the community in times of struggle. On Side B, Y’Y shows the connections between the global Black avant-jazz community. Bringing together multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings, harpist Brandee Younger, bassist Aniel Someillan, guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, the music creates an artful conversation by weaving together jazz traditions from across the world, while staying rooted in the unique sounds and rituals found in Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cultures. Freitas continues to intwine ancestral knowledge into music on Y’Y by bringing his fresh, “decolonized” interpretation of Brazilian jazz and sharing music that may well shatter our preconceived notions of what jazz can be.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mapinguari (Encantado Da Mata}
2. Uiara (Encantada Da Agua) - Vida E Cura
3. Viva Nana
4. Dancga Dos Martelos
5. Sonho Ancestral
6. Y'Y
7. Mar De Cirandeiras
8. Gloriosa
9. Encantados

Malegria, Reyna Tropical’s long-anticipated debut full-length album, is at once a vibrant arrival and an electrifying bridge. The album is a contemporary celebration and continuation of wide-reaching cultural traditions from Congolese, Peruvian, and cumbia rhythms to revolutionary artists like lesbian Mexican guitarist-singer Chavela Vargas these influences meld and are remixed through the distinctive lens of trailblazing guitarist and songwriter Fabi Reyna.

Traversing themes including queer love, feminine sensuality, and the transformative power of intentional relations to the earth, Malegria spotlights narratives often pushed to the margins and offers them a sonic homeland. The portmanteau, born from a 1998 Manu Chao song by the same name, is akin to bittersweet and blends the Spanish “mal” which means “bad" and “alegria” which means “happiness.”

Malegria marks Reyna Tropical’s return to centering creative joy and movement through music. Whether enjoyed during listening parties or infectious live sets, the music will move listeners and irresistibly command a jump into action in protection of the land, into the arms of a crush, into your own power and fearlessness, into steady body rolls along to the beat. Malegria offers us all a chance to witness history in the making.

TRACK LISTING

01 Aqui Te Cuido
02 Radio Esperanza
03 Cartagena
04 Goosebumps
05 Lo Siento
06 Singing
07 Conocerla
08 Movimiento
09 Suavecito
10 Neke
11 LaMama
12 Malegria
13 Pajarito
14 Puerto Rico
15 Mestizaje
16 Cuaji
17 Queer Love & Afro-Mexico
18 Conexién Ancestral
19 Guitarra
20 Huttzilin

The long-awaited reissue of The Dead Tongues' beloved third album, Unsung Passage, a profound reflection on the emotional architecture of love, loneliness, and life at large.

The Dead Tongues is songwriter Ryan Gustafson's long-evolving vehicle for a beautifully fractured vision of folk, country, blues, and cosmic American rock, and Unsung Passage is a first-person reckoning with the things Gustafson, a chronically peripatetic adventurer, has seen enough to sing about. The ten remarkable tracks of Unsung Passage are long-distance distillations of events lived and places seen and pondered and ultimately poured into reflective anthems for our harried times.

During "Like a Dream," a gentle gallop of grinning harmonica and trickling guitar, Gustafson explores the balance of existence from a hillside vantage. He sees the curveof the earth while pondering his need for a paycheck, a moment that eternally pits the banal against the beautiful. "The Broken Side of People Everywhere" is a gorgeous love song written with the wisdom of someone who knows that nothing is forever or perfect, that there's no real risk in a life where everything ends, anyway. There are meditations on mortality and devotion (the flute-laced dream "My Other"), on money and temporality (the banjo trot "The Giver"), and on impermanence and acceptance (the achingly gorgeous "Pale November Dew").

This isn't Gustafson's idle speculation about life and the world: these are the realizations of a restless mind, of a songwriter who sings "this old town ain't gonna watch m edie" and means it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Won't Be Long
2. Ebb And Flow
3. Pale November Dew
4. My Other
5. Like A Dream
6. Unsung Passage
7. The Broken Side Of People Everywhere
8. Thunder And Crash
9. TheGiver
10. Clip Your Wings

Tim Bernardes, a Latin Grammy nominated singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and producer from São Paulo, Brazil, has just announced the release of his forthcoming album Mil Coisas Invisíveis on Psychic Hotline. Bernardes has captivated global audiences with his delicate balance between sounds seeped in Brazilian tradition and contemporary indie and folk that is deeply warm, intimate, emotionally resonant and healing. He’s collaborated with the likes of Fleet Foxes, Tom Zé, David Byrne, Gal Costa, Devendra Banhart, Shintaro Sakamoto, and more. Mil Coisas Invisíveis is his second solo album, following his 2017 debut Recomeçar. The album was written primarily while touring with his acclaimed tropicalia-indie group O Terno, and heading into 2020, which is when he decided to step back from touring and focus on new songs. What emerged was an album that is generous and intimate- a series of meditations on metaphysical transformation in the face of grave uncertainty. The first single, ‘Nascer Vivier Morrer’ opens the album, tracing the journey of life from birth to death. One of the last songs written for the album, Tim feels that it connects the rest of the songs on the album- ‘I understand how the album looked from the outside and understand how it accentuated this conscious shift in me.’ The song says a lot in a few words, meditating on the magical experience of existence and presence. Joyful and introspective, the song is carried by simple instrumentation and layered vocals that render the song remarkably intimate. "This is a very short song that when I wrote I felt it fit as kind of an opening to the album. The songs in the album have some different vibes between them but I feel that this one connects them in a very synthetic way. Trying to say a lot with few words. About 'just being', about how magical the existence of existence is. About the presence of presence, and presence of absence in life. Like the song says, 'in the rare infinite moment, to live.” Says Tim about ‘Nascer Vivier Morrer’ 

Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Meath have been yodeling together for upwards of fifteen years – in the backseat of a Prius while on their first cross-country tour, on back porches and backstages. It’s what led them to Fruit, their debut release as The A’s – a joyous ten-song collection spanning genre and decades, with interpretations of traditionals, lullabies, and an original song, it weaves between the weird and the wonderful. “Why I’m Grieving,” originally recorded by the DeZurik Sisters, was the inspiration for the A’s existence. The A’s reach into the past to hold hands with the DeZurik Sisters, two farm girls from rural Minnesota who taught themselves to yodel amongst all their animals, in a continuing celebration of the tradition of folk eccentricity and whimsy.

The A’s played their first show together in 2013 after Sauser-Monnig first moved to North Carolina, where Meath had been living at the time, but it wasn’t until summer 2021 that they thought seriously about making Fruit. They decamped to Sylvan Esso’s Chapel Hill studio, Betty’s, for two weeks in the midst of a balmy and blooming Carolinian summer. They rehearsed during the day, deconstructing yodeling parts phonetically and staring absurdly into each other’s eyes as they practiced tongue twisting harmonies - and recorded in the nighttime, candles lit, a flickering glow against the windows framing the violet twilight outside.

“There was a lot of giggling during the session,” Sauser-Monnig explains. “At one point I was getting a tangle out of my hair and was like, oh, my God, that sounds really cool – the sound of my hands in my hair. And then I thought, what if we recorded hair for a percussion track? And then it just sort of snowballed.” Across the record, the A’s employ a bizarre-o ghost orchestra of strange noises that are percussive and melodic. The credits include nylon shorts, string (singular), hair, shoes, ice chunk, gravel, frog sample, and shoelace, among other unexpected makeshift instrumentation. The backing band is built out by a more traditional group of players: saxophone from Sam Gendel on “Copper Kettle,” backing vocals from Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes, Wye Oak) on “When I Die,” string arrangements from Gabriel Kahane on “He Needs Me,” and more.

Fruit is made up simply of songs the A’s love to sing – there are lullabies and love songs; “He Needs Me,” written by Harry Nilsson and first released by Shelley Duvall in the 1980 Popeye film; traditional ballads like “Swing and Turn Jubilee,” “Copper Kettle” and closer “Buckeye Jim,” a multiplying song about frogs and nature. The sole original track to appear on the album is the penultimate “When I Die,” written by Meath. It contains both wishes and instructions for the celebration of her death, a low synth bubbling beneath Sauser-Monnig and Meath’s voices. It’s a collection of ten seemingly incongruous songs, but with the throughline of Sauser-Monnig and Meath’s vocals and sense of humor working in tandem, they fit together into a cosmic yodeling-folk masterpiece. Fruit feels like blowing the dust off a precious artifact of decades past, but also winking and modern. Sauser-Monnig sums up their ethos on the project succinctly: “If it doesn’t make you cackle or cry, it doesn’t belong.”

TRACK LISTING

01 He Needs Me
02 Swing And Turn Jubilee
03 Wedding Dress
04 Why I’m Grieving
05 When The Bloom Is On The Sage
06 My Poncho Pony
07 Go To Sleep My Darling Baby
08 Copper Kettle
09 When I Die
10 Buckeye Jim

Recorded in a little bedroom studio out in Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn's debut LP as Sylvan Esso arrived in 2014 at the juncture of pop and experimental. Even now, years later, the LP remains an urgent and fitting introduction to a push-and-pull that would go on to inform the duo's sound - a thoughtful headiness that also wants you to get out on the dance floor. A blend of analog and digital, Meath and Sanborn were two unexpected puzzle pieces fitting together with singular ease, producing a ten-track LP that was both minimalist and shimmering, with dark undulations rippling beneath the synthy-surface and crystalline quality of Meath's voice.

Before all of the international touring and festival headlining and critical acclaim, Sylvan Esso was just a shot-in-the dark of musical chemistry gone right. The original album bio for the self-titled presciently sets the stage for the thesis that has gone on to guide Meath and Sanborn's writing since then: "a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance" arriving as "a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don't suffer the longstanding complications of that term." And so, even as the band continues to evolve and becomes amorphous, there's still that argument about what pop can be at its core. This is just the beginning of that conversation captured on tape.

TRACK LISTING

1.HeyMami
2. DreamyBruises
3. CouldIBe
4 .Wolf
5. Dress
6. H.S.K.T.
7. Coffee
8. Uncatena
9. PlayItRight
10. ComeDown