Wishy’s 'Nature’s Pill' captures a world where life feels unpredictable and overwhelming, yet full of possibility. On their vibrant sophomore record, Wishy entertains the madness–capturing romantic frustration, neurotic desire and the melodrama that ensues from simply being human in a jubilant remix of the past. Nature’s Pill bears all of Wishy’s trademarks: zany lyrics transfiguring melancholia into freedom, choruses set to become instant classics, and an unholy fusion of sugary grunge, indie rock and dream-pop.

Wishy’s genesis has been a prolific burst powered by the band’s musical synergy: the 'Mana' and 'Paradise' EPs in 2023, debut LP 'Triple Seven' in 2024, and a follow-up EP 'Planet Popstar' in 2025. After those releases met acclaim and the band’s stature rose, the conception of 'Nature’s Pill' was fundamentally different. Written more collaboratively than past releases, the group reconvened with 'Triple Seven' co-producer Ben Lumsdaine in Los Angeles, where the quintet packed into a tiny studio and tracked half the songs live in the room, imbuing the album with the immediate energy of a band in sync after heavy touring. It gave them the ability to synthesize an even greater array of touchstones this time around, with the ‘90s dream-pop and alt-rock of 'Triple Seven' fusing with ‘80s college rock and ‘00s indie.

TRACK LISTING

1. All The Rage
2. Covergirl
3. Sensational
4. Shift
5. You’re Not Serious
6. Mona Lisa
7. Lovesick
8. Freak 99
9. Headscratcher
10. Blitz
11. Kiss Kiss Kiss
12. Party World

A sweeping, guitar-driven road trip that recalls and reinvigorates the slowcore and alt rock of the 90s and early aughts, 'Mount Zero', the debut LP from Swapmeet, marks the moment the Australian four-piece come into their own. Following their dreamy 2024 debut EP 'Oxalis', 'Mount Zero' arrives on the heels of the band’s signing to LA-based label Winspear, after stirring up buzz throughout Australia, taking home awards for Best Release and Best Song ('Ceiling Fan') at the South Australian Music Awards and earning the title of ‘Best Emerging Artist’ at SXSW Sydney. Mingling airy sweetness with jagged surrealism, 'Mount Zero' transmutes so many of the regrets and uncertainties of young adulthood into a burgeoning, newfound confidence. Though the members of Swapmeet often begin their songs by writing individually, the tracks on 'Mount Zero' ended up circling common themes: first loves, first heartbreaks, first embarrassments, first disasters. As they've done since their earliest days as a band, Swapmeet traded instruments throughout 'Mount Zero' and shared production duties as a foursome, developing their sound by layering dozens (sometimes hundreds) of tracks within each song, then carefully removing elements until the production took a clear shape. The result is a record where Swapmeet bottle up the tooth-gritting intensity of feeling yourself change at the cellular level under reality's unyielding pressures. It's a tribute to all the lives that can never be lived, all the paths that will never be followed--and an ode to the one that lies just ahead, too.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Know!
2. Mount Zero
3. Bonny
4. Halfway
5. 2 C U
6. Seeds
7. Sand
8. Personal (Don’t Take It)
9. My Heart Breaks II

A newly dynamic chapter in villagerrr's discography, 'Carousel', Mark Scott’s fifth album as villagerrr, glides from slowcore to shoegaze, from log-cabin folk to the accelerated bliss of rock tailor-made for an empty freeway. The boldest and most delicate album to date from the Ohio songwriter, 'Carousel' is a sweeping exploration of what it means to try to make sincere art in a hyperexposed and constricting age, where Scott’s big, midwestern songs smolder with a desire to find enduring meaning in an era rife with commodification. Piecing the music together over the course of two years, Scott let the collaborative spirit of his previous record flourish. 2024’s 'Tear Your Heart Out', sparked tours with Real Estate, Greg Freeman and Momma, a new label deal with Winspear and recent deluxe reissue, bringing in widening circles of listeners and collaborators. 'Carousel' features a melange of Scott’s rising folk and indie rock peers, like Boone Patrello of Teethe, h. pruz and Carolina Chaue of Hemlock, and was mixed by Scott after listening back to rough drafts on long drives or on runs.

With Scott’s keen ear for both particulate detail and expansive landscape, listening to villagerrr can feel like peering into prairie grass to see what's crawling there, then standing up suddenly to witness the splendor of an
oncoming storm. 'Carousel' harbors a lot of healthy skepticism about the world we're in now, but it also holds up proof that just laying down your guard and reaching out to other people can spark creatively bountiful relationships–and set the foundation for a life that's deeply, meaningfully livable.

TRACK LISTING

1. Full Nelson
2. Gleam
3. Carousel
4. Virginia
5. Crystal Ball
6. Locket
7. Indiana
8. Roadstar
9. Swimming
10. What Does It Mean?

'Patching', the intimate debut LP from Minnesota-based singer and songwriter Runo Plum, gracefully captures the contraction, expansion and release of an intense period of emotional repair, in soft-edged, radiating indie rock. A lush debut statement born from heartbreak, 'Patching' is filled with rich sonic moments that balance out emotional vacancies, creating expansion from an ending. The record’s unbridled sincerity isn’t anything new for Runo Plum, who’s been writing and quietly sharing bedroom dispatches of her intricate folk for a half-decade. During the pandemic years, she steadily caught the ears of a widening circle of listeners and began independently releasing a series of singles and EPs, all while cutting her teeth on the live side supporting Searows, Angel Olsen and Hovvdy.

Cataloging the double edged sword of love and loss in an aching freefall of indie rock with the same unabashed candor of early Julia Jacklin and Big Thief records, 'Patching' was recorded in a cabin in rural Vermont over the course of two weeks. Together with Lutalo, the Minnesota-born, Vermont-based musician and producer and Runo’s collaborator, instrumentalist and girlfriend Noa Francis, the trio centered the honeyed, time-worn timbre of a centenarian acoustic guitar and the easeful warmth of runo’s voice. Across patching’s twelve tracks, Runo paints melodic arcs that swirl and tumble, crafting songs that capture both the hazy highs and the dark blue lows of all the natural cycles that make the world turn.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sickness
2. Lemon Garland
3. Alley Cat
4. Halfway Up The Lawn
5. Be Gentle With Me
6. Elephant
7. Locket
8. Pond
9. Gathering The Pieces
10. The Quiet One
11. Darkness
12. Outro (Angel)

As villagerrr, Mark Allen Scott’s patient songs are mesmerizing and unmistakably Midwestern. On his latest record, ‘Tear Your Hear Out,’ the prolific Ohio artist pinpoints quiet, mundane experiences and imbues them with disarming emotional clarity.

It’s a record for long drives dappled with sunlight and small-town get-togethers. Chalk-full of home-recorded songs of tasteful indie rock with understated twang, the record solidifies Scott as an essential voice alongside the rising tide of his peers and collaborators. Originally released in 2024 by Darling Recordings, ‘Tear Your Heart Out’ was warmly received and thrived on the undercurrent, rippling out into a handful of sold out tape runs, tours with Real Estate, Horse Jumper of Love and Momma, and most recently, a record deal with Winspear, the LA-based label that has issued breakout records from Slow Pulp, Barrie and Wishy.

The label will be issuing the LP on vinyl for the first time, and will also be releasing a Digital Deluxe Edition of the LP featuring five previously unreleased recordings.

TRACK LISTING

1. Neverrr Everrr
2. See
3. Tear Your Heart Out
4. Runnin’ Round
5. Honesty
6. Cry On
7. Barn Burnerrr
8. Car Heart
9. Low
10. Come Right Back
11. River Ain’t Safe

Bonus Flexi Disc
12. Ride Or Die W/ Lydia

A fixture in LA’s music scene for over a decade, singer and songwriter Samira Winter found a home in the city’s DIY rock community, carving out her own niche of gloriously detailed and eclectic dream pop under the name Winter. Her newest record and Winspear debut, 'Adult Romantix', is a farewell love letter to LA—“a tunnel of summers and memories”—inspired by Mary Shelley’s gothic-romantic literature and ’90s rom-coms. After growing up in Curitiba, Brazil and playing in her first bands in Boston, she relocated to Los Angeles in 2013 and fell in love with the city. But at a certain point, Samira was craving a change of scenery to facilitate self-growth, a painful, but necessary realization that brought about a move to New York City.

Leading up to her emotional coast-to-coast move, she spent roughly two years writing songs in a transitory state: often in between tours, in different cities, and in various sublets. The resulting 13 tracks became her new LP, 'Adult Romantix'— the follow-up to 2022’s landmark 'What Kind of Blue Are You?' Nostalgic and wistful, the album blends swirling guitars, cigarette-glazed vocals and a few notable guest collaborators, like Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos and Hannah van Loon of Tanukichan. Influenced by touchstones like Sonic Youth’s 'Rather Ripped', Elliott Smith’s 'Either/ Or' and 2010s sunkissed California shoegaze, 'Adult Romantix' vacillates between dewy, strummy ecstasy and moody, nighttime desire. Marked by swirling, drive-pedal squalls and open-tuned acoustic guitar, there’s a palpable bittersweetness to these raw, lovesick tunes.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Hazy indie is clearly in-vogue right now, but I don't think anything sounds quite like Winter. It's got the naïve dreamy storytelling of Claud or Soccer Mommy, but with a more clashing shoegaze production and jagged, grungy melodicism. Great stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. Just Like A Flower (Intro)
2. Just Like A Flower
3. Hide-A-Lullaby
4. Misery
5. Existentialism
6. Sometimes I Think About Death
7. Like Lovers Do
8. Without You
9. In My Basement Room
10. The Beach
11. Candy #9
12. Running
13. Hollow

Teethe re-emerges with 'Magic Of The Sale', a soft but steely full-length album where the Texas band’s four distinct songwriters, singers, and artists ask a series of interlocked questions about what it means to build a life in a time of shared collapse. The result is a sad and beautiful self-built world of Southern slowcore, where four people turn toward one another and drift forward, together. 'Magic Of The Sale' follows Teethe’s 2020 self-titled debut, a loose and warm 12-track collage of exquisite existential blues and twilit harmonies from which few early cassette runs turned into several sold-out vinyl editions, unlikely name-drops from mega-stars, and several tours across the United States and Europe. 'Magic Of The Sale' represents Teethe’s natural next step: a second album, a record label, a slew of guest collaborators (Xandy Chelmis of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, Charlie Martin of Hovvdy and several other veteran musicians) who represent their Texas roots and new friends they’ve made in recent years. Still, Teethe took special care to preserve the part of the process that made their debut so special, now with expanded toolkits. On 'Magic Of The Sale', they’ve boosted their gear and home studios and dug into the craft of composition and production. Eliding an outsider producer or engineer, the band’s Boone Patrello spent four arduous months mixing the record–taking the patchwork of tracks from each member and their collaborators and funneling several visions into one complete picture. From a long-overlooked pocket of Texas’ musical wealth, Teethe returns with a deeply layered and collaborative work that makes the weight of the world feel a little lighter to lug.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tires & Bookmarks
2. Magic Of The Sale
3. Anywhere
4. Push You Forever
5. Holy Water
6. Iron Wine
7. China Day
8. Lead Letters
9. Ammo
10. Funny
11. Build & Crash
12. Hate Goodbyes
13. Make It Red
14. Matching Durags

Set in the pressure cooker of fresh adulthood, Jahnah Camille’s defiant new EP 'My Sunny Oath!' is a guitar-based grab at self-acceptance. Romping through alt-rock, lo-fi grit, and sardonic grunge with unflinching momentum, the new six-song collection channels Jahnah’s era-agnostic songwriting influences, from The Sundays and Liz Phair to Minnie Riperton and Japanese Breakfast. Largely written before a breakout year including tours opening for Luna Li, Tops, and Blondshell, 'My Sunny Oath!' is set in stormy self-development. Dreamily layered vocals, modern shoegaze sheen, and keyboard lines accompany Jahnah’s ear-worming guitar parts and coyly detached tone, as she pushes through the muck of outgrown relationships, misogyny, and hometown anxiety with the help of producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman). The clear-eyed sonic expansion of 'My sunny oath!' marks a decisively bold, exploratory new direction for Camille’s sound with fearless hooks and swirling production abound. It’s a messy, vulnerable, and inviting picture of early adulthood.

TRACK LISTING

1. Close To Heaven
2. What Do You Do?
3. Rocket
4. Summer’s Scorch
5. Sit With You (Pain)
6. Away, Again.
7. Flesh
8. Roadkill
9. Elliot
10. Paper Doll
11. Carnival Sounds

On their second record as The Convenience, 'Like Cartoon Vampires', New Orleans multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast embrace a hypnotic physicality and collage-y, spur-of-the-moment approach to composition. The result is an avant-rock soundworld, peppered with spidery, atonal guitar work, pointy rhythms, and strident feedback, which may strike as a total reinvention following the sugary funk-pop of their 2021 debut album 'Accelerator'. With their second LP, following their inspiration meant creating with their hands much more than buttons or switches. Sessions were characterized by gnarly, improvisational jams as they tinkered with everything from cassette loops, found sounds, and 808s. Tracks like 'Target Offer' and 'Fake the Feeling' quake with ear-splitting guitar feedback, while 'Pray’r' and 'Rats' eschew their groove worship in favor of haunting minimalism. Song after song, 'Accelerator’s pop influences are traded in for more eccentric frontiers, with the clear common denominators of their first two records being the duo’s spellbinding, funky instincts and a mastery of texture.

Lyrically, 'Like Cartoon Vampires' collects dispatches from a dying empire–characters are devoured by alienation and vanity, though society doesn’t bat an eye. But make no mistake, these songs are not merely disaffected ennui–music-making and collaboration are intensely emotional practices for The Convenience, and they reflect a shrieking lust for life.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Got Exactly What IWanted
2. Target Offer
3. Dub Vultures
4. Pray’r
5. Waiting For A Train
6. Opportunity
7. Cafe Style
8. That’s Why I NeverBecame A Dancer
9. Rats
10. 2022
11. Western Pepsi Cola Town
12. Vanity Shapes
13. Fake That Feeling

Slow Pulp celebrates five years of their breakout debut album 'Moveys' with a deluxe reissue. Available for the first time on gatefold vinyl, the double LP release includes live versions of beloved singles like 'Falling Apart' and 'Idaho', as well as two reimagined versions of 'Moveys'-era tracks. Full of blistering energy and emotional catharsis, 'Moveys' is a testament to hard-fought personal growth. Since its 2020 release, the band has appeared on late night TV, performed at Lollapalooza, and toured with The Pixies, Alvvays, The Postal Service, and Death Cab For Cutie.

Slow Pulp’s remarkable full-length debut 'Moveys' is a testament to hard-fought personal growth. In the process of making this record, the Chicago-based indie rock band powered through health challenges, personal upheaval, and a pandemic, all while learning how to be better songwriters and friends. Their made-up word “moveys” is multi-faceted for Slow Pulp. It is an invitation to dance. It is a wink at the cross-country nature of the album’s songwriting process, while the bandmates were literally on the move touring, sheltering in place, and going through major life changes. But, mostly, it’s an inside joke. Listening to these warm, dynamic and welcoming songs, it's easy to feel like you're a part of it too.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Horse
2. Trade It
3. Idaho
4. Track
5. At It Again
6. Channel 2
7. Whispers (In The Outfield)
8. Falling Apart
9. Montana
10. Movey
11. Idaho (Live)
12. Falling Apart (Live)
13. Track (Live)
14. Trade It (Live)
15. Montana (Live)
16. Iowa
17. At It Again (Again)

You could call Wishy’s story a lucky one. After prior monikers and iterations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternative music’s semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge and power-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites’ musical synergy proves itself to be a rare one–the kind that sounds like someone striking gold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it’s only fitting their much anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, where Wishy’s penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally in pillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion.

By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitar lessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by trade and often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up in a scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkites instead found themselves writing melodies in their heads while driving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier, more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, their music oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.

The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes and snapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwind couple of years exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embry- onic project, making sense of their musical pasts while forging a musical future alongside one another, each of them on a journey of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, Triple Seven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discovery with the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albums that inspired it.

TRACK LISTING

A Side
Sick Sweet
Triple Seven
Persuasion
Game
Love On The Outside.

B Side
Little While
Busted
Just Like Sunday
Honey
Spit

Follow up EP to 2022s ‘Barbara’, which was praised by The New York Times, NPR Music, KEXP, KCRW, Stereogum, The Line Of Best Fit, Billboard, Consequence, Under The Radar, Clash and more.

New EP expands on the sound of ‘Barbara’ while taking a fresh approach to songwriting and collaboration.

Brooklyn-based musician and producer Barrie Lindsay, known simply as Barrie, has a passion for creating left-of-center pop music. She spends her days writing songs and tinkering in Logic, stockpiling her creations in a vast archive of folders and hard drives. When it came time to select the songs for her sophomore LP, ‘Barbara,’ she narrowed it down to sixteen tracks. As the record came together, it became clear that there would be two separate projects - the first being ‘Barbara,’ an emotionally charged collection of songs dealing with the loss of a parent, the love of a new partner, and finding one's own identity. The remaining five tracks, which were more light-hearted and o­ the cu­, were compiled into a new project titled ‘5K.’

As an avid runner, Barrie named the EP after the common foot race. The aptly titled lead single, "Races," is a delightful synth-pop track in a unique 12/8 time, built around a bombastic drum kit and giddy key ri­s. "Nocturne Interlude" acts as a segue between ‘Barbara’ and ‘5K,’ showcasing a haunting melody amidst dark brass-like synths. Second half highlight "Ghost World" has a distorted guitar ri­ and classic drum pattern that evokes a forgotten 90's radio b-side. The song was recorded entirely by Barrie herself, serving as her own band on guitar, bass, keys, and drum kit. Even though most people would finish listening to the project front to back

before finishing a 5k run, the short, sweet, and melodically rich EP begs to be replayed over and over. With ‘5K,’ Barrie showcases her versatility as an artist, closing the loop between the sounds found on her debut LP ‘Happy To Be Here’ and her follow-up ‘Barbara’.

TRACK LISTING

A Side:
1. Nocturne Interlude
2. Races
3. Unholy Appetite
B Side:
4. Ghost World
5. Empty

RIYL: The Microphones, Bon Iver, Lomelda, Vegyn, Hovvdy, Dijon.

Follow up to 2019’s critically acclaimed ‘bunny’

Sam Hall’s new album as ghost orchard, ‘rainbow music’, is a collage of patience and meditation. It’s filled with nuances as quietly imperceptible as the seasons, or the profound movement of time, where one day looking back you realize your whole spirit has shifted. Where 2019’s critically revered ‘bunny’ was a love letter to a romantic relationship, ‘rainbow music’ documents the culmination of Hall’s first personal experience with loss in several forms. At the end of 2020, his longterm childhood pet passed away, and with it the last continuing threads of familiarity between being a kid and adulthood. Still based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan town he’d grown up in, the static ease of familiar living seemed to be coming apart at the seams, as friends moved on to bigger cities, relationships shapeshifted and in a short period of time, another kitten he’d adopted passed away prematurely, leaving Hall to question the trajectory in which he himself was headed.

Like “songs in the key of life,” the title ‘rainbow music’ refers to the myriad of colors and qualities within Hall that are refracted throughout. It’s a symbolization of hope and the aftermath, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel (or “when a rainbow shows up after a big storm”). “Wish I could have fun anymore,” Hall ruminates on “dancing”, as well as confessing he “wish he made more upbeat bangers.” But reality packs more of a punch, and this collection of songs sees him finally be at peace with the current state of affairs. Relatable to anyone who has contemplated what it means to settle down, or even just catch your breath in an era where anguish is commonplace, the release of ‘rainbow music’ is a happy ending in its own right, a marker of survival that remains close to the bone.

TRACK LISTING

01. Rest
02. Jessamine
03. Cursive
04. Maisy
05. Cut
06. Soot
07. Memory Storage
08. Dancing
09. Bruise
10. Sweet Song
11. Comfort (Rainbow)

Genre: Indie, Electronic, Latin. RIYL: Toro y Moi, Helado Negro, Rosalía, Tame Impala, Cuco.

Divino Niño are no strangers to bold reinvention. When Camilo Medina and Javier Forero—friends whose bond dates back to their childhoods in Bogotá, Colombia—moved to Chicago and recruited guitarist Guillermo Rodriguez to form a band, they were psych-pop outsiders playing live shows with a drum machine. With the addition of drummer Pierce Codina, their 2019 breakthrough and debut LP for Winspear, Foam, solidified their place as local indie rock mainstays.

Soon after, multi-instrumentalist Justin Vittori joined to round out their lineup. Once again, with their masterful, unpredictable, and eminently danceable new album, the band has done something radical: They totally upended the way they write songs, eschewing practice room jams for unrelentingly collaborative beats, implied grooves for immersive dance floor heaters, and mellow vibes for frenetic doses of reggaeton, electropop, and trap on their most adventurous and ambitious work to date.

Welcome to the Last Spa on Earth. Written and recorded over the past two years, Last Spa on Earth deals in release and catharsis: confronting your darkest moments and coming out better for it. The album artwork, done by Medina, a longstanding visual artist, depicts a dreamy, yet graffiti-tagged spa, void of physical bodies so listeners can envision themselves in this unique environment. It represents the yin and yang approach Divino Niño took while creating the album: the serenity of the spa and the chaos of the party. Ultimately, the band’s desire is to provide healing in the same way one feels after sweating, shivering, stretching, and resting at the spa against the backdrop of the world’s darkness. Last Spa on Earth is the cathartic product of Divino Niño letting go of their musical preconceptions, past traumas, and future anxieties to embrace change, chaos, and each other’s contributions both to these songs and to each other.

TRACK LISTING

01. LSE
02. Nos Soltamos
03. Tu Tonto
04. XO
05. Toy Premiado
06. Ecstasy
07. Drive
08. Miami
09. Mona
10. Especial
11. Papelito
12. I Am Nobody

Jacki plays bass and sings in Waxahatchee’s band. Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, who wrote the album bio, describes lead single 'Access' as “a conduit for the grand and complex structures Bullard builds throughout the album. It’s as much a personal plea for patience and humility as it is a pep talk for setting the bar high and working hard to ascend.”

Access, the second album by Major Murphy, out April 02, 2021 via Winspear, is an album born out of being at a crossroads. It’s also, without question, an album to blast at an unruly volume to soundtrack an experience one might have standing at that crossroads. It’s remarkably cohesive - a striking relic in an age where ardent and true “album-making” is a fading art form full of heavy rock’n'roll sounds and textured atmospheres fused with pro-idea, hyper-creative jittery warmth. In nine songs, it somehow takes a listener backwards and forwards at once, reckoning with intrinsic anxieties while conceptualizing a fantastical and vibrant happening, soothing in its familia familiar, occasionally childlike tone.

Behind the sturdy and poetic architecture lies a story of new parents, navigating uncertainty and seeking a sense of agency in the new unknown. Throughout Access, songwriter Jacob Bullard recounts memories of teaching his young son to breathe through his nose and laments missing his son and his partner and bandmate Jacki Warren.

On “In the Meantime”, Bullard expresses the timeless anxiety of recent parenthood, written in the wake of the terrifying experience of their son suffering from lead poisoning. While the title track “Access” is as much a personal plea for patience and humility as it is a pep talk for setting the bar high and working hard to ascend. Together with Brian Voortman and Chad Houseman, the Grand Rapids, Michigan four-piece makes a laudable case for pushing forward against a pervasive resistance. Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee).

TRACK LISTING

1. Access
2. Attention
3. IntheMeantime
4. Unfazed
5. Real
6. Rainbow
7. TearItApart
8. Flower
9. Blind

RIYL: Mild High club, Helado Negro, Juan Wauters.

Divino Nino's new album Foam feels like catching up with a lifelong friend. There's undeniable songwriting chemistry between guitarist Camilo Medina and bassist Javier Forero, who met as kids in Bogota, Colombia and years later reconnected by sheer happenstance after their families had both moved to Miami. Both studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they met guitarist Guillermo Rodriguez and eventually Drummer Pierce Codina. Now Chicagoans, their rhythmic, soulful - and at times bilingual - Latinx punk songs are a reflection of their continent-spanning bond and proof that Divino Nino couldn't have formed without unlikely but happy coincidences.

The ten tracks on Foam feature wistfully romantic lyrics like the yearning plea on the title track ("I really wanna run away with you"), and sunny, honeyed arrangements. Songs like "Quiero" trade-off between English and Spanish with woozy guitars and harmonies anchoring the sweetness of the lyrics. The quartet's Latin American roots seep in throughout the LP's silky psychedelic flourishes but especially on single "Maria," which is sung entirely in Spanish. Inspired in equal parts by Argentine punk and the narratives of Mexican telenovelas, the personality-filled track is one of the most memorable on the record. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Foam
2. Quiero
3. Coca Cola
4. Plastic Love
5. Flamingo
6. Maria
7. Melty Caramelo
8. B@d Luck
9. Koda
10. Cosmic Flower

Inclusivity is at the heart of Barrie, the Brooklyn five-piece made of Barrie Lindsay, Dominic Apa, Spurge Carter, Sabine Holler and Noah Prebish. And on their debut LP Happy To Be Here, their multidimensional take on classic pop sounds awake and present, like a group that’s daydreaming but firmly there with one another. Lindsay largely wrote these songs late into the night, alone in her apartment, and her voice feels appropriately full of possibility throughout. Barrie, the band, is primarily her project; on the record, which she co-produced with Jake Aron (Snail Mail, Solange, Grizzly Bear), Lindsay plays guitar, piano, synth and bass. But still, Barrie is distinctly not a solo project, and Happy To Be Here is very much a full band record. Dominic’s drums fill the entire album, while Noah added synths and Spurge sang on nearly every track; the three also contributed production. And Sabine, though stuck in Germany with visa issues, remotely recorded vocals. Engineered and mixed by Aron at his Brooklyn studio in August 2018, the album is a softly explosive document of Barrie’s collective vision: “a well-crafted pop song that’s a little bit fucked up,” they explain. The album’s singles speak to its scope: the analog synths that burst from piano pointillism on “Clovers”, the lush electric guitar grooves on opener “Darjeeling”, the minimal arrangement and modular programmed drums of “Saturated”. The album’s energetic but unhurried movement is a testament to the wide-ranging backgrounds of Barrie’s membership: Spurge and Noah met at the Lot Radio through a shared love of house and techno, Dom plays and tours with the electronic rock band Is Tropical, Sabine is a performance artist and solo musician. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Darjeeling
2 Dark Tropical
3 Clovers
4 Habits
5 Saturated
6 Chinatown
7 Teenager
8 Geology
9 Casino Run
10 Hutch 

Major Murphy is set to release their debut full-length No. 1. Those who caught feelings for “Mary,” the plaintive single released in November of 2017, may be pleased to find that the single is no outlier in this album. Brimming with jangly guitar, bright riffs, synth-sheened grooves, and commanding backing vocals, No. 1 reimagines 1970s radio rock with bristling sensitivity for our present era. Not quite pastiche, the lyrics of songwriter Jacob Bullard come from millennials’ unique cache of societal anxiety and ego-crises. On one hand, the technicolor and mechanized world of No. 1 is unmistakably ours: we are over-stimulated and pressured, confused and frustrated. On the other, Bullard heaves up worries seeded in adult selfhood and relationships, working for answers beyond life’s many brief and manic vanities.

The album’s musical sensibilities catch all this with A-side’s sudden velocity and mechanical repetitions, and B side’s encouraging grooves and contemplative soft-rock. The sound is rich and evocative, owing in large measure to bassist Jacki Warren’s faculty for harmonic structure. Drummer Brian Voortman’s keen responsiveness to melodic progressions and emotional shifts make for concert-like, energetic recordings--in fact, most of No. 1 was recorded live, capturing how naturally Major Murphy makes music together. When Major Murphy tours, they travel in a light-blue Dodge van and make a memorably caring and playful threesome. On stage, they’re a tight and assertive performance.

“This album is kind of an experiment,” says Bullard, “We wanted to see what would happen if we recorded in a studio instead of at home. We wanted to extend the idea of capturing our live dynamic a little further.” The result is an album that holds the kinetic charge of these three musicians. With precise control and live versatility, they never quite let the tension out. Even their dreamy soft-rock tracks have moments that feel utterly urgent, as if something dear were at stake. And isn’t there? 

TRACK LISTING

1. No. 1
2. Who I Will Be
3. Mary
4. Radi-Yum
5. My C. C. Blues
6. Step Out
7. One Day
8. Jesus
9. When I Go Out
10. Lisa, Robbi, And Me

It’s either her second album or her ninth, depending on how you count, which means Amy O is both a new artist and a veteran. Growing up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, she taught herself to play guitar and write songs, eventually recording a series of lo-fi albums as she moved around the country for college and work. The endeavor was more about her own experience: the thrill and the discipline of making art. “Songwriting became a way for me to process things and make sense of my life. I got hooked on it emotionally.”

Today, Amy’s songwriting processes remains the same. ‘Elastic’ is an album about learning to live in your own inescapable skin—a challenge that defines not just Amy’s life, but everybody’s existence. Identifying that universal truth has shaped Amy into an exciting and insightful artist, one who is no longer making music for herself but is working to command whatever stage she steps onto. “I always had an aversion to being a girl onstage with a guitar singing quiet songs. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but I always knew I wanted to do something with a bit more volume, a bit more anger. I’m just now figuring out how to represent myself, and I think a lot of that has to do with feminism—learning how to be loud and take over a room, when those are things I’ve been socialized not to do. It’s been a very powerful realization that I can do that.” 

TRACK LISTING

1. Lavender Night
2. Soft Skin
3. Untouchable Heart
4. History Walking
5. Sunday Meal
6. Spacey Feeling
7. Patterns
8. Cherry Blossom
9. Elastic
10. Spill
11. David
12. Spinning