Indie Folk
Shovels & Rope Announce New Album Manticore, Share “Domino”: Stream
Shovels & Rope, the folk-rock duo from Charleston, South Carolina, are back. They just announced a new album called Manticore that’s coming out February 18th via Dualtone Music. To celebrate the news, they’re sharing the lead single “Domino,” which you can stream below, as well as news of a US and European tour. Manticore is Shovels & Rope’s seventh album of their career, following this year’s covers collection Busted Jukebox Vol. 3 and 2019’s original full-length By Blood. The new LP spans 10 tracks in total, including “Domino.” Bandmates Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst originally wrote Manticore as an acoustic album, but the pandemic offered them the time to reimagine their initial arrangements and flesh out the music a bit more. In a press release, Manticore is descr...
José González on Effective Altruism, Doomsday Dudes, and New Album Local Valley
Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Radio Public | RSS José González catches up with Kyle Meredith to talk about Local Valley, his first album since 2015’s Vestiges & Claws. Advertisement Related Video The Swedish singer-songwriter talks about effective altruism as a way to make the world a better place and how that concept fits in with his lyrics. He also discusses his frustrated with “doomsday dudes,” and how a line like, “We’re all in this together” is both a statement and a plea. González also touches on incorporating Western African music into his personal style and covering “Line of Fire” by his other band, Junip. Listen to this new episode of Kyle Meredith With above or...
Jeff Tweedy Shares “C’mon America” and “UR-60 Unsent” for Sub Pop Singles Club: Stream
Jeff Tweedy has shared a pair of solo tracks for Sub Pop Singles Club. “C’mon America” and “UR-60 Unsent” make up the latest 7-inch released from the subscription-only series. “C’mon America,” the A-side, is described in a press release as from an “unreleased group of songs with mostly sci-fi lyrics,” while “UR-60 Unsent,” the B-side, is billed as “a pitiful tale of an unsent lovesick mixtape, taken from a separate batch of unreleased songs with mostly pitiful lyrics.” On the twangy and sarcastic “C’mon America,” Tweedy asks, “what you gonna do now that the world is turned against you”? In contrast, “UR-60 Unsent” is a melancholy ballad full of heartsick lyrics about rejection. Stream both tracks below. Advertisement Related Video Also included in today’s drop is TV Priest’s “All Thing,” t...
Bon Iver Share Previously Unreleased Versions of “Beth/Rest” and “Babys”: Stream
Bon Iver will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their self-titled sophomore album with a deluxe reissue of the Grammy-winning LP. The bonus material is pulled from Justin Vernon and Sean Carey’s 2011 4AD/Jagjaguwar Sessions at AIR Studios, and the band has today shared two of those tracks: “Beth/Rest” and “Babys.” The AIR Studios sessions saw the Bon Iver members stripping back the layered sounds of Bon Iver, Bon Iver and restructuring them for piano. Thus, that glorious ’80s melodrama of the album version of “Beth/Rest” becomes a more grounded and cooler drama. Meanwhile, “Babys,” a cut from Bon Iver’s 2009 Blood Bank EP, is already based on keys; here, however, Vernon and Carey slow the tempo down a tick, allowing the song’s emotionality to settle in. Take a listen to both trac...
Bartees Strange, Eric Slick, and OHMME Cover TV on the Radio’s “Province”: Stream
The only thing better than finding a new indie rock artist you love is discovering that they look up to an old indie rock artist you also love. It’s a warm feeling, and a handful of our favorite musicians are rekindling that today by way of a cover song; Bartees Strange, Eric Slick, and OHMME joined forces to record their own version of “Province” by TV on the Radio. Stream it below. For their group rendition of “Province,” all three artists play into their unique strengths. The Dr. Dog drummer steers the track with his effortless fills and driving rhythms, Bartees Strange adds an emotional depth with his pitch-perfect vocals, and OHMME’s Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart add synth swells to the mix like celestial glitter. It’s a low-key yet riveting cover of a TV on the Radio classic, and...
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine on Collaborating on A Beginner’s Mind: There Was “Mutual Trust and Respect”
For fans of both Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, it might come as a shock that it’s taken them until 2021 to put out a collaborative album together. The two prolific indie-folk titans have been associates of sorts since at least 2017, when Stevens proposed releasing De Augustine’s second LP, Swim Inside the Moon, on his own Asthmatic Kitty Records. De Augustine, whose featherlight vocals and gently-plucked acoustic guitars echo those found on Stevens’ beloved 2015 album Carrie & Lowell, is such an on-the-nose disciple of Stevens’ that it was only natural for the duo to pair up on their new album, A Beginner’s Mind (September 24th). With each track inspired by a film they watched while holed up at an upstate New York cabin together — ranging from Bring It On ...
On A Beginner’s Mind, Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine Use Fiction as a Guide and a Salve
Sufjan Stevens is nothing if not prolific. The experimental artist has released a ton of albums over the past few years, each one a unique effort at navigating his emotional state and the state of the world at large. Almost one year ago to the date, Stevens released The Ascension, an expansion exploration into love, death, apocalypse and nationality. The Ascension was preceded by Aporia, a collaborative album with Stevens’s stepfather, Lowell Brams. Earlier this year, Stevens unleashed Convocations, a five-volume instrumental exploration of grief in the wake of the death of his biological father. We’ll do the math for you: A Beginner’s Mind marks Stevens’s fourth album in two years. This time, he’s collaborated with Californian Angelo De Augustine, who has an indie-folk style complementary...
Joanna Newsom Made a Cameo in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Series Finale: Watch
It’s always a treat when Andy Samberg is in the news: Not just because he’s a witty comedian who makes us laugh, but because it also means there’s a chance we may get to see Joanna Newsom, the absurdly talented harpist and notoriously recluse musician who is also his wife. During the series finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine last week, Newsom made an unexpected cameo that marked her first acting performance in five years. Brooklyn Nine-Nine wrapped up its eighth and final season last Thursday with a special two-part episode. Without giving anything away for those who haven’t seen it yet, Newsom appears for a brief gag as “Caroline St. Jacques Renard, the associate principal cellist for the Berlin Philharmonic.” She quite literally steps out of a tiny closet-esque compartment with a cello in hand...
The Moldy Peaches Announce Archival Set Origin Story: 1994-1999
Though they’re best known for their appearance on the soundtrack to the film Juno, the history of The Moldy Peaches dates years before “Anyone Else but You” came to be. The anti-folk duo are offering some eye-opening context to their cult legacy with Origin Story: 1994-1999, an archival set that compiles songs, unreleased demos, live tracks, and poems from their earliest days together. The collection arrives on February 25th, 2022 via ORG Music. Adam Green and Kimya Dawson formed The Moldy Peaches in New York in the late ’90s, reaching mainstream success when Michael Cera and Elliott Page covered their 2001 track “Anyone Else But You” for Juno in 2007. With the band on hiatus, Origin Story: 1994-1999 is a long-overdue look at their formation and rise in New York City’s ...
Dr. Dog Share New Song “Loneliness” from Homicide Survivors Benefit Compilation: Exclusive
As part of a new compilation benefiting the family members of homicide victims, Dr. Dog have shared a previously unreleased song called “Loneliness.” The track is featured on Luz de Vida II: A Compilation to Benefit Homicide Survivors. Ten years ago, Tucson, Arizona and the nation were shaken by a mass shooting that claimed the lives of six and injured 19 others — with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords amongst the latter. In response, Fort Lowell Records launched the Luz de Vida benefit project, with 100% of proceeds going to aid and comfort survivors through the Tucson Together Fund. Now, to mark the 10th anniversary of that tragedy, they’ve put together a second charity compilation. Due out November 5th to coincide with Tuscon’s All Soul’s Procession community ceremony, Luz da Vida I...
A Conversation with Faye Webster About Isolation and Depression
Listen via: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Stitcher | Google | Pocket Casts | Radio Public | RSS Indie folk artist (and former Consequence Artist of the Month) Faye Webster speaks about her struggle with isolation and depression in the latest episode of the Going There podcast with Dr. Mike Friedman. The I Know I’m Funny haha singer-songwriter shares her experience of isolation during the pandemic, something to which many of us can relate. We as human beings often crave connecting with others, and the pandemic has in many cases radically changed and interfered with how we connect with people. Webster describes how she approaches her mental health as an ongoing and experimental process by which she is...
Wye Oak Announce Civilian 10th Anniversary Reissue, Share “Electricity”: Stream
Wye Oak have announced a deluxe reissue of their third studio album, Civilian, in celebration of its 10th anniversary. Due out on October 22nd via Merge Records, the 2xLP features Cut All the Wires: 2009–2011, a previously lost collection of unreleased tracks and demos. Cut All the Wires contains 12 songs rediscovered by Andy Stack and Jenn Wasner while Stack was digging through some old hard drives. According to a press release, Wasner originally wrote the tracks while “deep in the throes of heartbreak and suffering,” lending a “raw, emotive quality to these songs.” “I found a treasure trove of material which we had both forgotten ever existed — original demos, live versions of the songs, and, most exciting, a bunch of fully realized studio recordings from this era which never saw the lig...
