New Song Releases
Matt Berry Announces Psych Rock Album The Blue Elephant, Shares “Aboard”: Stream
When he’s not playing a Staten Island-based vampire in What We Do in the Shadows, the English actor Matt Berry makes freaky psych-rock music. He’s released upwards of ten albums over the last 25 years, and now he’s announcing that his latest will be titled The Blue Elephant. The full album is out in May, but today he’s giving fans a taste with a new song called “Aboard”. Like his previous six records, most of which have arrived in the last ten years, The Blue Elephant will be released via the legendary London label Acid Jazz. The imprint is famous for putting out music that’s super out-there, and Berry’s ear for tantalizing psychedelia fits snugly into their renowned catalog. His 2020 record Phantom Birds was a detour into classic folk, but a press release promises that...
Hiss Golden Messenger Announces New Album Quietly Blowing It, Shares “If It Comes in the Morning”: Stream
Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C Taylor will find out this weekend if his last LP, 2019’s Terms of Surrender, takes home the Best Americana Album at this year’s Grammy Awards. Even with that anticipation looming, the ever-prolific Americana artist has already set his sights on his next effort, as he’s today announced Quietly Blowing It. As a preview of the June 25th release, Taylor has shared “If It Comes in the Morning”. Arriving via Merge, Quietly Blowing It was written during the spring and summer of the tumultuous 2020. Even before that year “rolled up on us like an existential mugger,” as Taylor himself puts it, he was feeling burnt out. He’d canceled an Australian tour in 2019, and left the road ready for “the time and space to mourn something, though I wasn’t sure what.” When h...
Gary Numan Reveals the Origins of New Single “I Am Screaming”: Stream
Our new music feature Origins seeks in depth details about new songs from the artists who create them. Today, new wave legend Gary Numan wants you to hear that “I Am Screaming”. Intruder, Gary Numan’s upcoming 18th studio album, picks up the narrative of 2017’s Savage (Songs from a Broken World) from a different point of view. While that previous LP depicted a barren future wrecked by global warming, the new wave icon’s latest effort takes on the perspective of Mother Earth herself. “If Earth could speak, and feel things the way we do, what would it say? How would it feel?” Numan explained when announcing the album. Although the entirety of Intruder seeks to answer those questions, perhaps no track does so more directly than the new single “I Am Screaming”. What begins as a mournful bubbli...
Skullcrusher Announces New Storm in Summer EP, Shares Title Track: Stream
Helen Ballentine has announced the next project under her Skullcrusher banner. The Storm in Summer EP drops April 9th via Secretly Canadian, and has released the title track as an early preview. The five-track follow-up to her 2020 Skullcrusher EP finds Ballentine reeling from the spotlight after experiencing some unexpected success. As she explained in a statement, “I wrote ‘Storm in Summer’ after releasing the first Skullcrusher EP. Over that summer I thought a lot about what it means to really put myself out there and share something personal. I felt so vulnerable and overwhelmed by the fact that these songs I had written in private were exposed and likely being misinterpreted or disliked. I think the song really tries to communicate these anxieties in a cathartic way whi...
Brittany Howard Covers Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”: Stream
One of the biggest voices of this century is following one of the biggest voices of the last, as Brittany Howard has shared a new cover of “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” by Jackie Wilson. Released in 1967, “Higher and Higher” is not for the faint-hearted or pitch-challenged. “Mr Excitement” Wilson had a four-octave range, and on this, his signature song, he kept his voice moving. That’s no problem for Howard, whose picture you can find in the dictionary under “Powerhouse.” If anything, the rendition by the leader of Alabama Shakes has a little extra ferocity. Howard’s “Higher and Higher” skips over the original’s hand drums and prominent bass riff, preferring a drum kit and guitar-forward sound. She also uses a heavenly choir to a put a little extra height on those “Highe...
Fucked Up Share 26-Minute Song “Year of the Horse – Act Two”: Stream
Fucked Up have released “Year of the Horse – Act Two”, the second track of the Toronto punk band’s latest EP celebrating the Chinese Zodiac. Stream it via Bandcamp below. The 26-minute epic is written like a play. It contains seven different scenes starring a cast of more than a dozen characters, which are detailed in the liner notes the band made available on WeTransfer. The song mixes disparate sounds from straightforward punk rock to spaghetti-western to doom metal, and includes guest vocals from singers Tuka Mohammed, Eidolon, and Maegan Brooks Mills. “Act Two” appears on the four-track EP, Year of the Horse. Fucked Up is dedicating the project to Texas hardcore icons Wade Allison of Iron Age and Riley Gale of Power Trip, both of whom were friends with the group prior to their deaths. ...
Dirty Honey Announce Debut Album, Share “California Dreamin’”: Stream
Hard rockers Dirty Honey have announced that their self-titled debut album will arrive April 23rd. The L.A. band has also shared the music video for the opening track and lead single, “California Dreamin’”. Not to be confused with the ’60s pop hit of the same name by The Mamas and the Papas, Dirty Honey’s take on the Golden State is a darker portrayal. Vocalist and lyricist Marc LaBelle said the track and its video explain that the Cali dream is just that: a dream. It doesn’t always come true. “Lots of people come out to California, chasing a dream, and sometimes, people just don’t make it,” LaBelle said in a press release. “California isn’t always the ‘land of milk and honey,’ dreams don’t always come true here, and that’s the perspective this song and video take. The video is a dream thr...
Regional Justice Center Break Down New Album Crime and Punishment Track by Track: Stream
In our Track by Track feature, artists guide listeners through each track on their latest release. Here, Regional Justice Center singer Ian Shelton pulls back the curtain on the band’s new album Crime and Punishment. Hardcore act Regional Justice Center have unleashed their new album, Crime and Punishment, out now via Closed Casket Activities. The LP clocks in at a blistering 13 minutes but leaves an impression that lasts far longer. The album shares its name with the legendary novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky and tackles similarly weighty themes of postmodern existence. As RJC vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ian Shelton explains in the remarks below, many real-life events inspired the passionate outbursts of anger and disillusionment heard throughout Crime and Punishment. Shelton previously ...
The Streets Shares New Single “Who’s Got The Bag (21st June)”: Stream
Last year, the never-ending bleakness of the coronavirus pandemic prompted The Streets to release a mixtape with the ominous title of None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive. Now that things are actually looking up in the UK, the project’s mastermind Mike Skinner is ready to celebrate with a positive mood and a new single called “Who’s Got The Bag (21st June)”. Stream it below. “It’s been too long since I’ve been behind some decks, or on a stage, in a tour bus sleeping in a bunk,” said Skinner in a statement. “The moment we can do it we want to be the rave and we will. It’s also about hospitality, events and nightclubs not being able to take anymore. It’s a protest song, it’s saying, don’t change the date on us again! FIRST IN THE ROOM. 21 June.” It’s clear Skinner concocted “Who’s G...
Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, and Jon Randall Announce The Marfa Tapes, Share “In His Arms”: Stream
Country superstar Miranda Lambert has teamed up with songwriters Jack Ingram and Jon Randall for the new album The Marfa Tapes. It drops May 7th, and to preview the release, the group has unveiled the lead single “In His Arms”. Lambert, Ingram, and Randall are hardly strangers; the trio previously collaborated on Lambert’s twice Grammy-nominated single “Tin Man” (2016), as well as the fan favorite “Tequila Does” (2019). Fresh takes on both of those songs will appear on The Marfa Tapes, but the majority of the 15-track effort has never been heard outside of Marfa, Texas. The small town is home to only about 1,800 people, but for five days last November it also hosted three musicians, two microphones, and one acoustic guitar. The stripped-down recording session tried to capture the stark bea...
Mitski Announces Graphic Novel Soundtrack, Shares “The Baddy Man”: Stream
For her first full-length project since 2018’s Be the Cowboy, Mitski wrote and recorded the soundtrack to the graphic novel This Is Where We Fall. It’s out May 5th, and as a taste of things to come, the 30-year-old songwriter has shared the new song “The Baddy Man”. Written by Chris Miskiewicz and illustrated by Vincent Kings, This Is Where We Fall combines science fiction and Western tropes to tell a tale of death and the afterlife. It will be available in both softcover and hardcover editions, though the hardcover has the added bonus of coming with Mitski’s soundtrack on cassette. Besides that, 1,000 copies of a deluxe edition will also be released, and that iteration includes her score on vinyl. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Mitski said, “It was exciting to make a...
Kings of Leon Unveil New Album When You See Yourself: Stream
Kings of Leon have unveiled their first album in five years, When You See Yourself. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify. The 11-song effort is the Nashville-bred band’s first full-length since 2016’s WALLS. They previewed the album with three singles — “The Bandit”, “100,000 People”, and “Echoing” — but the most compelling aspect of the rollout process had nothing to do with the sound of the music (which is quite good). Earlier this week, the group announced that they were going to be the first band to ever release an entire album in NFT form — that’s “non-fungible token” for those who aren’t aware. NFT’s are essentially a cryptocurrency for art: images, videos, music, and even items like concert tickets that are sold on an online marketplace like Bitcoin. In add...
