Indie Exclusive Releases

Forgiveness is the brand new full-length Girlpool album, which finds the duo embracing weirdo-pop decadence without sacrificing the poetic curi- osity that has always made their music so absorbing. Just like they did for What Chaos Is Imaginary, Harmony and Avery each wrote their Forgiveness songs separately, then came together to decide how to present them in a style that felt representative of what excites and inspires them now. This time, the process resulted in their slickest and most ambitious music to date, filled with idiosyncratic and provocative gestures that simultaneously support and complicate the emotionally intricate material. With its unique blend of introspective earworms and surreal party music, Forgiveness reaches beyond the loosely sketched parameters of “indie rock,” challeng- ing any preconceived notions of what a Girlpool album can or should be. “Faultline” the albums first single, is an effective introduction to the world of Forgiveness; the notion of straddling a fault line feels somewhat indicative of Forgiveness on the whole. These songs investigate the always-shifting boundaries between a number of elementally human concepts: pain and pleasure, sex and love, reality and delusion, insecurity and confidence, grief and growth.To support their vision of a sound at the intersection of Holly- wood futurism and post-grunge sincerity, Girlpool enlisted help from pro- ducer Yves Rothman (Yves Tumor, Miya Folick).

Porcupine Tree have made their comeback today with a new single "Harridan". This will be off their new album "CLOSURE/CONTINUATION" which hits stores on 6/24. The band last released an album in 2009 (‘The Incident’). They released ten albums between 1992’s ‘On The Sunday of Life’ and 2009’s ‘The Incident’ before entering a hiatus after their biggest live show to date at the Royal Albert Hall in October 2010. The band is composed of Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison.

Never before on vinyl - original cover art by the legendary Mear One. Featuring Oddisee (4 tracks), Apollo Brown (2 tracks), Roc Marciano, Black Milk, Georgia Anne Muldrow, !llmind and more.

Songs My Friends Wrote is an album I’ve been threatening to make for years. It’s a bunch of tracks that are my versions of a bunch of…songs my friends wrote. I’m fortunate to count a lot of world class songwriters as good pals and I wanted to shine a little light on some of my favourite examples of their work. In most cases I’ve picked relatively obscure songs that have always spoken to me, even though many of them won’t be so familiar to people. There’s a pretty good chance of a Volume Two, Three and Four eventually, because there were a lot of friends and a lot of songs to choose from. The best part about recording all these tunes was that they reminded me of all the people who I haven’t been able to hang out with for the past two years because of the plague we’ve all been dealing with. All of these tunes bring a smile to my face and I hope they do the same for you. - Corb Lund

10th anniversary edition! New alternate all black cover & vinyl labels. Special photo discobag. 

Robin Pecknold brings light to the bleakest of winters with Fleet Foxes’ ‘A Very Lonely Solstice,’ a 13-track career spanning collection recorded in December 2020, at Brooklyn, NY’s St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church.

Now being released for the first time on vinyl, CD and digital formats, ‘A Very Lonely Solstice’ captures a poignant moment in time. The recording was originally broadcasted as a live-stream event on the winter solstice of 2020, just days after New York declared a state of emergency tightening restrictions again in response to increasing COVID-19 cases. Pecknold describes the set as “me by myself on the longest night of the year... honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old.” Fans worldwide tuned in while quarantined at home, finding solace and a sense of community in a period of extreme isolation.

Much of ‘A Very Lonely Solstice’ showcases a solo focus on Pecknold who offers up acoustic arrangements of fan-favorite songs spanning Fleet Foxes’ catalog. Selections cover all four of the band’s studio albums, including their 2008 self-titled debut album (“Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”) to 2011’s Helplessness Blues (“Blue Spotted Tail”) and 2017’s Crack-Up (“If You Need To, Keep Time On Me”), all the way to their latest release, Shore. Resistance Revival Chorus joins Pecknold on Shore tracks “Wading In Waist-High Water” and “Can I Believe You.” Also featured: a cover of Nina Simone’s “In The Morning” and a rearrangement of the traditional “Silver Dagger.”

2 bonus tracks never before on vinyl 

Written partially in Nashville and partially in the Compton house Keb’ grew up in, Good To Be… weaves together past and present into a heartwarming tapestry spanning more than forty years of sonic evolution. Joined by a variety of collaborators, including country legend Vince Gill, famed producer Tom Hambridge (B.B. King, Buddy Guy), Darius Rucker, Kristin Chenoweth, and Old Crow Medicine Show, Good To Be…is a deeply cohesive and optimistic collection of music about appreciating what you’ve got, where you come from, and who you get to share it with.

Indie Exclusive Cassette w/ alternate cover art

Dawn FM is the fifth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter The Weeknd. The album is narrated by Jim Carrey, and features guest appearances from Tyler, the Creator and Lil Wayne. The production was handled by The Weeknd himself alongside Oneohtrix Point Never-who produced the majority of the tracks-as well as Max Martin, Oscar Holter, Calvin Harris, and Swedish House Mafia, among others. The album serves as a follow-up to The Weeknd's fourth studio album, After Hours (2020).

“Alpha Games was conceived on the road, playing in front of amazing crowds on our last tour and then brought to life with the fire and the frustrations of 2020,” says Kele Okereke on Bloc Party’s first new album in seven years.

The first Bloc Party album written and recorded as this four piece; adding the musicality of Justin Harris (bass) and the unbridled energy and power of Louise Bartle on the drums to capture the spark of their live shows and to deliver the most exciting Bloc Party album yet.

“We wanted to can what was happening at those massive gigs in 2019, to showcase what Louise can do, what Russell is capable of and most importantly the electricity coming off the audience. We knew that Nick & Adam were the right choice of producers to do that and the result feels like fire in a bottle.”

Produced by Nick Launay & Adam Greenspan (Nick Cave, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, IDLES), the 12 tracks of Alpha Games veer from the intense & confrontational (Traps, Day Drinker) to melodic and introspective (If We Get Caught, By Any Means Necessary) and marks a new and important chapter in one of music’s most important voices in Kele Okereke and important bands in Bloc Party.

Scheduled for release in April 2022, the 10-song sophomore full-length album showcases Kirke’s unselfconscious, country-twinged vocals alongside a brightly colored candy shop of glam-twang guitar riffs, department store tv commercial synth stylings, and swooping, lilting, unabashedly feminine background vocals. Lady For Sale channels a high-spirited insouciance that feels invigorating and familiar, decidedly more easy-going and fun-loving than what we’ve come to expect from its genre (and the world in general) in recent years. This is a party you’ll want to attend.

On Paint This Town, Old Crow Medicine Show offer a riveting glimpse into American mythology and the wildly colorful characters who populate it. Co-produced by OCMS and Matt Ross-Spang the album pays homage to everyone from Elvis Presley to Eudora Welty while shedding a bright light on the darker aspects of the country’s legacy. Fueled by Old Crow's freewheeling collision of Americana, old-time music, folk, and rock & roll, Paint This Town turns razor-sharp commentary into rapturous sing-alongs.

“We’re a bunch of outsiders who refused to be kept out,” says High Pulp drummer Bobby Granfelt. “We’ve never had an academic approach to jazz—most of us grew up playing in DIY bands—so it was the rawness and the energy and the absolute freedom of the music that called to us in the first place.”

Indeed, there’s something defiant, something utterly liberating about High Pulp’s remarkable ANTI- Records debut, Pursuit of Ends. Drawing on punk rock, shoegaze, hip-hop, and electronic music, the band’s brand of experimental jazz is both vintage and futuristic all at once, hinting at times to everything from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington to Aphex Twin and My Bloody Valentine. The songs here balance meticulous composition with visceral spontaneity, and the performances are nothing short of virtuosic, fueled by raw, ecstatic horn runs ducking and weaving their way around thick bass lines and dizzying percussion.

While the Seattle-based collective is centered around a crew of six core members, they also make judicious use of a broad network of collaborators on the album, wrangling special guests like sax star Jaleel Shaw (Roy Haynes, Mingus Big Band), harpist Brandee Younger (Ravi Coltrane, The Roots), GRAMMY-nominated trumpeter Theo Coker, and keyboardist Jacob Mann (Rufus Wainwright, Louis Cole) to help stretch the boundaries of their already-expansive sonic universe. The result is a lush, cinematic collection that’s as unpredictable as it is engrossing, an urgent, exhilarating instrumental album that manages to speak to the moment without uttering a single word.

Fear of the Dawn is the fourth studio album from Jack White, founding member of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather. True to his DIY roots, this record was recorded at White's Third Man Studio throughout 2021, mastered by Third Man Mastering, pressed to vinyl at Third Man Pressing, and released by Third Man Records. Pressed on limited astronomical blue vinyl, only available at independent record stores

Christian Lee Hutson starts his new album Quitters with a laugh. In this follow up to his ANTI Records debut, Beginners, Hutson moves away from a focus on growing up to the dread and complications of growing older. Written under lock down, the laugh that announces Quitters is the kind you’ll find at the end of John Huston films, one of resignation and release, and somehow a cosmic laugh that says “California,” a place where lonely people gather together like birds.

The song “Rubberneckers” follows the story a romance from beginning to breakup, with backing vocals by Phoebe Bridges, who returns as producer along with Conor Oberst. Quitters is a departure from the digital recording of his debut. Hutson shares, “With this record, Phoebe and Conor had an idea that it would be fun to make it to tape. Phoebe is my best friend and making Beginners with her was so comfortable and easy. So I wanted to work with her again and Conor is someone who I really respect as a lyricist.”

If every great record is a world, then this is Christian Lee Hutson’s world. It’s one filled with the fuzzy haze of a dream, and the half-remembered moments of a forgotten life. It’s a record brave enough to say, In the good old days, when times were bad. But beyond the songs, it is this voice. The voice of someone who was alive in 2021 and recorded a group of songs with his friends for us to hear.

This is a color LP that features alternative packaging from the standard LP. The LP package also includes a download of the full album that includes two exclusive bonus tracks. 

Luther and Cody Dickinson started North Mississippi Allstars in 1996 as a loose collective of like-minded second-generation musicians who shared a local repertoire and regional style. Over the years the lineup shifted by design, and each NMA record offered up a different combination of collaborators. Set Sail finds the brothers working with Jesse Williams on bass and Lamar Williams, Jr. for the first time. 

Set Sail, North Mississippi Allstars’s thirteenth album, follows 2019’s Up and Rolling, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for the Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2021. Set Sail continues the band’s tradition of creating roots music that displays remarkable variety. With their latest record, NMA are able to build upon their self-described sound of Primitive Modernism - a melding of the new and the old, traditional and futuristic, crafted lyrics and improvisational music.

Want to get a bead on Paul Cauthen?

Good freakin' luck -- especially on his third album, COUNTRY COMING DOWN.

COUNTRY COMING DOWN has been in motion awhile, actually. The title track, one of several co-writes with good Nashville pal Aaron Raitiere, has been around since before Cauthen's dark sophomore album ROOM 41. Its sense of campfire calm and "damn near off the map" idyll set a bar, for both music and lifestyle, that Cauthen aspired to, while the rest of the new album, recorded at Modern Electric Sound Recorders in Dallas with regular collaborators Beau Bedford (Texas Gentlemen) and Jason Burt (Medicine Man Revival), shows that Cauthen was able to get there without losing any of the playful "hot dog holly golly dagnabit" good-time spirit that rolls off his tongue like a tumbleweed in the west Texas panhandle.

If you want to know what COUNTRY COMING DOWN sounds like, tuck into the album's sonic array, an austere, sinewy attack that puts Cauthen's vocals dead center in the ride. "We've really unleashed Big Velvet in this situation, which I love," he says. Nowhere is that more true than "Country As Fuck," with a taut groove and loping gait tailor made for a 21^st century honky tonk. Cauthen, Bedford and Burt play with that template throughout COUNTRY COMING DOWN, punctuating "Caught Me At a Good Time" with a sharp guitar solo, "High Heels" with a tasteful Wurlitzer break and the satiristic "Country Clubbin'" with a disco beat and chorus of female backing vocals.

His muse fully engaged, Cauthen is looking towards doing more of that in the future, with a few conceptual ideas up his sleeve about what he might do next.  No matter what direction he takes, however, he won’t be abandoning that cabin in the hills or the "Country Clubbin'" life; Cauthen will just be adding more to the mix he's stirred together.

"It's just about looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing that what you've done to this day has been in good standing, with good morals and a good compass in life, driven the right way," he says. "Legacy is all we have -- that, and try to be a good person as well. If you get all that together, then you can do whatever the fuck you want and it'll be alright."

King Garbage is the result of a 16-year friendship and collaboration between Zach Cooper and Vic Dimotsis. 

As Grammy-Nominated Producers, KG has brought a unique perspective on American Soul Music through their recordings BASH003 , Make it Sweat, and their production offerings for The Weeknd, SZA, Travis Scott, Ellie Goulding, Ricky Reed, THEY., Gallant , The Knocks, Jon Batiste, Billy Porter and Leon Bridges. 

They’ve shared the stage with Leon Bridges, John-Robert, Ghostface, Raekwon, Talib Kweli and Blackalicious among others in venues and arenas around the country.

Following their critically acclaimed 2019 album, Morbid Stuff, and 2020's raucous This Place Sucks Ass EP, PUP are back with their fourth album, their most ambitious release to date. Recorded with Grammy winning producer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National, Kurt Vile), the band spent five weeks in the summer of 2021, recording and mixing the typically furious and anthemic songs that would become The Unraveling Of PUPTHEBAND.

The critical darling band has been met with their share of success over the last eight years—winning a Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year, being shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, write ups and accolades everywhere from the New York Times to Pitchfork to NPR and playing venues around the world packed with rabid fans. They have performed on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and played at major festivals like Lollapalooza, Boston Calling, Shaky Knees, and Riot Fest.

Every PUP record arrives with an implied “contents under pressure” warning; the tension between the band’s instinct for the melodic and its gift for chaos propels the songs forward while making them also seem close to flying apart in a horrifying spray of tears and gore. The Unraveling Of PUPTHEBAND is the sound of a band that is not just comfortable with but in command of that chaos.

Placebo have unveiled their long-awaited 8th studio album. Nine years on from the release of their last outing Loud Like Love, Never Let Me Go is set for release on March 25^th, 2022.

LABYRINTHITIS brims with mystic and intoxicating terrain, the threads of Dan Bejar’s notes woven through by allusions at once eerily familiar and intimately perplexing. The record circuitously draws ever inward, each turn offering giddy surprise, anxious esoterica, and thumping emotionality at equal odds. “Do you remember the mythic beast?” Bejar asks at the outset of “Tintoretto, It’s for You,” the album’s first single, casting torchlight over the labyrinth’s corridors. Delivered in a Marlene Dietrich smolder, Bejar’s lyrical menace seeps like smoke through the brazen march’s woozy synths and dizzied guitar. “There’s some character here that feels new to me, a low drawl, an evening gown draped over a piano,” Bejar says of the song. Throughout, LABYRINTHITIS insists that everything’s not all right, but that even isolation and dissolution can be a source of joy—stepping into the sunlight at the other end of the maze in your ear, Bejar strolling alongside like a wildmaned,
leisure-suited minotaur.

More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, LABYRINTHITIS warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of “It Takes a Thief ” to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the over-the-top madcappery. “John is in his 50s, and I’m almost there, but we used to go to clubs,” Bejar laughs. “Our version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album were more true to disco.”

Bejar and Collins conducted their questing in the height of isolation, Collins on the remote Galiano Island and Bejar in nearby Vancouver, sending ideas back and forth when restrictions didn’t allow them to meet. “From the vocal manipulation to the layered electronics, making this record pushed us to a new place, and reaching that place felt stressful,” Bejar recalls. “But I trust that that stress is a good feeling.” That cuddly anxiety excels in tracks like “Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread.”

Lyrically, LABYRINTHITIS embraces a widescreen maximalism, blocks of text dotted with subversions and hedges. Building from the koans of Have We Met, Bejar continues to carve his words precisely, toying with expectations and staid symbols, while Collins’ production reconstructs the pieces into a unified whole. “Even though everyone recorded in their own isolated corners, this is the most band record that we’ve done in the last few years,” Bejar says. “Everything’s manipulated, but the band is really present, and our plans wound up betrayed by what the tracks wanted. I’ve written 300, 400 songs in my adult life—I don’t know how to do anything else—but this album feels like a breakthrough into new territory.”

That unprepared synchronicity and mutual discovery shines on “June,” a six-and-a-halfminute track that features a blend of funk bass, fluttering synth, and charred poetry recitation. While Bejar initially envisioned LABYRINTHITIS as a straight dance record (“just like Donna Summer’s greatest hits”), the end of “June” explodes that simplicity into a million shining pieces, finding joy in mutual discovery instead of isolated certainty. LABYRINTHITIS closes on “The Last Song,” Bejar singing and strumming all alone, a gentle yet no more settled exodus out of the fractured dance party. “I try and sneak in sweet moments where I can,” Bejar laughs. As LABYRINTHITIS closes, the reorienting vertigo lingers, its implacable aura and bewitching lyrics wriggling ever deeper into the mind.

Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong is a grown-up break-up record, for strugglers by a struggler. It’s a record about fatherhood written during a pandemic. It’s a kitchen-sink 10th album pivot, painstakingly brought to life by two career-long collaborators and their shared and split obsessions. Lyrically evocative, excavating and unflinching without irresponsibly printing your journals.

Single LP on yellow & black splatter color vinyl in same packaging as standard edition. Full album download included. Ltd edition. Indie only.

Electricity is the fourth and most progressive album from Ibibio Sound Machine, and like all good Afrofuturist stories, it begins with an existential crisis. "It's darker than anything we've done previously," says Eno Williams, the group's singer. "That's because it grew out of the turbulence of the past year. It inhabits an edgier world." Electricity was produced by the Grammy Award- and Mercury Prize-nominated British synthpop group Hot Chip, a collaboration born out of mutual admiration watching each other on festival stages, as well as a shared love of Francis Bebey and Giorgio Moroder. The fruits of their labor reveal a gleaming, supercharged, Afrofuturist blinder. Electricity is the first album Ibibio Sound Machine have made with external producers since the group's formation in London in 2013 by Williams and saxophonist Max Grunhard. True, 2017's Uyai featured mixdown guests including Dan Leavers, aka Danalogue, the keyboard jedi in future-jazz trio The Comet Is Coming, but Hot Chip and Ibibio Sound Machine worked together more deeply throughout the process, collaborating fully. Along the way, the team conjured a kaleidoscope of delights that include resonances of Jonzun Crew, Grace Jones, William Onyeabor, Tom Tom Club, Kae Tempest, Keith LeBlanc, The J.B.'s, Jon Hassell's "Fourth World," and Bootsy Collins.

Following the success of their UK Top 3 debut album in 2020, Sea Girls will release their new album, Homesick, on March 25, 2022. They have teamed up with longtime producer Larry Hibbitt and GRAMMY Award-winning producers Jacknife Lee, Jonny Coffer and Cass Lowe to co-produce. A deeply personal record, singer Henry Camamile returned to his childhood home in Lincolnshire at the wake of the pandemic and found himself reflecting on events from his past. 11 tracks. Indie Exclusive Yellow LP.

ARCHITECTS new album captures a historic live stream performance event at the iconic Abbey Road studios: spiritual home to legends like The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Dubbed For Those That Wish To Exist at Abbey Road, the album features a reimagined orchestral version of their masterpiece album For Those That Wish To Exist, backed by their friends in the Parallax Orchestra, the well-respected UK based orchestra made up of some of England’s best and most versatile classical musicians, arranged and written by Simon Dobson, Parallax Orchestra’s conductor and a three times British Composer award (BASCA) winner for his compositions.

Vocalist Sam Carter speaks to the cultural importance of Abbey Road Studios, “It’s such an important part of music in not only the U.K. but all across the world. Some of the biggest and most important records of all time were recorded there. It’s such a joy to even be allowed into the building, let alone to record there. It’s a very special place; I still can’t quite believe we were able to create there.”

P.E. ‘s sophomore album, The Leather Lemon, ushers in a new era for the New York band. A wild ride through chewy bubblegum pop, sweeping synthetic orchestrations, and mutant club beats, the album slides ever closer to the fully-realized pop sensibility only winked at with their debut album Person (2020) and subsequent releases. Recorded primarily at Schenke’s Studio Windows in Brooklyn, NY, The Leather Lemon was cultivated from a fertile creative period between spring 2020 and summer 2021, which also yielded 2021’s acclaimed The Reason For My Love EP.

Digging into mystery, romance, and sex appeal, the album centers its sound within a Bermuda Triangle of dance music, electronic composition, and experimental rock. Members Jonathan Schenke, Bob Jones, and Jonny Campolo play within pop parameters, building upon free-form collaboration to create a fluorescent groove machine that harnesses the energy of their frenetic live shows. Singer Veronica Torres explores her softer side, expanding her vocal repertoire from spoken word and jagged growls to cherubic and sensuous psalms. Sax virtuoso Benjamin Jaffe’s chiseled experimental tone is heard in an extended solo of true romance in “Tears in the Rain,” a somber surrealist duet penned by Torres and Andrew Savage, singer/guitarist of Parquet Courts.

It is a reckoning record for the times; an album of psychedelic resurfacing, real-time response to world events, and soft, sympathetic magic. This is a collection of songs shaped by five individuals who embrace music-making as a way to center themselves in times of uncertainty; it’s resilience and imagination given shape. The Leather Lemon is a true sweet-and-sour listening experience, an album as bright and clear as it is fractured and fun. Get turned UP and ON with the electrifying new lemon drop from P.E.!

Gang of Youths say, “The album is about the life and legacy of Dave's father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God. And also the Angel, Islington.” 

A new Son House album of previously unreleased recordings from the legendary “Father Of The Delta Blues” features the never before recorded track, “Forever On My Mind.” The album comes from noted blues manager and historian Dick Waterman’s archives which were the first upon Son House’s 1964 re-discovery. Restored to remarkable clarity, by producer Dan Auerbach for Easy Eye Sound, these recordings represent the earliest recordings of House upon his return to the limelight after 20+ years away.