When the pandemic began, and the world shut down, so did the process of creating for Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam. In its place was a domesticity that the singer hadn’t felt in a long time, and although it was filled with many rewards, making music was not one of them. Reflecting on that time, Beam notes:

Once again, Six Organs of Admittance showcases the intricate tangle of fingers on the fretboard and flash of lens flare slicing the air, as the future arcs 360 degrees around to become a part of the past as well. Oscillations in this glass bowl ripple outward eternally, but are rooted on the ground where all the creatures are moving and communing; humans too. An intimate cosmic expression, file under: rural-industrial psych, ecosystem goth.

After forming in 2019 and slowly drip-feeding music into the world during the pandemic, Royel Otis garnered fans in BBC Radio 6 Music, triple j and on US college radio. To date, they have amassed over 35 million streams, covered global playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, and headed out on a debut headline tour of the UK and Europe. After releasing their first music in the form of 2021 EP Campus, the duo shared a further pair of EPs in 2022 - Bar & Grill and Sofa Kings - which slowly and carefully morphed their sound into new shapes, moving away from synths and towards guitars while keeping their signature and rare chemistry. PRATTS & PAIN brings everything from the band's history together on a record that's reverent towards their beginnings but unafraid to push forwards into new sounds. This loose, open formula for what makes a Royel Otis song is written all over PRATTS & PAIN, an album defined by it's sense of fun and adventure.

As acclaimed indie folk band The Ballroom Thieves wrote and recorded their upcoming album, one central question emerged as the theme: “What if we could all just be a little more tender?” The duo – Calin Peters (vocals, cello, bass) and Martin Earley (vocals, guitar) – started to ponder what they could do to be more self-aware of their mental health and of those around them in a world oversaturated by social media, pop-culture, and digital consumption. The result is a lush, 10-track collection of thoughts on the human experience called Sundust, out April 12. “This group of songs is a self-portrait of our intertwined lives,” shares Peters.

Recorded at April Base studio and co-produced by Bon Iver drummer and acclaimed solo artist S. Carey, Pieta Brown’s lush new album, Freeway, is a delicate yet forceful reckoning with change that’s marked by the push and pull of unabashed intimacy and a slow-burning intensity. Brown cut the album with an all-star band that included Carey, bassist Mike Lewis (Bon Iver), and guitarist Jeremy Yivisaker (Andrew Bird), and the resulting recordings reflect the foursome’s seemingly telepathic bond, a deeply organic chemistry fueled by a shared passion for emotional exploration and sonic discovery. Released September 20, 2019 on Righteous Babe Records, Freeway is Brown’s most experimental collection to date, but it’s also her most confident and direct, an honest accounting of bittersweet endings and hopeful beginnings, of painful loss and traces of liberation in the aftermath, all captured here with a raw spontaneity and fierce self-assurance.

Ben Lupus, qui manie aussi bien les notes que les mots, a décidé de fusionner tous les arts qu’il affectionne. Son album, subtil alliage de folk, ballades mélodiques et touches synthétiques, sera accompagné d’un livre écrit et illustré par ses soins. Une proposition artistique dont le clip de Debout – réalisé et animé par Mathieu Larone, Scott Fleming-Little, et Darcy Roop – offre un premier aperçu. Nul doute que ses Forêts Futures offriront de belles promenades musicales.

15 CD collection includes: Spoke (1997); The Black Light (1998); Hot Rail (2000); Even My Sure Things Fall Through (2001) EP; Feast Of Wire (2003); Convict Pool (2004) EP; Black Heart (2004) Maxi Single; In the Reins (with Iron And Wine) (2005) EP; Garden Ruin (2006); Carried To Dust (2008); Algiers (2012); Edge of the Sun (2015); The Thread That Keeps Us (2018).

It was in December 2022 that The Staves celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album Dead and Born and Grown - a strange and beautiful period in the lives of sisters and band members Jessica, Camilla and Emily Staveley-Taylor, making their fourth album All Now with the same organic vulnerability as that first record: except now everything was different, and they kind of were too.

OUR FREE CD! THE SOUND OF 2020: 15 fantastic tracks from the cream of the year’s releases, including songs by Jason Isbell, Courtney Marie Andrews, Jarv Is, Stephen Malkmus, Phoebe Bridgers, Laura Marling, Fontaines DC, Thundercat, Kevin Morby, Brigid Mae Power and more.

on bright future, adrianne lenker, a songwriter known for turns of phrase and currents of rhyme, says it plainly, “you have my heart // i want it back.” documented with analog precision, what began as an experiment in collaboration, became proof adrianne’s heart did return, full to the brim, daring her into the unknown. admirers of adrianne’s solo music and big thief will find on bright future her reliable talent captured in stunning, magnetic clarity. in the company of parlor instruments, adrianne’s modern melodic and lyrical inventions create new traditions. her vocal flights at times outwit gravity, then land, guiding along an earthly path. the wholeness of the unspliced recordings preserve a time of musical friendship during a golden season.

All Now emerges from a period of chaos for the band that was followed by a period of enforced quiet. The Staves released their third album, Good Woman, in February 2021; it was an album of love and loss, written during a disconcerting period of turmoil and pain. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” says Jess of the period that came after Good Woman, as the band—like the rest of us—were forced to sit with their thoughts.The Staveley-Taylors were also still processing the death of their mother and other seismic changes: Emily took a backseat on this album (while still contributing vocals on a handful of tracks) to focus on motherhood, while Camilla reckoned with her own mental and physical health issues, including chronic pain and a series of operations due to endometriosis, which began to take an increasing toll.Struggling after two years of deep solitude and pain following the release of Good Woman, The Staves did what they know how to do best: they got back to writing with the idea of going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point.It began with Jess, navigating this new landscape by harnessing her creativity on her own, at first in the studio in Hackney at the end of 2022, then slowly luring Camilla back to the next chapter of The Staves, before reaching out to Congleton, who the band had worked with on Good Woman.

Collection includes: Roman Candle (1994); Elliott Smith (1995); Either/Or (1997); XO (1998); Figure 8 (2000); From A Basement On The Hill (2004); New Moon (2007).

Following the praise around his The Generation of Lift EP and a number of critically acclaimed singles, Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist Conner Youngblood is back to announce his long awaited debut album Cheyenne due via Counter Records. Along with the announcement, Youngblood shares a striking visual for his first single off the new project, "The Birds of Finland". Comprised of 13 tracks, Youngblood's debut album is the culmination of two years of extensively seeing the world, resulting in a record that involves travel and nature, but also the grounding aspects of the people Youngblood has encountered along the way. Whether it's what Youngblood humbly puts down as "musical ADHD" or sheer talent - Cheyenne is the work of a musical polymath. Where most musicians are relatively happy with picking up a guitar and sailing away on a few chords, Youngblood can be found darting from one instrument to the next. Cheyenne features no less than 30 different instruments - a harp, a bass clarinet, a tabla, and more - all of which are played by Youngblood on a record featuring no guests. While his sound is definitively his own, his debut takes cues from an array of artists including multi-instrumentalists Sufjan Stevens and Elliott Smith as well as the beautiful melodics of singer-songwriter Moses Sumney and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.

Bon Iver is a Grammy award-winning American folk band founded in 2007 by indie folk singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. Bon Iver won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best New Artist and Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for their self-titled album.

Like his legendary father, Ali Farka Touré, Vieux is a guitarist who likes to collaborate. He has worked with the Israeli keyboard player Idan Raichel, and now comes an even more powerful partnership, with American singer Julia Easterlin. The opening Little Things starts with the familiar guitar lines of that Malian favourite Kaira, before Easterlin eases in to nudge the song towards western balladry. Elsewhere, this bravely original fusion switches from an African funk treatment of Fever Ray’s I’m Not Done to slow, thoughtful laments. The traditional In the Pines has been covered by everyone from Lead Belly to Nirvana, but is here reworked with chilling, whispered vocals and desert blues guitar, while the most startling track is a slow, African-edged treatment of Dylan’s Masters of War, which sounds like a pained meditation on the recent chaos in Mali.