American indie folk band from Michigan, now based in Los Angeles, California, USA. Formed in 2010, the band’s name was inspired by Lake Huron. The founder of the band grew up visiting this lake and would spend evenings playing music around the campfire.
Lord Huron has gained popularity for their unique blend of indie folk music and captivating storytelling. Their songs often transport listeners to scenic landscapes and evoke a sense of nostalgia. With their melodic tunes and heartfelt lyrics, Lord Huron continues to captivate audiences worldwide.
“The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1” is Lord Huron’s fifth album. It was written and co-produced by Schneider, and it features band members Tom Renaud, Mark Barry and Miguel Briseño, and a host of collaborators, including actress Kristen Stewart (on ‘Who Laughs Last’) and Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino (on ‘Fire Eternal’). The album title references the mysterious machine featured on the cover art. Schneider asks: “What if you could choose your fate like choosing a song on a jukebox? What if your finger slipped and you got the B-side instead? What if you misunderstood the meaning of the dang song to begin with?”
Guerilla Toss has released their latest earworm, “Psychosis Is Just a Number,” available worldwide on all digital service providers (DSPs) from Sub Pop. This stand-alone single was produced by Stephen Malkmus and mixed by Jorge Elbrect. It’s a glittering no wave skronk anthem about staying present in the chaos – imagine post-punk Pylon meeting the cheerleaders from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, but they’re obsessed with The Contortions.
This track is the first new material since the release of their 2022 Sub Pop debut, “Famously Alive”, which Our Culture described as “…their most urgent, vibrant, and deliriously infectious effort to date… Guerilla Toss make being alive sound like a heavenly deal.” The band is currently working on their forthcoming long-player, which is expected to be released later this year.
Frankie Cosmos was originally a bedroom pop outlet for Greta Kline, who released a lot of stuff before ever releasing a proper full-length album. However, Frankie Cosmos has existed as a full band, with regular members, for a few albums now. They remain quite prolific, but the sound of a full band really rounded things out around Kline’s lyrics.
“Next Thing” is the best album from 2016, which may be enough alone to get it on this list given that 2016 as not all that long ago. However, beyond being fantastic and influencing people as a byproduct of making great music, there is a case to be made beyond that for Frankie Cosmos. The project began as a bedroom project of Greta Kline, and with “Next Thing” she finally made the project manifest as a full-length, proper release. The bedroom pop artist is certainly a niche well-known in this modern, internet-heavy era, but albums like “Next Thing” bring that into the limelight.
Frankie Cosmos have shared an official video for their emotive new single “Bitch Heart.” Director, Eliza Lu Doyle shares about the song/video: “To me the song is about being torn between the comforts of domesticated life and your innate wildness. There’s a yearning for a more feral time––before you touched your fucking phone all day. So we made Greta into a dog-shepherd, someone who straddles those two realms. Meanwhile the band performs a line dance that’s somehow constrained and exuberant at once. Everything is shot in the dark using infrared and thermal cameras, hovering in the not-quite-real.”
“Different Talking”, the sixth and, so far, best album by NYC indie-rock four-piece Frankie Cosmos, exists across time and space, as we all do. It’s a collection of fragments and memories, remembered places, and reinterpreted feelings that adds up to a lucent, humming whole: a sturdy, worldly indie-rock record about aging and the passage of time that nonetheless manages to feel sharply current.
Frankie Cosmos has announced a World Tour in support of the groups forthcoming long player From the upcoming album ‘Different Talking’, out June 27th on Sub Pop Records.
The promise of a Florry show, a now familiar caravan that has been honed over ambitiously trekked zig zags across America and Europe since the release of Dear Life Records debut “The Holey Bible“, is the redemptive promise and prodigal joy of rock and roll guitar music. Bred in the crackling warmth of the Philadelphia DIY scene, and forged with the alloys of community action, queer liberation and bedroom poetry, bandleader Francie Medosch and her absolute unit of collaborators have put in the work of sharpening their homespun tools to take up the mantle of the great lip-puckering rock and roll tradition pioneered by the likes of The Band and the Rolling Stones, but with proudly displayed Aimee Mann and Yo La Tengo bumper stickers on the rusty frame of the truck. At any second, the wheels could come off but they are steering just fine.
For ‘Sounds Like…’ Florry’s sophomore effort as a fully realized band, Medosch and co. decamped to Drop of Sun studios in the nest of the Blue Ridge Mountains to record with Asheville wunderkind Colin Miller, a critical voice behind the records of MJ Lenderman, Wednesday and Merce Lemon and a powerful songwriter in his own right. Three powerhouse days in late 2023 solidified writing work done by the band earlier that summer in the now defunct Haw Creek compound under Miller’s guiding suggestion.
The result is a portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers, uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait. Lyrically, Medosch’s utterances are both careful and excessive, the product of sifting through the rubble of classic good-time media, and finding what works for both her and her community to reach the heights of abandon.
“The Jackass theme song was actually a really big influence on the new album.”
The expansive personnel and continent spanning footprint of Florry casts a wide net for this community. Florry the band rolls deep in the herd of North American DIY, featuring Jon Cox (Sadurn, Son of Barb) on pedal steel, John Murray on electric guitar, Collin Dennen on bass, Will Henrikson on fiddle, Katya Malison (Doll Spirit Vessel) on Vox, and Joey Sullivan (Bark Culture) on drums. Medosch’s recent move to Burlington Vermont entrenches the Philly born project firmly within the ranks of fellow alt-country upstarts Lily Seabird and Greg Freeman, and gives them a vantage just outside of Pennsylvania at the thresholds of New England and the Midwest. There is a new life breathed into this music that confirms Florry as equally rooted in place work, and at home on the vast roads of America.
For listeners who fell in love with Florry’s infectious charm on sweeping tours with the likes of Kurt Vile, Real Estate, MJ Lenderman, Greg Freeman and Fust, ‘Sounds Like…’, provides a refreshing memento of the band that surely left them smiling. If the support behind ‘The Holey Bible’ provided validation for the insistent vision of these young artists, ‘Sounds Like’ finds them revelling in and honing their vocabulary. Praise from outlets like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Paste, and Brooklyn Vegan touched on the potential of their wild idiosyncrasies, and accurately predicted that their next steps would see them continuing to write their own story, like a 10 car pileup that you can’t take your eyes off if you tried.
Florry proves that they can let the car spin just out of control whenever they want, and you are welcome to ride shotgun while Medosch does donuts in the WaWa parking lot. The ceiling, it turns out, is truly the roof.
Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke are set to release their debut album as a duo via Warp Records. Following Pritchard’s remixes for Radiohead, the pair struck upon an otherworldly synergy with the track ‘Beautiful People’, a centrepiece of Mark’s 2016 solo album “Under The Sun“.
“Tall Tales” showcases Pritchard’s mastery of archaic machines that he had previously unearthed in synthesizer archives, guiding the music down unexpected and experimental paths. Yorke meanwhile delivers a haunting and expansive vocal performance, evoking Radiohead’s “OK Computer“-era digital FX while delving into dark, introspective storytelling. Features the singles ‘Back In The Game’ and ‘This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice’.
Now presenting a whole album, “Tall Tales” showcases Pritchard’s mastery of archaic machines that he had previously unearthed in synthesizer archives, guiding the music down unexpected and experimental paths. Yorke meanwhile delivers a haunting and expansive vocal performance,
Also central to the project, visual collaborator Jonathan Zawada’s artistry enhances the project with his hyperreal environments that blur the line between the organic and digital, juxtaposing uneasy landscapes of natural beauty with the brutal aesthetics of a dystopian world.
Through Yorke’s lyrics, Pritchard’s atemporal compositions and Zawada’s visuals, “Tall Tales” questions where our insatiable appetite for ‘progress’ might have landed us.
The First edition vinyl – Black 2LP vinyl in polylined paper inners, housed in casebound sleeve with printed sleeves held in front and back cover, 36 page suspended booklet, debossed cover with tipped in central image. Artwork designed by visual artist, Jonathan Zawada.
Legendary artist, Raincoats co-founder, songwriter, filmmaker, and feminist icon Gina Birch has announced her eagerly awaited second solo album, “Trouble”, arriving via Third Man Records on Friday, July 11th.
For the ‘Causing Trouble Again’ video, after hearing Bob Dylan sing about a white ladder all covered with water, I became obsessed with white ladders,” Gina Birch says. “ I decided to use five white ladders, three with seven rungs…I realized later that this references Jacob’s Ladder and a connection from Earth to heaven, but I think I was thinking of ladders as a symbol of getting on, getting up. I wanted to have a choreographed movement with four of us with these ladders. How do we move with ladders? Do we move together, do we fight, do we dance? “I also wanted to reference the wind scene from the film, The Colour of Pomegranates, and to include as many artist women from the Women in Revolt exhibition as I could. I wanted them to be troublesome, or just to shout ‘Causing trouble!’ I ended up inviting all the artist musician women I knew who could make the shoot, and it was a fantastic meeting of great women, many of whom had never met each other before.”
The National’s frontman collaborates with producer Sean O’Brien and various musicians on his second solo album, recorded in California. The National’s Matt Berninger is set to release his second solo album ‘Get Sunk’ through Book/Concord Records. The album was created in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer Sean O’Brien, who also served as co-writer on several tracks.
The project features contributions from numerous musicians, including Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, Julia Laws of Ronboy, Kyle Resnick, Garret Lang, Sterling Laws, Booker T Jones, Harrison Whitford, Mike Brewer, and The Walkmen’s Walter Martin and Paul Maroon. The recordings took place in a basement studio in Silver Lake, California.
Berninger shared the album’s first single, ‘Bonnet of Pins’. Speaking about the creative process behind the album, Berninger says, “Our hearts are like old wells filled with pennies and worms. I can’t resist going down to the bottom of mine to see what else is there. But sometimes you can get yourself stuck.”
The album follows his solo debut ‘Serpentine Prison’, which was produced by Booker T Jones. After experiencing writer’s block in 2020, Berninger found new inspiration in Connecticut, where he wrote lyrics and created art pieces in his barn. “I was able to get the blurry picture as close to just right for me,” he reflects.
Berninger will embark on a tour in support of ‘Get Sunk’, accompanied by the core band from the album’s recording sessions, with Ronboy opening the shows.
“Get Sunk” is an ode to the infinite. It brings brush-stroked, blurry memories to the surface, amassing in a heap of colours and connections that stretches beyond individuality and into an endless altering. Under water, everything moves in slow motion and for Matt Berninger, he saw his creative voice slipping away with the current.
But sometimes we have to drown to remember how to breathe. “Get Sunk” is the purgative inhale. It’s seeing the undulating reflection in the water and realizing that you are not yourself without a thousand others: parents, friends, siblings, spouses and exes, college roommates, childhood best friends, cousins and kids, strangers even––all of it––make up the spirit of “Get Sunk’s” narrator. Berninger wanted to figure out why he loves what he does and it’s in the album’s collaborative spirit and loose, unfurling attitude that Berninger looked up and felt the warmth on his face. When we sink into ourselves, we’ll often find that we are actually swimming with others.
The official audio for Matt Berninger’s from the new album, “Get Sunk” out May 30th, 2025
After nine albums, you’d think you’d know exactly what to expect from Elbow on their 10th: big, open-armed, open-hearted anthems perfectly suited for festival crowds. But “Audio Vertigo” doesn’t sound like any other Elbow album before it while somehow retaining all the things that make the band’s music so rewarding. The soaring melodies and the warm, inviting voice of frontman Guy Garvey are distinctly Elbow, but the way they get there — the arrangements, the instrumentation — feels new and exciting. It’s not often you get a band three decades into their career making music this bold, creative and fun.
Elbow announced a new EP, “Audio Vertigo ECHO elbow EP 5“, and shared a new song from it, “Sober.” The EP is due out June 6th via Polydor/Geffen and follows the British band’s 2024 album, “Audio Vertigo”.
Frontman Guy Garvey had this to say about the EP in a press release: “Finishing something for the band in lots of ways. We are having more fun in the studio than ever before. Craig’s on fire as a producer, Pete and Alex are the coolest rhythm section working and Pot’s unpredictable rhythm guitar has started working its way into such a soulful and accomplished place. The words are all stories from my past, sometimes joyful, often dark, but all of it exciting and mostly true. It feels like we’re having another go on the Waltzers after hours.”
“AUDIO VERTIGO”was the follow-up to 2021’s “Flying Dream 1” and in contrast to that more intimate sounding album, the new record embraced a more varied and rhythmically diverse musical landscape, or as Garvey puts it, “gnarly, seedy grooves created by us playing together in garagey rooms.”
This week, Fiona Apple shared a brand new song, “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home),” about how the cash-bail systemin America negatively affects women and girls, especially Black women.
Apple had this to say about the song in a press release: “I was a court watcher for over two years. In that time, I took notes on thousands of bond hearings. Time and time again, I listened as people were taken away and put in jail, for no other reason than that they couldn’t afford to buy their way free. It was particularly hard to hear mothers and caretakers get taken away from the people who depend on them. For the past five years, I have been volunteering with the Free Black Mamas DMV bailout, and I have been lucky to be able to witness the stories of women who fought for and won their freedom with the tireless and loving support of the leadership.
I hope that this song, and the images shared with me, can help to show what is at stake when someone is kept in pretrial detention. I give this song in friendship and respect to all who have experienced the pain of pretrial detention and to the women of the group’s leadership who have taught me so much and whom I truly love.”
Joe Louis Walker was a remarkable singer, guitarist and songwriter, but above all he was a serious bluesman. If you were looking for a lively blues night out, Walker would not have been your best bet. From the first, he stood out as a composer of ingenious, intelligent songs, which he made sound blue regardless of their musical form. His allegiance was to the inner character of the blues rather than to its external structure.
The survival of the blues has always depended on its stock of known stories and familiar expressions. Walker, who has died aged 75, was deeply conscious of this tradition and drew on it with discrimination and skill, but often took the harder path of telling stories in freshly made language, his images drawn not from the ghost world of the blues’ past, but from life around him. “I swore I was gonna stay single – when I leave out and come back is up to me,” he sang in “Personal Baby”, “but I got to take a real good look at that Playboy philosophy.”
He grew up in San Francisco, where his parents had moved from Arkansas, bringing with them a profound love of the blues. “My father would come home from work in construction and have his dinner and he’d have his record player right here. He’d put on Amos Milburn, Rosco Gordon, Howlin’ Wolf. And then, when he wasn’t playin’ it, my mother was – BB King, always BB King.”
Hanging out with older teenagers who had bands, he picked up the elements of guitar. When he was about 20 he fell in with the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and some of his colleagues who had left Chicago for the west coast. He played with this band and that, and had the chance to open a concert for Fred McDowell and spend time absorbing the older man’s slide guitar playing. But the market for blues and R&B covers bands was overstocked, and in 1975 Walker jumped genre to play guitar for a gospel group, the Spiritual Corinthians.
A decade on, he landed a place in the Mississippi Delta Blues Band, a group thrown together for a European tour. Back home, he pitched an audition tape to all the blues companies he knew of, and was signed by the Oakland label HighTone. Working with the production team of Bruce Bromberg and Dennis Walker – who had recently launched the recording career of Robert Cray – he achieved an impressive debut with “Cold Is the Night” (1986), its mostly original songs energised by spiky guitar.
The album was voted the best blues recording of 1987 by the French Académie du Jazz, and its successors “The Gift” (1988) and “Blue Soul” (1989) helped Walker to winning contemporary artist of the year in the WC Handy blues awards three years running. Couched in more elaborate arrangements than its predecessors, “Blue Soul” set a standard by which his subsequent work would be measured.
And there was a lot of it. Between frequent tours of the UK and mainland Europe, he made six albums in seven years from 1993 for Verve, among them “Great Guitars”, a conclave of blues guitarists including Steve Cropper, Robert Lockwood Jr and Otis Rush, and Silvertone Blues, which found him turning his gaze backwards and drawing inspiration from blues duos such as Muddy Waters and Little Walter, not recreating but reshaping them.
That contract completed, he became a freelancing butterfly, flitting between labels including Telarc, Provogue and Stony Plain, but never, stylistically speaking, staying in one place long. He told me: “I don’t have this allegiance to Chicago blues – rah! rah! – or west coast blues – rah! rah! … Like my ex-ex-old lady said, I’m sort of all over the place … and it shows in my music.”
“Take Pasa Tiempo” (2001), with its covers of Van Morrison and Otis Redding songs, and Latin-tinged jazz instrumentals: clever music, if somewhat impersonal. But in the same year’s “Guitar Brothers”, the tension is sometimes so tight it is painful, as he stared bleakly at the collapse of a relationship: “Our bodies, they live together, but our hearts, they live apart.” A newcomer to Walker’s work, hearing those two records in succession, might not have guessed they were by the same man.
A bluesman so aware of the music’s history was obviously well suited to commemorative projects, and in the early 2000s Walker participated in tributes to Robert Johnson and Charley Patton, and contributed to albums celebrating the blues connections of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Then, in 2012, he was signed by Alligator, the leading blues indie label – 26 years after it had turned him down. Of his three albums for the company, the most surprising was “Journeys to the Heart of the Blues” (2018). Turning his back on every prevailing blues fashion, Walker assembled a setlist of blues from the 1930s, 40s and 50s and arranged them for an acoustic trio: himself on guitar, the keyboardist Bruce Katz and the English harmonica player Giles Robson. It was as if men like Big Bill Broonzy had been brought back to life and given quality studio time. Nobody was better equipped for such affectionate and accurate reanimation than Walker.
He is survived by his wife, Robin Poritzky-Walker, whom he married in 2009, two daughters from earlier relationships, Lena and Berniece, a sister, a brother, and two grandchildren. An earlier marriage ended in divorce.
Joe Louis (Louis Joseph) Walker, born 25th December 1949; died 30th April 2025
