The band Great Lakes was formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1996 with members Ben Crum, Dan Donahue, and Jamey Huggins, and from there, the numbers grew, with a revolving cast of musicians from the local scene involved, until, by 2008, Crum was left as the only permanent member.
The Elephant Six Collective plays a part in the early days of Great Lakes; the Elephant Six Collective being a number of bands all connected to four friends in Ruston, Louisiana, who shared a love for music and exchanged homemade cassette recordings, the friends went on to form bands such as The Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Olivia Tremor Control. Originally part of the Elephant Six Collective’s Athens-based second‑wave, connected through the people…
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Few musicians can name a chiptuned guitar sketch “Artrock” and be taken seriously. One of them is Leo Fincham, a precocious Londoner whose songs evoke irony-tinged earnestness and referential irreverence, the sorts of tensions terms like “art rock” were invented to resolve. Along with Rowan Please of the Femcels, he helms the madcap duo Worldpeace DMT, whose debut, The Velvet Underground & Rowan (2025), stuffed a thrift store’s worth of sounds — Glockenspiels! 8-bit consoles! Broadcast footage! — into mechanically precise music, as if childhood memories could be exported as sample packs. The resulting RAM space is evident on Stick Around for Tea, a slighter record with the ragtag splendor of a low-budget musical. More remarkably, its metaphorical…
Three hours of music about water is an audacious proposition. But not, perhaps, for Slovak label Mappa, which for the past decade has made a habit of asking listeners to slow down and pay attention, releasing records that move between field recording, electronics, and idiosyncratic folk. 
After four consecutive English language albums Ed Motta returns to singing in Brazilian Portuguese on Toc-Toc. A significant shift to be sure, but it’s not the only one. Motta always surrounds himself with the best studio musicians in Brazil. In sharp contrast, Toc-Toc was recorded in his apartment. He programmed and/or played all instruments and provided all voices. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Michel Limma, Motta received lyric assistance from comic book artist and spouse Edna Lopes. His goal was to bring two different genres of contemporary music together: Electronica and traditionally structured songwriting. He regards this as a pop-R&B album threaded with jazz influences. One can hear trace elements of artists who fascinated him while growing up,…
Vocalist Samara Joy owns the spotlight with swinging charisma on 2026’s Live at the Blue Note L.A. Recorded at the West Coast club, the EP finds the Grammy-winning singer leading her small big band during her April 2026 run of shows. Here, she dives into a set of well-chosen standards that nicely showcase the golden, resonant warmth of her vocals and her lithe phrasing. It’s a vibe she captured on her studio albums, but which takes on a dynamic immediacy in these live performances. She opens in bold manner with Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight,” emerging with a moll’s swagger from her band’s screaming noir-ish fanfare. These are not easy songs, but sophisticated statements of artistic purpose. Her Latin-infused rendition of “Yesterdays” has a burnished…
If the name 
…10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition expands the original tracklist to 22 songs total, featuring 8 bonus tracks.
…deluxe edition feature 25 tracks spanning 1 hour and 34 minutes. It appends the original 13-track record with a bonus disc of B-sides, acoustic takes, and early home demos from 1997.
Not everyone has heard 
Dating back to 1994’s Live…My Truck Is My Home and The 9 Volt Years: Battery Powered Home Demos from four years later, Marshall Crenshaw has created an alternate universe for himself with a discerning series of recordings from his personal archives (not to mention expanded editions of previously released studio efforts).
For Wüsthoff, music began long before Faust. As a child he watched his father lose himself in music, playing accordion renditions of operettas, film themes and folk songs with complete absorption. At eleven he discovered jazz through a radio programme tracing its history, then taught himself guitar and piano as a teenager, developing an instinctive relationship with sound driven by curiosity rather than convention. That outlook would become central to Faust, not simply as a band but as an enduring way of thinking. Reflecting on those formative years, Wüsthoff describes them as the experience that shaped everything that followed: without Faust, he says, he would never have made this record in the way he has today. Produced by Onnen Bock…
Mike Reed’s Separatist Party sophomore effort and Thrill Jockey debut 
One of rock’s most distinctive and magnetic frontmen, Weiland left an unmistakable mark on the genre through his work with Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver and his acclaimed solo career. From the alternative-rock explosion of the 1990s through the hard-rock resurgence of the 2000s, his singular voice, commanding stage presence and restless creative spirit made him one of the era’s most recognizable rock stars.
JP Harris has always understood that old songs are not relics or something to be appreciated from afar. They are passed down from one generation to another by people who alter them simply by singing them. On 
Rayland Baxter has spent much of his career chasing clarity – but his newest record 
On each album since