Dena Miller, who records under the moniker Deer Scout, has announced her debut album. Woodpecker is set for release on April 8 via Carpark Records, and it includes the new single ‘Cowboy’. Check it out below.
Woodpecker was recorded and mixed primarily by Heather Jones at So Big Auditory in Philly. It features contributions from Ko Takasugi-Czernowin on bass, cello from Zuzia Weyman, drums from Madel Rafter, and guitar from Miller’s father Mark. According to a press release, many of the album’s tracks were written during periods of grief or change. “I used to sing myself to sleep as a baby and I think music still plays the same role in my life – it’s a way of self-soothing or seeking comfort,” Miller explained. “But there’s also part of it that comes from wanting to connect with people.”
Woodpecker Cover Artwork:
Woodpecker Tracklist:
1. Cup
2. Cowboy
3. Synesthesia
4. Kat and Nina
5. Peace with the Damage
6. Dream
7. Break the Rock
8. Afterthought
BENEE has announced her LYCHEE EP with a new single called ‘Beach Boy’. Check it out below, along with the EP tracklist and BENEE’s upcoming tour dates.
“‘Beach Boy’ is pure fantasy, set in LA,” the New Zealand alt-pop artist explained in a statement. “It’s about being happy alone, but still wanting some love; wanting the thrill without the pain. It was the first time I’d worked with Greg Kurstin, and it was so sick…we got on super well, and I love this track…I think it is perfect for cruising down the freeway with the top down :).”
BENEE’s new EP is set to arrive on March 4. It will follow her 2020 debut full-length, Hey u x.
LYCHEE EP Tracklist:
1. Beach Boy
2. Soft Side
3. Hurt You Gus
4. Never Ending
5. Marry Myself
6. Doesn’t Matter
7. Make You Sick
BENEE 2022 Tour Dates:
May 31 — Montreal, QC – Corona Theatre
Jun 1 — Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre
Jun 3 — Minneapolis, MN -First Avenue
Jun 4 — Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre
Jun 6 — Detroit, MI – St. Andrew’s Hall
Jun 7 — Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall
Jun 8 — Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
Jun 11 — New York, NY – The Governors Ball
Jun 14 — Boston, MA – House of Blues
Jun 15 — Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts
Jun 17 — Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
Jun 18 — Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival
Jun 21 — Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre
Jun 22 — Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot
Jun 24 — Seattle, WA – The Showbox
Jun 25 — Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom
Jun 26 — Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
Jun 28 — San Francisco, CA – The Warfield Theatre
Jun 30 — Los Angeles, CA – The Novo
Obongjayar has announced his debut album, Some Nights I Dream of Doors, which lands on May 13 via September Recordings. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘Try’, which the Nigerian-British singer co-wrote with producer Barney Lister. Check out its accompanying Spencer Young-directed video below, along with the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
“You can be a pilot or an astronaut, it’s all so possible,” Obongjayar said of the new song in a statement. “By the time you turn twenty, you realise you’re probably not going to become a brain surgeon; reality starts to set in. That’s what the song and this record is about; where do those feelings go? At what point do we lose our innocence, our wide-eyed approach to the world?”
“This album dives into the idea of opportunity and tries to explore what that means, what lies behind those doors, and asks if we’re ready for it,” he added of the LP. “The pursuit of success, what happens when you achieve it, and what happens if you don’t? What does success mean? The head, the body, and the end of a dream. Opportunity is looking forward, and in that lies the question of time. What is your place in it? To know the future, or to fully be aware of your present, you need to analyse and understand your past. It’s an endless loop that continuously piles on itself.”
Some Nights I Dream of Doors will follow Obongjayar’s 2021 EP with Afrobeats producer Sarz, Sweetness. It features London jazz musician Nubya Garcia as well as the previously released single ‘Message in a Hammer’.
Some Nights I Dream of Doors Cover Artwork:
Some Nights I Dream of Doors Tracklist:
1. Try
2. Message In A Hammer
3. Parasite
4. Some Night I Dream Of Doors
5. Wrong For It [feat. Nubya Garcia]
6. Sugar
7. My Life Can Change Today (interlude)
8. New Man
9. All The Difference
10. Tinko Tinko (Don’t Play Me For A Fool)
11. I Wish It Was Me
12. Wind Sailor
Circuit des Yeux has released a new song, ‘The Manatee’, which was recorded during the sessions for last year’s-io. The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Rudy Rubio. Watch and listen below.
“At 4:30 A.M. on February 4th, 2020 a manatee popped out of the sea and stared directly at me,” Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr said in a statement about the new song. “It was a charged 10 seconds. The experience stuck with me so much that I wrote a song about it.”
“The music video (directed by Rudy Rubio) is a depiction of my own kind of manatee,” she added. “I play a wet sea creature trying to make it work in a dry-land society. It is inspired by the scientific understanding that the manatee crawled into the ocean 50,000,000 years ago. The manatee is my reminder that intuition and two legs might be all a person needs to find a more hospitable world – perhaps an undiscovered place to call home.”
Along with the track, Circuit des Yeux has also announced European and North American tour dates for 2022, including a special performance at the Barbican Centre’s Milton Court Concert Hall on April 6. Find the list of dates below.
Last week, Steve Gunn shared a new collaborative EP titled Nakama, which featured Circuit des Yeux’s reinterpretation of ‘Ever Feel That Way’.
Circuit des Yeux 2022 Tour Dates:
Feb 24 – Vancouver, BC – St. James Hall
Feb 25 – Seattle, WA – Fremont Abbey
Feb 26 – Astoria, OR – Anita (solo)
Feb 27 – Portland, OR – The Old Church
Mar 1 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
Mar 2 – Los Angeles, CA – Pico Union Project
Mar 17 – Austin, TX – SXSW
Mar 25-26 Knoxville, TN – Big Ears Festival
Apr 2 – Bern, Switzerland – Dampfzentrale
Apr 4 – Berlin, Germany – HAU 1
Apr 6 – London, England – Barbican Centre, Milton Court Concert Hall
Apr 8 – The Hague, Netherlands – Rewire Festival
Apr 9 – Brussels, Belgium – BRDCST Festival
Apr 11 – Paris, France – Centre Pompidou
Apr 13 – Lille, France – L’Auditorium du Conservatoire
Apr 15 – Dublin, Ireland – National Concert Hall Studio
May 3 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th St. Entry
May 4 – Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
May 6 – Iowa City, IA – Englert Theatre
May 7 – Columbia, MO – Stephen’s Lake Amphitheatre
May 8 – St. Louis, MO – William A. Kerr Foundation
May 9 – Rock Island, IL – Rozz Tox
Jun 2 – Louisville, KY – Decca
Jun 3 – Memphis, TN – Crosstown Arts
Jun 4 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Jun 5 – Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle
Jun 6 - Philadelphia, PA – PhilaMOCA
Jun 7 – Brooklyn, NY – Green-Wood Cemetery (Pioneer Works Graveyard Shift)
Jun 9 – Brattleboro, VT – Epsilon Series
Jun 10 – Montreal, Quebec – Centre PHI
Jun 11 – Ottawa, Ontario – Arts Court
Jun 13 – Toronto, Ontario - 918 Bathurst – Wavelength Festival
Jun 14 – Detroit, MI – Trinosophes
Jun 16 – Chicago, IL – Constellation
Jun 17 – Chicago, IL – Constellation
Sep 1-4 – Larmer Tree Gardens, UK – End of the Road
Lady Dan, the project of Tyler Dozier, has released a new song called ‘Not In Love’. The track is a B-side from the sessions of her debut album I Am the Prophet. Listen to it below, and scroll down for Dozier’s upcoming tour dates.
“I wrote this song a few years ago, when I was going through a really difficult time with my mental health,” Dozier explained in a statement. “I was experiencing some of the worst anxiety and depression that I’ve experienced to this day. When I would listen to music I would take note of all the sweet and endearing love songs people could write about a person, and I thought that was something I would never be able to do in a way I actually enjoyed. I still feel that way about it. But also, not being in love in the first place doesn’t help.”
“’Call Me Home’ is dedicated to anyone who has blown up their life just to remember what it’s like to feel something,” Sasami said in a press release. “It’s about the darkness of feeling nothing and the creeping ache of apathy that can swallow you whole if you let it. It’s about skipping town, driving all night and knowing you’ll always have a home to come back to.”
Squeeze is due for release on February 25 via Domino.
Mallrat, the moniker of Australian pop songwriter Grace Shaw, has released a new single called ‘Your Love’. Check out the track, which was co-produced by Stylaz Fuego, below.
“When I wrote ‘Your Love’, I was listening to a lot of old Memphis rap, like Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat,” Shaw explained in a press release. “I genuinely loved producing this song, and am obsessed with the energy that the Gangsta Pat sample brings.”
She continued: “I shot the Your Love video in Tasmania with my friends James Robinson (Director) and Amy Dellar (Cinematographer). My favourite shots are in the final scene – it was 1am and we spontaneously decided to shoot on the football field. And then the sprinklers came on and it was magic.”
Following a trio of EPs, Mallrat returned last year with the single ‘Rockstar’.
Norwegian art-pop outfit Mall Girl have announced their debut album, Superstar, set for release on April 29 via Jansen Records. Today, the band have shared their new single ‘For Hannah’, which follows the previously shared ‘Bachtap’ and ‘Bubbly Cool Drink’. Check it out below.
Elaborating on the new single, Mall Girl said in a statement: “All the feelings and thoughts you hide from the other person in a relationship, where do they end up and what will they lead to? As life keeps on moving forward towards an uncertain future, you sit and wonder what your desires are in the midst of all the uncertainty. These questions are the story told in this song: “Who will catch me if I fall? Will you run if things get too tough? What are your true, inner desires?” And until you get your answers you’ll sit down, observe the world around you and try to find as much comfort in the future unfolding before your eyes.”
Members Iver Armand Tandsether, Hannah Veslemøy Narvesen, Eskild Myrvoll, and Bethany Forseth-Reichberg recorded the LP at Studio Paradiso in Oslo with longtime collaborator Marcus Forsgren. “Because of COVID regulations and the four of us living in two different cities, we changed the way we worked with the songs quite radically in the months leading up to the studio recording,” Narvesen explained. “We’ve always been very oriented towards the live performance of the songs, including when we compose them together in our rehearsal space. That way of working has led to some challenges when recording, as you end up listening to the songs in a different manner and might figure out you should have done everything differently.”
Superstar Cover Artwork:
Superstar Tracklist:
1. Pink NASA
2. Lilies Dew
3. Bubbly Cool Drink
4. Feel Like Crying
5. Dance Alone
5. Close My Eyes
6. Bachtap
7. Poolside Person
8. Think About It
9. For Hannah
10. Machine Gun Mystery
11. Slush
12. See My Soul
13. You And I
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have announced their next album: Endless Rooms is due out May 6 via Sub Pop. The announcement arrives with the release of a new single called ‘The Way It Shatters’, which is accompanied by a Nick Mckk-directed video. Check it out and find the album’s cover art and tracklist below.
“It’s about how ending up in your particular situation in life is the result of absolute randomness,” the band said of the new song in a statement. “If you happen to be born into wealthy Australia or happen to be born into a war zone in Syria. That’s just the way it shatters. So it’s when this good luck is mistaken for a sense of pride in one’s self or their country they become confused and deluded about what’s important. It’s when those on the other side of the luck scale are completely othered and considered not worthy.”
The group’s five members exchanged ideas for Endless Rooms online during Australia’s lockdowns. Between lockdowns, the band were able to decamp to a mud-brick house the Russo family built in the bush in the ’70s (featured on the album cover) to record the LP, which they self-produced alongside collaborator Matt Duffy. The record was informed by the acoustics of the space and includes field recordings of rain, fire, birds, and wind. “It’s almost an anti-concept album,” the band explained. “The Endless Rooms of the title reflects our love of creating worlds in our songs. We treat each of them as a bare room to be built up with infinite possibilities.”
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever put out their sophomore album, Sideways to New Italy, in 2020.
Endless Rooms Cover Artwork:
Endless Rooms Tracklist:
1. Pearl Like You
2. Tidal River
3. The Way It Shatters
4. Caught Low
5. My Echo
6. Dive Deep
7. Open Up Your Window
8. Blue Eye Lake
9. Saw You At The Eastern Beach
10. Vanishing Dots
11. Endless Rooms
12. Bounce Off The Bottom
Kamasi Washington made his late night television debut last night on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, performing his brand new track ‘The Garden Path’. Watch it below.
‘The Garden Path’ was released just yesterday, marking the jazz saxophonist’s first new music in nearly a year. In 2021, he shared the track ‘Sun Kissed Child’ for The Undefeated’s Music For The Movement series and contributed a cover of Metallica’s ‘My Friend of Misery’ for their The Metallica Blacklist compilation. Washington’s latest studio album was 2018’s Heaven and Earth, which he followed with a score for Netflix’s 2020 Michelle Obama documentary Becoming.
