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The world needs more Dave Matthews.

While it’s true that over the years the wildly successful songwriter has endured his fair share of critical derisions (largely over his “fratty” fan base), his skill and abilities as a musician have always been obvious. Even more than that, Dave Matthews has a supreme knack for connecting with millions of fans all over the world. When listening to his music and message, it’s clear why.

For those looking for a sensitive spirit, nimble guitar playing and a unique voice, look no further than Matthews. We have the exclusive videos to prove it.

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If a friend called one day and said, “Look, I need you to write a song for Michelle Obama,” what would you do? Likely, you’d have to stay up and work for weeks, writing and rewriting drafts to eventually send your music to one of the most famous and regal people on the planet. But Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci didn’t get that advance notice. In that way, the duo, known for the songs they write under the moniker, Garfunkel and Oates, was spared intense anxiety. But when they found out that a silly demo they’d written about a tomato had found the former First Lady, there was a moment of sheer surprise. Friend and show creator, Jeremy Konner, called to say that Mrs. Obama loved the tomato track he’d asked them to write as a favor weeks prior. But there was more good news. Mrs. Obama’s approval portended the new Netflix food-centric kids puppet show, Waffles + Mochi (out now), and Lindhome and Micucci were tasked with writing its child-friendly songs.

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When a band is together for thirty years, things can change in ways that are imperceptible in the moment but obvious with a bird’s eye view. Sometimes that’s behavior within a group, sometimes that’s the way bands play songs live. For the Chico-born “California soul” group, The Mother Hips, that’s often meant the way the band interprets the music it’s played for three decades when on stage. This year, the band is celebrating its 30th anniversary by rereleasing its entire 10-album discography on vinyl, one album each month. In April, the band will release the reissue for their classic LP, Later Days. And today (March 24), they are sharing an exclusive acoustic video for the titular single below. But by looking back on all this music, the band’s co-founders, Tim Bluhm and Greg Loiacono, say that while some things have changed, some things still thankfully remain the same.

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Italian electronic music duo Giolì & Assia want to take you on a trip. Traversing distances, internal and external, is both the reward and what propels the two artists to produce new songs. But they want their fans to join in on that ride, too.

Seeing the duo perform live is to witness a sonic workout—the two create and play music that’s physically taxing in a live setting. This is one of the reasons why their destination #DiesisLive series is so popular with their fans online.

Aesthetically, Giolì & Assia’s music is textured, topographical. Their new EP, Moon Faces, which the duo released earlier this month, speaks to this signature endeavor. The moon, of course, is speckled with craters and cliffs. It’s also distant, dark and shifting in space. Therefore, to engage in the songs of Giolì & Assia is to hike their landscapes and, in a way, never to step in the same place twice. The payoff of these travels, is the lift and drop of the lyrics, the swell and sail of the melodies.

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A few years ago, Lynn Gunn, front woman and principal songwriter for the Lowell, Massachusetts-borne electronic band, PVRIS, took a trip to the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. There, Gunn set up a small studio in the kitchen of a rental home. She began to work, experimenting and manipulating sounds, trying to capture something special from the sonic ether around her. Soon, a few compositions bubbled up and she got the beginnings of the tracks down. More recently, Gunn decided to dust off one of the songs from that retreat and give it a new look. She listened to it again and decided to send that track’s “topline”(or, isolated vocals) to her friend, the DJ and producer, Rezz (aka Isabelle Rezazadeh), to see what she could do with it. Gunn says she gave Rezz “total freedom” to work on the music and when Gunn got back the finished product and heard what Rezz did on the song “Sacrificial,” out today, she says she was floored.

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With one listen through each of the two records, it’s clear that the late Fela Kuti’s musical family tree remains both strong and fruitful.

On February 5th, Fela’s son, Femi, and grandson, Made, will each release their own forthcoming studio albums on Partisan Records, Femi’s Stop The Hateand Made’s For(e)ward. The achievement carries with it much significance. It’s rare that any father and son are able to share in such a prominent co-release. It’s also a sign that the genre of music that Fela invented, Afrobeat, is alive and well in the voices and instruments of his lineage and beyond. But the albums, outside of any historical context, are also just quite good. The music empowers, emboldens and reaffirms a connection with what the Kuti family has always kept in mind: the hands, the head and the heart. The songs offer important messages, the kinds that have and will stand the test of myriad future societal evolutions. They are timeless.

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For Nathaniel Motte and Sean Foreman, co-founders of the Boulder, Colorado-based band, 3OH!3, it was love at first sight. The two then-aspiring artists, who’d already spent years dabbling in making songs individually, met in a mid-level physics class at the University of Colorado years ago. A “bromance” quickly brewed. On that fateful day, Motte had noticed that Foreman was wearing a very obscure but very tasteful band t-shirt and a conversation ensued. Ever since that meeting in class, the duo has created a great deal of music together. First the idea was to mess around and make beats and freestyle but that soon turned into a more realized project. Motte and Foreman, who started 3OH!3 from humble Colorado beginnings, have since collaborated with the likes of pop star Katy Perry and rapper Lil John. This year, the band has released new songs, including the latest single, “I’M SO SAD,” and, they say, a new record is in the works and is expected later this year.

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With the lead track of the band’s first new record in four years, Kings of Leon front man, Caleb Followill, asks a simple but meaningful question—“One more night, will you stay here?” It’s a lovely query for a pop song from a popular band. But the idea carries with it more significance than just that. Over the band’s prodigious and prolific history, they have asked much of their fans along the way, including to withstand a four-year layover between the newest LP, When You See Yourself, and the band’s 2016 release, Walls. But fans of the group, both stalwart and casual, will likely feel pleased with the highly anticipated 11-track project—set for release in March. With its first refrain, Kings of Leon have offered an open door, a reconnection after what might have felt like a lifetime away. But what would you expect from a band so rooted in the messiness and brilliance of triumph?

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The songwriter-bard, Bob Dylan, once wrote, “Take what you have gathered from coincidence,” in the famed poetic song, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Well, if a lyric could have offspring, the children of that line would be the dream pop band, Still Corners. The group’s founding two members met by chance on a train platform in London and later started to collaborate in song. Since then, the band’s history has been saturated in organic surprises noticed from the corners of their eyes or ghost lyrics plucked from the ether and woven into verse.

The duo’s newest record, The Last Exit, which is set for release Jan 22nd, is rooted in the myths and mysticisms of the open road. The visions seen when the mind starts to lose its tight grip on reality. When the highway is a river. There is much to learn when looking out the windshield. So, Still Corners, put it all in song in a new 11-track LP.

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Over the past few weeks, Kings of Leon has teased a handful of new songs on social media, coming on the heals of their March 2020 acoustic release of “Going Nowhere,” which has already amassed two-million views on YouTube.

The band recently announced that they will be releasing two new tracks on January 7th—“The Bandit” and “100,000 People”—along with news about a new 11-track LP, the band’s first since 2016.

But for those needing more evidence of a forthcoming release, ten KOL super-fans announced on social media that they each received a one-of-a-kind t-shirt from the group with a different set of unreleased lyrics screen-printed on the inside.

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Just before the proverbial ball drops and music fans can watch 2020 wash away into 2021, the music world gets one more piece of tremendously bad news. The great emcee, MF DOOM, has passed away, according to his wife, Jasmine, who posted this information on social media. He was 49-years-old.

MF DOOM, who rose to prominence in 2004, with the album, Madvillainy, which he made with the famed hip-hop producer, Madlib, had been performing publicly since 1988. The rapper, who was born Daniel Dumile on January 9th, 1971, in London, England, the son of Trinidadian mother and Zimbabwean father, moved to Long Island, New York, as a child. In 1999, he released his debut album, Operation: Doomsday.

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There’s an old saying: man plans, god laughs. The idea, of course, is that no matter how precisely or consciously human beings chart a course for the future, it can be upended in a moment. A flash flood, an earthquake or a global pandemic can shift entire blueprints. This year, married couple, Tekla Waterfield and Jeff Fielder, learned this lesson over and over again. The two had made strong considerations to move from their Seattle homestead to Nashville to pursue the connections Fielder has amassed in the industry over his years playing with folks like Mark Lanegan and the Indigo Girls.

Sometimes change can be good – or, at least, salvageable.

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