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Matt Berninger, the crooning front man for the popular rock ‘n’ roll band, The National, likes to write songs while riding his bike. The sharp, rapid-minded and loquacious singer-songwriter engages in conversation often like a metaphorical triathlon participant. His brain is chugging along in a marathon, swimming laps and cycling all at once. But amidst all the frantic activity, a logical through-line emerges. So does sonic and melodic clarity. Berninger says lyrics come to him as he pedals, avoiding trees and following traffic signs, because when his mind is focused in on myriad other things, the art can step forward and show itself. Revelations like these are the substance of Berninger’s forthcoming solo record, Serpentine Prison, out October 16th.

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Australian country musician, Angus Gill, has a baby face but an aged soul. The 22-year-old, award-winning songwriter first began making music at six-years-old. By the age of 11, Gill had contemporary music heroes like Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash while other kids were donning Batman costumes or playing peewee soccer. Later, Gill began to regularly play at his own high school assemblies with his self-titled three-piece. He’s been rife with ambition since listening to his grandmother’s favorite twangy records as a boy. For his whole life, Gill has been focused on becoming an established artist. And he’s off to a fast start. His latest in this effort is the new 11-track LP, 3 Minute Movie, which will be released Friday and features the legendary songwriter, Steve Earle.

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Jessica Dobson, frontwoman and principle songwriter for the Seattle-based band, Deep Sea Diver, was adopted. While this is indeed a very personal bit of information it is also pertinent to the story of the band’s new LP. Any work of art takes a lifetime to create. While, in truth, from first note to final mix, a song may take, say, a year or two, the work is, in actuality, a culmination of a person’s entire existence. It wasn’t until recently that Dobson met her birth mother, which was both monumental and fascinating for the expert musician. The encounter is one of several recent marvelous moments for Dobson and her percolating, neon-electric-sounding group, which is set to release its latest LP, Impossible Weight, on Friday.

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Los Angeles-based musician-producer-songwriter, Terrace Martin, didn’t grow up in a safe place. Born in 1978, Martin came up in very dangerous areas of Southern California. He was forced to make his own safe places, while never truly feeling protected. Music became his safe place. It became his time machine, too. It became the keyhole through which the entire universe began to unfold. It was also the thing that bonded him with now longtime friend and collaborator, Snoop Dogg. Martin met the rapper over 22 years ago. Ever since, they’ve held together through love of life and song. This shared, heartening bond is the hearth that continues to warm Martin’s creative soul. It is the furnace for his speeding locomotive of production. And it was the model for the musical supergroup he co-founded – Dinner Party – and the band’s latest album, Dessert.

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Many music fans can remember where they were when rumors of Jay Z’s The Black Album began to swirl on early blogs in 2003. One of the most notable aspects of that particular record’s announcement was the inclusion of the then-underground producer, 9th Wonder (born Patrick Denard Douthit). At the time, Jay Z was one of the biggest names in entertainment (still is). For the rapper to reach to the underground to bring up 9th Wonder was remarkable – a bridge to a new generation’s sound. Ever since, 9th Wonder’s career has taken off. His appreciation for music validated by fans all over the world. But, perhaps first and foremost, that validation began with family – his mother, his older brother. And that familial inspiration continues to permeate 9th Wonder’s music today, including in the songs he makes in the supergroup, Dinner Party, which released its latest record, Dessert, on Friday.

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Today, important notions of mental health, support systems and self-love are in the public consciousness more and more. And rightly so. As they say, you can’t put someone else’s oxygen mask on without first putting on your own. Miami, Florida-based R&B artist, Savannah Cristina, has taken that idea to new and scintillating heights. Cristina, who released her anticipated EP, Self-Care, earlier this month, thinks of her songs like contained, miniature therapy sessions. Instead of paying someone for a 30-minute Zoom consultation, Cristina says, just put on one of her new tracks and lose yourself in the necessary revelations and the repetitions of self-confidence and personal appreciation.

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If you’d only just met her, it might be hard for you to believe that accomplished New York City-based EDM singer and songwriter, Lachi, grew up shy. The charming, loquacious, effervescent personality, who can soar and glide on a dance track, grew up quiet, resigned. She didn’t always want the spotlight on her but today she’s making up for lost time with enough sonic power and force to get any other like-minded wallflowers within earshot out of their chairs or off their relaxed poses and onto the dance floor to show their stuff. Lachi’s latest musical endeavor is the perceptive, candy-sticky track, “Messages,” which we’re happy to premiere here.

“It wasn’t until college that I opened up,” Lachi says. “I gained confidence through joining different music groups and sharing my talent.”

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Every morning, Albuquerque-based songwriter, Heather Trost, puts on a new record to fill her home with sound. It’s a habit she and her husband, Jeremy Barnes, who plays in the band, Neutral Milk Hotel, have started and sustained during the months of quarantine. But it’s also one borne of a life enriched early on by music. Trost, whose parents regularly played albums in the house growing up, learned to love vinyls from Bach or The Beatles. Now, she and her hubby, spin an array. Each one is like a bridge or portal to another space. This idea delights Trost, who relishes delving into sonic textures, as evidenced by her latest single, “Jump Into the Fire,” which we’re happy to premiere today. The song, which dances and splashes, is from her forthcoming LP, Petrichor, out November 6th on Third Man Records.

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At a young age, records transported Kurt Vile. The soon-to-be professional songwriter would, as a kid, play his father’s albums over and over again. There were standards like John Denver but there was also the personal favorite, Rusty and Doug, two brothers who recorded mostly in the 1950s. Vile loved their brand of Louisiana-infused early rock ‘n’ roll. Listening to his dad’s albums, Vile would imagine he was a singer in the bands. Those early, foggy memories were, in actuality, some of the earliest proverbial building blocks of Vile’s creative and musical foundation. From there, he would go on to co-found the band, The War on Drugs, and build a fruitful solo career, which continues with the release of his latest EP, Speed, Sound, Lonely KV, which was released Friday.

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Zimbabwe-born, Australia-raised artist and musician, Tkay Maidza, grew up playing tennis. Her parents were metallurgists – academics who worked in the field of mining and chemistry – and, as a result, the family moved around Australia often, from Perth to Whyalla, in search of new and better opportunities. Maidza had to learn quickly to rely on herself. That’s exactly what she did – socially, academically and athletically. But, at some point, she outgrew the game. She needed a new focus. That’s when music entered the picture in earnest. For Maidza, music had always been around the family, now it was her turn to try her hand. By making the choice early on to dive into music headfirst, Maidza kick-started a career that will yield her fair share of precious things like gold, silver, platinum and diamonds.

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When Conor Oberst was growing up, there was only one hip record store in town. Oberst, who was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, a town he continues to call home, found the area to be both a blessing and a curse. Omaha, which is the largest city in the state, is only five-percent the size of, say, New York City. But what the region lacked in infrastructure or volume, it enjoyed in comradery and community. Oberst, whose popular band Bright Eyes released its latest record, Down In The Weeds Where The World Once Was, this summer (the band’s first in nine years), remembers spending hours in that record shop, flipping through albums and observing gig posters thumb-tacked to the wall.

“There was one cool record store and everything revolved around that,” Oberst says. “That’s where you went to find out about new records and where bands hung their flyers for shows. It was insular but supportive.”

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Nashville-based songwriter, Ingrid Andress, is a “terrible liar.” One listen through her confessional record, Lady Like, which will be re-released as a deluxe version on Friday, and it’s evident: Andress wears her heart on her sleeve as clear as the day is long. On the album, she sings of chance encounters at the bar, broken hearts, family and her signature scuffed-boot-brand of feminism. The deluxe version of Lady Like, which was first released in March just when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, also includes three stripped-down songs at the end of the LP, which both showcase and underscore Andress’ talent for emotive, honest and clear storytelling.

“To me,” Andress says, “it all comes down to the song. For someone who learned how to write in Nashville, there’s something beautiful about listening to a story without all the bells and whistles around it. Those can be fun, too. I enjoy co-producing and turning a song into a wall of sound. But I’m also a sucker for just focusing on the words.”

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Bonnie Bloomgarden, who fronts the Los Angeles-based rock ‘n’ roll band, Death Valley Girls, doesn’t waste precious time. If she’s in a tour van driving from one city to the next, she won’t put something frivolous on the radio. Instead, it’s a potentially world-changing, mind-exploding podcast. Or it’s funk music from a region in Africa recorded in the 1970s that gives her a stronger connection, in some mystical way, to community. Or, when in the studio with her stirring band, Bloomgarden is the type of bandleader who errs on the side of a burst of energy, not painstaking precision, in a given take. That’s why there is such a thick, full boldness to Death Valley Girls’ forthcoming LP, Under the Spell of Joy, out October 2nd.

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Henry Binns, co-founder, along with Sam Hardaker, of the popular electronic band, Zero 7, keeps a garden. There isn’t much else for the artist to do these days in the time of social distancing, COVID-19 and quarantine besides make music and tend to the burgeoning flora. But it’s alright. Both endeavors, actually, are coming along rather nicely. Both are producing. Today, Binns says he has a “lovely, big” garden in his home in rural Somerset, England. And his acclaimed group has a new record, Shadows EP, set for release on October 23rd that features the up-and-coming Australian Jeff Buckley-esque vocalist, Lou Stone. And we’re proud to premiere the EP’s second single, “Outline” today.

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In the history of music, there are major venues like Madison Square Garden, The Gorge or Red Rocks that have long, well-told stories. But there are also smaller, more modest hubs that were, in their own little ways, integral to a thriving sonic movement. In Seattle, Washington during the mid-80s, one of those small hubs was a Kinko’s in the city’s University District. There, eventual Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog drummer, Matt Cameron, would print readers for the nearby University of Washington and, at night, give away hundreds of free leaflet copies to local bands that were making flyers, posters or any number of promotional materials. Cameron was a hero. Still is to many. Especially to those fans of the sludgy rock ‘n’ roll he helped make eternal.

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