This is how it goes with us. As we near the end of the year, the lofty web-posting goals of monthly mixtapes coming out at the beginning of months slowly slips to the middle, then to the end as we get busier and busier with all the other, non-web-related things in life (which, happily, is many and much), to the point where we’re, for example, releasing the ‘August mixtape’ on the actual last day of August. But what can you do? Priorities are priorities and IRL > URL. Also, from what I’m told, no one really reads blogs anymore? Even blogs you call ‘web journals’ to sound more sophisticated?
So, mreh.
But music! Always music! ‘This month’s’ mixtape starts off with the new Robyn, because how could it not. And, maybe as a result, we have a bit of a Robyn feel weaving it’s way through a number of the subsequent tracks—the exciting new single from Christchurch’s Yumi Zouma; a new danceable track from London’s Millie Turner; and a somewhat more subdued song from an exciting, new-to-us artist out of Dublin, Sorcha Richardson.
Also on the new awesome artists front, we’ve got Melbourne’s Jordan Dennis, who gives us a nice, laid back late summer hit with “Crumbs”; Utah duo, Sego, who walks the line between drone core and catchy pop; Toronto’s Verzache, who’s cooking up some nice foot-tapping bedroom music up north; Brooklyn-Minneapolis duo Tiny Deaths, who we interviewed earlier this month; Richmond’s own Lucy Dacus, who Claire from Tiny Deaths turned us on to in said interview (typing this from Richmond, VA, for what it’s worth); a beautiful single from trio, DYAN, that seems to call just as many places home—Winnipeg x Los Angeles x Cincinnati; and a catchy, fun single from Your Smith (née Caroline Smith) out of Minneapolis.
Then back to some studio regulars and also from Minneapolis, trio Bad Bad Hats is back with what’s looking to be one of our favorite albums of the year so far; moving only slightly eastward, St. Paul’s Hippo Campus just released a promising, woozy new single from a forthcoming full-length; we’ve got a new single from Portland, Oregon’s Liyv, who we featured last year; and we have one of our favorites from Mitski‘s new one.
Enjoy the music and enjoy these last days of summer, friends.