If the season premiere of Game of Thrones was the only HBO event that dominated your weekend, may we be so bold as to say that you missed out.

As you’ve likely heard by now, pop queen Beyoncé debuted her new album, Lemonade, over the weekend along with the first of its kind—a ‘visual album’ to accompany the new record.

Less a series of 12 videos to accompany the 12 tracks of the album and more a continuous narrative, the visual Lemonade presents the songs as related stories, stringing them all together with poetry, spoken word, sound, and stunning visuals and telling one cohesive story of pain, heartache, loss, anger, and restoration, both personal and in a larger more societal sense. It’s 57 minutes of gifted, heart-laid-bare storytelling from the artist and a bold move to employ a new, innovative format to do so, positioning her solidly as a cultural icon.

Over the weekend, HBO debuted the limited release of the visual album, pairing it with a free preview weekend—both of which have now ended—skillfully stepping out of the cultural white noise and grabbing our oh-so scattered attention in this attention deficit disorder digital age.

In the wake of the loss of Prince, Beyoncé + Lemonade give us hope for the future of pop culture if its in such skilled, thoughtful hands as these.

You can view a trailer for Lemonade below and buy the album—visual and aural—via iTunes + Tidal. And check out Kiana Fitzgerald’s review of Lemonade for NPR, if you get a chance.

As we said yesterday on IG, boo to the fur used in the primary imagery/film; yay to all else.

Seriously, 2016‽ What the fuck‽

Still coming to grips with the loss of Bowie and now Prince is gone. We honestly cannot believe this. Two legendary figures in not only music but in culture—two men who shaped our generation in so many ways—gone far too soon and so close to one another in time. This is simply unfair. And terrible.

Our hearts go out to fellow fans of Prince Rogers Nelson, particularly those in his native Minneapolis, who must be reeling right now.

There are far too many songs to chose from to pay tribute to Prince, one of the most prolific popular song-writers of our time, so we chose one Prince didn’t write—Radiohead’s “Creep”, performed at 2008’s Coachella, which he, of course, kills.

Rest in peace, you sexy motherfucker. And please start the coolest band ever in the afterlife with Bowie + Lemmy.

British band yndi halda does not do the three-minute pop song. They do the sprawling, epic, cinematic song full of symphonic instrumentation and massive builds and dive in dynamics. And their shit is awesome.

We were recently sent Under Summer, the band’s recently released, long-awaited follow-up their 2006 debut, Enjoy Eternal Bliss, and had to find out more about them. We talked with founder, multi-instrumentalist, and singer James Vella (hooded, attacking above) about how the band arrived at their sound, what got the members back in the studio and out on tour after so many years, and how the hell to say their name. Listen below and read on.

raven + crow: I apologize as I imagine this you’re usual out the gate question, but where does the band name come from and how on earth do I pronounce it?

James Vella: The name comes from an ancient Norse poem entitled Odin’s Raven Magic. We found it as teenagers and loved the line (it translates to “Enjoy Eternal Bliss”) so much that we felt it perfect for the name of the band.

We pronounce it “yin-dee hal-dar”, but I have no doubt that we pronounce it wrong. A real modern-day Icelander would probably take exception to our voicing of it.

Good enough for me. Also, raven magic. Nice. How did the band originally form?

Most of us met in school. Jack, Daniel, Olly, and I met as boys and grew up together, scattered across a few small towns in one local area. We developed our musicality together, and I think that characterises the nature of the band and our music a great deal. We started playing covers together—graduating from The Smashing Pumpkins to Jeff Buckley to Radiohead over our school years, and formed yndi halda when we were 15-16.

I’m not usually a player of the comparison game, but I hear a lot in your music—Explosions in the Sky, Rachel’s, other early Touch and Go/Quarterstick Records—but it’s definitely distinct too. I also feel like there’s just not a ton of good music in this vein being made these days—what other bands do you guys listen to that you feel like might inform your sound? Or at least be on par with it?

We all listen to a huge amount of music. So much so, in fact, that I don’t think any of us listen to anything similar to our own. I am a fan of Rachel’s, for sure, but among a much bigger record collection they only provide so much influence to my songwriting. Something I like to do is reduce the number of records on my iPod to a bare minimum so I have to listen very closely to a small pool of albums. For example, I currently have: Fugazi, Julia Holter, Majical Cloudz, Omar Khorshid, Rully Shabara, Shellac, Sun Ra and a few of the Habibi Funk mixtapes on there. I think it’s really important to expand the palette. Not just to listen to music like your own.

Man. It is safe to say that is a very eclectic list of music-makers. I like your anti-single approach though. I sometimes feel that I listen to way too much music from way too many people, to the point of not really getting to know many of the artists like I used to when music existed without the internet.

Many of your songs have run pretty long compared to most contemporary pop out there and the new work’s no exception. Is that by design or more just an effect of the music itself?

That’s a good question. A few of us in our solo projects—mine is A Lily, Olly does The Lunchtime Sardine Club, Alex has Vincent Vocoder Voice—write much shorter, more pop-orientated pieces. So I guess we could do that if it fit for yh, but it seems evident that the sum of the yh songwriters’ influence is long-form structures. There’s no design to it, just the natural result of the compositional process. We always like multiple moods and movements in a song, and we also like very patiently-paced tempos, so I guess it is inevitable that we require some time to include everything we want in a single piece.

What brought the shift to more vocals in the music? …or maybe a better question is why the absence of vocals in earlier work?

I think a similar answer to my last one, honestly. I think we can only ever write the music that naturally comes out of us, and in this case that includes wishing to express something that could only come out in real lyrics. Much of us are big fans of vocal music—we’re all big Beach Boys listeners, for example—and so it wouldn’t have taken us long to have arrived there in any case. I think we work to the instrumentation or timbres that best express what we intend to express. It just happened that the first record came out almost entirely instrumental and the second record a lot more vocal.

I heard you guys did handmade covers for the self-release of Enjoy Eternal Bliss—you don’t have any photographs of those you can share do you?

Not personally, but I bet if we did a social network shout-out we could unearth a few!

Let’s do it! I’m super-curious. Besides the vocals, how else do you see the new work differing from what you did some ten years back?

I see it differing a great deal. I said in another interview somewhere that it feels less like a memory and more like a past-life revival in some cases. Unearthing lots of old feelings that I couldn’t have accessed without playing those older pieces again. That became especially true on our UK tour last week, performing Enjoy Eternal Bliss material for the first time in years. I think, for one, we’re better musicians this time around. We can all play a lot more comfortably. I feel that that represents a significant difference on this record.

I can hear that, as a listener. Obviously, the whole music scene and how we consume music has changed a lot since then. Do you have any opinion on whether it’s for the better or the worse?

I couldn’t say whether it has become better or worse, truthfully. In fact—in a wider sense—I don’t believe that anything actually becomes much better or much worse over time, just that the world and its people change. With that in mind, I can see positives and negatives in equal measure across the music industry. There has been a huge, huge influx of bands and labels and platforms over the past couple of years. This is great for plurality and creativity, but it of course becomes very difficult to be heard as one, competing against all of the others. Likewise, income and sales have reduced—a bad thing by anyone’s reckoning—but distribution has expanded. I’ve received emails from India, Malaysia, Peru, and other countries miles and miles away from home. This must have become possible only recently.

On that note, where have you guys been for the past decade? I assume pursuing the non-band part of your lives.

You assume correctly. We finished Enjoy Eternal Bliss while we were studying at our respective universities, and by then had all moved away from home to various cities and had lives to get on with. Day-jobs, relationships, other obligations. It was difficult for the band—meeting only on odd weekends when our calendars could match up—but we always knew we wanted to make it work, however slowly.

What brought the move to get everyone back in the studio now?

Honestly, just the realisation that we could do it. The material for the record felt ready and though we still had some loose ends to tie up—additional instrumentation, some arrangements etc.—by the time we went into the studio, we did so with more or less completed pieces. And that was the first time that that had felt the case, even after the years of songwriting. We can be very hard on ourselves and each other with our internal criticism and though it was tough at times, I definitely feel it made the record stronger.

That’s excellent. Again, I feel like it comes through in the sound of the record. So is everyone still based in Canterbury?

None of us, actually. Phil from the touring band is nearby, but most of us have long left our hometown. We’re fairly scattered across the UK now.

Are you touring more to support the new album?

We have just finished our first UK tour with the new record. It felt great to be back on the road. Just a week of shows, but really rewarding, fulfilling, exciting. And playing a sold out show in London—our first there for two years—was genuinely moving for all of us.

That’s great to hear! Think you’ll make it over to the states again any time soon?

Definitely!

Well heads up when you do.

Stay tuned to yndi halda’s tour and/or Facebook page to find out if they’re playing a town near you. You can buy their album digitally via iTunes and get the CD and 2xLP vinyl from Burnt Toast.

Have you heard the dope new song from Paul Simon?

…yes, we did write “dope,” “new,” and “Paul Simon all in the same sentence.

No seriously, it’s awesome. Check it out.

Off the coming album Stranger to Stranger (Simon’s twelfth solo studio album), out June 4th and available for pre-order now.

“Totally best mixtape yet.”

Is what I said to myself after finalizing this month’s mixtape last night. I mean, what does this Troy guy, know, right? But this is a pretty great one. Between combing through the wealth of “new” bands that played SXSW and the others coming out of the woodwork as festival season gears up, I’m really into these songs and excited to hear more from all of these bands.

Starting off with an awesome pop song from the adorably named Australian duo Oh Pep!, who begins a North American tour in June (they play LA’s Bootleg in July) and then go straight to what’s likely the catchiest tune of the mic, “Forever, Never” by un-Google-able Bay Area band YOURS. We’ve also got an awesome song from Boxed In + Formation, both out of London, that’s the product of a collaborative project from producer Dan Carey requiring bands to write and record tracks in a single day at his studio; a beautifully droning, rhythmic song from Tokyo’s Kikagaku Moyo (translation: “geometric patterns”), a quintet that incorporates elements of classical Indian music, Krautrock, Traditional Folk, and 70s Rock; a soulful electronic track from Los Angeles’ Soayla (with accompanying art [right] from Tallulah Fontaine, who we dig); chilled out island pop from Holy ’57; glitchy beautifulness from the much-hyped NYC producer/musician The Range (AKA James Hinton); and we end with Paris’ Joon Moon and Brooklyn’s Arthur Moon (no relation). And more in-between.

Put the mix on, open a bottle of wine, and chill with a friend. And, as always, support any artist you like on here by buying their music and seeing them live.

This fucking guy.

We’d mentioned how blown away by the design and technology behind the web site for DJ, producer, and musician j.viewz back in January, when we included a track of his on our mixtape for that month. Now, he’s teamed up again with site designers and digital creative agency Hello Monday to once again blow our minds.

The mobile, app-based video for his new song, “Almost Forgot” is tempo-driven and affected by your heartbeat. As you watch and listen, by placing your finger over your mobile device’s camera, the rhythm and video itself pair themselves with your heart rate, reading it by perceiving subtle changes in your finger’s skin color along with each beat of the heart.

Totally beautiful and innovative.

See the tutorial for the video/app below and download it for free via iTunes.

Recently, for reasons well beyond our own control, we were in a position of listening to SiriusXM’s Hits 1, which—for anyone who doesn’t already know—is the company’s free station that doesn’t require a subscription.

Great, right?

So not great. First, the station’s peppered with repetitive ads to subscribe to SiriusXM, for obvious and excusable reasons. What’s less excusable is the severely repetitive playing of roughly twenty-some top 40 songs supposedly representing the most popular tracks on Sirius which, when tuning in for long periods of time, as we did, results in hearing some of these songs 5, 6, 7 times in less than a couple of hours. And trust me when I tell you, in my most curmudgeon-y old man voice, most of these songs are terrible. Some, like the new Panic! At the Disco (yes, there’s new Panic! At the Disco) and “Jet Black Heart” by hey-look-we’re-eom boy band 5 Seconds of Summer sound as if they were written specifically with listeners’ emotional harm first and foremost in-mind. I experienced something akin to nausea of the soul and I hope to never experience such a feeling again.

One song that I had to admit a guilty pleasure for, though, was “Roses” by NYC electronic duo The Chainsmokers and featuring Rozes (AKA Philly’s Elizabeth Mencel). Judging on a totally superficial basis, their press photos and bio lead me to believe that they’re either extremely adept at humorously playing the part of total douches for the sake of creating engaging and entertaining public personas…or they’re total douches. Or a little from column A, a little from column B. Regardless, these bros can write a fucking tune.

We refer you to exhibit A, below. But, really, everything we’ve heard is pretty nice. These guys play Coachella in the coming weeks. Obviously, right?

One of the standout tracks in the mixtape we put out last month was from Los Angeles band, TUFT. The band—formerly known as Hi Ho Silver Oh—is a trio made up of Casey Trela, Kevin Manwarren, and Roxy Radulescu (left to right above) that’s playing a release show for their debut full-length Look Look at Highland Park’s new venue The Hi Hat next Thursday night. We got a chance to preview the new album recently and honestly loved it, start to finish. TUFT plays sparkling, vocal- and melody-forward indie pop with orchestral undertones. So, right up our alley.

We got a chance to speak with the band’s founder and primary songwriter, Casey, in anticipation of the album release party about Listen to their lead single, “Stills,” below, check out on our favorites on our March mixtape, and check out their most recently released track, “Spools,” at the end of the interview.

raven + crow studio: So, not to diminish how much I like the new work, but I have to ask out of the gate—what’s the story behind the name change? Was it a legal conflict thing or did you all just crave some newness?

Casey Trela: We felt like our old band name created a context for people that didn’t match the music anymore. It’s not that we don’t love our old band name, it’s more that we grew apart. Bands change over time. It felt good to try something new, something more succinct.

And how did you get to TUFT as a new band name?

We had a running list that was mostly just for fun. There are so many bandnames, and so many mediums on which to claim your own (soundcloud, bandcamp, etc.). It was a puzzle to find one that clicked with all of us, wasn’t already taken, and was possible to easily pronounce and repeat to other people. Once I stopped trying hard to come up with a name, TUFT popped up. The definition is “a bunch or collection of something held or growing together at the base.” Everyone felt good about it.

It always reminds me of Bigwig from Watership Down. It is crazy though how the Internet impacts naming…anything, really, these days though. I know ya’ll are still on the road, but how was SXSW?

We only went for 3 days this year, which I think is the perfect amount of time. We only had 1 show in the shit (6th Street). We packed all of our SXSW craziness into that show—we toted gear a mile from where we were able to park, we pushed past drummers set up in the street and dancers dressed like ninja turtles, played our ambient/dynamic set sandwiched between a cover band and a hard rock band, had a quick laughing/crying breakdown, drank a Lone Star and got out. It was great. There’s lots of craziness, but most people are there because they love music in one way or another, and we got to play music for those people.

Yeah, despite the growing shade that’s thrown SXSW’s way every year, I’d say it’s still a great event. Any insane stories from Austin you can share?

Our last show was at a market where we played on their front porch. Rain started to pour down halfway through the set. Us and all the people there were under cover, so we were able to keep playing through the storm. It was a beautiful situation. I’d like to have a controlled rain storm at all shows.

Who wouldn’t? So your debut full-length as TUFT comes out next month with a release party at this new place, Hi-Hat. Our friends Moon Honey played there pretty recently and swore by it as the best new venue in LA. Are ya’ll psyched?

We are psyched, stoked, amped AND pumped.

Damn.

I’m excited for all the new mid-size venues opening up in LA in general. It feels like there’s more of a chance for bands that live in LA to play in LA. We live close to the Hi Hat. To have our album release in the neighborhood is a dream.

Totally agree with about the great venue scene in LA right now. It’s great, because we moved from New York recently and I feel like it was the exact opposite situation there when we left—every good venue shuttering, including ones that had been open since the beginning of independent music in New York. Back to you guys though, what’s got you most excited about the new material on the album?

We spent so much time with it in writing, recording, and mixing that the most exciting thing now is getting it out to people. We tried a lot of new arrangement things within our setup (drums, bass, guitar, vocals), and brought in a few outside elements (strings, horns, synth) to really get our vision through on record.

Nice. I know there was a pledge aspect to it too, but was that for the recording or touring or what?

We went to Pledge toward the end of the process in order to do a pre-sale of the record and to raise some gas money for the tour. This is the longest tour we’ve done (about 5 weeks). We booked it all ourselves, and are driving around in my minivan. Having some money raised made it feel a lot less daunting. Pledge also offered a way to make buying the album a rewarding experience. It’s easy nowadays to stream music and move on. We wanted to give the album the value we felt like it deserved, and give people who invested in it a showing of thanks.

What kind of response did you get to the crowd funding?

We first got a really nice response from people who already knew about us. They got the word going when the campaign started. Since then, we’ve gotten some international orders and new folks found us through the Pledge site. We’re currently at 175% of our original goal, for which we’re extremely thankful. It seems to be spreading to lots of new people.

That’s really great. Who did the art for your new album?

Roxy, who plays guitar and sings backup in TUFT, does all our artwork and graphics. She made the artwork with a paper cutout and layering technique. She’s a great graphic designer outside of the band as well (see: roxymakesthings on Etsy, and her tumblr blog: moviesincolor.com).

Okay, I was going to tell you how much we like the album design, but now I’m even more enamored with that raccoon pillow she makes. I think I need that. Who does what in the band, then? Do you all have pretty strict roles or do they bleed into each other?

Everything bleeds together. Songwriting-wise, I write the lyrics and skeleton arrangement, then Roxy and Kevin fill in with their parts. I tend to do most of the management and booking type stuff. We use the Slack app to figure out/delegate most plans. Everyone chips in when we’re coming up with ideas, or looking for shows and places to stay. Roxy does all the graphics. Kevin is sort of a renaissance man between all the categories and runs the Snapchat.

You all a musical publicity machine—well-done. Are you all native Angelenos or fellow transplants?

Kevin is the closest to native—he grew up in Claremont. Roxy was born in Romania, then moved to Montreal, then Rockford, IL. I was born in central NY, then moved to North Carolina before I transplanted to LA.

Right—I kind of love the Memento-esque bio Ben Axelrad wrote for you all. I assume it’s mostly flavor—you didn’t really pick up Kevin as a hitchhiker or meet Roxy in a truck stop…did you?

Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.

We’re 100% putting that in the pull quote. What brought everyone here in the first place then? Ambitions for the silver screen? Beach bumming? Tacos?

NC actually has pretty great Mexican food, some nice beach spots, and is the home of hit shows like Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill, so those were actually all covered. I moved with a big group of friends from college who were all getting into film or music. It was an adventure that popped up at the right time and has been challenging but rewarding. I think we all moved to LA because we had creative pursuits, and it’s a big gathering place for creative people.

Nicely put. So what do you love about LA then?

There are a lot of very driven people, which can be annoying, intimidating, or overwhelming at first. Once you find a good group of friends though, that drive becomes inspiring and helpful. The tacos and beach are definitely a bonus. If I were to move away, I would miss being able to find good food at all hours. The landscape is wild with surprisingly beautiful spots scattered around the city. It’s a nice place to live if you have the energy for it.

Hear, hear. Well thanks for your time, Casey.

If you’re in Southern California, catch TUFT’s record release next Thursday, April 7 at The Hi Hat and you can pre-order their album via their Pledge site. Seattle + Portland, the band’s playing your towns tonight and Friday, respectively, and they’re making their way down the coast for their homecoming next week; check their Facebook page for a full list of shows.

Band photo by Elli Papayanopoulos.

A little over a week ago, one of our favorite bands, The National, and their label, 4AD, finally announced details of a project they’ve all been talking about for a while now—Day of the Dead, a massive tribute to the Grateful Dead that marks the 20th album of original music the organization Red Hot has produced over the past 25 years to help raise awareness and money to fight HIV/AIDS and related health issues. The collection was curated by curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National and singer Matt Berninger has been talking about the project since his press tour for the documentary his brother did, Mistaken for Strangers, in 2014. So it’s been on people’s radar for a while now, but we don’t think we’re alone in not until now understanding the scope of the project—the 5 CD, soon-to-be-announced LP box set, nearly 6 hour long collection features 60 bands doing their renditions of 59 Dead tracks. That’s nearly a workday’s worth of Ahoni, Wilco, Angel Olsen, Jim James, The Tallest Man on Earth, Local Natives, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and, of course, The National, playing some of the most beloved songs of American country-folk-pop-Americana…to name a fraction of those involved.

We can’t imagine what it took to put this whole thing together, but we like what we’ve heard so far. Day of the Dead won’t hit store shelves/your download folder until May 20, but, you can pre-order it via 4AD now—t’s a mere $29.99 for all of that music and remember, it benefits the good work of Red Hot (the last collection the Dessners did for the organization, Dark Was The Night, has raised over $1.5 million for the organizations fighting AIDS to date). 

One of our favorite tributes so far is The War on Drugs‘ version of “Touch of Grey”; you can listen to that below along with four other tracks that have been released to promote the collection by The National (they actually get four tracks across the collection), Phosphorescent + Jenny Lewis,  Bruce Hornsby + DeYarmond Edison, and Melbourne’s darling of indie rock, Courtney Barnett. Full track list of Day of the Dead below the video streams. Find out more and pre-order the album in its various forms via the Day of the Dead web site.

Bonus related post over at our sister web journal, Forgotten Favorite—our write up on the Dead, Freaks and Geeks, and “Box of Rain”.

“Thunder” (Vol.1)
01. Touch of Grey – The War on Drugs
02. Sugaree – Phosphorescent, Jenny Lewis & Friends
03. Candyman – Jim James & Friends
04. Cassidy – Moses Sumney, Jenny Lewis & Friends
05. Black Muddy River – Bruce Hornsby and DeYarmond Edison
06. Loser – Ed Droste, Binki Shapiro & Friends
07. Peggy-O – The National
08. Box of Rain – Kurt Vile and the Violators (featuring J Mascis)
09. Rubin and Cherise – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Friends
10. To Lay Me Down – Perfume Genius, Sharon Van Etten & Friends
11. New Speedway Boogie – Courtney Barnett
12. Friend of the Devil – Mumford & Sons
13. Uncle John’s Band – Lucius
14. Me and My Uncle – The Lone Bellow & Friends
15. Mountains of the Moon – Lee Ranaldo, Lisa Hannigan & Friends
16. Black Peter – Anohni and yMusic
17. Garcia Counterpoint – Bryce Dessner
18. Terrapin Station (Suite) – Daniel Rossen, Christopher Bear and The National (featuring Josh Kaufman, Conrad Doucette, So Percussion and Brooklyn Youth Chorus)
19. Attics of My Life – Angel Olsen
20. St. Stephen (live) – Wilco with Bob Weir

“Lightning” (Vol. 2)
01. If I Had the World to Give – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
02. Standing on the Moon – Phosphorescent & Friends
03. Cumberland Blues – Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band
04. Ship of Fools – Tallest Man on Earth & Friends
05. Bird Song – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Friends
06. Morning Dew – The National
07. Truckin’ – Marijuana Deathsquads
08. Dark Star – Cass McCombs, Joe Russo & Friends
09. Nightfall of Diamonds – Nightfall of Diamonds
10. Transitive Refraction Axis for John Oswald – Tim Hecker
11. Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad – Lucinda Williams & Friends
12. Playing in the Band – Tunde Adebimpe, Lee Ranaldo & Friends
13. Stella Blue – Local Natives
14. Eyes of the World – Tal National
15. Help on the Way – Bela Fleck
16. Franklin’s Tower – Orchestra Baobab
17. Till the Morning Comes – Luluc with Xylouris White
18. Ripple – The Walkmen
19. Brokedown Palace – Richard Reed Parry with Caroline Shaw and Little Scream (featuring Garth Hudson)

“Sunshine” (Vol. 3)
01. Here Comes Sunshine – Real Estate
02. Shakedown Street – Unknown Mortal Orchestra
03. Brown-Eyed Women – Hiss Golden Messenger
04. Jack-A-Roe – This Is the Kit
05. High Time – Daniel Rossen and Christopher Bear
06. Dire Wolf – The Lone Bellow & Friends
07. Althea – Winston Marshall, Kodiak Blue and Shura
08. Clementine Jam – Orchestra Baobab
09. China Cat Sunflower -> I Know You Rider – Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
10. Easy Wind – Bill Callahan
11. Wharf Rat – Ira Kaplan & Friends
12. Estimated Prophet – The Rileys
13. Drums -> Space – Man Forever, So Percussion and Oneida
14. Cream Puff War – Fucked Up
15. Dark Star – The Flaming Lips
16. What’s Become of the Baby – s t a r g a z e
17. King Solomon’s Marbles – Vijay Iyer
18. Rosemary – Mina Tindle & Friends
19. And We Bid You Goodnight – Sam Amidon
20. I Know You Rider (live) – The National with Bob Weir

We’re not usually ones for country music…not usually, but true country—the stuff that continues to point back to the old time greats and doesn’t veer pop—that stuff sometimes gets us.

Case in point, Margo Price, out of (you guessed it) Nashville. She’s got that authentic country twang and deep, deep soul that she puts into her lyrics and that simply can’t be ignored in her utterly impressive voice. And he backing band is fucking tight.

Our friend Becky turned us on to herald we got a chance to catch her in the intimate setting of the hotel cafe—hard country in the heart of Hollywood. She’s blowing up a bit of late after a run at SXSW and it sounds like it’s some well-deserved success after years of rough times and struggle in the industry.

Price sat down with NPR’s David Greene while she was in town—you can hear that interview below, but first, check out her single “Hurtin’ (On the Bottle)”.