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Synthesizeris the title of A Place to Bury Strangers' seventh album. It is also a physical entity, a synthesizer madespecificallyfor A Place to Bury Strangers’ seventh album.Synthesizeris a record that celebrates sounds that are spontaneous and natural, the kind of music that can only come from collaboration and community. It now features a fully collaborative new lineup, withJohn and Sandra Fedowitz. That spirit of reinvention is all over the record.Synthesizeris out October 4, 2024 -- only on Dedstrange.

Supersonic Home, the anticipated debut LP from Pittsburgh's resident musical wunderkinds Adventures, is an ambitious blend of powerhouse influences: these ten songs reimagine of the best parts of 90's alt-rock and emo and infuse them with the cathartic energy of punk. However, Adventures delivers much more than just the sum of these parts. Throughout upbeat anthems like opener "Dream Blue Haze" and pensive, melancholic retreats like "Tension and "Long Hair," the constant vocal tandem of Reba Meyers and Kimi Hanauer radiates above every infectious pop-rock riffs and the warm, rhythmic backbone of bass and keyboard. No matter what draws you in to listen to Adventures, there is something undeniably relatable in these songs about honestly dealing with self-doubt, troubled hearts, and the everyday struggle to feel content that will make you keep coming back to Supersonic Home.

For the last 15 years, Allah-Las have alchemically melded surf rock washes with folk rock jangle and rock, building up their lauded music podcast, Reverberation Radio, and record label, Calico Discos, in the process. But a lot has changed since Matthew Correia (drums/vocals), Spencer Dunham (bass, guitar, vocals), Miles Michaud (guitar, organ, vocals), and Pedrum Siadatian (guitar, synth, vocals) first bonded over psych rock vinyl in the back room at Amoeba Records in the late aughts. Zuma 85 signals the start of a new era for Allah-Las, and finds the band reinventing itself in defiance of the algorithmic categorization and robotic sterility. Recorded in the midst of the shift from the Old World to whatever branch of reality we’re on now, it’s a return, too: The album will be released October 13th on their own label, Calico Discos, in partnership with Innovative Leisure, which released early defining statements like Allah-Las (2012) and Worship The Sun (2014).

On 'Mirror, Reflect,' Amy O returns to form as she documents her transition into motherhood in the early days of the pandemic. Initially conceived as a lo-fi endeavor to record songs made with friends in those days of uncertainty, 'Mirror, Reflect' is an intimate and exploratory work that weaves collected home and field recordings with shimmering synths and Oelsner's playful lyricism.A stalwart presence in the indie-pop underground since 2012, Oelsner shifted her approach to record making on 'Mirror, Reflect' to emphasize process over product, with the resulting songs born out of a myriad of home sessions, song-a-day projects, songwriting workshops and online collaborations. This kind of patchwork, home-spun approach was familiar to Oelsner, who made her name with her sparkling, homemade pop songs before releasing three studio albums, including her most recent album, 2019's Shell.'Mirror, Reflect' gently shrugs off the sheen of those studio albums, as an early prenatal recording of Oelsner's daughter's heartbeat opens the record in the near-ambient instrumental prelude of "Honey" -- a wonderfully nuanced dispatch from the dog days of summer that's under-bellied by both the precarity and beauty of the early months of infancy and new motherhood. Oelsner's knack for finding magic in the mundane is also deeply apparent on "Dribble Dribble," where the stick-with-you nature of the playful rhyme schemes of the children's books that became a regular part of her literary intake are worked into a lilting reflection on resilience, destruction and loss.Oelsner's initiation into motherhood is inseparable from the poetic heart of 'Mirror, Reflect', but the album is also largely informed by the shifts in Oelsner's relationship to herself. Through playful and emotionally acute observations, Amy O turns the potentially contractive experiences of motherhood, isolation, family and aging into a freewheeling work where ephemerality and humor collide over her deft lyrical phrasing, musicality and her keen observations t...

Knife Man, is a record about love, poverty, violence, luck, discrimination, homelessness, and Phoenix, Arizona. Recorded by their longtime engineer jalipaz at audioconfusion, AJJ formed an Arizona all-star band, borrowing members from Roar, Doth, French Quarter, and Malakai. The Knife Man sessions have yielded Andrew Jackson Jihad's most cohesive and driving album yet.

The descent into darkness is a trope we find time again across history, literature and film. But there’s also an abyss above. There’s a winding white staircase that goes ever upward into the great unknown — each step, each turn, requiring a greater boldness and confidence than the one before. This is the journey on which we find Angel Olsen.

Olsen's artistic beginnings as a collaborator shifted seamlessly to her magnificent, cryptic-to-cosmic solo work, and then she formed bands to play her songs, and her stages and audiences grew exponentially. But all along, Olsen was more concerned with a different kind of path, and on her vulnerable, Big Mood new album, 'All Mirrors,' we can see her taking an introspective deep dive towards internal destinations and revelations. In the process of making this album, she found a new sound and voice, a blast of fury mixed with hard won self-acceptance.

Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen's Big Time were forged in such a whiplash. Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen's process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she'd been avoiding for some time. "Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me," she said. Three days later, her father died and shortly after her mother passed away. The shards of this grief - the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents - are scattered throughout the album. Three weeks after her mother's funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album. Loss has long been a subject of Olsen's elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she. If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She's working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice - both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

An icy wave of distortion. Gristle and bone bass. Incantatory, bloodcurdling poetics. Anna Funk Damage returns to Osare! Editions with a full-length LP, laying down 13 occultist tracks, turbocharged by industrialism, dissolution and heartbreak. The Italian producer more than lives up to his namesake, delivering his signature, genre-destroying blend of experimental-punk-techno and steely dance floor deviance.

Opening with a howl, clatter and smash, on 'Sono Spento’, Andrea Natale takes the shape of a self-annihilating robot, his heavily pitched-down vocals laden in layers of FX. ‘Maybe I’ whirls into a slow build screech while 'Allegri Rimpianti’ joins together organic, pummelling percussion, sharp synth chords, and jangly guitar for a nightmarish trifecta of throbbing noise. Occasionally, Natale's presence falls away entirely, allowing for unadulterated machinic ecstasy to take over. Cogs grind on 'Memoria, Solitudine’, a dark and lolloping track, thrumming with sinister, malicious intent, before 'La Fine’ signs off, lurching skittishly like an anxious, artificially pumping heart.

Interweaving elements of avant-garde ambient, rock, and even black metal, all rewired through a Moog Dfam and a Mother-32 interface, II Corpo Che Si Rompe is powered by unrelenting energy as Natale descends to ever more demonic, punishing depths.

Artsick was formed in June 2018 when Christina Riley was feeling "artsick" and writing songs, but missing the inspiration and excitement of collaborating with her old band, Burnt Palms. Christina was soon joined by Mario Hernandez (Kids On A Crime Spree, Ciao Bella) on drums and Donna McKean (Lunchbox, Hard Left) on bass and a band was born. Following up their terrific 2018 7" single they are back with their debut album "Fingers Crossed," a thrilling, compelling and downright fun record that surveys a vast swathe of indie and indiepop history, from DIY progenitors like Dolly Mixture through the punkier side of C86 (think Talulah Gosh, Fat Tulips) to the 90s K Records-centered International Pop Underground and straight through more recent exemplars like Vivian Girls and Colleen Green. Across its 11 songs "Fingers Crossed" is packed with great songs and memorable moments, indelible melodies and heartfelt lyrics. Christina says that she was "always been drawn to fuzzy guitars, melodies with emotion and songs with urgency" and that is readily apparent on every moment of this excellent album.

Like a character out of your favorite movie or a novel you can’t put down, Ashe possesses her own mystique rooted in quiet wisdom, yet amplified with vibrance and spirit. For as much as she embodies timeless California cool (northern or southern, take your pick), she’s got enough gusto and moxie to hang on the East Coast or down South. Musically, she slides untouchable hooks over dusty instrumentation, connecting Laurel Canyon eloquence with UK rock scope. After an injury sidelined her future as a gymnast, she immersed herself in music as a kid. Attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, she kickstarted her journey with the single “Used To It” in 2017 followed by The Rabbit Hole EP a year later. Teaming up with Finneas as producer, she reached critical mass on 2019’s Moral of the Story: Chapter 1 EP. The single “Moral of the Story” appeared in NETFLIX’s To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You and exploded on streaming platforms, going platinum in the US and Silver in the UK. Her 2021 full-length debut, Ashlyn, arrived to widespread critical acclaim from Variety, Nylon, Billboard, and more. Beyond tallying nearly 2 billion total streams, she took over television with performances on Today, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, American Idol, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Now, she turns the page on another chapter of her story on her second full-length album, Rae [Mom + Pop] out on October 14th. Rae was produced by Leroy Clampitt (Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber), mixed by Manny Marroquin (Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Rihanna) and mastered by Michelle Mancini (Kid Cudi, Camila Cabello, Halsey).

The latest album by Bachi Da Pietra in duo; the most extreme (and also the most pop) and champion of paradoxes: memorable songs that form a concept dedicated to early eighties Metal hybridized with black music, obsessively tribal. For a concept like "Necroide" ending up on cassette is its death, or its new life.

Brooklyn-based musician and producer Barrie Lindsay,known simply as Barrie, has a passion for creating left-of-centerpop music. She spends her days writing songs and tinkeringin Logic, stockpiling her creations in a vast archive offolders and hard drives. When it came time to select thesongs for her sophomore LP, `Barbara,' she narrowed it downto sixteen tracks. As the record came together, it becameclear that there would be two separate projects - the firstbeing `Barbara,' an emotionally charged collection of songsdealing with the loss of a parent, the love of a new partner, andfinding one's own identity. The remaining five tracks, whichwere more light-hearted and o the cu, were compiled into anew project titled `5K.'As an avid runner, Barrie named the EP after the common footrace. The aptly titled lead single, "Races," is a delightfulsynth-pop track in a unique 12/8 time, built around a bombasticdrum kit and giddy key ris. "Nocturne Interlude" acts as asegue between `Barbara' and `5K,' showcasing a hauntingmelody amidst dark brass-like synths. Second half highlight"Ghost World" has a distorted guitar ri and classic drumpattern that evokes a forgotten 90's radio b-side. The songwas recorded entirely by Barrie herself, serving as her ownband on guitar, bass, keys, and drum kit. Even though mostpeople would finish listening to the project front to backbefore finishing a 5k run, the short, sweet, and melodically richEP begs to be replayed over and over. With `5K,' Barrie showcasesher versatility as an artist, closing the loop between thesounds found on her debut LP `Happy To Be Here' and herfollow-up `Barbara'.

Some deadly bass drum for your tape deck!

Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitars strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With Bcmc, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life"s strange and sunny days. Cooper"s organ and synths and Bill"s guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, as set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of "em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other"s sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance.

Inspired by a love of artists such as Bill Evans, Lester Young, Chet Baker and Vince Guaraldi, Dustin Payseur reimagines some of his greatest hits from the Beach Fossils catalog alongside a group of formally trained jazz musicians. A rich and mellow mix of piano, saxophone, upright bass and brushed drums explore the contours of familiar songs, soaring Payseur's melancholic harmonies to new heights.

The garage-y psychedelic outsider pop band Being Dead shines bright with their distinctly right-brain songcraft, mischievous humor, and implausibly great vocal harmonies. As they've graduated from curiosity to cult favorites, we've yet to encounter a single person who dislikes Being Dead. Recorded at Radio Milk, producer Jim Vollentine (White Denim, Trail of Dead, Spoon) spit-shines Being Dead's sound without diminishing their weirdo-best-friend vibes. Their penchant for idiosyncratic lyricism and musical unpredictability shines throughout the album as the duo moves between everything from garage rock and pop to Laurel Canyon-style folk.

Bendrix Littleton is the writing and recording project of Nashville-via-Dallas musician and producer Bennett Littlejohn. The self-aware, malaise-filled songs on his debut LP 'Deep Dark South' are imbued with the painful beauty of the modern American South, including themes of drug and alcohol abuse, and the dissolution of relationships. Bendrix wrote most of the album on a vintage Harmony H162 acoustic guitar that he found at a flea market in Kentucky and restrung with higher pitched strings (a 'Nashville tuning'). After running the tracks through a Tascam four track cassette recorder, which sped the songs up ever so slightly, Bendrix added layers of lap steel, dobro, and pedal steel. 'I tried to pair instruments that typically aren't used together--one's that I've shied away from after playing them with uninspired country music.' 'Deep Dark South' conjures the feeling of wonder one gets from looking up at the vast Southern night sky.

Ever since childhood, learning to play various instruments in a suburban Cincinnati basement alongside his brother Bryce, Aaron Dessner has consistently sought an emotional outlet and deep human connection through music _ be it as a primary songwriter in The National, a founder and architect of beloved collaboration-driven music festivals, or collaborator on two critically acclaimed and chart-topping Taylor Swift albums recorded in complete pandemic-era isolation at his Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, among many other projects. Through it all, Dessner has brought together an unlikely community of musicians that share his impulse to connect, celebrate and, most of all, process emotion and experience through music. This generous spirit and desire to push music forward has never been more deeply felt than on Big Red Machine's "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?," the second album from Dessner's evermorphing project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. In 2008, while assembling material for the charitycompilation "Dark Was the Night," Dessner sent Vernon a song sketch titled "big red machine". Vernon interpreted "big red machine" as a beating heart and finished the song accordingly _ a metaphor Dessner says "still sticks with me today. This project goes to many places and is always on some level about experimentation, but it shines a light on why I make music in the first place, which is an emotional need. It's one of my therapies and one of the ways I interrogate the past." Released in 2018, Big Red Machine's self-titled debut album evolved from improvisation and what Dessner calls "structured experimentalism," with an ear toward building tracks that would work well in a live setting alongside visual elements. When Dessner and Vernon started the Eaux Claires Music Festival in 2015, they staged the original "Big Red Machine" as an improvisation-based performance piece. They later took that show to the People collective's Berlin residency and festival, and to Dessner's Haven Festival in Copenhagen. "Big Red Machine started as this thing we would do for fun, and we fell in love with the feeling of it," says Dessner." Vernon agrees: "I remember it feeling really easy, but we never knew what would happen. It was exciting. As time went on, we just kept doing things together. And our friendship has grown strong, alongside all the collaborative stuff." New Big Red Machine material began taking shape in spring 2019, when Vernon came to visit Dessner at Long Pond. The first week produced songs such as "Reese," "8:22am" and eventual album opener "Latter Days," a haunting number sung by Vernon and Anaïs Mitchell that set the emotional tenor for what was to come. "It was clear to her that the early sketch Justin and I made of Latter Days was about childhood, or loss of innocence and nostalgia for a time before you've grown into adulthood _ before you've hurt people or lost people and made mistakes. Anaïs defined the whole record When she sang that, as these same themes kept appearing again and again," Dessner says. In the ensuing months, Vernon and Dessner would meet up when they could, and in the meantime, Dessner developed the existing material and wrote new instrumental tracks which he sent Vernon, always eager to hear what he would receive back. "Justin is incredibly gifted, but he's also disruptive in the best way," says Dessner, pointing to the first note of the song "Birch" as a prime example. "It's absolutely brilliant, but it was very surprising when I heard it the first time. I can't tell you what that interval is. There are many moments working with him where your head hits the wall in amazement like that." In the early stages of the pandemic, Swift approached Dessner to work with her on what would become the sister albums "folklore" and "evermore." Dessner describes this period as a "creative blur," during which he'd be writing material for Swift and Big Red Machine simultaneously. "I think this was an intense growing period for me, I was learning so much from Taylor and the process. Along the way, I shared all of our unfinished Big Red Machine songs with her and she really found them inspiring and gave me so much positive feedback and encouragement," he says. "I think that helped me realize how connected this Big Red Machine music was to everything else I was doing and that I was always supposed to be chasing these ideas. I was finding new sounds and ways of working through these songs. I just hadn't been able to finish them. So, I did." Beyond Vernon and Swift's encouragement, many of Dessner's previous collaborators and friends show up for him here, continuing the reciprocal exchange of ideas that has come to define his creative community. Songs feature guest vocals and writing contributions from artist friends including Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold ("Phoenix"), Ben Howard and This Is The Kit ("June's a River"), Naeem ("Easy to Sabotage'), Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Nova ("Hutch," a tune inspired by Dessner's late friend, Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison) and Swift herself ("Birch" and "Renegade," the latter an instant-classic Taylor earworm summed up by the poignant lyric "Is it insensitive for me to say / get your shit together so I can love you." The song was recorded in Los Angeles at the Kitty Committee studio in March 2021, the same week when Swift and Dessner took home the Grammy for Album of the Year for "folklore.") "This is all music I generated, but it is interesting to hear how different people relate to it, or how different voices collide with it," Dessner says. "That's what makes it special. With everyone that's on this record, there's an openness, a creative generosity and an emotional quality that connects it all together." As he continued writing prolifically on his own, Dessner noticed a theme emerging -- the idea of sitting with the uncomfortability of personal and family darkness from his childhood and reflecting on how emotional issues he dealt with growing up have reverberated through his adult life. It became clear that some of these he'd need to sing himself; songs such as "The Ghost of Cincinnati" and "Magnolia" address the disintegration of marriage and family and mental health, asking pointed questions of himself and those closest to him. "Brycie" is an ode to his aforementioned twin and National bandmate, who picked up on the musical vibes immediately when Dessner played the song for him for the first time backstage at a National show in Washington D.C. "He picked along to it with me and it immediately sounded like Aaron and Bryce playing the guitar in the basement as kids, which was my intent," Dessner remembers. "The words mean a lot to me. It's about my childhood with Bryce, and how I had pretty severe depression in high school. He was the one who kept me going and took care of me until I was back on my feet. I've lost close friends to depression and this song is about how important it was that Bryce was there for me at that time and is still here." In addition to being one of the more lyrically significant tracks on the album, Dessner says singing it himself felt like an important act of self-acceptance. "I always sing under my breath when I write music, but I usually hand it off to [National vocalist] Matt [Berninger] or others" he says. "When you're in a band for so long and somebody else is that person, you come to rely on it and I've always loved Matt's voice and his words. But singing `Brycie' myself helped rewire my brain to realize that maybe Big Red Machine is the project that not only enables me to create songs with other people, but also sometimes finish songs on my own." Recalling sessions at Sonic Ranch in Texas when Dessner recorded his vocal takes, Vernon says, "Aaron showed me `Brycie' a couple years ago now. I was like, this is beautiful, and you should do more singing. Not only would it be good for the future of your songwriting, but your voice sounds really good to me. It was exciting to see him flourish in that way _ to now be a part of that process and realize the hardships in that and also the victories. On this record, he's leading the charge, wholly and completely." Musically, "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?" features what Dessner calls maybe the "clearest distillation" of his varying songwriting and production styles. Songs like "Reese," the Dessner-sung "Magnolia" and the elegiac "Hutch" are built on the kinds of tear-jerking piano melodies millions of fans have come to love from The National, but then move at their own pace toward unusual sonic destinations. "Aaron's greatest gift as a collaborator is his ability to evolve and experiment with the emotional sound that is so natural to him," Vernon says of the material. Elsewhere, the dream-like "Hoping Then" sets layered vocals by Vernon, Dessner and Hannigan ("It's the on the edge of why I can't sleep soundly") atop chopped and phased violin lines, programmed drums and countermelodies played on a rubber bridge guitar. His brother Bryce's orchestration ebbs and flows throughout this song and many others. The main instrumental track of the chugging, groovy "Easy to Sabotage" was stitched together from two different live recordings and later enveloped in warm keyboard textures and the head-nodding vocals of Naeem. "It just feels alive and electric, and it just happened," Dessner says of the song. That sense of shared experience extended to the new album's title, which was coined by Swift after Dessner told her he wasn't sure what to call the new album. Intuitively summing up the themes, she suggested titling it "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?," a question which she pointed out could refer to multiple subjects addressed therein: "childhood, family, marriages, a depression, a losing streak, a winning streak or a creative streak. Taylor saw it all so clearly," Dessner says. "A year ago, we'd never even worked together. It's so cool that this community keeps extending and that everyone who contributed to this album connected so naturally to the emotions at the heart of the music."

Bill MacKay and Drag City are delirious with pride to announce the discovery of a new territory: Locust Land, a record which seeks to reflect the nerve-shredding consciousness run amok in our world today - and somehow allay it with sound. Bill"s music is a visceral crackling where it meets the air, and Locust Land can"t help but reflect its era more than any other in his discography.It"s been five years since the release of Fountain Fire - but in the interim, Bill has barely stopped moving, collaborating with artists across the spectrum, including cellist Katinka Kleijn, banjo player Nathan Bowles and keyboardist Cooper Crain. He"s also contributed to recordings by Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy (Blind Date Party), and Black Duck (on their self-titled record featuring Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback). Forget five years - how"d he even get Locust Land squeezed out of his temporal lobes?Bill"s sense of music as art is constantly modulating - lifting off from where it is found and naturally migrating to some other place. Sometimes, that"s elsewhere - others, it"s simply to be found deeper inside the starting point. And so, the action of moving on informs the landscape of Locust Land. This manifests in several different ways.A restless energy and urgency is repeatedly felt - in the driving momentum of "Keeping in Time," "Glow Drift," and "When I Was Here" - while a dogged persistence radiates from the tone colors and percussion of "Oh, Pearl." Mating a dirge-like desolation with sparkling guitars, "Radiator" adds darkness and depth. The sense of searching, displacement and longing in vocal tracks "Keeping in Time," "Half of You," and "When I Was Here" speak literally to the tumult of current vibrations. Within the arrangements, there"s also departure from previous norms - in addition to the brilliant guitar work for which he is known, Bill plays a variety of keyboards, from piano to organ to synth, extending his music with the available voicings, while enri...

Billy Cobb’s Bear Album showcases Billy at some of his most emotional and vulnerable songwriting.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll love. You’ll die. Billy Cobb’s The S.S. Krill is a pirate love story. Running through just about every type of sea shanty, the album carries you through the waves of Johnny and Joel’s relationship, one yearning for the land and one yearning for the sea.