Indierock | Alternative Tape 431 Items

Introducing Jahnah Camille (pronounced Hannah), a young artistemerging from the DIY scene of Birmingham, Alabama. Camille'ssongs capture the rollercoaster of teenage angst, heartbreak andintrospection over a well-made bed of driving guitars and catchy,compact melodies. A five-track EP infused with anxiety and grit, i triedto freeze light, but only remember a girl, is a shining introductoryproject smoothed over by Camille's sugar-sweet voice and cuttinglyricism.Much of the EP's songs were written and recorded while Camille wasstill in high school, taking trips back and forth from Atlanta to record.In the time following, Camille dug into the local DIY scene, steadilygaining an impressive resume of opening slots as she cut her teethsupporting acts like Clairo, Soccer Mommy, Cryogeyser andWednesday as they came through town. Now 19 years old, Camilledelivers an excellent snapshot of those uncertain and wildly hopefullate teen years. i tried to freeze light captures Camille approachingheartbreak and self-perception from a variety of angles-each trackplaying slightly with genre and cadence and infused with influencefrom her musical heroes, like Liz Phair and Fiona Apple.The EP pulls at a range of alternative rock and pop threads, there'sthe 90s alternative rock opener "flesh" and the country-gaze-tinged"roadkill." Camille then softens on the swooning synth-layered ode tolove lost, "elliot," before relaxing into a folksy, acoustic "paper doll."Iwanna talk and not spill out carnival sounds" Camille confides oncloser "carnival sounds"--a track that illuminates the singer's art-popinfluences and knack for revealing tender and at times searing admissionsthrough her lyricism. While misunderstandings color theemotional sentiment of the EP, Camille's artistry and expressioncome through clear as day on i tried to freeze light, presenting her asa promising young voice with real talent and a hunger for musicalexperimentation.

While Duster went into hibernation in theyear 2000, Clay Parton's four-track neverstopped rolling. Recorded alone at homeover several years, Birds In The Groundis an album of 30-something, post-9/11malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (EverythingIs All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym,Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy andclean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocaldisappear into noise. This deluxe pressingis packaged in a gorgeous tip on sleeveand includes the complete lyrics for thiscryptic entry of the Dusterverse.

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

Matt Loveridge is a prolific multi-instrumentalist condemned to Bristol, UK. He has over sixty solo records under various monikers, done before and after his time in Beak>, none of which appear on major streaming platforms, nor get much attention. His work as Mxlx is a miasmatic fog, and he tosses the listener deep into it. Kicking Away At The Decrepit Walls Til The Beautiful Sunshine Blisters Thru The Cracks is his most celebrated release (if one counts hate mail), and it appears here for the first time both on vinyl and somewhere not on his own site.

Songs swerve between ambient, electronic ambient noise, metal, and industrial. Vocal harmonies ride arpeggiated basslines and shimmering synth lines, ascending upwards before plummeting into distorted screams. And yet, Loveridge’s aggression does not overlook introspection. He faces one stripped of all pretense, creaking “I’ve got that dumb skull of yours locked in place,” apologizing, “I’m sorry for all that I’ve done in the name of myself” and laughing in one’s face, “Just kidding, I hope you rot in the ground.” Drawing from an obsession with literature, he’s converted a life stricken with bouts of depression and homelessness into febrile sonic turbulence. He channels the intensity of groups like Pharmakon and The Body, while embracing compositional noise like Colin Stetson. With droning organs, emotionless chanting, and fleeting walls of sound, his results have more to do with cosmic futility than petty score-settling.

Mxlx produces barren liturgies of raw emotion, like a fallen medieval monk given a synthesizer. He pulls the listener from comfort, spits in their eye, and abandons them as roadkill. An explosive catharsis not for faint hearts or distracted minds.

Belarusian post-punk / synth pop group Molchat Doma have always exuded the kind of brutalist aesthetic of the architecture that adorns their album art. It's cold, gray, imposing, industrial_and yet there are human hearts beating within those foundations. In the wake of their breakthrough success in 2020, the trio endured a polarity of experiences, from the nadir of an uprooted life and forced relocation away from their native Minsk to the apex of headlining massive shows across the world. It was in this headspace that the band settled into their new home of Los Angeles to finish writing their fourth album Belaya Polosa, a testament to change in difficult times, a love letter to the digital pulse of the `90s, and a technicolor reinvention of the band's somber dancefloor anthems.From the opening synth swell and drum machine throb of "Ty Zhe Ne Znaesh' Kto Ya," to the goth / post-punk austerity of "Son", to the swirling electronic textures mixed with reverb-drenched guitar flourishes, expansive space, and yearning vocals of title track "Belaya Polosa" - that suggests Depeche Mode at their most reflective or The Cure at their most downtrodden - to the sultry and seductive "Chernye Cvety"_ a track reminiscent of Duran Duran's early `90s output in its fusion of dreamy guitars and authoritative mechanized beats _ and the interwoven layers of instrumentation, soaring chorus, and melodic sophistication of "Ya Tak Ustal", it's clear that Molchat Doma are operating on another level.Molchat Doma gained following with earlier albums that sound like third-generation bootlegs of banned recordings from the Eastern Bloc made after a few key entries in the Factory Records catalog were smuggled in from the West. Belaya Polosa propels them into a new direction while retaining their cold minimalist delivery they're known for. The basement grime and dirty tape-head sound of their previous work are now making space for digital luster and shimmering production values.And while Molchat Doma's broadened aural spectrum adds a syne...

A sprawling patchwork of the artist’s dreams and fears, Parannoul’s third album After the Magic explores the enigmatic solo artist’s life in the wake of his second album’s overnight success.

Expanding on the shoegaze-shaded emo that made Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream so beloved by lo-fi and indie rock fans alike, After the Magic sees the anonymous auteur striving to write a follow-up as worthy of acclaim as the last.

Across the album’s ten songs, Parannoul plunges yet deeper into his diverse pool of influences, coming back to the surface with a record that captures and extends the magic of its predecessor. Unexpected flashes of orchestral ambient and glitched-out electronica meld seamlessly with Parannoul’s signature passages of noisy, distortion-laden shoegaze, offering a real time glimpse into the maturation of one of indie rock’s most exciting artists.

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound _ handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul _ takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer's resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self."

•Green and red cassette shells
•Dolby B noise reduction
•On-body print

•Dolby B Noise Reduction
•Double-cassettes in a butterfly case
•6 cassettes total (2 tapes per night)
•Cassette Shells with On-Body Printing

In 2023, King Gizzard performed multiple nights in cities across the Us-- this tour being known as the Residency Tour. This is one of those 3-night runs at The Salt Shed in Chicago!

DestructionDerby(Remixes and Alternative Mixes) is a collection of the remixes and alternative mixesfrom the era of their debut album - Future Primitive. Reconfigured by the finest minds in underground rock n roll and trashed onto a mixtape cassette, the mixtape brings together remixes of Data Animal along side remixes undertaken by Data Animal of other artists.DestructionDerbyis out on cassette and digitally May 31st , only on Dedstrange.

Maya Hawke is a musician, songwriter, actor and producer. She has released two lauded albums of music to date, Moss (2022) and Blush (2020), both of which showcase her natural gift for songwriting and storytelling, as well as a knack for striking visual presentation with sleeve designs of her own creation. “Thérèse,” the lead single from Moss, garnered global attention with its mesmerizing Brady Corbet-directed video - and tens of millions of streams - and saw Maya make an impressive network TV performance debut on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Maya and her band picked up a slew of rave reviews for sold out shows in the US and EU, as well as support slots for Bright Eyes and Faye Webster.

Now 25 years old, Maya’s third album, Chaos Angel, takes the spare, viscerally honest songwriting she has made her name on and goes deeper and bolder. Both her most sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced collection to date, it feels like a culmination. Across these 10 songs, Hawke catalogs upheavals, revelations, foibles, and broken promises, all while navigating the patterns we repeat while reaching towards growth, wandering astray, and finding our way back to some core understanding of ourselves.

Chaos Angel is also a document of Hawke coming more fully into her own as a musician. More adventurous in the studio after her previous two albums, Hawke leaned into her ambition. Many of these tracks are still anchored by acoustic guitar and Hawke’s graceful yet conversational vocals, but their surroundings are more intricate and lush than ever before. She reconvened with longtime collaborators Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, with Christian Lee Hutson serving as producer.

LAKE's 2009 album Let's Build A Roof [KLP213], produced by Northwest legend Karl Blau, is sweet, funky and nostalgic - a paragon of psychedelic pop. Originally, this landmark album had overlooked sonic anomalies now corrected by REMASTERING. Five bonus songs have been added to the DIGITAL ALBUM, creating a whole new Let's Build a Roof.Let's Build A Roof is LAKE's most popular album with many fan favorites, though every track is unique. After extensive touring in 2009, LAKE entered Dub Narcotic Studio (Olympia, Wash.) to record fresh with their live energy. In the studio they were able to fill out their jingly pop aesthetic, enhanced with the vintage sounds of instruments available at Dub Narcotic and the local community. Blazing synth solos, timpani, flutes, saxophones, cello, and marimba, are just some of the featured sounds on Let's Build a Roof.Some of the album's most requested songs: "Madagascar," a dubby, slow-groove track; "Christmas Island" a surfy Phil Spector-sounding song used as theme music for the television in show Adventure Time; and "Don't Give Up", an upbeat motivating dance song with Blau performing the hook on harmonized saxophones; "Gravel" is the first single and has that a driving intensity that we can all deeply relate to - trying to keep up.

Finally! A Doc Hopper release on Dead Broke! 90's pop-punk underdogs from the greater New England area & some of the best to do it. This is a collection of demos, leftovers + non-LP cover songs. First collected in 2000 intended for a disbanded Go-Kart Records release. Only self-released by band on CDRs for “final” year of shows back then. Art by Ray Ahn (the Hard-ons) Color by Tom Lowell. 100 Puke Green Tapes pressed.

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...

Los Campesinos! have become one of the most important and influential cult acts in the UK since they formed in the mid-2000s. Starting out in the Cardiff indie scene and soundtracking Budweiser adverts, the seven-piece’s musical evolution since then has been slow, steady and remarkable. From the frenzied chaos of debut album Hold On Now, Youngster… (2008) through 2010 breakthrough Romance is Boring and the self-mythologising of latter day highlights NO Blues (2013) and Sick Scenes (2017), their discography is an interconnected web of niche references, big swings and unflinching honesty.

Making self-professed sleeper hits for weeping dipshits, they’re as influenced by The Beautiful South as they are US emo, with emotional intensity and connection always at the core. Their lyrics are a treasure trove of football references, tales of romantic woe and painfully frank exorcisms, which have been tattooed across hundreds of fans’ bodies and served as comfort and insight during that break-up you had (there’s a reason the band’s tagline is “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band”).

Now with the release of All Hell, Los Camp! approach their third decade as a band more brilliant, more potent and more vital than ever.

Temir Alcy (producer Enir Da - Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm and multi-instrumentalist Charles Lmx) is at the junction of spherical textures of acoustic clouds and shapeshifting forms of immersive electronic percussive patterns. By intertwining etherionic atmospheres and organic moods to magnetic and hypnotic rhythms, Temir Alcy explores the mysteries of the future and the unknown through a journey of sensory trance, where whispers and melodies of voices strike a vivid contrast between emotions’ fragility and sound’s solidity enhanced by a downtempo, leftfield and erratic kraut’s feel.

With the broader adoption of the internet around the turn of the century, how people would engage with and discover underground music would change forever. As a result of the new digital era, DIY was now worldwide, and no band embraced this new frontier better than Have A Nice Life. Formed in 2000 by duo Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga, the Middletown, CT-based pair would, throughout the 00s, self-release and share a number of demos and home recordings via early social media channels as well as establish its in-house label Enemies List Home Recordings. These first steps set in motion Have A Nice Life’s rise to renown as an icon of underground music in the internet age, culminating with the release of its pivotal 2008 debut album, Deathconsciousness. Through word of mouth and online discussion, Deathconsciousness became subject to viral praise thanks to its synthesis of bleak post-punk, lo-fi shoegaze, and carpets of hypnotic drone music. Eventually, this humble self-released project would attain the status of a post-internet cult classic, amassing Have A Nice Life a fervent online following that the band would interact with in kind.

In an effort to thank and continue to engage with Have A Nice Life’s internet cult following, Barrett and Macuga would regularly share links to old demos, works in progress, and outtakes from the recording of Deathconsciousness. Over time, a group of fans would compile these demos into an unofficial release. Dubbed Voids, this fan-made compilation several alternate takes of tracks from Deathconsciousness, as well as a handful of early versions of songs that would appear on Have A Nice Life’s two following albums, The Unnatural World and Sea Of Worry. Fans swarmed around this compilation, accompanied by loud calls for it to receive a physical release. A tape pressing of Voids would be released via Music Ruins Lives, a DIY label run by Have A Nice Life superfan Thom Wasluck, also known for his band Planning for Burial. Between both instances of the tape swiftly selling out and the compilation’s long absence from streaming services, Voids has historically been an elusive release to track down, only available in the obscurest corners of the internet or physically on the secondary market at eye-wateringly high prices.

Over a decade since its initial, unofficial release in 2011, The Flenser is proud to reissue Have A Nice Life’s Voids for the first time ever in an official capacity in physical form.

You could call Wishy's story a lucky one. After prior monikers anditerations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternativemusic's semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge andpower-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwritersKevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' musical synergy provesitself to be a rare one-the kind that sounds like someone strikinggold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it's only fitting theirmuch anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, whereWishy's penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally inpillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion.By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitarlessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by tradeand often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up ina scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkitesinstead found themselves writing melodies in their heads whiledriving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier,more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, theirmusic oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes andsnapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwindcouple of years _ exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonicproject, making sense of their musical pasts while forging amusical future alongside one another, each of them on a journeyof self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimesgorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, TripleSeven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discoverywith the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albumsthat inspired it.

Sliding between the bodies in the street, cutting across the contrails that bisect our sky, Wand find melody and the anxiety beats as they hum the soundtrack for a new gravitational center. Seeking connections against the plan of niche interest and anonymity, Vertigo is the sound of slippage, rocks of contradiction (in soft focus); feet lost, regained, lost again, a multi-chromatic swaying, more automatic, associative, directed, in time.Determining to work backwards (or at least insideout) this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less . . . going somewhere they"d never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum.

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...

In 2023, downt showed further expansion of their activities by collaborating with many overseas artists such as Gestalt Girl (Taiwan), Grrrl Gang (Indonesia), Pswingset (us), and deathcrash (uk), and releasing the epic single "Undecember", which showed a new direction as a band. The long-awaited full-length album will finally be released in March 2024 from P-vine! The new album also features re-recorded versions of their iconic songs such as '111511', 'mizu ni naru' and 'AM4:50', which were included in previous eps and beloved by fans.

It's been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood's great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green's trilogy of Halloween reboots. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they've struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as "soundtracks for the movies in your mind." On the fourth installment in theseries, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs "noirish" is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it, as in connected in an emotional way.The trio's free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine_the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John's own Christine. It's a chemistry that's helped power one of the most productive stretches of John's creative life, and Noir proves that it's nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.

On the night of April 3rd, 1980, the iconic post-punk band Joy Division descended upon the intimate stage of the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead, London. The venue, dimly lit and shrouded in an aura of mystery, provided the perfect backdrop for the band's melancholic and atmospheric sound. The raw power and emotional intensity of their performance served as a testament to their artistry, leaving a lasting legacy that continues to inspire generations of musicians and fans alike.

I Know I'm Funny haha is Webster's most realized manifestationyet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloomfrom her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut AtlantaMillionaires Club, Webster's sound draws as much from the lap-steelsinger-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes asit does from the audacious personalities of her city's rap and R&Bcommunity.The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad "In a GoodWay," as in "You make me want to cry in a good way"_an instantclassicFaye Webster one-liner. It's beguilingly simple, the kindof melody and arrangement that seem to have existed forever. Asense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop of "Cheers,"where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone. She alsocollaborated, on "Overslept," with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara,who she calls the biggest influence on her new music.Webster's music is full of personality. Many of her songs containbits of girl-group-esque talk-singing, which color her atypical storysongs.Webster says she's in a growth mindset, pushing herself to learnmore, to be more vulnerable. "Growth is really important to me," shesays. "I hope people will relate to my songs, and not just be like `thisis a good record' but `this makes me feel something. This is makingme think differently, this is making me question things.' I told myselfa few years ago that I was going to be more honest in my songwriting,that honesty is the best route to take with music. If I have a voice andpeople are listening to me, I'm not going to waste it."

Since the release of their debut studio album Do Hollywood (on 4AD) in 2016, The Lemon Twigs_the New York City rock band fronted by brothers Brian (27) and Michael D'Addario (25)_have waved the same revivalist torch as Alex Chilton and his Big Star crew, working to prove that archaic music from the `60s and `70s can still be relevant in digital world. Alongside peers like Foxygen and Drugdealer, The Lemon Twigs have explicitly documented a synchronistic blend of contemporary narrative motifs, old-school recording techniques, and flawless, consistent attitudes collaged from various crucial stages of rock 'n' roll. After a whirlwind 2023, the D'Addarios are continuing the momentum of their own evolving vision and voice, distilling a history lesson of baroque and power pop into A Dream Is All We Know (out May 3 on Captured Tracks).Garnering the top-to-bottom critical acclaim the brothers have long deserved, their 2023 LP Everything Harmony was spearheaded by an impressive string of singles, including "Corner Of My Eye" and "Any Time of Day." It was the kind of record that put all of Brian and Michael's talents on display, be it the former's multi-instrumentalist gifts or the latter's boyish, explosive pop-rock charisma and eye for engineering and vocal layering. But A Dream Is All We Know is not the acoustic, nylon string-based project that Everything Harmony was. Instead, it's a return to the form the Lemon Twigs first introduced on Do Hollywood_an electric guitar-centric, anthemic assemblage of, really, everything the band does great. These two companion records are an immediate example of a band capitalizing on their fire-in-the-belly appetite to make tunes that boast ubiquitous chemistry.A Dream Is All We Know is grandiose yet grounded; meticulous, yet wild and glowing. Made with analog precision, the album was finished in the immediate months after the band completed Everything Harmony during a vibrant, prolific period split between three studios on separate coasts. A Dream Is All We Know is a profoundly...