V.A. Hardly Released

Often referred to as Sub Pop's "sister label," Hardly Art is an offshoot of Sub Pop designed to spotlight emerging talent. While the label's initial focus was local when it started up in 2007, over the past decade it has expanded beyond the Cascade region to welcome artists from all over the United States and abroad to a roster that has grown increasingly varied and eclectic, encompassing the sounds of garage rock, post-punk, surf rock, power pop, electronic, and other debatably useful genre descriptors. With the goal of cultivating a stable of vital, young, and relatively undiscovered bands, Hardly Art journeyed underground while a booming Sub Pop stayed above the surface (though both operate out of a shared office space in downtown Seattle). Since its inception and immediate worldwide reception as a paradigm-shifting, taste-making powerhouse (wink), Hardly Art has expanded its staff and broadened its purview along the way to include dubiously profitable ventures like reissues, EPs, one-off seven inches, and cassettes. Now, Hardly Art will try its hand at another experiment: a compilation to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Hardly Released: Bedroom Recordings, Demos, Rarities, Unreleased, and Widely Ignored Material-available June 2nd on cassette and digital formats-makes a strong case for Hardly Art's sonic diversity. Spanning a decade of recordings, the seventeen tracks of Hardly Released culls together a wide-ranging assortment of songs from the label's history, including a little-heard gem from Hardly Art's inaugural signing (Arthur & Yu) and a tune from Chastity Belt's I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone sessions, the label's most recent release. The full list of contributors includes Colleen Green, The Dutchess & the Duke, Fergus & Geronimo, Gazebos, Grave Babies, Hausu, Hunx & His Punx, IAN SWEET, Jacuzzi Boys, Jenn Champion, La Luz, The Moondoggies, Protomartyr, Seapony, and Shannon and the Clams. Bedroom recordings, demos, rarities, unreleased, and widely ignored material!