

Laura Marling’s spring tour got cancelled and suddenly there was a seemingly unfillable void inside of us. Fortunately, the British songwriter has decided to release her new album earlier than it was supposed to, and we couldn’t be more grateful for that. Besides two songs off “Song for Our Daughter”, we have 26 brand new tracks from Jackie Lynn, OHMME, neubauten.org, Scottibrains, Hoops, Phoebe Bridgers, Tristen, Woods, Alex Nicol, AZITA, James Elkington, Buck Curran, The Orbiting Human Circus & The Music Tapes, Bia Maria, Anna Burch, Jenny O., Camille Delean, Becca Mancari, Kellen of Troy, John Anderson, Steve Earle, Pokey LaFarge, Caleb Caudle, Tommy Alexander, Jaime Wyatt, and Eilen Jewell.
We’re back and we’re bringing you a ton of music. Unusually, August was kinda eventful, with plenty of great single and album releases. So we had to exaggerate a bit and make a 33 song playlist (and we had to leave quite a few tracks out to make it reasonable). Our focus this week is The Hold Steady’s new album “Thrashing Thru the Passion”, probably their best since 2008’s “Stay Positive”. There’s no way we’re tagging every single artist this time around, so just scroll down for the track list.
Eleven years after the Silver Jews’ swan song “Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea”, David Berman finally resurfaces as Purple Mountains. And the new record is everything we ever wanted and more, with members of Woods as their backing band and producers adding extra catchiness to Berman’s superior songwriting. It jumps straight to the top of our list of favorite albums of the year.
Plus: new tracks by Divino Niño, B Boys, Tijuana Panthers, Drab Majesty, Kyle Craft, Lower Dens, Gruff Rhys, Jenny Hval, Carnivorous Plant Society, Sandro Perri, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Bad Heaven Limited, Olympia, Jade Jackson, Michaela Anne, Eilen Jewell, Kelsey Waldon, Emma Russack, Erin Durant, Asia, and Joanna Sternberg.