Category: good to hear

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Theia / The Silver Chord / Set
The Australian band has been a fixture with us ever since their formation. They are made up of Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Crook Craig, Joey Walker, Lucas Harwood, and Michael Cavanagh. “The band’s early releases blended surf music and garage rock… They released several psychedelic and progressive rock albums in the early 2010s, and incorporated a broader range of musical styles later in the decade, such as jazz fusion… and the folk-inspired Paper Mâché Dream Balloon.
KGLW

________________________________________________________________________

New Age Doom & Tuvaband
There Is No End
Critically-acclaimed experimental band New Age Doom has teamed up with Norwegian indie singer Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser, known as Tuvaband, to create There Is No End. This record showcases New Age Doom’s evolution towards a more melodic direction while retaining their signature freewheeling chaos. Tuva’s ethereal vocals elevate New Age Doom’s genre-bending, densely-layered sound with lyrical themes about rebirth, emergence from the underground, living fearlessly, and the subjective nature of time.
We Are Busy Bodies

________________________________________________________________________

Black Pumas
Chronicles of a Diamond
In 2017, singer and songwriter Eric Burton made his way from the San Fernando Valley, in California, to Texas. He grew up singing in church and got involved in musical theater. Burt traveled through the Western states and developed his performance skills, studied music at New  Mexico State University before settling down and busking in Austin. Black Pumas is an American psychedelic soul band, led by Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada. (Wiki)
ATO

________________________________________________________________________

Martina Herlop
Busa
An angelic voice in experimental mode doesn’t let us sink too comfortably into a depth of expression that draws us into a world of many concerns. Marina Herlop, born Marina Hernández López, is a Catalan experimental musician. History. A classically trained pianist, Herlop released her debut album, Nanook, in 2016. About hermusic she says: «When you take away the chromatism, and leave a wider space between the intervals, the emotion is more indeterminate. There’s more room for you—they don’t tell you what you’re supposed to feel, and that’s interesting.»
PAN Records.

________________________________________________________________________

Desire Marea
The Only Way
Desire is the latest of the greatest to come out of Johannesburg, South Africa, a whirlwind made for the big stage. “As one half of South African duo FAKA, Marea drew on local dance music sounds like gqom, but on Desire, their exploration of the divine takes them in a many-splendored multitude of stylistic directions, often within the span of a single track: liturgical drone, galloping club beats, existential noise.» (Pitchfork) The track we’re hearing is from the upcoming album The Baddies of Isandlwana.
Izimakade

Cesia Sáenz
X Ti Ya No!
Cesia Sáenz was born on December 27, 1998 (age 24) in Honduras and is best known for winning La Academia 2022, a Mexican musical competition show. She is the first singer from Honduras to have won on the show. Cesia is an Instagram star with more than 300’000 followers. Known as the Lioness of Honduras for the strength and power she has in her voice, Cesia plays play the guitar, ukulele, and violin. She is also a painter. Originally from El Porvenir, Comayagua, she has four sisters and
toured with world singer Ricardo Arjona.
Sony

---

Drea Dury
Bandida
Colombian-born Dréa Dury developed a passion for music at an early age. Thanks to a school system that encourages extra-curricular activities, she discovered singing and was soon performing on stage. From the age of 15, she successfully took part in numerous competitions in her native country. At 18, she decided to study industrial design in Belgium. Today, this young songwriter knows that she wants to make music her profession. Overflowing with energy when she’s on stage, Drea likes to get her audience dancing. Her sound is predominantly Hip-Hop, R&B with Latin rhythms.
Wagram Intenacional

---

Jimmy Humilde
Desde Abajo
Jaime Alejandre, better known as Jimmy Humilde, born in Los Angeles on 21 July 1980 of Mexican descent ,is a highly successful American music artist, music composer and entrepreneur. He’s the CEO and owner of the popular record company  Rancho Humilde Records, which has its own YouTube channel, and with which he produces regional Mexican music, and especially a style called corridos tumbados, songs that narrate the exploits of real and mythical heroes and antiheroes. Fuerza Régida, Natanael Cano, Junior H., or Arsenal Efectivo have signed with him.
Humilde Music

---

Natanael Cano
Mas Altas Que Bajadas
his is a great example of a corrido. Natanael Cano (Natanael Ruben Cano Monge), born in 2001, is best known for blending corrido and rap, known as corridos tumbados. Born in Sonora, he started singing at parties and festivals when he was nine. Today he is the number one regional Mexican artist in his category of music. The fusion of trap music and regional Mexican corridos, known as corridos tumbados were born in Los Angeles where Cano first signed with Rancho Humilde. (Wikipedia)
Humilde Music

---

Eslabon Armado featuring Peso Pluma
Ella Baila Sola
Eslabon Armado is a Mexican American regional Mexican group formed in 2017. The group consists of Pedro Tovar (lead vocals), Brian Tovar (bass), Damian Pacheco (twelve-string guitar) and Ulises González (acoustic guitar). They have released six studio albums and have received several awards and nominations including two Billboiard Music Awards, two Billboard Latin Music Music Awards and two Latin American Music Awards. In early 2022 Damián Pacheco joined the group. In March 2023,they released the song “Ella Baila Sola”  featuring singer and rapper Peso Pluma.
Del Records

Cypress Hill
Tiny Desk Concert
One of my favorite hip hop bands has been given a horn section! These boys have aged well – and their music sounds as fresh as ever. Cypress Hill hails from South Gate, in Los Angeles County. The formed in 1988 by the originally Cuban brothers Senen ‘Sen Dog’ (photo) and Ulpiano Sergio ‘Mellow Man Ace’ Reyes, joined by Lawrence Muggerud (DJ Muggs), and Louis Freese (B-Real). They soon became hugely popular.
NPR Music

---

Minyo Crusaders
Kushimoto Bushi (Cumbia)
Minyo are traditional Japanese folk songs. The Minyao Crusadres breathe new life into them by either turning them into instant jazz classics or by giving them an African or south American twist. The band was co-founded by Katsumi Tanaka and Freddie Tsukamoto, who, together with the ten-piece ensemble create some of the most exciting cross-continental music around. Their goal is to reinvent popular music for the people.
Mais Um

---

Blur
Live @ St. Charles Square
Blur debuted in London in 1988. Here, Damon Albarn (vocals), Graham Coxton (guitar), Alex James (bass), and Dave Rowntree (drums) regale their fans with a fantastic set showing they are still highly relevant  with their new album, The Ballad of Darren. You can listen to some of it on their website blur.co.uk. Best known for his collaboration on the movie Trainspottin Damon Albarn enjoyed on a successful solo career. The band broke up and reunited several times.
Parlophone

---

Juanes
Mayo
Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez (born 9 August 1972), known professionally as Juanes, is a Colombian musician who was a member of the rock band Ekhymmosis and is now a solo artist. Since releasing his solo debut album Fijate Bien in 2000, Juanes has won 24 Latin Grammy awards and sold more than 15 million albums worldwide. Raised in Columbia, Juanes began playing piano at age two. (Wikipedia)
Universal Music

---

Tony Allen & Adrian Younge
No End 
Tony Oladipo Allen was a world-class Nigerian drummer and songwriter and one of the founders of Afrobeat. As its musical director, he worked closely with Fela Kuti. Allen was born in Lagos in 1940 and died in Paris in 2020. He taught himself to play the drums and was inspired by the jazz greats he emulated, as well as by African musical traditions and the highlight scene in his homeland. Much of his music is still unreleased. Adrian Younge promotes it.
Jazz is Dead

Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily
Tiny Desk Concert
disorder that produces abnormalities at the body’s surface, including fingernails and teeth. Five decades later, Ismaily has become one of music’s most in-demand collaborators, flitting like a mischievous butterfly through genres as diverse as honeyed folk, rambunctious free jazz and spectral meditations sung in Urdu. He does not think these facts are unrelated.» (Grayson Haver Currin in The New York Times)
NPR Music

---

Arooj Aftab
Tiny Desk Concert
Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab is the first female artist of her country to win a Grammy Award, in 2022, for the ghazal Mohabbad. Born 1985 in Saudi Arabia, she was ten when her parents moved back to their native Lahore. He family moved to the United States in 2005, where Arooj attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She works in various musical styles and has won a number of prizes for her increcible music and extraordinary voice. (Wikipedia)
NPR Music

---

King Krule
Flimsier
Archy Ivan Marshall (1994), known by various names, Zoo Kid being one of them. He is an English singer, composer, and musician who writes poetic texts and lyrical music. He has mental issues he openly writes about and struggled with discipline from an early age, before learning to adapt go at least some of the time. No doubt he is highly talented, and very special. He takes his name from the Elvis Presley film ‘King Creole’.
Matador Records

---

Mdou Moctar
Full Performance (Live on KEXP)
I fit weren’t so trite, one might call this Tuareg guitarist the new Jimi Hendrix, though you can hear his African Roots in everything he plays. Mdou Moctar’s home is Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by YouTube videos of Eddie van Halen’s six string techniques and traditional Tuareg melodies, he mastered the guitar which he himself bult and created his own burning style.
Sahel Sounds

---

Olivia Rodrigo
Vampire
Olivia Rodrigo (2003) is from California and is half Filipina, half German. She started playing the piano at the age of seven and began writing song lyrics at 12. Her debut single, “Drivers License,” broke records. “When I wrote ‘Drivers License,’ I had heartbreak that was so confusing and so varied for me, combining all those feelings into one song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer, and at the end of the day, I think that’s really the whole purpose of songwriting.” (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia)
Geffen Records

Phoebe Bridgers
Wasted – video by Rob Moose
Phoebe Bridgers, born 1994 in Pasadena, California, has lately been enjoying huge success both as a solo artist, and as a member of the band ‘Boygenius’. She plays the guitar and names the late Elliott Smith as a big influence. Her style has been called a mix of indie rock, emo folk, and indie rock. (Wikipedia) Her music has lately lost some of its unhappiness but still deals with topics such as loneliness, gender rights, and racial justice.
Libera Awards

---

Clark
Medicine (feat. Thom Yorke) – from the album Sus Dog
«Sus Dog… creates songs you’ll replay because you can’t get their comforting weirdness anywhere else. Clark’s falsetto, reminiscent of Caribou’s Dan Snaith or executive producer Thom Yorke, is used carefully as a texture that neither distracts nor dominates, counterbalancing the occasionally abrasive electronics.» (The Observer) Radiohead’s Tom Yorke has a long history of contributing to other people’s albums.
Bandcamp

---

JAAW
Total Protonic Reversal – from the album Supercluster
JAAW is a post-industrial supergroup featuring Andy Cairns (Therapy), Jason Stoll (Mugstar, KLÄMP, Sex Swing), Wayne Adams (Death Pedals, Big Lad, Petbrick) and Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers, Goldie, Squarepusher). JAAW glories in big riffs and massive hooks, while also pushing the boundaries of what that even means thanks to its uncompromising strangeness.
June Records

---

Lola Young
My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely
«On her debut project, ‘My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely’, it’s gratifying to hear Young push her idea of pop beyond the spacey atmospherics of her earlier material – this is the overdue arrival of a completely credible new talent. Much of the 10-track collection was inspired by Young’s schizoaffective disorder diagnosis, a condition marked by intrusive thoughts – though it’s also about grace and the illusion of effortlessness.» (New Music Express)
Island Records

---

Peter Fox
Eine Auge blau (‘One Eye Blue’)
The German producer, hip-hop and dancehall musician was born in Berlin in 1971 and is actually called Pierre Baigorry. His family comes from the Basque country. He is one three musicians of the band Seeed. He started playing the piano at an early age and also played the recorder and even the trombone. He has been writing idiosyncratic lyrics to catchy music for a long time.
Warner

Dave Matthews Band
Walk Around the Moon
In Charlottesville, Virginia, in early 1991, when vocalist/guitarist Dave Matthews decided to tape some songs he had written.,he found assistance in drummer Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore, both accomplished jazz musicians. Their bass player, Stefan Lessard was a musical prodigy and only sixteen. The lineup was completed by keyboard player Peter Griesar who left the band after a few years, and the classically trained violinist Boyd Tinsley.
ATO Records

---

The Smashing Pumpkins
ATUM
This third and last album of this operatic work is the Pumpkins twelfth studio album. It is a concept album and based on a lot of autobiographical data. The story has one foot in reality, and one foot in a world of make-belief. The Smashing Pumpkins are made up of Billy Corgan (vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboards), Jimmy Chamberlin (drums), James Iha (guitar) and Jeff Schroeder (guitar). And as usual, they’re smashing it.
Rough Trade

---

Graham Nash
Right Now
Legendary artist Graham Nash, as a founding member of both the Hollies and Crosby Stills and Nash, is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who has seen rock history unfold at some of its seminal moments. Towering above virtually everything that Graham Nash has accomplished is his long and multi-facetted career, stand the litany of songs that he has written and introduced to the soundtrack of our lives for nearly six decades. The beloved singer-songwriter is eighty-one years old.
Rudy Records

---

Dave O’Higgins
Pluto
Dave O’Higgins’ tenor and soprano sax sounds are highly personal and recognisable, with a clear sense of melodic development and adventure. He has relentlessly pursued artistic and sonic exploration and development with a deep respect for the tradition of the music. Dave is also a highly regarded educator at the London College of Contemporary Media, where he is the Jazz Pathway Leader. On Pluto, seven of the nine songs are originals.
JVP Productions

---

Madison McFerrin
Colorado
Throughout her fruitful independent career, spanning three EP ad multiple collaborations, Madison has received much acclaim. Her genre-bending work has been called ‘soul-appella’ by Questlove. Ahead of releasing new music in 2023, Madison has continued to blow away and sold out crowds in New York City and Los Angeles; last fall she mesmerized crows in London and Paris.
AllMusic

Sparks
The Girl is Crying in Her Latte starring Cate Blanchet
The Sparks, a duo made up of Mael brothers Ron and Russell, have been producing unique music for five decades. They could have been «just another band from LA» (Frank Zappa), however, they have continually pushed boundaries with their music, exploring new styles from Glam to Swing and beyond. Their recent score for the film Annette highlights Russell’s unique voice, while Cate Blanchett proves herself as a phenomenal dancer.
Island Records

---

Lizzy McAlpine
ceilings
Lizzie McAlpine, born in a suburb of Philadelphia, studied songwriting at Berklee College of Music before leaving in her junior year to pursue music full-time. This was during the Pandemic, when she also lost her father. Her first album, Give Me A Minute (2020), was not only critically acclaimed but listened to millions of times.
“Part of McAlpine’s increasingly far-reaching appeal is the mix of musical influences that have helped form her as a storyteller.” (Rolling Stone)
Independent, found here

---

Rising Appalachia
Thank you very much
“The soulful folk-roots of the two sisters can be traced back to their parents, who prioritized culture and diversity, and to the grassroots music communities that dot the hills and valleys of the Deep South. They spent countless weekends at fiddle camps, immersing themselves in what they affectionately call “Appalachian trance music.” Leah and Chloe Smith have eschewed established industry norms and instead forged their own path by following their invitations and intuitions independently.»
Independent, found here.

---

Lana del Rey Featuring Jon Batiste
Candy Necklace
«Listening to Lana Del Rey’s music is like diving into a cinematic dream world filled with heartbreak, romance, and nostalgia. She’s a true poet of our time!» (Bedo)
Lana del Rey (Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, born 1985 in Manhattan, New York) needs no introduction. She’s considered to be one of the best singer-songwriter of the 21st century, unique in her effort to recreate the music of the forties and fifties, which she lends her very own timbre.
Interscope

---

Aly and AJ
Blue Dress
Another duo made up of two sisters: Aly (Alyson) and AJ (Amanda Joy) Michalka like to use the stage for good, enlightening their audiences about LGBTQ+ rights and the importance of voting. They’ve cut five studio albums, pursue individual acting careers, as well as working together. Their music comes from a Christian perspective, but they are not preachy. They are from southern California and play a guitar-driven mix of rock, punk, and pop.
Aly & AJ Music LLC

Gorillaz feat. Bad Bunny
Tormenta
This smooth piece is due to the collaboration of two big names. It takes us back to the sounds of Sergio Mendes, or Antônio Carlos Gobim. Life has picked up a bit speed since. The Bunny charms us with many changes in rhythm and subtle vocals. Gorillaz, still with Damon Albarn and Jimmy Hewlett at the helm, are releasing a new album, Cracker Island, in a few weeks and have teased various outtakes with different colleagues. The results, so far, are jazzy and light. (sgs)
Parlophone/Warner Records

---

Depeche Mode
Memento Mori: Ghosts Again.
The band is releasing their 15th studio album on 23 March. It looks a little somber. But is it? No, the old drive is there from the first beat, unmistakably Depeche Mode! It is the first album they have released since the death of Andy Fletcher, their keyboarder. “We started work on this project early in the pandemic, and its themes were directly inspired by that time. After Fletch’s passing, we decided to continue as we’re sure this is what he would have wanted, and that has really given the project an extra level of meaning.” (Martin Gore, songwriter, guitarist, and keyboarder)
Columbia/Mute

---

Nakhane
My Mom Was Good
Nakhane Mahlakahlaka is a South African singer, songwriter, actor, and novelist. Having grown up among a Christian community in Port Elizabeth, at fifteen they moved to Johannes, leaving the church in 2013 and publicly celebrating their queerness with their debut album Brave Confusion. They found both controversy and critical acclaim with their starring role in John Trengrove’s 2017 film Inxeba (The Wound), and relocated to London to record 2018’s autobiographical album You Will Not Die. (Wikipedia)
Columbia/Polydor

---

Boygenius
Live from Brooklyn Steel
The American Indie supergroup is made up of singer Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers (acoustic guitar and electronic production), and Lucy Dacus (singer-songwrtier and producer). Though the three women only burst onto the scene in 2018, each of them was already well-known on their own. They are releasing their first album soon, called The Record. According to Rolling Stone, “fans have always hoped for more». I agree.
Interscope

---

Schaltkreis Wassermann
2600Noise
For the first time since the early 80s, the pioneer electronic band  Schaltkreis Wassermann has released several completely new tracks. Up to now Schaltkreis Wassermann was known for their early singles and their cult album Psychotron (1982) These, and a plethora of other Schaltkreis tracks from the early eighties, have been re-released on vinyl by Berlin-based Private Records over the last few years. And now there’s a new Schaltklreis EP called 2006Noise. It grooves!
Private Records