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Talkhouse

<div class="c-message__content c-message__content--feature_sonic_inputs" data-qa="message_content">The glitchy pop duo HXXS craft experimental tones with deafening synths and aggressive drums that melts the mind and moves the feet. Their politically charged debut album Year Of The Witch (out Oct 18 via Captured Tracks) sounds as turbulent as it’s heavy subject matter. </div>
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HXXS

Music

Introducing: HXXS’s Creepy New Stop-Motion Video For “Last Days of Magic”

Itasca’s Kayla Cohen wrote the anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album Open to Chance in a century-old adobe house in rural New Mexico. Inspired by the landscape and history of the Four Corners region, the sublime Spring — its title summoning both season and scarce local water sources — dowses a devotional path to high desert headwaters. Featuring contributions from Chris Cohen, Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas), James Elkington, and members of Gun Outfit and Sun Araw, Spring contains Cohen’s most quietly dazzling and self-assured set of songs to date.
<div class="yj6qo ajU">(Photo Credit: Joanne Kim)</div>

Itasca

Introducing: Itasca’s “Lily”

Retail Space is Isabelle and Jacob Rosse. Their latest album, In The Lotia, is out September 20, 2019.

Retail Space

Hear First: Retail Space’s In The Lotia

Good things come to those who wait: and so this summer, Liam Gallagher returns with a new single, a documentary film, a Glastonbury performance, and most importantly, a second solo album called Why Me? Why Not looming on the Autumn horizon. It looks like the rest of 2019 will be a bonanza for fans of the one-time Oasis singer. 
The first notification of his return is the mammoth single &#8220;Shockwave.&#8221; Like all of Why Me? Why Not, “Shockwave” was written by Liam with producers Greg Kurstin and Andrew Wyatt, and recorded in Los Angeles and at RAK Studios in London. Kurstin and Wyatt also contributed writing and production to Liam’s 2017 hugely-successful first solo album in 2017, As You Were.  
(Photo Credit: Tom Beard)

Liam Gallagher

Liam Gallagher: As It Was

There&#8217;s a difficult to describe, yet timeless quality to certain songs that transcends genre or era. It&#8217;s something that you can&#8217;t fake or contrive and it&#8217;s what lies at the core of Skating Polly&#8216;s music. The multi-instrumentalist duo of Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse started their band in Oklahoma in 2009. They recorded their debut album Taking Over The World in 2010 and achieved instant acclaim from underground music icons like X&#8216;s Exene Cervenka (who produced 2013&#8217;s Lost Wonderfuls) and Beat Happening&#8216;s Calvin Johnson (who produced 2014&#8217;s Fuzz Steliacoom). After the release of 2016&#8217;s The Big Fit, Veruca Salt&#8216;s co-frontwomen Louise Post and Nina Gordon reached out and said they wanted to write with the band. What started as a writing session ultimately became 2017’s New Trick EP. Then, armed with a third member — Kelli’s brother Kurtis Mayo — the trio released their latest full length, The Make It All Show in 2018.
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The band&#8217;s latest record, Chaos County Line, is out now.

Skating Polly

Introducing: Skating Polly’s “Classless Act”

The heart of An Horse’s magic is rubbery and elastic. Rows of slinky, hypnotic spirals, widening middle-out. They’ve never spun to more vibrant and dynamic impact than on their third album Modern Air.
Loosely from wherever-you’re-seeing-them-play-tonight-by-way-of-Brisbane-to-Montreal-and-New-York, Kate &amp; Damon woke up from a six-year nap to make their best, broadest and most accomplished album, doubling-down on and clarifying their strongest strengths while casually developing and showcasing a career’s-worth of new ones.
Before their 6 year break, An Horse were two albums into their career and touring non-stop with the likes of Tegan and Sara, Death Cab for Cutie, Silversun Pickups, Nada Surf, Cage the Elephant, and Brand New when a series of distracting life events forced them into a hiatus of sorts. That hiatus led to an extended break from touring and recording that’s finally ending with their 2019 album Modern Air, out May 3 on Lame-O Records.
The songs on their new record manage to be both propulsive and loping, lean mission statements about negotiating modern living easter-egged with intelligence and humor, melodic and percussive ear candy, heart and teeth, hope and anger.
They sound like themselves, two-headed and singularly focused, a particularly effective evolutionary step in a long tradition of of guitar-based indie-rock, angular in spaces, jangly in others, sometimes both at the same time. They take a familiar vocabulary and teach it new words, one sugary harmony barbed-wired to unflinching insight at a time.
Modern Air is An Horse at their most realized, and it’s right on time. Some naps are worth taking.
(Photo Credit: Amelia Shaw)

An Horse

Introducing: An Horse’s “Started A Fire”

It had been 16 years since John Dragonetti had called himself Jack Drag when he dusted off the largely solo entity to release the aptly titled album 2018 last year. The Submarines singer and co-founder had released four full-length albums under the moniker from 1995 to 2002, based out of Boston. The return was a welcome one&#8230; both for Dragonetti himself and for fans, with lead single, “Little Lies [feat. Aimee Mann and Dylan Gardner], racking up over two million streams, airplay on KCRW and guest appearances from Belle &amp; Sebastian’s Sarah Martin on vocals and Mike Sawitzke of The Eels/Dispatch assisting with horn arrangements and mixing.
After The Submarines released their 2011 album, Love Notes/Letter Bombs, Dragonetti turned his focus to composing for film and TV, including the 2018 comedy All About Nina, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Common. It’s still where Dragonetti focuses most of his attentions.
A new Jack Drag EP, Summer of Cuts and Bruises, is set to drop August 30 on Burger Records, to be preceded by lead single, &#8220;It&#8217;s Something&#8221; on August 9, with an animated video by Cult Of Dang. The title-track, which Dragonetti stated is about “standing tall in the face of romantic sabotage,” features Morgan Kibby (M83/White Sea) on guest vocals, with bass and cello from Gabe Noel.

Jack Drag

Introducing: Jack Drag’s “It’s Something”

Sauna is a brand new Toronto based band featuring Zach Bines (Weaves), Braeden Craig (Greys), and Michael le Riche (Fake Palms).
With synths in bright focus, which le Riche both plays and builds, this project marks a departure from the electric guitar-driven sound of Fake Palms. Bines (bass) and Craig (drums), meanwhile, provide a tough and tight complement to this new approach. Minimalist one minute and maximalist the next, the music is rich with suspense and satisfying subversions of expectation.

Sauna

Introducing: Sauna’s “Carousel”

How far does our sentimental strength go? When do we turn to the other without any resistance? What is the breaking point? By showing emotional connections we become vulnerable. Existing together, we cannot conceive without the other. &#8220;I am another you&#8221; is a Mayan thought that blurs the limits of personal bonds, extending individuality to any being that we choose to look in the eyes, allowing us to find something shared in each others stare.
Entre Los Dos is the follow up to critically acclaimed Mujeres (NPR, Pitchfork, Billboard), Y La Bamba&#8216;s most recently released full-length album (February 2019). This EP comes as a collection of portraits, affinities, and new visions birthed during Luz Elena Mendoza&#8216;s frequent stays in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico. These are songs and powerful prayers, created with their purpose being to protect the land and its people, recognize the ancestry that burns in our hearts, and treasure wisdom weaving healthy bonds that reflect self-love with dignity.
Through the veins of front person Mendoza, runs Purepecha blood. Adapting to new environments over and over again, she has become someone who constantly questions and empowers through music: her great teacher and tireless companion.
The creative flow of Entre Los Dos moves without stopping, without resisting its own form. It adapts, migrates, and fuses with its environment and receptors. The adrenaline of a new beginning moves us, but also leaves a fragile space where the fear of being cornered and devoured may exist. When you float in foreign waters, you can not do more than surrender to doubt and become one with the death. The world is dangerous, and even more so when it comes to surrendering blindly to love.
(Photo Credit: Nadev Benjamin)

Y La Bamba

Introducing: Y La Bamba’s “Rios Sueltos”

The Rocket Summer is the project of multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and performer Bryce Avary. His latest album, Sweet Shivers, is out August 2.
(Photo Credit: Braverijah Gregg)

The Rocket Summer

Introducing: The Rocket Summer’s “Morning Light”

Ceschi’s music lives in some liminal space between left-field hip hop, folk punk, and indie rock. It’s hard to explain, so on planes he generally tells people that he sounds “something like Ed Sheeran,” and they nod. He has worked with Saskatchewan, Canadian producer Factor Chandelier for over a decade as they formed the backbone of their Fake Four Inc. record label. Their 2015 record, Broken Bone Ballads built a cult following within the indie rap and DIY punk communities. 2019’s Sad, Fat Luck is part eulogy to many lost friends, part breakup album, part US-born-Latino analysis of Trump’s America, and part ode to aging. Features guest vocals from Sammus &amp; Astronautalis.

Ceschi

Introducing: Ceschi’s “Middle Earth”

As a songwriter and producer, Johanne Swanson — who performs as Yohuna — maintains a masterful ability to distill chaos into calm; to contemplate the more challenging and messy matters of heart and mind with a self-assured deadpan stare and pointed stillness. Whereas her previous work centered layers of synthesizer, Mirroring was written entirely on guitar, giving her new songs a sense of catharsis and physicality. And while her debut, 2016&#8217;s Patientness, was a culmination of several formative years spent in flux, a document of coming and going, Mirroring is different: it has a set place and a time. Swanson wrote these intimate songs quickly in one purge in her bedroom in Brooklyn. When her roommate, Eric Littmann (Julie Byrne, Vagabon, Phantom Posse) heard her writing and recording them from the other side of his bedroom wall, he approached her to collaborate. Littmann ultimately co-produced, engineered, and mixed the record, alongside contributions from Adelyn Strei (guitar, flute), Warren Hildebrand (guitar) and many more friends. The results are some of Swanson&#8217;s most sweeping arrangements to date, with cello riffs that sing like a grounding human voice, harp and trombone, drums that push her loudest hooks yet forward.
(Photo Credit: Brian Vu)

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