Grammy-nominated artist JES steps into a new creative chapter with her new album Dreamer, an evocative pop record threaded with intention and honesty.

By asking premiere artists to perform ballads from the Great American Songbook without compromising their own integrity, the results were a series of classic LPs that are often overlooked in the musicians’ catalogs.

Hailing from London N1, singer-songwriter Tom Minor draws inspiration from indie rock, new wave and punk, power pop, psychedelic and garage rock, soul, reggae and R&B.

Alwyn Morrison is a New York City-based alternative rock singer-songwriter.

This isn’t a polished statement. It’s a quick, rough sketch of four musicians figuring out what they can do. That is exactly why it matters. Anyone who loves Bad Brains will treat it as a long-lost relic, and anyone curious about how hardcore found its first real momentum will find the answer spinning at 45 revolutions per minute.

Plenty of reunion records chase the sound of the old days and end up sounding like cover bands of themselves. This one takes the opposite route, accepting that the people playing are different and letting that difference carry the weight. The playing is careful, the singing humane, the arrangements generous to the point of self-effacement.

It’s still four people playing in a room, but the room has been scrubbed, polished and rigged with stadium lights. That’s tricky to pull off. Go too glossy and the songs vanish; go too murky and you’re back to regular shoegaze comfort. DIIV stay on the line most of the time, and the few wobbles feel ambitious rather than careless.

A younger listener who finds it by accident might get something better still: a reminder that a great pop song doesn’t need a marketing campaign. ‘Lightning Bugs Are Smiling’ is a worthy soundtrack to the sight, modest in scale, generous in spirit, and impossible to dislike.

A record this lean has no filler to apologize for, and it ends while you’re still hungry. ‘Play Nice’ is the work of a band that knows who it is, led by a writer with a sharp tongue and a softer heart than she lets on. Anyone expecting good manners will be disappointed. Everyone else is in for a very good time.

These tracks sound like someone who has taken in a whole lineage and started adding to it. Rhythm and funk drive everything, the machines have personality, and the confidence is real.

If you like records that reward close listening, where you decode a title or follow an image from one song to the next, there’s plenty here to dig into. If you just want melody and mood, that’s here too. Either way, ‘Tho I Seem Tame’ proves that calm and harmless aren’t the same thing.

His microtonal harmonica bends toward the in-between notes of Middle Eastern music, and he can stretch one note into a sigh, a question or a prayer. None of it feels like a trick. It sounds like he’s speaking his first language.

Despite its release several years ago, ‘Without Warning: Early Montana Punk, Postpunk, New Wave & Hardcore 1971 – 1991,’ is worth the revisit and further mention here. A fine compilation does more than collect songs. It rescues them. This one pulls two dozen overlooked recordings out of the shadows and sets them down in the light, dusty and imperfect and thoroughly alive.

Fans of the old singles will recognize the family resemblance immediately, and some may get a lump in the throat. Newcomers don’t need the history. The hooks land on first contact, the lyrics hold up under a closer look, and the whole record has the warmth of a band that never really stopped being friends.

Intrepid doctoral candidate (of drone) Susan Davachi’s latest investifgation of inner stellar worlds comes via a three LP set.

My Clever Android brings together singer-songwriter Kirk Ross, drummer/programmer Steven Wolf, and guitarist Jeff Thall, three longtime friends whose collective musical histories span an extraordinary range of artists and projects.

TIMOTEI is a London-based actor, musician and poet.

Sun Atlas, the anonymous LA-based masked collective whose identities remain deliberately concealed, release their sophomore album Law Of Attraction via Phlegmatic Records.

With his latest release, ‘For Us,’ Ja-Wan balances conscious hip-hop and harder-edged street rap, allowing them to share the same space without either becoming the dominant force.

The House Flies are a four-piece band from Moline, Illinois. Their second album, Lions and Ore, is out now.

Swedish trio Akaba return with their second album, Wither Without, a nine-track exploration of relationship breakdown, emotional distance and the difficult process of letting go.

ÅHM are a Swedish two-piece from Linköping creating organic alternative rock rooted in 90s grunge, but shaped by the darker atmosphere of post-rock and post-metal.

Kaatwalk, a Twin Cities based singer-songwriter, infuses her music with a quiet honesty. Inspired by storytellers like Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, and Joni Mitchell, Kaatwalk’s music defies genre boundaries and embraces lived experiences.

Kelley Smith is a quietly captivating folk singer-songwriter whose delicate vocals, poetic songwriting and graceful acoustic arrangements weave together the timeless sensibilities of traditional folk with an intimate, contemporary touch.

Inspired by his native U.K.’s tradition of folk horror, particularly that found in the splendidly weird dark fantasies that served as children’s television in the seventies, the genre-agnostic auteur eschews his usual path to digital perfection for a more gnarled, crooked, and well-worn world through the forest.

The Bamboos are a Soul/Funk outfit from Melbourne, Australia lead by Lance Ferguson.

AloneKitty is the Toronto-based sonic project of Michelle K, blending shoegaze, dream-pop and industrial noise into immersive, distortion-drenched soundscapes where fragile melodies shimmer beneath towering walls of guitar.

Inspired by her Palestinian/Jewish grandmother’s travels through Europe as a musician in the 1920s and ‘30s, Scheinman pens tunes that wander across styles like an explorer crossing a continent on their own schedule.

Riri Rose second single, “I Don’t Want That Colour,” is out now. It is the second single from my upcoming album. This indie-rock song is about loving so deeply, so devotedly, that it becomes all-consuming and almost destructive.

Those multiple spins reveal familiar elements given new life based on recent experience, letting the band be their best selves without sounding like they’re trying to copy more popular times.

The Radaman Song presents “LOVE YOU ANYWAY”, out now. It’s the third single from the forthcoming album WOMEN FIRST.

FINITE. is the second album from Sky Is Alright, a transatlantic shoegaze/alt rock band based between London and Los Angeles.

Michigan’s Strawberry Lake introduce their forthcoming album “Forever” with “Other Spaces,” a guitar-driven debut full of wavering wah effects, raspy vocals, and the melodic character of ’80s and ’90s college rock. Behind the music is the remarkable family story that brought the four musicians together.

The Effigies could have folded and celebrated their legacy as one of the more creative hardcore/post-hardcore groups, but with renewed vigor and creative drive, they moved forward and began writing new material in preparation for Fire. Aim. Ready. This record features hook-laden riffs that are complex enough to quickly grab one’s attention but without forcing the idea of crafting music for the sake of complication in some vain attempt to sound unique. This is where The Effigies continue to distinguish themselves from their peers.

On the Line is the sophomore EP by London-based cellist, singer and composer George Cooke under his artist moniker August Cooke, out now his label Poets Studio

Two North Carolina bands – one killer collaboration. Charlotte’s It’s Snakes and Raleigh’s Goddamn Wolves have teamed up to release “Viva El Monstro” b/w “Others.

Vietnamese independent artist, songwriter and producer Kiey prepares to enter a new chapter with ‘METROMIRAGE’, an ambitious third studio album that brings together introspective songwriting, globally informed production and a distinctly modern approach to English-language pop.

None of these songs were ever remade for any of his solo albums, and going through them, it’s difficult to understand why.

There is something wonderfully timeless and yet timely about the sound of Kerbside Collection: music that reminds us of our favourite funk and soul moments while still feeling forward-thinking and on-the-moment.

Southern California-born, San Diego-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Aly Rowell has released her debut solo LP, ‘Where It All Goes’.

Having begun composing at the age of 10, Laing draws inspiration from contemporary classical artists including Nils Frahm, Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi, Arvo Pärt and Hania Rani.

Saxophone, stritch, and trumpeter blower Caleb Wheeler Curtis invited pianist Jason Moran into the studio for a duet session, and the results capture the pure joy in the collaboration.

Eternal Mourning aka Philippe Mourani is a singer-songwriter from Montreal

Dreampop artist, poet, storyteller, and producer Arily Michele has released her third studio album, Meditation for Wildflowers.

Reset E.P. is the debut EP from Afternoon Sister, an indie rock band led by young singer-songwriter Alice Ventura.

Through five songs, Picastro turns documentation’s failure into musical material, and the EP that comes out of it is intimate, restless, and quietly devastating. It does not claim to restore a lost life. It simply refuses to let a missing record excuse forgetting that the life was there.

This is communal music made by people who obviously listen to each other, recorded in the middle of winter in a room that held them close. It asks you to move at its speed.

The commitment to atmosphere is exactly what gives the single its identity. As a calling card, ‘Full Moon Factory’ is a confident one.

Meyer has spent years building scenes, releasing other people’s records and playing rooms where the stage was the floor, and he’s made an album that sounds happy to be here. It doesn’t strain for importance.

Everyone writes under the band’s name, and that democracy shows in how the songs are built. Nobody hogs the frame. Sennen never come across as imitators. The warmth belongs to them alone.