Amy Ray praises a very good boy, Third Face are in your face, Dominique Fils-Aimé knows what she wants, Lydia Luce is caught in a romantic web — and you’ve still got the magnificent Nick Waterhouse and plenty more on tap to close out your Thursday Roundup. What are you waiting for?
31 | Amy Ray | Muscadine
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Amy Ray is premiering the video for her new single Muscadine. The song was penned by Ray and recorded with her band remotely in their respective homes. Amy sings this story of love and loss over a landscape of haunting melodic keyboard drones, mixed with acoustic guitar, dobro, pedal steel, and fiddle, laid over a heartbeat of rhythm and bass. Alt-Americana, North Carolinian artist H.C. McEntire (Mount Moriah) provides a whole chorus of backing vocals that are her own special flavor of sweet and devastating. Amy says, “I wrote this song after one of my oldest dogs passed. Regardless of living deaf and blind for his last few years, he was always willing to go on adventures with me in the woods. He might run into a few trees along the way, or fall in a little ditch, but he always got up and carried on.”
32 | Thirdface | No Requiem For The Wicked
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Nashville hardcore group Thirdface debuted their latest single No Requiem For The Wicked from their upcoming debut album Do It With A Smile, due out on March 5. No Requiem For The Wicked is a direct call-out of clout chasers and those that take from their communities but never reciprocate. The fiery track puts Thirdface’s vicious hardcore on full display with a pummelling introduction before ripping into equally heavy and varied intricacies, all well under the two-minute mark.”
33 | Dominique Fils-Aimé | Mind Made Up
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Juno winner Dominique Fils-Aimé just shared the defiant Mind Made Up, from her upcoming album Three Little Words (out Friday). She explains: “It’s a bold and introspective metaphor about mental health and the all-important moment where we decide to put in the work towards feeling better about ourselves.” The last in her trilogy exploring the roots of African American musical culture — from blues confronting historical silences & sorrows to jazz exploring the civil rights movement of the ’60s — this final project in the series embraces the emotional lushness of soul music.”
34 | Lydia Luce | Tangled Love
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nashville singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lydia Luce has shared her latest song Tangled Love. It comes off her sophomore album Dark River, due out Feb. 26. Tangled Love’s subtle chamber pop, orchestral and indie sounds highlight Luce’s captivating vocals making them center stage while telling a cathartic story of a codependent relationship and toxic attachment to a partner. Luce stated, “Tangled Love is about attachment. This relationship has become painful and difficult yet there is something that holds me to it. When I’m without it I’m longing for it. It is an addiction and both parties are aware of the co-dependency but no one wants to be the first to get clean so we stay tangled in the web we’ve created.”
35 | iskwē | Night Danger (Lovers Mix)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “iskwē | ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ is an artist — a creator and communicator of music and of movement, of pictures, poetry and prose. And through it all, she’s a teller of stories that have impacted our past and will inform our future. Today, the Juno winner announces her new project The Stars — a reimagination of her album acākosīk — and shares the first single Night Danger (Lovers Mix). “While I wasn’t physically in the room with the FILMharmonic Orchestra while recording, being able to finally have a long-standing vision of performing and recording with an orchestra come to life was one of my happiest and most soul-satisfying moments. I can’t fully put in words the sensation it brought, but I felt a sort of bliss and pride like nothing I’ve experienced before.”
36 | Buscabulla | Eva
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Buscabulla have released a new single titled Eva to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The song is a Puerto Rican karaoke classic, sung by Lissette Alvarez, while the original 1982 song was written in Italian by Umberto Antonio Tozzi. “During the height of the global pandemic in 2020 we kept revisiting this track which speaks of renewal after tragedy and the opportunity to start over,” Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo del Valle explain. “It struck a chord with us and we decided to give it our own twist, softening it without losing its powerful essence, and hopefully conveying that spirit of rebirth, optimism for the new year after such a calamitous moment in history.”
37 | Little Mazarn | Werewolf
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “2021 marks 30 years of Kill Rock Stars. Special releases and announcements will fill this anniversary year, including a new cover singles series titled Stars Rock Kill (Rock Stars), where 30+ artists from around the world will cover tracks from KRS’ expansive catalogue. This cover of Jad and David Fair’s Werewolf is the third single of the series. Little Mazarn states, “I met Jad and David Fair at a youngish impressionable age. I think they were some of the first artists/musicians I met that I thought wow, this is exactly what I want to be when I grow up. My regard for them has only skyrocketed to the stratosphere since then and although the KRS catalog is the stuff of dreams, I could think of nothing better than paying tribute to two of my favorite artistic people.”
38 | Anya Marina | Shut Up (Live from Rockwood, NYC)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Singer, songwriter and renowned live performer Anya Marina presents her new single Shut Up (Live from Rockwood, NYC). The track is the latest preview of her album Live and Alone in New York album, out Feb. 19. Marina says: I chose to play Shut Up in this live set because it’s got such a range of emotions and moods. There’s desire, playfulness, and flirtation, but also exasperation, fear and longing. Whenever I play it, I go right back to the headspace I was in when I wrote it. It was a fraught time. I wanted my way, but I wasn’t getting it. I wanted a relationship to happen with someone who wasn’t ready — he had all of these reasons why we might not work out. I didn’t want to hear it. Hence, Shut Up.”
39 | Ed is Dead | Endlessly
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Award-winning experimental artist Ed is Dead shares his latest single Endlessly. The single is lifted from his upcoming album Global Sickness, which will be released on March 18. The talented producer tells us: “I was thinking about how nature always makes its way. Whatever we humans do, in the end, nature will find its way. I always imagined immense landscapes, and slow camera movements as if a drone were flying over Iceland. Musically, I love the granular synth world, in which things are unquantized but find their place and make the production “grooves” in the end — as something uncomfortable that finds its place.”
40 | Not So | Valentine
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Not So is the neo-soul project of Bay Area musician Jeffrey Wright. The latest single Valentine is debuting today. Wright says, “A lot the creative process behind it was “strike while the iron is hot,” so in that way it was one of the quicker pieces I’ve worked on. I like the idea of committing to early ideas and not looking back for this project — something I haven’t really wanted to do in the past. I’m used to writing songs over the course of months / years, not just days. Not So is a journey for me into a new musical space so it’s only natural that I change my process a bit.”
41 | I Like Trains | The Truth (Vessels Remix)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Leeds trailblazers I Like Trains present a searing take on post-truth politics, with a hefty bass-heavy rework by Vessels. The electronic artist re-envisions a more upbeat version of The Truth, the lead track from the band’s hard-hitting Kompromat album released in 2020. “I don’t usually have a remix in mind when it come to our own music, but The Truth was always designed to make people move, and it seemed logical to gear it up properly for the dance floor,” says I Like Trains vocalist David Martin. “We asked for something dark, relentless and filthy and Vessels delivered it in spades.”
42 | Nick Waterhouse | Place Names
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A very special Valentine’s release from Nick Waterhouse that was recorded in Memphis & co-produced by Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart), capturing Waterhouse’s relentless spirit and mesmerizing brand of jittering, crystalline doo wop, jazz and blues. Lower-than-low gospel chants and refrains by The Sensational Barnes Brothers lend both energy and emotional weight, conjuring a whole new mythic world for Nick’s compositions.”
43 | Silk Tonic | A Second of Your Time
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Silk Tonic is an indie-pop band from Montreal composed of two childhood friends that have been playing music together for as long as they can remember: Matthew Brouillet, lead singer and drummer and Mark Hodges, lead guitarist and bassist. As the years went by, casual meet-ups evolved into writing sessions, when in 2017 they decided to devote their time and efforts into pursuing their music career. The duo’s new single A Second of Your Time is a funky, uptempo dance-pop track with guitar-driven production that incorporates vintage synths.”
44 | Unify Separate | Dying On The Vine
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “These days, our lives are forever lived in the public eye. We share photos of the food we eat, voice our innermost secrets, bare our bad habits, pimp our pets and air our dirty laundry. Ceaselessly, unrelentingly, unthinkably … We no longer spend our time with real friends and live in the moment. Instead we focus on digital buddies we’ve never met, who we desperately try to court, to connect for just a moment and get that all-important like that validates who we are. We are, all of us, truly, madly and deeply … dying on the vine. The cats, the food, the remedies … your kids, your life, your family … can’t you see the irony … in non-exclusive privacy? The new single Dying on the Vine channels classic synthpop with acidic social commentary.”
