Hardly Art Vinyl, CD & Tape 65 Items

Initial run of the LP will be pressed on an Eco-Friendly Recycled Vinyl Mystery Colour! On their self-titled fourth album, La Luz launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy for a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland, bassist Lena Simon, and keyboardist Alice Sandahl. To help shape La Luz, the band found a kindred spirit in producer Adrian Younge. Though primarily known for his work with hip-hop, soul, and jazz acts, Younge saw in La Luz a shared vision that transcended genre. "We both create music with the same attitude, and that's what I love about them," he says. "They are never afraid to be risky and their style is captivating. It was an honor to work with them." The result is an album that is both the most naturalistic and psychedelic of the band's career. All the elements of classic La Luz are still present-the lush harmonies, the impeccable musicianship, the gorgeous melodies-but it's a richer, earthier iteration, replete with inorganic sounds that mimic the surreality of nature-the humming of invisible bugs, the atmospheric sizzle of a hot day. After spending the last few years living in rural northern California, Cleveland's lyrics have become more grounded, less interested in traveling to other dimensions than in peeking behind the curtain of this one. With sounds ranging from ghostly electric guitar shimmers, charging fuzz-guitar rock, soulful organ-driven dream-funk, galactic synths, and breezy '70s folk-pop, La Luz is an album that celebrates love - of music, of friendship, of life in all its forms.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2022.

Initial run of the LP will be pressed on an Eco-Friendly Recycled Vinyl Mystery Colour! On their self-titled fourth album, La Luz launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy for a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland, bassist Lena Simon, and keyboardist Alice Sandahl. To help shape La Luz, the band found a kindred spirit in producer Adrian Younge. Though primarily known for his work with hip-hop, soul, and jazz acts, Younge saw in La Luz a shared vision that transcended genre. "We both create music with the same attitude, and that's what I love about them," he says. "They are never afraid to be risky and their style is captivating. It was an honor to work with them." The result is an album that is both the most naturalistic and psychedelic of the band's career. All the elements of classic La Luz are still present-the lush harmonies, the impeccable musicianship, the gorgeous melodies-but it's a richer, earthier iteration, replete with inorganic sounds that mimic the surreality of nature-the humming of invisible bugs, the atmospheric sizzle of a hot day. After spending the last few years living in rural northern California, Cleveland's lyrics have become more grounded, less interested in traveling to other dimensions than in peeking behind the curtain of this one. With sounds ranging from ghostly electric guitar shimmers, charging fuzz-guitar rock, soulful organ-driven dream-funk, galactic synths, and breezy '70s folk-pop, La Luz is an album that celebrates love - of music, of friendship, of life in all its forms.

"Deliciously trashy homoerotic pop." --Pitchfork //"Bogart is a vivid, alluring frontman with one thing on his mind." -The New York Times"Too Young To Be In Love" is the first fully-realized HUNX & HIS PUNX album, and the group's first for Hardly Art. It was recorded in New York City by Ivan Julian-one of the founding members of inimitable NYC punk legends Richard Hell and the Voidoids. This record was made in the same studio that one...

First ever 7" release from La Sera. New project of Katy Goodman (Vivian Girls, All Saints Day)! This release contains two lush, dreamy songs of heartbreak, love, and death, all written by Goodman and recorded with Brady Hall in Seattle. "Never Come Around" is taken from a forthcoming LP, "Behind Your Eyes" is exclusive to this 7". Initial pressing of 700 with 200 on half-clear, half-red vinyl, and 500 on black vinyl. The debut full-length from La Sera will be released by Hardly Art in early 2011.

All LPs include a download code.

As Jess Sylvester finished his Hardly Art debut as Marinero in the fall of 2020, he realized it was time for a change. Sylvester grew up in Marin County, on the doorstep of San Francisco. It was a nurturing community for a high-school punk with a pompadour and, later, for a sober songwriter with a proclivity for moody psychedelia. But he wanted to be challenged and inspired by a new setting and scenario around strangers who prompted him to approach his music in unexpected ways. So in September 2020, as the world continued to reel in lockdown, Sylvester headed several hours south to Los Angeles, a city that, despite the relative proximity, the film buff knew largely from classic and cult films situated there. When he arrived, he kept digging into that cinematic past-Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, with John Williams' classic theme, or classic 90s movies about East LA, many featuring Edward James Olmos. They shaped his understanding of his new town just as it began to open. This is one pillar of the multivalent and endlessly lush La La La, Marinero's new album about sobriety, identity, and fantasy that is playfully named both for the city that helped shape it and the sophisticated pop it contains. Sylvester wrote about characters outside of himself, whether considering the heroine reckoning with her own version of keeping clean or the screenwriters whose work was deemed communist simply as a political convenience. He linked those songs with motivational anthems about self-acceptance and playful numbers about flirting through food, shaping a 12-song set rich with humor, empathy, and encouragement. Sure, La La La is a continuation of the slippery genre play Sylvester started with 2021's Hella Love, 2019's Trópico de Cáncer, or even before that. But it also feels like a fresh beginning for Marinero, as Sylvester realizes how boundless this project can be. He began to think about the music of his childhood, how his mother is from San Francisco with Mexican roots, and how he'd heard so much salsa growing up as...

New 7" by FERGUS & GERONIMO, the Brooklyn, NY (by way of Denton, TX) weirdo-pop wonder duo. "Never Satisfied" is a catchy Beach Boys-esque pop tune with a post-millennial skew, while b-side "Turning Blue" is a cover of an 80s novelty non-hit from a Pac Man picture-disc LP. No kidding. Initial pressing of 500 on opaque half-white, half-blue vinyl. This is the first material from FERGUS & GERONIMO for Hardly Art, in advance of a full-length LP due in early 2011. They have previously released 7"s with Woodsist, Tic Tac Totally, and Transparent.

Dick Stusso's third album is a document of slow mental unraveling with a world in perpetual decay as its backdrop. With S.P., California-based singer and songwriter Nic Russo has created his most out-there and toothsome record to date, plunging his listeners into a strange and thrilling new world at every opportunity. S.P. is the first Dick Stusso record in four years, following his stellar Hardly Art debut In Heaven from 2018-but this latest missive is more of an indirect sequel to the buzz-building 2015 release Nashville Dreams / Sings the Blues, diving deeper into the fictional character Dick Stusso's crumbling psyche and dystopian surroundings. If our introduction to Dick was someone trying to pursue their dreams and turning into a failure as a result, S.P. reflects the moment where, in Russo's words, "The character is becoming unlikable. He's succumbing to what is taking place around him."Nearly half of its 18 songs-spanning countrified rock duets, Guided by Voices-recalling anthems, and outro noise-burst sound experiments-were completed before the pandemic, when Russo decided to take a beat and allow the music to sprout new, weird buds in his rehearsal space. With mixer Andrew Oswald accentuating the record's unique feel, S.P. bridges the gap between the ultra lo-fi confines of his 2015 debut Nashville Dreams / Sings the Blues and the lush echoes of In Heaven, with a few helping hands to fully flesh out Russo's vision. Grace Cooper (The Sandwitches, Grace Sings Sludge) contributes vocals to "Dinner for Two" and "Self Reflection (Deep)," while his father Marc Russo-a Grammy-winning saxophonist who's currently touring with the Doobie Brothers-lays down expert horn arrangements on "Garbagedump #1." The myriad of twists and turns on S.P. further establish Russo as a fascinating craftsman who's never bound to do the same thing twice.

Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

Hardly Art debut by new, NY-based duo Lily Konigsberg (of Palberta) and Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes). This album follows a 2020 digital EP on Hardly Art . The closer you are to someone, the crueller you can treat them, but if they love you, they're inclined to forgive you. My Idea's Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos forgive each other now, but they were in a bad way when they recorded CRY Mfer - which is not to say their debut album is some kind of sonic bum out. CRY Mfer proves you can still make pop music while spiralling, as evidenced by the existence of "Breathe You," a bop all about fucking Nate constructed while "high as shit in my room making fun of Justin Bieber," the vocals of which Lily tracked while "blindly sad" and "genuinely devastated." They're best friends now, and they were best friends when they recorded CRY Mfer last year, but they didn't know that yet. ("We definitely were like, oh, maybe we're in love?" Lily recalls: it was a confusing time.) CRY Mfer is the sound of two people figuring out what they mean to one another "in the midst of," quote Nate, "a bunch of other chaos," up to and including being drunk as skunks; when listening to the album, Nate can "smell" the aforementioned chaos. "Thank God we're not those people [anymore]," Lily, with the clarity of newfound sobriety, marvels. When not using the other party as an emotional punching bag, Nate and Lily used one another as a creative filter and sounding board. In life, as in art, they share a language, a hive mind, finishing each other's sentences while lounging on Lily's parents' couch in the Hudson Valley. The duo joined forces in the Fall of 2020, when Lily, after a few years gobbing away in the punk trio Palberta, solicited Nate (who, at the time, was popping away as half of dance duo Water From Your Eyes) as a potential producer for her solo record; the subsequent song writing competition that followed resulted in dozens of tracks and one EP, That's My Idea. No strangers to productivity, Nate's Water From Your Eyes recently released their fifth album, and Lily recently released her solo LP, both to high marks. CRY Mfer is, true to the band's vision, a beautiful mess of different sounds, completely and effortlessly genre less (though if pressed to label it, the band settles on "Truth or Dare Pop"). While a milieu of myriad styles, from folk to dance, the album's main through-line is truth, regardless of how much the expression thereof may hurt. Its lyrics aren't "particularly diary-ish," Nate says, they're "a little more_" "Diarrhea-ish," Lily jokes. It's a reaction against the self-seriousness that runs rampant throughout indie music, which comes as no surprise when you learn the duo originally wanted to call themselves The Grammys (Why? Because when the two of them started working together, "we were like, we're gonna get a Grammy," Lily says). They aren't ashamed to admit they listen to Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, in much the same way they aren't ashamed to use a vocoder or lyrically play the heel. My Idea has only just begun, but already misery is in the rear-view. CRY Mfer is a punisher, to be sure, but it's also a banger; reflecting on the time period during which it was recorded, Nate breathes a sigh of relief: "Oof. Well, we made it, and we got something out of it, too." And so, dear listener, have you.

Initial Lp Copies On Clear With Aluminium High Melt Vinyl!Follow-Up To Lala Lala's Acclaimed 2018 Sophomore Album, The Lamb, Which Pitchfork Called "A Major Leap Musically And An Unflinching Reflection On The Courage Of Rejecting Easy Comforts."Co-Produced By Lillie West Of Lala Lala And Yoni Wolf Of Why?. Features Contributions From Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie / The Postal Service), Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Poet Kara Jackson, Ohmme, Adam Schatz Of Landlady, Sen Morimoto, Christian Lee Hutson, And Kaina Castillo."I Want Total Freedom, Total Possibility, Total Acceptance. I Want To Fall In Love With The Rock." That's How Lillie West Describes The Theme Of "Diver," The Song She Calls The Thesis Of Lala Lala's Third Record, I Want The Door To Open. The Rock In Question Is A Reference To Sisyphus, The Mythical Figure Doomed By The Gods To Forever Push A Boulder Up From The Depths Of Hell. To West, It Is The Perfect Metaphor For, In Her Words, "The Labor Of Living, Of Figuring Out Who You Are, What's Wrong With You, What's Right With You."Coming Off Of 2018's Acclaimed The Lamb, An Introspective Indie Rock Album Recorded Live With A Th...

Initial Run Of The Lp Will Be Pressed On Yellow Vinyl!Hella Love, The Hardly Art Debut From Marinero, Is An Album About Closing A Chapter. It's Jess Sylvester's Grand Farewell, And Love Letter To His Hometown And The Place He Grew Up, The San Francisco Bay Area, Before Relocating To Los Angeles After Finishing His Debut Release. Using The Moniker Marinero (Which Means "Sailor" In Spanish), Jess Sylvester Was Drawn To This Name As A Means To Honor His Parent's Stories -- His Father, A Sailor, And Mother, A Mexican-American Who Grew Up In San Francisco. This Record Blends Many Worlds From Beginning To End, And As You Go Deeper It Hits Harder. It's His Goodbye To The Bay. Pulling Sonic Influences From Classic Latin American Groups And International Composers From The 60's & 70's: Los Terricolas, Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, Carole King And, Serge Gainsbourg Hella Love Finds Sylvester Fusing Classical Arrangements With A Variety Of Different Genres, Evoking A Sonic Nostalgia Blended With Other Contemporary Artists Like Chicano Batman, Connan Mockasin, And Chris Co...

Vinyl includes mp3 coupon.Initial run of vinyl will be on Light Green transparent.Chastity Belt talks a lot about intention these days-how to be more present with each other. The four piece-Julia Shapiro (vocals, guitar, drums), Lydia Lund (vocals, guitar), Gretchen Grimm (drums, vocals, guitar) and Annie Truscott (bass)-is nine years deep in this, after all. It seems now, more than ever, that circuit is a movement of intentionality, one that creates a space inside which they can be themselves, among themselves. It's a space where the euphoria of making music with your best friends is protected from the outside world's churning expectations. It's a kind of safe zone for the band to occupy as their best selves: a group of friends who love each other. Their fourth record, Chastity Belt, comes out of that safe space. After a restorative few months on hiatus in 2018, each member worked on solo material or toured with other bands. "So much of the break was reminding ourselves to stay present, and giving ourselves permission to stop without saying when were gonna meet up again," says guitarist Lydia Lund. "It was so important to have that-not saying, 'we're gonna get back together at this point,' but really just open it up so we could get back to our present connection." Their experience navigating adult life within the strange seasons of the music industry has Chastity Belt orienting themselves towards whatever gets them to feel the most present with each other, in any part of the band grind. With the luxury of spending several weeks in the studio with Jay Som's Melina Duterte, Chastity Belt was able to experiment. The new self-titled album is the work of the band playing "old songs, and trying new things on top of it," like adding more dynamic harmonies and violin, says bassist Annie Truscott. Lydia, Gretchen, and Julia all share lead vocals on different tracks on the album. The result is their most sonically developed and nuanced record yet; one that's not only a product of, but a series of reflections on wha...

This pressing of Sleepyhead includes new artwork and LP copies arrive on cloud-colored vinyl. Originally released in October 2016 as a long-since sold-out self-released cassette, Hardly Art is proud to announce that Sleepyhead, the debut full-length from celebrated Chicago band Lala Lala, will be available for the first time ever on LP and CD (along with a new run of cassettes). Recorded in a basement over the course of five days during a typically-inhospitable Midwestern winter, Sleepyhead is an auspicious-if, at the time, criminally overlooked-debut effort from the young songwriter Lillie West and her then-lineup of supporting players (Abby Black on drums and Karl Bernasconi on bass). Unlike 2018's critically-acclaimed The Lamb, Sleepyhead is a rawer, more punked-up album with fewer lyrical metaphors obfuscating it's intimate, direct emotionality. Committed to tape in an urgent outburst of creative energy, the self-produced record eschews overdubs and takes unfussy aim at the listener's ears, heart, and the lump in their throat. Album standout "Fuck With Your Friends" was a breakthrough moment for West-it was the first song she ever wrote, one that tumbled out of her fully-formed, setting her on the path that's led to her recent successes. Its also emblematic of Sleepyhead's confessionalism and fearless forthrightness: "I drink more than I want to 'cause it makes you easier to talk to / And what you're saying is boring," West sings.

Shana Cleveland has been beguiling listeners for years in her role as the superlative frontwoman for elastic surf rockers La Luz. Now Cleveland is evolving her sound on the new solo full-length Night of the Worm Moon, a serene album that flows like a warm current while simultaneously wresting open a portal to another dimension. As much a work of California sci-fi as Octavia Butler's Parable novels, Night of the Worm Moon incorporates everything from alternate realities to divine celestial bodies. Inspired in part by one of her musical idols, the Afro-futurist visionary Sun Ra (the album's title is a tip of the hat to his 1970 release Night of the Purple Moon), the record blends pastoral folk with cosmic concerns. Cleveland dreamt up this premise while living in Los Angeles, a city where--as deftly explored on La Luz's recent Floating Features--reality and fantasy casually co-exist. Abetting Cleveland during the recording process was a familiar gallery of co-conspirators: multi-instrumentalist Will Sprott of Shannon & the Clams, original La Luz bassist Abbey Blackwell, Goss, pedal steel player Ol...

Chastity Belt are back with new album ’I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone’!

The record is being previewed with new single ‘Different Now’, which also has its own shiny video.

‘I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone’ is the follow-up to the band’s 2015 album ‘Time To Go Home’ and the new viddy for ‘Different Now’ parodies Temple of the Dog’s ‘Hunger Strike’ clip.

For the follow-up to their excellent 2013 debut record It’s Alive, La Luz worked with Ty Segall who engineered and produced the LP recorded primarily at a surf shop in San Dimas, California. To capture the growing sophistication of their live shows honed over a year and a half of extensive touring, much of Weirdo Shrine was recorded live with all four members sharing the same space. Segall describes the record as a “world…burning with colors [he’d] never seen, like mauve that is living.”

Chastity Belt is a Seattle-based rock band consisting of four friends - guitarists Julia Shapiro and Lydia Lund, bassist Annie Truscott, and drummer Gretchen Grimm. Recorded by Jose Diaz Rohena at the Unknown, in Anacortes, WA, and mixed by Matthew Simms (guitarist for legendary British post-punks and one-time tour mates Wire), Time to Go Home sees Chastity Belt take the nights out and bad parties of their past to their stretching points, watch the world around them break apart in anticipatory haze, and rebuild it in their own image with stunning clarity before anyone gets hungover.

As LA SERA, Katy Goodman turned an aching heart into two marvelous,...

In Spanish, La Luz means “light” and that’s the perfect thing to evoke when your songs give the illusion of veering in the opposite direction. But lift out most any lyric—which is a good excuse to give a closer listen to the delicate, four-part harmonies that are fast becoming the band’s signature—and you’ll find that the aches and pains of love and loss, of living in a world where no foothold is ever a promise—all this is delivered with a nuanced dose of perfectly timed exhilaration, like the whole thing might just be worth it in the end. It's Alive is the debut LP from Seattle's La Luz. For fans of 60s surf, soul und psych pop sounds highly recommended!

This 7" release features the album track "Devils Hearts Grow Gold" on the a-Side and a cover of "Dedicated to the One I Love" on the b-side. Black vinyl.

The Older I Get the Funnier I Was, musician/comedian Whitmer Thomas's follow-up to his 2020 HBO special The Golden One, and his 2022 Can't Believe You're Happy Here EP, moves between pop punk, electro, and the influence of the singer-songwriters he grew up listening to in early childhood. It conjures the ennui of Bright Eyes, the barefaced storytelling of John Prine, the overstuffed lists of Fred Thomas, and the lackadaisical humor of Colleen Green. Initial run of the LP will be pressed on Transparent Pink vinyl.

Originally released in October 2016 as a long-since sold-out self-released cassette, Hardly Art is proud to announce that Sleepyhead, the debut full-length from celebrated Chicago band Lala Lala, will be available for the first time ever on LP and CD (along with a new run of cassettes). Recorded in a basement over the course of five days during a typically-inhospitable Midwestern winter, Sleepyhead is an auspicious-if, at the time, criminally overlooked-debut effort from the young songwriter Lillie West and her then-lineup of supporting players (Abby Black on drums and Karl Bernasconi on bass). Unlike 2018's critically-acclaimed The Lamb, Sleepyhead is a rawer, more punked-up album with fewer lyrical metaphors obfuscating it's intimate, direct emotionality. Committed to tape in an urgent outburst of creative energy, the self-produced record eschews overdubs and takes unfussy aim at the listener's ears, heart, and the lump in their throat.Album standout "Fuck With Your Friends" was a breakthrough moment for West-it was the first song she ever wrote, one that tumbled out of her fully-formed, setting her on the path that's led to her recent successes. Its also emblematic of Sleepyhead's confessionalism and fearless forthrightness: "I drink more than I want to 'cause it makes you easier to talk to / And what you're saying is boring," West sings.This pressing of Sleepyhead also includes new artwork.

"There are two ways things can fall," says Dude York's Claire England. "They can fall and be ruined, or they can fall gently like a feather and be fine." On Falling, their second full-length for Hardly Art, the Seattle trio explores that sentiment-evoked by the broken cake on the album cover and the soft confetti on the inside sleeve-through impossibly catchy and emotive songs that investigate the ways you can fall in and out of relationships, and sometimes fall back together. Recorded at Different Fur Studios in San Francisco with producer Patrick Brown, Falling finds Dude York sounding bigger and more fully-realized than ever with hits that would feel perfectly at home sandwiched between Jimmy Eat World and Third Eye Blind in early 2000s alt-rock radio rotation, while somehow still sounding utterly their own. Peter Richards (guitar) and England (bass) share equal songwriting and lead vocal duties on this record, a significant change from their previous album, 2017's Sincerely, on which England fronted only two songs. The duality of their songwriting and vocals complement each other emotionally and sonically, with Andrew Hall's harmonies and driving drums providing their own unique character in each song. The collaboration is clear-each part is carefully crafted, with Richards' guitar adding texture to the verses and then soaring into the particularly special kind of guitar solos that make you want to sing along. The production on Falling is full of meticulous details and sonic tricks designed to hit that deep teenage place in your heart, whether it's the dense, chugging guitars or impeccably-placed harmonies. "We all have very different reference points for music and then when we swap them in becomes something totally different," says Richards. He didn't grow up as attached to the radio-friendly emo music that defined the adolescence of the rest of the band, but when he got into the genre in the past few years decided he wanted to embrace it in his songwriting, which comes across in the heavy guitars and dra...

Like many important bands, Seattle quartet Versing got their start in college radio_Tacoma's KUPS. The group's main songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Daniel Salas served as alternative music director there, where he met guitarist Graham Baker, drummer Max Keyes, and bassist Kirby Lochner. Now Versing are poised to spread their coolly combustible brand of rock on those said airwaves...and beyond if the world knows what's good for it. Baker, Keyes, Lochner, and Salas have risen through Seattle's competitive rock ecosphere with nonchalant élan. They ch...

Shana Cleveland has been beguiling listeners for years in her role as the superlative frontwoman for elastic surf rockers La Luz. Now Cleveland is evolving her sound on the new solo full-length Night of the Worm Moon, a serene album that flows like a warm current while simultaneously wresting open a portal to another dimension. As much a work of California sci-fi as Octavia Butler's Parable novels, Night of the Worm Moon incorporates everything from alternate realities to divine celestial bodies. Inspired in part by one of her musical idols, the Afro-futurist visionary Sun Ra (the album's title is a tip of the hat to his 1970 release Night of the Purple Moon), the record blends pastoral folk with cosmic concerns. Cleveland dreamt up this premise while living in Los Angeles, a city where--as deftly explored on La Luz's recent Floating Features--reality and fantasy casually co-exist. Abetting Cleveland during the recording process was a familiar gallery of co-conspirators: multi-instrumentalist Will Sprott of Shannon & the Clams, original La Luz bassist Abbey Blackwell, Goss, pedal steel player Ol...

"The Lamb was written during a time of intense paranoia after a home invasion, deaths of loved ones and general violence around me and my friends," says Lillie West, the Chicago-based songwriter behind Lala Lala. "I began to frequently and vividly imagine the end of the world, eventually becoming too frightened to leave my house. This led me to spend a lot of time examining my relationships and the choices I'd made, often wondering if they were correct and/or kind." West initially started Lala Lala as a way to communicate things that she felt she could never say out loud. But on The Lamb, her sophomore LP and debut for Hardly Art, she has found strength in...

Fans of Jenn Champion (formerly "S") have praised her open-hearted lyrics, expertly-deployed melancholia, technical skill, and willingness to forgo conventions, but mostly they've praised her for making albums they could cry to. With the release of Cool Choices in 2014, Champion made what many considered the best record of her career, and a lot of people cried to it.On Single Rider, Champion brings with her all those skills and vulnerabilities, but it is not a record for wallowing: it is a recor...

Los Angeles has often been described as a "dream factory"--both a mecca where dreamers converge to pursue long-held aspirations, and a topography of hallucinogenic contradictions: enchanting tangerine sunsets diffused by smog, crystal-clutching spiritualists mingling with deep-pocketed narcissists, rows of scenic palms competing with garish billboards for commuters' attention. It was against this backdrop that the four members of La Luz--singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland, drummer...

Los Angeles has often been described as a "dream factory"--both a mecca where dreamers converge to pursue long-held aspirations, and a topography of hallucinogenic contradictions: enchanting tangerine sunsets diffused by smog, crystal-clutching spiritualists mingling with deep-pocketed narcissists, rows of scenic palms competing with garish billboards for commuters' attention. It was against this backdrop that the four members of La Luz--singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland, drummer...

 A Love Sleeps Deep's bones rattle with all the seismic changes of the last five years since the release of The Moondoggies' Adios I'm a Ghost. While the Washington band got lumped in early on with the woodsy folk-rock/Americana movement that sprung up in the P...

 A Love Sleeps Deep's bones rattle with all the seismic changes of the last five years since the release of The Moondoggies' Adios I'm a Ghost. While the Washington band got lumped in early on with the woodsy folk-rock/Americana movement that sprung up in the P...