Hardly Art Rock & Indie 45 Items

On the surface, TacocaT may seem to be all about tacos, cats, fluorescent highlighters, reverb, great hear, gum, and tambourines, but that's just to throw you. That's frosting. Through clever social and political commentary via pop culture references and a relentless emphasis on positivity, this grrrl-fronted palindrome transcends pop-punk pigeonholing while never forgetting their primary mission: FUN. Limited one-time pressing on black vinyl. "TacocaT's jokes and uncanny party-starting ability mean you have to try in order to hate them. And 'trying' isn't going to get you anywhere with this band." - The Seattle Times"They're the best band in the world." --Katy Goodman (La Sera, Vivian Girls)

Two brand new songs from Seapony, exclusive to this release. First material to follow the band's debut LP, Go With Me, also available on Hardly Art. The music of Seapony is refreshing in its simplicity. Most songs use no more than three chords, with an average running time around two-and-a-half minutes. Other bands make a fuss about coloring outside the lines, but Seapony aspires to the reverse, making each ditty distinctive while operating within the same basic sonic framework: Fuzz-drenched guitar playing simple chord progressions, topped with concise melodic hooks and singer Jen Weidel's breathy vocals. In lieu of a human drummer, the Seattle trio entrusts timekeeping to a vintage gizmo the size of a desktop calculator. The lyrics to "Dreaming," the track that catapulted them into the spotlight in late 2010, are just six lines long. Like YoungMarble Giants and Beat Happening before them, this young three-piece has generated excitement that belies their music's modest means. "Sailing" gently drifts on a simple, sleepy melody and soft handclaps, allowing space for crystalline layers of both acoustic and electric guitar. B-side "I Saw You" is an upbeat number in the traditional Seapony vein that gets crazy with the drum machine...

Two brand new songs from SF's Sandwitches, exclusive to this releaseFirst material to follow the "Mrs. Jones Cookies" LP [Empty Cellar, 2011]Recorded by Mike Donovan of Sic AlpsFeaturing former members of The Fresh & OnlysNaivete and splattered paint; gothic Americana and tender misfit pop; memories recorded and remembered underwater. This is what makes THE SANDWITCHES, a three-piece from the Bay area with a powerhouse of a pedigree. Members are currently involved in SONNY& THE SANDWITCHES, EARTH GIRL HELEN BROWN, and PILLARS OF SILENCE, after having spent time rolling around the country as backup singers and tambourine smackers for fellow San Franciscans THE FRESH & ONLYS. Following a debut LP on Sonny Smith's own Turn Up! Records, another acclaimed LP on Empty Cellar earlier this year, and a smattering of releases in between, Hardly Art releases "The Pearl" 7". The new sounds of THE SANDWITCHES are at once both strange and we...

Xray Eyeballs is the brainchild of O.J. San Felipe. Originally from San Francisco, O.J. landed in Brooklyn in 2000 after numerous cross-country adventures. Upon settling, O.J. quickly cemented himself in the underground Brooklyn punk, noise, and indie scene playing in numerous bands including Golden Triangle (Mexican Summer, Hardly Art). While Golden Triangle is known as an all around party band that bashes out garage pop tunes that could easily be found on a Nuggets compilation, O.J. had something else in mind for Xray Eyeballs. Starting as a solo project, O.J. aimed to make pop songs that kids could remember after leaving the party. O.J. explains, "I just wanted to make every song sound like a lullaby." These songs are filled with dreamy pop hooks and melancholic melodies, covered in a spooky haze.

Brand new material from up and coming Seattle goth pop group. Seattle's GRAVE BABIES have been reverberating shimmery pop songs in the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, The Smiths, and The Cure. Driving guitar riffs, weirdo synth and slamming drums. GRAVE BABIES' first single, "Gouge Your Eyes Out" was released by Danish label Skrot Up in the spring of 2010. Skrot Up released the first Grave Babies full length, "Deathface", in March 2011.

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.

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.

Colder than what might be comfortable is one of the warmest places you'll ever find yourself. There are particular melodies that bite you as they travel through the air and into your ears. Grave Babies hurl such soundwaves towards you like a ton of bricks. Yet even as Grave Babies' sounds maul you, their songs pull you right in. Their music describes a world of constant turmoil, and how exciting that world can be. With their newest release, Grave Babies expand this world beyond relentless struggle to recognize the inherent balance this constant back-and-forth actually brings. Across this EP's five tracks, Grave Babies expand on their raw, exploded sounds they've used to communicate the concepts and inspirations occupying the lush-but-seemingly-uninhabited landscape of their art. Gothdammit is an ambitious step forward for the band and plays heavily on the lo-fi post-punk aesthetics they've become known for. With Gothdammit, Grave Babies offer disarmingly uplifting anthems and search for a way forward, as opposed to drowning in their usual filth. Submerging achingly pretty melodies in fathoms-deep oceans of solvent distortion, Grave Babies are unlike any other band in Seattle, and Gothdammit is their newest release: a 12" EP featuring five brand new tracks. Limited pressing on black vinyl. All 12"s include a download code.

Green vinyl.

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...

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.”

We've thought a lot about rock-music. One selects one's influences and moves from there, a process madesimpler in the networked age. The result often resembles a collage, unified by the aesthetic leanings of its maker.Music writers and peers in conversation map out the references and citations made by their favorite new bands - "just like early SST punk" or "frigid cold-wave resembling...

Grave Babies are a band whose sound might suggest the need for drugs that stabilize mood, while also creating a desire for ones that enhance them. The center of Grave Babies' sound is the sonic equivalent of thwarted desire - and on Crusher, their first LP for Hardly Art, Grave Babies take the harder approach: doing what they've always done, but doing it better. All LPs include a download code!

All LPs include a download code.

Seattle bred Unnatural Helpers churn out short blasts of power pop punk hits. Recorded in Seattle with Kurt Bloch (Fastbacks) and Eric Randall (TacocaT), "Land Grab" is the band's third full length release and second for Hardly Art. One will hear glimpses of old school grunge, sure, but one will also hear some Nerves/Tom Petty-esque power pop, too...and all of this expert song writing is accomplished in short blasts that reminds one of punk bands like The Minutemen. Old school working class rock for the youth and adults of today.

Seattle based indie-pop darlings SEAPONY return with their second full length lp, "Falling". "Falling" is simple and yet complex pop music to fall in or out of love to. It's the aural equivalent of sunshine on a rainy day. Recorded by Danny Rowland at SEAPONY HQ in Seattle, WA and mixed at Dub Narcotic in Olympia, WA by Bob Schwenkler, and mastered by KRAMER (Galaxy 500, Daniel Johnston, etc), "Falling" is SEAPONY at their best.

Formerly known as YellowFever this is the first full-length under the moniker DEEP TIME. From Austin TX comes a bewitching pop duo, comprised of Jennifer Moore on Organ, electric guitar and vocal microphone, and Adam Jones on drums. Jennifer Moore, once the torchbearer for girl-group legends THE CARROTS is something altogether unusual in the modern age; a singer with those endangered qualities: personality, style, and an arresting delivery. Adam Jones is the jazzy 'batterista,' as musical and dynamic a drummer as you will see on the scene today. What if Stereolab were more interested in sounding like Young Marble Giants or LiLiPut instead of Krautrock and French Pop?

NY's K-Holes have returned with "Dismania", the group's second full-length and first for Hardly Art. "Dismania" comes packed with the same kind of sinister, feverish punk skronk the New York quintet (featuring former members of Golden Triangle and the Black Lips) is known for. Their abdication follows a natural extension of the atrophied rock/roll ligament - unfurling from H. Williams to G. Vincent to Larry & the Blue Notes to the Pagans, Birthday Party, Flesh Eaters, Scientists, beyond - colored, at times, with smudges of primitive ceremony. As we follow their trajectory, running from the towering urban oppression, we catch whiffs of guttural noir in the honk of the sax, we hear the jagged swaths of guitar, we sense the bite and lust in their gang vocal. It's a dark, brutal, menacing trip; the sound of escape with the sheen of redemption, fueled by the low, thundering beat of tribal divination.

Over the course of four years, THE BEETS have become one of the best bands, if not the best band, in New York. With two full-length LPs and three singles on NY label Captured Tracks under their belt, and an amazing live show to boot, it is no wonder why they have been personally asked to share the stage by the likes of PAVEMENT, and to tour with bands from THE VIVIAN GIRLS to THE MOUNTAIN GOATS. THE BEETS are the musician's band, the artist's band, the band of bands. THE BEETS are smart and colorful individuals who treat life as a sing-along and a comic book all at once. THE BEETS are more than a band: they are a way of life, a gang, a gang from Jackson Heights, a gang that you want to be a part of. Hardly Art is proud to present to the world "Let the Poison Out", the third...

The Seattle-based songwriter Grant Olsen -best known as half of the duo Arthur & Yu-christens his new project GOLD LEAVES. An autumnal character imbues these nine originals. Just as foliage buds, changes color, and eventually falls from the branches every season, so too do themes of birth, death, and regeneration permeate "The Ornament". Like most creative types, Olsen's muse is always in transition. The album went through myriad permutations between inception and completion. Although he began work on it nearly four years ago, he scrapped the bulk of those early efforts after a bag...

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.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2022.

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...

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.

Here's the thing about ill peach: this band exists because they are too weird to not exist. The seed of ill peach was first planted in the recording studios of New York City where Pat Morrissey and Jess Corazza were working together as professional songwriters, collaborating with artists like Icona Pop, SZA, Weezer, Pharrell, Big Freedia, and others. Then came the day they were offered their own publishing deal. Cool, right? Well, about that: "Everyone kept saying, 'The stuff that you're writing is slightly too left-of-center-weirdo stuff," remembers Morrissey. "Why don't you start your own project?" Thus ill peach, a pop band with a punk streak and a taste for both the rotten and the sweet, with an approach to making music that goes something like: "Do you want to pick up a guitar and do you want to be on this water jug and we'll record it on the iPhone and create some weird drum pattern?" Following a series of well-received EPs on their own Pop Can Records (a record label and artist collective Morrissey and close collaborator Jesse Schuster run with friends), a digital single for Hardly Art's 15th anniversary series, and some colorful music videos that crystallized the band's visual aesthetic along with their sound, ill peach's "weirdo stuff" comes to fruition on first full-length This IS NOT AN Exit: a collection of anthemic songs built out of bright pop and gritty experimental elements (Morrissey names the sculptural use of distortion on the final albums by Low as an inspiration), punctuated with hooky choruses ready to be screamed along to in the safety of your own bedroom or with a bunch of friends at one of ill peach's intense live shows. If ill peach first blossomed in New York, it took quarantine in Los Angeles for the project to ripen. The end of the world turned out to be what ill peach needed to get real with themselves. "It helped us creatively to zone in and removed us from the [industry] side of things to where we could just be like: this is our new identity, let's jump with both feet." This IS NOT AN Exit's title is a reflection of something Corazza realized during a period of personal and familial crises "I kept walking into buildings and I'd try to exit somewhere and the sign would be like, 'This is not an exit,'" she says. "It just felt like a metaphor for a hopeful thing-don't give up yet." This combination of hope and anxiety is all over This IS NOT AN Exit, reflected in a sonic palette (Alternative! Electronica! Indie! Radio pop! Coldplay!) as eclectic as it is unpretentious. Ultimately, This IS NOT AN Exit is a record about healing, a process often spoken about in New Age-y terms but one that in reality can be really confusing and, yes, weird. But it is the beautiful strangeness of being alive that ill peach capture so well on This IS NOT AN Exit.

Chris Cohen was always a quiet kid. In fact, this introversion was one reason he began playing music as a toddler-to communicate without speaking, to identify with others without the direct representation of words. It has worked, too, with Cohen's terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn't come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes. But Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen's meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener "Damage," the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle "Laughing": this is Cohen communicating with friends not only through his deep understanding of groove, harmony, and hook but also with his listeners through songs that croon of our uneasy little era. On Paint a Room, Cohen's music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it's often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud. Paint a Room both reckons with reality and conjures an alternate one, where nighttime walks and a neighbor's wind chimes offer endless escapes for the imagination, space for the mind to roam. Sublime and sun-lit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly...

Nick Llobet (they/them) was ready to throw in the towel. Llobet, who grew up in South Florida, learned to play guitar at a very young age, dabbling in everything from classical, blues, classic rock, and flamenco. They'd spent much of their early 20s searching for their voice as an artist and as an individual, as well as for a musical community Llobet would eventually move to Brooklyn, but after three years of looking for a hopeful artistic breakthrough, they spent much of their time in seclusion, consumed by social anxiety and imposter syndrome-and they were considering abandoning songwriting completely. One day, while commuting through Penn Station en route to their partner's family home in Virginia (that would also lead to the crucial purchase of a secondhand Tascam cassette recorder), they noticed Patti Smith sitting alone, waiting for a train. The typically shy Llobet decided to approach the icon, who was, in turn, delighted to see that Llobet was carrying a guitar. At the end of their interaction, Smith offered some parting wisdom: "She wished me luck and said, 'Practice hard, Nick.'" Llobet took her advice to heart, and this chance encounter kicked off a personal and artistic rebirth. They started performing as youbet, a play on their last name, and began "changing [their] vision for what a song could be." youbet's debut, Compare & Despair, a delightful gem of a record that showcases Llobet's propensity for freewheeling whimsy and emotional intensity. In May 2019, inspired by a song-a-week writing group that produced Compare & Despair, Llobet started a second club in which contributors would upload that week's song to a private Bandcamp. Invigorated by this small musical collaboration, the feedback, and the accountability, Llobet wrote 18 songs throughout the duration of the club, twelve of which became Way To Be. After this songwriting marathon, Llobet spent 2020 focusing on instrumental guitar work and political engagement. By the summer of 2021, they were ready to revisit the Way To Be tracks. Over the next year-and-a-half, Llobet worked on the record relentlessly, refining the lyrics, recording, and arrangements from their apartment. Llobet self-produced Way To Be and describes the process as an enormous, labor-intensive undertaking that felt akin to "making a whole film." Along the way, Llobet was joined by collaborators, including Julian Fader (Ava Luna), Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek), and Daniel Siles. Across Way To Be's 12 delightfully off-kilter tunes, Llobet uses wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor to obliquely explore dysfunctional relationships, regret, self-confidence or the lack thereof, queerness, and self-discovery. Fuzzy at the edges and filled with playful, kinetic arrangements, Way To Be is a bridge into the entrancing world of youbet. You won't want to leave.