Gum Bump’s syncopated grooves dance across the stereo spectrum in oozing fits before synthesizers erupt into heaps of magma — Setting crafting their own singular dynamic funk. Built on long exploratory sessions, Fennelly, Bowles and Westerlund have developed a shared syntax that transforms electric spontaneity into something more elaborate and impactful. Urgent and smouldering, patient and emotive: a thrilling statement.

“Life is Scary Horses” arrives as the final preview of We Are Together Again, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s forthcoming album. A “spiritual cover” of the Sally Timms / Jon Langford composition, it sees Timms herself appear on the track alongside strings arranged by Oldham’s cousin Ryder McNair. The accompanying video, directed by longtime collaborator Braden King, frames the piece as an elegy assembled from a disappearing world.

Brown Wimpenny’s experimental take on Raglan Road builds a dense wall of sound around Patrick Kavanagh’s Joycean poem of longing and loss. The eleven-piece collective’s version “probes the relationship between cacophony and beauty; attempting to show that by sitting with chaos and perpetual change, we can find a new cohesion.” The track is taken from a forthcoming debut album, details of which are yet to be announced.

Berkeley Street, the lead single and video from Adam Ross’ forthcoming third solo album, Bring On The Apathy, finds Ross sifting through Glasgow memories with characteristic lyricism and warmth. The single carries both the intimacy of return and the sting of passing time. Accompanied by a stellar ensemble, it’s one of his richest recordings yet.

Sons of Town Hall’s Of Ghosts And Gods is intricately, beautifully and never ostentatiously arranged, the voices full of quiet emotion as the music and the words draw you in. Across its richly orchestrated sweep — brass, strings, woodwinds and acoustic guitar all woven together with quiet precision — it is at once an adventure story, and something genuinely haunting and divine.

In their debut album, Hookahs of the Cave, Danny Riley and Noah Radley deliver an addictively listenable collection of electric guitar and drum excursions. From the acid-tinged, eastern raga-esque grooves of ‘Smoking the Bone’ to the pensive, sparse atmosphere of ‘Enclave of Parisian Cash’, the duo showcases immense depth. Whether through muscular drumming or patient restraint, this collaboration is consistently exciting and atmospheric.

Jimmy Cauty and Jem Finer’s The Standing Stones return with Twa Sisters, an eleven-minute, three-part rendition of one of the darkest Scottish ballads — sung by Iona Zajac, accompanied by Lankum’s Daragh Lynch. The track will be encoded into a twelve-foot Welsh slate monolith under the Flower Moon in Stroud on 1st May. The New Stone Age continues.

In conversation with Harper Mahood, Barry Walker Jr. talks about “Paleo Sol,” his Thrill Jockey debut — a record born from new age lullabies, ancient oxidised soils, and dark forces banging on the door. “I want people to look past the horizon and try to break the material veil that we’re all living in.”

Latest Mixtapes & Playlists

From Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois to the dream-folk of Cold Mountain Child, via Myriam Gendron’s reimagining of Dorothy Parker’s poetry — this week’s playlist moves between grandeur and intimacy. One of our most eclectic in a while — but it holds together. These things usually do.

Our latest Mixtape draws together a constellation of artists we’ve been championing lately — Bill Callahan, Buck Meek, Tōth, The Notwist, Iron & Wine, Juni Habel, and more — alongside a few welcome discoveries. From highway-wide Americana to quietly devastating folk, sun-bleached indie to avant-garde drift, it’s an hour-plus of music that earns your full attention. Press play and let it run.

From Zimbabwean heavy rock pioneers Wells Fargo to the meditative desert blues of Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, KLOF Mag’s Monday Morning Brew playlist is one of contrasts and quiet revelations. Gillian Welch mourns a myth, Polar Bear tear up the rulebook, and Elijah Minnelli steps into new territory alongside Osaka vocalist Kiki Hitomi. Folk, jazz, dub, desert blues and beyond — your week’s finest soundtrack.

Featuring new music from Natalie Wildgoose, Joshua Burnside, Lisa O’Neill, Juni Habel, Alela Diane, Joe Harvey-Whyte & Geir Sundstøl, Wendy Eisenberg, Iron & Wine, Jason P. Woodbury, Buck Meek, Tacoma Park, Marisa Anderson, Abigail Lapell, and Shane Parish.

South American field recording artist Caminauta has shared Encounters, the new single and video from her debut album Unseen Dimensions, due March 2026 via Wayside & Woodland Recordings. Shot during isolated coastal walks after three years of near-total solitude, the video captures the same unhurried, observational spirit as the music itself — organic, atmospheric, and quietly essential.

Iron & Wine’s Hen’s Teeth is decidedly darker than its sibling album, admitting emotional ambiguity at every turn. Sam Beam knows that a lot can happen in the span of a single song, and here he leans ever further into the South’s musical traditions, surrounding himself with collaborators who double the vulnerability at the heart of his most open-hearted work in years.

Blood Sucking Maniacs, the multigenerational family band led by Terry Allen and Jo Harvey Allen, have announced their self-titled debut album, out April 24th via Paradise of Bachelors. Spanning five generations and 121 years — from Pauline Allen’s ghostly piano to a great-grandchild’s fetal heartbeat — the album is a wild, tender testament to family as creative force.

Tōth has always been somewhat genre-slippery; it’s proof of his unwillingness to stay in one place for too long, and that’s something to be celebrated. There aren’t too many musicians making heart-on-sleeve emotional rollercoasters with this much control, poise and skill. ‘And The Voice Said’ moves in all directions at once, and ends up exactly where it should be.

Philadelphia/Chicago duo The Early have mastered a specific brand of improvised music that draws on jazz and hard-edged experimental rock. Across their latest EP, Cusp, and album, I Want to be Ready, Lewis and Nussbaum pass through landscapes, lighting them up and leaving them changed for the better. A resounding success.

Colleen has shared Mis armas se habían caído al suelo, the opening piece from her forthcoming album Libres antes del final, out March 20th via Thrill Jockey. Three insistent chords and a tentative melodic line surface through warm organ like a held breath released — a declaration of vulnerability that sets the tone for what Cécile Schott calls her most emotionally intense work.

The Wave Pictures fashion their touchstones into new shapes: rapid-fire surf-pop, sleazy garage blues, tender slow-burners full of weeping guitars. Tattersall’s playing remains immediately distinctive, incorporating desert rock and spiky proto-punk, sometimes sounding like both Television guitarists at once. From Proustian throbs of memory to blazing solos, “Gained/Lost” is accessible, varied, and endlessly rewarding—another bright star in their constellation.

My Days of 58 finds Bill Callahan embracing uncertainty — and it has made his songs wiser than ever. They are also funnier, sadder, deeper. Live energy, partly improvised performances, a spirit of collaboration: these are the things that make Callahan tick. Over three and a half decades into his career, he is still capable of adding more strings to his bow.

Seamus Cater and Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten have an exceptional ear for space — knowing what to leave out as much as what to put in. Across six unhurried songs, Strange the Grass Grows breathes and blooms with quiet confidence, its traditional ballads and originals handled with such grace and elegance that it stays with you long after the final note.

Magic Tuber Stringband have announced Heavy Water, out May 22nd — their most expansive album yet, rooted in the ecological and human fallout of nuclear arms production in rural South Carolina. Lead single Tribute to the Angels draws on Hilda Doolittle’s wartime poetry and old-time fiddle tradition, its luminous harmonics hovering between folk memory and grief. Spring tour dates are forthcoming.

Darkly cinematic and compellingly unhurried, “laundry | blood” finds Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart at their most brooding — a slow-burn highlight from BODY SOUND. A live performance video directed by Derrick Alexander accompanies the single. The album arrives March 20th via International Anthem and the trio are perfomring live across the East Coast US, London’s Cafe OTO, and Europe this spring.

Recorded at Capitol Records in 1971, “10,000 Greyhounds” is a frantic, jangle-blues workout that sends Tommy into scats and the band into sprawling jams before spiraling into an ebullient pocket epic of blissed self-discovery. It’s the latest preview of Echo Park, the 91-year-old LA legend’s long-lost album, mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke and due March 27th.

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