“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.