Alex Gallacher

The Handover return with “New Old Medicine,” out June 5th via Sublime Frequencies. The Egyptian-rooted trio of Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien follow their 2024 debut with a second long-form composition, recorded in Berlin by Rabih Beaini. Oud, violin and vintage organ move through one continuous piece into something psychedelic and strange.

Your next Monday Morning Brew Playlist has arrived, including new music from Le Ren, Laura Veirs, Mairearad Green and lots more. Plus, explore two visionaries: Sardinian guitarist Paolo Angeli and Lisbon experimentalist Ana Lua Caiano, whose 2024 debut, Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado, was one of my Albums of the Year.

KLOF Mixtape No. 84 ranges from folk to ambient experimental – featuring music from French composer Cécile Schott (Colleen), new offerings from Folk Police Recordings: “The Silent Harvest Volume One,” Ed Askew’s posthumous “The Final Painting,” Robin Katz’s “Hypnos,” plus music from Amarante-Cerisier, D. Rothon, The MerKaBa Brotherhood, Sailing Stones, Aure and more.

Spell Songs return on 4th September with their third album, In Thin Air, out via Hudson Records. A musical companion to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds, it follows the “Seven Wonders” from nest to migration — a celebration of birdlife and a plea to halt its loss. First single “Flight” is out now, ahead of a September UK tour.

Tara Clerkin Trio have shared “Lazy Daisy”, the latest track from their forthcoming album “Somewhere Good”, out 5th June via World of Echo. Following a 6 Music session, it’s the Bristol trio’s first album since 2023’s “On The Turning Ground” — forty-odd minutes of harmonium, upright bass and hushed vocals, sounding more like themselves than ever.

BCMC — Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain — return with “Tête-à-Tête”, the second single from their forthcoming Drag City album “Stash”, out June 26th. Where lead single “Kaleidosmoke” unfurled in patient, accumulative psychedelia, this one rotates skyward — Crain’s organ tearing through prog, gospel, psych and funk, MacKay’s twin guitars tracing intricate, Krautrock-leaning patterns. A new visualiser arrives alongside the single.

The Bevis Frond unveil the music video for “Romany Blue”, taken from their recent 27th album “Horrorful Heights” on Fire Records. Directed by Italian filmmaker and long-time fan Roberto Beani in Bologna using a vintage Academy 1.37 aspect ratio and handheld camera, the clip arrives ahead of a UK tour beginning in Coventry on June 4th.

Biita Houdei — the new moniker of singer-songwriter Lisa Houdei (formerly LéPonds) — shares debut single “Life Inside The Hourglass” via Basin Rock and Father/Daughter. Shaped in the shadows and sounds of Topanga Canyon, the sub-three-minute strum dropped into her mind “from a ghost of sorts” and was written in twenty minutes. Produced by Haley Heynderickx in her first lead production role.

Pharis & Jason Romero return on June 12th with “These Are The Days That Turn In To Years”, their seventh studio album for Free Dirt Records. Recorded at the duo’s restored riverside barn in Horsefly, BC, it is, in press notes, “a songwriter’s deep exhale, replete with stories, love, and nostalgia.” Title track “These Are The Days” is out now.

Laura Veirs returns on 14th August with her fourteenth solo album, “Temple Songs”, released via her own Raven Marching Band Records. Her lead single, “Flying Into Darkness”, arrives with a video that Veirs filmed herself during a recent French tour. Written, recorded, arranged, produced and performed entirely alone in her backyard ‘Temple of Bloom’ studio, it’s the most self-contained project of Veirs’s three-decade career.

A final album from Ed Askew is on the way. “The Final Painting,” a posthumous album from the late outsider songwriter, painter and poet, arrives July 31st — assembled in his last years with producer Jerry David DeCicca. Lead single “Gray Air-o-Plane,” featuring Sharon Van Etten, is out today with a music video framed by Ed’s own paintings.

Irish alternative trad/folk group Rattling Ark share “Coleraine Jig,” the second single from their forthcoming debut album “Top of a Mountain.” Led by cellist Kevin Murphy (Slow Moving Clouds), this haunting instrumental piece fuses cello with cascading zithers and percussion — the melody framed before resolving into a trancelike groove.