Alex Gallacher

Alex Dupree returns on August 14th with “Talking to the Dog,” his first album since 2022’s “Thieves,” released via Oklahoma’s Scissor Tail Records. Produced by Michael Krassner and featuring Jolie Holland, it’s the work of a poet-songwriter taking Hank Williams’s offhand line somewhere stranger and more visionary. Ahead of it, he shares lead track “New Meaning.”

Luluc share “No One Else’s Pen”, the second single from their sixth album “Sweet Thief”, out 10th July on Community Music. Steve Hassett calls it a big old love song and a paean to living and loving with integrity, gratitude and presence of mind, set to a video built around printmaker Fleur Rendell’s artwork.

Lambchop share ‘Stella’, the second track from ‘Punching The Clown’, their new album due 21st August via City Slang. Guitar and banjo intertwine beneath an omnipresent choir in a state of lush minimalism — the band’s first record in nearly four years, following ‘The Bible’.

Shearwater share “Slugs In The Marigolds”, the third single from “The New World”, and it’s a side of the band we’ve not heard before: slinky and carefree. Beginning mid-stride, as if caught playing in an empty warehouse, it lets Doug Wieselman’s casually beautiful saxophone summon the ghost of Roxy Music, the loose, sunny feeling playing against a darker lyric.

Chicago trio Black Duck and Basque musician Elena Setién announce their self-titled debut, Black Duck With Elena Setién, out August 28th via Thrill Jockey. Born from a run of improvised Spanish shows and recorded fast in Chicago, the album lands with lead single “Land of the Many Eyes” — four players conversing at the boundaries of improvisation and composition.

Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip and producer Mike Simonetti have shared their cover of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “I See A Darkness,” from the collaborative EP, out 12th June via Smugglers Way. The accompanying video, starring Taylor and David Bredin with Jarvis Cocker and Sian Ahern, plays like a televised Samuel Beckett play.

Elanor Moss announces her debut album “The Knife, The Needle,” out August 21st on Merge Records, and shares the single and video “Sarah Waiting in the Car.” Across nine songs, Moss renders joy and pain in exquisite peals of psych-folk, her darkly-dreamed vignettes offering an understanding of healing as a process, rather than an object one obtains. This album is sure to be on many End-of-year lists.

KLOF Mag’s Mixtapes and Shows page now features a persistent player — two new buttons, Play and Info, let you keep listening while browsing the archive, or swap between mixes freely. Older code going back to 2010 has also been updated. With over 450 mixes in the archive and new ones added weekly, it’s a good time to explore.

Our latest Mixtape opens to Frankie Archer, whose new album, The Dance of Death, is out today. We’ve also got new music from Zoh Amba, Simon Joyner, Johnny Bell, and a big finale from Brown Wimpenny. Plus: Iona Zajac, Stein Urheim, The Modern Folk, The Deadlians, Hack-Poets Guild, Naomi Alligator, Deer Scout, Josh Kimbrough, Nora Brown, anne annie, Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell, Robert Wyatt, Maxine Funke & more.

Helen Svoboda shares “Veins,” featuring Finnish vocalist Selma Savolainen, from her forthcoming album “Headwater” (out June 26th on Room40). The track draws Svoboda’s Finnish background into the vocal work, with Savolainen circling a single phrase about mother and daughter — “This short pondering is injected with raw emotion and melancholic beauty, as if she is bursting out of her younger self.”

Bring Your Own Hammer returns with two new singles, giving voice to figures the archive left in the margins. “The Cruel Father,” from Lavinia Blackwall and Neil Farrell with SJ McArdle, draws on an 1860s ballad about a father who abandoned his infant son. “The Girl from Spark’s Lake,” sung by Sophie Coyle, follows a runaway chasing bluebells.

Nora Stanley has spent years as a saxophonist and improviser on records by Cassandra Jenkins, The New Pornographers and Beth Orton. Now she steps out front. Her solo debut “Glass,” out July 31st via Worm Records and co-produced with Nate Mendelsohn, arrives with lead single “Noble Gas”, with Wendy Eisenberg calling her songs ‘subtly devastating.’