With Masks, the band pushed themselves to break beyond the scope and limits of every previous album, and focused on creating a tightly-woven, cinematic record intended to be an immersive experience, listened to in sequence and in a single sitting. The result is their most powerful and sonically impressive release of their career: an album as epic and ripping sonically as it is conceptually heady, which unfurls into an ever-expanding and lush world of instrumentation.

First single, “Born For One Thing” represents a natural evolution for the acclaimed French band: hyper-focused but unhinged, confrontational and yet compassionate. “We have to practice detaching ourselves from everything, beginning with actual things,” vocalist / guitarist Joe Duplantier says of the song’s anti-consumerist message. “One day we’ll have to let everything go, and if we don’t, we’ll just become ghosts stuck between dimensions.”

Typhoons involved a conscious return to their roots, back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and original. “We realized that we didn’t have to completely destroy what we’d created so far; we just had to shift it, change it. On paper, it’s a small reinvention. But when you hear it, it sounds so fresh.”

With the 11 tracks on Turn Up That Dial, Dropkick Murphys celebrate the simple pleasure of music, the relief and release from worry that comes when you “turn up that dial” and blast your troubles away. Volume cranked, heads held high, smiles wide, eyes on the prize, Dropkick Murphys charge forward with the same spirit that brought them here in the first place…yet with a new determination and exuberance that brings both the live show and this album to the next level.

Rich with emotional range and sharp awareness, Indian Yard explores love, desire, frustration, pain, revolution, and connection through the magnetic expressions of an Indigenous mind (Nicholas Galanin is Tlingit and Unangax̂, born in Sheet’ka, Alaksa). These 11 tracks put, Ya Tseen, Galanin and Indigenous art at large in a current musical conversation with the likes of Moses Sumney and TV on the Radio, FKA Twigs and James Blake.

Rosegold finds the GRAMMY-nominated Nashville star pushing her sound in bold new directions, drawing on everything from Kanye West and Kid Cudi to Beck and The Beach Boys as she layers lush vocal harmonies atop dreamy, synthesized soundscapes and sensual, intoxicating beats. It’s an ecstatic, revelatory meditation on happiness and gratitude, celebrating our endless capacity to love, and to be loved, even in the midst of chaos and tragedy.

Frontman and songwriter JJ Julius Son has been in the studio off-and-on for two years, allowing for a combination of globe-trotting and meticulous tinkering, resulting in a spectrum of sounds recorded around the world. The final product is refreshingly free of calculation, with Julius Son allowing each tune to dictate its path while simultaneously leaning-in to his blues, folk and rock inclinations.

Over its past 17 years, Dumpstaphunk has earned its reputation as the most well-regarded next-generation New Orleans live powerhouse. Cousins Ivan and Ian Neville have built upon their family’s iconic NOLA legacy as they’ve transformed Dumpstaphunk into the city’s pre-eminent 21st-century funk-fusion export. The band’s mix of classic and modern influences can be heard throughout the party-friendly mix of R&B, funk, rock, swamp-pop and blues of Where Do We Go From Here.

The term "Guitar Hero" is bandied about loosely these days. But if you ask the actual guitar heroes---like Brian May, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton---who their Guitar Heroes are, Steve Cropper is definitely on the shortlist. He’s a guitarist's guitarist, and a songwriter's songwriter. Fire It Up, Cropper's first album of new Soul/R&B material in 10 years. Produced by Steve and Jon Tiven, the album will be released worldwide on April 23, 2021.

Wide-eyed Nashville singer-songwriter Dreamer Boy’s upcoming album All the Ways We Are Together wasn’t necessarily written with the turmoil of 2020 in mind, but its ethereal melodies, delicate timbre and empathetic lyrics will surely speak to fans burdened by the state of things. He chose Earth Day, April 22nd, as a release date for the album to reflect the global communal spirit he feels with people and our shared environment.

"With this album I had the idea for the sound first, I think. I had done a lot of listening to and looking into Parliament and James Brown and lots of reggae music, too." Borne from Todd Snider's popular weekly live stream series, ”touring stopped, and so I started a Sunday morning show. Viewers started jokingly referring to it as a church and to me as a reverend. I've only reverend-ed twice. But I have the license so in my mind this opened me up to play bossy kinds of songs.”