Today's Top Tune

Ready to rattle your cage? Rock n’ roller Mondo Cozmo, a.k.a. Josh Ostrander, is back recalling early Dylan on “Meant For Livin,’” and says “This is the first song that I wrote when the pandemic hit, with the lyrics reading as a practical guide for successful living."

Texas fiction writer and teacher Jana Horn turned her prose into song on her solo album debut, “Optimism.” Backed by members of Knife on the Water, the title track is minimalist in nature but packed with feels.

Pulling from lore and ancestral mythologies, Combo Chimbita come to us with choppy rhythms, powerful grooves, and tantalizing beats on the serpentine song “Memoria.”

Non-binary creator Arca inhabits her own musical world, having worked with some of the most distinguished and intriguing musical minds around, including Bjork, FKA Twigs, and Kanye West. An influencer in fashion that found freedom on dance floors, her work is unexpected and glorious as we share an instrumental work called “La Infinita.”

Just a couple of weeks ago, KCRW DJ Jeremy Sole played a new collaboration between Dirtwire — known for their work as part of the West Coast underground electronic bass music scene — and Argentine producer Chancha Via Circuito. The result is “El Sultan,” a whirling piece unifying South American rhythms and a sprinkling of magic dust that leaves us in the ecstasy of a trance state.

San Francisco skateboard pioneer-turned-musician Tommy Guerrero and LA-based multi-instrumentalist Josh Lippi are Los Days. Together, the duo set out to the high desert with a limited collection of instruments and gear to write and record an album’s worth of music. “Floating Against The Night Sky” captures the sound of their surroundings with a spaghetti western feel.

LA-based indie artist The Undercover Dream Lovers delivers the catchy “Come A Little Closer,” weaving the sound of some of his favorite artists like Tame Impala and Daft Punk together.

Here’s a great example of the power music has to raise awareness… A member of the feminist supergroup Les Amazones d’Afrique, Rokia Koné, and uber-producer Jacknife Lee co-create an album with purpose. On their song “Kurunba,” Koné denounces the customs of exclusion and diminishment faced by women after having raised their husband’s children in patriarchal society.

Dope Lemon, the saucy moniker created by Angus Stone — one half of the Australian sibling duo Angus & Julia Stone — saunters in with “Rose Pink Cadillac,” a breezy track that feels like sunshine.

Named after Erykah Badu’s sophomore album, London’s Mamas Gun are soul titans in the making. Their song “Looking For Moses” was written on the day Bill Withers passed, and pays tribute to the legendary singer.