Known for her improvisational recordings — turning warehouses, trailers, and lofts into studios – Japanese Breakfast front-woman and founder Michelle Zauner took to a proper studio for her fourth full-length album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women),  due on Mar. 21 via Dead Oceans. For a unifying theme, this collection turns to the Greek mythological plight of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and died. A noted author (Crying in H Mart), Zauner riffs on the work of another author John Cheever’s Orlando Innamorato for the melodious “Orlando In Love.” 

Paris-based trio Oracle Sisters will (appropriately) deliver their sophomore album Divinations  on Valentine’s Day. After clocking countless hours touring, the band began to compose as a trio, building songs from sketches while channeling the mystic. “‘Riverside” is, “a respite, a song to wrap yourself in. It’s about turning rust to gold,” say Oracle Sisters’ band members. “We hope it inspires you to go on long walks and to get lost in the wilderness.” 

Sometimes it’s best to let an artist speak for themselves, as is the case with The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser on his new solo work: “Knockin’ Heart” is sung by an estranged, stoned lover on their way home, who is dying to get a message through to someone who is probably not listening. It is ‘I will love you for life if you’ll let me.’ I wrote and recorded it one evening and put it away for over a year. I knew I liked it, and I didn’t want to mess anything up by trying to perfect it. It was the last song I played for Aaron when we got together, and the first song he helped me work on. I’d say he raised the ceiling and lowered the floor on the entire thing sonically. He actually used a funny bass technique he said he’d used on a Taylor Swift song, which I got a kick out of. I gotta say his bass sounds fantastic. Now there are three basses on it! One of mine and 2 of his. That is a first for me.” 

Storyteller Olivia Wolf grew up in Northern California steeped in the bluegrass tradition. Now based in Tennessee, she’s able to blend both worlds to narrate her tales of desolation and rebirth. Her debut album Silver Rounds (due January 17) is a collection of 10 penetrating songs including “Lucky One.” RIYL: Sturgill Simpson, Gillian Welch, and Bobby Charles.

LA neo-soul group The Altons will release their new collection of songs Heartache in Room 14, on Valentine’s Day, but we don’t need to wait to share the love. They’ve generously gifted us with the early single “Your Light” — a dreamy, declaration of love with a call-and-response chorus for you to chime in on.

Let’s call him a polymath, cause these are just a few of the skills he’s aced: singing, rapping, playing bass and producing music… It's Dylan Cartlidge whose song “New Day” is a soulful, joyful antidote if you’re having a dreary time of it. 

Two decades after his debut with Animal Collective, Noah Lennox (best known as Panda Bear) delivers more of the signature sound we’ve come to love via his  latest single ahead of new album Sinister Grift, “Ferry Lady.” 

But don’t take our word for it, LA singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt is among the first to experience and review Panda Bear’s first album in five  years. She says: “On Sinister Grift, Panda Bear cuts a lone figure, bracing himself against the winds of fortune and calamity. Noah’s pure and poignant lamentations are less elusive this time around, as though our narrator has awoken from a sobering dream. Singing a familiar round on an imperiled path, Panda Bear presents a set of torch songs conveying hard-fought wisdom, buoyant despite the load they bear.”

LA-native songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Kowloon will soon deliver his sophomore album. His latest track finds him stepping into a sound that plucks from 80’s new wave, to African Highlife — intertwining his dulcet tones into a bopping beat on “Heart Begins With You.” 

Mexican band Karen y Los Remedios stir cumbia and downtempo sound together into their own heady blend. Their 2023 album Silencio — an exploration of epiphanies that come from sitting with silence — caught the ear of fans and critics alike, and now has a remix issue that includes “Las Muchachas,” reworked here by Mexican Institute of Sound. 

It’s been seven years since we last got new music from Benjamin Booker, but don’t despair — a new album is on the way! Lower is out January 24, with the first taste being “Same Kind Of Lonely,” a track full of fuzzy guitars and whispered singing. Benjamin says: “I was thinking a lot about existence and the natural world — how things that start off so beautiful are often twisted into something unsettling or sinister. Maybe the disconnect between the natural state of things and the modified state of things is the source of a lot of pain, suffering, and loneliness in the world.”