Today's Top Tune

“Houston” is a brand new song from Irish-born, London-based Country singer Janet Devlin. And if you listen past the stomping good time, honky tonk grit that defines the track, you’ll find that Devlin arrives upon something deeper: A reclamation of solitude as liberation.   

Do you have a young pup who suffers from separation anxiety? If so, we have a real treat to share. “Beautiful Dog” is from Grammy-winning producer Antaeus' groundbreaking new album, Dreaming Dog. Created to soothe anxious canines, this project is a genre-crossing, globe-trotting collection of ambient electronica. 

It’s been a banner year for Dijon: Lending talents to Bon Iver’s SABLE, fABLE, contributing to Justin Bieber’s SWAG, and an upcoming role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Batter After Another. But all of the above takes a backseat to Baby, his long-awaited follow up to 2021’s Absolutely. It’s an album made at home and mostly in isolation (save for contributions from his new family and a few notable musical kindred spirits). Crucially, it retains the deliberate introspection fans have come to expect. “Yamaha” is a highlight from the LP (out now), capturing a slice of quotidian life.

Latin Grammy-winning, Puerto Rican star iLe’s new LP Como Las Canto Yo (How I Sing Them) is due in late October. The album will feature her interpretations of a few favorite boleros. This includes “Un Amor De La Calle” (A Love of the Street), popularized by Boricua Hector Lavoe in 1975. Boleros tend to lean heavily on orchestration, but for this version iLe keeps it gritty and bohemian with streetwise energy. 

Nashville-based pop purveyor Jessie Baylin has shared the stage with artists like Stevie Nicks, The Shins, and Iron & Wine (to name just a few). “Wild Life” was co-written with Daniel Tashian, a two-time Grammy-winning songwriter and producer who has worked with Kasey Musgraves and Burt Bacharach. This track has all the glitter of classic orchestral pop, and evokes a timeless Laurel Canyon sound.

Jazzy vocalist Mae Powell has experienced a major break-up. The kind of major break-up that led her to move to the farm where her mom lives so that she could take the time to process and figure out her next steps. Eventually she wrote “Where Will Love Go?” for her new album Making Room for the Light. Accustomed to devoting all of her attention to that one person that was no longer there, Powell felt overwhelmed by the love and care that she could no longer funnel through. Writing helped her figure things out and led her to realize that she’d need to learn to love herself before she could send that love anywhere else.

To say we’re excited by the prospect of new music from seminal ‘90s/2000s dreampop band Ivy would be an understatement. Traces Of You, the erstwhile project’s first new release in twelve years has been built from the ground up using demos and fragments which date from 1995 to 2012. After losing founding member Andy Schlesinger to COVID in 2020, surviving bandmates Dominique Durand and Andy Chase thought that Ivy was done forever. But as the pair prepared for back catalog reissues, they discovered a treasure trove of reel-to-reel tapes and old hard drives with unfinished songs. They handpicked the best and carved out an album’s worth of goodies for this new collection, complete with contributions from Schlesinger. “Heartbreak” is a 2010 demo that showcases their twinkling magic. 

If you are looking to stargaze, look no further than the all-female, Sydney-based shoegaze band JuliaWhy?. Fans of Cocteau Twins and Slowdive will find plenty to love in “Pale Blue Dot.” The song invites its listeners to turn to the stars and the beauty of the environment as a place for solace. 

LA-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Melina Duterte — best known as Jay Som — recently announced Belong, her first new album in more than six years. It’s also her first album to feature guest vocalists, including heavy-hitters like Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, and Lexi Vega of Mini Trees. Hear the latter adding backing vocals to Duterte’s favorite track on the record “Cards On The Table.”

The strongest link between the members of Melbourne’s Folk Bitch Trio, aside from their lifelong friendship, is music. The three women all knew that they wanted careers in music and joining forces demystified their future. Their debut album Now Would Be A Good Time, centers around being young and feminist in Australia. Absorb the message, download “God’s Got A Different Sword” for free as Today’s Top Tune.