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| Photo - Zack Brigham |
Sarah Sharp - Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.
Austin-based singer/songwriter Sarah Sharp just announced the upcoming release of her debut album Deja Vü out May 15 via Spaceflight Records. A staple of the Austin music scene, the former leader of the critically-acclaimed Jitterbug Vipers and highly respected commercial songwriter's luminous debut blends intimate, nocturnal arrangements with her incredible vocal prowess.
Alongside the announcement, Sharp has shared her interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”. She started performing the tune during her nine-year prestigious residency at the Elephant Room in Austin when a former boyfriend developed cancer. Passing away soon after, Sharp's reading reflects on the disappointment of past relationships, embodying life experience and loss.
When asked about the timing of her debut, Sharp says, “My kids are now old enough”, underscoring her commitment as a single mother. “I want to play for way more people. Traveling with your music to other parts of the world is like running up and saying hello to parts of yourself that you can’t always access. It’s so powerful to integrate them. I’m always striving to become whole while keeping my heart open - living in the flow of what my friends call ‘Sarahdipity’.”
After nine years of her prestigious residency at the Elephant Room, Sarah Sharp recorded her debut album in the studio of local guitar legend Eric Johnson, who offered the space to her after being mesmerized by one of her performances. The result crosses over a multitude of genres, from jazz, to folk, to americana, providing a wide cinematic canvas on which she traverses a haunting emotional journey. Deja Vü marks the singer coming into her own in the national spotlight, with a distinguished, smokey vocal in the lineage of Norah Jones.
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It's time to buckle up for Aldous Harding's fifth studio album, Train On The Island (on 4AD).
Her first album since her 2022 release Warm Chris, Flying Nun Records in New Zealand are making the album available digitally and on CD, red vinyl gatefold, exclusive ‘Flying Nun Black’ vinyl gatefold, and exclusive ‘Holiday Records Copper’ vinyl gatefold [limited to 50 copies] all out on 8th May 2026!
This week marked the release of the first single and video One Stop. Premiered by Huw Stephens on his BBC 6Music radio show, One Stop is accompanied by a Harding-esque video directed by Michelle Henning (Props/location/assistance by Hana Shimada).
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Sydney's Salarymen are rolling straight off a mostly sold-out UK tour with DMAs and Old Mervs and they're not hitting pause. New music drops today March 6th, plus a run of Australian headline shows this March. The indie outfit unleash Take It Or Leave It (Extended), featuring new single 'Borrowed Time'—an atmospheric psych-pop/indie rock fusion that takes aim at the music industry's unspoken expiration date for female artists.
'Borrowed Time' combines Djo's hazy, reverb-drenched guitars and warbly synths, with Alice Phoebe Lou's ethereal, captivating vocals. It's retro-leaning but sophisticated in all the right ways, with tight harmonies, clever chord changes and richly-layered soundscapes
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But beneath the shimmering surface lies a hard-hitting message: women in music are working against a clock nobody sets but everyone enforces. Once women hit their late 20s, suddenly there's this quiet pressure, this sense that your window is closing before you've even hit your peak. “In a world increasingly obsessed with youth, women in music are quietly taught that relevance has a shelf life, long before their artistry has room to mature.” says Renee de la Motte.
The extended version also features ‘Echoes’, a fan-fan favourite dream pop track inspired by the likes of Beach House and Alvvays. Written in memory of two friends who tragically passed away, the song is a stunningly-raw and beautiful depiction of grief and the fragility of life.
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The legendary post-rock duo El Ten Eleven have just released the driving and electric new track "Formerly Fresh" from their upcoming album, Nowhere Faster, on April 10th via Joyful Noise Recordings. "The title is us poking fun at how old we are getting," El Ten bassist Kristian Dunn says. "Everything you hear other than drums is coming from a fretless acoustic bass guitar (yes, with loads of effects at times!). On our new record, side one was recorded with my usual electric basses, but side two is all on the acoustic."
Not many bands greet aging head-on, and fewer still announce it with a cowbell. El Ten Eleven does both without flinching. “Formerly Fresh” is a self-effacing glance in the mirror—a song that understands time has passed and refuses to apologize. Moving between peppy, string-driven swells and quieter passages built on little more than bass and shaker, it finds El Ten Eleven at their oldest—and, undoubtedly, at the peak of their powers.
We like to believe our lives can be shaped into stories—clean arcs, legible meaning—but life refuses the outline. Instead, it moves bluntly and without apology, indifferent to our sense of order. Events pile up without resolution, momentum divorced from direction, motion confused for progress. Sometimes the only refuge left is the nowhere of our own minds.
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Tacoma, Washington songwriter Kye Alfred Hillig this week releases The All-Night Costume Company, his ninth solo album. It’s a record born from necessity rather than momentum, written during a period when Hillig had nearly walked away from music altogether, and found himself worse for it. What emerged instead is his most vital and clear-eyed work to date, an album shaped by collapse, community, and the unglamorous work of staying alive. For more than two decades, Hillig has been a steady presence in the Puget Sound underground, splitting his life between songwriting, social services, and a string of bands and solo releases that value truth over spectacle.
Since stepping fully into his solo work in 2012, he’s built a catalog known for sharp melodies, indelible hooks, and lyrics that refuse to soften the blow. His writing carries echoes of Bob Dylan’s moral unease and narrative patience, delivered with a plainspoken, blue-collar directness that recalls Springsteen at his most human rather than heroic. There’s also a modern indie pulse running through the record, a sense of emotional lift and tension familiar to fans of The Jayhawks and Wilco’s early work, even as The All-Night Costume Company stands firmly on its own.
The album exists because Hillig’s band refused to let him disappear. After releasing the double album In All Colors Singing Back in 2022, Hillig became largely inactive, convinced that music had taken more than it had given. Walking away didn’t bring relief. It made things worse. By the fall of 2024, his life had begun to unravel in quiet but dangerous ways. A rare full-band show that November at Tacoma’s Edison Square changed everything. In front of a packed room, something snapped back into place. Afterward, his band demanded a record. Hillig owed them one, and more than that, he needed it. The band at the center of The All-Night Costume Company — guitarist David Bilbrey, keyboardist Bill Nordwall, bassist Yoswa, drummer and multi-instrumentalist Jasen Samford, and backing vocalist Annie J — isn’t presented as a supporting cast, but as a collective force. Their presence shapes the record’s emotional center, giving Hillig the space and pressure needed to finish what he’d nearly abandoned.
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