The lead single from Guitar is a soft, twinkly meditation called “Home,” and it’s all about the relationship that DeMarco has to his birthplace in British Columbia. It’s a short song, but it’s long enough to evoke a real bittersweet longing for something that you can’t always have. To make the video, DeMarco brought his camera onto a canoe and filmed himself near his mother’s house. A bunch of Canadian geese make cameos.
In addition to the new album, Mac DeMarco is also announcing some heavy touring plans that’ll take him all over the world in the months ahead. In his journeys, he’ll be joined by a bunch of openers — Mock Media, Tex Crick, Daryl Johns, Vicky Farewell — who are signed to his record label, which is called Mac’s Record Label. Below, check out the “Home” video, the Guitar tracklist, and DeMarco’s touring itinerary
The indie singer-songwriter’s seventh album, Guitar, arrives Aug. 22
Ty Segall came up through the late-’00s West Coast garage-psych scene that also gave us the Oh Sees, The Intelligence, White Fence, and more. For a while, he was matching those artists’ output with a constant barrage of albums, including solo releases and through his various side projects. These days, 17 years since releasing his debut album, Ty is slowing down a little. He’s married, has a kid, and moved his Harmonizer studio to the family’s new home near Pasadena. Possession is Ty’s 17th solo album, depending on how you count — and his most immediate yet.
Possession is billed as Ty Segall’s sixteenth album, but that feels about as underreported as the tip jar at an anarchist cafe. You have to factor in the slew of side projects as well, like Fuzz, GØGGS, and Freckle, the last of which being a new band with Color Green’s Corey Madden, which put out an unreasonably slept-on self-titled debut just a few months ago. It’s an old cliche at this point that Segall never slows down, but part of why it’s been easy to keep up is because he insists on slicing through fresh terrain, often with new people holding on for dear life alongside him.
With each decade, musicians who’ve been in the game since they were a kid get to add a little flair to their performance style, like badges on a Boy Scouts sash. John Dwyer and David Barbarossa are such unshakeable giants at this point that listeners tend to associate them with a specific sound: garage rock for the Osees singer-guitarist, new wave for the Adam & The Ants drummer. But listen to all of their other bands — because, boy, do they both have a lengthy scroll of projects — and the compulsive, unstoppable creativity that’s coursing through the two of them on the regular is unmistakable.
For years, Ezra Furman’s music embraced protest and defiance. Now she’s striking a different chord.
Furman’s 10th studio album, Goodbye Small Head, was written in the wake of illness, sociological terror, collapse, and creative exhaustion. She recently spoke with Paste about invoking tropes of humiliation, deviance, and rebellion by repurposing them through the lens of agency.
There was no trepidation to be found during Spellling’s set at Great American, where Cabral’s body-bending theatrics and captivating command of the stage stood in stark contrast to the insecurities she sings about on her newest album.
‘Portrait Of My Heart’ shows Cabral, who has spent her nearly decade-long career building her own universe, not relishing comfort but raging against its vast expanse
Nevertheless, she describes Portrait as “a creative resurgence” and “a way to bridge the gap” between SPELLLING the artist and Chrystia the person: more forthright, more honest, less cloaked in mystery. The price of a small identity crisis in the process is one she’s come to terms with. Through asking the big questions like “Who am I?” and “What are my relationships?”, she was able to explore romance and intimacy “in new ways” that reflect on and address the changes in herself. She describes feeling “a big sense of relief” from coming to the end, as if the portrait’s completion marked a pivotal moment, a return to self. “There’s Tia and there’s SPELLLING,” she says firmly. “This album is much more personal, it’s much more Tia.”
“[‘Fantastic Tomb’ is] an energy-charged anthem that would feel right at home on classic rock radio.” – Paste
“Segall sets his hard-luck narrative to the grind of a fried electric guitar riff, while a smattering of keys and blustery saxophone solo further bring his story to life.” – Paste
“[‘Fantastic Tomb’] explodes with color; every element sounds like it’s been filtered through California sunshine. If you’re looking forward to a summer road trip, this is the song for you—its freewheelin’ groove practically demands to drift from cracked-open car windows, out onto the open road.” – Paste
Last year, Ty Segall shared the album Three Bells in January and followed it with the instrumental LP Love Rudiments in August. Today, the restless rocker is returning with the announcement of a new record called Possession, slated for release in May, as well as full-band tour dates.
Ty Segall has announced a new album. Co-written with his longtime collaborator and filmmaker Matt Yoka, Possession is the prolific rocker’s follow-up to the two records he released last year: Three Bells and the instrumental LP Love Rudiments. The new one is out May 30, via Drag City, and is led by the single “Fantastic Tomb,” which you can listen to below.
Last month, SPELLLING announced her new album Portrait Of My Heart and released the gripping title track, which was one of our favorite songs of the week. Today, she’s back with another beautiful banger titled “Alibi.”
“Alibi” was originally a piano ballad, which is hard to imagine. Much like “Portrait Of My Heart,” “Alibi” is an exuberant, triumphant explosion of sound. Listen below.
Mac DeMarco, King Gizzard & the Wizard Lizard, Jim James and the War on Drugs are just a few of the dozens of artists featured on a new benefit album released on Tuesday to help raise funds following the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.
Super Bloom: A Benefit for Los Angeles Fire Relief, is 62 tracks-long and also features songs from Guided by Voices, Jenny Lewis, Dr. Dog, Ty Segall, and Swamp Dogg, among many others. All 100 percent of the proceeds from the album — organized by nonprofit Sweet Relief Musicians Fund — will go toward wildfire relief to organizations including Mutual Aid LA, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and Pasadena Humane. A digital copy of the album is available to purchase on Bandcamp now for $10, though customers could also pay more as a charitable option.
02 – SPELLLING – “Portrait Of My Heart”
SPELLLING has a knack for making music that sounds like it’s from another galaxy. “Portrait Of My Heart” is Chrystia Cabral’s newest otherworldly tune — taken from her just-announced new album of the same title — and it’s as fun as it is celestial. With enchanting strings and a cathartic chorus, “Portrait Of My Heart” serves as a cinematic, urgent anthem about alienation. It’s the best possible first preview of Portrait Of My Heart. –Danielle
For Portrait Of My Heart, Cabral assembled a band with Wyatt Overson on guitar, Patrick Shelley on drums, and Giulio Xavier Cetto on bass. It has Drew Vandenberg, Rob Bisel, and Psymun on production, and features special guests like Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi, Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory, and Zulu’s Braxton Marcellous. “Portrait Of My Heart” is a bewitching first taste; the song is a sweet indie-pop epic, even stronger paired with the Ambar Navarro-directed music video of Cabral dancing and singing in her bedroom, opening up a portal to another world. Fall under her spell below.
Spellling has announced a new album: Portrait of My Heart is out March 28 via Sacred Bones, and it marks Chrystia Cabral’s first truly new full-length since her 2021 LP The Turning Wheel. Cabral has also shared lead single and title track “Portrait of My Heart,” along with a music video directed by Ambar Navarro.
The prolific Australian collective team up with musical ensemble of kids and young adults with disabilities and illnesses.
“King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard isn’t just a band. It’s a shape-shifting beast that devours genres for breakfast and spits out sounds you didn’t even know you needed.
Psychedelic rock, thrash metal, jazz, electronica, prog, folk, synth-pop and more; nothing is sacred and everything is up for grabs for this Melbourne-based sextet. We’re talking 26 studio albums and counting, 39 live recordings, stacks of singles and enough music videos to keep you glued to your screen for days. And it’s all been done over the course of just 14 years.
The latest record, Flight b741, was released in August right in the middle of a 44-date world tour. Its sound is heavily influenced by no-frills Southern rock n’ roll bands from the late ’60s and early ’70s—pedal steel, harmonicas, bluesy twang and all”
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have detailed a new run of 2025 U.S. shows. Next summer, they’ll play shows with conductor and music director Sarah Hicks and city-specific orchestras. For example, a show at Columbia, Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion will feature Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Symphony will play with the band at Colorado Springs’ Ford Amphitheater. Still, in Forest Hills, New York, and Buena Vista, Colorado, they’ll fit in rock’n’roll shows. See King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s tour dates below.
SPELLLING has announced her first tour since 2023. The “Portrait of My Heart” tour begins in San Francsico on April 4 and wraps up in Reno on May 19, stopping in Los Angeles, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Washington DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, and more. According to a press release, she has “brand new songs” to perform, and you can see all dates below.
In the first half of a decade which saw the rise of many diaristic singer-songwriters, the indie world still struggles with whimsy or theatricality as concepts. Yet, Oakland art pop multi-instrumentalist Tia Cabral crafted one of the most ambitious, existential sleeper hits of the past five years by operating in a fantasy world of her own. Centered around her distinctive soprano cutting through lush, immaculately produced walls of harp, prog guitars, woodwinds and strings, The Turning Wheel is half paean to the natural world, half chilling depiction of isolation outside of it. From the pulsing lovesickness of “Always” to the icy synth showcase of “Queen of Wands” to the grandiose centerpiece of “Boys at School,” she carves out one mini-opera after the other, dazzling us one breath and haunting us the next. For all the critical darlings singing plaintive, poetic lines over acoustic guitars, few moments will still cut like Cabral’s delivery of “I’m meaner than you think, and I’m not afraid of how lonely it’s going to be” by the decade’s end. —Elise Soutar
Special Interest will be on tour this fall, including dates with Show Me the Body and an appearance at Levitation fest in Austin. Things kick off with a NYC headline show at Le Poisson Rouge on September 21 that is in-the-round with Dollhouse and DJ Chaotic Ugly. All dates are listed below.
As far as playing live and touring goes, Dwyer’s decades of experience automatically qualify him to give advice. I almost have to tell him this directly, since he reflexively doubts his own authority—“Who the fuck am I to talk?”—and immediately checks his established act privilege: nightly hotels, a comfortable sprinter van, a merch person. Eventually he doubles back, reassuring us both that he can give advice since the comparative luxury Osees now enjoy was earned over years of touring. “I have been there, sleeping on the floor and waking up with cat litter stuck to my face,” he muses. “So I can speak.”
On this tour, Mackenzie is giving up a bit of the creative control in order to livestream each show on YouTube — something he’d considered for years but that took time to fall into place. Documentary filmmakers Jackson Devereux and Allen Dobbins record each performance in real time, with the sound mix (helmed by longtime King Gizzard audio engineer Sam Joseph) coming straight from the live mix of the show. It’s not a traditional way to livestream — most acts would make sure to have a separate sound mix going out to the stream — but it’s one that fits in with their DIY approach. “I think a lot of people would look at this operation and be like, ‘You guys are absolutely insane,’” Mackenzie says. “That is not what you’re supposed to do. So many things could go wrong at any moment, but I think making it free allows you to have a few teething problems along the way, and figure it out in good faith.”
“The city of Olympia in Washington has declared today, August 23, “Bikini Kill Day,” in honor of the foundational riot grrrl band, which famously formed in 1990 with members Kathleen Hanna, Billy Karren, Kathi Wilcox, and Tobi Vail. (The current lineup includes Hanna, Wilcox, Vail, and touring guitarist Sara Landeau.) The honor is another feather in the band’s 2024 cap; earlier this year, Hanna released her memoir Rebel Girl: My Life As A Feminist Punk, Bikini Kill made their late-night TV debut on Colbert, and the band is currently on tour”
The multi-instrumentalist has always shown his talents, but on Love Rudiments, Segall proves he can make a compelling record without wielding the instruments (including his voice) he is typically associated with. The drums are joined by instruments like vibraphone, which gives the album a mysterious and curious quality, enticing and hypnotising listeners with every note.
Looking around the theater, Hanna was spot-on in terms who Bikini Kill fans are in 2024: a glorious and giddy cross-section of women, girls, men and gender non-conforming fans both young and old, who clearly resonate with the Olympia, Washington rockers’ buoyant and badass rants and anthems, over three decades and counting.
