If It's Too Loud...

Photo courtesy Sofaburn Records Growing up in Gary, Indiana, Quinn DeVeaux was raised listening to his mom's 80's R&B albums and his dad's classic rock ones. His grandmother was a jazz singer and an uncle booked booked shows in northern Indiana for artists like Howlin' Wolf. He first heard Muddy Waters while driving across the country and was taken by Waters' raw emotion. He moved to Kansas, then Olympia, WA to attend Evergreen State College, then Los Angeles before settling in San Francisco.  For his new single, he teamed with The California Honeydrops. "Very Best Thing" is just pure classic soul. DeVeaux just has this timeless quality in his vocals that makes the song sound like it could be from any time in the past fifty years or so. His voice just sounds vintage. As smooth as the song is, The California Honeydrops just add this certain edge to the music you don't typically hear in soul. "Very Best Thing" is one of the finer soul songs...

Photo by Rachelle Caplan Lung, officially our favorite "art-punk, cello-rock duo" are back with a new single off their upcoming album. "Air" isn't going to be what you expect when you hear "cello-rock." It's much more rock than cello. In fact, "Air" is fairly heavy rock. It's a loud song with pounding drums. Kate Wakefield is a classically trained opera singer, and here she delivers her vocals with the kind of theatricality that would make Amanda Palmer jealous. Possibly the most interesting thing about "Air" is that it is much more straightforward rock than you would expect "art-punk, cello-rock" to sound like. It's weirdo straightforward rock, but still comparatively straightforward. You can watch the video for "Air" below. Come Clean Right Now  is due out August 20 on Sofaburn Records. For more on Lung, check out the band's website .

Photo by Rachelle Caplan Art-punk cello-rock. Just from reading that description, you know if you're going to want to listen to the latest from Lung. One surprising aspect of "Sun God" is how much the song leans into the rock part of that description. "Sun God" is a surprisingly heavy song. It's definitely art, punk, and includes cello, but more than anything else it's a rock song. The first band that's going to come to mind with cello rock is Rasputina, and while those comparisons are fair, and Lung does share some of their theatricality, Lung is going to land slightly more mainstream than their cello brethren. But just barely. Singer/celloist Kate Wakefield says of the upcoming album: “The record is indirectly or perhaps directly influenced by books I was reading. I read poetry daily over the past year. I love the poets Joy Harjo and Ellen Bass. I’m also into buddhist and consciousness literature, and was able to really dive into a lot of beautiful...

Photo by Melissa D Fields We all know Concrete Blonde's song "Joey." It's one of those songs that seems to transcend genre, and it's almost in our marrow at this point. Covers of it are oddly rare, so we're thrilled to have this new one from Jeremy Pinnell. The country artist has released a quarantine solo version as a single, and to say he owns this version of the song is an understatement. Somehow Pinnell takes a cover and transforms it with his unrestrained passion. It hardly sounds like a cover at all, but an incredibly personal song to Pinnell. This is the kind of cover on par with Johnny Cash's transformation of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." Chris Mueller (Sofaburn Records founder and Jememy Pinnell's manager) says of the cover:  "After over 300 tour dates in the previous three years, Jeremy was sitting at home last summer, and, because of the pandemic, realized he was going to be there for much longer than he was hoping. Refusing t...

Photo by Robert Paul Simpson Andrew Hibbard first started playing guitar when he was only six years old. He'll be releasing his third album next year, and the first single, "Changes," is a perfect slice of Americana. The song leans heavily into country and blues, and is a laid back straightforward example of both. Hibbard straddles the fine line between being too traditionally rootsy to be mainstream and being too mainstream to be traditional, and somehow is perfectly both at once. It's a song that could propel Hibbard into superstardom, so make sure you jump on board his bandwagon with us now. You can watch the video for changes below. Andrew Hibbard's self-titled third album will be out in April via Sofaburn Records. You can pre-order a copy here . For more on Andrew Hibbard, check out his website .

Photo by Kristian Svitak The new project from Kelley Deal (The Breeders, The Kelley Deal 6000) and Mike Montgomery (Ampline) is R. Ring. They've done some touring and released a few singles, but they are set to release their debut album on April 28. Right now we can listen to a new song from the album, "Steam." "Steam" is definitely not what I would expect from a band featuring Kelley Deal. (I'm not all that familiar with Ampline, so I can't compare it that way.) "Steam" is sparse, almost painfully so. Montgomery's vocals are the main focused, accompanied with a barely plucked guitar, Deal's background vocals (her "oooooooooo-ooooooooh"s are the hook of the song, and the very occasional string instrument in the background. Some of the other songs on the album are a bit more rambunctious, but "Steam" is quietly beautiful. You can watch the video for "Steam" below. R. Ring's debut album, Ignite the ...