Indie Exclusive Releases

Double LP.  Side D contains a custom etched design

The Highwomen are a cleverly named new supergroup comprising country and roots rock stars Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. After a few months of teasers and a soft debut at April’s Loretta Lynn tribute, they’re making their official introduction to the world.

The group has announced its self-titled debut album, out in September and produced by Dave Cobb, the Nashville mainstay who always seems to be behind the boards for these types of projects. (He’s also produced recent albums by Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Lori McKenna, Ashley Monroe… you get the idea.) The album features 12 songs written by various combinations of the core members plus some notable collaborators like Isbell, McKenna, Miranda Lambert, and Ray LaMontagne. It features guest appearances from Isbell, Cobb, Sheryl Crow, Yola, the Hanseroth twins, Chris Powell, and Peter Levin.

 

Vinyl LP pressing in gatefold jacket. 2019 release. Igor is the fifth studio album by rapper Tyler, The Creator. Produced entirely by Tyler, the album follows the 2017 release of Flower Boy. It features guest appearances from Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert, Solange, Kanye West, and Jerrod Carmichael, along with backing vocals from Santigold, Jessy Wilson, La Roux, CeeLo Green, Charlie Wilson, Slowthai, and Pharrell, among others.

‘VOLCANO’ follows Jungle’s previous album ‘Loving In Stereo’, which proved to be a landmark moment for the acclaimed UK duo. It achieved their highest domestic UK chart position to date debuting at #3, while also achieving their best ever album chart positions in key international territories such as Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands; and in the US it catapulted to #1 on the Billboard Dance Albums chart which led to major Arena shows as guests to Billie Eilish. The free-spirited energy that runs right through ‘VOLCANO’ reflects how organically it came together. J and T had written most of the record on tour before starting the recording process while staying in an Airbnb in Los Angeles. It was later completed back home in London at their favourite location, Studio B at Metropolis Studios. This time around, the duo wanted to include a wider variety of voices within the album. In addition to Erick The Architect, they reunited with Bas (who previously featured on the ‘Loving In Stereo’ single ‘Romeo’) for ‘Pretty Little Thing’, as well as calling on talents in the shape of Roots Manuva, Channel Tres and JNR Williams.

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real are back with Sticks and Stones, releasing 7/14 via 6ACE Records / Thirty Tigers. This self-produced, honest and emotional new album highlights Nelson's strength as a songwriter and the band's uncompromising commitment to clarity, compassionate tones, and exceptional melodic moments. Lyrically, Sticks and Stones spans the themes of Drinking, Heartbreak, Love, Lying, Hope, Nature, Self-Reflection, Work-Life Balance, Settling Down, Home, Time, Longing and more.

"I Want It All Right Now" was produced by Grammy-winning producer John Congleton. They will be embarking on a North American stadium/arena tour with pop superstar P!nk. Los Angeles' Grouplove blend a quirky, '90s-style indie rock sensibility with a spirited, arena-ready roar. It's a sound they debuted on 2011's Never Trust a Happy Song, which spawned the number one Billboard Alternative Songs Chart hit "Tongue Tied." They have continued to straddle mainstream and indie success, playing festivals around the globe and remaining Top 20 Billboard Alternative chart regulars with albums like 2013's Spreading Rumours and 2020's Healer. In March 2021, Grouplove returned with their surprise fifth album, This Is This.

- 20th Anniversary of the release of AFI's Platinum-certified 6th album.

- Only 20,000 copies were pressed on vinyl originally and demand for the title is extremely high and going for a lot of money online.

- One-Time-Pressing for this ThinkIndie Exclusive Edition.

If 2021’s “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” catapulted Simz into the big leagues, crashing into the top 5 of the albums charts, collecting Mercury Music Prize, Mobo, Ivor Novello and Brit Award wins and earning her the biggest live audiences yet in the UK and Europe yet, “NO THANK YOU” is yet another delicious left field turn for 29-year old Simbiatu Ajikawo. Sleek, succinct and utterly propulsive, it’s Simz’ defiantly punk rock, two fingered salute to conformity and fame, and all the expectations and restrictions that come with. Recorded with her regular collaborator Inflo, this is Simz at her most free, daring and spontaneous. In her own words: 

'emotion is energy in motion.
honour your truth and feelings.
eradicate fear.
boundaries are important.’

A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience, a soundtrack to his world and magically to theirs, too. Weathervanes carries the same revelatory power. This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age -- and carry a certain amount of scars.

“There is something about boundaries on this record,” Isbell says. “As you mature, you still attempt to keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you’re growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself.”

Weathervanes is a collection of grown-up songs: Songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Life and death songs played for and by grown ass people. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers in a big summer pavilion, united in the great miracle of being alive. The record features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers.

They make a big noise, as Isbell puts it, and he feels so comfortable letting them be a main prism through which much of the world hears his art. He can be private but with them behind him he transforms, and there is a version of himself that can only exist in their presence. When he plays a solo show, he is in charge of the entire complicated juggle. On stage with the 400 Unit, he can be a guitar hero when he wants, and a conductor when he wants, and a smiling fan of the majesty of his bandmates when he wants to hang back and listen to the sound.

Jenny Lewis’ fifth solo album, Joy’All arrives June 9th. Joy’All finds the singer-songwriter embarking on a new era, in a new town – and on a new label, as she joins the iconic roster of Blue Note/Capitol Records. While Joy’All pulls from a bounty of sonic inspiration – from classic soul to ‘90s R&B, as well as country and classic singer-songwriter records – the album’s rich, intimate and warm live sound is the hallmark of eight-time GRAMMY-winning producer Dave Cobb. Recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, Joy’All includes new single “Psychos” and the previously released single “Puppy and a Truck.”

As Milky Chance prepare to share the idiosyncratic and inventive alt-pop songs that populate their new album Living In A Haze, they proudly boast over 10 million monthly Spotify listeners, an enviable touring resume (including stops at Coachella and Lollapalooza), and an upcoming schedule of world-trotting 2023 dates featuring the biggest shows of their career. Over the past decade, they've proven themselves to be, in their own low-key way, one of the biggest bands in the world. Their runaway hit debut "Stolen Dance" - which recently surpassed over 1 billion streams on Spotify - gifted Rehbein and Dausch with a platform far beyond what the duo could have imagined. They capitalized on that momentum with their 2014 debut Sadnecessary, which broke them as a global streaming and touring act, and followed that up with 2017's Blossom and 2019's Mind The Moon, which found them taking advantage of new resources to collaborate with heroes like Jack Johnson and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. On their independent debut Living In A Haze, Milky Chance thrive on writing the tightest, most groove-forward alt-pop songs imaginable - and then going back and distorting each sound into it's wildest iteration. Recorded at Jazzanova Recording Studios in Berlin with production help from DECCO, Jonas Holle, Tobias Kuhn, and Dennis Neuer as well as guest appearances from Fatoumata Diawara and Charlotte Cardin, Living In A Haze applies the band's endless musical curiosity to the propulsive logic of the best club music while delivering masterful songcraft. There are sublime moments throughout: Album opener and lead single "Living In A Haze" is an economical haymaker of a track that unfolds with an enigmatic logic, going from elegiac triplet guitar figure to a tight, post-Strokes rhythmic feel that provides the ideal musical metaphor to accompany Rehbein's dreamy delivery. Afrobeat rhythms power both "Flicker In The Dark" and "Feeling For You" - on the first providing a canvas on which to liberally splatter earthy acoustic textures and a cartoonishly colorful guitar solo, on the second lending a swiveling counterpoint to a narcotized vocal. And on "History Of Yesterday," Milky Chance marry a UKG shuffle with sunny atmospherics and cascades of reverberating piano to propel the band's breeziest chorus to date. Living In A Haze vibrates with possibility and passion - it's a thrilling juncture for band as they look forward to a heavy touring schedule in 2023 and beyond.

My Morning Jacket, touring behind It Still Moves, took the stage at Bonnaroo on a scorching hot day in the summer of '04. Ominous dark clouds rolled in early in the performance. "I'll never forget it," reflected Jim James "We're playing & the sky just rips open & rain starts pouring down. People are losing their minds... Everybody is petrified that we're going to get electrocuted, but it was such a transcendent moment that we just didn't care." It would become one of the festivals most iconic sets.

Avenged Sevenfold’s new album, Life Is But A Dream is a timeless work of art that blurs genres. Best served as a whole and consumed en masse to truly appreciate its musical breadth and sonic depth, it marks their boldest statement and most revolutionary work to date. Written and recorded over the span of 4 years, it was produced by Joe Barresi and Avenged Sevenfold in Los Angeles and mixed by Andy Wallace in the Poconos, PA. Inspired by Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the album is a journey through an existential crisis; a very personal exploration into the meaning, purpose and value of human existence with the anxiety of death always looming. Immerse into this experience…

Since their 2012 debut, Protomartyr have mastered the art of evoking place: the grinding Midwest humility of their hometown, as well as the x-rayed elucidation of America that comes with their vantage. The group’s sixth album was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX with producer Jake Aron. “The desert is more of a metaphor or symbol,” singer Joe Casey says, “of emotional deserts, or a place or time that seems to lack life.” The “growth” came from a period of colossal transition for Casey, including the death of his mother. But life does go on, and Casey describes the great theme of Formal Growth In The Desert as an embrace and acknowledgment of that fact: a 12-song testament to “getting on with life,” even when it feels impossibly hard.

Provo Utah's The Aces will be releasing their latest studio album "I've Loved You For So Long" via Red Bull Records on 6/2. The 11-track album produced by Keith Varon.

In the years since The Aces released their Billboard& MRc/Luminate Top 10 charting, and acclaimed second album, “Under My Influence”, in 2020, the band has been on a journey of self-discovery. Faced with the realities of a global pandemic, sisters Cristal and Alisa Ramirez (lead vocals/guitar and drums, respectively), Katie Henderson (lead guitar/vocals), and McKenna Petty (bass) used quarantine as a time to reflect, confronting personal mental health issues as well as processing experiences they’d had growing up together in Provo, Utah, as part of the Mormon church. When The Aces returned to the studio, their vision — and the honesty and trust between them — felt stronger than ever. The result of this growth period is “I’ve Loved You For So Long”, the band’s third studio album — a sparkling indie-rock record that’s by far their most personal and self-assured work to date. Written and executive-produced by the group (along with Keith Varon, the sole producer/collaborator on the project), the album is like time-traveling through their most intimate moments. From tracks that ruminate on mental health and self-sabotage to searing anthems about love, longing, and heartbreak, “I’ve Love You For So Long” is a record that’ll work its way into your head and heart — and will have you singing along all the way through.

Autographed Color LP

“More than anything, I wanted to make an album that was generous, that was useful,” says Ben Folds. “I want you to finish this record with something you didn’t have when you started.” Indeed, Folds’ masterful new collection, What Matters Most, isn’t so much a statement as it is an offering, an open hand reaching out to all those wounded and bewildered by a world that seems to make less and less sense every day. Recorded in East Nashville with co-producer Joe Pisapia, the album marks Folds’ first new studio release in eight years, and it’s a bold, timely, cinematic work, one that examines the tragic and the absurd in equal measure as it reckons with hope and despair, gratitude and loss, identity and perspective. The songs are bittersweet here, hilarious at times, but often laced with a quiet sense of longing and dread: a text message goes unanswered; an old classmate descends into the dark depths of internet conspiracies; a relationship unravels in the middle of a lake. And yet, taken as a whole, the result is an undeniably joyful record that refuses to succumb to the weight of the world around it, an ecstatic reminder of all the beauty and promise hiding in plain sight for anyone willing (and present enough) to recognize their moments as they arrive.

On Last Man Dancing, Jake Shears turns his lifelong love affair with club culture into his most ambitious pop music to date. The album was brought to vivid life by Jake Shears and a close crew of collaborators, including head-turning features from Kylie Minogue, Jane Fonda, Iggy Pop, Amber Martin, and a pre-Renaissance turn from the iconic Big Freedia.

Recorded at Ardent Studios and released in 1972, the album has gone on to become one of the most influential and iconic debut albums of all time. This 50th-anniversary edition is pressed on 180-gram metallic gold with purple smoke vinyl and features all-analog mastering by Jeff Powell at Take Out Vinyl. The album has been included in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, with the song “Thirteen” featured in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Strap yourselves in for the sonic ride of your life. Rock and classical royalty unite on brand new album Drastic Symphonies. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London, Def Leppard have drastically deconstructed and reimagined some of their biggest hits, collaborating with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This bold new approach to the orchestral hits formula sees new vocal and guitar recordings from the band.

It’s been a time of intense, worldwide change over the past few years… or maybe it all depends on scale. Zooming out to a geological timeline, maybe not much has changed at all. On his sixth album Wilderness Within You, acclaimed singer/songwriter Parker Millsap explores this flux between the here and now and the big BIG picture, while reckoning with questions about humanity’s place on this planet. The result is a study in contrasts: the personal versus the cosmic, sparse acoustic compositions sitting next to lush psychedelic improvisations. Above all, Wilderness Within You is an understanding of darkness while expressing an abundance of gratitude for life itself.

Born and raised in Purcell, Okla., a tiny town with a huge sky, Millsap learned early on how to express gratitude through song while playing gospel in the church band. Long-time fans will recognize the album’s foundations – acoustic instrumentation and solid songwriting centered around Millsap’s show-stopping voice. They’ll also spot the evolution towards more experimentation and sampling from other musical cultures. Beyond the opening “Greetings and Thanks,” which puts to music “The Thanksgiving Address” of the indigenous peoples of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — all proceeds from the song will be donated to the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force — the album continues on with a series of auditory landscapes and thoughtful insights including “Running on Time,” which contrasts a sweet message about patience with distorted electronic harmonies. The second half of Wilderness turns darker and moodier with the industrial, buzz-saw “Half a World Away,” which finds Millsap questioning “who murders for my meat? who gets it here from there?” At the other end of the sonic spectrum is the beautiful, roots-y title track, a duet with the legendary Gillian Welch. The track illustrates Millsap’s understanding of nature as something that humans are not separate from - that life is stunningly beautiful most of the time, but does contain streaks of darkness that are just as natural: “There’s a field that’s full of violets, there’s a bruise that’s purple brown / There’s a little bit of violence, and a lot of fertile ground.”

In a broader sense, Wilderness Within You poses many weighty questions without easy answers. While Millsap can feel deeply discouraged by the way things are going wrong in the world, especially with the climate crisis, Wilderness Within You is threaded with hope and thankfulness for all we do have. This idea is beautifully etched on “Magic,” an anthem about the power of paying attention – a torch song perfect for listeners to join in and belt along to.

“I really do want people to feel the magic,” Millsap said, echoing lyrics from the song. “It’s out there.”

You know a band has to be one of the most incredible live outfits in the country when they get signed immediately after a show in the time it takes to pop outside for a cigarette break. This is exactly what happened to Island of Love after they were invited to play The Blue Basement venue in Third Man Records - which opened in September 2021 in London as the third Third Man store after Nashville and Detroit. Island of Love were second only to Jack White himself to play the room and it was still so new that the drummer even left with paint on his back from where he’d been pressed up against the wall playing. With that on-the-spot offer, they became the first band signed to Third Man London.

The band are a unique proposition in many ways. While countless London bands continue to go down the same tired path of churning out spoken word post-punk, Island of Love marry raw, primal noise led by crunchy guitars with intrinsically melodic sensibilities - recalling the sound and spirit of peak-era Dinosaur Jr. or Husker Dü.

Moby’s second album on Deutsche Grammophon following 2021’s Reprise. Digging further into his catalog, Moby has reimagined fifteen of some if his most iconic tracks for his new album, Resound NYC. The album features tracks that he wrote between 1994-2010 while living in New York City, and the new versions feature a vibrant, brass-heavy sound.

The indie variant includes three exclusive screen-printed inserts, each inspired by the three acts of ATUM.

DRAIN – the Santa Cruz, CA based hardcore band, whose energetic live shows have propelled them to peak underground popularity (during a global pandemic) and they are ready to break wide open in 2023.

Living Proof is the band’s Epitaph Records debut and follow up to their 2020 breakout release, California Cursed. The new album is a testament to the hard work and heartfelt ethos that’s at the center of DRAIN’s good-time psyche. There are a couple surprises on the album. Rapper Shakewell appears on the track, “Intermission”. There’s also a cover of “Good, Good Things,” a nearly four-decade old melodic punk carol by the Descendents: slam-pit forebearers to DRAIN if there ever were any. “It’s crazy because the song’s been out like forty years, but lyrically it’s a DRAIN song!” exclaims vocalist Sam Ciaramitaro. “It just hits on everything that I love, that I’m about.”

What Sammy’s about is plenty wholesome. “I hope with this record that when someone hears it, it gives them hope,” beams. “If we were able to get through the tough times, anyone can. I can’t wait to play these songs and hear a room full of people singing back to us. We’re what the title says, the Living Proof.”

Produced by longtime friend and multi-instrumentalist Taylor Young (God’s Hate, Suicide Silence), then mixed by John Markson (Drug Church, Koyo), this is hardcore for everybody. “As the band gets bigger, I try and keep that feeling alive,” says the smiling singer. “Every night I set up the merch and run it until it’s time to play. I want to be the guy that everyone says hello to. I want to thank every single kid that comes out for being there.”

“I was finally able to trust myself fully,” says Indigo De Souza of making her masterful third album All of This Will End. Across 11 its songs, the LP is a raw and radically optimistic work that grapples with mortality, the rejuvenation that community brings, and the importance of centering yourself now. These tracks come from the most resonant moments of her life: childhood memories, collecting herself in parking lots, the ecstatic trips spent wandering Appalachian mountains and southern swamps with friends, and the times she had to stand up for herself. “All of This Will End feels more true to me than anything ever has,” she says.

In many ways, All of This Will End has become a personal motto for Indigo. “Every day I wake up with the thought that this could be the end,” she says. “You could look at it as a sad thing, or you could look at it as a really precious thing: Today I'm alive and at some point, I will not be in this body anymore. But for now, I can do so much with being alive.” There’s a peacefulness in acceptance throughout. As she sings on the title track, “I’m only loving only moving through and trying my best / Sometimes it’s not enough but I’m still real and I forgive.” She describes the experience of writing this song as “magic,” as if everything about it from the words and melody had felt timeless and intangible and that she was just writing it down. Like the hues of reds and oranges that her mother painted on the LP cover, All of This Will End marks a warmer and unmistakably audacious era for her. It’s a statement about fearlessly moving forward from the past into a gratitude-filled present, feeling it all every step of the way, and choosing to embody loving awareness.

The follow-up to 2015’s Just Like You, Coming Home finds the band exploring its sound, all the while retaining the signature ethos and aesthetic that has won the love and loyalty of its incredibly invested fans and followers.

Frontman Ronnie Radke previously told Alternative Press that the album is “a huge left turn. It sounds like nothing we’ve ever done. Every song is very vibey. There’s more feeling in it.” 

He continued, “We’re challenging ourselves now more than we ever have in the weirdest ways possible, because you would think writing the craziest solo or riffs would be the challenging part. But the challenging part is trying to stick to a theme and not go all over the place like we would normally do.”

“PERMANENT.RADIANT is the newest EP from the darkly cinematic duo ††† (Crosses) featuring Chino Moreno of Deftones on vocals and Shaun Lopez on production and instrumentation. This project features the previously released singles “Vivien” and “Sensation,” along with the once exclusive vinyl track “Day One.” Eerie synth arrangements and pulsating percussion culminate in a lush, sprawling soundscape captured throughout this collection of songs. Chino Moreno's lyrics and vocal textures combined with Shaun Lopez's immersive production and sound design create a world that will likely transport anyone who listens to places both familiar and new. 

Guitar virtuosos Rodrigo y Gabriela have announced the follow-up to the GRAMMY-winning album Mettavolution. In Between Thoughts…A New World is the duo’s first full-length album in four years. It is a spontaneously composed, yet unified work which brings the same expansion of consciousness that inspired its creation. Self-produced in Ixtapa, Mexico, the album sees Rodrigo y Gabriela building on their original sound to include electronics and orchestral elements.

 

When Paul Janeway learned he was going to be a father he decided to scribe his thoughts (joy, fear, confusion) as messages to his then-unborn daughter. Those letters became Angels in Science Fiction, the stunning fifth album from St. Paul & The Broken Bones. Produced by Matt Ross-Spang at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis, it finds the band stretching further out, building on the shadowy psychedelia and intricate, experimental R&B of 2022’s The Alien Coast. Indie Exclusive Black & White LP.

LIGHT THE MATCH! Setting the scene ablaze, the rough and rowdy Overkill have reappeared to bludgeon your ears with their twentieth, that's right, twentieth studio album: SCORCHED. For over 3 and a half decades their bottom-line crazy method of thrash has produced some of the most signature moments in the world of metal. Now in the latter half of their career, all the experience is showing face with SCORCHED as it somehow rings more mature, refined, and embellished with hints of more than just thrash metal. Splatter vinyl

After seven years, Daughter are back – a generational band with well over 1 billion streams across three records. Since their debut in 2013, Elena Tonra’s intimate, crushingly honest lyrics have been a lifeline for the band’s fans, whilst also finding a gateway to the likes of alternative giants Phoebe Bridgers and Bon Iver. ‘Be On Your Way’ is warmly optimistic in tone, finding a lightness in Tonra’s poetry, whilst still desperately evoking an emotional resonance unmatched in the alternative space.

Produced by Sean Ono Lennon and mixed by Dave Fridmann (Beach House, Spoon, The Flaming Lips) , Temples fourth full-length album takes place in an impossibly utopic island dreamed up by the four band members. With its resplendent collage of psychedelia, krautrock and time-bending dream-pop, Exotico brings that world to life in crystalline detail, all while exploring an entire spectrum of existential themes: impermanence, mortality, our connection with nature and the wild immensity of the mind.

Feist will release Multitudes – the 11-time Juno Award-winning artist’s sixth full-length album and first release since 2017’s critically acclaimed Pleasure – on April 14, 2023 via Interscope Records. Multitudes took shape soon after the birth of Feist’s daughter and the sudden death of her father. Amid meditations on mortality, connection and the frenetic state of the human condition, Multitudes ultimately radiates an ineffable sense of hope. Indie Exclusive Clear LP.

72 seasons. The first 18 years of our lives that form our true or false selves. The concept that we were told ‘who we are’ by our parents. A possible pigeonholing around what kind of personality we are. I think the most interesting part of this is the continued study of those core beliefs and how it affects our perception of the world today. Much of our adult experience is reenactment or reaction to these childhood experiences. Prisoners of childhood or breaking free of those bondages we carry.”

-James Hetfield