Fruit+bats

Gold Past Life marks both an end and a beginning for Fruit Bats. It's the end of an unintentional thematic trilogy of records that began with 2014's EDJ (a solo record by name, but a Fruit Bats release in spirit) and hit an emotional peak with 2016's Absolute Loser. They encompassed years of loss, displacement, and the persistent, low-level anxiety of the current political climate. They were written in the wake of friends who left these earthly confines and families that could have been. But these salves, these songs on Gold Past Life, also represent new beginnings-the journeys that await after making it through troubled times. Gold Past Life is about rejecting notions of idealized nostalgia ("Gold Past Life") and the process of grounding oneself in the present, both geographically ("A Lingering Love," "Ocean") and spiritually ("Drawn Away"). With Gold Past Life, Eric Johnson of Fruit B hopes to bring more immediacy to the music and share positivity, hope, and motivation to keep on keepin' on with a wider audience.

Highway Butterfly is a 3+ hour tribute collection of Neal Casal’s songs recorded by 41 artists & 130 musicians between February and December 2020, performed by artists including Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Bob Weir, Steve Earle, J Mascis, Shooter Jennings, Hiss Golden Messenger & many more.

Kacey Johansing was one half of duo Yesway, and is now about to release her third album, The Hiding. The record is gentle and sunny, steeped in late ’70s soft rock but sounding very much here and now. Members of Real Estate, Fruit Bats, Vetiver, The Range of Light Wilderness, and Tall Tales and the Silver Lining helped her out making it, and we’ve got the premiere of the featherlight “Bow and Arrow,” which brings to mind some of those groups’ breezy sounds.

2017 release from the Portland, Oregon-based band. Eyelids existed long before the actual band came to be. Friends for over two decades, principal songwriters John Moen and Chris Slusarenko had long desired to get together to write songs, "sweet melodies" paired with "bummer vibes," which would fuse Big Star's jangle to XTC's melodicism, connecting the dots between the dream pop sounds of the '80s Paisley Underground to the homespun post-punk of the legendary Flying Nun label. With Or, the band's second full-length LP, Eyelids have created their most emotional record yet.

Philia: Artists Rise Against Islamophobia is a music and arts collaboration project designed to bring awareness to the growing problem of Islamophobia. According to the Department of Justice, incidents of bullying, discrimination and hate crimes towards American Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have dramatically increased over the past year. Named after the Greek word for brotherly love, Philia aims to connect people through music and the arts, to promote the ideals of civic love and respect across America. Philia includes a vinyl album and digital release followed by multiple live concerts. Proceeds go to benefit the work of Unity Productions Foundation, a nationally recognized nonprofit educational organization that specializes in combating Islamophobia.