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"Pandit is the musical outlet for Texas singer/songwriter/producer Lance Smith. I record in my home studio and will release most if not all of my material on Lefse Records and Orchid Tapes." Debut LP on Lefse Records - January 2011 Debut, self titled EP now available for a free download on last.fm!!! http://www.last.fm/music/Pandit

“Not so much a replication, but more of a study in reclamation. We were into the idea of making a record of the type of country that we all seemed to hold in high regard, not for the kitschy-ness or the retro-ness, but for the beauty and simplicity it could impart to the listener” – Kurt Wagner, July 2010. INVARIABLE HEARTACHE is an album inspired by a shared love of Nashville and its musical traditions. Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner – a long time champion of the city’s history and charms – and Cortney Tidwell – whose family have, for decades, played a significant part in the city’s (country) musical life – are both fervent admirers of the music that has emerged from the city. It was an early collaboration on Cortney’s Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up album that led to the two of them performing together at Nashville club The Basement in the summer of 2008. Such was the crowd’s overwhelming response that evening that the idea of a duets album was born, and though work didn’t begin for well over a year the concept was never forgotten. It was discussion about Cortney’s family history that led them to the Chart Records catalogue, a label run by Cortney’s grandfather Slim Williamson, A&Red later by her father Cliff Williamson, and for which her mother Connie Eaton also recorded. The result of their subsequent fascination with what they discovered on dusty forgotten vinyl is an album that pays tribute to art of the duet and the classic songwriting that lay behind many of the albums and singles released by the label, a tribute on a grander scale to the forgotten sounds of ‘Music City USA’. cityslang.com ‘Incredibly Lonely’ is a cover of a song recorded by Gene & Rod for Nashville’s Chart Records in 1968. Although the song is available for free, those downloading it are encouraged to make a donation at their own discretion to the Community Foundation Of Middle Tennessee. Kurt and Cortney were in the middle of recording when, at the start of May 2010, Nashville and other areas in Tennessee became victims of appalling flooding caused by well over twenty inches of rain in less than two days. The tragedy went almost unreported: ‘bigger’ events such as the attempted bombing of New York’s Times Square and the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico meant that the significant loss of life and the destruction of homes and buildings throughout Tennessee remained almost ignored. Grants from the fund will be made to nonprofits supporting relief, restoration and clean-up efforts in the Davidson County area in the aftermath of the flooding and storms. http://www.kort.cd http://www.myspace.com/cortneytidwell http://feverqueen.com http://www.lambchop.net

http://www.myspace.com/foxesinfiction ------ http://www.foxesinfiction.com ------ Warren Hildebrand :"Foxes in Fiction is vehicle for different musical ideas that I have and want to try and put to work despite a lack of a band. I record in my apartment in Toronto, Ontario and release a lot of my work under an online & cassette label I run called Orchid Tapes . I play live shows in and around Toronto using guitars, voice and electronics. Thanks. Contact: lafayetteblues@gmail.com I have a new album out called Swung from The Branches, you can download it here: http://www.foxesinfiction.com/2010/02/swung-from-branches.html".

http://www.myspace.com/gemclub //// http://iamgemclub.com ///// http://gemclub.bandcamp.com/album/acid-and-everything

http://www.myspace.com/twowoundedbirdsofficial

http://www.myspace.com/casiokids ****** http://happyjokes.wordpress.com

Small Sur’s latest offering, Bare Black, is mood music at its best. This three-song EP transports the listener into a world occupied by lush drones, heartbreaking melodies, subtle hooks, and carefully crafted, minimalist arrangements. A classic foundation (guitar, bass, piano, and percussion) provides the music’s heartbeat, with sometimes unexpected swells of exquisite texture from banjo, pedal steel, alto saxophone, and cello. Delivered with the fragile sincerity of Nick Drake or Will Oldham, Keal’s tender, haunting vocals remain the centerpiece throughout—his lyrics as steadfast as ever in their evocation of Steinbeck’s realism, Whitman’s over-joyous transcendentalism, and Little Wings’ guru Kyle Field’s child-like wonder.

http://www.karaocake.com /// http://www.myspace.com/karaocake

"Something special happens when the four members of the Wilderness of Manitoba sing together, whether it’s in the house on Delaware Avenue in Toronto where three of them live or in the garage out back where they sometimes staged their own shows including their live debut. The band recorded most of their new album When You Left The Fire as well as their EP Hymns Of Love & Spirits in their basement studio. They learned not to rely on electric instruments, although they now use them, but on the strength of their voices and melodies. The process of recording the new album was different in that, when Stefan Banjevic and Melissa Dalton joined the band, most the of the songs for the EP had already been written by Will Whitham and Scott Bouwmeester except “Evening” which was written by Will’s mother in the sixties. For When You Left The Fire, Dalton says, “Everyone had input on the new songs from the very first listening, sometimes on the same day that the song had been written.” They gave each other songs to work on so they ended up with a couple of songs that had music by one person and lyrics by another. These collaborations, the addition of Sean Lancaric on drums and percussion and the use of new instruments like lap steel created a fuller and more varied sound. “The new assortment of instruments changed the colour of the songs and helped shape our growth as a band”, observed Bouwmeester. There is a lot of fire imagery in the lyrics and When You Left The Fire reflects a sense of longing and loneliness that permeates most of the songs on the new album. Dalton states, “It recalls someone or something crucial being left behind, perhaps for a greater purpose which gives the impression of hope, but still it has a definite ring of sadness to it.” Adds Bouwmeester, “When You Left The Fire is a line from ‘Hermit’ that stands out, especially at the end when Melissa sings it. It’s a title that pulls the whole album together.”

19 year old Dylan LeBlanc was born in the Parish of Caddo in northwest Louisiana. He was exposed to a wide variety of music whilst growing up in Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Inspired by Willis Alan Ramsey, Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt and Tennessee Williams, he joined the House of Fame as a writer at 18. Dylan’s approach to music is to write and sing about things that are real, that convey humanity, so all can relate. His inspiration comes from experience, and watching, listening, and absorbing everyday life around him. Dylan is currently finishing mixing his debut album ‘Paupers Field’ with Grammy award winning engineer Trina Shoemaker in Nashville which will be released this autumn. Rough Trade will release Dylan’s debut album, Pauper’s Field on August 24th 2010.

« Take Vic Chesnutt, take Tom Waits, take Scott Walker, draw a Bermuda Triangle between the three : you’ll have an area wide as the universe. Yet The Nightcrawler’s husky voice sails its cloudy waters like a sticky fish, intoxicating whoever dares to lay a hand on his back’s asperities. Abrupt, lonely and hoarse, it animates the luminescent songs of this diurnal and generous album from head to toe. As it happens, it begins with luxurious pads of real strings and a love declaration addressed to Lambchop (« Great Breakfast With Lambshop LP ») : The Nightcrawler may be alone in front of the microphone, he inhabits that same paradoxical peninsula than Kurt Wagner’s big Texan posse, the one that links eternal soul music and confessional folk music. Eventually, the Nightcrawler’s first album does more than welcoming you in his mobile-home in the desert: it embraces you on the threshold. An to further prove that he treats this very special role with uttermost involvement, Red himself hand painted every single copy of this quite extraordinary uninvited guest in his discography ».

"Pearly Gate Music is an incredibly gifted gentleman by the name of Zach Tillman (although he records and usually plays live with a stylistic variety of full-band options), who makes beautiful, challenging, simple-yet-complicated songs structured around his extraordinary singing, vivid lyrics, and unusual melodic sense. Sometimes conjuring the feeling of a punk rock religious revival in an old-time prairie tent, sometimes stripped down to spare acoustic-guitar-and-lovely-croon, Tillman's music sounds as if it were written and performed by a bedraggled dust bowl poet influenced by whatever popular songs from the poor folk circuit were being sung after dinner in the parlors of his youth — and who somehow managed to supernaturally absorb the sound of Lubbock circa 1955, Laurel Canyon circa 1968 and Berlin circa 1980".

/// DAMIEN JURADO /// "Saint Bartlett" CD / LP (SC192, released: 05/25/10) - Saint Bartlett opens up with a grandiosity yet unheard on a Damien Jurado album. It strips away the many layers of paint from the house down the street where we know Jurado has occupied for the last decade. The new coat is exhilarating. It makes the whole neighborhood shine. It's a modest grandiosity; still homegrown. The mellotron swells, heavenly handclaps ring in stereo and big drums create a sky for the songs to fly in. And the words. Words spring forth from within the volcano of Jurado, full of hope. There's so much hope, in fact, that album opener "Cloudy Shoes" turns into a call-and-response with himself, as though it were a dialogue between two halves of himself. "I wish that I could float up from the ground / I will never know what that's like" Heavy stuff. Richard Swift's Spector-esque production is spot-on. He ferries Jurado across the river, where the metamorphosis occurs. He then ferries him back, and it is through Swift's lens that we see Jurado not as a folk singer, but as a mystic -- somewhere between Van Morrison, Scott Walker and Wayne Coyne. Saint Bartlett was made entirely at Swift's National Freedom studio in Oregon, in just under a week with only Jurado and Swift as the performers.

http://www.pernicebrothers.com/ http://www.myspace.com/pernicebrothers

Skeleton Jack (Jack Saltmiras) is the solo material of ‘new’ bass player of The Middle East. http://www.myspace.com/jacksaltmirasmusic http://www.themiddleeastmusic.com

http://www.myspace.com/visitthemiddleeast

http://www.myspace.com/visitthemiddleeast

http://www.yerbird.com/compilation/ http://www.myspace.com/yerbird "Yer Bird Records is proud to present this collection of new, unreleased and rare recordings by both our label artists as well as some of our very favorite musicians. We feel that this collection of music represents where folk music lives and breathes". The compilation includes new songs from: . Hayden , J. Tillman , Alina Simone , Chris Bathgate , Elephant Micah , O'death , Paleo , Sarah White , Nic Garcia , Hezekiah Jones , The Gunshy , Travel By Sea , The Hotel Ghost , Allyn Latorre , Chauchat , Oweihops , and Matthew Ryan!

"Goodbye, Killer by Pernice Brothers is Joe Pernice’s first band album since 2006’s Live a Little. In several weeks-long bursts of work over the course of a couple of years, in between writing a novel, recording a soundtrack for said novel, touring on both, and doing real-life things, Joe, his brother Bob, and long-time collaborators James Walbourne (Pretenders, Son Volt, Peter Bruntnell) and Ric Menck (Matthew Sweet, Velvet Crush) holed up in an attic in Boston and recorded these 10 Pernice originals. Goodbye, Killer should appease Pernice fans from all walks of life. It includes the full on rock 'n rollers "Jacqueline Susann" and "Bechamel," signature pop songs "The Great Depression" and "F***ing and Flowers," the Scuds-esque "Newport News" and "The End of Faith," and two AM radio would-be classics "The Loving Kind" and "Goodbye, Killer." Pernice refers to the undeniably show tune-y number "We Love the Stage," as his "homage to vaudeville, indie rock and learning to love betting against yourself." (Whatever. Pernice's manager just hopes it"s the first song in the musical he and Walbourne are going to write, because she"d love to lose a lot of money producing musicals too.) Goodbye, Killer is a versatile album that"s trademark Pernice".

On July 13 2010, The Love Language will release their Merge Records debut, Libraries. The Love Language, initiated by Stuart McLamb, is a fortunate by-product of the North Carolina native’s rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. The growing body of emotional fight songs, committed to MP3 with a high-school era multitrack recorder, became postcards from exile, a way to let his friends and former flames know he was getting along, battered but not beaten. The self-immolating beauty of the budget correspondences was exhausting and triumphant; McLamb’s dalliances with rejection and redemption would be minted in a self-titled debut on Portland independent label Bladen County in March of 2009. Soon afterwards, the mighty ensemble band version of The Love Language—a dysfunctional symphony of musical vagrants—disbanded to pursue personal projects. McLamb, who had roamed the state since recording The Love Language, moved back to Raleigh where Libraries producer/engineer BJ Burton adopted the one-man band and helped harness the extraordinary might generated during these sessions. Among the moments captured on Libraries are Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything. The effective average of McLamb’s madness and Burton’s discipline rendered an album in the classic sense, in which no song is expendable and no passage is without purpose. With Libraries, McLamb transitioned from a guy who could write a good album to an individual who can maintain a good band. The sooner we listen, the sooner we may figure this whole love thing out.

Although the name probably doesn't seem familiar, Danish recording artist Emil Friis is someone to remember. Having been making a name for himself with his two previous releases, Friis is now back with his third LP The Road To Nashville. Where his PIAS released debut Mutineer had been a debutants attempt at making a modern country record performed and delivered with tight arrangements, Friis' second LP Tennessee Theft saw a more traditional approach to record making. Recorded live in the studio Tennessee Theft had a more animated and lively sound, something Friis was to develop further on his next effort. In January 2010 he went to Varispeed Studios in southern Sweden to record his third LP The Road To Nashville. Recorded in just two days, the album showcases a more soulful and also more playful Friis. Along with his usual gang of musicians Friis also introduces the addition of a trumpet, most evident on the title track. The track, among the strongest on the album, reminisces Mexican tijuana with it's tight horn riffs. It might be fair to say that his first two releases were Alt Country albums, but this time around Friis crosses the bounderies of genre and reveals a new take on American Music. One that, despite the title, also drips with nordic mournfulness, something Scandinavia has been made famous for.

/// DAMIEN JURADO /// "Saint Bartlett" CD / LP (SC192, released: 05/25/10) - Saint Bartlett opens up with a grandiosity yet unheard on a Damien Jurado album. It strips away the many layers of paint from the house down the street where we know Jurado has occupied for the last decade. The new coat is exhilarating. It makes the whole neighborhood shine. It's a modest grandiosity; still homegrown. The mellotron swells, heavenly handclaps ring in stereo and big drums create a sky for the songs to fly in. And the words. Words spring forth from within the volcano of Jurado, full of hope. There's so much hope, in fact, that album opener "Cloudy Shoes" turns into a call-and-response with himself, as though it were a dialogue between two halves of himself. "I wish that I could float up from the ground / I will never know what that's like" Heavy stuff. Richard Swift's Spector-esque production is spot-on. He ferries Jurado across the river, where the metamorphosis occurs. He then ferries him back, and it is through Swift's lens that we see Jurado not as a folk singer, but as a mystic -- somewhere between Van Morrison, Scott Walker and Wayne Coyne. Saint Bartlett was made entirely at Swift's National Freedom studio in Oregon, in just under a week with only Jurado and Swift as the performers.

"Caught In The Trees" CD / LP (SC175, released: 09/09/08) - "Caught In the Trees" marks the dawn of a new era for Damien Jurado. It may not be a huge departure from some of his past albums musically, but lyrically Jurado has taken a giant leap forward and there is no turning back. Best known for his dark yet fragile first person fictional tales, Jurado now unlocks the door and invites us into his own enigmatic world with an energy and intensity that is all-consuming. Jurado took a full year to make this record, longer than ever before, as he ran away from and eventually found himself in his own songs. He subsequently found refuge in sharing the songs with his closest friends and bandmates, Eric Fisher and Jenna Conrad. Having walked alongside him through this most challenging journey, the songs that came out of it are as much theirs as his. Jurado, Fisher, and Conrad collaborated on the compositions - some much more rocking than Jurado fans are used to, but ever as intense - and pulled in producers Kory Kruckenberg and Casey Foubert to contribute their own unique stylings. Recording started in the summer months and the sweltering heat, and wrapped in the freezing temps of winter. (It is clear on first listen that two distinct seasons are represented through "Caught In the Trees" - an accidental metaphor perhaps?) There was laughter and there was introspection, and the result is a record that Jurado loyalists will find was worth the wait. And perhaps a reason to listen for those who have yet to give this bedraggled storyteller a chance.

Anti- Records announce the signing of Lost In The Trees, an inventive music collective from Chapel Hill, North Carolina helmed by composer and songwriter Ari Picker. The band merges the dramatic symphonic elements of classical music with the accessibility of American folk and modern pop, creating a sound that is simultaneously intimate and sonically ambitious. Creative Loafing has described their unique sound as “beautiful soul baring music combining folk with unconventional classical that will make your toes curl.” Picker, who has already composed and publicly debuted his first symphony with members of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, draws band members from prestigious music schools such as Berklee, Eastman and University of North Carolina, as well as the rich, indie-rock community in North Carolina. Lost In The Tree’s forthcoming album All Alone In An Empty House was co-produced by Scott Solter (St. Vincent, Mountain Goats, Okkervil River, John Vanderslice) who provides a sonic landscape in which classical and pop composition can co-exist with stirring results.

CocoRosie are two American-born sisters, Sierra and Bianca, who started making music together in Paris in 2003. Their first album, La Maison de Mon Rêve, was released in 2004 and their second album, Noah’s Ark, followed in 2005. Their third and, to now, most recent album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, came out in 2007. All three of these albums were released worldwide on Touch and Go Records and earned positive critical acclaim both overseas and at home. The nomadic duo (currently and temporarily residing in New Mexico) spent much of 2008 writing and recording in Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Berlin, New York, and Paris, finding amazing and diverse musicians to collaborate along the way. The result is their 11-song Sub Pop debut, Grey Oceans, due out May 11th, 2010.

http://www.myspace.com/wyeoak

From "Rough Travel For A Rare Thing", a collection of live recordings, due out 3/23 from Drag City. It was recorded in Melbourne, Australia on November 8, 2007, at a club called The Toff.

The first single from The National's forthcoming new album High Violet will be 'Bloodbuzz Ohio. http://www.americanmary.com/

http://www.myspace.com/meansealevel

After pausing an 18-year career with partner Ben Watt in best-selling alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl (1982–2000), followed by a self-imposed hiatus to start a family, Tracey Thorn re-emerged in 2007 to a wave of critical acclaim with the glittering autobiographical folk-disco of Out of the Woods, her first solo album since 1982’s indie classic A Distant Shore. Now she is back with another: the starkly beautiful Love and Its Opposite to be released on May 18.

http://www.sharonvanetten.com/

http://www.bellaunion.com/index.php/site/news/queen_of_denmark

http://www.theblackatlantic.com

http://www.myspace.com/themorningbenders

http://www.myspace.com/themorningbenders

http://www.myspace.com/elizabethharper

http://www.myspace.com/atlassound

http://www.myspace.com/robstjohn

http://www.myspace.com/robstjohn

http://www.myspace.com/koudlam

http://www.myspace.com/phantogram

http://www.peterwolfcrier.com/

http://namesrecords.com/?p=198

http://www.elvisperkinsindearland.com

http://www.asthmatickitty.com/texas-rose-the-thaw-and-the-beasts

http://www.myspace.com/langhorneslim

http://www.myspace.com/monstersoffolk

http://www.frankelmusic.com

http://www.magnoliaelectricco.com

http://www.vandaveer.net/