Indie Exclusive Releases

“Alpha Games was conceived on the road, playing in front of amazing crowds on our last tour and then brought to life with the fire and the frustrations of 2020,” says Kele Okereke on Bloc Party’s first new album in seven years.

The first Bloc Party album written and recorded as this four piece; adding the musicality of Justin Harris (bass) and the unbridled energy and power of Louise Bartle on the drums to capture the spark of their live shows and to deliver the most exciting Bloc Party album yet.

“We wanted to can what was happening at those massive gigs in 2019, to showcase what Louise can do, what Russell is capable of and most importantly the electricity coming off the audience. We knew that Nick & Adam were the right choice of producers to do that and the result feels like fire in a bottle.”

Produced by Nick Launay & Adam Greenspan (Nick Cave, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, IDLES), the 12 tracks of Alpha Games veer from the intense & confrontational (Traps, Day Drinker) to melodic and introspective (If We Get Caught, By Any Means Necessary) and marks a new and important chapter in one of music’s most important voices in Kele Okereke and important bands in Bloc Party.

10th anniversary edition! New alternate all black cover & vinyl labels. Special photo discobag. 

2 bonus tracks never before on vinyl 

Written partially in Nashville and partially in the Compton house Keb’ grew up in, Good To Be… weaves together past and present into a heartwarming tapestry spanning more than forty years of sonic evolution. Joined by a variety of collaborators, including country legend Vince Gill, famed producer Tom Hambridge (B.B. King, Buddy Guy), Darius Rucker, Kristin Chenoweth, and Old Crow Medicine Show, Good To Be…is a deeply cohesive and optimistic collection of music about appreciating what you’ve got, where you come from, and who you get to share it with.

Fear of the Dawn is the fourth studio album from Jack White, founding member of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather. True to his DIY roots, this record was recorded at White's Third Man Studio throughout 2021, mastered by Third Man Mastering, pressed to vinyl at Third Man Pressing, and released by Third Man Records. Pressed on limited astronomical blue vinyl, only available at independent record stores

The disjointed space between personal happiness and global sorrow is where Smrtdeath's new album it's fine makes it's home. Written and recorded during the pandemic, one of the most dramatically isolating experiences of our lives, the album finds Smrtdeath's Mike Skwark in a surprisingly contented state, newly coupled up and living in bliss. it's fine was produced by Matt Malpass, who Skwark calls "fucking incredible." He's a Grammy-nominated producer who has worked extensively with Blink 182, along with other artists surfing across similar genre borderlines as Smrtdeath, like Trippie Redd, Machine Gun Kelly, and 311. His bombastic approach to sound blends perfectly with Smrtdeath's near-spiritual use of harmony.It's fine is loaded with amazing featured artists, a who's who in the pop punk scene. The first song recorded for the album, "Adding Up," features Blink 182's Mark Hoppus on vocals and guitar, and his presence brings an epicness to the track. On "Sober," it's clear that falling in love has helped him grow up-but not too much. Skwark calls the song, which features both Lil Lotus and Lil Aaron, the result of "an internal conversation I've been having." It balances both the seriousness of the subject with the fun he wants to leave behind perfectly."I like this album the most out of anything I've done, and I want everyone to like it the most," Skwark says. He hopes to tour the record when the pandemic allows, with a live band. "I want to do something less familiar to everyone, something more like, Whoa. Something where I'm larger than myself," he says.

This is a color LP that features alternative packaging from the standard LP. The LP package also includes a download of the full album that includes two exclusive bonus tracks. 

Luther and Cody Dickinson started North Mississippi Allstars in 1996 as a loose collective of like-minded second-generation musicians who shared a local repertoire and regional style. Over the years the lineup shifted by design, and each NMA record offered up a different combination of collaborators. Set Sail finds the brothers working with Jesse Williams on bass and Lamar Williams, Jr. for the first time. 

Set Sail, North Mississippi Allstars’s thirteenth album, follows 2019’s Up and Rolling, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for the Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2021. Set Sail continues the band’s tradition of creating roots music that displays remarkable variety. With their latest record, NMA are able to build upon their self-described sound of Primitive Modernism - a melding of the new and the old, traditional and futuristic, crafted lyrics and improvisational music.

Want to get a bead on Paul Cauthen?

Good freakin' luck -- especially on his third album, COUNTRY COMING DOWN.

COUNTRY COMING DOWN has been in motion awhile, actually. The title track, one of several co-writes with good Nashville pal Aaron Raitiere, has been around since before Cauthen's dark sophomore album ROOM 41. Its sense of campfire calm and "damn near off the map" idyll set a bar, for both music and lifestyle, that Cauthen aspired to, while the rest of the new album, recorded at Modern Electric Sound Recorders in Dallas with regular collaborators Beau Bedford (Texas Gentlemen) and Jason Burt (Medicine Man Revival), shows that Cauthen was able to get there without losing any of the playful "hot dog holly golly dagnabit" good-time spirit that rolls off his tongue like a tumbleweed in the west Texas panhandle.

If you want to know what COUNTRY COMING DOWN sounds like, tuck into the album's sonic array, an austere, sinewy attack that puts Cauthen's vocals dead center in the ride. "We've really unleashed Big Velvet in this situation, which I love," he says. Nowhere is that more true than "Country As Fuck," with a taut groove and loping gait tailor made for a 21^st century honky tonk. Cauthen, Bedford and Burt play with that template throughout COUNTRY COMING DOWN, punctuating "Caught Me At a Good Time" with a sharp guitar solo, "High Heels" with a tasteful Wurlitzer break and the satiristic "Country Clubbin'" with a disco beat and chorus of female backing vocals.

His muse fully engaged, Cauthen is looking towards doing more of that in the future, with a few conceptual ideas up his sleeve about what he might do next.  No matter what direction he takes, however, he won’t be abandoning that cabin in the hills or the "Country Clubbin'" life; Cauthen will just be adding more to the mix he's stirred together.

"It's just about looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing that what you've done to this day has been in good standing, with good morals and a good compass in life, driven the right way," he says. "Legacy is all we have -- that, and try to be a good person as well. If you get all that together, then you can do whatever the fuck you want and it'll be alright."

Placebo have unveiled their long-awaited 8th studio album. Nine years on from the release of their last outing Loud Like Love, Never Let Me Go is set for release on March 25^th, 2022.

Gang of Youths say, “The album is about the life and legacy of Dave's father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God. And also the Angel, Islington.” 

Nilüfer Yanya runs head first into the depths of emotional vulnerability on her anticipated sophomore record PAINLESS. Recorded between a basement studio in Stoke Newington and Riverfish Music in Penzance, the record is a more sonically direct effort, narrowing her previously broad palette to a handful of robust ideas. Yanya's debut album Miss Universe (2019) earned a Best New Music tag from Pitchfork and saw support tours with Sharon Van Etten, Mitski & The XX. Indie Exclusive Cloudy Blue LP.

Like only the most gifted storytellers, Matisyahu spins the rare kind of stories that simultaneously enlighten and enthral and expand the audience’s sense of possibility. On his eponymous new album, the Grammy Award-nominated singer/songwriter/rapper shares his most autobiographical work to date, merging that personal revelation with a shapeshifting collision of reggae and hip-hop and boldly inventive pop. Produced by Salt Cathedral (a Brooklyn-based duo comprised of Colombian musicians Juliana Ronderos and Nicolas Losada), the result is an undeniably transformative album, one that invites both intense introspection and unbridled celebration.

Belgian-Caribbean provocateur Charlotte Adigéry and long-term musical partner Bolis Pupul announce their debut album, Topical Dancer. Cultural appropriation. Misogyny and racism. Social media vanity. Not talking points that you’d ordinarily hear on the dancefloor, but the Ghent-based duo are rare storytellers. Co-written and co-produced by Soulwax, Topical Dancer is both a triumph of kaleidoscopic electro-pop and a snapshot of how we think about pop culture in the 2020s. Indie Exclusive 1 Black LP & 1 White LP.

Dashboard Confessional’s ninth studio album, All The Truth That I Can Tell, is both a remarkable renewal and fortunate step forward for the band’s songwriter, front man, and founder, Chris Carrabba. All The Truth That I Can Tell stands among Carrabba’s finest – a strikingly potent musical look at himself through a rediscovered keyhole, both an achievement of vision and a vital burst of artistic clarity; less like reading someone’s diary and more like reading their eyes.

All The Truth That I Can Tell is available exclusively at participating indie retailers on “Cold Night” transparent dark blue/green vinyl.

In the wake of his time leading The Healers, Marr’s solo career has given rise to three UK Top Ten albums - The Messenger (2013), Playland (2014) and 2018’s Call The Comet. He now returns with his most expansive work to date, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4. It was created during the long, uncertain period that followed the arrival of the UK’s first lockdown, when his focus was pushed into both his interior life, and evoking the emotional states of others. “It’s an inspired record, and I couldn’t wait to get in and record every day,” he says. “But I had to go inwards.”

The new album reflects his multi-faceted past, but takes his music somewhere startlingly new. “There’s a set of influences and a very broad sound that I’ve been developing - really since getting out of The Smiths,” he says.  “And I hear it in this record. There are so many strands of music in it. I think it’s the most ambitious solo record I’ve done.”

Being in a band is like being in a marriage: sometimes it’s magical, sometimes it’s unbearably challenging. To reinvigorate that marriage, Deap Vally have made their third album a genre-bending experiment with new collaborators and instrumentation that push the limits of what has previously defined the duo - Marriage is their musical Rumspringa, if you will. The album sees Julie and Lindsey break free of the rigid creative constraints within which they previously existed (two members, two instruments, two voices) and invite in collaborators such as KT Tunstall, Peaches, Jennie Vee and jennylee, as well as a range of producers including Allen Salmon, Josiah Mazzaschi and Harvey Mason Jr.

Spiritualized will release "Everything Was Beautiful" via Fat Possum on 2/25/22. It is the ninth studio album from Spiritualized and it comes 30 years after the debut album. This is the follow up to 2018's "And Nothing Hurt". Jason Pierce performs 16 different instruments across the album. It is recorded at 11 different studios and includes more than 30 musicians across the album. There will be an indie exclusive Pink vinyl inserted into a gold foil sleeve, housed in a high gloss UV Jacket that includes a removable pill box with braille inlay.  Some assembly required.  Designed by Farrow Design.

STARSET return with their 4th studio album, HORIZONS. A continued voyage through a captivating science fiction narrative, HORIZONS delivers a cinematic soundscape that accompanies the listener through pain, love, descent, and triumph. The world has been consumed by synthetic methods of escaping reality, and it is with this technology that we are able to explore life through other users' experiences — finally, the ability to be someone else.

"For our Levitation Session we recorded on reel-to-reel 1/2 inch tape in the middle of the Mojave Desert in Antelope Valley. Due to my natural tendencies to explore the layers of my ancestry and being forever inspired by the beautiful sounds coming out of the Saharan desert, I wanted to challenge myself to produce a recording that doesn't filter but fully embraces a similar environment. A search for symbiosis between the music and the ground it’s made on. Thanks to a place I love and respect, a welcomed challenge, and some of my closest friends, what you are hearing is Night Beats in one of its truest and rarest forms. Thank you for listening and thank you to those who lived on and cherished this land before us." -Danny Lee Blackwell // Night Beats

“I’m starting to realize that being an outlier and a weirdo––it doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” says Sarah Shook. Shook pauses, then adds with a grin, “It can be whatever you want it to be.”

Shook is home in North Carolina, talking about Nightroamer, the hotly anticipated new album from their band, Sarah Shook & The Disarmers. Backed by white-knuckle playing from Eric Peterson on guitar, Aaron Oliva on upright bass, drummer Jack Foster, and Adam Kurtz on pedal steel, Shook has pulled from Hank Williams, Elliott Smith, the Sex Pistols, and Shook’s own inquisitive, open, outlying self to create pop-savvy, honky-tonk punk that’s both an escape and a reality check––a re-opened wound and a balm. Relationships and life-changing realizations are dissected with honesty and humor, three tight minutes at a time.

When Sarah Shook & The Disarmers released Sidelong four years ago, the irreverent quintet’s debut turned heads around the world. Then 2018’s follow-up Years hooked everyone from Rolling Stone to Vice. “This ain’t no country for hipsters or posers,” said No Depression. “It’s real, raw, mean-and-evil-bad-and-nasty bidness.” Then, the first two albums turned into a tease: The pandemic shut down the world, just as The Disarmers finished recording Nightroamer in Los Angeles. The band has had to sit on the album––until now.

Nightroamer is worth the wait. This is still a band whose recordings beg to be heard live, either in a punk-rock hole in the wall or honky-tonk roadhouse. Shook’s voice is crystalline––but boozy, too, with a cadence that sounds comfortable resting in the pocket before lagging, jumping, or cozying up to the offbeat. What initially may feel like a slip is actually a stroke––and listeners cannot get enough.

Produced by Pete Anderson, Nightroamer is the confident next step fans hoped The Disarmers could take. “I think this record is different than ones we’ve done in the past. It feels every bit as expansive as I wanted it to feel,” says Shook. “I didn’t want there to be a shocking, jarring difference, but I definitely wanted it to feel like things are opening up. It’s a bigger feeling experience.”

Asked what they hope listeners experience, Shook is clear. “Music is one of the ways we can connect to other people,” they say. “That’s my hope: That people feel seen and they feel connected to something that brings them a sense of peace.”

The Nonesuch debut of Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra),LIFE ON EARTH, out February 18, 2022, is a departure for the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter. Its eleven new “nature punk” tracks on the theme of survival are music for a world in flux—songs about thriving, not just surviving, while disaster is happening.For her eighth full-length album, Segarra (they/she) drew inspiration from The Clash, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Bad Bunny, and the author ofEmergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown. Recorded during the pandemic, Life on Earth was produced by Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Kevin Morby).

Don’t Go Throwing Roses In My Grave is the first solo record by beloved frontman of The Menzingers, Gregor Barnett. Devoted Menzingers fans will love its electrified Americana riffs, yearning melodies, driving beats and indelible lyrical imagery. The Philadelphia based singer/songwriter is telling his stories with a folkier style then he does in The Menzingers, but his stories are just as moving and compelling.

After his departure from Judas Priest in 1993, Rob Halford reinvented the steel with Priest drummer Scott Travis. Taking cues from rising titans like Pantera as well as riffing off the furious verve of Judas Priest's legendary LP, Painkiller, Fight was born. Paint-peeling missives like "Into the Pit" or "Nailed to the Gun" were exactly what the fans wanted and Fight's War of Words was a classic on its deafening arrival. Seldom heard on vinyl since its release in '93, WOW remains as hungry a ball of intense riffing and vocal acrobatics now as ever.  Century Media will be reissuing the vinyl on 2/18.

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros—consisting of Bobby Weir, Don Was, Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti—are set to release their first ever vinyl collection of recorded material. Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live In Colorado is out February 18 on Third Man Records—their debut with the label. Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live In Colorado features a collection of songs recorded at the band’s live performances at the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado and the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado on June 8, 9, 11, 12, 2021. These shows were the group’s first live audience concerts in over a year and featured Greg Leisz on pedal steel, along with The Wolfpack: Alex Kelly, Brian Switzer, Adam Theis, Mads Tolling and Sheldon Brown. “Been too long,” Weir said of the performances, “but I can’t think of a better place to pick it back up…”

“I was born in the North Carolina mud,” says Jamil Rashad, better known as Boulevards, one of the most idiosyncratic artists making music in the Tarheel State. His fourth album, Electric Cowboy: Born in Carolina Mud, is caked in the soil where he grew up, mired in the muck of this place—not stuck but freed. Grounded in personal experience and haunted by personal demons, Electric Cowboy is an album that reaches out, that embraces the world, that mixes the confessional and the communal. But the dominant sound—the dominant mindset—is funk: gritty, warm, weird, charismatic. Rashad once again composed and recorded with Blake Rhein, guitarist for Durand Jones & the Indications, after they had worked so well together on 2020’s Brother! EP. They corralled an all-star team that included Adrian Quesada from the Grammy-nominated neo-soul act Black Pumas and Colin Croom from the Chicago indie-rock outfit Twin Peaks.

“On Electric Cowboy I wanted to make some modern funk that the kids would enjoy, but still have some soul elements and some punk elements. On the cover you see a black man on a horse running away from his demons. That’s me. You can hear it all in the songs – struggling with demons and still coming out on top of it all. That’s what funk is! You got some heavy, dark shit, but you also got some joyful compositions, funky basslines, dope harmonies, infectious hooks. So that’s me on the cover, the Electric Cowboy, slaying anything that comes in my path. I gotta keep riding, keep trucking, keep fighting, keep pushing.”

Coming February 11th: Spoon's tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is alive, vital and inarguably the band's heaviest work to date. The first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown, Austin, in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years ' both in and out of shutdown ' these songs feel like a culmination of Spoon's career while marking a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more vivid.

The Mercury Prize-winning, multiple GRAMMY- and BRIT Award-nominated band alt-J have announced their eagerly-awaited fourth album The Dream, set for release February 11, 2022. The Dream is an album of intrigue, beauty and humanity - a coalescence of everything that has made alt-J a global band with true staying power. True-crime inspired stories and tales of Hollywood and the Chateau Marmont rub shoulders with some of the band’s most personal moments to-date The album was created after a period of rest for the band following their seismic world tour in support of previous record RELAXER. It is a record that is the sound of a band growing as songwriters and storytellers.

It’s been a decade since SLASH FEATURING MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS released their debut album together, and since then have been on one of the more impressive and unrelenting tears in rock ‘n’ roll, issuing two more hard-hitting, highly acclaimed records, and rocking stages all over the world. Enter 4, the Dave Cobb-produced highly anticipated studio effort from SMKC. True to the band’s expanding legacy, it’s everything you’ve come to expect from SLASH, MYLES KENNEDY, TODD KERNS (bass), BRENT FITZ (drums) and FRANK SIDORIS (rhythm guitar)… but also unlike anything you’ve heard from them yet. This time out, SLASH says, they captured a certain “magic” – the sound of five musicians and band mates listening to and playing off one another in the spirit of live, in-the-moment collaboration. “It has a very spontaneous, fun kind of thing to it, and I love that,” SLASH says of 4. “It’s the sound of the five of us just jamming together in one room.”

Ask the members of Empath how things have changed since the release of their critically-acclaimed 2019 album, Active Listening: Night on Earth, and they’ll downplay it. Though, come February 11, 2021, Empath will release their sophomore full-length, Visitor, via Fat Possum, marking a seismic shift for the scrappy quartet who came up playing shows on Northeastern DIY circuits and now have just completed a tour with Modest Mouse. While the album holds steadfast to the careening, joyous noise Empath staked their name on, Visitor was produced by Jake Portrait, making it the first release the band has recorded with a producer in a formal studio. “It’s a collage of sounds intended to produce a feeling of hearing life through the walls.”