Our journey of musical discovery continues

Have you heard of Canadian singer-songwriter Lauren Mann? Neither had we until her latest album, Dearestly, showed up on Noisetrade.com (a site we highly recommend, by the way). We started listening and couldn't stop.

We're adding "New Beginning" to our New Music bin, and a bunch of other tracks are going into our Marvelous Mix of Music.

So who is Lauren Mann? A Calgary native now living on Canada's west coast, she was the winner of a CBC-Radio Canada's "Searchlight" talent contest a couple of years ago (read an interview here).

Our other new adds couldn't be much more different: A couple of hard rock tracks and some British indie pop:

• OK we'll also admit that we're not familiar with the L.A. alt-rock band Failure, which broke up in 1997. But it's now reunited and issued its first album in 20 years, The Heart Is A Monster. We're spinning "Hot Traveler."
• Yet another band that's news to us: Mammal Not Fish, four lads from Norwich, U.K. They've just put out their first EP, Wake Up! One track won its way into our New Music bin: "Dreaming Of The Sea."
• And more from Canada: The band Billy Talent has a lot to say about global issues on its fifth album, Afraid of Heights. We're adding the title track, which allmusic.com calls "a melodic pop/rock bomb, the central thesis of the entire record: conquering fear and taking a step into the unknown."