Latest from Mavis Staples, Wilco, JD McPherson, Valley, Pete Yorn added to our big mix

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Mavis Staples: Worthy

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“It’s a pick-me-up song - it’s a celebration, and you can’t help but move,” says the R&B icon of her new single. Written and produced by MNDR (Amanda Lucille Warner), the song has an uplifting message of self-worth. It's a perfect fit for Staples, still sounding ebullient as she's turning 85. Warner says working with Staples - "listening to her soulful voice, spending time in her grace, and watching her artistry in the studio ... was an experience too profound to put into words."  

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Wilco: Hot Sun

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Here's the title track from a new EP that bandleader Jeff Tweedy describes as having a "summertime-after-dark kind of feeling." Pitchfork says the song "practically melts from the heat, guitar notes bending and warping as Tweedy sings about the physical pleasure of sunlight hitting skin. With that sensation comes a nagging doubt, possibly about climate change: 'Shouldn’t I be doing something?' he asks himself." (Photo by Akash-Wadhwani)

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J.D. McPherson: Sunshine Getaway

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Speaking of sun on the skin, that's what the narrator in this song longs for, as an escape from the "same old same old day after day." The single precedes Nite Owls, McPherson's first (non-Christmas) album since 2017's Undivided Heart and Soul. In the meantime, he's been touring as band leader and opening act for Alison Kraus and Robert Plant. The Oklahoma native is known for a 60s rock-and-roll sound, but this track features a riff reminiscent of "Bang a Gong." McPherson told Variety: "Well, any playlist of mine, you’re gonna see Little Richard right next to T. Rex." (Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins)

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Valley: Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden

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Founded in 2014, this Toronto-based band has been growing its fan base steadily with what AllMusic calls "their buoyant blend of indie pop uplift and melodic hooks." We would add: with lyrics that describe the ennui of many young adults today. That continues in this title track: "I guess that I'd rather laugh than cry 'bout my problems / When, honestly, I don't know how to solve them." But that refrain alternates with another urging, "Quit wasting the sunlight, it's always the right time / Just open your eyes, 'cause it's always the bright side."

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Pete Yorn: Real Good Love

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There's word that the California-based New Jersey native has an album coming out later this year. Along with January's single release, "Someday, Someday," it will presumably include this new song. Both are simple, quiet, acoustic tracks, this one musing on how "real good lovin' is so hard to find."

Coldplay, Lake Street Dive, Rachel Hickey, Vacations, Sarah Kinsley bring the new music

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Coldplay: feelslikeimfallinginlove

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This is the first track to emerge ahead of the veteran U.K. band's 10th album, Moon Music, due in October. After nearly a quarter century of releasing anthemic hits, Chris Martin and company don't break new ground here, and the lyric about new-love euphoria isn't terribly original - but they're no denying it's catchy, and easy to imagine as a stadium sing-along.

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Lake Street Dive: Far Gone

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We picked up the title single back in March, and now with the full release of Good Together we're highlighting this track that departs just a bit from the band's typical style. Americana Highways notes that this track features guitarist James Cornelison "providing an excellent riff to counter [Bridget] Kearney’s deep groove" - and adds that "Kearney is seriously undervalued as one of rock’s best bass players." We heartily agree. For his part, Cornelison replaced founding member Mike “McDuck” Olson, who parted on friendly terms in 2021.

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Rachel Hickey: Back On Track

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Following two EP releases since 2021, this Toronto-based singer-songwriter just released her first full-length, The Eve of St. Agnes - a title the former English lit/psych double- major borrowed from a Keats poem. 

Hickey's music is described as "folk-focused with a blend of indie, pop, and rock." We previously featured an early single, "High," and now choose this peppy track for our New Music bin.

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Vacations: Midwest

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Here's the latest single to break out from this Australian quartet's third album, No Place Like Home. Lead singer Campbell Burns says: "I’d never directly written a break-up song until ‘Midwest.’ ... I enjoy having songs that are universally relatable and open to interpretation ... Lately though, I’ve been writing about my memories and unravelling them in exact detail. Almost like therapy, except you’re all there in the room with me."

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Sarah Kinsley: Last Time We Never Meet Again

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This classically trained singer-songwriter-musician-producer's first full-length album, Escaper, is set for release in September. This first single "is meant to be celebratory," says the artist, but it is also "a goodbye - the closing of all these worlds that you inhabit with the people you love. A celebratory goodbye."

The latest from Mondo Cozmo, The Offspring, Susan O'Neill, Belfountain, The Heavy Heavy

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Mondo Cozmo: Wild Horses

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This track heralds Josh Ostrander's fourth studio album under the Mondo Cozmo moniker, It’s PRINCIPLE!, due in August. The song "draws you in with its bold, galloping beat, and exudes power in the first half," writes his home-area radio station WXPN-Philadelphia. "However, the song takes a turn ... into a piano ballad, giving way to Cozmo’s raw vocals, expressing the range of emotions he was dealing with during the writing process as his dog (and band namesake) Cozmo was nearing the end of his life."

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The Offspring: Make It All Right

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AllMusic has called The Offspring "perhaps the quintessential SoCal punk band of the 1990s," which turned out a string of "snotty, satirical alt-rock hits." After a nine-year break, they released Let The Bad Times Go in 2021, and now they've announced Supercharged for October release. The song "talks about the people in our lives who make us feel strong when we are feeling low — our partners in crime who make us feel all right," says group leader Dexter Holland.

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Susan O'Neill: Bright Eyes

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This singer-songwriter from Ireland's County Clare will release a solo album, Now In A Minute, in September. She has previously recorded and toured as SON, and in 2021 collaborated with Cork singer-songwriter Mick Flannery on a concept album called In The Game, the biggest-selling independent selling Irish album that year. We're told Flannery co-wrote some of the 12 songs on the new album.

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Belfountain: Tell Me When It Rains

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An indie-folk-rock project fronted by Canadian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Chris Graham makes its debut this week with Some Hearts. The album is billed as a "roots-inspired collection ... an earthy mix of old and new." This second track has a soulful flavor, and the sound and subject matter put us in mind of old songs like the Temptations' "I Wish It Would Rain." (Photo by Dzesika Devic)

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The Heavy Heavy: Happiness

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Will Turner and Georgie Fuller started their Brighton, UK-based band with the ambition of “making records that sound like our favorite records ever." We picked up on their 2022 EP Life and Life Only, and now they're out with their debut LP, One Of A Kind, expanding on their "sunshine psych-pop and folk sound." This track certainly has a 60s retro sound.

The Wild Feathers, Ray LaMontagne, Burnstick, The Hard Luck, Arkells now in our New Music Bin

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The Wild Feathers: Sanctuary

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The Nashville group will release its next LP, Sirens, in October. It's billed as a collection of "road-worn, sharply-woven tales chronicling a life worth living, love worth holding and the hard-earned lessons found along the ride." This first single is about standing up for oneself in a one-sided relationship.

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Ray LaMontagne: Step Into Your Power

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The singer-songwriter's next studio album, Long Way Home, is coming out in August, and this is the first single. "Anything that your heart can dream, you can make it reality," he sings, as The Secret Sisters provide choral backing vocals. (Photo by Brian Stowell)

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Burnstick: Closer

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The indigenous Canadian contemporary-folk duo of Nadia and Jason Burnstick recently released their sophomore album, Made of Sin. This song is "about the willingness to do anything necessary for loved ones - inspired by the birth of the couple's son.

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The Hard Luck: Tonight

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This track is billed as the debut single from a new solo project by Canadian singer-songwriter Cory Dee, a member of the alt-rock band Owls By Nature. But we found another single released several months ago, called "Still Having Fun," and we'll be add that to our mix, too.

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Arkells: Big Feelings

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The Ontario band is out with this new single, asking the musical question, "Are you afraid of big feelings?" Frontman Max Kerman says: "In the studio, this track was a burst of energy and felt like it came together quickly. ...Immediately, we understood it would be unruly, and that the spirit of the song was more about the collective unvarnished expression than any conventional 'songwriting rules.'"

New tunes by Richard Thompson, Crowded House, Lynne Hanson, Vanishing Shores, The Metal Byrds

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Richard Thompson: Maybe

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One of the pioneers of folk-rock returns with Ship to Shore, his latest collection of "curious characters, love laments, dark chords, dark humor and peerless guitar work," as The Associated Press puts it. AllMusic calls calls the album "one of the tightest collections he's made in the past quarter-century, exhibiting a wide tonal palette and a vitality belying his 75 years." Our pick for the New Music Bin is this ditty about infatuation: "There’s a girl I know / I want to know her better." As Thompson catalogs her virtues - "She rolls with the punches / Follows her hunches" - we're reminded a bit of Cake's "Short Skirt / Long Jacket."

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Crowded House: The Howl

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In 2020, Neil Finn and Nick Seymour, original members of the 80s hit-making band, were joined by Finn's sons Liam and Elroy, along with Mitchell Froom, who produced the band’s first three albums, and released Dreamers Are Waiting the next year. The new lineup is back now with Gravity Stairs. Rolling Stone Australia says "the five-piece gell[s] wonderfully on this loose, gently psychedelic LP that’s still guided by Finn’s immaculate pop instincts." 

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Lynne Hanson: Outlaw Lover

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This Ottawa-based singer-songwriter is billed as "too tough for folk and too blues-influenced for country." But in fact there are traces of all those styles, and more, in her music. On this track from her new album Just A Poet, Americana Highways says her "smoky, seductive voicing" results in "a jazzy lounge performance that shimmers." The lyrics combine a love-'em-and-leave-'em history with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude: "I lost count of the goodbye notes / No fixing all the hearts I broke / Roll the dice, take the leap."

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Vanishing Shores: We Still Own the Night

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Cleveland's Kevin Bianchi and company have just released Possible Light, Pt. 1, consisting of a few previously released singles along with a half-dozen new songs - including this one. Bianchi says he wrote it "to promote a feeling of defiant love. ... I wanted to affirm the reality that love can truly conquer whatever attempts to tear us down and separate us from having meaningful relationships and welcoming communities."

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The Metal Byrds: I, Fall

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Here's the first single to emerge from an new album, Lights Out, coming soon from this Houston indie-rock band. London-born vocalist Suzanne Birdie and lead guitarist Sly Rye founded the band in 2018. Bassist Mac Jacob and drummer Charlie “Breeze” Janto round out the current lineup.