Our latest picks: David Byrne, Trombone Shorty, St. Etienne, Planet Smasher, Jacob's Run

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David Byrne feat. Ghost Train Orchestra: What Is The Reason For It?

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With the release of Who Is The Sky? we pick another of its ebullient tracks for our New Music Bin. This one features vocals by Hayley Williams of Paramore. Byrne says it's "a love song, or at least it’s asking what is love, what it’s about?" 

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Trombone Shorty & New Breed Brass Band: Good Time

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Released twenty years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the new album Second Line Sunday is billed as a reflection on culture and tradition, on family and community, on survival and resilience." Mostly it's joyous, and it's pretty much impossible to sit still when listening to any of its ten tracks.  

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Saint Etienne: Glad

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Continuing the upbeat mood, this is the opening track from International, the twelfth album from the U.K. trio of Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs, and Sarah Cracknell. They've said it will be their last. AllMusic says this number "booms out of the speakers with huge drums, thumping bass, and jangling guitars in a style very reminiscent of some of the band's early work, while coming across very fresh and shiny."

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Planet Smashers: Things You Do

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We previously featured "Wasted Tomorrows" from this Montreal punk-ska band's new LP On The Dancefloor, and we're dipping in again for another dose.

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Jacob's Run: She's Not That Mean

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OK, so it's the umpteenth song to use the "down on my knees/begging you please" rhyme, and if the lyrics are telling a story we're not getting it. (How mean is she, then?) But the second single from the upcoming second album by this Melbourne indie-rock trio is a fun listen. Lead singer-guitarist Michael Jacobs says the band "wanted the chorus to sound like a throwback to the ’60s - a-la The Monkees, Mamas and Papas - those really rich interweaving harmonies where no one voice is prominent."

New music from The Beths, Flyte, Lauren Mann, Next Week's Washing, Don't Believe in Ghosts

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The Beths: Straight Line Was A Lie

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Here's the title track from the New Zealand band's just-released fourth album. Nothing has been proven more effective against Music Boredom than Birch Street Radio. It's unsurpassed! Use only as directed. Possible side effects include altering your mood, distracting you from what you should be doing, and causing flashbacks to the first time you heard that song. Our musical variety program is produced Birch Street Studios in Beautiful Downtown Suburbia and streamed 24/7 from Canada by TorontoCast and in the USA by Live365.

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Flyte: Alabaster (feat. Aimee Mann)

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We weren't familiar with Flyte, the UK indie-folk duo of Nick Hill and Will Taylor, but we're long-time fans of Aimee Mann, so this collaboration caught our attention. It's from Between You And Me, the upcoming fourth Flyte LP. Under The Radar mag writes: "The band’s typically feather-light acoustics are anchored by simmering fuzz guitar and prominent basslines ... [T]he lyrics explore a love affair that is doomed to implode."

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Lauren Mann: Different Light

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We're very happy to get new music from this self-described songwriter-musician-island adventurer from Pender Island, B.C. She's releasing an EP called Heaven in late September. Mann describes it as "an intimate collection of songs brought together through expansive journeys of finding home, blossoming into motherhood and navigating personal growth through it all." (It's strictly coincidental that this week's New Music picks include two women with the last name Mann.)

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Next Week's Washing: Empty Pages

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Here's the latest of a series of singles from this emerging Toronto trio, formed last year by Rhys Newman and brothers Miles and Julian Duffy. Canadian Beats writes: "Drawing on elements of shoegaze, Britpop, and alternative rock, the track combines a nostalgic emotionality with forward-looking sonic ambition – pairing shimmering walls of guitar with front-and-centre, harmony-laced vocals."

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Don't Believe in Ghosts: Driver

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This New York City band will release But On The Bright Side in November. Steven Nathan (vocals), Dan DelVecchio (guitar) and Ken Yang (drums) worked on it over two years across multiple studios in Nashville, Cleveland and New York. Vocalist Steven Nathan says this first single "is about living in the moment ... a colorful track filled with a lot of energy."

Florence + The Machine, Goose, Night Talks and much more added to our New Music bin

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Florence + The Machine: Everybody Scream

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Has there ever been a song so clearly designed to whip a concert crowd into a frenzy? This is the title track from the band's upcoming sixth studio album. Florence Welch is known for her near-manic live performances, dancing wildly around the stage, and in this song she acknowledges both the rush she gets from her audiences and the toll it takes on her: "Look at me run myself ragged, blood on the stage / But how can I leave you when you’re screaming my name?" Compare: "It's Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It)"

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Goose: Royal

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Surprise! Just four months after April's Everything Must Go, the jammers from Connecticut released another album, Chain Your Dragon, in August. The band has played most of its 12 songs live over the years, but this is a new number, which the band says is about "a transient musician whose burning ambition threatens to get the best of him.”

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Night Talks: Targets

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It's good to see this LA indie band getting more recognition - including East Coast tour dates in September. This new single features additional guitar work by Cory Wong. The group's firecracker lead vocalist, Soraya Sebghati, sings of trying to shake feelings of paranoia: "I've got a target on my back ... It's not real you said / It's in my head." 

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And Many More!

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We took a bit of a summer break from adding new releases and posting about them. But now we've refreshed the New Music bin with the three tracks described above - and a dozen more!

• Wolf Alice: White Horses
• Sheryl Crow: The New Normal
• Almost Monday: Enjoy the Ride
• Alkaline Trio: Oblivion
• Cult of Venus: Sinner
• Kathleen Edwards: When The Truth Comes Out
• Rohin: Sundown
• The Black Keys: No Rain, No Flowers
• Planet Smashers: Wasted Tomorrows
• Bob Moses: Last Forever
• Krooked Tongue: Dog Days
• Pony Gold: Big in the City

Remember: Nothing has been proven more effective against Music Boredom than Birch Street Radio. It's unsurpassed! Use only as directed. Possible side effects include altering your mood, distracting you from what you should be doing, and causing flashbacks to the first time you heard that song.

Latest from Sheryl Crow, Stereolab, Nilufer Yanya, The Technicolors, Sunrise in Jupiter

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Sheryl Crow: See You On The Other Side

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This is one of two new singles from Crow and her longtime touring band, The Real Lowdown. Here she seems to be channeling a god who can't understand why his people find it so hard "to let love win."

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Stereolab: Aerial Troubles

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Instant Holograms On Metal Film is the first album in 15 years from this UK band that went dormant around 2010. Founders and former couple Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier brought their "groop" back together for a 2019 tour and that led to this recording. Under The Radar says "Stereolab’s sound remains unmistakable, yet newly expansive. ... [T]he music fuses elements of Krautrock, lounge jazz, psychedelic pop, and minimalism."

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Nilufer Yanya: Cold Heart 

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The London artist follows up last year's My Method Actor LP with a new EP, Dancing Shoes. It consists of four songs that were held back from that album and then reworked.

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The Technicolors feat. Madison Cunningham: First Class to Nowhere

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We haven't been familiar with the band from Phoenix, but reviews of this track from their upcoming album Heavy Pulp say it marks a shift to a softer, more introspective sound than their previous releases. (Chalk up one more collab outing for the ubiquitous Madison Cunningham.)

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Sunrise in Jupiter: Take Me Home

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This London rock group's upcoming first album will be a double-LP entitled Mission to Mars. It's billed as cinematic rock exploring "profound themes of exploration, separation, and destiny." An ambitious debut, no?

Jeff Tweedy, Joe Bonamassa, The Strumbellas, Goose, Suzanne Vega in our New Music bin

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Jeff Tweedy: Enough

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The Wilco frontman newest project is a 30-track (!) album, Twilight Override, arriving in late-September. With the announcement of the longggg-player came four tracks, of which this is the most upbeat, despite melancholy lyrics: "Has it ever been enough? / Has it ever been OK?"

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Joe Bonamassa: Drive By The Exit Sign

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The veteran blues-rocker just released Breakthrough, his first album since 2021's prog-influenced Time Clocks. He returns to his shorter, tighter, songwriting on this outing, writes Rock and Blues Muse, which calls this track "a spark-plug igniting inclusion enhanced by soulful backing female vocals."

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The Strumbellas: Hard Lines

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There's no word on whether the release of this new single means that an album is on its way. It would be the Ontario group's sixth, following last year's Part Time Believer. But we won't be the ones to ask. After all, the band says this is a "a song about keeping up with pressure and expectations."

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Goose: Dustin Hoffman

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We pull another plum from Everything Must Go, the Connecticut jam band's latest studio release. It's one of just a handful of songs to appear on the album before being heard in concert. Glide Magazine calls it one of the record's standout moments. "Starting as a funky ’70s strut, the track seamlessly shifts to an adult-contemporary-infused chorus teeming with ’90s-inspired horn arrangements courtesy of an impressive brass trio led by a longtime collaborator, saxophonist Stuart Bogie." (The song's title supposedly was inspired by the actor of the same name, but the lyrics have nothing to do with him.)

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Suzanne Vega: Alley

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We return to another of this spring's releases to pick another track for our New Music Bin. The singer says this is a song "about transcending life's difficulties and seeking sanctuary somewhere."

Tedeschi Trucks & Mad Dogs, Drop Kick Murphys, All Time Low, James and the Cold Gun, Big Thief

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Tedeschi Trucks Band: The Letter (Live at Lockn' 2015)

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Ten years ago at a festival in Virginia, TTB and Leon Russell celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour with a tribute concert. The 12-member band and the iconic blues-rock pianist (who passed away the following year) were joined by some original members of the Mad Dogs ensemble, such as Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, and Chris Stainton, plus guests including Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes, Warren Haynes, Anders Osborne, and Dave Mason. This track is the first taste of an album compiled from that show, to be released in September. What took so long?

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Drop Kick Murphys: Who'll Stand With Us?

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This single from the Boston band's new album, For The People, is a protest anthem that ties the current socio-political situation in the U.S. to historic inequality and exploitation. "The working people fuel the engine / While you yank the chain." The song's video depicts immigrant workers being abducted, and then uses the same imagery for people being cut off from health and other benefits. Lead singer Ken Casey says, “We’ve always had the same message and haven’t been afraid to speak out about what’s important to us.." (Photo credit: @Chezphoto / Riley Vecchione)

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All Time Low: The Weather

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It's been 20 years since this band, formed by high school classmates in Towson, Maryland, released its first album - and now it's rolling out its tenth studio LP, Everyone's Talking!, due in October. This track is billed as "Ramones-toasting pop-rock." Lead singer Alex Gaskarth calls it a "a cynical but playful" song about running into an ex and, rather than delving into the past, talking about trivial matters. "I won't ask you how you've been / 'Cause we might just fall back in / So we talk about the weather."

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James and the Cold Gun: Above The Lake

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This group from Cardiff calls itself "the loudest in South Wales" (which seems to have confused some people into thinking they're from Australia's New South Wales instead of the U.K.). This track is from the band's second LP, Face In The Mirror. Frontman James Joseph says: "We’re massive rock fans. If you look at 90 per cent of the bands on rock playlists right now, though, they don’t always sound like rock. You can barely hear a guitar, and everything is super polished. We found ourselves wanting to hear new music that had the guts to keep things messy and as real as possible, so we made it ourselves.” (Photo credit: Luke Shadrick)

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Big Thief: All Night All Day

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Here's the second single to emerge from Double Infinity, the sixth album by the Brooklyn band featuring the tremulous voice of Adrianne Lenker and bandmates Buck Meek and James Krivchenia. "Swallow poison, swallow sugar / Sometimes they taste thе same / But I know your love is neithеr / And love is just a name."

New music in our mix: Turnstile, Splitsville, Kathleen Edwards, Sunflower Bean, Royel Otis

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Turnstile: Seein' Stars

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When we picked up "I Care" from the new LP, Never Enough, we wrote that Brendan Yates's lead vocal reminded us a bit of Sting. And we find ourselves agreeing with those who say this track sounds like it could be a lost Police recording. Which is fine by us. Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Dev Hynes (a.k.a. Blood Orange) contribute vocals on this track, although they don't stand out in the mix.

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Splitsville: A Glorious Lie

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Here's another group that, like Turnstile, hails from Baltimore. But they haven't released new music in a couple of decades. Now they're out with Mobtown, which includes this song whose intriguing lyrics relate (we are told) to a 1926 visit to Baltimore by Queen Marie of Romania.

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Kathleen Edwards: Say Goodbye, Tell No One

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We pull another track from Billionaire, the Canadian singer-songwriter's album due next month. This is a not-very-gentle break-up song: "People change, people grow," it starts out, "You can take it in stride or slam a door."

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Sunflower Bean: Waiting For The Rain

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Yes we're choosing to feature another track from Mortal Primetime, following "Champagne Taste," "Nothing Romantic" and "Take Out Your Insides." Got a problem with that?

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Royel Otis: Moody

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This duo from Sydney is getting some backlash for the lyric, which has a guy complaining that his girl is "a bitch when she's moody," while also singing that "she's my everything, she's all that I need." Is he being sexist - or is she being emotionally abusive? Discuss.

'Lost' Springsteen + new Marshall Crenshaw, Yukon Blonde, The Beths, Jacob's Run

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Bruce Springsteen: Waiting On The End Of The World

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"New music" in the sense that it has never been released (except for a bootleg), this 1994-vintage recording is one of 83 (!!!) songs on the just-issued Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Reviewer Josh Kitchen writes: "It's unbelievable that this song was not released until now. ... [It] feels like a perfect summation of the music found on Tunnel of Love, Human Touch, Lucky Town, and now the rest of the songs here on the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (one of the seven 'lost albums' in this collection). It's peak Bruce, a hopeful sounding Bruce anthem about the price we pay for love."

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Marshall Crenshaw: Move Now

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Here's another kinda-sorta new track, from an LP called From the Hellhole, Crenshaw's nickname for his home studio. Stereogum tells us "the album’s 14 tracks include 11 repurposed from Record Store Day vinyl EPs released between 2012 and 2016, all of which have been out of print since 2016. Eight of those tracks have been remixed for the occasion. Three more tunes from across Crenshaw’s career round out the tracklist." This song is one of the originals, co-written with Dan Bern.

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Yukon Blonde: Colours of My Dreams

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This is the first single from Frienship & Rock 'n' Roll, a new LP due in September. The album is described as "stripping things back to spotlight the rawness and electricity of their rock 'n' roll love show." The group from British Columbia says it's "our love letter to rock ’n’ roll itself, like a dog-eared note stuffed in the locker of the universe."

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The Beths: No Joy

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We've been spinning the New Zealand quartet's recent single, "Metal," and now comes word of an LP, Straight Line Was A Lie, coming in August. This song deals with vocalist Elizabeth Stokes' experience with depression and treatment. "It's about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI (medication). It wasn’t that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn’t like the things that I liked. I wasn’t getting joy from them.”

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Jacob's Run: Sunday

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We're glad to hear more from this Melbourne band - its first release since its self-titled debut LP in 2019. The word is that this single precedes a second album on its way, The Other Side. With Mark Opitz producing, the original line-up of Michael Jacobs (vocals, guitar), Peter Curigliano (bass, vocals) and Fabian Bucci (drums) is augmented here by a 32-piece orchestra led by conductor George Ellis - giving this gentle ballad a lush sound it doesn't really need.

New from Muse, Nation of Language, Beta Trip, James McMurtry, Shayla McDaniel

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Muse: Unravelling

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Nation of Language: I'm Not Ready for the Change

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Beta Trip: Juliet

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James McMurtry: The Color of Night

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Shayla McDaniel: Pretending For Real

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Cool new sounds from David Byrne, Big Thief, Tune-Yards, Goose, Suzanne Vega

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David Byrne feat. Ghost Train Orchestra: Everybody Laughs

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This buoyant track will open David Byrne's upcoming album Who Is The Sky? It's due in September and features many collaborators, including St. Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The Smile’s Tom Skinner, and New York ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. "Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word “everybody” a lot.’ I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,” Byrne says in a press release. “Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps ... I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way, balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that—hold opposites simultaneously."

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Big Thief: Incomprehensible

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Now a trio since the departure of bassist Max Oleartchik, the Brooklyn-based group recruited a bunch of collaborators to record their upcoming album, Double Infinity. We're told they set up New York’s famed Power Station studio and recorded live with minimal overdubs, playing for nine hours a day as they improvised arrangements. The LP is due in September, and this track will be the album opener. Adrianne Lenker's conversational lyrics describe personal reflections on time and aging during a road trip.

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Tune-Yards: Swarm

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We felt the need to put another track from Better Dreaming into our New Music Bin as "How Big Is The Rainbow" settles back in our giant playlist. One reviewer called this one "a funky soul-inspired piece with a bass that can motivate some serious air guitar playing."

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Goose: Your Direction

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The current lineup of the Connecticut-based jam band - Rick Mitarotonda (guitar), Peter Anspach (keys/guitar), Trevor Weekz (bass) and Cotter Ellis (drums) -  recently released its fourth studio album. Glide Magazine writes that "Unlike the previous genre-bending Dripfield LP that saw the band making a concerted effort to adopt a more indie pop sound, Everything Must Go embraces the group’s jam band roots." The review says this track is an "album highlight thanks to a strong Fleetwood Mac influence and breezy West Coast vibes." 

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Suzanne Vega: Love Thief

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This song from her new album, Flying With Angels, has a very different sound from anything else in Vega's discography. It has a 70s funky R&B sound, complete with background singers supplying "yeah yeah yeahs." The lyric seems to come from a desire to give love, rather than steal it. The narrator is "Loving everybody these days / Like it's some kind of craze."

New music: Turnstile, Sunflower Bean, Pool Kids, Kathleen Edwards, The Happy Fits

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Turnstile: I Care

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This Baltimore group has been billed as "punk-hardcore" since its origin in 2010; its website is turnstilehardcore.com; and every review of its new, fourth album, Never Enough, seems to insist it still fits that genre. But as newcomers to Turnstile, we think a better descriptor is "versatile." The LP has some hard-edged tracks and parts of tracks, but they're mixed with strains of indie-pop, shoegaze, classic rock and even jazz and reggaeton. On this and other songs, lead vocalist Brendan Yates seems to channel Sting. Well, after all, The Police were pretty damn hardcore in their day. (Photo by Alexis Gross)

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Sunflower Bean: Take Out Your Insides

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We've been spinning "Champagne Taste" and "Nothing Romantic," and now with the full release of Mortal Primetime we're featuring this track that Under the Radar calls "sublime ... heartfelt, folky, and quietly devastating." The lyric is a plea to a friend or lover to share inner thoughts and feelings. Paste says the LP may be the "best album of the trio's career. Because after 10+ years of flirting with nearly every classic-rock trope under the sun, [its new record] casts aside the traditional rock-band impetus to choose an era, genre, and style of rock and roll’s past to emulate - and instead embraces all of them. "

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Pool Kids: Easier Said Than Done

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We're glad to hear these kids from Tallahassee, Fla., have a new album on the way. This first single is the title track, which vocalist Christine Goodwyne says reflects on how obsessive-compulsive disorder "can just rob your life of joy. Things can be going so well, and then it just sucks any enjoyment out of it." She sings: "I told you I know how to have fun / If only I could let go, it’s easier said than done."

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Kathleen Edwards: Save Your Soul

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The Canadian singer-songwriter says she decided to call her new album Billionaire "because the word is used in such a caustic way these days. But we should all want to be billionaires in life, to be rich in experience, friendship, purpose, and the pursuit of the things that bring us joy." OK but this song's lyric is clearly about monetary riches: "Line your pockets with gold / Who’s going to save your soul?" The LP, due in August, is co-produced by Jason Isbell, who also contributes guitar, keys and backing vocals.

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The Happy Fits: Everything You Do

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Three friends from the outer 'burbs of New Jersey formed this band in 2016, and had released an EP and three LPs by 2022. Since then the lineup has changed, with lead singer Calvin Langman and drummer Luke Davis now joined by Nico Rose and Raina Mullen on guitar and backing vocals. Langman says he wrote this song, from their upcoming album Lovesick, "shortly after moving to Brooklyn to live alone for the first time in my life. Maybe it’s just my social circles and algorithm, but I feel there’s a shared feeling amongst everyone right now of being overworked, underpaid, and underloved. 'Everything You Do' is my own internal battle of fighting for my heart vs. being practical and rational. Knowing me, the heart always finds a way to win."

New releases from Yellowcard, Garbage, Caamp, Mt. Joy & Gigi Perez, Grace Potter

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Yellowcard: Better Days

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Here's the title track from the Florida alt-rockers' first full album in nearly a decade, due in October. Blink-182's Travis Barker produced and added his drums to every song. The band describes this number as an "unflinching reflection on gratitude, perspective and purpose."

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Garbage: Hold

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With the release of Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, the band's eighth studio album, we're adding this track that Melodic Magazine calls "a rallying cry for a generation lost in grief and rage - a standout track that feels tailor-made for the times." Written during frontwoman Shirley Manson’s recovery from hip surgery, the LP is "steeped in reflection and resilience, anchored by a refusal to succumb to despair," writes Under the Radar.

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Caamp: Mistakes

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Just months after dropping an EP, Somewhere, but three years after its last LP, the Ohio group is back this week with a full album, Copper Changes Color. This song is said to be inspired by frontman and primary songwriter Taylor Meier’s time in New York City, and seems to describe the early stages of getting to know a potential romantic partner: "Can I get to know you, honey / And all of your lovely mistakes? / I've got more than a few to show you."

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Mt. Joy, Gigi Perez: In The Middle

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This Philadelphia group broke big with its third album, 2022’s Orange Blood. They return with Hope We Have Fun, which includes guest spots by Nathaniel Rateliff and Gigi Perez. Frontman Matt Quinn says he co-wrote this song with Perez at a songwriter retreat, without knowing that she'd just had her own breakout with “Sailor Song.” “I probably would’ve been really nervous if I knew that she was this star songwriter and singer, so I think it just really worked in our favor,” Quinn says. “It was just two people working on a song together.”

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Grace Potter: Before The Sky Falls

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In a post announcing her new release, Medicine, Potter says: "Seventeen years ago, I stepped into the studio with the legendary T Bone Burnett to create an album that captured a raw, authentic sound. That album was shelved and remained unheard - until now." Glide Magazine reports that "Potter’s label was unhappy with the softer direction, which they saw as off-brand for the rock star persona they were building." Eight of the songs were reworked and re-recorded for 2010's Grace Potter and The Nocturnals. Our pick for the New Music bin is a song that was never previously released.