'80s echoes and more indie sounds added to our New Music bin

On first listen to The Heroic Enthusiasts, one might wonder if they're an overlooked New Wave band. This Rochester, N.Y.-based quartet embraces "the ethos of '80s new romanticism." Although the band is relatively new - formed in 2014 by singer/guitarist James Tabbi and guitarist Thomas Ferrara and now rounded out by Mike James and Anthony Molina - its members aren't youngsters trying to be retro. In an early interview with Rochester's City Newspaper, Tabbi said of the band's sound: "If I had to make some parallels through history it would be like Echo and the Bunnymen, Radiohead, Coldplay. ... We know and lived those decades musically and physically, so we draw on all that history." They've just released their first LP, self-titled. Our featured pick is "New York Made Me," a paean to that big city at the other end of the New York Thruway.

We previously featured the single "Lights Out" from the latest release by Montreal's Chair Warriors. This trio draws influences from the likes of Muse, Coldplay and Smashing Pumpkins. The seven-track EP has been out for a few months now, and we're dipping back into it to pull out an uplifting, anthemic track, "So Alive."

Speaking of dipping back into a recent release by a Montreal band, we're adding "Real Thing" by Stars to our New Music bin this week. We've been playing "Fluorescent Light" since the October release of There Is No Love In Fluorescent Light. As it happens, "Real Thing" was actually the first single, and came out back in August. But we follow our own timetable here at BSR, not bound to trivial things like release dates or chart positions. (Or maybe we just missed it, but, better late than never.)

Continuing our usual genre-jumping, we turn to New York singer-songwriter Holly Miranda, whose next album, Mutual Horse, is due next year. The first track to drop, "Exquisite," features Miranda's frequent collaborator, Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio. Miranda told Consequence of Sound that the co-written song is her “favorite thing we have ever done together,” and is “partly about our longtime friendship and conversations about taking inventory and responsibility for your mistakes and shortcomings.”

Another male-female duet we're featuring this week has a more country/folk sound. Swearingen & Kelli are a musical couple: Pennsylvania native AJ Swearingen met Michigan-born Jayne Kelli at a writers' showcase in Florida and ended up "partners in life and music." Of their new album, The Marrying Kind, Swearingen says, "We really dialed in our Americana country sound on this album. I used lap-steel on many of the songs." Our featured pick, "You Run Away," has its share of steel and country flavor, but with a late-70s pop sensibility that would blend nicely with Eagles or even some Fleetwood Mac.

'80s echoes and more indie sounds added to our New Music bin

On first listen to The Heroic Enthusiasts, one might wonder if they're an overlooked New Wave band. This Rochester, N.Y.-based quartet embraces "the ethos of '80s new romanticism." Although the band is relatively new - formed in 2014 by singer/guitarist James Tabbi and guitarist Thomas Ferrara and now rounded out by Mike James and Anthony Molina - its members aren't youngsters trying to be retro. In an early interview with Rochester's City Newspaper, Tabbi said of the band's sound: "If I had to make some parallels through history it would be like Echo and the Bunnymen, Radiohead, Coldplay. ... We know and lived those decades musically and physically, so we draw on all that history." They've just released their first LP, self-titled. Our featured pick is "New York Made Me," a paean to that big city at the other end of the New York Thruway.

We previously featured the single "Lights Out" from the latest release by Montreal's Chair Warriors. This trio draws influences from the likes of Muse, Coldplay and Smashing Pumpkins. The seven-track EP has been out for a few months now, and we're dipping back into it to pull out an uplifting, anthemic track, "So Alive."

Speaking of dipping back into a recent release by a Montreal band, we're adding "Real Thing" by Stars to our New Music bin this week. We've been playing "Fluorescent Light" since the October release of There Is No Love In Fluorescent Light. As it happens, "Real Thing" was actually the first single, and came out back in August. But we follow our own timetable here at BSR, not bound to trivial things like release dates or chart positions. (Or maybe we just missed it, but, better late than never.)

Continuing our usual genre-jumping, we turn to New York singer-songwriter Holly Miranda, whose next album, Mutual Horse, is due next year. The first track to drop, "Exquisite," features Miranda's frequent collaborator, Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio. Miranda told Consequence of Sound that the co-written song is her “favorite thing we have ever done together,” and is “partly about our longtime friendship and conversations about taking inventory and responsibility for your mistakes and shortcomings.”

Another male-female duet we're featuring this week has a more country/folk sound. Swearingen & Kelli are a musical couple: Pennsylvania native AJ Swearingen met Michigan-born Jayne Kelli at a writers' showcase in Florida and ended up "partners in life and music." Of their new album, The Marrying Kind, Swearingen says, "We really dialed in our Americana country sound on this album. I used lap-steel on many of the songs." Our featured pick, "You Run Away," has its share of steel and country flavor, but with a late-70s pop sensibility that would blend nicely with Eagles or even some Fleetwood Mac.

This week's picks: Band of Rascals, The Elephant Trees, Sunflower Bean, I'm With Her, LOZT

Music variety is our brand, and this week our New Music picks range from hard rock through pop to acoustic folk.

Vancouver Island-based rockers Band of Rascals have just released their second EP, Tempest. Noisetrade.com calls it "an in your face rock album, which pairs guitars with thundering drums that underline the soaring rock vocals of lead singer Sam Trainor." There's a lot of energy packed into our featured track, "Seas Coming Down." But it's not all loud-hard-fast on this record. They also try out a folksier, Mumford/Lumineers-ish sound on "Fell Into The Love Of You," and we'll be giving that some spins, too.

Veering into a poppier style of rock, we bring you the debut single by an outfit from Manchester, England, called The Elephant Trees. As far as we know they just have a few singles to their name so far but they're picking up airplay and fans in the UK. We're picking up the single "Open Up." Songwriter and vocalist Martha Philips says it's "a story of falling in love with someone when you're not ready to fall," and the bouncy two-and-a-half-minute track captures that head-spinning feeling.

It's not such a big jump from that to the smooth new single from Sunflower Bean, "I Was A Fool." It's the Brooklyn trio's first release since it made a splash last year with its debut album, Human Ceremony. Consequence of Sound says "the jaunty number recalls Fleetwood Mac, and features more of the buoyant guitars and call-and-response vocals of Nick Kivlen and Julia Cumming that helped make the band’s debut so charming."

Now we shift to a couple of new numbers featuring acoustic instruments and harmonies.

I'm With Her, the folk super-trio of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan, will release its debut full-length album, See You Around, in February. The recent single "Little Lies," which we featured this summer, apparently won't be on the LP, but we now have the lovely title track. The album was recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, England - much of it in live takes. This is flawless music produced by masters of their craft.

Back in March we were introduced to Tom Ryder, a singer-songwriter from Essex, England, and we picked up his amusing song "Here We Go Again." Now Ryder and California singer-songwriter Lauren Scudder have formed a "trans-Atlantic folk-pop duo," called LOZT. They plan to release their debut single early next year - but in the meantime, we have a song they recorded live for Cambridge-based Bridge Sessions, called "Turmoil." Their interwoven voices, with the simple accompaniment of acoustic guitar and cajón, produce a beautiful sound on this ballad about the confusion that comes with new love.

This week's picks: Band of Rascals, The Elephant Trees, Sunflower Bean, I'm With Her, LOZT

Music variety is our brand, and this week our New Music picks range from hard rock through pop to acoustic folk.

Vancouver Island-based rockers Band of Rascals have just released their second EP, Tempest. Noisetrade.com calls it "an in your face rock album, which pairs guitars with thundering drums that underline the soaring rock vocals of lead singer Sam Trainor." There's a lot of energy packed into our featured track, "Seas Coming Down." But it's not all loud-hard-fast on this record. They also try out a folksier, Mumford/Lumineers-ish sound on "Fell Into The Love Of You," and we'll be giving that some spins, too.

Veering into a poppier style of rock, we bring you the debut single by an outfit from Manchester, England, called The Elephant Trees. As far as we know they just have a few singles to their name so far but they're picking up airplay and fans in the UK. We're picking up the single "Open Up." Songwriter and vocalist Martha Philips says it's "a story of falling in love with someone when you're not ready to fall," and the bouncy two-and-a-half-minute track captures that head-spinning feeling.

It's not such a big jump from that to the smooth new single from Sunflower Bean, "I Was A Fool." It's the Brooklyn trio's first release since it made a splash last year with its debut album, Human Ceremony. Consequence of Sound says "the jaunty number recalls Fleetwood Mac, and features more of the buoyant guitars and call-and-response vocals of Nick Kivlen and Julia Cumming that helped make the band’s debut so charming."

Now we shift to a couple of new numbers featuring acoustic instruments and harmonies.

I'm With Her, the folk super-trio of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan, will release its debut full-length album, See You Around, in February. The recent single "Little Lies," which we featured this summer, apparently won't be on the LP, but we now have the lovely title track. The album was recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, England - much of it in live takes. This is flawless music produced by masters of their craft.

Back in March we were introduced to Tom Ryder, a singer-songwriter from Essex, England, and we picked up his amusing song "Here We Go Again." Now Ryder and California singer-songwriter Lauren Scudder have formed a "trans-Atlantic folk-pop duo," called LOZT. They plan to release their debut single early next year - but in the meantime, we have a song they recorded live for Cambridge-based Bridge Sessions, called "Turmoil." Their interwoven voices, with the simple accompaniment of acoustic guitar and cajón, produce a beautiful sound on this ballad about the confusion that comes with new love.

Our latest picks: Mavis Staples, Robert Plant, Bryde, Chelsea Reed and Oh Pep!

The wonderful Mavis Staples is about to release If All I Was Was Black, a collaboration with Jeff Tweedy. Continuing in the socially conscious vein that goes back to her early work with the Staple Singers, she addresses the current divisions that leave people feeling "lonely in the land of the free." The songs are written by Tweedy, who told the Los Angeles Times that he recognizes "it's a very presumptuous thing" for a white man to write songs about race relations for the perspective of a black woman. “But I don’t think I put anything in Mavis’ mouth that she didn’t want to sing," he said. And Staples told the newspaper that she and Tweedy "come from the same church, which is that we want to save the world. These songs are what I’ve been doing my whole life.” Our featured pick is the let's-come-together song, "Build A Bridge."

Robert Plant's Carry Fire has been out for about a month now, and we've previously featured "Bones of Saints." As that song settles back into our big playlist, we're adding another to our New Music bin: "The May Queen." Consequence of Sound said of this track: "Eastern rhythms are given a warm vibe with the psychedelic leanings of guitar. Using American folk instrumentation to play altered versions of foreign melodies creates an intoxicating mood." The title, of course, winks at "Stairway to Heaven" - as Plant says of this album, "I must mix old with new."

These next three artists are all making their debuts on Birch Street Radio. Big shout-out to the excellent new-music resource The Revue for turning us on to Oh Pep! and Bryde, and to Canada Beats for introducing us to Chelsea Reed.

Oh Pep! is the Melbourne-based duo of Olivia Hally (guitar, vocals) and Pepita Emmerichs (fiddle, mandolin). The Revue says their new single, "Half Life," marks a shift from indie-folk to a more upbeat pop sound. "Hally and Emmerichs use the unique sounds of their classical instruments to create this shimmering number. The plucks of the fiddle, for instance, act like electronic beats; the steely fiddle echos the synth; and the drums sound like drums (such a unique thought these days!)."

From Australia we jump to Canada, following the path of Chelsea Reed. An Australian native now based in Toronto, she's released her debut full-length album, self-titled. Her music is largely piano-based, and she cites Elton John and Carole King among her influences. But the track we're featuring, "Empty Hearts," stands out for its rich instrumentation, including horns and strings. Her vocals remind us a bit of Aimee Mann. Expect to hear more of Reed in our mix.

Next we globe-hop to Wales, whence hails singer-songwriter Sarah Howell, who has put together an indie-rock-ish band for her new project, Bryde. On the new single "Desire," over punchy percussion and bass, she sings about "our need for instant gratification, about desire’s addictive qualities and how they can make us behave."