Betrayer

What things come from Australia? Lots of bitey poisonous things. The fabulous and flamboyant movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. AC/DC. Australian Toaster Biscuits (do you remember Australian Toaster Biscuits? I do. They were amazing.) The On Fires also come from Australia. Are The On Fires as amazing as Australian Toaster Biscuits? Do they wear shorts all of the time like Angus Young?

In Good Time

When I first popped it in, my iTunes player categorized Annie Fitzgerald’s album In Good Time as country. As I began listening, I found this to be wholly misleading. As a matter of fact, I was unable to categorize her music as any one genre. A little bit folk, a little bit pop, this thoughtfully produced album is a gem. Fitzgerald has managed to create new music with a message that is thoroughly original by today’s musical standards.

The Ancestry

While I’m not overly familiar with Celtic traditions or music, there was a lot for me to love about Jillian LaDage’s new album, The Ancestry.

Through the Night

I worked for four years in an independent record store. For those unfamiliar with what said environment might be like day in and day out, I would seriously suggest taking in High Fidelity. Read the novel by Nick Hornby or watch the film starring John Cusack; either way, you’ll get the idea.

Love Will Find a Way

Lola Bleu, aka twenty-two-year-old R&B singer Janell McCracken, has a fine voice, so it’s a shame she doesn’t have better material to showcase it on her debut album, Love Will Find a Way. While some of the songs have catchy melodies, excessive instrumentation detracts from and sometimes obscures Bleu’s voice.

Hawk

Mark Lanegan—hey, I know that name. You sure do. Mark Lanegan fronted Screaming Trees, one of the better bands to come out of the early '90s Seattle grunge scene. They never gained the attention or commercial success of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Nirvana, and their minor success was propelled mostly by “Nearly Lost You,” a track from the soundtrack for how-very-zeitgeisty film Singles. After grunge was discarded in favor of nu-metal, gangsta rap, boy bands, and factory pop, Mark Lanegan didn't remain with his old band churning out increasingly bad records or touring on nostalgia value.

Hunting My Dress

Attention wiccans and hippies—Jesca Hoop’s Hunting My Dress (with Bonus EP) is your new theme music. Ethereal and bluesy, this nine-track album and folksy five song EP are a call to light incense, join a drum circle and bake your own bread. Hunting My Dress is Hoop’s second full-length album.

The Woody Nightshade

Positive reviews litter the internet for Sharron Kraus’ earlier records and got me excited for her new release, The Woody Nightshade. However, the rave reviews made my disappointment with the album all the more palpable.

1,000 Years

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Corin Tucker has been actively involved in music since the early 1990s when, as a teenager, she launched the riot grrrl band Heavens to Betsy. Around the same time, Carrie Brownstein was heading up queercore outfit Excuse 17. Eventually the two joined forces to form Sleater-Kinney in 1994.

Pandora's Box

Conventional wisdom says that every young popster or rocker, no matter how devoted, will one day grow into a consumer of smooth jazz. How else to explain Rod Stewart's resurgence as a tuxedo-clad, Bing-style crooner (aside from a mid-seventies deal with Beelzebub himself)?

Red Velvet Car

I've often wondered what happened to Heart. Did they break up? Did they retire from the music business? Sometimes I saw them pop up in the news, but they would dart out of sight as quickly as they had come. I was both happy and surprised to hear them speak up during the last presidential election. However, there was no new music until now. In a sea of male rock ballad performers, Heart always stood out in plain sight. Known for their straightforward lyrics and soaring vocals, the sisters' songs have always been memorable.

Acoustic Project

When I moved to Virginia over four years ago, I didn’t know what folk music was. Growing up in Portland Oregon, I was raised on the quickly growing West Coast indie rock scene. But sometime in my teenage years I started finding artists like Sparklehorse, Nickel Creek, Laura Gibson, and Blitzen Trapper and I couldn’t get enough. I didn’t know then what it was about these different artists’ sounds that made my mouth water, but there was something they had in common, something earthy, something gritty, that I absolutely loved. And when I arrived in Virginia, it finally dawned on me.

Welder

Elizabeth Cook blends tenacity with tradition for Welder, embracing traditional backwoods country twang, some bluegrass, and a touch of rockabilly while adding her own progressive spin and pop edginess. The daughter of country musicians and welders, for whom the album was named, Cook effectively utilizes these aforementioned influences to raise her fist to integral feminist themes like independence, sexual expression and assertion.

Electric Green

Fiddler Cady Finlayson and guitarist Vita Tanga bring two disparate locations (Brooklyn and Paris) and musical styles (traditional Celtic music and world music/electronica) together on Electric Green, a ten-song collection of mostly traditional Irish songs, with a distinctive modern twist. In most cases the violin carries the melody while the guitar, acoustic or electric, adds depth and texture.