New Music Reviews (2/22)

Each week, KEXP’s Music Director Don Yates (joined this week by DJ Alex) shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases. See what's coming up this week below, including reviews for new releases from The Hold Steady, Rat Columns, Claud, and more.

The Hold Steady – Open Door Policy (Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers)
This Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis band’s excellent eighth studio album is their strongest since 2008’s Stay Positive, featuring an expansive, dynamic and revitalized sound on richly detailed songs with soaring guitars, bright keyboards, punchy horns and more accompanying some of Craig Finn’s more captivating narratives of characters surviving on society’s margins, with the album’s main themes revolving around power, wealth and mental health. — DY

Rat Columns – Pacific Kiss (Tough Love)
The fourth album from this Perth, Australia-based project spearheaded by David West is an excellent set of jangly, hook-filled indie-pop with fuzzy guitars, atmospheric keyboards, occasional sax, breathy, wistful vocals and buoyant melodies. — DY

Claud – Super Monster (Saddest Factory)
The debut full-length from this young Brooklyn-via-Chicago artist (aka Claud Mintz) is a well-crafted set of intimate, breezy bedroom-pop combining atmospheric synths and guitars, often-propulsive rhythms and dreamy melodies with personal lyrics revolving around gay love, longing, heartache, identity and growing up. — DY

Cassandra Jenkins – An Overview on Phenomenal Nature (Ba Da Bing)
This New York-based artist’s second studio album is a beautifully crafted set of jazz-tinged folk-pop with an atmospheric sound combining keyboards, guitars, sax and strings with hushed vocals, dreamy melodies and lyrics of loss, mortality and renewal. — DY

Balthazar – Sand (Play It Again Sam)
This Belgian band’s fifth album is a potent set of moody, soul-tinged pop combining atmospheric synths and guitars, occasional sax and gently propulsive rhythms with lush, often-falsetto harmonies and lyrics of love and loss. — DY

Corvair – Corvair (Where It’s At Is Where You Are)
The debut full-length from this Portland-based duo comprised of Brian Naubert (Tube Top, Pop Sickle, Ruston Mire, etc.) and Heather Larimer (Eux Autres, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, etc.) is a promising set of hook-filled indie-pop inflected with psych-rock, New Wave and other styles, combining atmospheric guitars and keyboards with alternating lead vocals, lush harmonies and sparkling melodies. — DY

Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella – People Need People (Schema)
16 years after their initial collaboration, veteran Italian DJ, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Nicola Conte teams up with Italian jazz trombonist Gianluca Petrella for another solid and diverse exploration of transportive lounge grooves that touch upon soul, house, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, disco, and more. American rapper Raasahn Ahmad appears on three songs while the duo also get assistance from an international roster of artists along the way. — AR

Indigo Sparke – echo (Sacred Bones)
This Australian artist’s debut album is a promising set of intimate, psych-tinged folk-pop. Produced by Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, the album combines an atmospheric, often-spare sound with her spectral vocals, haunting melodies and lyrics revolving around death, decay and transcendence. — DY

Editrix – Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound)
The debut album from this Easthampton, MA band led by Wendy Eisenberg is a potent set of explosive math-rock combining volatile guitar riffs and solos with jagged, shape-shifting rhythms, high, often sing-song vocals and off-kilter melodies. — DY

Valley Maker – When the Day Leaves (Frenchkiss)
The fourth album from this Columbia, SC artist (aka Austin Crane) is his first since moving back to his native South Carolina after spending a decade in Seattle. It’s a well-crafted set of introspective folk-pop, featuring an often acoustic-oriented sound combining finger-picked acoustic guitars, atmospheric keyboards, occasional woodwinds, horns and other instrumentation with haunting harmonies (courtesy of Amy Godwin), melancholy melodies and lyrics of love, loss, anxiety, uncertainty and renewal. — DY

Another Michael – New Music and Big Pop (Run For Cover)
This Philly-based band’s debut album is a well-crafted set of dreamy, folk-tinged indie-pop combining a warm and wistful sound with yrics revolving around music, love and loss. — DY

Lost Horizons – In Quiet Moments, Pt. 2 (Bella Union)
The second part of the second album from this London duo comprised of Cocteau Twins bassist (and Bella Union label head) Simon Raymonde and Dif Juz drummer Richard Thomas is another well-crafted set of atmospheric indie-pop combining a dreamy, psych-tinged sound and lyrics of death and rebirth with an impressive lineup of guest vocalists including Ural Thomas, Marissa Nadler and other notables. — DY

Sibille Attar – A History of Silence (PNKSLM)
This Swedish artist’s second album is a solid set ranging from soaring electro-pop to arty dream-pop, with an ‘80s-steeped sound combining bright synths and occasional strings, sax and guitar with lyrics of acceptance and renewal. — DY

Beach Bunny – Blame Game EP (Mom+Pop)
The latest EP from this Chicago band led by Lili Trifilio is a potent four-song set of punkish power-pop with fuzzy guitars, punchy rhythms and pointed lyrics revolving around sexism and toxic masculinity. — DY

Octo Octa – She's Calling EP (T4T LUV NRG)
The latest EP from this New Hampshire-based producer (aka Maya Bouldry-Morrison) is a strong three-song set of house and related dance grooves, combining propulsive rhythms, moody synths and playful samples. — DY

Gabriels – Love and Hate In A Different Time EP (self-released)
The debut EP from this LA-based trio comprised of lead singer Jacob Lusk and producers Ari Balouzian and Ryan Hope is a captivating set of expansive R&B with a deeply soulful, melancholic, expressive touch. While the release is dominated by syrupy, cinematic, wistful pieces that recall the likes of serpentwithfeet, the title track is a distinctive uptempo offering and a timeless soul/funk anthem that signaled one of the best hidden gem singles of 2020. — AR

Kasper Marott – Full Circle (Axces Recordings)
The debut full-length album from this Copenhagen-based electronic producer is a colorful set of diverse and buoyant electronic grooves that bounce between rave, house, trance, psychedelic, techno, ambient, and other tangential styles. While it's a varied affair, Full Circle is at its best when Kasper dives into high-energy technicolor house rhythms, amply exemplified on the addictive dancefloor anthems "Mini Trance" and "Sol." — AR

Willie Nelson – That's Life (Legacy)
The country legend’s latest album finds him interpreting songs associated with Frank Sinatra for the second time (following 2018’s My Way), combining his weathered though still agile vocals with a warm sound ranging from blues/country-tinged jazz and big-band swing to lush torch-pop. — DY

Duke Hugh – Common Ground EP (Dance Regular)
The latest EP from this Groningen, Netherlands-based electronic producer, DJ, and multi-instrumentalist is a strong set of fresh electronic grooves that blends broken-beat, house, jazz, and soul flavors in confident and kinetic fashion. London-based musician Renato Paris provides stellar vocals on the brilliant title track. — AR

Hand Habits – dirt EP (Saddle Creek)
The latest Hand Habits release from Los Angeles-based artist Meg Duffy is a solid three-song EP featuring two songs of spare, atmospheric folk-pop and a pitch-shifted hyperpop remix (courtesy of Katie Dey) of Hand Habits’ “what’s the use.” — DY