Fresh Sounds Podcast

This week's show covers new music from Catalonia’s Rosalía, from Malian guitarist and singer Vieux Farka Touré backed up by Houston’s Khruangbin, a new tune from Durham, NC’s The Mountain Goats, and Cambridge, England’s Anish Kumar. For the archive track this week, Brendan whips out a favorite from <checks notes> 14 years ago, from Melbourne’s Cut Copy. This is perhaps their signature song, “Lights & Music,” expertly produced by Tim Goldsworthy, then affiliated with DFA Record...

This week's show covers new music from London’s Hot Chip, Brighton’s Wax Machine, a collaboration between Chicago’s Sam Prekop and John McEntire, and the team-up of Paris’s Biche with the LA band Pearl & The Oysters. For the archive track this week, Brendan goes back to 1992 for some mutant hardcore punk on the melodic side of that scene. This band was signed to Sub Pop Records at the time, which was about the best indie label on the scene in those days. The track in question is by ...

This week's show covers new music from Nashville’s Soccer Mommy, Hamburg’s Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, Detroit’s Omar-S with Supercoolwicked on vocals, and Brisbane’s Moses Gunn Collective. For the archive track this week, Brendan goes back to 1996 for a slice of melodic grunge track from Ash, a band from Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. If you know of Ash, you will probably know this tune, as it was a Number 5 hit on the UK Top Ten that summer. It’s a quiet-loud-quiet 1990s tune; w...

This week's show covers new music from NYC’s Grace Ives, a new track from London’s Greentea Peng, some fusion electronics from The Range, and a new collaborative single between West London’s Lava La Rue and Cork, Ireland’s Biig Piig. For the archive track this week, Brendan takes us back to 1992 to the debut album from Aphex Twin, for what used to be called “ambient techno.” The song here is the undying “Xtal,” which one could argue put Richard D. James on the map as one of the key pro...

This week's show covers new music from a duet between the French producers Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon, and LA R&B artist Sunni Colón. Next, some noisy dreampop from Ireland’s Just Mustard. We also feature a new track from London’s KH, which is Four Tet’s name when releasing dance bangers, and some spooky jazz from Britain’s The Natural Yogurt Band. For the archive track this week, Brendan honored Andy Fletcher, the recently departed member of Depeche Mode, with perhaps that band’s sig...

This week's show covers new music from Athens, Greece’s Σtella from her new Redinho-produced album, London’s The Hics, Athens, Georgia’s Drive-By Truckers, and the team of Danger Mouse and Black Thought, of The Roots. Brendan took us back to November of 1980 for this week’s archive pick, an early blast from the goth rock cannon. Yes, a non-album single later added to In the Flat Field from Bauhaus—the original goth rockers, if you ask him. “Dark Entries” is the track. Of course, ...

This week's show covers new music from Ghent’s Bolis Pupul, Aix-en-Provence’s Melody’s Echo Chamber, London’s Sault, and Oakland’s Hazel English. For the archive pick this week, Brendan went back to 1989 for the debut single from Inner City, the duo of Kevin Saunderson and Paris Grey. Saunderson is, of course, one of the legendary Belleville Three, the originators of Detroit Techno, a still-vibrant and enduring sound that created a parallel to Chicago’s house music. Even 33 years later,...

This week's show covers new music from Brisbane’s Hatchie, the excellent pairing of LA’s Mykki Blanco and Michael Stipe--of R.E.M. fame!--, a bit of techno from one of the two new albums from Stockholm’s Axel Boman, and some excellent music from Bremen’s Saâda Bonaire. For the archive pick this week, Brendan takes us back to 1978 for soul/funk gem from a band called Leo’s Sunshipp. We sample “Give Me The Sunshine,” a warm-weather jam that prefigures g-funk by a good fifteen years....

This week's show covers new music from Boston’s Cave In, London’s Kit Sebastian, Brisbane’s Confidence Man, and a great new single from Athens-based Σtella with an assist from London’s Redinho. For the archive pick this week, Brendan digs up some liquid fire from side one of Super Session. That record came out in the summer of 1968, and it features the work of keyboard ace Al Kooper and former Electric Flag guitar maestro Mike Blookfield. (On side two, Stephen Stills plays the guitars, ...

This week's show covers new music from Barcelona’s Rosalía, with an assist from The Weeknd, a new single from Amsterdam’s Weval, a deep cut from the new album by Christchurch, New Zealand’s Yumi Zouma, and a new single from London’s Robohands with vocals by Aleh. For the archive pick this week, Brendan sends us back to 1990 for a lost cut, that appeared right before Seattle turned into the grunge capital of the world. Mother Love Bone was the band, and the song in question is rockin’ ri...

This week's show covers new music from Britain’s Tears For Fears, Brisbane’s Sampology, Stavanger, Norway’s Beachheads, and the pairing of Paris’s Janko Nilovic with backing by The Soul Surfers, of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. For the archive pick this week, Brendan is digging up a record that is two weeks older than he is: Kick Out The Jams, by Detroit noise rock legends the MC5; Duel-guitar frenzy, and more than a little revolutionary politics, too. Of course, there are six more bonus tra...

This week's show covers new music from Sweden’s Sally Shapiro, London’s Babeheaven with an assist from the Brooklyn rapper Navy Blue, a new single from Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever of Melboune, Australia, and a bopping new tune from the Bay Area DJ Space Ghost. For the archive pick this week, Brendan pays tribute to the late grunge icon Mark Lanegan with a track from his 1994 solo album, Whiskey For The Holy Ghost, a very fine record. We lost Lanegan this past week at the too-young a...

This week's show covers new music from NYC’s Caroline Polachek, a nu-Balearic track from Saint Petersburg, Russia’s A Vision of Panorama, a new climate change anthem from Durham, NC’s Superchunk, and a new dance single from London’s Seb Wildblood. For the archive pick this week, Brendan hauls out one of the best tunes from December 1966. It’s a song entitled “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”, which is probably the signature song from The Electric Prunes. West Coast Electric Psyched...