There are many pleasantly surprising and pleasing things about this new full-length from Lonely Benson. First and foremost, it’s an upbeat, bright, sunny record from a new artist with an incredibly slick production.

Secondly, and no less important, the album was written to be intentionally positive. It started as a Kickstarter campaign from multi-instrumentalist Daniel Young with this synopsis: “These days, even the news is enough to give you a nervous breakdown. That’s why I’ve set out to create music that helps people CHILL.” What could be read as naive optimism actually comes through in spades throughout the record. Young sought to create songs that were “groovy and laid back but also just casual and relaxing” and absolutely nailed that vibe.

If you’re a fan of Toro Y Moi, you’ll probably feel at home here. The smooth production and languid songwriting lends itself to be the perfect backdrop of sitting in a hot place and chilling the fuck out. It’s the respite we deserve.

NPR’s First Listen has the preview for Joshua Hedley’s Third Man Records debut, Mr. Jukebox. The album won’t be released officially until April 20th but it’s streaming in it’s entirety now. As suspected (and hoped for), the album is steeped in Classic Country sounds and serves as a great reminder that Country Music isn’t a pejorative when done correctly.

Fun fact: Jordan Lehning, the subject of conversation in We Own This Town Episode 105, is a co-producer on this album along with Skylar Wilson. Check out the episode to hear how the two got together original and then enjoy Mr Jukebox as one of the fruits of their wonderful labor.

Jesse Wells, aka WELLES, has released the first single off his forthcoming full-length debut, Red Trees and White Trashes, due June 15th. The track, “Seventeen”, is a bit of a ballad that showcases Welles vocal style well – emotive in its cracking and waivering.

For more from Welles, check out the previously released, psychedelic, “Life Like Mine” video or his performance on Carson Daly earlier this year.

The debut full-length from Charlie & The Evil Mothers just hit the Internet the other day and I excitedly dove in. “Strings” has been in regular rotation for the last six months and my assumption was that a larger collection of songs would surely only add to that enjoyment. I am happy to report, I wasn’t wrong.

Unfortunately, my love of the album is hard to articulate. At the core of it, these are pop songs with catchy hooks but there is a subtle dark vibe bubbling underneath many of the tracks. “Baby Black and White” quietly descends into a fading organ and ominous field recording, “I Don’t Feel Eeinmore” fits right in on a Halloween soundtrack complete with a haunting whistle and “I Never R(Eli)zed” is just straight up creepy from start to finish. Despite those examples, there’s also moments of unbridled feel good vibes (“Klondike Bar”) and sweet sweet melancholy (“Happy is the Working Man’s Sin”). The production, the nasal vocal style and somewhat obtuse lyrics also contribute to the difficulty in pinpointing exactly what makes this work but, whatever those specific ingredients are, they work.

A debut record is often the culmination of an entire life’s experiences up to that point. It’s the foreboding reason for the sophomore slump but also the keystone to an expression of diverse emotions spanning a gamut of trials and tribulations. Charlie & The Evil Mothers manage to capture that diversity extremely well and I look forward to putting this one directly into the heavy rotation pile.

Electronic artist Makeup and Vanity Set is known for his cinematically dark soundscapes. What he’s not known for is creating dance-y beats with WARP records flavored spastic flourishes, which is exactly what he’s doing under the pseudonym daas. The latest release, Selected Early DOS, is a collection of recordings from 2000-2004 recorded in Murfreesboro and LA that reflect that certain kind of electronic music from the era.

There’s an insane pace to a lot of this that will drive you to madness if you aren’t ready for it beforehand but with that insight going in, you can easily enjoy this as the soundtrack to a tweaked out experience or frantic Rave scene. That’s not a disparaging comment – as the music induces a heightened state and I believe that to be the intention.

There are little bits and pieces throughout that denote the Makeup and Vanity Set “sound” that will emerge some 20 years after these recordings but it’s clearly, intentionally, a different beast of a project.

Last we heard from Jonesiii from the Moon was back in July 2017 with his album The Moon Is Watching Us (an intriguing spacey affair). Since that time he’s released a handful of new songs; the latest of which is “One Love” – now streaming over on Soundcloud.

Listen, I’m the last person that should be writing reviews of hip-hop as my musical vocabulary in the genre is certainly stinted, to say the least. What I can say is that this track is much more accessible than The Moon Is Watching Us but doesn’t shy away from some of the same lyrical themes as the previous album; it just presents them a little differently. The backing beat is borderline vaporwave but supports the vocal line from Jonesiii perfectly as it crosses between a crooning refrain and a smooth-yet-driving verse.

There’s something mesmerizing and meditative about the repetitive refrain and its delivery and I hope there’s more of it down the line.

Back on Volume 101 of the WOTT Music podcast we featured the song “Wynona” from The Daytona Machines and now it seems they’ve re-released their self-titled EP with a fuller sound, new sequence and additional songs.

The band describes them as “garage pop” which is fitting for a good majority of the tracks but undersells their diversity. “Wynona” features baritone sax for crissake! The new track, “King of the Road”, is a burst of anthemic energy complete with megaphone outbursts in the breakdown – a combination that will, surely, translate to a fevered pitch live.

Follow along on Instagram or Facebook – I suspect good things from these folks.