Austin TX via Montreal psychedelic supergroup MIEN current line-up is Alex Maas (The Black Angels), Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone), John-Mark Lapham (The Earlies) and Robb Kidd (Golden Dawn Arkestra). Since their inception, MIEN has been a confluence of diverse musical influences and shared histories. The seeds of this collaboration were planted back in 2004 when Rishi Dhir, known for his work with Elephant Stone, crossed paths with Alex Maas of The Black Angels during a serendipitous encounter at SXSW. This meeting sparked a friendship and a series of collaborations. Around the same time, Rishi met John Mark Lapham of The Earlies, whose electronic and production expertise would become a cornerstone of MIEN’s sound. Robb Kidd (Alex Maas, Golden Dawn Arkestra) joined the band on drums in 2018. These connections eventually led to the formation of MIEN, a band that seamlessly blends their varied musical backgrounds into a unique sonic tapestry. Building upon the foundations of their critically acclaimed 2018 self-titled debut while venturing into uncharted territories, their long-awaited second album MIIEN marks a bold new chapter for a band whose alchemical approach to music has redefined the boundaries of psychedelia and pushes the group’s collaborative and exploratory ethos to thrilling new heights.

Brooklyn singer-songwriter Derek Weaving’s debut album as Weaving, Webs, is a vulnerable and generous work that buzzes like nature surrounding you on a summer night. The musician, known for his work with Tiny Hazard, as well as with Stephen Becker, Lip Talk and a wide collection of other inventive NYC acts, steps out here with his first collection of original songs as a guitarist and singer. Accompanying him are his former Tiny Hazard bandmates Alena Spanger (vocals, keyboards), Ryan Weiner (drums, guitar, banjo) and Ronald Stockwell (drums), plus James Woodall (pedal steel), Lip Talk’s Sarah Pedenotti (vocals, keyboards) and Little Mystery’s Ivy Meissner (vocals). Webs’ lyrics pay gentle tribute to family and friends, and celebrate the flourishing of the natural world while also mourning its degradation. These songs are both psychedelic and grounded, abstract and filled with personal details, and always look inwards and outwards at the same time. They invite listeners to turn and really see one another, as well as the natural landscapes surrounding them. Webs is a heart-warming, multi-faceted first statement, bridging the cosmic and the intimate in an effort to trace the webs of meaning and sensation that link us all.

Born in Woodland, California, and having spent portions of his childhood in the Pacific Northwest and the mid-Atlantic, singer/songwriter and guitarist Will Stratton debuted with his first full-length album, What the Night Said, in 2007, at only 18. No Wonder followed in 2009 and New Vanguard Blues arrived one year later. The magnificent Post-Empire, Will Stratton’s fourth full-length record, was recorded in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and came out in 2012, released by French label Talitres Records, focussing, again, on Stratton’s insistent fingerstyle guitar playing, descended as much from British folk icons like Bert Jansch and Davy Graham as from American avant-gardists like John Fahey and Robbie Basho, but with a newfound urgency to his lyrics and his singing and an increasing dissonance in his harmonic sensibility. This was the turning point of his musical careeer, and, after another great and introspective record, Gray Lodge Wisdom,  out in 2014, again on Talitres, Stratton debuted for Bella Union label in 2017 with Rosewood Almanac. Stratton’s seventh album, The Changing Wilderness, out in 2021, saw him shift focus from inward-looking to outward-examining, an approach he stuck with for the first-person character sketches that populated 2025’s Points of Origin, released on Ruination Records (U.S.) and Bella Union (in the rest of the world) in March 2025.