At just twenty-two years old, Alex Pester has already established himself as a prolific singer-songwriter hailing from Bath, England. He has released three albums to date (Devotion, 2019, Seasons, 2020 and Lover’s Leap, 2021) each displaying his immense talent as a musician and songwriter. Influenced by the Incredible String Band, the Beatles, Robert Wyatt, Animal Collective, Harry Nilsson, and The Microphones, among others, his music has been described as dreamlike, hypnotic, and magical.
Better Days, his fourth album, will be out on Violette Records on May, 26th. It is Pester’s most accomplished work yet, showcasing his mature songwriting, complex arrangements, and exquisite attention to detail. The album features ten songs that range from instrumentation with vintage sounds to storytelling passages to suggestive sound experiments and acoustic caresses.

Lisa/Liza is the songwriting project of Liza Victoria, developed within Maine’s strange and wonderful DIY music scene. She has toured nationally with Jens Lekman and Advance Base and shared bills with Angel Olsen, Kaki King, Lucy Dacus, and Julie Byrne. Lisa/Liza’s catalog spans ten years, with The First Museum, her debut album, out in 2014, three albums on Orindal Records (Deserts of Youth in 2016, Momentary Glance in 2018 and Shelter of a Song in 2020), a single released through Mexican Summer’s Looking Glass, and a spate of self-released home recordings. Her songwriting invites traditional folk guitar-playing and lyricism into dream-like domains, directing memory’s imperfections toward restoration and healing. Her latest album, Breaking and Mending, out April 28, again on Orindal Records, the heavy, open-ended waltzes of her past work assume a more linear form, as Lisa/Liza carries on her tradition of shedding light on personal trauma and life’s greater mysteries through song. Questions about love and the natural world are met with moments of clarity, sparked by recollections of Judee Sill or John Prine. Above all, Breaking and Mending deals in dualities and the beauty of self-reconstruction, as carefully underlined in the opening track Felt Twice: “They tell me/ the body minds/ they said that, the mind was the body, Well each time that I fell, I felt twice, What else can I tell everybody?”

Seattle indiepop band The National Honor Society found themselves facing the problem of isolation. In 2020 they recorded their debut album, To All The Glory We Never Had, which was well-received. So what to do for the follow-up, when the world is forced into isolation? “This was a new process for everyone in the band as it was the first time any of us had recorded an album remotely,” says frontman Coulter Leslie. “Having always historically gone to studios, there was the fear that maybe that unique studio magic or energy wouldn’t be there, but what we found was that the unlimited time we had to record our parts really allowed us to explore ideas and to go in different directions that we might have, had the clock had been ticking. So I think that’s why you’ll hear a little more adventure in this record as compared to our first.” Thus was born To All The Distance Between Us, released April 10th via Shelflife/Discos de Kirlian/Subjangle Records, an album that carries on the band’s formula of dreamy pop and rock. The National Honor Society is Coulter Leslie (Lead vocals, guitars), Jerry Peerson (Lead guitar, backing vocals) Andrew Gaskin (Bass, backing vocals), and Will Hallauer (Drums).

Heavenly formed in 1989 from the ashes of legendary Oxford band Talulah Gosh, in which all four original members – Amelia Fletcher (vocals/guitar), Peter Momtchiloff (guitar), Rob Pursey (bass) and Mathew Fletcher (drums) – had played. Cathy Rogers joined later on keyboards/vocals. They released four studio albums, that are all being re-issued on vinyl by Skep Wax Records: in November 2022 Heavenly Vs. Satan was reissued and Le Jardin De Heavenly, originally released in 1992, is the second offering (and, to celebrate, the band are re-uniting to play two sold-out dates at Bush Hall in London in May: at the live shows, drums will be played by Ian Button. Mathew sadly took his own life in 1996). By the time their second album was ready, Heavenly were an established part of the Sarah Records stable in the UK and honorary members of the International Pop Underground in the USA, where Le Jardin De Heavenly was released by K Records.

After meeting at a memorial for a mutual friend, Tony Molina (Ovens) and Sarah Rose Janko (Dawn Riding), both fans of each other’s respective musical projects, bonded over a shared love of The Byrds and Bill Fox. So they decided they wanted to record all they’d been pouring their hearts into and The Lost Days was born. The Lost Days released Lost Demos, in April 2021, on cassette by Oakland label The Long Road Society, and on vinyl with the Spanish label Mapache. Inspired by the solo work of Bill Fox, The Byrds, Dear Nora and Guided by Voices, The Lost Days started recording what was to be their first full-length LP,  In The Store: ten tracks in thirteen minutes. In The Store came on March 17, 2023 on Speakeasy Studios SF, a new label run by friend Alicia Vanden Heuvel of the Aislers Set and Tony’s long term Slumberland labelmates.