Mid-May might not seem like the ideal time for moody new wave pieces, but clearly there’s something in the air. Less than a week after Hit TV raised the bar for electronic throwback, Nightblonde has released the shimmery pop nugget "I Belong in Your Arms" in advance of the full-length Numbers due out in early June. Check out the song below, dig hard on the purple-black aesthetic the band is sporting, and watch out for that mighty fancy vinyl release due out with Numbers. –Austin Phy

Makeup and Vanity Set has been around for a long damned time. He may not be the only guy doing the 80’s electro revivalism thing, but you can bet he’s been around a lot longer than even the most famous names in that field. From the glitchy chiptune dance of his earliest works to the deliciously schlocky dance that came later, and even the ridiculously dedicated locals-tribute dance in between, we’ve seen a lot of faces from a guy known for wearing a ski mask at his performances. The entire weight of that history can be felt on HIT TV, a collection of songs composed for a bloodstained purple-and-red online series of the same name. The ambition of the project lands with both feet solidly on the ground, and it seriously stands up there with the best neon dreamwave you’re likely to hear.

Even if you don’t happen to have the Miami strip right outside your door, any nighttime drive with the windowns down will do just fine. –Austin Phy

They say there’s a lot of value in first impressions, and Roco (née Bashly) isn’t one to waste an opportunity like that. Their debut single "e. silver" dropped last month, and the beginning of May saw the release of a colorfully twee video to accompany the colorfully twee song. The stop-and-start nature of the stop motion video, which looks like a set piece from Fantastic Mr. Fox, nicely compliments the minimal baroque pop of "e. silver."

It looks like we’ll be getting some more from Roco once Pidgin Tongue debuts on May 17, so now’s your last chance to be ahead of the curve on a band everybody should be talking about. If that’s not enough to convince you to give the video a watch, stick around after it’s done to see YouTube’s auto-play feature launch into some real out-there conspiracy videos about silver and the Illuminati, for whatever reason. -Austin Phy

Finding the words to describe a band I’ve experienced as many times and in as many states as Holy Mountain Top Removers is difficult, so let’s stick with the facts right now. They have a new album coming out May 10 on the excellent Otherness Records. The lead single, Pagoda Nods to Euphrates, is out for you to enjoy right now. Still sticking with the facts: this is a band you need to see live (more than once) at your earliest convenience, or even your earliest inconvenience. Cancel family plans. Drive a little farther than you’d like. Whatever it takes. Each show is its own experience of far-out explorations featuring, seemingly, whatever the band members pulled out of their toyboxes on the way out the door, punctuated by set pieces ranging from Mid-East Morricone surf pieces such as Euphrates to funeral dirges heavier than a freshly-occupied coffin. 

Check out the stream below and keep your eyes peeled for physical releases due later this year. –Austin Phy

Chill Witch is a group made up of people who sure know how to put together an album, and it shows on the collective’s debut full-length. Primitive in its use of modern instrumentation, the mood is like one day we all bombed our civilizations out and the descendants of the few survivors found our synthesizers buried in the dirt. You can dance to it, sure, but any dance to Chill Witch has to involve some sudden shaking and convulsing, so you’d best commit to it. –Austin Phy

Thin Veil, the new moniker for the music of James Vincent Oblon, is as close as an album can be to metal without being metal. Make no mistake: despite a lack of roaring solos and crash cymbal freakouts, the album is heavy and foreboding in the most laid-back way, like a wise old demon lounging on a throne of skulls. Oblon chugs and drones, hisses and wails, and creates a pervasive atmosphere of unease from start to finish.  –Austin Phy

Known mostly for their sweet as hell bootyshakin’ party anthems, "Animal" shows off a far more in-your-face side of ELEL. Yet another diamond from the minds of this 7-or-so member collective, a group of songwriting animals themselves, this track holds to band’s roots in grandiose love bangers but adds a pumped-up element that’ll make you want to find your troubles and kick them right over the moon.

If you happen to fall in the Venn diagram overlap of "people who like crawfish boils" and "people who don’t mind cutting a rug or two," you can catch ELEL at the East Nashville Crawfish Bash (5.21) with tons of other killer bands, beer from Yazoo, and did we mention it’s a crawfish boil? –Austin Phy

Good folk music must be one of those "you know it when you hear it" things. There’s sure no set criteria. Is it the lyrics, the music, the mood? One thing is certain—you’ll know you’re hearing it when you listen to Maddie Medley’s Garland EP. It’s is an all-too-short collection of barebones folk tunes, no bells or whistles in sight. Despite her low, resonant voice and the melancholy throughout (you can only be so peppy when discussing the life of Judy Garland), Medley’s register remains agile and bouncy. Check out the stream below. –Austin Phy

Ocelot by Caleb Groh is the kind of music you forget you love because not enough people are doing anything similar. There’s the smooth electronic current that runs through the entire album, but Groh knows when to break convention a la the out-there folk leanings of revered freakpop headmaster Karl Blau. There’s a delicate balance of being too weird for to be accesible and too vanilla to be memorable, and Ocelot confidently establishes a space for itself in the sweet spot between. –Austin Phy

The self-titled debut EP by Cheat Aqua is a collection of brooding, sentimental pieces recorded by a one-man band (plus drum machine) and brought to life by the wonders of tape and its warm lo-fi resonance. Not one to leave a quarter of his four track recorder unloved, Cheat Aqua’s main man Vaughn Walters fills out the sonic space with more harmonies than a Thin Lizzy guitar solo made sentient covering early Iron & Wine. The EP a wistful little gem, and we’d recommend you check it out on a cool, still night of your choosing. –Austin Phy

Proud Honey is something akin to a rush of cars driving by. There isn’t much to latch on to other than the constant flow itself and all the colors and makes and models and faces subconsciously blend together into a patchwork slipstream. You lose track of the individual pieces and forget that the entire process is a very inorganic, man-made thing as it fades into something as natural as a school of fish. The pieces here are even more abstract—new wave, post-punk, goth, surf—and the result is an EP that passes by all too quickly and demands another listen or two. –Austin Phy

If there’s a soundtrack to losing your mind and loving it, Linear Downfall is the composer, the band, and the medium itself. All the symptoms are there on 2015’s Sufferland: the delicate, lucid orchestral movements, feeding directly into pieces that sound like those movements were run through a random number generator and then stomped into the concrete. Needless to say, their live show is also completely nuts. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that not only is Linear Downfall taking their freak-psych show on the road, but they’re kicking the whole thing off with a Nashville stop on May 6 featuring Pleasures, Yumi and the System, and Carter Routh. Oh, and did we mention that a lucky fan and their plus-one will get to check that show out for free?

Enterprising Nashvillians who want TWO free tickets to the May 6 show at the High Watt oughta follow us on Twitter and then tweet with the hashtag #DeliGiveaway. It’s that easy! The contest closes in one week, on April 26 at noon CST, which also happens to be when we’ll notify our randomly-chosen winner. And while it’s true that there’s only going to be one winner, the fact that Linear Downfall is on tour should put a big ol’ smile on everybody’s face. Have a look at the full tour schedule below and start planning!