Modern bands going for a classic rock sound have a tendency to stop short in one of two ways. They strip the soul from it by aping their influences only and forgetting about the place where it all started—the blues—or they stick too tightly to those bluesy roots and ignore decades of musical growth and innovation. Laurel & the Love-In bring the best of both worlds with "Gonna Do," the lead single off the upcoming summer sizzler Don’t Love Nobody. Rootsy as it gets but not stiflingly so, "Gonna Do" hits the highs with grace and dips low and easy only to blossom back into a spirited outro, all the while driving forward with the determination and experience of several different generations. We’re thrilled to debut the track below, and we encourage you to keep watch for Don’t Love Nobody when it releaes later this year. –Austin Phy

Tasteful in its execution, Steve Wood Music’s debut Transformation is a well-rounded retrofuturistic voyage that avoids all the indulgences that lead to cheesy electronic music. It’s dancy but not robotic, retro but not novel, emotional but not saccharine. There’s an element of Tame Impala brand psych to be found in there as well, floating hand-in-hand with the textured synths and delayed vox in Wood’s chosen space somewhere between lofi and stereo recording. Get a taste of the future right now and stream the album below. –Austin Phy

We took notice of Kritoff Waltz way back in February when their debut EP The Innocents dropped. Not only has the EP kept a place in our rotation since (they won our band of the month poll for early April, after all), but others have been taking notice as well. Kristoff Waltz came out on top in a battle of the bands to play at Vanderbilt’s annual on-campus music fest Rites of Spring. Last week we sat down and had a chat with Kristoff Waltz to get to know them a little better. Check out our interview and be sure to see them tonight at Rites of Spring.

Andrew Strader’s debut recording No Improvement is a stripped down slacker tale that still feels fleshed-out and doesn’t cut any corners. No Improvement takes itself completely seriously, sometimes a feat for bedroom compositions, but still takes advantage of its lo-fi tape hiss aesthetic to keep the whole thing fun. Vocals hiss and crack, solos wander in and out of the frame, and the (remarkably tasteful) reverb fills your ears like cotton. It’s a brief listen, and you’d be doing yourself a disservice by skipping it. –Austin Phy

There’s something weird going on in Nashville, and I like it. Remember when the underground scene started getting some attention and everybody realized there was a rich layer of music underneath the shiny radio country exterior? That whole scene is sure no secret anymore, and we’re starting to see signs of a layer growing underneath that. It’s moldy, the temperature is stifling, and we have every reason to believe this is where the mole people are hiding some form of civilization.

Ace Quaalude is the first one we spotted, but that could have been an isolated incident. It’s when we noticed Velcro & The Slow Children and its parent Mesoamerica Records that it became clear some kind of funky movement was brewing.  Shanshala’s Creepier Than Family is the sprawling manifesto for that movement. Featuring the aforementioned misfit stalwarts, as well as fellow Deli favorites Bummr City and a handful of other contributors, the album sounds something like if Ween were raised on the garage rock ethos. Despite covering a lot of ground, Creepier Than Family keeps focus with admirable precision. The Bandcamp page notes that these songs were recorded during sessions for an official full-length debut by Shanshala. Keep an eye out for that, but hit the stream below in the meantime. –Austin Phy

Have you ever been alone in a department store after hours? Things change after the lights go down. It’s almost imperceptible, yet every bit as impossible to ignore as it is to describe. The gravity feels a little different and the air takes on a sinister tension. It’s the same place you’ve been a million times before, but a change in time and perception tranforms it into an alien planet.

Sad Summer II from Spliff Jacksun is the music that plays on the half-busted PA somewhere up in the rafters of that department store. At times Sad Summer II is almost serene. At other times, it borders on maddening in the discomfort evoked by its dilapidated lo-fi rap beats. The only constant is a slightly skewed forward motion—a detuned synth here, a dragging snare hit you can never quite latch on to over there—that lodges itself in a part of your brain that you probably don’t tend to very often. Hit the stream below and get ready to check out a real weird headspace. –Austin Phy

What plans do you have for your next birthday? Do you have a badass week-long series of show happening in your living room? No? Then chances are you aren’t 3rd and Lindsley (your ability to read this article is another clue, though I have no doubt the dawn of sentient music venues is on the horizon), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in style this week. Included in the week of festivities is a little shindig tonight (04.05) featuring *repeat repeat, American Dream, and Benjamin Harper of Magnolia Sons on an all-locals bill you don’t want to miss.

Check out the full week’s calendar at the 3nL website (does anyone call it that?) and stream a *repeat repeat track below. –Austin Phy

Enough to Die While Sleeping, the fruits of a collaboration between Syd Shanshala and Chandler Mills Brown, is the apex of bedroom music. That’s "bedroom music" as an aesthetic more than a description of technique—the cough syrup weirdness is here in full force, but the production values and planning are a step above what’s typically associated with outsider art. Every move is intentional, and each track and transition lands with its feet on the ground and its eight hands in the air.

 As far as we can tell, this is the first release on Mesoamerica Records, a budding label/art collective founded by Brown. If this album, a freak-flags-high triumphant march heralding an evolution in outsider art, is any indication of what we’ll be seeing from them in the future, consider us psyched. –Austin Phy

If you’ve been sleeping on Wally Clark, it’s about time to fix that with a pair of albums released recently on Gummy Soul. One is a collection of original compositions with roots in soul and funk, and the other is a riff on tracks by MF DOOM. Clark follows through with the requisite amount of braggadocio on the albums, but fortunately it’s backed up his talent as a rapper. We would’ve pegged DOOM as a heavy influence even without the presence of the tribute EP, but while his flow comes straight from the mouth of the Madvillain with a little Atmosphere thrown in for good measure, Clark’s tonal range is, impressively, a bit stronger than that of his forebear.

Check out the pair of releases and find your song for summer ’16 well in advance. –Austin Phy

We’ve talked before about how much we like the music of Regatta, moniker of local dreampop songster extraordinaire Evan Hickman. He’s back at it with a new EP that doubles down on what drew us to his songs in the first place while adding some new elements that expand on the sound. The addition of Josephine Moore (of Wildfront) adds a surprising amount of levity to the album’s gloomy throwback dreampop, ending up sounding somewhat like Disintegration if Robert Smith had written it while staying in a beach house. Despite the tonal differences between the two singers, their voices are in an effortless-sounding lockstep that still demonstrates their individual talents. –Austin Phy

Backyard Beach is far from the first release by Jonas Litton, but it’s one of the most interesting in the departure that it makes from his previous material. A longtime singer-songwriter, Litton has taken a hard turn into butter-smooth tropical jazz instrumentals for his latest. There’s plenty of noodling to be found, but the album avoids the cheesy wankery-for-the-sake-of-wankery tropes of Weather Channel bumper tunes by being genuinely interesting in its composition while still remaining completely accessible.

It’s the most relaxing collection of songs I’ve heard in a while, so you might want to see what’s up in the stream below. –Austin Phy

Sun’s out, major scale runs out, yeah? Carey’s self-titled debut EP is one to drown out the sound of the AC at home or in the car. Quality power pop is the name of the game here, but things get a little sludgier than expected at various points, like The Cars by way of Dinosaur Jr., with some real fuzzy guitars and heavy pacing giving it a heavier bottom than forward-driven numbers like these usually like to flaunt. –Austin Phy