Sharing members with both Baltimore and Chicago, Diamond released their second ep "Don’t Lose Your Cool" late last month. Now they are back with their take on the Christmas classic "Christmas Time is Here".

Speaking of Josh Caterer, The Smoking Popes‘ Daytrotter session has been posted, and in addition to performing the first two tracks from their 2011 release, This is Only a Test, the band performed to of their classics "Need You Around" and "Megan". You can check out the session here.

This Sunday at The Spaceship two local bands will be celebrating releases. Oshwa is the musical outlet for the dynamic Alice Walter. Their new ep is called Thanksgiving EP, and is somewhere between tUnE-yArDs and Jose Gonzalez. Shiloh is thrashing-folk, if that is possible, and began putting demo up on bandcamp back in March.

You can catch these two with Nashville’s Couched and Nebraska’s Universe Contest on Sunday, Dec. 18th at 7:30 at The Shaceship (1804 S. Racine Ave. FOURTH FLOOR).

Wilco has had a full blown revitalization this year, and they are capping it off with an appearance on Daytrotter. The band stopped by and performed four tracks from their critically acclaimed 2011 release The Whole Love.

I received an email from Ezra Furman this week announcing his plans to release a solo album this February. The album will be called "The Year of No Returning", and Ezra sent along the album’s first track "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde".

MP3: Ezra Furman "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde"

In the press release that he included in his email he wrote, "these are songs I wrote after fighting with strangers. Stricken by writer’s block, I felt stuck in a songwriting persona that no longer applied to me. I don’t know why I was moved to start physical fights with people I met at bars. The first one happened by accident. The fact is, though, that I began writing the next morning and did not let up. Somehow physical violence was the catalyst for transcendence and forward creative progress. It’s something I do not recommend to others–I got hurt and I hurt other people. And yet for me, it was the key." Everyone finds their muse in different places, and Ezra Furman has found his in his fists, at least for this project.

A Lull are launching a winter tour with Deleted Scenes with a show at Subt on 12/30. The band has had a great year and are thanking their fans by releasing a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s "I’m On Fire".

I’m On Fire by A Lull

This past week Old Town School of Folk announced that they will be releasing a four volume, 127 track collection of archived recordings. The recordings span 50 years and contains recordings from Joan Baez, Jeff Tweedy, Andrew Bird, Doc Watson, Pete Seeger, Lila Downs, Steve Earle, and more. The four volumes are broken down into "Family Music," "New Folk," "Trad Folk," and "World Music."

Here is "Dear Old Greenland" recorded by Andrew Bird on September 15, 2000 which is in the "New Folk" section of the collection.

This project is out today, and you can view the entire track list here.