It’s only been a few months since the release of Jordana’s Something To Say To You 12”, but since then she’s moved to New York (we’re neighbors now!) and gone straight to work – seriously the amount of incredible Jordana songs that are in the works is sort of insane. Speaking of, today she’s back with “Doubt of Revival,” a new collaborative single featuring Ryan Woods, an LA based pop outlier who appears courtesy of East West Records. On “Doubt of Revival” Jordana mixes the R&B influences that permeated moments of her most recent record with the crunchy guitars and aughts indie-rock influences of her earlier singles into a hybrid that is as immediate and fresh as it is nostalgic and cozy. As with her early bedroom recordings Jordana is able to sing about paralyzing and agonizing moments with an ease and grace that she brings to every aspect of her art and self. “Doubt of Revival” is an infinitely replayable song soundtracking the uneasiness of modernity without ever succumbing to it.

“Doubt of Revival” is a song written about the obsessive thoughts that have haunted me from past decisions and my internal struggle with the uncertainty of being able to grow from these decisions and experiences,” says Jordana. “Fitting enough, given the current state of the world, this song was made over Zoom! I am definitely wary about Zoom sessions, because I can’t help but goof off, seemingly most of the time! But working with [producer] Cameron Hale and Ryan was a blast and extremely rewarding considering how happy I am with the song we were able to make remotely.”

“Doubt of Revival” was produced by Cameron Hale (Claud, Khalid) and mixed by Billy Lemos (Still Woozy, Overcoats). The single artwork was designed by Julia Fletcher, while the YouTube visuals were created by Tall Glass With Ice. The visuals were inspired by Fletcher’s art and created using a series of actual screenprints of both Jordana & Ryan to animate the images to life. A handful of those hand-numbered screenprints were sent to fans in advance of the single’s release and have started to crop up across social media.

🥺 What are we @jordananye ? pic.twitter.com/bp58HamKrI

— DonutSlut™ (@dylansprayberry) February 25, 2021

More from Jordana soon.

Our Boys are back with “Desperado,” the latest single from their forthcoming debut album, Threesome, out on March 12th. “This one’s from an old session of Nathan’s that he intended to finish for a different project,” say the band of the standout track’s inverted, math-y guitar loop that twists and unfurls into glitchy pop bliss. “It’s about having a crush on a friend’s grandmother amidst the luxury of Santa Barbara, California, and trying to charm her by playing The Eagles’ ‘Desperado’ on her living room piano. It tackles the bizarre lengths we go to in order to win a stranger’s favor, despite the possibility of damaging a friendship in the process.”

In other equally-exciting news, the Saint Paul, MN-based trio today also announced a virtual album release show Live at the The Mall of America, a full-length set shot on multiple cameras showcasing Threesome’s cutting edge sonics and Baby Boys’ playful, ‘Don’t let ‘em take your fun’ attitude. The stream, free with RSVP HERE, will go live on March 25th, 2021 at 7pm ET/6pm CT.

“Desperado” follows album singles “Gone” and December’s one-two punch “Cannonball” & “Duke & The Cash,” which collectively earned early praise and support from Spotify’s New Music Friday, All New Indie, and Lorem, and also NPR Music (#NMF Spotify playlist), DIY, KCMP’s The Current, BBC Radio 1, and more. Threesome is available for pre-order & pre-save right HERE.

Some all-caps BIG dad sports news: the Ottawa trio’s debut EP, I AM JUST A BOY LEAVE ME ALONE !!!, is coming March 19th. The EP will be available digitally (pre-save it!) or on cassette (pre-order it!). 

This big news is paired with a celebratory single & music video for the song “nrvs again,” directed by the very talented Noah Keckler, who you’ll remember for being at the helm of the band’s “name & place” clip. The pandemic-themed music video is a ride through the ups and downs of quarantine life with the protagonist recalling the ways we’ve had to find joy in our new paradigm. Meanwhile, “nrvs again” is a testament to the rapid growth of the band since their debut singles in 2019 and lead singer/songwriter Miguel Plante’s skill. The new track was recorded, engineered and mixed by Plante himself, with dad sports’ signature electronic drums and emo-inspired vocals combined in a potent, catchy and endearing ode to overcoming self-doubt.

On I AM JUST A BOY LEAVE ME ALONE !!!, dad sports have leveled up, honing the lo-fi sound of their previous singles into a cohesive EP with a palpable joie-de-vivre that melds jangle-pop, electro, emo and indie-pop.  The new EP includes previously released singles “out 4 a breather”, “gf haircut” and “name & place”, which were lauded by Stereogum, FADER and Paste Magazine. Speaking to the new single Plante says;

“I wrote the chorus for this song 2018, before dad sports was even a thing. I had just met Keith, Alex had just picked up the bass, and I was just beginning to write music. I was still finding myself as an artist and was pretty (nrvs) about what others would think of my songs. These insecurities are what shaped the lyrics. For the next few years, we re-wrote the song over and over and over until we were finally happy with it. To us, the lyrics and the long songwriting process represent the time we spent learning how to do the whole music thing together. I realized that you’re always gonna be insecure in some way about your art, but that’s just part of the process of improving 🙂 🙂 Also I have Alex and Keith to tell me if my lyrics are shit now LOL.”

You can get a copy now with a very limited edition run of I AM JUST A BOY inspired earrings courtesy of Sam Makes Things  over on Bandcamp while supplies last. 

Tracklist:

01 out 4 a breather
02 if u want to !
03 gf haircut
04 nrvs again
05 MANY FACES
06 name & place

Baby Boys—the trio of producers & multi-instrumentalists Caleb Hinz, Jake Luppen, and Nathan Stocker—will release their debut album, Threesome, on March 12th, 2021!

The album’s latest single “Gone,” out today alongside a video directed by Isaac Gale (Bon Iver, Poliça, Swamp Dogg), could be considered the thesis of Threesome: a coalescence of disparate parts, a zig-zag of the irreverent and the cerebral, unified by deft, maximalist production that showcases the freedom of Baby Boys’ ‘Don’t let ‘em take your fun!’ attitude.

“This song is all about not getting caught up in the game. It’s not worth it to kill yourself over winning. Ambition can get the best of us and we are no strangers to that as people,” says Hinz of the song, which follows December’s one-two punch singles “Cannonball” & “Duke and the Cash.”

“If you find yourself in the middle of a raging pandemic, three days before a nail-biting election, and you haven’t left Minneapolis in 10 months, I highly recommend driving to the country with some friends to party with some goats, pigs and fuzzy cows for an evening,” says Gale of the video’s origins. ”Instant anxiety release, necessary, even if it only lasted a few hours. Thank you Baby Boys.” 

Tanya Villano, the owner of the farm seen in the “Gone” video, adds, “We loved having Baby Boys out at the Villano homestead! No cows, goats, pigs, hens or pups were harmed when shooting the video. They loved gettin’ down with their new friends and totally soaked up all the love, treats and pats!“

Threesome is now available for pre-order HERE. It’s available in three color variants as well, neon yellow over on Bandcamp, bubblegum pink at your local record store, and standard black pretty much everywhere. Pick your poison. 

On Threesome, Baby Boys’ enduring “yes to everything” mantra yields a snapshot of anarchic studio improvisation distilled into just ten tracks. Recorded at BJ Burton’s (Charli XCX, Bon Iver) Minneapolis studio after Burton left for Los Angeles, the entirety of Threesome came together in one week of 2pm to 6am studio sessions. The chemistry between the three in the studio has been well-documented outside of the band, too–Hinz, Luppen, and Stocker were the production team behind some of 2020’s most iconic breakout albums, including Samia’s The Baby and Miloe’s Greenhouse EP. But Threesome marked the first time Baby Boys had free reign of a professional studio for their own use, allowing the trio to be fully immersed in assembling its world.

Baby Boys is just the essence, then: a drama-free distillation of ideas. Luppen and Hinz handle nearly all of the programming, while Stocker is the main go-to for the analog instruments (guitars, banjos, and keys), and Hinz then sculpts it all together. They trade vocal duties off the cuff and in the moment; all of them sharing one microphone, typically whoever’s able to spit out a melody idea or vocal part the fastest gets control. The result is genre-bending mischief-pop: an amalgamation of busted-up iPhone memos and nonlinear lyrics colliding with erratic sonic landscapes.  

“Being able to put aside everything else for a second and appreciating what you have is so freeing,” says Hinz, summing up Threesome succinctly. “And so Baby Boys.”

The Baby Reimagined is a song-for-song reinvention of the debut album from Samia. It features old friends and new connections forged over mutual admiration. While some remix albums struggle to justify their existence, this one is a testament to the songwriting at the core of Samia’s work. In any hands, these songs are special. And in the carefully selected hands at work across this release, these songs are transcendent.

Since announcing in December with Briston Maroney’s spare, soulful take on “Is There Something in the Movies?,” a few additional tracks have seen the light of day: The District’s twinkly emo makeover of “Stellate,” Bartees Strange’s interstellar revamp of the album-opening “Pool,” and Christian Lee Hutson’s beautiful, unhurried version of “Does Not Heal.” But today you can listen in full.  Stream below or wherever you get your music.

EXCUSE ME @babyboyssucks pic.twitter.com/3cwPOBb7tA

— sydney liz (@seaofsplitpeas) January 11, 2021

Check your mailbox. Earlier this week Baby Boys postcards started landing all over the world. Words of encouragement were scrawled across the back in sharpie. Tucked in the corner of the card was a simple QR code. When the lucky recipients scanned it, they were treated to a brand new Baby Boys song.

Yes, after a near two year hiatus, the Twin City weirdo pop group is back and they’re sending you music in the mail. Earlier this week they offered up “Cannonball,” a demented nursery rhyme meets muzak tropicália romp. Video for the song is below, in which a purple-clad rollerblader brandishes their big beard, a flag and quite a bit of cheer throughout the heart of suburbia. It is sufficiently strange.

Today they’ve offered up a second new song in the form of “Duke and the Cash,” a frantic burst of neon lights and future pop bombast. Like “Cannonball,” the song comes with a fittingly irreverent video, this time presented with an ecstatic dance performance filmed by YouTube star Buff Correll. 

It’s been quite the year for Jordana. In March we re-issued her sleeper debut Classical Notions of Happiness. Then the world abruptly fell apart. Using the time she would have spent touring in support of the album (seriously, there were like 60 dates!), she quickly turned around a batch of new material that radically expanded on the homespun bedroom pop of her debut.  The result is today’s Something To Say To You, a piece of music meant to be consumed as a whole or as two distinct sections: Something to Say, which was released in July, and the thought-completing To You, which arrives alongside the full album.

“These EP’s have two different atmospheres,” Jordana recently told Our Culture, in an artist spotlight feature, “where Something To Say is more vague and To You is more direct, but when they all come together, the atmospheres collide, with different emotions in a matter of minutes, throughout the album, with all of the different genres we touch.”

Earlier this week she teased the record with one final single, “Reason.” The track follows in the footsteps of “I Guess This Is Life,” sprinkling piano on top of a perfect bass lines, only this time around swapping out the uke-led springiness for a more methodical beat. “It’s is a song of realization,” says Jordana. “How you can find worth and happiness in life just by showing love and compassion through simple gestures and being present in the moment.” The video, directed by the incredibly talented Ethan Nelson, is a moment worth being present in.

When Lauren Laverne spun “I Guess This Is Life” on 6 Music earlier this Fall, her description of the track summarized exactly why we feel so hard for Jordana’s music in the first place: “Lovely, gentle, exploratory, contemplative, tongue in cheek and funny – something really kind of youthful and beautiful about this.” Exactly! Jordana doesn’t write songs that make the listener feel young, she writes songs that make you feel like being old doesn’t – or couldn’t – exist. Something To Say To You, out digitally today and on vinyl Jan 22nd, is her second record. From those sun-drenched piano notes on “Life,” to the Beta Band baiting vibes of “Reason,” to the high temp kissoff of “F*** You,” the album overflows with exuberance. We’re lucky to be delivering this music to you today.

While Something to Say To You is out digitally now, the LP won’t be available until January 22nd. In the meantime, you can pre-order a copy over in our shop, or on exclusive limited edition light blue vinyl via Bandcamp now.

The Baby was a long time coming. And despite the album’s lyrical preoccupation with being alone, it took a village of Samia’s friends to raise it. So it’s little wonder that, in its wake, Samia has enlisted a new group of friends and contemporaries for The Baby Reimagined, out January 15th. Featuring covers, reinventions and remixes, the release is a top to bottom reimagining of her debut, filled with renditions from Bartees Strange, MICHELLE, Field Medic, The Districts, and many more.

Briston Maroney’s take on “Is There Something in the Movies?” serves as the lead single, and is available today wherever you stream music. It comes on the heels of the Anjimile version of “Waverly,” a wintry folk makeover that accompanied the recent music video a few weeks back. Briston’s cover lends his Americana sensibilities to The Baby closer, its earnest heartbreak conveyed through an emotive tenor. The reverb of his guitar echoes in the background, blessing the cinematic tune with a fresh, Western twang.

“This song is the most representative of Samia’s ability to tell a very specific story in a relatable way,” says Briston. “I really enjoyed the opportunity to retell this story in an attempt to show my appreciation as a listener for Samia’s willingness to share her experiences with us all.”

Lots to appreciate here. Full tracklist below. Pre-save The Baby Reimagined now.

01 Is There Something in the Movies? – Briston Maroney Version
02 Minnesota – MICHELLE Remix
03 Winnebago – Charlie Hickey Version
04 Waverly – Anjimile Version
05 Does Not Heal – Christian Lee Hutson Version
06 Triptych – Field Medic Version
07 Stellate – The Districts Remix
08 Limbo Bitch – Donnal Missal Remix
09 Big Wheel – Palehound Remix
10 Fit N Full – Remo Drive Version
11 Pool – Bartees Strange Version

Get your copy of The (original) Baby over in our shop.

Today Samia shares a music video for Baby-standout “Waverly.”  Directed by frequent visual collaborator Matt Hixon, the clip eschews the urban vignettes of the song’s lyrics for a woozy backwoods trip that may or may not end in the den of a low-grade cult. In what has slowly become Samia’s signature visual style, the video is a surrealist, dream-like trek through the absurd. Watch it above.

The release of the video arrives alongside a re-imagining of “Waverly” courtesy of indie folk artist Anjimile (Giver Taker is one of our favorite records of the year!), who spins the song’s buoyant, piano-led energy into a hushed ballad that wouldn’t sound out of place on an early Sufjan Stevens album. The rendition serves as the first in a series of collaborations, reworks and re-imaginings set for release over the coming months. We’ll have more details there soon. In the meantime, listen to the cover below or wherever you stream music. 

Back in August we announced the signing of Ottawa sweethearts dad sports with a pair of perfectly-crafted dream pop tunes “name & place” and “out 4 a breather.”  Today the boys returns with a song that commands you to feel things about that haircut your ex gave you a few months back. “Alex and I were hanging in our basement while rocking haircuts that our exes gave us when we came up with the idea for the song,” says dad sports’ Miguel Plante. “It’s about how those haircuts outlasted the relationships.”

On “gf haircut” they run through several minutes of brightly-lit guitar pop before arriving at our favorite coda of 2020: a wistful wash of DIY Death Cab and twinkly bedroom emo catharsis. The video is exactly what you’d expect: fucking adorable, tracking the theme of the song with a lighthearted energy. “The original plan was to cut our actual hair in the vid,” says Plante. “But we all shaved our heads during the summer so we just got some funny wigs instead.”

Stream “gf haircut” here, and stay tuned for more from dad sports soon.