FFO: Hiatus Kaiyote, toe, Mid-Air Thief, tricot, American Football, CHON, Yvette Young, exploratory dreamworld math-rock infused with jazz, electronic, and classical

The 12 songs that constitute Dreams, the third full-length from the Taiwanese trio Elephant Gym, explore the deep spacetime continuum that consciousness cannot capture. Beyond the trio’s staple instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drumset, Dreams blends in wind instruments, traditional drums, and Taiwanese narrative.

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FFO: Cornelius, Sufjan Stevens, Rei Harakami, Grizzly Bear

The pre-cursor to Mid-Air Thief's cult-acclaimed album Crumbling, Gongjoong Doduk exhibits a distinct universality, merging disparate sounds and styles into a cohesive, electronic-infused folk amalgam that tactfully blurs the lines between organic and synthetic. Listeners are led through enrapturing passages of swirling melodies underscored with eloquent plucks, strums, and bursts of bubbly glitches. Individual phrases drift into one another as if in a dream, cohered by entrancing hooks and vocal soundscapes. Gongjoong Doduk is a compelling accomplishment of both composition and production, bending as it does to its unique contours of consonance and dissonance, always resolving to a place of calm and beauty.

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FFO: early Touché Amoré, HIRS, Jeromes Dream, Respire, thrashful hardcore-indebted screamo

Already a fan of Record Setter and heading in a heavier direction, it was an easy choice for Home Is Where to decide on doing a split release with the Denton, TX-based hardcore band. “[We] wanted to make something unabashedly trans. Two trans bands. Songs about trans issues. Cover by a trans artist. We wanted to make something for the girls to pop off to,” explains Home Is Where’s Brandon MacDonald of dissection lesson’s genesis.

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FFO: Sparklehorse, Spirit of the Beehive, Jon Brion, Stephen Steinbrink, George Clanton, Toro y Moi

There is a distinct, refreshing current that charges outtakes from “bad summer”. An energized pop-focused collection of tracks born from what bandleader Nathan Tucker describes as “the contrast between total formlessness and rigid claustrophobia”.

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The culmination of a year's worth of work with and for artists that we're so fortunate, excited, and thankful to be affiliated with. It's been the most surreal of years, but has also been one of the strongest in terms of musical output that our label has ever had. Catch up with everything we've released recently with our annual PWYW sampler!

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FFO: Stereolab, Helena Deland, Arcade Fire, Ada Lea, Julie Doiron, expansive pop with inflections of exploratory folk

“rest is in many ways a reflection of myself, asking the question, 'who am I when it all stops?'” Being stuck at home indefinitely allowed Thanya to examine her relationship to rest on a more critical level. With this newfound downtime, she began to realize an active pursuit of rest, with deliberate and kind intention, eventually turning to back songwriting as part of her new practice. The resultant five songs that comprise rest explore Iyer’s mindful intentions through a graceful amalgam of tender pop with inflections of jazz, backed with orchestral experimentation.

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FFO: Mannequin Pussy, Circa Survive, Paramore, Now Now, Forth Wanderers

Philadelphia’s Sweet Pill write eruptive emo songs that embrace the edges of pop and hardcore. The kind of band whose members are fully immersed in their local scene, the quintet’s sound takes wide-spectrum influence from its environment.

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FFO: Tune-Yards, Liv.e, MICHELLE, Nick Hakim, Bernice, Santigold, KeiyaA, Jamila Woods

“This record is a representation of everything that has led me to this point. It’s been a long, bizarre path,” says Zenizen’s Opal Hoyt of both her life and her journey to make this record. P.O.C is a record that blooms in beauty over time—the kind of record that you can take anywhere in any season, as any version of yourself.

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FFO: Mitski, Xenia Rubinos, Karima Walker, Noname, Tune-Yards, Yves Jarvis

Mal Devisa is the songwriting, liberation, and poetry project of multifarious artist Deja Carr. Starting in 2014 and breaking through with 2016’s Kiid, Mal Devisa’s work spans a selfmade spectrum of sound from gravitic, soulful rock to soliloquy to unabashed hip hop.

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FFO: Mothers, Great Grandpa, Duster, Palm, florid indie rock

The majority of the nine slithery songs that comprise supernowhere’s Skinless Takes A Flight were originally cuts that didn’t make their debut Gestalt. But after collectively moving across the country from Burlington, VT to Seattle, WA, the scrapped tracks transformed substantially into florid, at times entrancing compositions.

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FFO: Trace Mountains, Told Slant, Emperor X, sprawling and ornate rock

There is an immediate and palpable sense of joy that jumps out from Next of Kin, the fifth full-length album from bedroom recording project Bellows. But the record is steeped equally in loss: loss of family, beloved dogs, friendships, romantic love, and most of all loss of selfhood. Backwardly inspired by the wealth of loss, Next of Kin sees songwriter Oliver Kalb discovering a renewed sense of appreciation for life in the face of hardship, freshly emboldened to move through the world with a loosened grip on life.

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FFO: Swirlies, Horse Jumper of Love, Blue Smiley, Spirit of the Beehive, Pinback, Alex G, Machine Girl, Pachinko, Drop Nineteens, Astrobite

An Insult to the Sport is a split offering from the genre-defiant groups They are Gutting a Body of Water and A Country Western. Elements of breakcore, shoegaze, and obtuse slacker rock find home on An Insult, at times with no bridge at all between the disparate styles. On paper, the combination of styles may read as cacophonous or incompatible, but the end result is instead a measured contrast of sounds, a reflection of the inescapable influence of our chaotic time and the groups’ environments.

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FFO: Slowdive, Duster, Neil Young, Alex G, Swirlies

Though their sonic palette is vast, Knifeplay craft a cohesive aesthetic to carry frontman Tj Strohmer’s thematically heavy songwriting, which touches on loss of all kinds against the backdrop of a nihilistic world.

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FFO: Kero Kero Bonito, Crying, Hatchie, sugary sweet guitar-pop

Dedicated to the power of pop music, Sobs are Singapore’s premier indiepop propagandists. A thirty-minute trip for the post-Internet consumer, Air Guitar calibrates inventive pop hooks for the indie rock lover, instantly accessible yet intricately arranged.

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FFO: Alvvays, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Snail Mail, snappy invigorating pop-rock

On Subsonic Eye’s Melt the Wax, the Singaporean five-piece present a concise collection of their richly layered, quick-paced indie-pop. Over three songs which explore singer Nur Wahidah’s upbringing, Melt the Wax boasts Subsonic Eye’s penchant for snappy, invigorating pop-rock songs jangling with clarity and entrancing tone.

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