Top Indie Album Picks of the Week [May 6, 2022]

Spell 31 is the third album from Afro-Cuban French twins Lisa-Kainde and Naomi Diaz, who together are Ibeyi. Inspired by the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, this is a record celebrating their multitudes are harnessing their power to heal others. The 10-track album features collaborations with Pa Salieu, Jorja Smith, BERWYN, Dave Okumu, Ben Reed, and Owen Pallett, with production by Richard Russell. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

Marigold is the long-awaited collaborative album by singer and songwriter Alex Isley & Grammy-nominated producer Jack Dine. The 9-track album is an indie soul masterpiece featured collaboration from Bas and Robert Glasper. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music.

Since racking up a Grammy-award nomination for his work on “Bring It on Home to Me,” a Sam Cooke tribute track recorded with PJ Morton, BJ the Chicago Kid, and Charlie Bereal, Kenyon Dixon has proven to be one of the most promising independent acts in R&B. The South Los Angeles, California native’s new album Closer is his strongest body of work yet. The 12-track project features guest appearances by Tiffany Gouche, Gwen Bunn, D Smoke, and Susan Carol. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music.

Love & Algorhythms is an interstellar synthesis of astral Soul, R&B, and sci-fi Funk. Working with producer Paul Butler (The Bees, Micheal Kiwanuka, Caroline Rose, Hurray for the Riff Raff), Seratones have taken the invitation to knock at the door of the cosmos. A.J. Haynes’s voice dances with soul-stirring devotion at the altar of Black Feminisms: weaving the words Toni Cade Bambara, Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis multiverse, echoes of bell hooks, and Audre Lorde’s Power of the Erotic. With drummer Jesse Gabriel’s machine-like precision and the transcendental touches from guitarist Travis Stewart, the album oscillates between Alice Coltrane-inspired bliss & Giorgio Moroder’s ecstatic release. Each song hovers and pulsates in the wide, dark matter—constellations guiding a journey through the subtle body, the vast fullness of the human experience, and the irresistible potential of liberation. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

Malaysian singer and songwriter Yuna released her new 3-track EP Y2 in the lead-up to her upcoming album Y5. The star’s hazy, honeyed vox invite R&B devotees to take chances on tracks “Girl U Used 2 Know”, “24 Hours”, and “Make A Move”. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music.

During the pandemic, Tomberlin was all over the place, physically and mentally. Louisville. Los Angeles. Back home in Illinois for a bit. She’s now settled in Brooklyn, where her new album, i don’t know who needs to hear this… was recorded at Figure 8 studios over the course of two weeks with producer and engineer Phil Weinrobe (who played a variety of instruments on the collection), and later mastered by Josh Bonati. “The theme of the record,” she explains, “is to examine, hold space, make an altar for the feelings.” Hold space: Tomberlin’s songs do it literally, making it heard space. Here, the space feels larger and holier, built to echo. Pedal steel. Old acoustic guitars, freshly plucked. A drifting synthesizer. Chill, brushy percussion. Ambient, expansive clarinet and saxophone. Aleatory piano trills, a lot of piddling with the occasional splash. The looseness and wideness of the arrangements convey tender regard for their parts, as though each arpeggio, loop, or scratch is a found shell or feather in the hand. Then there is the instrument of her voice, which has the endearing quality of being perfectly tuned but reluctantly played. “I’m not a singer,” she sings on “idkwntht.” “I’m just someone who’s guilty.” To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

Singer Col3trane's long-awaited debut album Lush Life is finally here. The 12-track album takes listeners on a sonic journey through the most dizzying and electrifying bits of it. The London native uses the connections he’s made with guest appearances by Lucky Daye, Flatbush Zombies, and Erik the Architect. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music.

Inland Empire rapper AUNDREY GUILLAUME. shares his sophomore EP Energy. In the triumphant follow-up to his first EP Violet, Energy finds AUNDREY in a place of cautionary optimism. From introspective tracks like “Refund” to hard-hitting bass lines of “Combo” GUILLAUME.’s compelling authenticity on Energy is palpable. Speaking on the EP, AUNDREY says, “after completing my first EP Violet, the mood is more celebratory, but still cautious of the trappings this newfound attention gets me. ENERGY is about taking that feeling and thriving in it.” To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

London-based electronic pop duo Dahlia Sleeps (consisting of Luke Hester and Lucy Hill) released their debut album Overflow. “The title Overflow was chosen because this is a record that features a lot of struggle, fight, bravery, will, hope, and ultimately triumph,” says the duo. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

Brooklyn-based, Los Angeles-raised trombonist and composer, Kalia Vandever new album, Regrowth possesses “tremendous instrumental facility and a highly melodic compositional voice” offering listeners eight ethereal tracks: wisps that, with springtime in the air, conjure both wistfulness and hope. Regrowth, as a whole, is cyclical in nature, an album marked by renewal and discovery, by compositions that arose from improvisation, by the thrum of found melodies, each enlivened by Vandever’s longtime ensemble: saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Nick Dunston, drummer Connor Parks, and guitarist and producer Lee Meadvin. To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

There’s a palpable feeling of intimacy throughout every moment of Radiator, the debut album from Philadelphia’s Sadurn. The band’s spare-yet-satisfying instrumentation, diary-like lyrics, and graceful vocal harmonies bring you in extraordinarily close, breaking down any walls between artist and listener to offer fleeting glimpses of life’s most internal moments—as well as one of the most compelling debut records in some time. That warmth and familiarity permeates Radiator, with its roomy recording and lean instrumentation nimbly serving the songs, bolstering DeGroot’s stunning vocals and conversational lyrics. Sadurn’s affecting indie-folk draws on a range of influences from Jason Molina, to Gillian Welch, to Alex G and Elliott Smith, working in the tradition of songwriters whose melodies are as captivating as the words within them. Radiator explores the struggles and eventual beauty of grappling with multiple emotional realities, particularly when it comes to relationships. “I definitely write as a way of processing what’s going on,” says DeGroot. “I’m usually making space for a feeling or a thought that, for some reason, I can’t talk to other people about because it’s too destructive.”To stream the album visit, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.

kelz’s debut 5 AM and I Can’t Sleep delivers us a frothy dream-pop introduction to the mind of Vietnamese-American producer and multi-instrumentalist Kelly Truong. Written and recorded in the middle of the night in her Orange County, California home, these songs tell a nostalgic and hopeful story following loss. For kelz, carefully looping beats, tinkering with synthetic waveforms, and interweaving guitar picking serves as a meditation--a mode of processing emotions and the inevitable passing of time. Front and center are her airy vocals, recorded in a whisper so as not to wake sleeping people in the other rooms. Each song folds in on itself like a wave’s undertow, reorienting infectious melodies from tracks previous. When asked about the tracks, kelz reflects on the process as “feeling like running towards something” but not knowing what it is. Escape with kelz on a long night drive with this effervescent electro-pop debut.To stream the album visit, Spotify, Apple Music, or purchase on Bandcamp.