Oracle Sisters credit the inspiration for their newest track “Asc. Scorpio '' to their guitarist Lewis Lazar, who conceived of the song after being stung by a scorpion in Jamaica. This experience served merely as a jumping-off point for the band’s future releases, all of which will take on the complex associations we have to our memories within an uncertain international moment. “Asc. Scorpio” captures this intention expertly, combining a dreamy and laid back sound with lyrics that are fearful at times, nostalgic at others. “Asc Scorpio” montages youthful and idyllic images of the past—a child in a crib in a rocking chair—with painful images of the global present—an elephant in hunger, a power grid and thunder. “Asc. Scorpio” does not explicitly speculate what the future holds, but perhaps suggests that in any cultural moment, pain is punctuated with joy, and the joy is what we attempt to hang on to. Ultimately, Oracle Sisters prove that many meditations can come from a warm, Jamaican beach day that is interrupted by a sting.

Singer-songwriter Jordan Moser’s “The Devil” feels like summer nights around a Texas campfire with folk songs and ghost stories. It has a soft sadness as he sings, “how am I gonna know where your hand is gonna be on a night so dark.” He is reaching hopelessly into the night, searching the stars for answers just to be met with emptiness. The acoustic guitar floats warmly above the soft percussion. The beautifully sad and timeless track nods subtly to country greats like John Prine and Guy Clark while rooting itself in modernity through the contribution of fellow Austinite Molly Burch’s ethereal tone. “The Devil” is the first single off his label debut at Austin label Keeled Scales (Buck Meek, Twain) due out July 26.

Join Jay Som in a golden summer dreamscape with her butterfly-inducing new single, “Superbike.” Los Angeles-based artist Jay Som (a.k.a. singer-songwriter Melina Mae Duterte) invites listeners into what feels like the song equivalent of an orange creamsicle on your neighbor’s front porch step. With her ethereal voice gliding over bouncy strums and riffs, this track will transport you into a warm, wistful 90’s revival. Jay Som sings of the departure of love: “If I’ve fallen from your lips / Straight to your fingertips / (Somebody tell me)”—her lyrics are evocative of the familiar feelings of heart-rending scenes in favored 90’s & 2000’s romance films. Place this song safely into your pocket and hold it tightly until Jay Som's new album, Anak Ko, is released on August 23rd.

The Nashville based art-pop duo, Okey Dokey is comprised of Aaron Martin and Johnny Fisher, who are both by all accounts, highly-collaborative, opened minded songwriters and musicians. Even their own personal creative history portends to a rare level of ego-less fluidity—Martin and Fisher previously wrote together in Sol Cat only to circle back to each other again around 2016. When they realized they sired a nice vibe from a songwriting standpoint they, in their own words, “brought in around 20 friends from other projects to either perform or record with us.” Okey Dokey’s summer 2019 album, which will feature 10 songs with 10 different artists, is a logical extension of the band’s innately communal ethos. The first single, “Thick and Thin,” features LA-based indie synth-pop staple Dent May. It’s a 60’s nostalgic little ditty about being a good pal to a friend in need—a pleasant track to both the ears and the soul. Okey Dokey is basically :) personified.

Like many great albums before, Tōth’s debut album, Practice Magic and Seek Medical Help When Necessary, was born of heartbreak in a Brooklyn apartment. Tōth is the project of Alex Toth and the aptly titled album tracks his road to recovery after a debilitating break-up. The standout single from the album, “When I Awoke” addresses the literal feeling of waking up next to someone you love and knowing that it’s over as well as the philosophic waking up to yourself and the world in the wake of loss. Toth enlisted friends to build a gloomy, gorgeous arrangement of drums, upright bass, and echoing cello to create a dream-like trance that pulls his listeners into the moments and the rooms where his relationship unfolded and ultimately ended. With an ethereal build up of percussion, he somehow manages to capture the sound and ubiquity of memory. Toth is a poet in this song and lines like “you looked like a shadow of the day before” and “you step into my stream about a thousand times a day” illustrate the hazy shape a memory can take and how persistent those memories can be. The track is absolutely wrenching but holds notes of acceptance as well as loss, suggesting that Toth may be coming up for air soon. When things fall apart, they often look different once you put them back together. However, in putting himself and his music together again, Tōth has found a voice and created a song both ephemeral and pervasive.

Justin Vernon has grown comfortably into his role as a sort of ambassador of alternative rock, a curator of the museum that is his tiny sliver of the musical canon, a less guttural Dave Grohl. His April Base studio is not only the home base of his many side projects (Big Red Machine, Volcano Choir, and The Shouting Matches), but has also used his musical success as a platform to support other music he loves, recording albums for The Staves, Hippo Campus, Sufjan Stevens and numerous others. Upon releasing “U (Man Like),” one of two new tracks released in anticipation of a new album, Vernon said of Bon Iver, “This project began with a single person, but throughout the last 11 years, the identity of Bon Iver has bloomed and can only be defined by the faces in the ever growing family we are.” The song is centered around a soulful piano line and features guest vocals from Bruce Hornsby, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, the Bryce Dessner-directed Brooklyn Youth Chorus and a fellow experimental alternative rock falsetto-singer, Moses Sumney. The influence from these various contributors is apparent but doesn’t prevent Vernon’s characteristic voice, either melodically or lyrically, from shining through—with references to Greek mythology and German opera crowding the same verse. Addressing a range of notably American social problems, Vernon has assembled his friends to urge us all to do better, admitting, “It’ll be a long day of fixing.”