Today's Top Tune

Jakarta-born, LA-based singer-songwriter NIKI has a flirty new song to share, “Too Much Of A Good Thing.” It’s a perfect gift for your new crush and is our first peep into her forthcoming album, Buzz, to be delivered in August.

After releasing Blue Skies in 2022, the Chicago trio known as Dehd decided to turn a writing session into a road trip and filled their van to the brim with recording equipment, camping out in an Earthship in New Mexico to work as long as their solar panels kept their electricity on. And then onto the next adventure — the quiet of the Puget Sound. Eating, breathing, sleeping and their purpose, writing, turned into their album Poetry.

Last year while at SXSW, Liz Nistico — aka Revenge Wife — had a melodic dream that she translated into a song with collaborator NZCA Lines. The result is “Myth of a Salesman,” inspired by the Daft Punk song “Something About Us.” Their new track takes place in Los Angeles and speaks about love, change, and being alright in the present moment — with the added bonus of a lovely flute solo by an artist we play, but have been sworn to secrecy to reveal (if we told you, well, we’d have to kill you).

Some 30 years and soon-to-be 14 albums into their sonic journey, UK-based Tindersticks have a new collection of songs, Soft Tissue, set to drop in September. Their signature brooding melodies are still on track, as you hear on “Falling, The Light.”

Austin-based Charley Crockett is on the short list for Artist of the Year at the Americana Music Association Award at Americana Fest in Nashville in September and he’s in great company.

LA artist Jessica Pratt has been rounding up fans for a dozen years as a talented songwriter armed with an acoustic guitar and a soft-yet-penetrating voice. On her fourth album, Here in the Pitch, Pratt opted for “big panoramic sounds that make you think of the ocean and California” via nine songs that incorporate a range of instruments like the glockenspiel, timpani, baritone saxophone, and flute alongside her hypnotizing vocals. “Life Is” delivers a panoramic scope.

Ok, we get it. LA has a lot of characters who are easy to poke fun at, and now they’ve got an anthem all their own. Written in our fair city by Australian electronic duo Flight Facilities, “Days of the Week” features cheeky lyrics by Aramis Johnson of Enumclaw. “What started out as a joke during a three-hour studio session with Aramis of Enumclaw has turned into one of our guiltiest pleasures: A modern-day ode to Los Angeles and the people who make it shine,” the band tells KCRW.

You may know Cor.Ece as the LA-based, Grammy-winning co-writer on Beyonce’s mind-boggling Renaissance album, but here he intersects with Brooklyn-based DJ, songwriter, and producer Bad Colours for a heart-thumping, propulsive beat on their new project, Been Here Before. The mix is powerful, laden with soulful house and disco, as exemplified on the album’s opening banger “Say Yea.”

Ten Fold is the new album by nuanced singer Yaya Bey, and if you are looking for a chill vibe from an artist with something to say, you’re on the right track. Somewhere between the sound of Roberta Flack and Nina Simone, we tune into Yaya’s frequency on ‘the evidence.’

Cheo, a founding member of the Venezuelan trio Los Amigos Invisibles, has decided to revisit and re-record some of the songs he wrote for the group, now with his new band. “Suddenly, one morning I woke up and thought ‘I miss playing these songs, I don’t have to get on a plane to play it, they are my kids and I love them,’” Cheo confides. “So I started strumming the guitar remembering them; I thought it would be painful, but nope… Why would it be painful? They always made me smile.”

The gorgeous new album My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall captures the work of one most illustrious of the handful of Black Country songwriters (let alone a woman) in Nashville. Randall’s catalog includes work with legendary artists like Trisha Yearwood and Johnny Cash but draws inspiration from the work of Ray Charles, Charley Pride, Lil Hardin Armstrong, and DeFord Bailey, to name a few.

Have you heard about Yannis & The Yaw? Well, let us introduce you: They’re the intriguing collaboration of Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis and the late, great Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen.

Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur Tu, producer-composer Carmen Rizzo, and two-time Grammy-winner Dhani Harrison converge for their first-ever collaboration. Their new album is more than the sum of its parts, at the crossroads of different styles, rhythms, and languages through which they celebrate beauty, harmony, love, and kindness, all through the lens of vocals without words. “Dreamers In The Field,” a lilting and peaceful composition, is the title track.

We’re celebrating our mothers this weekend, and to honor them we turn to the timeless singer Alex Cuba, who pays tribute to his own mother and the work she puts into her delicious dinners, to which no one else comes close. Not only did he write the song for her, but Alex invites his mama to sing with him on “No Cocina Cualquiera”

We’re excited to premiere a new song from heavy instrumental dream team Parlor Greens, who have the distinction of recording their debut album at Colemine Records’ brand new studio at Portage Lounge in Loveland, Ohio. This trio celebrates their members with brilliant solos, as you’ll hear on the title track “In Green We Dream.”

Soul singer Bette Smith’s musical adventure was born in the church pews and street corners of Brooklyn. Today, Bette Smith announces a brand new album filled with her signature mix of soul and gospel. “Goodthing,” the title track, hints at the crunchy sound of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Back in 2018, LA roots-punk pioneer Dave Alvin and cosmic country slayer Jimmie Dale Gilmore wrote their first album together to great fanfare and kindled their lifelong friendship. The duo have announced a new full-length recording, TexiCali, coming in June that promises to deliver 11 trippy tracks, culled from the hearts of these two storytellers and providing a sonic tapestry across their home states. “We’re Still Here” celebrates their bond.

Motherhood is a game-changer for any artist, but it can also open up a new sonic horizon. Monogem is a new mom to a son, and has spent the last year in her backyard under their lemon tree. Her new ballad “Lemon Tree” carries a lilting melody, coupled with organic production and soothing saxophone peeling back the layers of a heavy world. It reminds us of what Monogem already knows: to appreciate the little things (and little ones) in our daily lives.

This June we’ll celebrate the 5oth anniversary of the seminal recording by Little Feat with a new deluxe edition of Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, featuring rare and unreleased versions plus outtakes from album sessions as well as a 1975 concert in Paris. Formed in Los Angeles in 1969, this outfit made a tasty stew of blues, country, R&B, and good ole’ rock n’ roll. We’ll share a song you may recognize, which has been sampled and covered by many — it’s an alternate version of the funky classic “Spanish Moon.”

Now that Beyonce released her country album to rave reviews, we’re seeing the buoying effect of her limelight, allowing other women artists to rise with the genre. Canadian artist Kaia Kater shines her love of the banjo with a love letter to her instrument. “In Montreal” is replete with head-spinning experimental rhythms and lyrics about a poet who feels lost and aimless, plus the added bonus of Grenadian-Canadian and Montreal native Allison Russell on vocals.