Jessica Lea Mayfield will perform with Emily Maxwell & Audrey Whitesides

Jessica Lea Mayfield official site | Jessica Lea Mayfield on Facebook | Jessica Lea Mayfield on Twitter

Mayfield has paved an unconventional lifestyle – playing in her family’s bluegrass band since the age of eight, she didn’t have any traditional schooling and released her first album at the age of fifteen, when she was discovered by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. Influenced by everything from that mountain sound to the modern garage, Mayfield has been able to come at songwriting from a pure perspective, lead more by her heart than any textbook. It’s what makes the tracks of Sorry Is Gone so striking and visceral – there is no filter on the emotions, no rulebook and certainly no excuses for anything she’s been through or the candor she fires

Sorry Is Gone is Mayfield’s first solo album since 2014’s Make My Head Sing…, which was released to widespread acclaim. Of the album, Rolling Stone asserted, “…Mayfield’s echo-laden bluegrass vocals mesh with scorching electric guitar lines to render remarkable results,” while Pitchfork praised, “There’s something certainly compelling about this raw, minimalist sound” and NPR’s Fresh Air proclaimed, “The music is heavy, but it soars.” Additionally Interview Magazine declared, “Mayfield sounds like she’s finally arrived” and USA Today affirmed, “Her evolution as an artist has been fascinating to hear.” Most recently, in 2015, Mayfield collaborated with Seth Avett on Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith.

Anni Rossi official site | Anni Rossi on Facebook | Anni Rossi on Soundcloud | Anni Rossi on Twitter | Anni Rossi on Bandcamp | Anni Rossi on Instagram

Anni Rossi is a multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Brooklyn, New York known for crafting euphonious folk-pop and punk to lo-fi and dirty Aaliyah-inspired RnB mixtape with prank phone calls. She is notable for writing and performing with her one-of-a-kind electric viola that was handcrafted from a tree branch by her friend and former Swans percussionist Thor Harris. Rossiʼs unconventional performance style, which sees her plucking and strumming her viola like an electric-guitar has won praise from Pitchfork, who described it as “a huge part of her appeal… she emulates the sound of her ‘father shoveling snowʼ and ‘cars on icy packed roadsʼ with a fricative scrape of the strings.” Rossi has released several critically acclaimed EPs and albums, including 2009ʼs Rockwell, which was recorded in Chicago with engineer Steve Albini and released internationally by British record label 4AD. Her songs have appeared in episodes of Greyʼs Anatomy, Sirens and The Good Wife, and a large-scale theater work she composed with award-winning Marxist anthropologist Michael Taussig has been performed at New Yorkʼs Whitney Museum and Berlinʼs Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Since parting ways with 4AD in 2011, Rossi has worked to expand her repertoire and find a wider frame of expression. She is now emerging from a period of playfully exploring several tangents of work woven by her creative instincts and raw responses to being human. With the help of Best Coast guitarist Bobb Bruno, she is currently putting the final touches on her third studio album which was recorded at his Yetiʼs Lair studio in Eagle Rock, California. The new work will see Rossi looking beyond the black and white framework that binds us to one another and exposing more of her emotional and mental interior.

Air Waves on Facebook | Air Waves on Western Vinyl

The album cover for Warrior, the third full-length by Brooklyn-based band Air Waves, features a ominous, androgynous figure standing with a bicycle, wearing a gas mask adorned with a daisy. The remarkable image was taken on April 22nd, 1970 at the inaugural Earth Day celebration in New York City by Nicole Schneit’s dad, Martin Schneit. Forty-seven years later, artist Em Rooney hand-painted Schneit’s original black & white photo, resulting in an image that radiates with Warrior’s indefatigable spirit, strength, and love Like many queer women, Nicole Schneit is a warrior by necessity, fighting for basic rights, dignity, and acceptance. Such determination in the face of hardship and injustice runs in Schneit’s family; her new album was inspired in part by her mom who was diagnosed with fallopian cancer last year. As she explains, “The doctor told her she had a fifteen to twenty percent chance, and her response was ‘I’m going to get this mother fucker.’ So the title ‘Warrior’ and the song are about her. After chemotherapy, surgery, and then more chemotherapy, all the cancer in her body has left and she’s currently in remission. I feel like most of the people in my life, including myself, are warriors and have overcome obstacles that seemed impossible to defeat.” The dignified fighter archetype referenced in the album’s title is explored on each of Warrior’s eleven pieces of bittersweet, empowering indie pop. According to Schneit the song “Gay Bets”, written after the 2016 election is “about being gay and being proud and open. I was thinking about hate crimes spiking and the current state of the world. My friend Jennifer Moore, who sings on the track, was my partner a long time ago, so I felt like I was writing a fuck you to Trump, for trying to take away queer rights, women’s rights, people’s rights.” The song “Tangerine” was inspired by the film of the same name in which two trans women try to make ends meet as prostitutes. This movie, a dark docu-comedy shot in the contrastingly sunny setting of L.A., reflects Schneit’s battle between identity and society via Brooklyn pop rock that swings between the pastel-tinged and the downright melancholic. On the album’s gorgeous closer “Blue Fire,” (inspired by the Adrienne Rich poem “The Will to Change”) Schneit equates her post-presidential-election anxiety to a flame that grows and recedes, as she pleads for herself and listeners to remain calm. Like its namesake, the track burns slowly and brightly into one of the most glowing points on the record, leaving the listener smiling with thoughtful hope. Warrior’s highlights, and all of the unmissable, satisfying pieces that tie them together show Schneit’s perseverance and resilience through crumbling relationships, personal adversity, and the current political climate, all leading to her most powerful collection of songs to date. Understated, subtly sophisticated, and equally empowering and comforting, Warrior launches Air Waves above the apolitical complacency of too many of the group’s contemporaries. Schneit proudly declares her mission statement: “I want these songs to be heard by people in my queer community, but also by anyone that wants to feels strong, powerful, and included.”