“This is the part of the song when we come together,” Adam Schatz’s voice rings out. “There’s no before. There’s no after. There’s only this.” Schatz leads Landlady, the Brooklyn five-piece whose 2014 Hometapes debut, Upright Behavior, boldly disrupts the notion of genre and reveals the soulful and continually-resonating work of Schatz and core band members Ian Chang, Ian McLellan Davis, Booker Stardrum, and Will Graefe, as well as a cast of NYC-based contributors gathered from Schatz’s tandem walks of life as a solo musician, improviser, organizer, collaborator, promoter, and writer. Compared to rock and roll juggernauts like The Band and Talking Heads, Landlady merge vast skill, a bend toward experimentation, and a proven belief that songs can be a true extension of the human experience. The result is timeless and charted by their recorded works and transformative live shows — both critically-acclaimed and ever-evolving. Landlady released a new EP, Heat, this summer, in tandem with nationwide tours with Son Lux and Buke and Gase.

Debo Band is a 11-member group led by Ethiopian-American saxophonist Danny Mekonnen and fronted by charismatic vocalist Bruck Tesfaye. Since their inception in 2006, the band has won raves for their groundbreaking take on Ethiopian pop music (think Ethiopiques), which incorporates traditional scales and vocal styles, alongside American soul and funk rhythms, and instrumentation reminiscent of Eastern European brass bands. Debo have toured Ethiopia twice, appearing at both the Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa and Sauti Za Busara in Zanzibar, the largest music festival in East Africa. In North America, they’ve shared stages with Gogol Bordello, Amadou & Mariam, Antibalas, The Family Stone, and Ethiopian great Tilahun Gessesse. Recent and upcoming performances include the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Bumbershoot, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, The Kennedy Center, Montreal Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, South by Southwest, globalFEST 2012, Joe’s Pub, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, and Montana Folk Festival. Their self-titled debut for Sub Pop / Next Ambiance was produced by Thomas “Tommy T” Gobena of Gogol Bordello and features album art by critically-renowned painter Julie Mehretu. It was recorded at Machines with Magnets (Battles, Deer Tick) and mastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Joe LaPorta at The Lodge.