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You may have experienced Arrington de Dionyso?s Malaikat dan Singa as an unexpected live force, pushing up through the earth like daffodils in late winter; or maybe you?re familiar with their previous exploits in the studio, Malaikat dan Singa [KLP215] and Suara Naga [KLP226], which burn clean with fragrant traumas. Open the Crown is similarly passion-filled, with new vistas (channeled hallucinations) exploring English (previously only the Indonesian language was employed) as their stomping ground to expand parallel themes anew. Open the Crown conveys tendrils of raw energy emanating from the head ? dream visions translated directly to audio outrage. Heavy. And sexy. To be expected from Arrington de Dionyso and his molten collection of Malaikat dan Singa who manipulate the ?form?d and the formless? to create from within this broken system.

The Shivas are friends and sweethearts who grew up playing music together, launching Kickstarters for a tour van and then coming of age driving that van around the country. Having played literally hundreds of shows together just after high school, The Shivas? joy and serious performing chops set them apart from other surf-pop bands in the swarming Portland music scene. Like their Burger Record cassette-mates Thee Oh Sees before them, The Shivas? sweet harmonies and sun-baked sound harkens back to the origins of surf rock, and are too compelling for the physical senses to refuse. Jared Molyneux (guitar; vocals), Kristin Leonard (drums, vocals), Eric Shanafelt and Robert Mannering are tight, precise, and deliciously fun Their sweet, reverb-laden LP Whiteout! (KLP243) debuts on K this spring,

Chain & the Gang have grown up in the crevices and the cracks of society, not due to the hi-octane nurturing of main-stream media and corporate wizards, but in spite of them. They make their version of call and answer rock'n'roll to fill a yawning chasm in music where fun, personality, charm, and content fit in. With songs like "Surprise Party," "Heavy Breathing" and "Certain Kinds of Trash" C&tG's punk spirit is as natural as falling off a log, and emits the pure expression of a feral child with finger paint. The Record is called IN COOL BLOOD (KLP240). Dig it?

Chain & the Gang are singers Ian Svenonius, Katie Alice Greer, and other musicians including Brett Lyman (M'Lady's records), Fiona Campbell (Coasting, Vivian Girls), Chris Sutton (Hornet Leg), Madison Farmer (Coasting), and Fred Thomas (Swimsuit, Saturday Looks Good to Me).

The Hive Dwellers new album is the essence of rock'n'roll moved from the garage to the basement to the rec room and then back out into the wild. Calvin Johnson plays guitar and sings his songs in combination with Gabriel Will on assorted stringed instruments and the contributions of several drummers who have made their mark on The Hive Dwellers.

Once upon a time Tara Jane ONeil mused that a 7 inch is the perfect venue for pop music, a place for light hearted documentation. After long travels and many collaborations, she banded together a group of friends to record two sweet singles from a vault of songs she's performed over the years, and she called the album "Connections" (IPU136). The first solo recordings from ONeil since her critically acclaimed release A Ways Away (KLP207) in 2009, "Connections" features "Sirena," the mesmerizing retelling of the Spanish Folk Tale in which a girl who disobeys her mother is turned into a mermaid, and "The Rainbow Connection" a tender rendition of the classic children's song.

Anyone who has seen Emily Beanblossom perform has surely left entirely taken with her. As the lead singer of Christmas, a band whose unique style of psych rock made them a cult marvel, Emily sold out both shows and records, due in no small part to her captivating, cultivated persona and the rare power of her voice. A vagabond for our ilk, she has lived life on the road and in collaborations, drifting down the line until she was called back to her family farm outside Chicago, Ill. Here she paused to lay down the hollowed noise that would become Ruby Fray. Her premier album Pith (KLP239) is a string of musical gems that range from harmonic americana and folk to shadowy psychedelia, united in their spectral chamber arrangements.

Phil Elverum, in his many musical incarnations, is a collector of sounds, so his Mount Eerie single 'Distorted Cymbals' (DBN122) fits in perfectly with the Dub Narcotic Disco Plate catalogue. Recorded with Calvin Johnson (Selector Dub Narcotics) in the Dub Narcotic studio, this collectable 7" has been called one of Phil's more cogent projects by Calvin, and is a wonderful collaboration between two musical savants.

Growing out of her previous release, Apple Core, some songs on The Mechanics of Hovering Flight are folk. Some are bluegrass. Some smack a bit more of country, with twangy guitar and foot-stomping rhythm, but somehow Kendl has created an album that is one moving piece, that tells a story between the liner notes. Perhaps it is her voice. Unwavering, at times haunting, Kendl's song reminds one of the legendary Lucinda Williams. And perhaps it is her dedication to writing the perfect song that serves her so well--to write a song that plays to the seasons, to the harvest, and speaks the truth about life. About love. About the love of a singer and her banjo.

Garage rock/Fuzz Pop. Girl-group heart and surfer-boy swagger. Would that every rock duo could be as coolly balanced as The Maxines. Two former Texans, guitarist Matt Murillo & drummer Kelly Norman rock out, sing together and make the coolest music ever on their new 7" LP, Drugstore (IPU140), out on K this January. Totally accessible and surprisingly PG-13, Drugstore is the kind of album you want to blast in the parking lot after school lets out, or bump while cruisin' the strip in your dad's T-Bird. They make garage rock as it was always meant to be made--fresh, rebellious and effortlessly fun.

The second album LAKE recorded for K, Let's Build a Roof [KLP213], included a song by drummer/multi-instrumentalist Lindsay Schief many consider one of its highlights, "Gravel". When the band returned from their U.S. tour following the release of Let's Build a Roof "Gravel" had a new fluid soulful feel to it that struck resident Dub Narcotic Studio producer Selector Dub Narcotic (aka Calvin Johnson) as a ripe candidate for the Dub Narcotic Disco Plate series of 7" 45 rpm phonograph records. He approached the band about the idea and they agreed to give it a try. The revamped "Gravel" was recorded at Dub Narcotic Studio, comprising the A side of this release. Flip it over and hear the Selector Dub Narcotic version, "Re-Grade", complete with a new melodica infused melody.

There is protectiveness in the fist that holds a bag of wolf teeth. These incisors are each of the songs held inside Tender Forever's fourth EP. To spend time with this magic while the first of the fall leaves suicide bomb your bare feet, and the cicadas are strangely silent, is like feeling the phantom sting of your own baby wolf fangs where they once bit into your most vulnerable parts.

The Hive Dwellers are a small grouping of Pacific Northwest natives, led by the large sound of one Calvin Johnson. On their latest musical effort, [DBN126] ? "Lynch the Swan" b/w Selector Dub Narcotic ? "Dub the Swan" ? Johnson and his alternating collection of collaborators fuse baritone vocals with melodica for an awkwardly peppy groove sensation.

"Tales of Crime (Part 1)" b/w "Tales of Crime (Part 2)" is the Pine Hill Haints' first 7" released by K. "Tales of Crime (Part 1)" attempts to express the dirty south, the home of the blues, the ancient father to son craft of whiskey and aging gardening in the mountains, and a cynical history, smashed and destroyed by the modern era of green star capitalism . . .

FROM THE DEPTHS OF DUB COMES THE CULTURE CLASH CLASSIC STEPPER, Adam Forkner, with his latest piece of hot wax [DBN125] White Rainbow ? "The Making of Thriller" b/w Selector Dub Narcotic ? "The Making of Star Wars."

This marks a home-coming of sorts, with Forkner returning to Dub Narcotic Studio to work with life-long friend and one time studio-mentor Calvin Johnson.

Welcome to the Midnight Opry [KLP236] is the third full-length album by The Pine Hill Haints. It's a burning tumbleweed headed straight for an open field in the middle of a dry summer; bright, dangerous, vast, and blistering. Laid out before you is a full rotation of snazzed-up, working class ghost-country. The contradiction allows you to mentally wander from one track to the other on an emotional journey from the range to the rock show, whatever you want to make of it within those parameters, that's what it is.

Nucular Aminals squeeze a lot onto their new 7" - "Nobody's Man" b/w "Kill Your Dogs" and "Garrison+ Phillips/Garrison Phillips." Shifting smoothly from surf to pop to rock and back again, the amount of fun you find yourself having while listening to these tracks is equal to at least two full-length albums, maybe four.

Inspired by Bollywood, a trip to Morocco, and Serge Gainsbourg, Angelo Spencer's second full-length World Garage [KLP235] brings armloads of new instruments and the flavor of exotic locations to a compilation of songs that amount to more than just an album, but an experience of wildness

Bobby Birdman is the ultraego of west coast musician Rob Kieswetter and he graces us with his musical interludes on "Don't Walk Away" b/w "Dub Walk" [DBN124]. Birdman's guitar twang supplemented with Calvin Johnson's melodica = magic in the heartland.

Nucular Aminals' self-titled debut release on K [KLP233] sounds like what would happen if you woke up in the morning and squeezed your tube of toothpaste, but a thick glob of sunshine came shooting out instead of minty freshness. This breed of Aminals was formed in Portland, Oregon by four distinctly rare species of musician who specialize in perfect pop melancholy.

Kendl Winter's new 7" At the Same Time [DBN121] stays true to what we've come to love from Kendl. The songs featured here are homegrown, feet in the dirt, sugary country, recorded at Dub Narcotic in Olympia, WA.

The tracks featured here single are good 'ol fashioned garage rock that morph and segue into surf, blues, and even at times a little bit of soul. But don't get confused, they're no retro band.

Tara Jane O'Neil and Nikaido Kazumi spent two years turning the recordings of 4 days into gorgeous intuitive guitar and voice duets that create a collection of orchestral collage songs which are truly a unique delight for the ears.

City Center's first full-length on K is Redeemer and it's a time capsule of strange geography and slow-motion memories; ten stretches of well-crafted sound by Fred & Ryan, distilled over the course of 2 years where the duo traveled around the country multiple times playing different versions of these songs in every basement, bar-room and house party available. The album title is actually the name of a street and a church (both) on said street in Ann Arbor, where Fred grew up and Ryan went to school. The songs are an atempt to retroactively understand said growing up (and said school), with underwater thoughts about high school tortures, stoned spring days listening to headphones for the microscopic elements of beauty, true love in a way that knows no age or era and the next generation of all these things already projecting themselves into the future at an alarming rate.Musically based in a tradition of what could be called the "understanding jam", City Center draws equally on the amped up teenage anger of hardcore (the Void side of the Faith/Void split), confused angst at the Gap sales rack circa '93 (Dinosaur Jr. style guitar solos over mumbling harmonies) or the frustration of the kid trying to talk about Fluxus at the open-armed parking lot scene of a Dead show in 1971.In the end, these songs reach out and grab at nothing, observe everything and ask no questions. The story folds back into itself like dim lights in the windows of houses only ever seen from the outside.