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Sean Hayes is a Bay Area singer-songwriter who makes music to dance to or cry to, or maybe both at the same time. He was born in New York City, raised in North Carolina, and honed his earliest musical chops in a band playing Irish and old-time tunes — but his unique style of deeply felt, R&B-inflected folk really matured during his two decades singing and playing in cafes, bars, and night clubs of San Francisco.

Basia Bulat is a singer-songwriter living in Montreal, Canada. She offers both a distinctive voice and artistry that pulls as much from gospel and soul as it does from classic folk. In addition to her skills as a powerhouse vocalist, Bulat is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, recording and performing on electric guitar, piano, autoharp, ukulele, bass and charango.

Time keeps moving and things keep changing, but that doesn’t mean we can't fight back. Yo La Tengo have raced time for nearly four decades and, to my ears, they just keep winning. The trio’s latest victory is called This Stupid World, a spellbinding set of reflective songs that resist the ever-ticking clock. This is music that’s not so much timeless as time-defiant. “I want to fall out of time,” Ira Kaplan sings in “Fallout.” “Reach back, unwind.”

Birthed in 2016 from a cross-section of beloved UK punk groups, London’s High Vis have steadily become legends by virtue of their passionate performances and evolving discography of poetic, progressive hardcore. Comprised of singer Graham Sayle, drummer Edward “Ski” Harper, bassist Jack Muncaster, and guitarists Martin Macnamara and Rob Hammaren, the band fuse the fury of English street punk with touches of Brit pop melody, neo-psychedelia swirl, wiry post-punk rhythm, and even bits of Madchester groove. To Sayle, such melting pot energy points the way forward: “For years hardcore had pretty clear boundaries – other scenes were separate worlds. Now things are getting more blended, drawing from different places.”

Hurray For The Riff Raff: Alynda Segarra is 36, or a little less than halfway through the average American lifespan. In that comparatively brief time, though, the Hurray for the Riff Raff founder has been something of a modern Huck Finn, an itinerant traveler whose adventures prompt art that reminds us there are always other ways to live.

That’s the Price of Loving Me is the fourth solo album by Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta), and his first album with producer Kramer since 1990’s This Is Our Music. Recorded in Los Angeles with Britta Phillips on bass and vocals, Anthony LaMarca (The War on Drugs) and Roger Brogan on drums. Eight new Wareham compositions plus covers of Nico and Mayo Thompson. Dean Wareham will be touring Europe and the USA in April and May, 2025.

Having celebrated his 70th birthday with a sold out show at the historic Royal Albert Hall in October 2023, Midge Ure is keen to continue the celebration of his life in music by announcing a new North American tour dates for 2025.

Two decades since debuting as the masked and nicknamed drummer and vocalist of Animal Collective, Noah Lennox has led so many creative lives, navigated so many different styles, and been part of so many beloved recordings, that it can be easy to overlook just how consistent his creative vision has remained. From landmarks solo albums like 2007’s Person Pitch and 2015’s Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, to breakthroughs with Animal Collective like 2004’s Sung Tongs and 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, to his boundary-pushing collaborations with Daft Punk and Solange, Dean Blunt and Paramore, all of his work followed an instantly identifiable emotional throughline while influencing multiple generations and genres of artists.

With a career now spanning six decades, Robyn Hitchcock remains a truly one-of-a-kind artist: surrealist rock ’n’ roller, acoustic troubadour, poet, painter, and writer. From The Soft Boys’ art-rock and The Egyptians’ Dadaist pop to solo masterpieces like 1984’s milestone I Often Dream of Trains and 1990’s Eye, Hitchcock has crafted a striking oeuvre rife with recurring marine life, obsolete electric transport, ghosts, cheese and what one writer has described as “morbid eroticism.”

“2025 will be the 45th anniversary of the release of ‘Entertainment!‘ in the US, and will be our final year as a band. It’s been wonderful, but all things must end. We want to go out with a bang and celebrate with our fans and friends. So, on what will be our last US tour, we’ll play two sets at each show: ‘Entertainment!” from start to finish in the first, and the best of the rest in the second. Come and join in, it’ll be a blast!"