RavenSingsTheBlues

This year I’m working to focus as much as I can on the site, but it’s also a big financial undertaking. If you love what RSTB offers to the music community, please consider supporting the site with subscriptions stating at $3. Also, bands, if you need bios, reach out! Thanks!

I don’t often post here anymore, but for all the Twitter folks, it's list time again. I've finally whittled it down. My 100 favorite albums and 15 favorite reissues of 2025. It was a hell of a year for music! Thanks, as always, for reading. bit.ly/44U65VY

Hello Sunshine is a great new compilation album from @RSTBRecords featuring Cosmic travelers Bobby Lee, Rose City Band, The Bures Band, Garcia Peoples and more, with all proceeds going to Music Cares to help artists dealing with losses from L.A. wildfires. klofmag.com/2025/03/new-re…

I put together this great Cosmic American tribute to one of my all time favorites, Relatively Clean Rivers. All proceeds from the album will go to @musicares.bsky.social to help with recovery from L.A. Wildfires. Check out the tracklist and details here: bit.ly/3XslclR

The title track from the new album, Heat Dome, is doused in haze, rippling through the ether with a beautiful blur. It’s a rare moment of clarity on an album that dives deep into the corroded underbrush. A gem for fans of Grouper or Tower Recordings bit.ly/4b0e1qA

Buzzing with a power pop heart and a halo of harmonies, the new Rishis single fizzes to life. The band even pulls in Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan on guitar for the track, culminating in a searing solo that tumbles through the speakers with infectious energy. bit.ly/4gIiXlh

Assembled from members of DDT and White Manna, Spunflower decamped to a 120 year-old church in Humboldt Country to form the bones of their new record, a deeper vibration, somewhere between the seance of spiritual jazz and the science fiction of Kosmiche. bit.ly/3EDzYzA

“Chain Reaction” finds the band at their most boisterous, pounding through breathless frets and piano keys with a wild-eyed energy that draws the listener into their ode to self-destruction and deception. @troubleinmind.bsky.social bit.ly/3CMJFv6

On their 2nd LP, Horsegirl stretches out and loses quite a bit of the claustrophobic tension of the last album. Guitars still set the tone, but the smudges of the ‘90s have cleared away in favor of post-punk’s austerity and icy exhale. @matadorrecords bit.ly/3WYbRlk

Tyler’s latest plays with a crumbling nostalgia for an Americana. Bringing to mind the degradation prominent in The Caretaker’s treatises on memory, works are bent and folded into creased pieces, dissolved in an acid bath of time and tarnish bit.ly/4aZ9WTm

Bhoy On The Wire is a testament to the experimentation & sonic malleability that has become the core of Bhajan Bhoy over the years. Slung between dub, synthpop, psych, & noise, the set hurtles us deep into the well of Ajay Sagger’s sonic imagination. bit.ly/40XiKVg

James Elkington pairs percussive palms on the instrument with deeply dreamlike playing. A kindred spirit to the work coming from Yasmin Williams or Cameron Knowler these days; far from the traditions that have often tied the genre to the tracks. bit.ly/4aWBpW7

New Consumables is rooted in the unraveling sense of control, doused in alienation & an edge of hopelessness. A little more lived-in than the last single, but still bubbling with the kind of immediacy that I’ve come to expect from releases on We Are Time. bit.ly/40NEK50

Black Editions Group reissue You Ishihara's solo debut, a detour from the heaviness of White Heaven and The Stars that finds the songwriter exploring a low-slung sound that stretches between narcotized VU burners and psych-folk’s edges. bit.ly/3Eyh9hm

Somewhere caught in the glare of lights off of the disco ball and pressed into the lipstick marks on the filter lives “Step Too Far.” Pushed over the edge, crumbling on the inside but keeping enough composure to slip away from the stage. bit.ly/3EnY2X2

A gauzy single wafts out of the new Exploding Flowers LP, staring into the sun to let the listener melt a few moments. The jangles remain, but the band leans into an atmosphere that’s thick & drowsy, letting the song’s title question drift away on the wind bit.ly/4jHBBfP

Striking out on his own, with a new label dubbed Ears Across America, Sean Thompson's new album picks up the country psych reins once again, burning some kaleidoscopic saunter into the synapses. bit.ly/3ErqMOK

Jetstream Pony feat mems of Trembling Blue Stars, The Wedding Present & The Dentists. The narcotic “Bubblegum Nothingness” douses the listener in gauzy plumes of pop, filling the room with fog before draping the cut in a slight shimmer of psych & dreampop bit.ly/3Cv9Zd9

Just in time to wipe the wither of the world from your mind, Jefre returns with a new album of all encompassing drone and pastoral ambience. First single “The Milky Sea” doesn’t tread lightly, inviting the listener into the new LP with 20+ minutes of float bit.ly/3EuWlr6

Ebo Taylor connects with Jazz Is Dead heads Adrian Yonge and Ali Shaheed Muhammed on his latest. Like a prime cut from Ebo’s past, the new track blends brass, fuzz, and a rhythmic insistence into the kind that can cut glass. bit.ly/40LU564

Tobacco City turn gaze from the grit of the American landscape to lend a rosy haze to the most melancholy of memories. They've been instrumental in the new wave of Cosmic Country, & prove why in the deep sighs & softly slung harmonies on “Bougainvillea.” bit.ly/3Q4gfvx