“Come and See,” Lean Year

–a meditative and profound song with lilting vocals and a mesmerizing melody. Powerful and elegant. Lean Year is Virginia-based singer Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson [The Comedy, Entertainment]. The duo co-wrote the album at home in Virginia and recorded it at the home studio of Chicago musician and engineer Erik Hall [In Tall Buildings, NOMO]. Lean Year’s self-titled album is out now.

“Oh Marie,” Misty Boyce

— This is an aching, sad, beautiful, winding song. The Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter’s full-length album, Get Lost, will be released on February 16, 2018.  As a popular keyboardist, Misty Boyce backed Sting, Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Bareilles and BØRNS. She recently lost her brother to an opioid overdose and her step-father to suicide. The indie-folk artist turned to writing music to work through the varied emotions she felt after these losses and hopes to reduce the stigma associated with drug addiction, mental illness and suicide. Boyce said: “Sometimes, I write to get the things I don’t want to feel out. And then maybe somebody else hears it and feels the same way, and it makes us both feel less alone. I get very frustrated with how disconnected we all are from each other, and how we’ll use whatever we can get our hands on to other people, whether it’s religion or our phones or what you like on Pinterest—anything to make us feel right and prove other people wrong. And then we don’t have to listen anymore. We can just tune out and focus on our own self-obsessed worlds. Nobody’s listening. It’s a scary thing.”