Friday Mix Tape: New Music Seminar V. II

The beginning of the year is traditionally slow for new music, but over the last few weeks things have been picking up with a number of quality releases giving us some fresh music to inject into our ears. With that in mind, I thought I’d use this week’s Mix Tape to offer up a batch of songs from some obvious releases, and maybe a few that might be under the radar. So sit back, enjoy and play it loud.

We kick things off with a trio of psychedelic rock revivalists. First up we’ve got  Smith Westerns with Weekend, the lead track from the Chicago-based act’s sophomore album Dye It Blonde. From there, it’s the Akron/Family with Silly Bears from their very clunky and absurdly titled record S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. Then, we’ve got the Real Estate side-project Ducktails with their Seinfeld referencing tune called Art Vandelay, which can be found on Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics.

We follow that up with folk-rockers The Cave Singers and All Land Crabs And Divinity from their upcoming release No Witch, which hits stores on February 22. Then, we’ve got the lovely Nicole Atkins with Cry, Cry, Cry from Mondo Amore, which came out earlier this week. Finally, we close things out with a song I’ve been obsessed with the most over the last few weeks – Iron & Wine’s Half Moon from his major label debut Kiss Each Other Clean. Take a listen…