Outside the Heard

	Twin Shadow Eclipse Warner Bros

After the success of his last album, Confess, Twin Shadow moved to L.A., got a major label deal and, with it, created a big POP masterpiece with Eclipse. Confessional at its core yet epic in scope, Eclipse is an 80’s album from the future. Bonus points for it being recorded in a chapel at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

	Delta Rae After It All SIR

It's been a good few years for Delta Rae – the relentlessly hard working six piece rock band from Durham, NC, whose sophomore album After It All – a collection of songs that looks to the folklore and romance of the American frontier as a means of understanding our angst about what is yet to come – finds them at the height of their powers. Imagine Fleetwood Mac playing Mountain Music: Big hooks, big harmonies, big time.

	Priory Need To Know WB

Written in a studio built from the ground up in a former cement factory, Need To Know – the latest from Portland’s Priory, is a unique and powerful collection of neon-lit new wave pop cut with modern rock aesthetics and hip hop flow, led by the ebullient and catchy single, "Weekend.” It’s the sound of a band emerging triumphantly from the trials of their past and looking fearlessly into the future.

	Greg Holden Chase the Sun WB

Chase The Sun is filled with Greg Holden’s passionate, purpose-driven rock songs – each brimming with tough, vibrant energy and showcase his lean, literate songwriting. Much of Chase The Sun was inspired by a life-changing, seven-week trip that the Scotland-born, England-bred artist took to India and Nepal in February 2013. Upon his return, Holden began to write the songs that appear on Chase The Sun, including the first single, “Hold On Tight.”

	Buena Vista Social Club Lost and Found Nonesuch

Coming almost two decades after the release of the original Grammy-winning, self-titled LP, Lost and Found is a collection of previously unreleased recordings culled from the Buena Vista Social Club’s studio heyday (1996– 2000), as well as live recordings from the group’s many globetrotting tours.

	Smallpools Lovetap! RCA

Smallpools is a quartet of frustrated musicians – half from Jersey; the other two from Portland – who’s crossed paths resulted in smartass synergy and big hooks. The songs on Lovetap! are both subversive and radio-ready – which makes them all the more dangerous. Revenge shall be theirs.

	Curtis Knight and the Squires featuring Jimi Hendrix You Can't Use My Name Legacy

Though Jimi Hendrix's tenure as a guitarist for Curtis Knight & The Squires in 1965 and 1966 was relatively brief, more than 100 albums have been crafted from approximately forty studio recordings and a slew of bunk live recordings and sundry studio detritus. You Can't Use My Name rights this wrong with new and properly mixed tracks by keeper of the Hendrix flame, Eddie Kramer.

	The Staple Singers Freedom Highway Legacy

Freedom Highway Complete is a newly remixed, remastered and expanded edition of the live concert masterpiece recorded by the Staple Singers in April 1965 in support and celebration of that year's historic civil rights marches from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama. Constrained by the time limits of 12" vinyl, the original album was pared down to key performance tracks. The new Legacy edition marks the first-ever release of the full concert and service.

	Young Guv Ripe 4 Luv Slumberland

Who's Young Guv? He's a ghostwriter eating pasta as he pens al dente tunes for the likes of Sum 41, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, a few Canadian Idols, Snow, a slew of hardcore bands, Maroon 5 and one or two OVO affiliates. Ripe 4 Luv is a beautiful album for beautiful people. Plus, it really shows off his range -- it sounds like Cheap Trick produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. What’s not to love?

	Evans the Death Expect Delays Slumberland

Following up their excellent 2012 self-titled debut, Evans the Death return now with their second album Expect Delay, which bristles with an underlying tension and veers from rip-roaring noise to quiet contemplation, underpinned by Katherine Whitaker's extraordinary voice. Still barely out of their teens, there's a tremendous sense across Expect Delays of a band coming into their own – both musically and in life. Young, down, out, and ready for adventure – Expect Delays has all the elements of a classic.

	The Bright Light Social Hour Space Is Still The Place Frenchkiss Records

Traversing the country and cranking tunes in the van, The Bright Light Social Hour’s collective musical palette expanded, embracing influences as diverse as deep house icon Frankie Knuckles, dance renegades Disclosure, Motown legends like Marvin Gaye, and Detroit Afrorock revolutionaries Black Merda. Everything siphoned into the vision behind Space Is Still the Place – an album that poses a few important questions and, quite possibly, an answer or two.

	Jack DeJohnette Made in Chicago ECM Records

With Made In Chicago, an exhilarating live album, Jack DeJohnette celebrates a reunion with old friends Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill and Muhal Richard Abrams – all veterans of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Jack brought them together again for a very special concert at Chicago’s Millennium Park in August 2013, completing the group with the addition of bassist/cellist Larry Gray. Made In Chicago is issued as the AACM begins its 50th anniversary year.

	Ólafur Arnalds & Alice Sara Ott The Chopin Project Mercury Classics

Icelandic pop/classical musician Ólafur Arnalds (celebrated composer for Broadchurch) has always loved the piano music of Frédéric Chopin, but he’d grown weary of the uniform and standardized perfection of recordings. Along with pianist Alice Sara Ott, Arnalds developed an intimate, fragile and often charmingly imperfect sound using old/unusual/altered pianos captured on vintage recording equipment, as well as various mixing techniques that create dreamlike ambient soundscapes. Breathtaking.

	Jakob Bro Gefion ECM Records

Gefion is Danish guitarist Jakob Bro’s first ECM album as a bandleader, following recordings for the label as sideman with Paul Motian and Tomasz Stanko. Like the work of those masters Bro’s balladeering distils a sense of jazz history in its specific and highly personal atmospheres. The open forms of Bro’s compositions leave plenty of space for his companions – drum legend Jon Christensen and bassist-of-the-moment Thomas Morgan – to make their statements, interactively and in parallel. There’s space too for the listener’s imagination, too.

	Hilary Hahn Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5/Vieuxtemps: Violin Cto No 4 Deutsche Grammophon

Two-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn now combines Mozart’s beloved and fiery “Concerto in A” with the rich, virtuosic romanticism of “Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 4.” More than 25 years have passed since Hilary first learned both concertos: “Ever since early childhood, opening the sheet music to a piece I love but haven’t yet played has felt like a magical combination of winning the lottery and setting out on an epic trip.”

	Thursday Waiting: The 15-Year Anniversary Edition Collect

On December 7, 1999, the then-fledgling Eyeball Records released the debut album by New Jersey band called Thursday. Waiting became more of a herald than an introduction: This is the sound of a band in the midst of discovering itself. Out of print since 2012, Waiting: The 15-Year Anniversary Edition features the original album remastered and repackaged with a die-cut sleeve, original liner notes, and a bonus 7” EP featuring previously unreleased demos from this period—including one never-before-released song.

	GABI Sympathy Software

GABI’s (A.K.A. Gabrielle Herbst) formal musical training began at an early age, where she studied gamelan, clarinet, and piano. While at Bard College, she developed a repertoire of short-form, loop-based, compositions for solo voice under the name GABI. The nine songs composed for Sympathy embrace the vast potential of the human voice as instrument, story and landscape. Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and Paul Corley produced.

	Kuroma Kuromarama Votiv Music

Born of the tectonics of 2012, thee current incarnation of Kuroma, which features members of The Whigs and MGMT, has unleashed Kuromarama Recorded between the band's hometowns of Brooklyn, NY and Athens, GA, the sound of Kuromarama most closely resembles that of an artisanal prescription spectrum of liquefied jolly rancher, each flavor -- each color -- imbued with a solace wrung from the depths of a salty ocean trench. You swim in this record. It has a fun surface. The sequence culminates. You're back in the cab. You've arrived at your apartment in the afterlife. Welcome to eternity. #trippy

	Alison Wonderland Run Astralwerks

One of Australia's most promising young musicians / producers, Alison Wonderland’s debut album, Run, boasts a robust rolodex of guest collaborators from both sides of the equator, in cluding Djemba Djemba, AWE, Lido, Ganz and Alexander Burnett. New York rapper Johnny Nelson, SAFIA's Ben Woolner, and Flaming Lips impresario Wayne Coyne.

	Kodaline Coming Up For Air RCA Records

That Kodaline are ready to release their second album has still to sink in with the men who made it. The Dublin quartet didn’t plan to follow up last year’s smash, In A Perfect World so promptly. In fact, they didn’t plan at all. Sparked by an invitation to record with fellow Irishman Jackknife Lee in his L.A. studio, Coming Up For Air was written and recorded just 8 weeks later. More electric than its predecessor but no less eclectic, Coming Up For Air is the sound of a band hitting its stride.

	Big Data 2 Warner Bros

Big Data is a paranoid electronic music project from the Internet, formed out of a general distrust for technology and The Cloud (despite a growing dependence on them). Helmed by producer, Alan Wilkis, Big Data aims to explore the relationship between man and machine, and how the internet has reshaped the human experience… But know this: Songs like “Dangerous” work by combining the best of TV on the Radio and LCD Soundsystem. Forget art! Let’s DANCE!

	Royal Blood Royal Blood Warner Bros

Royal Blood is a mixture of anguished vocals, ferocious drumming and bass that provides intricate detail as well as a rumble of rhythm. Royal Blood are the result of a lineage that stretches from present day heroes Queens of the Stone Age to the influential Led Zeppelin, and all the way back to early blues pioneers Yet this wall of sound emerges from just two men. Songs like “Out of the Black” and “Come On Over” will leave fans of The White Stripes and The Black Keys dizzy with wonder. And they’re British which means the drummer is especially good.

Over the past two years, Seattle duo Odesza (Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight) has rapidly ascended to the top of their class thanks to a strong online presence, sold out shows, and developing a stage show built to dazzle the festival set. In Return more than delivers on the promise of Odesza's previous work. A record with a precocious maturity and coherence, it’s a start-to-finish stunner of pop-infused, electronic wonder, littered with infectious hooks and potent atmosphere. Vocal performances from Zyra, Py, Shy Girls, and Madelyn Grant, who is featured on the previously released hit, “Sun Models,” are expertly worked into Odesza's trademark, mood-altering uplift. A new live performance has been developed to accompany In Return – ensuring that the shows will do the album proper justice.

Odesza -
In Return
Ninja Tune

The Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS) is a group of some of the best independent music stores in America. CIMS was founded in 1995; its current membership is made up of 29 accounts that handle 47 stores in 21 states. Many of the accounts have been recognized by the music industry and their local communities for their outstanding dedication to customer service and developing artist support.

Each member is bound by its shared love of music, a reputation for great selection and customer service in its community, yet each CIMS account is as unique as the market it represents. Most importantly, CIMS member stores continually seek to challenge the jaded, color-by-numbers advertising and marketing of other retailers.