Outside the Heard

	Waters Something More! Vagrant

Something More! is San Francisco by way of Los Angeles indie pop band Waters' first release since 2015's acclaimed What's Real. Written and recorded throughout 2016 in LA, following big-time touring runs with the likes of Weezer, Tegan and Sara, and Matt and Kim, Something More! came together after the five-piece band returned home and were forced to confront the day-to-day realities of everyday life – resulting in the most raucous, hook-driven songs of the band's career. "They sound fun on the surface, says frontman Van Pierszalowski, “But they are dark songs in disguise."

	COIN How Will You Know If You Never Try Columbia

How Will You Know If You Never Try is the sophomore stunner from Nashville’s Coin. Featruing the band’s breakthrough singles "Talk Too Much" and "Feeling," How Will You Know If You Never Try is “Our attempt to embrace the inevitable," says frontman Chase Lawrence. "Yeah, death creeps in closer every day, but we shouldn't fear it. Rather, it should motivate us. Do new things, live underwater, be what you wanna be: just try. We are very proud to share the tombstone engraved soundtrack to our early 20s."

	Day Wave The Days We Had Harvest

The Days We Had is the full-length debut album from Day Wave – the critically acclaimed dream pop project of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jackson Phillips. In addition to the shimmering guitar-pop of lead single "Wasting Time," the album also ushers in a yet another evolution for Day Wave with follow-up "Something Here," a mosaic of iridescent synths, energetic guitars, and steadfast percussion. The Days We Had truly showcases the dynamic talents of Phillips, who played all the instruments and produced every track on the record.

	LP Lost On You Vagrant

LP is a pop music polymath. Her music encompasses a variety of sounds – rock, stomping blues, EDM – which is the reason she’s become an in-demand writer and collaborator, working with the likes of Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, and the Backstreet Boys (among many others). A raw and powerful performer in her own right, LP’s star has been on the rise thanks to some successful European singles and prime placement in Orange is the New Black. Lost on You is poised to break her through.

	Alexandra Savior Belladonna Of Sadness Columbia

Belladonna of Sadness is the debut album from Portland native Alexandra Savior. With a voice that channels the ghosts of smoky '50s jazz haunts, lucid and literary lyricism worthy of J.D. Salinger, and wondrous youth-in-revolt abandon, Alexandra will tell you she makes "sassy impolite spaghetti western music." Belladonna of Sadness was co-written by Alexandra and British rock front man Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys, The Last Shadow Puppets) and co-produced by James Ford (HAIM, Florence and the Machine) and Turner. The album features eleven blissfully cinematic tracks, steeped in retro vibes and dusted with darkness and sensuality.

	Forest Swords Compassion Ninja Tune

Compassion, the follow-up to Forest Swords' critically lauded 2013 debut Engravings, is a response to the uncertain, aggressive new world we're experiencing and communicating within – distilling it into a unique sound territory. Matthew Barnes' exploration of the mid-point between ecstasy and melancholy, artificial and human feels timely and affecting – a celebration of primal connections, life itself, and an anxious glance at the direction we're heading. The result is an assured, compelling, vital body of work – weaving swathes of buzzing digital textures, field recordings, clattering beats and distorted jazz sax with fizzing orchestral arrangements.

	Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg Birkin Gainsbourg : le symphonique Nonesuch

Jane Birkin was Serge Gainsbourg’s muse for 25 years. Even when they were no longer a couple, his music longed for her. In 2002, she began to sing his music again, working with different composers and arrangers – but Birkin / Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique – created by artistic designer Philippe Lerichomme and composer / arranger Nobuyuki Nakajima – is Gainsbourg and Birkin as you’ve never heard them before. You’ll fall in love all over again.

	Dreamcar DREAMCAR Columbia

In the summer of 2014, No Doubt's Tony Kanal (bass), Tom Dumont (guitar), and Adrian Young (drums) and singer Davey Havok (AFI) began writing and demoing music together. The four musicians clandestinely moved into a cramped downtown Los Angeles rehearsal spot and revved up what would become Dreamcar. Rife with big hooks, shimmering guitar tones, percussive slap bass, bombastic drums, and a neon-lit dancefloor dreaminess, Dreamcar gleefully races through the gleaming 80s (both underground and on the MTV) through a kaleidoscope of wisdom earned from three decades after the fact.

	Jimmy Urine The Cinematic Sounds of Jimmy Urine BMG/The End

For over a decade New York City's Mindless Self Indulgence, featuring frontman Jimmy Urine, has been whipping crowds of eager fans in to furious riots with their heart-pounding electro-punk and death-defying stage antics. Over the years, they developed a devoted following, spawned bidding wars between major labels, and earned a reputation as a tough live act to follow, from clubs to arenas. With MSI currently on hiatus, Jimmy Urine is extending his creative palette in movie soundtracks and video game music including Metronomicon, I Want to Be Human, The Hive and more. He has now collected all those songs and is releasing them on the compilation album The Secret Cinematic Sounds of Jimmy Urine.

	Leif Vollebekk Twin Solitude Secret City Records

Born in Ottawa in 1985, Leif Vollebekk taught himself music using instruments inherited from his grandfather: harmonica, guitar, piano, and an old fiddle. Although he began with songs off the radio, originals started coming too, especially during a year spent in Iceland, where he gigged around Reykjavik, practicing his burled Icelandic and trying out new refrains. Vollebekk's debut album was originally released in 2010. Recorded and mixed in only ten days on the same 1968 Neve console used to create Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. NPR called Inland "beautiful, memorable and moving" by NPR. Still is.

Chris Stapleton's highly anticipated new album, From A Room: Volume 1 is the first new music since 2015's breakthrough double-Platinum solo debut, Traveller, and will be followed by From A Room: Volume 2 coming later this year. The album takes its name from Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where it was recorded during the winter of 2016-17. Once again produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Dave Cobb, Volume 1 features eight original songs as well as a rendition of "Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning," written by Gary P. Nunn and Donna Sioux Farar and made famous by Willie Nelson. Other highlights include "Second One to Know", which Stapleton recently premiered at the 52nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards as well as the album's first single, “Either Way.” In addition to Stapleton on vocals and guitar and Cobb on acoustic guitar, the album features Morgane Stapleton on harmony vocals as well as longtime band-members J.T. Cure on bass and Derek Mixon on drums, in addition to harmonica legend (and longtime Willie Nelson band member) Mickey Raphael on harmonica

Chris Stapleton -
From A Room: Volume 1
Mercury Nashville

"If you're going to sing something, it might as well be something important," says The Black Angels' Alex Maas. That ethos is the pulsing heartbeat of Death Song. Written well before the vitriolic election cycle, Death Song is part protest, part emotional catharsis, this is a troubled record for troubled times, and in that sense, it's classic Black Angels. Album opener "Currency" sets the stage in an explosive way, with ground-shaking low end and searing guitar riffs wrap around lyrics dealing with the desires that draw us to the brink of ruin. As the album unfolds, subsequent tracks reveal similar self-perpetuating cycles. Romance, violence, religion, health; for The Black Angels, everything is connected. On "I'd Kill for Her,' Maas steps inside of the mind of a man driven by the twisted belief that there's beauty in brutality, while "Half Believing" tackles modern apathy, and "Grab As Much As You Can" is a musing on the nature of greed. The surreal, Krautrock-influenced "I Dreamt" envisions a reality in which our true selves can be shared through artistic expression, and in that sharing, a new, more harmonious way forward is revealed. If there's a way out of the mess, Death Song suggests that it's not through consumption, but rather through creation. And fuzz… Lots of fuzz.

Black Angels -
Death Song
Partisan

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.