Paris-based indie art-rock project Books Of Moods has just released their debut album, "Dreams". Guided entirely by Hugo Sailer, a self-taught singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and fiercely independent one-man studio, the record arrives as a hazy, beautiful shock to the system. Sailer wrote, performed, produced, and directed the accompanying visual universe from the ground up. I’ve spent the last few days letting these tracks sink into...

You can feel the kinetic friction of two decades of shared instinct the moment Hallaballoo launches into their latest album, “Gravity”. The Minneapolis collective James Douglas Gross, Robert Lee, Al Berg, Kyle Primus, David Kittelson, Aaron Short, Max LaRock, Travis Johnston, and Mike Wolfram has long favored living on the outer fringes of the jam-band cosmos. Here, they turn in-studio uncertainty into sharp, melodic...