Michael Rault

Canadian troubadour Michael Rault has a new album of psych pop gems heading our way this summer with his new self-titled album.  Check out the sweet bubblegum sounds of "Neither Love Nor Money" below and pre-order the record here from Daptone.

Cochemea

Cochemea Gastelum is a saxophonist and composer who spent most of the last 15 years playing and performing with Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings.  And now he's got a deep and spiritual album of jazz, funk, soul, and R&B out on Daptone.  "All My Relations" feels heavy, an experimental sonic journey searching for life and meaning.  Listen to the title track below and get the record here.

The Mystery Lights

Here's a little soulful, psychedelic garage rock from The Mystery Lights.  New album "Too Much Tension!" drops in May on Daptone (pre-order here), but you should listen to "Someone Else Is in Control" below.

The Budos Band

Maybe everything's not completely going to shit, as we've got a new record from The Budos Band coming our way in April.  The New York band's mix of funk, soul, psych, and hard rock is undeniably infectious, the kind of sounds that would accompany the coolest, hippest movie never made.  Pre-order the upcoming "The Budos Band V" here from Daptone, and listen to album opener "Old Engine Oil" below.

Michael Rault

I've seen Toronto's Michael Rault perform a couple of times in the past at SXSW, but unfortunately missed him this last go around.  And that's a real bummer too, because the new jams i've heard from the artist from his forthcoming "It's a New Day Tonight" LP are all excellent '60s/'70s inspired soft psych gems.  The latest is the AM radio indebted "Dream Song."  Listen below and get the LP from Wick Records/Daptone.

Michael Rault - Sleep With Me

Here's a little McCartney-esque pop song from Montreal artist Michael Rault.  "Sleep with Me" is a lush and warm little number, sure to be stuck in your eardrums very, very soon.  Watch the trippy video below, and be on the lookout for a new album from the artist sometime next year via Daptone imprint Wick Records.

This Land Is Your Land

A few years ago, the late Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings recorded a wonderful rendition of Woody Guthrie's classic protest song "This Land Is Your Land."  Today only, Daptone Records is offering up a download of the song for free.  Get it here, listen below, and read label head Gabe Roth's description below:

"This land is your land
This land is my land

Though it has often been co-opted as a benignly patriotic campfire sing-a-long, "This Land Is Your Land" was actually written by Woody Guthrie in 1944 as a subversive protest song in biting response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." At my sister Samra's urging, we recorded our version in 2004, during the George W. Bush presidency, in an effort to re-establish it as a song about social justice.

Ironically, when Woodie Guthrie resided in Coney Island in 1950, his landlord was none other than Donald Trump's father, the infamously racist real estate mogul Fred Trump, about whom Guthrie composed his poem "Old Man Trump," including the lines:

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line 
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Using a dark re-harmonization of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as an intro, the Dap-Kings re-arranged "This Land" as a rough blues-y march, setting the tone for Sharon to tear into the lyrics of the song with the fiery gusto of a revolutionary. However, it was the inclusion of Guthrie's rarely-heard original verses that really enabled Sharon to reclaim the song as an urgent and unambiguous demand for equality and human dignity in a nation rife with social injustice and patriotic hypocrisy.

Today, as we inaugurate a rapacious billionaire to the highest office in the land, those original verses resonate with us as loudly as the day they were written:

There was a big high wall there
That tried to stop me
The sign was painted
Said 'Private Property'
But on the backside
It didn't say nothing
This land was made for you and me

One bright sunny morning
In the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office
I saw my people
As they stood hungry
I stood there wondering
If God Blessed America for me

We are grateful to Woodie Guthrie and to Sharon Jones, two friends of the people and bitter foes of the Trumps, who have given us an essential soundtrack to our struggle. When times get dark, let us not crumble in fear and bigotry. Let us honor the unbreakable spirit of those tireless fighters who have fallen before us. Let us rise to the fight, and let us help each other never to forget this noble truth:

This land was made for you and me."

-Gabe Roth

Charles Bradley - Changes

Why it took somebody over 40 years to do a soul cover version of Black Sabbath's "Changes" is beyond me, but thank god somebody finally did because it works so well it makes my heart swell.  67-year old Charles Bradley's latest album on Daptone Records, appropriately titled "Changes" features the moving cover, and it will be the best thing you hear all day.  Watch the video below.

The Budos Band

The Budos Band have been making incredible Afrofunk instrumental jams over the course of three albums now  The group's fourth, "Burnt Offerings," pairs those funky rhythms with a dark gloss of doom and stoner metal.  Just glance at the album cover above to get where they're going here.  The music is still horn-heavy funk and soul, but there is an added fuzz to the guitar and bass, and an early 70's psych-rock vibe throughout.  Deep grooves abound.  Listen to "The Sticks" below and grab the album from Daptone Records.

Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings - Goldfinger

I am a sucker for Bond theme songs.  Always have been.  Always will be.  So, it should go without saying that i was stoked to find out that soul revivalists Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings covered Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" for Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" soundtrack.  Listen below.