An Evening with Shawn Mullins: a solo performance filled with songs and stories
After a series of indie releases and growing buzz in the Atlanta music scene, Shawn Mullins’ critical and commercial breakthrough came when 1998 Soul’s Core shot him to fame on the strength of Grammy-nominated No. 1 hit, “Lullaby” followed by AAA/Americana No. 1 hit “Beautiful Wreck” from 2006’s 9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor. His song, “Shimmer” was used in promotion of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney and was included on the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack. His co-write “All in My Head” from 2008’s Honeydew was featured in episode one of the hit TV sitcom “Scrubs.” Mullins also co-wrote the Zac Brown Band’s No. 1 country tune “Toes.” In early 2002, he formed supergroup The Thorns with Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge. “No Blue Sky” from the resulting album, is a modern day classic. For the 20th anniversary of his breakthrough album, Shawn revisited the music of Soul’s Core by recording two new versions of the album. He calls this Soul’s Core Revival. This is not a remix or a remaster of the original, but rather brand new recordings with new arrangements of the songs – one album is stripped down solo performances, some on guitar, some on piano and maybe one a cappella and the second is a new studio recording with his full band, Soul Carnival. Website · Facebook · Instagram · YouTube
The Bug Club
The Bug Club are back with a new album. It’s been a whole eleven months since their last. Where have they been? Every Single Muscle, the band’s fifth LP, arrives May 29th, 2026 via Sub Pop, making it a hat-trick for the Welsh duo and their esteemed Seattle-based patrons. Since Very Human Features, which emerged in June of 2025, the non-stop tour has seen the BBC 6 Music and KEXP favourites ping-pong across the Atlantic like they used to the Severn Bridge. Various festival slots in the summer kept them from having any sort of holiday – who needs one when you live in Wales anyway? – until it was time to head back to the writing room. So that answers that first question. Not that you’d have otherwise known. Ever self-effacing, songwriters Sam (guitar, vocals) and Tilly (bass, vocals) go as far as to claim that they’ve been sitting around “doing nothing at all” during track “It’s Our Manager David.” That’s clearly a lie. Every Single Muscle gets off to a full-throttle, chugging start with “Miss Wales 2012,” referencing a competition both Tilly and Sam have actually won. Dead serious. It’s the first of many sub-two-minute tracks on the album, setting the tone for The Bug Club’s punkiest offering yet and recalling both the short, sharp snaps of their very first singles and the grunt of recent releases. So packed is the album with wall-to-wall riffs and lyrical hooks rammed into tight confines that Sam actually asks permission to squeeze in a solo during second track “A Good Day for Dying.” He’s given two seconds. Not that we’re short-changed, though, because Sam asks again later on and is granted more. Across eighteen tunes there’s enough classic Sam/Tilly guitar interplay to satisfy even the most vociferous Bug Club club member and firmly refute the band’s own claim that they are only “just about technically proficient on our instruments.” “Full Range of Motion” has a choppy rhythm that sits atop drummer Tom’s tight beat and serves to remind us all of Minutemen, for a minute. “Make It Count” brings sweet melody and call and response, while “All My Clothes Fell Off” allows for a slower paced ballad that builds to a crescendo that would not be out of place in the world of classic rock. “Cut to Black” combines a Sparks-esque falsetto and Tilly’s melodic bass playing with a rhythm something close-ish to what Klaus Dinger used to do for Neu! And closer “My Uncle Warren Drives a Passat” sees them doing a bit of a left turn and swapping out guitars for keys. This record’s an exercise in efficient maximalism – the musical equivalent of your dad packing the car for a holiday. Bring what you like; space is tight but they’ll get it in there somehow. On to the words, because with these guys those are important. While Very Human Features did an excellent job of pointing at everyday things and highlighting their absurdity, on Every Single Muscle The Bug Club look more closely at themselves. Not so much in an introspective way, though. More in a way an alien might probe a captive specimen on an intergalactic gurney. Horror movies get their “body” subgenre, now garage rock albums get theirs too. Self-interested in an entirely new sense of the term, the human form and condition is prodded and inspected from every angle throughout the course of the album. Bandcamp · Instagram · Facebook · YouTube
BALTHVS
BALTHVS has grown in six years to become one of the most unique psychedelic groove acts in the world. With over 100 million streams, four albums, and twelve EPs, the band has established itself in the global touring circuit, performing across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. They have played in 26 countries and 94 cities worldwide, appearing at major events including Jam Cruise, SXSW, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Outside Lands, Electric Forest, Lightning in a Bottle, Montreal Jazz Festival, SXSW Sydney, and Jazz Cafe Festival. The band has also made notable appearances on KEXP, Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Cafe, and the BBC. Website · Spotify · Instagram · Bandcamp · YouTube
Fruit Bats
The midwest, particularly the part of the midwest Eric D. Johnson hails from, is a largely flat expanse. Zipping through it on the highway, you’ll see cities and towns rise up in the distance, but blink and you’ll miss other man-made rejoinders to horizontal living dotting the landscape, hill after hill, built from the refuse of the past: landfills. Some of these hills make for great sledding spots, parks, and trails. Others turn organic waste into compost. The Landfill, Fruit Bats’ June 12, 2026 album from Merge Records, is something else entirely: a mountain dominating the landscape of Johnson’s heart. This being a Fruit Bats record, one scales that mountain to take in the view, to see the future spread out as wide and endless as the midwestern plains. “But the mountain that gives us this vantage point,” Johnson says, “is made out of the trash that we’ve created, the collective weight of the past and where it’s taken us.” When he details that view on title track and lead single “The Landfill” — “a holy vision / of what could be / and couldn’t be / and could have been” — it’s thrilling to hear him sent soaring by a full complement of instruments. But what’s truly stunning is how, in his recontouring from could to couldn’t to could have been, he has lost none of the vulnerability that was brought to the foreground of his songwriting by 2025’s solo outing, Baby Man. Over the course of his now 25-year career under the moniker, most of Eric D. Johnson’s output as Fruit Bats has been the product of patience and fine-tuning. His songs, to borrow a phrase, are slow growers, given life on albums that encompass long stretches of time and memory. Baby Man changed that — he disallowed himself from referring to material he’d been working on before laying the album down, utilizing the morning pages technique of stream-of-consciousness, observational songwriting which flowed directly into his afternoon recording sessions. It was both a breathtaking document of Johnson’s skill as a singer-songwriter and an unvarnished account of the two weeks in which he recorded the album. Baby Man’s closeness to Johnson’s heart and the close attention to his voice and instrument its minimalist-maximalist ethos required uncorked something in him as he wrote towards a new full band effort. “That session was over,” he explains, “but there was way more to explore. I liked the immediacy of it, and I wanted to see how that would translate into a full-band Fruit Bats record.” Within weeks, he was back in a studio, this time with his band — David Dawda (bass), Josh Mease (guitars, synth), Frank LoCrasto (piano, synth), and Kosta Galanopoulos (drums) — with whom Johnson has spent over a decade building Fruit Bats into one of the most in-demand live acts in indie rock. Listening to The Landfill, it’s not hard to understand why: simply put, this band smokes. Producing the initial recording sessions in Washington’s Bear Creek Studios, Johnson set out to capture “the sound of this band I constantly marvel at, the feeling of being in a room with musicians you love and trust enough to let them cook.” They laid most of it down on the floor — no click tracks, no comped vocals, and minimal overdubs, with frequent collaborator Thom Monahan returning to provide additional production and The Landfill’s final mix. Website · Instagram · Facebook · Spotify
Cole Chaney and Kyova
When it comes to his latest album, In the Shadow of the Mountain, 25-year-old singer-songwriter Cole Chaney is pretty candid and blunt about who he is and what kind of music he wants to make—the result of which is this stunning offering from an artist wise beyond his age. “There’s a yin to every yang,” Chaney says. “I want nothing more than for people to be creatively fulfilled, and to do what they want. But, for me to preach that? I have to practice it.” That attitude resides at the core of the record, where the trajectory of the songs seemingly—more so purposely—shoot off in the opposite direction of many of his contemporaries in the Americana, country and folk music scenes. In truth? Chaney is summoning his rock roots. “I’m not concerned with being labeled as ‘country.’ There’s not a lot of music being released right now that is doing anything for me. I made something that I would want to listen to.” Pointing to his lifelong admiration for 1990s rock—specifically Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots—as a vital influence on the sonic landscape of the album, Chaney aimed to find a melodic balance between that raw and real rock sound and the bluegrass and folk music of his native Kentucky. “I wanted to make something that sounded like Ralph Stanley went in and got backed up by Soundgarden,” Chaney jokes. “I write what I listen to. And whatever I listen to is going to come out in my music.” In the Shadow of the Mountain was captured by famed producer Duane Lundy at his legendary studio in Lexington, Kentucky. While talking at length about the possible collaboration, Lundy spoke of his love for Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots. “I know plenty of bluegrass guys that could have recorded this for me,” Chaney says. “But, I wanted to take that string band and folk sound and bring it to a rock producer, to bring that big sound out of these acoustic instruments—[Duane] was able to do that.” The album was also co-produced by guitarist Zachary Hamilton, a close friend of Chaney, who is also the brother and bandmate of rising Lexington singer-songwriter Abby Hamilton. “[Zach] has that ability to fill a room with his guitar, his voicings, and all the choices he goes for down the neck of the guitar,” Chaney says. “When Abby was opening for us, I got to sit there and watch him play every night. I knew when I was going to do another album, he needed to be involved in some capacity.” Heading into the recording sessions, Chaney brought along his band, which included Ella Webster (fiddle), Kyle Kleinman (mandolin), Joel Murtaugh (upright bass) and James Gooding (drums). Acclaimed Kentucky musician (and former bandmate) Aaron Bibelhauser also makes an appearance. With this pivot in his tone and intent compared to his 2021 debut album, Mercy, Chaney sees this current path as more in tune with what he’s not only wanted to do all along, but has slowly shifted towards in recent years amid endless touring and performing. “I was green [while recording Mercy]. I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Chaney admits. “And, by the grace of so many people around me, we were able to get some really great string band music on [that album].” Website · Facebook · Instagram · YouTube
Lynn Blakey: A Celebration of Her Life and Music
Lynn Blakey: A Celebration of Her Life and MusicFeaturing Chatham County Line, Tift Merritt, Skylar Gudasz, Caitlin Cary, Tonya Lamm, Sara Bell, John Howie Jr., Linda Hopper, Jeffrey Dean Foster, Caroline Mamoulides, Anne-Claire Cleaver, Rachel Kiel, Mary Johnson Rockers & MoreBacked by an All-Star Tarheel Band: John Chumbris, Doug Davis, Wes Lachot, Will Rigby & Robert Sledge Lynn Blakey, one of the most beloved singers North Carolina ever produced, died February 6. Those who knew Blakey speak of her kindness, beauty, and optimism, and the way she lit up any room she was in. All true. She was like a sun that never set, and a tireless warrior—an activist with North Carolina Music Love Army, and an unofficial advisor to friends trying to negotiate the intricacies of the Affordable Care Act. A spectacular vocalist and terrific songwriter, Blakey played in North Carolina and Athens, Ga., bands including Oh Ok (with Lynda Stipe), Let’s Active (with Mitch Easter), Holiday (with Linda Hopper), Glory Fountain (with John Chumbris), Tres Chicas (with Caitlin Cary and Tonya Lamm), and most recently, the indie-rock supergroup Salt Collective (including tracks with Mike Mills and Matthew Caws). Her Christmas shows with her husband, violinist Ecki Heins, were treasured local events as well. She was our scene’s Emmylou Harris, blessing scores of other friends’ recordings with her voice for the ages. Yep Roc Records is releasing Dreams Are Lovers: A Retrospective, a collection of some of her marvelous songs, on May 29, and the concert is both a celebration of her life and a record-release performance for this release. “Anybody Lynn ever met immediately realized what a bright shining star she was,” said her Tres Chicas bandmate Lamm. “Not like a rock or movie star, but a brilliant light of kindness, happiness, and depth. A living angel. I can still hear her laugh and will hold that in my heart forever.” Blakey’s musical life began four decades ago at UNC-Greensboro, where she was a college radio deejay and avid concert-goer. When R.E.M. played Friday’s in Greensboro for the first time in 1981, she was one of perhaps 20 people in the room. Inspired, she began playing in bands herself, among them Broken Crayons and, later, Holiday with Linda Hopper. In 1983, she left school and toured with Let’s Active, eventually landing back in Chapel Hill and fronting a series of great bands over the years. “All I ever had to do was put a mic in front of her,” said Chris Stamey, who frequently recorded Blakey, “and the first take would always have magic in it. To us, she was family, even singing some of the Tres Chicas album with everyone around one mic while holding our young daughter, Julia, in her arms.” The May 30 concert will benefit Ecki Heins’s ongoing cancer treatment expenses, and sales from the Yep Roc release will benefit the NC Musicians Mental Health Alliance, a partnership between Be Good To Yourself, the SIMS Foundation, and Backline that provides grants up to $1,000 to help cover the cost of mental health care for North Carolina-based music industry professionals and their family members. Apply here: https://backline.care/case-management – excerpted from an article in INDYWEEK by David Menconi
MC Chris
It was twenty-five years ago that most fans first came across mc chris when Adult Swim premiered September 2nd, 2001. The first album was free for download on a website most OG fans found in the credits of a random Sealab episode. After five years of working for Cartoon Network during the day and making mc chris music at night, mc took a chance, quit his job and headed out on the road. He found packed venues filled with nerdy kids who knew all the words. Twenty years later he’s still at it, playing the same venues, singing along with the same kids, who are now in their thirties. The only difference is now they’ve either brought their kids or given themselves a much-needed night off. This year mc celebrates 25 years in existence and a new Marvel inspired album, King in Black. mc chris is most widely known for his reoccurring character MC P Pants on Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force where he was also an animator and writer. He’s been featured in the Aqua Teen movie, the video game and most recently on a series of You Tube videos called Aqua Donk Side Pieces. He’s also starred on several Adult Swim series including The Brak Show and Sealab 2021. A pioneer of the hip hop subgenre Nerdcore, mc chris has worked with Talib Kweli, Andrew WK, and Donald Glover. His fans include the likes of Gerard Way, Post Malone and T-Pain and he was even sampled by Run the Jewels for the latest Aqua Teen movie Plantasm. He’s toured with Reggie and Full Effect, and Ninja Sex Party, performed on the Warped Tour and The Gathering of the Juggalos, appeared on a GWAR album, and even had his own Honda commercial. You truly never know where he’s going to pop up. He’s a full-time single father to his son, Tony, and lives in Los Angeles.
Tank and the Bangas – The Last Balloon Tour – A Carrboro Juneteenth Celebration
For Tank and the Bangas, music is a vessel for unbridled joy and transcendent connection—forces as integral to their essence as their wildly original sound. On their new album The Last Balloon, the New Orleans-bred outfit channel those impulses into something celebratory yet profoundly human, exploring themes of frustration, resilience, and self-realization with equal parts raw emotionality and playful exuberance. A shapeshifting collective helmed by lead singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball and multi-instrumentalist Norman Spence II, the globally beloved group completed the LP after winning a GRAMMY for 2024’s spoken-word powerhouse The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, moving from incendiary poetry to a euphoric collision of soul and hip-hop and forward-thinking R&B. As the final installment in a trilogy of albums that began with 2019’s Green Balloon (a critical triumph that earned them a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist), The Last Balloon ultimately solidifies Tank and the Bangas’ legacy as one of modern music’s most steadfast voices of sublime exhilaration. Executive-produced by their frequent collaborator Austin Brown (Jamila Woods, Masego), The Last Balloon offers up a suite of songs designed to thrive in Tank and the Bangas’ rapturous live set, where unified movement becomes crucial to the show itself. “We’re known for a very interactive experience, so I wanted to get the fans more involved and have even more fun with the crowd,” says Ball. “There’s lots of gang vocals, handclaps, all these intentional moments to let everyone know, ‘This is my part, but your part’s coming up next—so get ready.’” A highly collaborative band whose past work has featured luminaries like Big Freedia, Questlove, and Jill Scott, Tank and the Bangas created The Last Balloon with the help of Iman Omari (a multifaceted musician who’s worked with Kendrick Lamar and Mac Miller), pianist/producer Tane Runo (Brittany Howard, JID), esteemed soul singers Ledisi and Jelly Joseph, and many more. The result: a party-ready extravaganza that provides both ecstatic catharsis and communal elevation. Mainly recorded at The Complex Studios (an iconic L.A. spot once home to Earth, Wind & Fire), The Last Balloon unfolds in a loosely woven storyline charting a journey from self-doubt and erasure to empowered self-reclamation. On “Ain’t That Deep,” Tank and the Bangas deliver a defiant refusal to let negativity penetrate their world, setting Ball’s larger-than-life vocals against a potent backdrop of hypnotic beats and velvety horns. Sprung from a punchy piano riff spontaneously composed by Spence, “No Invite” arrives as a fantastically explosive takedown of industry gatekeeping and shameless clout-chasing. “There’s a lot of parties and award ceremonies we don’t get invited to, even though we do a lot for our community and should really be welcomed into those spaces,” explains Ball, who conceptualized “No Invite” as a rock-trap track. Next, on “Move,” two-time GRAMMY-winning R&B phenomenon Lucky Daye joins in for a pleading but powerful anthem lit up in lush grooves and jangly guitar tones. “I wrote that song about wanting my partner at the time to move to New Orleans to be closer to me, but you could interpret it as motivation to get moving in general,” says Ball. “I’ve been around people who let Monday go into Friday real quick, so ‘Move’ could be a way of telling yourself, ‘Let me get up, get my body moving, start making things happen for myself before it’s too late.’”
2nd Annual Study Hall Music Fest
EIGHT standout UNC bands playing on multiple stages, + more to be announced. Bands:JuniperBill Moore (and his Secret Admirers)Davie CircleThe Carolina JunebugsRed KanooHorizonThe Band PollenThe Wallabies+ MC Spencer Whittman
Larry.
Larry. On their new album Changing Size, produced by Casey Proctor of Verity Den, the Durham, NC band Larry. (@larry.theband) blends immersive atmospheric effects, distorted guitars, driving complex rhythms and cutting vocals. From slower reverb-soaked ballads to fast-paced pop-influenced diss tracks, the band weaves across tempos and style influences, bringing together straightforward, fuzz-laden indie rock and layered dreamlike bubblegaze. Songwriter Emma Bouck delivers hyperbolic and bratty lyrics that sneak vulnerability and heartbreak into undeniably infectious melodies. At a Larry show, only two things are certain – Larry is everyone, and we are all Larry. Bandcamp · Instagram Jupiter 2 Jupiter 2 is the collaboration of Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based multi-instrumentalists Nicholas Cirone and Ian Campbell. The duo weaves their discography into hazy, starry-eyed, and hypnotic live performances – balancing an inclination toward sweet, psychedelic pop melodies and jangly guitars with thumping drum machines and blissed out layers of synthesizers, noise, and samples fit for a DJ mix. dreamscent dreamscent is a band from Raleigh that blurs shoegaze with indie rock. FFO: Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Ringo Deathstarr, Wishy
