Portland’s Strangled Darlings bring punk intensity to folk pop and completely bust the mold, creating smart, irreverent tunes using classic acoustic folk instrumentation paired with rough, impassioned vocals. The lyrics are more political and confrontational than the rather observational style that you often hear in folk. Think of it rather like the Clash with an indie Northwestern American aesthetic and acoustic instruments instead of Telecasters and Fender Precisions. George Veech and Jessica Anderly lead Strangled Darlings, playing tenor banjo, mandolin, cello, fiddle, and bass, while they bring in friends to add percussion and jazzy horn bits.

The group’s latest album, Red Yellow & Blue releases 15 May via Mudfarm Records. Today we bring you the premiere of the album’s opening track, “Snake & The Girl”, which takes on organized religion in a big way, saying “stand up for yourself… be your own goddamn salvation.”

After nearly a year of blog hype and widely praised festival performances at CMJ and SXSW, Purity Ring finally has a full-length album in the pipeline and it’s hitting the shelves and online music hubs on July 24th. The group just dropped a free track on their Twitter as a sample of the upcoming goodness.

You loved our last Anathema premiere so much—it was the most popular MP3 premiere on PopMatters ever—that we’re pleased to bring you another new Anathema tune, “The Storm Before the Calm”. Anathema has a long musical history dating back all the way to 1990 when the band emerged from Liverpool as a figurehead in the death/doom metal genre. Evolving over time, Anathema is now more of a modern progressive rock ensemble, producing far more challenging music than at its origin.

Weather Systems is the new record, releasing next Tuesday (24 April), and Anathema counts it as their most musically ambitious effort to date. Daniel Cavanagh explains, “it feels like we are at a creative peak right now, and this album reflects that. Everything from the production to the writing to the performances are a step up from our last album. This is not background music for parties. The music is written to deeply move the listener, to uplift or take the listener to the coldest depths of the soul.” “The Storm Before the Calm” typifies that shoot-for-the-stars approach, as it plays rather like a mini rock symphony, chock full of leitmotivs and dramatic movement.

Read our review of Weather Systems.

Enigmatic New York singer-songwriter Rachael Sage returns this May with her 10th career album releasing via her own successful indie label, MPress Records. Haunted By You (May 22) is a captivating song cycle about passion, desire and romance, both the glorious highs and the depressing lows. Sage took a different approach with this new set of tunes, penning them all on guitar, not her primary instrument, both to prove she could do it and to shake things up. The material was written during a period of her life when she went through a number of relationships in short order, both breaking hearts and being on the receiving end as well. As Sage explains, “I fell recklessly in and out of love multiple times while writing this record. I broke a couple hearts… and I also had my heart broken pretty badly.” Today we bring you the online premiere of album track one “Invisible Light”, a song that expresses romantic longing and the endless search to find a real soulmate.

Brendan Benson has been releasing solo records since 1996’s One Mississippi and What Kind of World, releasing 21 April via Benson’s own Readymade label, will make it his fifth. After 2005’s Alternative to Love, Benson took a break from going it alone by co-founding rock supergroup the Raconteurs with Jack White. Both Detroit artists have since made Nashville home and Benson has become a family man, hitching up and having his first child.

Of course, in Nashville has he has found a true musical family as well, as so many more have before him. On What Kind of World, these new friends joined in to lend a hand, including Jon Auer (The Posies, Big Star), Ken Stringfellow (The Posies, Big Star, R.E.M.), Brad Pemberton (Ryan Adam’s Cardinals), Mark Watrous (Loudermilk, Gosling), and Sam Farrar (Phantom Planet). The changes in his life have also led him to explore new themes in his songwriting in a more straightforward style. “I think on this record I’m saying a lot of things I never thought I would say,” says Benson. “Maybe I’m just getting older, but I don’t want to hide now in my songs, I just want to be truthful. And I’m realizing that the truth is really interesting—I’m more attracted to honesty these days than to convolution.”

Today on PopMatters we have the pleasure of premiering the title track from the new album, “What Kind of World”. Benson describes the tune as “one my favorites on the record. I think we captured an ‘80s, new wave sort of sound that I’ve always been obsessed with ala the Cars or Missing Persons.”

You can pre-order the album now via Benson’s website.