Peace or Love is the sound of two old friends exploring the latest phase of their lives together and finding new ways to capture that elusive magic. recorded across five years in five different cities, the album sounds as fresh as spring: 11 songs about life and love with the alluring beauty, purity and emotional clarity that you would expect from Kings of Convenience.

For most of the last decade and a half, guitarist Steve Gunn has been quietly going about his business as a musician's musician. In addition to collaborating with Meg Baird, the Magik Markers, and Kurt Vile, he has been an active recording artist as a member of GHQ, the Gunn Truscinski Duo, and in his low-key way, as a solo artist. Time Off is his first trio recording under his own name. Gunn is a guitarist of wide interests and skillful versatility, whether it be early blues traditions like Piedmont or Delta styles, American Primitive, Indian music, psych, Gnawan, etc. He seeks out what inspires him then masters it. This set was reportedly cut in the breaks he had between other projects.

Steve Gunn's Time Off was one of the great surprises of 2013. Not because it showcased his already considerable skills as a guitarist, but because he discovered his strength as a songwriter too. Way Out Weather, written during his global travels over the last year, is ambitious. Its musical architecture is more focused yet its production is more spacious. Gunn employs a larger band here – drummer John Truscinski, bassist/producer Justin Tripp, banjo player and soundscape artist Nathan Bowles, harpist Mary Lattimore, Rhyton's Jimy Seitang, and multi-instrumentalist/engineer Justin Meagher. Gunn has gained considerable confidence as a singer.

When the Mountain Goats got together in March 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. The idea was to again work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind. Matt pitched we spend a week at Sam Phillips Recording, his home base in Memphis, followed by another at the storied Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a plan that dovetailed nicely with John’s notion of corralling these songs into two complementary batches: one light, one dark. The Memphis album Getting Into Knives, would be brighter, bolder, marked by rich and vibrant hues; the Muscle Shoals album Dark in Here, is quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense.

Ben Howard returns with his fourth album, Collections From The Whiteout through Island Records. Produced alongside Aaron Dessner (The National, Sharon Van Etten, Taylor Swift), Collections From The Whiteout heralds the first time Ben has opened the door to production outside of he and his bands closer confines.

‘Tis the season for country-themed side projects. Just a few weeks before Mt. Desolation’s release, Tired Pony – another indie rock supergroup with rootsy inclinations – issued their own debut. What was billed as a country album turned out to be little more than standard pop/rock, though, which makes Mt. Desolation’s debut – recorded by a loose group of British musicians, with Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin serving as co-captains – all the more charming. The best songs here sound like genuine Americana, not pop songs dressed up in acoustic guitars and cowboy shirts, and even the filler material has a cohesion that’s rare for most first-time supergroups. “The Midnight Ghost,” with its barroom ambience and harmony vocals, is a woozy Western ballad that takes its cues from Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, while “Platform 7” – featuring the Killers’ Ronnie Vannucci on percussion – is bar band country-rock, filled with all the twangy trimmings that the Killers attempted (with mixed results) on Sam’s Town.

“Nothing ever really disappears,” Cassandra Jenkins says. “It just changes shape.” Over the past few years, she’s seen relationships altered, travelled three continents, wandered through museums and parks, and recorded free-associative guided tours of her New York haunts. Her observations capture the humanity and nature around her, as well as thought patterns, memories, and attempts to be present while dealing with pain and loss. With a singular voice, Jenkins siphons these ideas into the ambient folk of her new album.

"I first heard Lady In Satin in a mega-shopping mall somewhere in San Francisco. I was about 20 years old and didn't know much about Billie's records or her life or how her voice changed over the years. Anyway, the sound was coming from the other side of the mall and I remember mistaking her voice for a beautiful perfectly distorted electric guitar - some other-world thing floating there on this strange mournful ocean of strings and I was hooked for life. Ten years later in 2006 I recorded an electric guitar instrumental version of "I'm A Fool To Want You" for my album Post-War."

Archive Series Volume No. 5: Tallahassee is the lost-in-time debut album from Iron & Wine. A collection of songs recorded three years prior to his official Sub Pop debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002). A period before the concept of Iron & Wine existed and principal songwriter Sam Beam was studying at Florida State University with the intent of pursuing a career in film. Tallahassee documents the very first steps on a journey that would lead to a career as one of America’s most original and distinctive singer-songwriters.

An air of inquiry suffuses Laura Marling's third album, a mood of experimentation as cerebral as it is playful. Opening song The Muse is like nothing she has released before: swaggering and brassy, with her voice pulling angular shapes across saloon-jazz piano and tight brush drums. Salinas and Rest in the Bed are like miniature western movies, with spit and sawdust in the guitar and banjo lines, melodrama in the backing vocals and Marling squinting at a relentless sun as her characters glare fate in the face. As on last year's I Speak Because I Can, Marling can sound curiously dispassionate, slurring the chorus of Don't Ask Me Why, maintaining a studied cool at the start of Sophia as she murmurs: "Where I have been lately is no concern of yours." But when Sophia unfurls into a glowing country romp, the distance between her and us suddenly shrinks – and the feeling is exhilarating.

While Chantal's three previous solo albums were immaculately produced by two luminaries of the so-called "post-classical" scene (Nils Frahm, Peter Broderick and Phill Brown respectively), Saturday Moon is a more feral child and is all the stronger for it. The album spins and turns and upends preconceptions throughout its length. There are sonic surprises like Alan from Low's guitar synth on "Disappear," a song that ends in a tornado of electricity and also features backing vocals from Low bandmate Mimi. Atmospheric guitar legend Bill Frisell delicately converses with two tracks. Shahzad Ismaily of Tom Waits and Marc Ribot fame plays haunted six string fractures on one of the album's darkest songs "Conflict of Minds", together with Borgar Magnason (Sigur Rós, Björk). There are eighteen musicians in total on the album. Strings, horns, contrabass and piano are also woven into the kaleidoscopic, eclectic mesh. It is a human-all-too-human balance of things. Clarity and randomness. Anger and elation. Loss and awakening. The personal and the communal.