Out This Week 9/13

Remember how last week there was only a very small handful of new releases waiting for you on record store shelves? Well, this week’s it’s the opposite. You’re going to need a handtruck to help you move the stack of CD’s you’ll be buying this week! Among the most anticipated new albums is the self-titled debut of Wild Flag, who performed at KEXP’s SXSW broadcast during SXSW and who consist of veteran Riot Grrrls Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney), Rebecca Cole (The Minders) and Mary Timony (Helium). Wild Flag, though, is no 90′s throwback but rather a fresh take on a rocking sound. Also, out this week, The Drums‘ second album adds new twits and turns to their jangly 50′s-meets-80′s sound. Portland group Blitzen Trapper are more at home with 70′s country rock on their sixth album, which our Music Director, Don Yates, says is filled with “summery, hook-filled songs with concise arrangements driven by fuzzy electric guitars, rollicking piano, dirty slide guitar, warm harmonies and mostly uptempo rocking rhythms, and fleshed out with occasional harmonica, banjo and more.” On the third album from St. Vincent, songwriter Annie Clark pares down some of the “baroque touches of her first two albums” to create “her most visceral recording to date.” And San Francisco band Girls follow up their excellent EP from last year with their second LP of adventurous, dreamy, often lovelorn pop, while fellow Bay Area rockers Wooden Shjips release their first actual studio-recorded album, which add “greater clarity and mass to the band’s trippy, psych-inspired blend of heavy, distorted guitars, droning organ lines and hypnotic rhythms.”

But those are only some of the highlights from the arm’s length list of new releases out this week (check Largehearted Boy for the full list!). You’ll also want to pick up the latest from Blind Pilot, who performed some of the new songs live on KEXP last weekend during MusicfestNW, and Robbers On High Street, who will perform live on KEXP next Wednesday, 9/21, at 9:30am, plus the latest from lovable indie-pop duo Mates of State, the debut of new solo project CANT from Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, the followup to Neon Indian‘s much lauded 2009 album, Psychic Chasms, an EP from new Sub Pop signees Memoryhouse, and the formal debut of Das Rascist, whose new album, Relax, doesn’t at all tone down the hi-jinx of their previous mixtapes.

Also, worth checking out in record stores today are the latest releases from bands you’ve heard and seen on KEXP: Trombone Shorty, Grouplove, Milagres, Mogwai, Toro Y Moi, Ladytron, The Gourds, Tom Vek, Lydia Loveless, and so many others. If only we had time to sing the praises of them all!

So get crackin’, everyone! You’ve got a lot to pick up this week!