Out This Week 7/10

With summer finally coming into Seattle, your car/stereo/other music player is certainly in need of some fresh new music. One of this week’s biggest releases is also one of the year’s most anticipated: Swing Lo Magellan, the sixth studio album from Dirty Projectors. Dave Longstreth and company holed up in New York for a year to write the album, and the end result is definitely worth the wait. Our Music Director, Don Yates, says the album is full of “unusual musical textures, abrupt transitions, tricky polyrhythms and intricate yet gorgeous harmonies to flesh out the band’s warmest and most melodic set of songs to date.” The band remains a completely singular force in today’s musical landscape, so be sure to give this album a spin. Also returning this week is Twin Shadow, whose sophomore album, Confess, is filled to the brim with sick 80s inspired jams. Recalling Purple Rain at some points, George Lewis Jr.’s songwriting is emotionally immediate in its uptempo moments as it is during the ballads. Darkly attractive, it’s an album that begs to be played after midnight. Aesop Rock returns this week with his sixth LP, Skelethon, his first album in five years. Complex lyricism has become his calling card, and Aesop hasn’t lost a beat in his time away. You can hear it for yourself by tuning in during KEXP’s broadcast of the Capitol Hill Block Party on July 21st. Debuting this week is the world music group Debo Band, whose name means “collaborative” in Amharic. Although formed in 2006, the Boston-based group is just now releasing their recorded debut, which cites Ethio-groove, Charlie Haden, and avant-garde jazz as influences to its unique, multi-cultural mix.

Seattle’s group The Young Evils, fronted by Mackenzie Mercer and KEXP’s Troy Nelson, follows up 2010′s charming Enchanted Chapel “by revamping their previously sunny indie-pop for a darker, more electric and aggressive fuzz-pop sound to frame their most fully developed batch of songs yet.” To celebrate this release, The Young Evils just performed live on KEXP today on The Morning Show with John Richards. You can go back and listen to it later on our Live Performances Archive. Another duo reaching for a darker sound, Chicago’s Supreme Cuts debuts with “an evocative set of atmospheric, bass-heavy beats with a dark, densely produced sound thick with reverb, combining celestial synths and haunting R&B vocal fragments with hip hop rhythms mostly rooted in the Chicago styles of footwork and juke.”

Also releasing an album this week is Mission of Burma, whose newest album, Insound, is their first after departing Matador earlier this year and their fifth overall -- the post-punk legends have now made four albums since reuniting in 2002, which is three more than they produced during their original run. Aussie band Husky makes their American debut on Sub Pop with Forever So, filled with gorgeous harmonies and pastoral instrumentation. Out this week too is the official release of Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones 1981 show in Chicago, where the two blues-rock legends jammed long into the night playing blues standards alongside Waters originals. It’s a glimmering snapshot of the stadium-filling rock band kicking back and playing an intimate show near the end of their prime era.

There’s a lot more to be found in record stores this week, including new albums from Holograms, Clare and the Reasons, Chatham County Line, a lovely new EP from Twin Cities’ Johnny Solomon a.k.a. Communist Daughter, and the solo debut of Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Spring, so there’s no excuse to not enjoy the sunny weather with some new tunes in the near future. Be sure to sample these tracks, gathered just for you, before heading out into the sun.