Cowgirl says to the other cowgirl, “Hey, other cowgirl, is this a joke?” The sheriff nods her cap to the waitress and a courtesy of floral. Near asleep, a drifter: a head of cattle and some map whisking away from her hand. Along the prairie afloat, that old, sand-stained, sun-dried parchment of directions. Against a cactus’ left bicep spikes this map that burns into plumes of fumes. Spurs attached to the feet of our narrator tapping bones; strikes a chord.

More about: Sun Araw

Crystal ball emoji, trumpet emoji, the emoji heart with the vibes radiating from its top. Insight, play, and vulnerability make up the communication style of Jay Som, the project of Bay Area-based multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte. Seeing Duterte live last summer made me want to get out my guitar and text myself with it, drafting a love letter with just a few spare chords. The direct, emotive appeal of her live shows (and of last year’s Turn Into) is built out into full-band arrangements on her latest full-length, Everybody Works.

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Something is afoot at Her Records. Last year’s Her Records Volume 4 compilation felt like a defining moment in the label’s history, a crystallization of the varied rhythms and textures that have been steadily encroaching on the label’s hypermodern sound.

More about: Suda, Sudanim

There’s a knot of black scaffold unfolding in the intake of Atlantic air that slaps against the side of the building at odd cold intervals, heaves of breath, echolocations giving nothing back. A scaffold means construction, a banging means wind, an echo means empty.

More about: Vagabon

In a 2015 lecture to the European Graduate School’s Media and Communication Studies department, Benjamin Bratton, an American theorist, sociologist and professor of visual arts, presented thoughts dubiously compiled under the frame of “The Post-Anthropocene.” His talk began with a description of the now non-existent “Sanzhi UFO Pod City,” a seemingly futuristic city built in 1978 near New Taipei City in Taiwan for vacationing US soldiers.

More about: Dasychira, FaltyDL