Steady Holiday announces new album

Steady Holiday, the indie-pop project of LA's Dre Babinski, announced her new record Nobody's Watching today — the album is her first since signing to Barsuk and will be released on August 24. Produced by Gus Seyffert (Roger Waters, Beck, Bedouine), Nobody's Watching folds a sense of paranoia in the modern age into Steady Holiday's evocative soundscapes, resulting in an album that's both dreamy and unsettling. Stereogum premiered the album's title track today — listen here.

Nobody's Watching is available for pre-order now. 21 Jun 2018

Steady Holiday signs to Barsuk Records

Barsuk is excited to announce the signing of Steady Holiday, the Los Angeles-based indie pop project of Dre Babinski. Steady Holiday's music has been praised as "both fresh and new and like it's been around for a hundred years, a standard from a different world" (Stereogum) and "bubbl[ing] with tension like a psychological thriller" (The Fader). Babinski has played festivals like Coachella and shared stages with Mitski and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Barsuk will be releasing her second record later this summer — stay tuned for more details.

Steady Holiday will be playing Seattle's Upstream Music Festival on Friday, June 1 before returning to California to open for Dr. Dog. 29 May 2018

Barsuk 20th Anniversary merch

New merch alert! Barsuk turns 20 this year, and to celebrate we commissioned local Seattle artists Zack Bolotin and Kyler Martz to make some new Barsuk shirts, perfect for the warm summer months.

Head to the Barsuk shop now to see the new designs as well as new slip mats, enamel pins, and more. And while you browse, you can also tune into our latest playlist, which contains (almost) every track we've ever released digitally...

We're honored to get to continue putting out music we love by bands we love, and appreciate you supporting us and our artists for two decades! 20 Jun 2018

Active Bird Community announce new album

Brooklyn, NY's Active Bird Community announced their new album and Barsuk debut, Amends, will be released on September 14.

The video for first single "Unwind With Me" premiered today via Brooklyn Vegan, and can also now be seen here. Filmed entirely in the back of a moving truck, director Henry Kinder explains, "This choice created tight parameters within which we had to work, but it felt like the only way to achieve exactly what we wanted: to visually represent this state of unsettled displacement that we were both feeling at the time and that we were hearing in the song."

Active Bird Community have also announced a fall North American tour, beginning with a hometown Brooklyn show on September 27 at Rough Trade. A current itinerary is available here, and more dates will be announced soon. 14 Jun 2018

Thank You For Today

Death Cab for Cutie has announced the release of their upcoming ninth studio album. Thank You for Today arrives everywhere on Friday, August 17th.

With the announcement comes a new video from the album, "Gold Rush", directed by Alex Southam (alt-J, Mumford & Sons). The visual features Ben Gibbard performing the song amidst an increasingly crowded cityscape. Death Cab will make their debut performance of "Gold Rush" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Thursday, June 21st — check local listings. 13 Jun 2018

"Winning Star Champion" online stream + Ruler performances

Winning Star Champion, the debut album from rising Seattle artist Ruler, is now streaming in its entirety at Seattle Weekly; listen here. Ruler is the project of Seattle-based singer and songwriter Matt Batey (best known for his work with Rocky Votolato and Cataldo). The band is set to tour throughout the Pacific Northwest this summer, including performances at the Upstream Festival in Seattle June 1 and at the TIMBER! Summer Music Festival in Carnation, WA July 12-14. Additional tour dates to be announced shortly. 22 May 2018

Phantogram releases new single to benefit American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

In 2016, while working on what would eventually become their album Three, Phantogram's Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter were crushed when they suddenly lost Sarah's sister (and Josh's childhood friend) Becky to suicide.

Months later, returning to the studio to start picking up the pieces to finish the album, they resumed work on a song they'd begun building around samples of the classic Al Green songs "I'm Still in Love with You" and "Livin' for You" — and which the loss of Becky had imbued with new meaning for the duo. But working on the song still proved too painful, and the song was tabled.

This spring — following a lengthy healing process during which Barthel and Carter began to speak out regularly at shows and in interviews as part of their efforts to raise awareness about suicide prevention and to destigmatize mental illness — they came back to the song, and the beautiful recording stands as the latest piece of their ongoing campaign for the cause.

New original track "Someday" honors the memory of those lost to suicide, and the grief and hope carried every day by family and friends left behind; the B-side is a tribute to Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, a formative influence for the band. 18 May 2018

Barsuk to release 10th anniversary reissue of Ra Ra Riot's debut album

Barsuk Records is proud to announce a 10th Anniversary reissue of Ra Ra Riot's debut album The Rhumb Line on August 17, 2018. Originally released on August 19, 2008, The Rhumb Line was hailed as "a blissful chamber-pop breakthrough" in a 4-star Rolling Stone review (who included it in their top 40 albums of the year) and praised by Time Out New York as "classically pretty, but without getting all fussy about it."

"This has been a fun opportunity for us to consider how long we've been making music together, and how lucky we are because of that. We never want to take anything for granted, and we're so excited to revisit this record — which is still really meaningful to us — and share it again with the world," said bassist Mathieu Santos. Vocalist Wes Miles added these details about the reissue itself: "It's beautifully redesigned by our own Milo Bonacci with a second disc of unreleased gems, live tracks and demos. It's a real alternate universe Rhumb Line double LP."

In the poignant liner notes for the reissue, Santos notes, "The Rhumb Line, like most debuts, is the sound of the band becoming. Along with producer Ryan Hadlock, engineer Matt Doctor and our drummer Cameron Wisch, we spent a total of six weeks living in the studio's converted barn and trying, somehow, to compress two years into ten songs. Naturally, the specter of John [Pike]'s absence permeated every last moment of the sessions, but once we had decided to see the album through — to celebrate the songs we had developed together, to honor the dreams we had all shared — the burden, however slightly, first began to subside. For a moment, there was no baggage, no despair, no expectations — there were just some kids in the woods making music."

This 10th anniversary reissue includes the original album plus 11 additional live and demo tracks, 9 of which are previously unreleased. The album will be available digitally and as a limited-edition 2xLP set, hand numbered and limited to 2,000 copies worldwide. The limited edition vinyl will be bound in a linen-like cover with gold-foil stamping.

In addition, available for pre-sale now at RaRaRiot.com, the band will be offering an alternative version with blue-foil stamping and opaque blue and gold colored vinyl, limited to 500 copies.

In celebration of this release, the band will be playing a limited run of intimate shows at which they will perform The Rhumb Line in its entirety. Available only at RaRaRiot.com from today until May 31, VIP pre-order ticket bundles are available. The $75 package includes 1 pre-order ticket, 1 copy of the band exclusive version of the vinyl reissue and 1 t-shirt (which is a reprinting of the shirt that was sold on the original Rhumb Line tour and is available only in this bundle). General admission tickets for the shows will go on sale on June 1. 18 May 2018