Up for Discovering New Music?

This newsletter, as well as the glamglare website, are all about helping you discover music from new artists. ‘New’ refers to artists you may not have heard about because they did not make it (yet) to the mass channels. Music is a source of joy and gets experienced in different ways: It can be exhilarating to feel connected with the world by following a global star, but being connected to an individual, regardless of their popularity, can be just as exciting.

We want to help you with the latter. Most of the music we put on our #glamglarepick playlist comes from direct submissions by artists or their representations, many of whom we have developed personal relationships with over the years.

If one piece of new music per day is not enough for you, here are some other sources that we enjoy too:

• The KEXP Song of the Day podcast features one song per day with no talk. You actually get the MP3 files, so you can add the music to your library if you wish. This also guarantees that the podcast remains indie: major labels would never agree to such an arrangement.
• Spotify Discover Weekly is driven by an algorithm that analyzes your listening behavior and dishes you new songs that the algorithm believes match with what you like. It works relatively well for us since we mostly listen on Spotify to the music we feature on glamglare. Your mileage will vary. Apple Music offers a similar feature, the Discovery Station, but as per usual with Apple, there are no details about how it works.
• If you like to be on top of new music, then Spotify’s Release Radar or Apple Music’s New Music playlist is for you. Both feature new music by artists you showed interest in.
• NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast – the New Mix section of it, to be precise – is a hand-curated selection of music with pretty much no entry criteria. The show’s founder, Bob Boilen, retired recently, and there won’t be any new New Mix episodes until the new year.
• Music blogs are still alive and kicking. Here is one we know personally whose music selection complements glamglare: Joy of Violent Movement.
• Bandcamp is also a great way to discover new music but it requires some effort.
• Last but not least, the New York Times subscriber-only newsletter The Amplifier (subscribe here) does not focus on new music but regularly features Songs You Should Hear Now.

But before you head there, why not read on for our seven latest Song Picks of the Day?

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Song Pick of the Day

Listen to/watch all seven songs on YouTube. Follow our daily updated playlists on YouTube and Spotify for the 50 latest Song Picks of the Day. Thank you for following us and sharing the excitement.

“This Side of Me” by Yorkshire-based band Feral Family is classic British post-punk rock, and it makes you miss the times when this kind of music was ubiquitous. The song “conveys an inner-conflict, of trying to maintain a positive facade while fighting personal demons,” the band says.

néomí is back with a new song, “Your Girl.” Again, romance is not going well for the Amsterdam-based singer/songwriter, but this time she’s angry, not sad when she sings about “people (whether known personally to you or not) painting a picture ‘you’ using their own words, their stories, their interpretation of who they think you are today, or you should be tomorrow or how you were in the past.”

Siri Neel is a singer/songwriter from Denmark who lost her voice for an extended time after an injury. In her new song, “I Bet You Know,” she reflects on how she overcame this hard time with the help of her husband and children.

Even when a breakup is a done deal, there are still precious memories of the person you are leaving. “Postcards” by LA R&B musician frex deals with this situation in a tender and reflective way.

The Colorado-born singer/songwriter turned sailor turned singer/songwriter Noah Solt has many stories to tell. With “After All” from his upcoming album Big Water, he hopes “the audience will walk away believing love is in the giving.”

Kuoko, a singer, songwriter, and producer from Hamburg, Germany, wants to counter “the self-exploiting tendencies of our fast-living society.” So she says: “Take it Slow” with a wonderfully relaxing and friendly pop song.

A Beacon School is the project of New York musician Patrick J Smith. His new song “Mantra” literally “states plainly everything I’ve been trying to get across on the rest of the album (and probably in every song I’ve ever written).” The album yoyo is out this Friday, so you can check if that is true.

Also Happening

Here are three albums to look forward to tomorrow: A Beacon School with yoyo, Haley with Munca Munca, and L’Rain with I Killed Your Dog.

Bob Boilen had his official farewell show on the All Songs Considered podcast. I have followed the show since 2004 and had more than one nostalgic moment when I listened. The show must go on (see above), but it will not be the same.

Nine Photos from a Little Birthday Getaway

One of the advantages of getting older is to get to know yourself better. And so I realized many birthdays ago that I would appreciate getting another year older the most when on the road. No need to go far since Upstate New York offers gorgeous vistas and plenty of cool things to do. We had visited the alpaca farm Lilymoore the previous two years, but this year, we (or was it me?) decided to go on a winetasting tour. Inspired by the Apple+ TV show Drops of God (highly recommended!), I wanted to see the wine cellar of a winemaker with my own eyes. While we’ve been to wineries in Oregon, Long Island, and Upstate New York, we’ve never been to the country’s oldest one: Brotherhood Winery. Situated beautifully near the sculpture park Storm King Art Center (another fav destination), Brotherhood Winery is loved by families and wedding parties. It can feel a bit touristy, yet the grounds are authentic, and the people working there are genuinely proud of their work. The tour through the wine cellars was a highly interesting experience and worth the money ($25 incl. wine tasting) and time (tour ca. 40 min, tasting also 40 min.) Other than that, we enjoyed fabulous sunsets, delicious bubbly (rosé from Brotherhood, NY, and white from Spain), discovered beautifully decorated haunted (?) houses, and were welcomed by a magnificent rainbow along the way.