Freshly Squeezed, Vol. 113: Chris King, Gavin Haley, BANNERS & more

Welcome to Freshly Squeezed, a weekly new music playlist: spanning country, pop, EDM and urban, mainstream and other.

There are simply just not enough music folks talking about Chris King. He’s a Texas-based musician who has a coolness all his own. Today, he drops his brand new album, Lone Rats, and the standout cut “The Leopard of My Youth” is a gritty, scratchy but downright emotional cutter. With a single guitar, chalky production swirls puffing  up on the horizon like a campfire’s last breath, King crushes his entire body beneath weirdly layered synths and other strange emotion-grating choices. It’s as bedeviling as it is yielding him in his finest form.

The cruelly underrated BANNERS makes a bold move with his new album today, as well. Where the Shadow Ends is a strikingly bright and hopeful roster of stories, some more emotionally hyper-charged than others, and it appears his songwriting has only sharpened these days. “Wild Love” cracks open the heart for a jubilant moment of compassion, and he begs the listened to never give up hope for a new dawn that just might be peeking through the greying clouds. “All the stars are looking at us,” he sings, adorning the jaunty melody with his signature piano work. It’s at times raw, yet always provoking a sense of freedom.

The new playlist also includes such treasured names as Gavin Haley, BANNERS, CHVRCHES, Kelsey Waldon, MIKA, HOAX, Steve Moakler, AK, Chromatics, Alpha Chrome Yayo, Jeff Kelly & the Graveyard Shift, Sammy Kay and Joshua Radin, among countless others.

In all, we’ve got 30 new tracks to power your weekend ahead. Get to listening!

Each playlist will be refreshed every Friday morning/afternoon. We reserve the right to update anytime during the week, so make sure you bookmark this page.

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