sleepingdogs is a new duo consisting of Providence artist Jesse the Tree and Philly artist andrew. Both are relatively new to the scene, but both have put out some pretty substantial albums in the past couple of years that have caught some ears, whether that be andrew’s Sad Dance Songs/I Don’t Know, which came out earlier this year, or Jesse the Tree’s Pigeon Man, which marked his debut on Strange Famous last year.

Sleep Sinatra is an artist from Lincoln, Nebraska who has been releasing music for about a decade now. In that time, he’s worked with people like Ohbliv, Stik Figa, and August Fanon, just to name a few. Now he has teamed up with producer The Architect to give us a new EP, Battle of the Angelz. The Architect might not be a name that you immediately recognize, but his career in the Bay Area goes back to the early ‘90s, when he was part of the group Homeliss Derelix, who put out a couple of 12” on a new label called Stones Throw.

Del Jones is a musician from Philadelphia who unfortunately has been largely lost to time. He recorded and released an album and a few singles in the early ‘70s, but he never found the support to keep his music career moving forward, and his music seemed destined to be a treasure that only those of a certain generation in Philly knew about, and his death in 2006 went largely unnoticed in the music world.

Yarni is a producer/musician from Sheffield who has been releasing music for the past five years. He had a bit of a breakthrough with his last album, 2022’s Pigna, which was inspired by a visit to Sicily. Now he’s teamed up with Oxford producer Give Me Monaco to make a new full-length album, Parenthesis. Give Me Monaco is also a fairly new artist, dropping his debut album, From the Coral to the Grey, in 2020.

Adi Oasis is a singer-songwriter/bassist born in Paris of Caribbean heritage, but now based in Brooklyn for a few years. She used to perform under the name Adeline and was part of the group Escort. She debuted the name Adi Oasis with an EP released in September of 2021. She now realizes the next major step in her career as a solo artist with her full-length album, Lotus Glow. Some artists take more direct paths, and others might be a bit more winding, but neither is a better way to go.

Magna Carda is a group from Austin who got started over ten years ago, with core members Megz Kelli on the mic and Dougie Do on the keyboards and beats. In summer of 2021, they gave us their last full-length album, To the Good People. Now they are back with a different type of project, Little Trumpet: The Soundtrack. Little Trumpet is a short film written and directed by Megan Trufant Tillman, who you might know better as Megz Kelli from Magna Carda.

Ivan Ave is an artist from Norway who had a breakthrough in the mid-2010s when he signed with Jakarta Records and released a couple of projects with collaborator Fredfades and then a couple more with mndsgn. In 2020, he made the move to Mutual Intentions with the album Double Goodbyes, which also saw him incorporating a lot more ‘80s R&B and smooth jazz-rock into his sound. That then led fans to wonder where Ivan Ave would go from there.

Gianni Brezzo is not the given name of an artist, as you might assume, but the name chosen by Cologne-based producer/musician Marvin Horsch for his jazz/neo-soul project. Horsch had been recording under his given name starting in 2013, but debuted Gianni Brezzo in 2017 with the release of the album, tak€2. He debuted on Jakarta in 2021 with the release of The Awakening. Most recently, we got an EP called Amoria released this past November.

AJ Suede is an artist from Seattle who first started putting out music in the mid-2010s. He has really hit his stride lately, and he’s coming off a particularly prolific 2022, which saw the release of an album with Small Professor, Hundred Year Darkness, a self-produced album called Oil on Canvas, and an album with Televangel, Metatron’s Cube. He’s already released a short project in January called Indica Music, but now he’s back with Televangel to release another album on Fake Four, Parthian Shots.

junclassic is an artist from Queens who has been part of the hip hop scene for a minute, but really started his solo career in earnest about fifteen years ago with the release of 2 Much Ain’t Enuff. Since that time, he’s been working at a steady pace, collaborating with people like MF Grimm, billy woods, Mr. Troy, Wun Two, and Pen Pals along the way. His last album, Long Days and Short Lives, was released in November of last year.