Here’s a roundup of the latest music that just dropped (and what’s coming next)!
Vincent Neil Emerson: Jet Plane
2025 was a slow year for Emerson in terms of new music, but the man was hard at work, spending much of his time on the road, taking his music to all the corners of the United States. While Emerson was putting releasing new music on the back burner for 2025, that did not mean that he wasn’t in the studio working. The “Rodeo Clown” singer was hard at work recording a record that will be released later this year.
New music VNE promised, and new music he delivered on. Emerson recently announced his fourth studio album, Blue Stars, is slated for April 17, 2026, release via La Honda Records. The record was recorded with producer Patrick Lyons and Vincent’s touring band, The Red Horse Band, at Gnome Studios in Nashville, TN. Coinciding with the album’s announcement, Emerson also released a new single, “Jet Plane,” a song he wrote after traveling miles in the sky, turning his fear into a love song.
“‘Jet Plane’ is a love song I wrote after taking too many plane rides. Flying isn’t something I’m very fond of, but it’s an occupational hazard. I guess sometimes love songs can be too.”
The soft, slow lyrics draw the listener into a love-struck haze, filled with steel guitar and silky-smooth vocals. Emerson turned his fear of flying into a dreamlike state, turning his time in the clouds into a tune about finding peace with the woman he loves.
Don’t miss Vincent Neil Emerson at HI-FI on March 31st. GET TICKETS.
Nathan Evans Fox: Lots of Beginnings
North Carolina–bred, Nashville-based indie country artist Nathan Evans Fox announces his forthcoming LP Heirloom, arriving May 29 via Free Dirt Records, with the release of its lead single, “Lots Of Beginnings.” The song began as an extended outro that evolved into a meditation on what Fox hopes his child inherits from him: the generosity and grit instilled by his beloved grandmother, and the hope that he will be the kind of parent worth missing one day.
It sets the tone for the entire album, as Heirloom explores the kind of world and the kind of moral inheritance Fox is passing down to his children. The record treats inheritance as an active practice rather than a passive process, something that must be tended to with intention if it’s going to survive. Across its 12 tracks, Fox wrestles with generational trauma, working-class endurance, religious memory, climate anxiety, and the hope that cycles of harm can end.
Raised on four generations of family land at the end of a dead-end road in Glen Alpine, North Carolina, Fox grew up in a community shaped by mill closures, factory layoffs, and the slow erosion of working-class stability. When the recession hollowed out the local economy, he left for college carrying a deep sense of place and a sharp awareness of the systems that shape people’s lives – experiences that now inform his songwriting’s blend of tenderness, humor, and cultural critique.
Don’t miss Nathan Evans Fox at HI-FI on May 20th. GET TICKETS.
Andy Frasco: DANCE!DANCE!DANCE!
Frasco has wasted no time hitting the ground running in 2026. In January, he released Growing Pains (Deluxe), an augmented version of his last studio album Growing Pains that includes two brand new tracks and four acoustic versions of songs recorded at Second Nature Vintage in Nashville, TN. On February 27, he released a brand new single “DANCE! DANCE! DANCE!” where he invited fans to post to social media using the song audio and hashtag #frascodance and posted a compilation video of fan submissions that can be viewed HERE.
Don’t miss Andy Frasco at HI-FI on August 12th. GET TICKETS.
Chicago Farmer: Homeaid
Bloomington-based singer-songwriter Cody Diekhoff, known as Chicago Farmer, was in Colorado Springs promoting a new album when the pandemic hit. He and his band, the Fieldnotes, packed up and went home. Diekhoff said he wasn’t terribly eager to make another record after that.
Six years later, Homeaid is here, having dropped March 6 on vinyl, CD and streaming platforms. A double entendre, the title of the album points to the long arc of Chicago Farmer’s journey as a folk singer who has stayed relatively DIY the whole time. “Back in 2013 I got a manager and started working with booking agents,” Diekhoff said. “Other than that, it’s been all grassroots, organic—yeah, homemade, exactly.” Homeaid, in fact, is the first album he’s produced by a label, LoHi Records, and the first to feature his touring band, the Fieldnotes. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, for a decade, LoHi’s mostly roots rock and Americana roster also includes Erik Duetsch, Them Coulee Boys, The High Hawks and Vince Herman. “These songs are my life, my thing, my therapy—it’s hard to just give them to someone else,” Diekhoff said. “But I decided I’ve been doing it my own way for so long, it’s time to try something new.”
Don’t miss Chicago Farmer at HI-FI on March 20th. GET TICKETS.
Never Ending Fall: MOMENTUM!
Straight from the mouths of the band, “OUR NEW ALBUM “MOMENTUM” OUT MARCH 6TH. Spent the last year putting everything we got into this album and we truly love it. Written, tracked, and produced by us. A MIX OF EVERYTHING, FOR EVERYONE.”
Don’t miss Never Ending Fall at HI-FI on April 11th. GET TICKETS.
Lowertown: Big Thumb
Last month, Lowertown announced their new album Ugly Duckling Union and shared the kooky, addictive lead single “I Like You A Lot.” Now New York’s beloved indie duo is back with “Big Thumb.”
“‘Big Thumb’ was written during Olive’s obsession with collecting newspaper clippings and found pieces of writing,” Avsha Weinberg says, expounding:
She had always wanted to write a song in the way the 90’s industrial scene had by using newspaper clippings to inspire lyrics. Olive collected many different clippings and writings for us and spread them out on the ground, so that when we would begin to play together, Olive on harmonica and me on 12-string guitar, we could sing the words that inspired us most. What stuck was an almost mantra-like repetition of the words “Holding out the Big Thumb” which became the song’s conceptual core. The song became a reflection on the feeling of directionlessness in our generation, and how the paths of life that were carved out for previous generations are now void. We are left to drift along aimlessly or hopefully carve out some brand new path.
The track comes with a music video directed by Jack Haven (I Saw The TV Glow). Watch below.
Don’t miss Lowertown at HI-FI on May 8th. GET TICKETS.