Smalltown Poets are legacy band at this point, releasing their debut album back in 1997 -- the original band, Villanelle, released their album in 1995. While the Poets are no longer a full-time band, split between Washington, Georgia, and Florida respectively, the guys do continue to make music together and play some shows. Their last album, NWxSE (northwest by southeast) released back in 2021, but the Duluth, Georgia boys dropped a teaser for the song "Florida Man" back in April. St. Augustine, an EP-sized self-proclaimed "album," is their newest release and it's so nice to still be getting new music from the Poets in 2025...

Two years ago, Fepeste (A.K.A., Eric Jett) released What You Don't Know, an indie rock album with tinges of surf rock and shoegaze. It was a record focused on the hard things we deal with as adults (i.e., anxiety). For this reviewer, it was a timely God-send and made me an instant fan of Fepeste's work. Now, two years later, he's back-this time on Velvet Blue Music with his anticipated follow-up, This World Ain't Mine To Change. While the distinct "Fepeste sound" remains, Jett leans a little more into his surf rock influences, and having Jason Martin (of Starflyer 59) mastering the record makes this the best Fepeste has sounded yet.

If Fepeste's last album was a struggle with cares and worries, then This World... is a more settled view a little further down the road. To be sure, those troubles still exist and drive songs...

John Van Deusen nearly drowned in the making of his newest worship-centric record. Not literally, but emotionally and spiritually speaking. In the process of creation, he admits it was a season defined by both joyous compulsion and the deepest depression he has ever experienced. He shares this tension most fully on his Bandcamp page, but it hangs over As Long as I Am in This Tent of a Body, I Will Make a Joyful Noise Pt. 1 like a haunting refrain. What results is an eighteen-track odyssey that thrums with the raw nerve of duality, echoing the wild swings of emotion seen across the biblical Psalms.

At first, the tension is subtle, woven into the eclectic mix of tracks that stretch across an hour of music. But the more you listen, the more that...