*ATLANTA ROOM*

Elijah Johnston is a singer-songwriter from Atlanta, GA - Stupid Soul is either his 4th record or his 7th, depending on who you ask, but likely the first you’ve heard. The logical next step in a career of slow burns, Stupid Soul is a record built to fit like a glove. Performed by a small team including Johnston’s brother Gideon (Hotel Fiction, Hallpass), manager Drew Beskin, and long-time producer Tommy Trautwein (Waylon Wyatt, hey, nothing), the record is full of small wonders and live band moments, the sound of four close-knit collaborators in pursuit of something timeless. 12-string acoustic guitars, vintage synthesizers, and a relentless belief in the guitar solo round out Johnston’s usual pop rock palate. Elijah is a dynamic performer whether solo or accompanied by a band, and has had the opportunity to play with acts such as Rhett Miller, Jon Foreman, and Noah Gundersen.

The realest-deal storyteller in indie-rock today is the Tampa-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Thomas Dollbaum, and Birds of Paradise is his most powerful and dynamic work yet. Following up his critically acclaimed Wellswood (Big Legal Mess, 2022) and Drive All Night EP (Dear Life Records, 2025), Birds of Paradise is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones and former selves. These songs find Dollbaum searching for acceptance in the transient in-between places: Florida’s pine flatwoods, backroads leading to 1-95, where birds fly across the water. And even though the ghosts of his alt-county predecessors Townes and Molina are definitely present, on Birds of Paradise, Dollbaum emerges from their shadows–waving to the past, sounding all the more like himself.

This moment–this album–is long overdue. Both of Dollbaum’s previous releases had taken way too long to record, due to circumstances out of his control, leaving him frustrated. And after having been away from his home for eight years, the place he had left was no longer the place he remembered, and the unchanging of the natural world felt like a constant he wanted to write about. With a sense of immediacy, he wrote Birds of Paradise in three months. Called up the musicians he trusted and admired the most–Nick Corson, Josh Halper, and Jake Lenderman–and asked them to meet him at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi with producer/engineer Clay Jones. They learned and tracked the album in four days, capturing lightning in a bottle, a sonic revelation Dollbaum’s writing has always been waiting for.