Celebrating Tough Love at 20
It’s never easy to keep a label going, so when you hit 20 years, that should be celebrated, especially if you’re a label dear to our hearts, like Tough Love. While based in London, they’ve had some far reaching goals, particularly in the San Francisco scene, bringing us delicious tunes from acts like The Reds, Pinks and Purples and Cindy. Speaking of those two, they’ve both offered new tracks to for the compilation, Tough Love 20, which we’ve got streaming right below. As a person who owns a ton of LPs with the label stamped on it, I felt like we should celebrate along with the label! You can also grab the Tough Love 20 Compilation right HERE.
If your site isn’t covering 
Honestly, I thought about foregoing a year-end list this year. I mean, if you read our site, you know what we love. But, list making can be fun, especially if you really really love music. My criteria was simple, and not based on what I think is “best,” but rather looking at the stuff I listened to the most, and eventually bought (or was gifted). Popular locals for my Nathan Wrapped have me living on an island in between San Francisco and Australia; label of the year would be Trouble in Mind (congrats to Bill and family!); genre would be: most awesome. Again, this is one man’s personal tastes, take it for what its worth.
There was a ton of great music dropping last week, which seems to be the norm for this Spring…not that we mind one bit. I tried to give some love to our Austin friends like Jana Horn and Letting Up Despite Great Faults, who both dropped new releases…and new tunes from Batty Jr. and Born Twins too, so keeping the ATX alive. It was good to hear new stuff from Estonia’s Pia Fraus, who’ve always crafted great landscape shoegaze. New stuff from Cindy and Beach Fossils wasn’t a bad way to slide into the week either, but we closed it out with a fun feature between My Favorite and Holy Wire. Check it all out.
If ever there was a band coming through with a new LP that needed praise and adoration then it would absolutely be 
We obviously had a busy week being out and about in Austin, but we did cover some tracks early in the week we wanted to remind you of from the likes of Cindy and John Andrew. But, the rest of this week’s playlist of tracks includes singles from all the band’s we caught live and fell in love with during SXSW. Fortunately for you, the three of us all have distinctly different tastes, with lots of overlap, so you’re going to get a pretty varied jam session here this Monday morning. Sit back, and stream on.
Even after taking off Monday, we managed to get tons of coverage out there. I was stoked to hear that new Cindy song that I had been promised late last year. RayRay started pushing some of our SXSW introductions out with Pendant and Orions Belte. A handful of Austin acts tossed out new tunes, so check in on Hallo, Space Tan and Transy Warhol…a few who will be playing our just announced ATH vs SOTO SXSW Party. Plus, I got a bonus add by getting an excuse to post a little Braid to this site, on top of including my favorite releases of the week for streaming purposes. Get at it below.