It’s a hell of a time right now, so our featured stream for the month of May presents two artists instead of the usual one. Later this month, Learning Curve Records will release a split EP between Portland, OR’s Gaytheist and Connecticut’s Intercourse.

If their names don’t already suggest it, both band’s deliver powerful, aggressive tunes that spite convention.

Listen to the songs below, followed by both band’s talking about what inspired this record in the first place.

(Hit the plus sign for the full track list.)

Salt Lake City, UT punks Insight are back with new material and a career-spanning retrospective collection. The collection is fittingly titled Reflection and releases on July 31. It collects 19 songs in totlal, including the band's out of print What Will It Take EP (originally released on Victory) and new material.

A new song, "Take It Back," which is clearly based in the present, in streaming at No Echo.

Midnight Werewolf Records has issued a fundraising compilation of new and unreleased songs from the label's roster. The new compilation feaetures sons by Sorespot, Kal Marks, Fucko, Sneeze, J. Croteau, and more, with 16 tracks in total.

Titled Music to Bake Bread - A MWR Collection, the label asks for $5 (or more) donations, with a limited run of cassettes available.

All profits will be donated evenly to PPE for hospitals, restaurant and migrant workers, and Massachusetts music venues.

Run The Jewels is back with its fourth LP this summer. Following previous naming conventions, RTJ4 will be available digitally on June 5 and on physical formats in September.

A video to "Ooh La La" is out now (and shared below).

In related news, Fat Possum Records has reissued El-P's Cancer 4 Cure, I'll Sleep When You're Dead, and will soon also re-release Fantastic Damage (digital soon and vinyl in August). All three were originally released on Definitive Jux.

Recorded entirely in isolation and and tracked separately by participating musicians, members of Signals Midwest, Ratboys, Modern Baseball, Into it. Over It. and more have teamed up for a benefit track to benefit NIVA.

The song "Tying Airplanes to the Ground" was inspired by the late John Prine and it features Maxwell Stern (Signals Midwest, Timeshares) and several friends (full credits listed below).

"I wrote this song on April 8th, 2020, the day after John Prine died. I spent the whole day doing nothing but listening to his music," Stern says. "There's such incredible beauty and humor in his songs but there's also a definite darkness, a somber quality that can exist in that same space. I was wondering about what he might write for these current times, and then I tried to write my own personal version of that song."

Two Minneapolis, MN bands are releasing a new split on Jetsam-Flotsam record label. To be released on 10" vinyl and digital platforms, the EP features Holler House and Busey and will be available June 5. Both bands play a unique variation of noise-driven post-punk. Idioteq shared "Running" by Holler House this week, and the label says a song by Busey will premiere elsewhere next week.

On August 28, Kill Rock Stars will release an expanded 25th anniversary edition of the self-titled Elliott Smith album, originally released in July 1995.

The album was Smith's second solo release. The new expanded edition features an entirely remastered LP, a previously released Live at Umbra Penumbra live album, and a coffee table book by photographer JJ Gonson, who also shot the album cover for the original release.

The live recording is the earliest known recording of Smith performing solo, from September 17, 1994 at Portland’s café and “art salon” Umbra Penumbra. 

Kill Rock Stars, who released the original record and the upcoming reissue, will prepare fans for the release by collaborating with artists on cover songs leading up to its August release. While many are still not finalized, artists will include Bonny Light Horseman (Anais Mitchell of Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats) and Josh Kaufman (Muzz, Bob Weir, Josh Ritter), Marisa Anderson, MAITA, Prateek Kuhad and Califone, and more. Califone's cover of “Needle In The Hay” is currently available exclusively through Amazon.

A new duo called Man On Man has released its first song, "Daddy." Man on Man is comprised of boyfriends Roddy Bottum (Faith No More, Imperial Teen) and Joey Holman (Cool Hand Luke). While the two are romantically entwined, this is their first musical collaboration. 

The debut single is streaming at Rolling Stone and was written in isolation during the COVID pandemic.

“Man on Man is bold and sexual by nature - romantic, optimistic and celebratory. Isolation may be the new norm but it’s provided a springboard for M.O.M. to create and rally against the limitations of the virus,” Bottum says, with Holman adding, “Our vision is to create art that promotes positive views of sexual freedom, honest expression and adaptable creativity."

The duo will release singles throughout the year, building to an EP in late summer.

A collective of musicians calling itself Rock For Hope has shared a cover of the Ramones' "I Believe In Miracles" to raise funds for COVID-19 related causes, plus to raise spirits in general. The collective includes Walter Schreifels (Quicksand, Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Rival Schools, CIV), Frank Turner, Eugene Hutz (Gogol Bordello), Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance), Justin Hawkins (The Darkness), Brett Anderson (The Donnas), Tom Higgenson (Plain White T's), Nathen Maxwell (Flogging Molly, The Bunny Gang), Mike Miley (Rival Sons), Boris Pelekh (Gogol Bordello, Hey Guy), and Roy Cardenas (Mutemath). 

The group is raising funds for Partners In Health, a global health organization aimed at bringing quality health care to the most vulnerable around the world.

Listen to the cover and read a statement after the bump.