Mavis Staples, photo by Elizabeth De La Piedra

Every Friday, Relix surveys the wealth of new music released over the past seven days and selects dozens of standouts for the Relix Staff Picks playlist. Read on for the highlights from this week’s batch.

Mavis Staples has returned with her 15th solo studio album, Sad and Beautiful World. The rhythm and blues and gospel legend’s follow-up to 2019’s We Get By once again sets her peerless talents on redressing the problems of the present, this time through a collection of covers and originals that stretch seven decades into the past; among the reimagined entries are classics from Tom Waits, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Curtis Mayfield, Leonard Cohen, Frank Ocean and Kevin Morby.

Taken together, Staples’ treatments wield the power of song to steel her listeners against disillusionment and ignite a fiery faith in change. She finds support in this mission in collaborators like Derek Trucks, Buddy Guy, Justin Vernon, Bonnie Raitt, Katie Crutchfield, MJ Lenderman and Jeff Tweedy, who reflect the musical community she has assembled through decades of carrying the legacy of activist music with passion, warmth and resolve.

Staples’ first new album in six years comes after the 86-year-old singer-songwriter briefly considered retirement in 2023. Once she realized that her vital work was not yet complete, she connected with super-producer Brad Cook, who set her unparalleled talents as a storyteller and vocal powerhouse over a sparse arrangement of piano and percussion before carefully adding layers, Through sparing, careful words, the album’s title track resounds as a bittersweet reflection of her hopeful outlook, echoed over a wistful dirge by tentative horns and whining steel guitar.

“You have to stay hopeful and have faith that things are going to get better,” Staples said in a statement. “I just have to deliver the compassion I feel. I want to share the song the way I feel it.”

On Thursday, Khruangbin celebrated the 10th anniversary of their first studio album with the re-recorded The Universe Smiles Upon You ii. Surprise-released a decade to the day after the pioneering psych-funk trio shared its groundbreaking debut, the revisited version documents the crystallization of its eclectic musical tastes into a singular, genre-defying sound and style. With subtle changes throughout, the band expressed their current perspective, reflecting on their origins to chart a course forward. Read more on the intentions and process behind the project in a new interview with Relix.

Circles Around The Sun have finally released Interludes for the Dead: Vol. 2, the beloved jam outfit’s collection of exploratory instrumental jams debuted during the intermissions of Dead & Company’s Golden Gate Park concerts, which marked 60 years of the Grateful Dead in August. Associate Editor Hana Gustafson, our resident expert on all things Dead, has been singing the praises of CATS and their singles since then, and offered her reflection on the album:

Like the first set, Interludes for the Dead: Vol. 2 draws on the untamed essence instituted by Jerry Garcia, Bobby Weir, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann, particularly during their own Pigpen era, demonstrating a willingness to push the sonic boundaries and take listeners outside of their musical comfort zones by playing with tone and textures that allowing feeling to propel extemporization. By entering the instrumental deep end, Circles Around the Sun create their own brand of cosmic grooves that inspire skirt-flying twirls and hair-throwing catharsis.

Portugal. The Man just dropped their 10th studio album, SHISH. The Grammy-winning indie-rock mainstays’ new project braves fearsome new sonic possibilities – from the scuzzy, bombastic opener “Denali” to the spiralling baroque pop of “Tanana” – and draws inspiration from their origins in Alaska. It follows their surprise summer EP, uLu Selects Vol #2, and their triumphant 2023 album Chris Black Changed My Life.

Elsewhere in this week’s list: Emmylou Harris has shared an expanded edition of her unforgettable 1998 live album Spyboy, including an enchanting cover of Lucinda Williams’s “Sweet Old World.” Willie Nelson – who just earned a Grammy nomination in the new Best Traditional Country Album category – has saluted his fellow outlaw Merle Haggard with a new collection of covers. Mercy, the second collaboration between Armand Hammer (billy woods and ELUCID) and the Alchemist, is a masterclass in looming, gritty indie-rap from the genre’s most prolific and consistent innovators. Chris Thile flexes his classical chops on a new set of solo Bach sonatas, and Cat Power struts her soul stuff on a cover of James Brown’s “Try Me,” heralding 20 years of The Greatest. Grumpy took the stage at TV Eye last night to celebrate the release of their Piebald EP with a heavy, rapturous and many-sided outpouring of love and desire.

This week’s batch of Relix Staff Picks also includes new music from Florence + The Machine, Roger Eno, Hilary Woods, Holy Sons, The Belair Lip Bombs, The Cars, Heems, US Girls and Don Was & The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, among many other gems. Tune in here.