This Is The Kit, the nom de plume of Kate Stables, has been in existence since the 00s, when Stables moved to Bristol and started playing and collaborating with local musicians. Now seven albums in, This Is The Kit has carried Stables from Winchester to Bristol to Paris, across tours and festivals and the admiration of critics and her peers. Among these are Sharon Van Etten, The National (Aaron Dessner appears multiple times on Moonshine Freeze), Chris Thile (of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers), as well as Guy Garvey and much of BBC 6Music.  

Her latest album, and third on Rough Trade Records, is the Gruff Rhys-produced Careful of Your Keepers, released in summer 2023. The album finds Stables as magnetic as ever, joined once again by her stalwart band of Rozi Plain (bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums), and accented by a cascading horn quartet arrangement by Jesse Vernon.  

Careful of Your Keepers is daring and soft, cutting and warm—a wild feat of complexity and combined dispositions. There’s a shared language of the band’s family experience that is as audible as ever in these recordings, which boast beautiful instrumental performances that still leave the nuanced space required for Stables’ vocals to live at the forefront. According to her, the record centers on “The fragility of things. Of situations. Of relationships. Of humans. What we do to look after each other and ourselves. The passing of time and what that does to us, and how we live our lives going forward.”  

“one of the most original and musically gifted artists of today.” —The Independent  

“Stables’ outside-the-box brand of folk music still sounds like nothing else you’ve ever heard.” —Paste  

Born in South Florida in 1980 to Ecuadorian immigrant parents, the world-building multi-instrumentalist Roberto Carlos Lange stitches together memories, impressions, and atmospheres to make detailed dreamscapes as Helado Negro. He produces, engineers, and mixes his own songs, literally creating and populating his own sonic world. Lange has a degree in Computer Art and Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design and works extensively with video, sculpture, sound, and performance. He brings that toolbox to whatever he makes, and there’s a seeming effortlessness to the complexity. His songs are awash with vibrant melodies, sharp lyrical vignettes, and subtle, even whispered hooks. Since his 2009 debut, Awe Owe, across multiple projects and collaborations, through his breakthrough records, 2016’s Private Energy and 2019’s This Is How You Smile, and to 2021’s Far In, Lange’s work continues to move past easy genre assignments. Showcasing that interest in open-ended multidisciplinarity, in 2022, he and his wife, the artist Kristi Sword, created the multidisciplinary exhibition, Kite Symphony, with Ballroom Marfa—it was a collection of impressionistic installations, drawings and sound pieces that encourages listeners to “open their ears to the sky, the sound of cacti, and the feeling of the wind on their skin.” Lange’s ninth studio record, Phasor, picks up on that interest in the natural world but in the form of pop music. Deep, atmospheric, and meticulously executed, it’s Lange’s tightest collection to date. Lange has been awarded a United States Artist fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant. He lives in Asheville, NC. His most recent album is PHASOR released on 4AD.