Things have changed up a bit since we last heard from Zaq Baker . The Minneapolis piano rocker teased towards his sophomore record (titled  Good Kid Manic Summer  at the time) with a pair of video   performances in the winter, but now his plans have been adjusted. Instead of a spring release for Good Kid , Baker is planning to release a different album, titled Cardio , sometime before the end of 2020. "I Wanna Be Your Night Owl" is our first taste. He retains a sense of youthful earnestness on the song, which shouldn't be surprising given the teenage melodrama that has informed his music since 2017's Housewarming  EP. Baker describes the song as telling "a simple story of yearning, a little crush, and staying up late." All of this is immediately evident from the title alone. A veritable murderer's row of collaborators help enliven the piano-driven elegance of Baker's storytelling. Musicians from all across the Twin Cities contribute — Kremblems ...

Fringe Pipes - Whiskey Kisses  EP (self-released)   Colin Loynachan wasn't sure if Fringe Pipes would ever come back. The alt-country songwriter and multi-instrumentalist put his project on hiatus shortly after releasing a debut album - 2015's Karma Bricks . Friends moved away and post-collegiate life came rushing in. A great deal has changed since then, but Fringe Pipes found a way back. Whiskey Kisses , the band's new EP, is a collection of some of the songs that Loynachan "managed to write...along the way." While Loynachan's writing is unquestionably the core of Fringe Pipes, he has once again surrounded himself with a murderer's row of local collaborators. Singer and violinist  Jillian Rae  adds gorgeous backing vocals to two-thirds of the tracks and members of 26 Bats! and Lucid VanGuard play across several songs. The music on Whiskey Kisses  sounds wizened, even as the songs burst with life. Loynachan writes with a timeless pen without sinking int...