Weekly Music Roundup: DJ Shadow, Guachinangos, and Radie Peat of Lankum

This week, a new release of an old song by DJ Shadow, and new music from Lankum’s Radie Peat, Jesus Is The Path To Heaven, HUG, and Guachinangos.

DJ Shadow Rolls Back the Years

DJ Shadow has a busy year in 2026 – not because he’s doing a lot of new music, but because he’s revisiting so much old music. This year marks the 30th anniversary of his groundbreaking, all-sampled album Endtroducing, and it’s also the 10th anniversary of his album The Mountain Will Fall. So, he’ll be doing special versions of both records, and today Shadow released a track originally done for the video game Mafia III in 2016, which has never been available before. It’s called “Nobody Wants To Die,” and it’ll be on the deluxe version of the reissue of The Mountain Will Fall. The song is built on a sample from the late 50s folk group Glenn Yarbrough & The Limeliters (“everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”), and features Ice Cube in full-on 1980s gangsta rap mode. The rapper has alienated a lot of fans recently with his political views, but DJ Shadow seems to think enough of this decade-old collaboration to put it out there.

This Band’s Name Is Jesus Is The Path To Heaven. They Don’t Sound Too Sure…

Jesus Is The Path To Heaven is a North Carolina-based trio… I almost wrote “folk trio” because they do present as some sort of extension of the “old weird America” that characterizes so much Appalachian music. But JITPTH is something different. Their new album, Power!, uses the language of Christianity, the language of the Bible, in ways that make it appear shockingly violent. Put another way, there is a lot of blood in the five songs on this album. The songs can be sneakily unsettling, or in the obsessive finale, “Little Lamb,” genuinely terrifying, as the “folk” mask peels off to reveal the doom metal band that’s been hiding behind it all along. Opening track “The Lord Had Bled A Line” builds suspense with a long instrumental prelude before singer Jordan Hoban finally appears with all his gothic imagery, and the song becomes a kind of apocalyptic (or Apocalyptic) hymn.  

New York’s Guachinangos Release Their Debut LP

Guachinangos make Mexican music with a New York accent. More specifically, the band plays the son jarocho music from the state of Veracruz, using traditional sounds like the requinto, a small guitar-like instrument played by the band’s Veracruz-born leader, Juan Carlos Marin, but adding things like electric guitar. They also draw on the sounds of Colombian music, and the guitar playing may bring to mind some other New York bands like Chicha Libre who revel in the sounds of early 70s Latin psychedelia. All of which makes Guachinangos a hybrid band with clear roots, which sounds pretty New York-y to me. Their debut album is called Guachinangos, Vol. 1 and includes this catchy, Colombian-inflected tune called “Café Café.”

Lankum’s Radie Peat Goes Solo

Radie Peat is the lead singer of the Irish band Lankum, whose gothic, drone-based take on Irish folk song has made them the standard-bearers for a new wave of folk revivalists. Her expressive, slightly weathered vocals are an essential part of the band’s sound, and I suppose it was just a matter of time before she started releasing music on her own. Her debut single is “Still I Love Him,” a deeply problematic folk song about a deeply problematic marriage, sung from the point of view of the abused wife. Somehow Peat manages to convey the sad details of the woman’s life while making the refrain “still I love him” sound more like a statement of empowerment than the cry of a victim. The arrangement by John Francis Flynn is a lot more understated than Lankum tends to be, but that restraint amplifies the song’s emotional impact.  

Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley, and Noah Georgeson Unveil New Collaboration

Hug is the name of a new project by three guitar-playing friends – the veteran singer/songwriter Devendra Banhart, the composer and virtuoso musician Gyan Riley, and the producer/engineer/guitarist Noah Georgeson. Their album called HUG comes out on September 11, but this week the trio released the single “Cow With Half Moon Parasol.” The whimsical title could be taken as a gentle parody of the New Age music that all three have in their backgrounds, but the piece itself is a blend of electronica and minimalism, with a repeating set of harmonics forming a theme and a gradually building accompaniment that includes recordings of frogs as well as more conventional rhythmic effects.