As I’ve written here before, I love Bandcamp. Artists keep 80-85% of their sales on the platform, making Bandcamp the only digital music store that I feel as good about patronizing as I do about buying a band’s CD at their show.

And today, Friday, March 20, as the world is grinding to a pandemic halt and all concerts are off, they’re helping out those artists by letting them keep 100% of their sales today. I personally will be stocking the hell up.

Now, a lot of of the biggest names in music are on major label deals that aren’t sold by Bandcamp. But there are also a lot of really excellent bands, some of my favorites of all time. A non-comprehensive selection, in no particular order:

• Sleigh Bells
• Wussy
• Moving Panoramas
• Flock of Dimes
• The Decemberists
• boygenius
• She Keeps Bees
• Los Campesinos
• Hop Along
• Courtney Barnett
• Heartless Bastards
• The Besnard Lakes
• Juana Molina
• S / Jenn Champion (new old release!)
• Summer Cannibals
• Diet Cig (preorder!)
• Gina Chavez
• Automatic
• Screaming Females
• Chumped
• EMA
• Bleached
• Torres
• Waxahatchee (preorder!)
• case/lang/veirs
• Nervous Dater
• Speedy Ortiz
• Amanda Palmer
• Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
• Charly Bliss
• Lucy Dacus

Now get over there and start shopping!

I gave a listen to a few episodes of the Still Processing podcast, and really enjoyed them. The hosts have a great rapport, as well as points of view I don’t always hear that often. I’ll let the blurb from the Guardian article where I learned of it make the pitch:

This weekly confab between Pulitzer-winning critic Wesley Morris and his friend and fellow New York Times writer Jenna Wortham is not, strictly speaking, all about politics. So what are they still processing? Being black in America, for starters. Also: queer life, anything inspiring/troublesome in pop culture, Beyoncé v Adele and more. Times colleagues make frequent appearances, and the duo also take the occasional field trip. (If ever there was the correct use of the word “poignant”, it would be to describe their tour of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture – or the Blacksonian, as they dubbed it.)

That “Blacksonian” episode (it’s from Oct. 6, 2016, if you’re searching by date in a podcast app) was a good one, as was the Feb. 2 episode, “You Only Leave Home When Home Won’t Let You Stay”. But they’re not all big, heavy themes; the latest episode is an Oscars preview. It’s good stuff, check it out.

P.S. Pod Save America, also listed in that Guardian piece (“four former Obama aides… usher in the [Trump] era”) is another good one.