Sometimes, Mitski says, it feels like life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” Mitski says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have, after I die, so that I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will continue to shine that love long after she’s gone. Listening to it, that’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.“ This is my most American album,” Mitski says about her seventh record, and the music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. In this album,which is sonically Mitski’s most expansive, epic, and wise, the songs seem to be introducing wounds and then actively healing them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like the light from a distant star. The album is full of the ache of the grown-up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything, and everyone, is crying out, screaming in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning us and then rejecting us. To love this place — this earth, this America, this body — takes active work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Wyatt Flores is in the midst of a breakout year following the release of his full-length debut album, Welcome to the Plains, this past fall (Island Records). With the record, produced by Beau Bedford (Orville Peck, Shane Smith & The Saints), Flores continues to gain widespread attention, having appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” NPR Music’s “Tiny Desk Concert” series and “CBS Saturday Morning,” while the album landed on several “Best of 2024” lists such as NPR, Rolling Stone and more. Known for his electric concerts, Flores recently released his first live album, Live At Cain’s Ballroom, and will continue to tour through this summer with his “Welcome Back to the Plains” headline tour as well as several festival dates across the country. Born and raised in Oklahoma, the Mexican-American artist has established himself as one of country music’s most vital voices. In the past year, he’s been recognized as one of Rolling Stone’s 25 “Future of Music” artists, was nominated for Emerging Act of the Year at the 2024 Americana Awards, was selected as Amazon’s Breakthrough Artist of the Year, included in Spotify’s Hot Country Class of 2024 and CMT’s Listen Up class and made his Grand Ole Opry debut. Additionally, Flores has garnered over 325 million streams to date and had his song “Before I Do” with Jake Kohn featured on the soundtrack for the Twisters movie.