On Grandeza, the debut album from Sao Paolo–born artist Sessa, the eponymous lead track swings casually into the frame with lightly strummed nylon-stringed guitar and sparse hand percussion. Sessa’s deadpan tenor nonchalantly weaves in and out of the accompaniment of his heavenly, all-female chorus; setting the stage for the mesmerizing vocal interplay that highlights the set throughout.

A spiritual successor to 2004’s Golden Apples of the Sun, the recent compilation Fragments du Monde Flottant proves Devendra Banhart’s ears fully intact. Released by the Genève, Switzerland based Bongo Joe Records, Fragments again finds the singer-songwriter in a curatorial role, culling a dozen demo recordings from his labyrinth of friends, acquaintances and musical compatriots.

Lo-fi traces of eastern raga, drones, Jan Garbarek, Dave Holland…perhaps even a bit of Plastic Soul leaning sax. All of these figure into Julian Lynch’s thing — a thing he does far away from the music biz hype machine. This record, Terra, is of a piece with another one of his albums, Mare. In fact, we engage with the pair as if they were a double album…we’re not even sure which one came out first. No matter, just listen.

David Berman is now recording under the moniker of Purple Mountains, and with the help of Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere of Woods, has created an album that encapsulates an entire missing chapter of his life—and, in typical fashion, has revealed quite a lot about that chapter in the process…

Genre fluid, Jarvis slips as easily into balmy, if broken, r&b as he does sinewy folk. Traces of gospel and homespun funk permeate the record, as its disparate sounds are spliced, screwed and ultimately recombinant. In regard to atmosphere, imagine happening upon a cache of extremely mellow Shuggie Otis demos; if say, Otis had a penchant for hyper-abbreviated 4-track and ambient field recordings.

Cult new wave band The Art Museums tell sordid tales of artists, lovers, and poseurs. Bay Area psych burnouts Josh Alper and Glenn Donaldson converged in San Francisco in the summer of 2009 to record Anglophile jams on a Tascam 388 tape machine (state of the art home-recording circa ’85). Sometimes the collection sounds like Pete Townshend demos. Sometimes.

Bob have mercy! Just about eight months after More Blood, More Tracks comes another massive Dylan archival haul. The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings weighs in at a hefty 14 discs, giving listeners a front row seat (and a backstage pass) at the traveling road show Bob threw together in the months following Blood On The Tracks’ release. Three discs of rehearsals! Five complete Dylan sets! A bonus disc of curios and oddities! (Oh and hey, there’s that Martin Scorsese doc to absorb as well). The good news? This box is very reasonably priced at just about $80 — a whole lot of bang for your buck. The bad news? Come on, dude, there is no bad news.

On Badge’s self-titled debut LP, available via Telephone Explosion, they drift through dusted funk moves drawing inspiration from library music records, electric Miles, and the spaced-out hip-hop productions of Madlib, Dilla, and Edan. Flautist Alia O’Brien, from Toronto’s witchy folk-metal group Blood Ceremony, adds signature trills to the grooves laid down by Turnbull on clavinet and Rhodes, while the rest of the group struts in step.