kwn and Makeshift Art Bar Return with New EPs

kwn has released the new EP and all pride aside, an eleven-track project that arrives with guest spots from Destin Conrad and Ty Dolla $ign. The collaborative choices pull r&b into the orbit without softening the core of the record. Details beyond the tracklist remain thin, but the scale alone suggests an artist testing wider ground.

In a separate corner, Belfast four-piece Makeshift Art Bar deliver their second EP, Marionette. The music sits in that punishing zone where noise stays just on the right side of actively enjoyable. Ask the band to explain what drives it and they would rather not — they field the big questions and bat nearly all of them back. That evasiveness fits a sound that resists easy interpretation, made by a group still most interesting when they let the distortion do the talking.