Ryan Olcott News Today

This summer has led alternative artists to reflect on their careers due to creating projects of varying successes.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

Last month, the Minneapolis band 12 Rods announced their first new album in 21 years, If We Stayed Alive, which will be released at the beginning of July. They shared “My Year (This Is Going To Be)” at the time, and today they’ve returned with a second single, “Private Spies.” “Private Spies is about those of us who control and document the finest rumors, secrets and gossip in our communities,” bandleader Ryan Olcott said in a statement. “Written ...

12 RODS, also stylized as 12RODS or Twelve Rods, is widely an univestigated mystery of the 1990s.

“My Year (This Is Going to Be)” is the first single from Ryan Olcott’s If We Stayed Alive

The Minneapolis rock band 12 Rods got together in 1992 and developed a searching, contemplative style that a lot of people compared to Radiohead. The band’s 1996 EP Gay? is one of those records that got a 10.0 in Pitchfork back in that site’s early years. After releasing four albums, 12 Rods broke up in 2004. In 2015, Justin Vernon’s Chigliak label reissued 12 Rods’ 2002 album Lost Time, and the band played a one-off reunion show in Minneapolis. Now, frontman Ryan Olcott ...

After its fun 2013 song "Puppy Princess" unexpectedly went viral, the quintet is back with a new single and a gig this weekend.