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- Gutsy News - August 2026
Gutsy News - August 2026
Album Review, Top 5, New DJs and more!
Gutsy Radio
August 10, 2026
Welcome to the Gutsy Radio newsletter! We‘ll keep it short and sweet letting you know about all the amazing music and DJs you can find on gutsyradio.org.
Gutsy Radio is a decentralized community radio station featuring music, talk, performance, and experiments broadcast live from around the United States. Each program is curated solely by its DJ, host, or performer. We present an eclectic and exciting variety of ad-free shows every night of the week and weekend mornings.
Successful May Marathon!
During our May Marathon we aimed to raise half our annual operating expenses, and with the help of our volunteers and listeners, we pulled it off—$2500 raised! If you haven’t supported us yet, please consider becoming a supporting member of the Gutsy Radio listening community. All donations go directly to paying for our broadcasting service and required music licensing.
THANK YOU to those who have been keeping us on the air with your donations and store purchases. We truly appreciate your support!
There are other ways to support Gutsy Radio, too. Check out our webstore! You'll find custom apparel, bandanas (make great impromptu picnic cloths as well as fabulous accessories) and drinkware among other old favorites.
Coming Soon: Gutsy Zine
We’re seeking submissions for a Gutsy zine that will be printed and provided for Gutsy DJs to freely distribute. This inaugural issue will showcase the many voices, interests, and creative practices that make up the Gutsy community. Listeners and DJs alike are encouraged to submit work.
Rather than responding to a specific theme, contributors are encouraged to bring whatever they do best. Submissions can take many forms. Our goals for the publication are to introduce more people to Gutsy Radio, and to highlight the creativity and interests of our community, even beyond our shared love of music.
Submissions could include artwork, short stories, poetry, interviews, comics, essays, reflections, observations, or more station-specific content such as lists of most-played tracks or artists, record reviews, playlists, or anything else you think would help introduce yourself and the broader Gutsy community.
Please proofread any written contributions before submitting, and provide them as a text file that includes your name. Submit images at their original (highest) resolution with your name included in the file name.
Click here to submit your work for the zine!
Music Reviews
“What’s Up?” by Revelry — If you haven’t had Revelry on your radar yet, it’s high time to fix that. These Murfreesboro, TN, good ol' boys are putting in the real work, dropping a raw, heavy-hitting brand of Southern rock that hits like a freight train, packed with dual-guitar grit and massive harmonies. Their take on the '90s 4 Non Blondes classic "What's Up?" completely rips. Instead of doing a lazy, carbon-copy cover, they slam the pedal down with a booming low end and thick guitar tones that make that iconic chorus hit twice as hard. Dropped as a standalone single, it fits right into their playbook of bite-sized offers, one at a time, to keep the queue fresh. But if you want a deeper dive into their original stash, go dig up their 2024 EP, South of Nashville. It proves these guys aren't just a great live act, they can write serious tunes. Bottom line, Revelry is the real deal because they respect the roots without sounding like a museum piece, leaving every last bit of soul right on the tape. REVIEW by Nikk in GA
“Slippers 08” by Slippers – Listening to Slippers 08 is like eating an ice cream cone. Sweet, fun and over in 22 minutes. The longest song on the album, “Til You Know,” is only 2 minutes and 37 seconds. But a little goes a long way. Madeline Babuka Black's vocals are crisp yet dreamy and backed by rich orchestration. The LA artist experiments with guitars and synths on some tracks and croons about everything from hot cars to misunderstandings. Released in June 2026 on Perennial, an imprint of K Records, this album is summer in a nutshell. REVIEW by Sandie in MD
“Help(2)” by War Child Child Records — Charity records seem to allow a critical exemption: the cause is good, therefore the music can be just good enough. HELP(2) does not quite accept that bargain, however, and perhaps its greatest achievement is turning an ostensibly charitable compilation into something that demands to be heard on its own musical terms. This 23-track sequel assembles an improbable cast—Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Pulp, Big Thief, Sampha, Fontaines D.C., Olivia Rodrigo and more, with proceeds supporting War Child’s work with children affected by conflict. Ultimately, HELP(2) succeeds because it treats music not as a solution to war but as a means of refusing indifference.
Conceived as a sequel to the landmark 1995 HELP compilation, it gathers 23 tracks spanning indie rock, electronic music, pop, soul, jazz and experimental music. The album’s central theme is therefore impossible to separate from its purpose of showcasing how war, displacement and vulnerability sit alongside ideas of solidarity, love and the stubborn possibility of hope, resulting in an occasionally unwieldy album. HELP(2) is about war, certainly, but also exhaustion, displacement, generational anxiety, intimacy and the desperate human instinct to find meaning when the larger world seems determined to erase it. HELP(2), released by War Child Records on March 6, 2026, is less a conventional album than a musical act of collective conscience.
Its strongest songs understand that a protest song does not necessarily have to sound like one. Arctic Monkeys’ “Opening Night” is an unusually restrained entrance, its atmosphere more evocative than declarative, while “Flags” — Damon Albarn, Grian Chatten and Kae Tempest’s uneasy collaboration — turns collective identity into something simultaneously communal and threatening. Beth Gibbons’ “Sunday Morning” is even better: fragile, ghostly and almost indecently intimate amid an album concerned with geopolitical catastrophe. Sampha’s “Naboo” operates in a similar register, suggesting that the consequences of conflict are ultimately experienced as private wounds rather than statistics.
The middle of the record is where the quality control becomes noticeably uneven. Pulp’s “Begging for Change” has the necessary anger but occasionally mistakes volume for urgency, while some of the more conventional contributions feel as though they were selected because they fit the cause rather than because they transform it artistically. Not every track earns its place, but enough of them cut deep enough to make the whole project matter. Ezra Collective and Greentea Peng’s “Helicopters” is a genuine left turn: dub-heavy, bass-driven and simmering with distrust, it gives the album a physical pulse that many of its more solemn songs lack. The song confronts surveillance, oppression and the machinery of power.
The closing sequence makes the album’s argument without spelling it out. Foals’ “When the War Is Finally Done” gives the record its most explicit expression of hope, while “Sunday Light” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “The Book of Love” move toward tenderness rather than triumph. It is an appropriately modest ending. HELP(2) cannot offer resolution because the problems that inspired it have none, and the album wisely avoids pretending otherwise. REVIEW by Russell in KY (DJ Slaz)
Welcome New DJs!
Darcy in CA broadcasts her show Precious FM live every four weeks on Sundays at 11pm ET. Catch Darcy’s next show, on August 23, to hear an infectious, head-bobbing mix. Darcy describes Precious FM as "Tender and immersive, moving between dreamy indie, soft electronics, and euphoric pop. The kind of show you listen to by a window when you're thinking about someone." Click here to listen to an archived edition of Darcy’s Precious FM broadcast from July.
Hop onto our Discord server to let them know you’re listening!
Top 5 of ’26
This month, we present DJ Mark in MD’s Top 5 Songs of 2026. Tune in every other Monday from 9-11pm ET for Mark’s dazzlingly eclectic show, and don’t miss his equally fun shows cohosting with Sandie in MD every other Saturday at 9pm. Mark and Sandie share air next on August 15, and Mark’s next Monday show is August 17.
And now, in no particular order, Mark’s best of ’26, so far:
Playlist of the Month
On Tuesday, July 21, DJs Christina and Rahne from Maryland played a mix of contemporary and classic music from Canadian artists in celebration of Canada Day. It’s your Mystery Date Can Con playlist!
The Subhumans - Oh Canaduh
Lesbians on Ecstasy - Summer Luv - Everything Was Slo-Mo
The Weakerthans - Our Retired Explorer (Dines With Michel Foucault In Paris, 1961)
Spirit of the West - And If Venice Is Sinking
SPOILS - burnt jacket
The New Pornographers - Champions of Red Wine
Martha Wainwright - Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole
Sloan - Money City Maniacs
The Hidden Cameras - Steal All You Can Motherfucker
case / lang /v eirs - Accidental Tattoo
Richard Laviolette - Ordinary Fellow
Mary Carl - song 22
Meryn Cadell - I Say
Barenaked Ladies - Great Provider
Cowboy Junkies - 'Cause Cheap Is How I Feel
The Be Good Tanyas - When Doves Cry
Feist - My Moon My Man
Broken Social Scene - Fire Eye'd Boy
Alanis Morissette - Joining You
Metric - Patriarch on a Vespa
Shawnee Kish - Diagnosed Dissociative
Fifth Column - To Sir With Hate
The Dishrags - Quiet Little Table
Kingdom of Birds - Kenny
Tipless - They were not roommates, they were lovers
The Cliks - Oh Yeah
The Weakerthans - Bad Time to Be Poor
Plumtree - In the Sink
Crash Test Dummies - Comin' Back Soon (The Bereft Man's Song)
Rough Trade - Emotional Blackmail
Final Fantasy - This Is the Dream of Win & Regine
Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet - Having an Average Weekend
. . . Blips . . .
Join us on Discord! Did you know you can chat with DJs and other listeners while listening to the radio? Some of our DJs also take requests and post links to Bandcamp during their shows. It’s a lively and fun way to chat about music and more.
To join Discord, head over to gutsyradio.org and click on the pulsing black circle in the bottom righthand corner. Accept the invite, continue to Discord and then create your username and password. You’ll be all set to join the conversation live over at Discord.
Gutsy, Too! kicks off our broadcasting Monday through Friday from 5 to 7pm ET. Hand picked from our growing archive of over 3,000 shows, re-listen to all the variety that makes Gutsy Radio great. The schedule is listed each week on Instagram and gutsyradio.org.
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