Smalltown Poets are legacy band at this point, releasing their debut album back in 1997 -- the original band, Villanelle, released their album in 1995. While the Poets are no longer a full-time band, split between Washington, Georgia, and Florida respectively, the guys do continue to make music together and play some shows. Their last album, NWxSE (northwest by southeast) released back in 2021, but the Duluth, Georgia boys dropped a teaser for the song "Florida Man" back in April. St. Augustine, an EP-sized self-proclaimed "album," is their newest release and it's so nice to still be getting new music from the Poets in 2025...

John Van Deusen nearly drowned in the making of his newest worship-centric record. Not literally, but emotionally and spiritually speaking. In the process of creation, he admits it was a season defined by both joyous compulsion and the deepest depression he has ever experienced. He shares this tension most fully on his Bandcamp page, but it hangs over As Long as I Am in This Tent of a Body, I Will Make a Joyful Noise Pt. 1 like a haunting refrain. What results is an eighteen-track odyssey that thrums with the raw nerve of duality, echoing the wild swings of emotion seen across the biblical Psalms.

At first, the tension is subtle, woven into the eclectic mix of tracks that stretch across an hour of music. But the more you listen, the more that...

It's somewhat astounding how quickly Zach Williams has made the journey from "new artist" to beloved veteran of the music scene. It seems like only a few years ago that the dusty, heartfelt "Chain Breaker," off of his debut album, was a spark of a song on the radio that led to all sorts of gritty singer/songwriters having a chance in the sometimes sterilized and staid world of Christian music. Like Johnny Cash before him, Zach's testimony about the dark places he'd been in life spoke loudly through his music, and with his new album, Jesus Loves, this trend continues.

With the album release coming in a tense moment in our country, the title track serves a needed reminder to how the love of Jesus is at the heart of...