Every Durango14 album has built significantly on the last one, and while 2016’s Vol. 3 was very close, I believe this is the album they were striving to make.

The initial few EPs from Les Robots were immediately exciting: they were bar-none the best modern Joe Meek sound-alike that I'd heard. Thankfully, they didn't keep us waiting for long to hear a full-length, and I think it delivers on the promise of those EPs.

Let's Fly to Mars is a high-profile, long-term, cross-continental collaboration between Jeremy DeHart known primarily from The Aqualads, El Firetone from El Ray, Dr. Boris  from Messer Chups, and Dane Carter from The Madeira. Jeremy lays out the story in detail in this post at SurfGuitar101 that I would highly recommend reading.

The Sharawaji Records roster has been growing steadily and adding more high-profile releases. They recently grabbed some attention for the upcoming Chewbacca’s record, but meanwhile this little gem snuck under the radar. Black Valley Moon features the guitarist from Epitaph punk band Down By Law, but they do a great job of carving out a unique surf that feels accomplished and comfortable within the genre.

I don’t know much about French surf power trio Beach Moonsters but they quickly had me thinking of another prominent French group: Hawaii Samurai. They’re tastefully clipped to sound loud, play fast, and generally keep it pretty stupid and fun. There’s one slower one “Before the Death of the Gringo”, but it’s by no means any softer. It’s hard to find much to say here, if power surf is your thing, I think your interest will be piqued.

Recently the surf radio show Heads Up! with Carmen Ghia put on a monster 11-band showcase of Seattle's surf/instro groups. On that roster was a band called Via Combusta, who have been playing Seattle surf shows for a while but seem largely unknown outside their home turf (and was certainly unknown to me). This 7" was slated for a release this fall, but waddaya know, they were ready to go earlier than expected, which is seemingly never the case these days. I think they deserve a little attention.

In 2015 Los Freneticos’ album El Sonido Que Perdura was anointed with my Gremmy award for best Trad Surf record of the year (man, I was playing fast and loose with the word "trad" then...). It’s a record that bursts with energy, exuberance and playfulness. Teletransportacion is the follow-up to that record, and though it keeps much of the same sound, it chooses a different style. If El Sonido Que Perdura is an action-packed Saturday afternoon in the sun, Teletransportacion is Sunday at the same spot, cold drink in hand.

3 releases in less than a year, perhaps Amphibian Man is getting back to his previous furious pace. Though Metal Goes Surf went back to slapping some reverb on that guitar, these 7 songs are about as dry and punk-sounding as they've ever been, to the point where I'd consider this instro-punk instead of instro-surf.

Cat Sith (or Catsith, they never seem to settle on that) have released 3 EPs and 2 LPs since April of 2018, and every subsequent release gets a little more poisoned.

Despite hearing their first EP, something about this led me to believe that it would be fast-n-nasty metal-tinged surf, but Mare Incognitum actually adopts a pretty normal modern surf sound at a normal pace, just dwelling a bit more on the darker side. That's no complaint though, each of these is punchy and fun, almost always danceable, and with a good sense of when to go big, when to sound a little nastier, and generally how to stay interesting and fun.