Jay Siegel’s Tokens are truly one of pop music's most versatile, talented and enduring groups. Ever since their first hit single in 1961, The Tokens have remained popular with generation after generation. “Tonight I Fell In Love” introduced the world to the irresistible harmonies of The Tokens and gave the group their first hit, climbing to #15 on the pop charts. Soon after, the group landed at #1 with their signature song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” More than 30 years later, that song returned to the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart in August of 1994, making it the second-longest chart span in the rock era. Featured in the Disney motion picture "The Lion King," the success of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” prompted RCA to re-release "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and a CD featuring a unique compilation of twenty of The Tokens' earlier tunes. It gives their fans a rare opportunity to enjoy many of the songs The Tokens wrote more than thirty years ago, as well as songs popularized by other artists which The Tokens later recorded in their own distinctive style.   While dyed-in-the-wool Tokens fans know that Jay had always sung on the group's hits (including, among many others, “Tonight I Fell In Love,” "Portrait Of My Love," "La Bamba,” "B'wanina," "He's In Town," "She Lets Her Hair Down,” "I Hear Trumpets Blow" and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”), few know that he had a hand in writing many of them and even more may not be aware of the number of hats he wore throughout the group’s career.

For those just tuning into their programme, Vanity Mirror is the name under which the transnational musical duo of Canadian singer-songwriter-producer Brent Randall and Los Angeles-based drummer Johnny Toomey release music. Their debut record, Puff (2023), was a masterclass in lo-fidelity rock and roll, weaving together various strands of twentieth-century pop into a variegated sonic tapestry that is both rich in melancholic longing and radiant with technicolor exuberance. The follow-up album, Super Fluff Forever, arrives over two years after the release of Puff. During that time, the band toured through Europe and California, while Randall split his time between Toronto and Monrovia, California, working on several albums in collaboration with his wife and honorary third member of Vanity Mirror, Madeline Doctor. For the most part, Super Fluff Forever was entirely written, performed, recorded, and mixed by Randall in Toronto and Monrovia. True to his minimalist bedroom style, he used a laptop, three microphones, a few guitars, and an old piano found on Craigslist. Following the process established on their first album, Randall would send tunes through the wires of the internet over to Toomey’s Los Angeles basement, where he would lay down drums and send them back for mixdown. Additional vocals and piano overdubs were contributed by Doctor thereafter. Compared to Puff, Super Fluff Forever explores new stylistic terrain. The album plays like a cabinet of bedroom pop curiosities, filled with sonic signifiers that point in many directions: ringing six-string power chords, Echoplex-treated flute pirouettes, effervescent vocal harmonies, sepia-toned parlor piano rags, blurry Casio synthesizer mirages, fuzztone melodies, and wistful jangle-pop arpeggios. Unlike the ornate baroque arrangements of Randall’s earlier work with the Pinecones, or the kaleidoscopic sunshine pop of his and Toomey’s other band, Electric Looking Glass, these songs are tied together by a shared minimalism in both arrangement and production. There are sly winks and reverent nods to the past throughout, but taken as a whole, the album feels like it exists outside of time and space.

Stratford, Ontario-based songwriter Christo Graham returns with Good Covers, a stunning slice of self-described “British Invasion Americana” boasting a varied tracklist that combines pastoral banjo fingerpickers, McCartneyesque piano balladry, and languid acoustic psychedelia into a remarkably cohesive package. His fifth release for Toronto’s We Are Busy Bodies, the album takes an understated and homespun approach, the directness of the recordings reflected in the immediacy of the resulting tunes. It arrives in record stores on January 30th, 2026.   Good Covers is Graham’s eleventh album overall; he has been releasing work through We Are Busy Bodies since 2020’s Turnin', and his earliest records date back to early high school. By his own admission, his discography has run the stylistic gamut, veering into genres as disparate from his current work as slick 80s pop (2016’s November Baby) and bombastic rock opera (2025’s Clown Riot). Lately though, his guiding light appears to be rustic folk and country songwriting filtered through the lens of kaleidoscopic 60s pop. On Good Covers, sparse instrumentation disguises sneakily ornamental and lush arrangements, with expertly deployed organ drones and twinkling Cameo piano augmenting the standard guitar, bass, and drum layers. It’s an exercise in making full use of a simple toolbox; everything was tracked with one Shure 545S, all guitars were run clean through a small Silvertone bass amp, and the vocals sit unadorned above the mix. This no-frills aesthetic is the record’s greatest strength, allowing Graham's deft words and sticky melodies to take the listener’s primary focus.