Happy Friday! As we head into a busy Valentine's weekend, I wanted to share some of the newer sounds I've been loving lately, starting with a hometown crooner who just released his first video and song...

Jon Jones

Thanks to Jake Heinitz over at Greenroom Magazine for hipping me to Jon Jones, a Minneapolis auto-tune slow jam singer who just put out his first single. With traces of Justin Timberlake and Imogen Heap, I dig the stacked vocals and sparse nature of the song—and the video, directed by fellow musician Nicholas Larkin Perez, suits the mood just right.

Camp Dark

Camp Dark is a new collaboration between singer/songwriter Adam Svec and drummer/producer Graham O'Brien. In their first single, they set out to accomplish an ambitious task: To create an epilogue to the famous Tom Waits song "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis." Camp Dark's debut album, Nightmare in a Day, is due out May 12.

Fairchord & Fixer

"The Imagined Kingdom" is another audio-visual offering from former Blue Sky Blackout frontman Christian Erickson's new project Fairchord & Fixer—and if you listen carefully, you can also hear backing harmonies from Christian's wife and former Astronaut Wife bandmate, Janey Winterbauer. Dreamy!

We Are the Willows

The six members of orchestral pop project We Are the Willows take the whole Awkward Family Photos concept to new levels in the music video for "Picture," which is the title track from their latest album Picture [Portrait].

Jourdan Myers

This new song from Jourdan Myers is so mournful and gorgeous; both her piano playing and singing remind me quite a bit of Marketa Irglova. Don't mind me, I think I just have a little dust in my eye...