Chris Stamey is an indie-rock icon with a long and illustrious history that’s encompassed co-founding seminal avant-pop band The dBs, playing with Alex Chilton in the 70s, and more recently with Jody Stephens's Big Star Quintet. His upcoming album, Modernism (May 1) was conceived as a companion piece to 2025’s lauded Anything Is Possible (with guests the Lemon Twigs), and is a further “love letter” to the kaleidoscopic variety of music heard on AM and free-form FM radio in the 1960s and early 70s. It features many of his favorite songs from that era, with special guests such as Jody Stephens (Big Star), Pat Sansone (Wilco), long-time cohort Mitch Easter, Probyn Gregory and Nelson Bragg (formerly of the Brian Wilson band), The dB’s, NC legend Wes Lachot, and Emily Frantz (Watchhouse), among others. First singles are “Hey Bulldog” (with Stephens) and “Waterloo Sunset” (with The dB’s).

As a producer and a featured singer/songwriter with the Paris-based Salt Collective project, he has collaborated with Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Juliana Hatfield, Richard Lloyd (Television), Matthew Sweet, Aimee Mann, Andy Partridge, The Lemon Twigs, Mike Mills, and Lynn Blakey, among others. As a producer, arranger, and mixer, he has worked with over a hundred artists, including Alejandro Escovedo, Kronos Quartet, Flat Duo Jets, Skylar Gudasz, Branford Marsalis, Tift Merritt, Le Tigre, Those Pretty Wrongs, Ryan Adams, and Yo La Tengo.

Other tracks on the new record Modernism include Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” (featuring the Uptown Horns, Brian Dennis [DAG], and Jon Wurster [Mountain Goats, Superchunk]), “Shadows Breaking Over My Head” by the Left Banke, “Hernando’s Hideaway” (from The Pajama Game, and a 1954 hit for Everly Bros. producer Archie Bleyer), “At Last” (by Harry Warren), as well as three new interpretations of his own earlier tunes. There’s also a closer of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday,” a version produced by Alex Chilton in 1977.