Fust and Merce Lemon at Motorco

Fust, the Durham, North Carolina–based band, announce their new album Big Ugly, out March 7 via Dear Life Records. Following 2024’s Songs of the Rail and 2023’s Genevieve, the record expands their blend of small-town storytelling and country-tinged folk-rock. Songwriter Aaron Dowdy explores Southern life with vivid, literary detail, while the band—featuring members of Sluice, Weirs, Mipso, and more—delivers their biggest, most collaborative sound yet, recorded with engineer Alex Farrar at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studio.

Merce Lemon’s music is rooted in the tight-knit creative community of Pittsburgh, where she grew up surrounded by art, family, and a supportive local scene. After releasing Moonth in 2020, she stepped back during the pandemic to reconsider her relationship with music, spending time farming, writing privately, and reconnecting with nature. The songs that emerged became Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild—a warm, restless record shaped by community, the natural world, and Lemon’s searching reflections on love, belonging, and change.