Kaki King keeps putting up new tracks on her Myspace page ahead of the 8/8 release of her new album, Until We Felt Red, which was produced by John McEntire. I have been excited to the point of fanaticism about this record all year, and I can't wait to hear it. The posted songs find King exploring both slide guitar (the title track) and a delicate and nuanced fingerstyle alongside her customary tear-up-the-fretboard pyrotechnics. As reported earlier, she's singing, too; she's also adding what sound like hammered dulcimers and pump organs, and horns, and some drums. There's a real emotional heft to the title track, but it's not trying to get over on feeling alone: King's rightly-heralded technique provides the skeleton, and her willingness to try new things puts flesh on the bones. I'm going to put a preorder link up - here it is - because I think Kaki King is an artist whose work should be heard by everybody, not for bogus reasons like "importance" or anything but just beecause it's so damned good. I want her to sell a lot of records so that she can keep on making them, though I should confess that I personally will be buying the record from iTunes when it comes out, and that, morever, if the album isn't available from iTunes when I wake up on the morning of August 8th, I am gonna throw a huge tantrum. The tantrum will be filmed, and then I'll get my own Myspace account on which to post an mpeg of the tantrum, thereby closing the loop. This is what's known in the trade as a win-win situation. But never mind all that. Just go listen to the new Kaki King tunes. They are so wonderful.