Seattle legends Young Fresh Fellows, the band led by Scott McCaughey (R.E.M., The Baseball Project) that also includes Fastbacks' Kurt Bloch, are back with Toxic Youth, their first album in eight years. The record was somewhat made by accident. Knowing that frequent YFF producer Conrad Uno's famed Egg Studios in Seattle — where they made many of their records over the years — was about to close, the band regrouped to record just a couple songs. They ended up leaving with 17 completed tracks, 12 of which they decided were album-worthy. (Other Egg tracks ended up on last year's Exit Ramp which also collected songs that had never been released on vinyl.) The album got a limited release for the October edition of Record Store Day, and we've got the premiere of the video for "Becky Doll," which features co-lead vocals from Coco Hames of The Ettes. Directed by Scott Ferril, the video is a computer animated haunted house tale that should excite folks who didn't get enough Halloween last weekend. Says Scott, "Pretty cool, huh? Watch it on a big screen!"

Meanwhile, for Bandcamp Friday, Scott McCaughey has released an album of Neil Young covers, simply titled Neil Vol. 1. "When I had a major stroke three years ago, I lost my ability to talk, sing, make music. As I found my way back, I turned to the songs I had a best chance at recalling, music somewhere deep in the recesses of what was left of me," Scott says in a note about the release. "The Beatles and Neil were my subterranean lode … words and chords COULD be unearthed if I tried hard and often enough. When this homegrown effort started taking shape, in the bowels of 2020, I consciously swerved away from much of the best known Neil songs to me, and the casual listener. Digging deeper, like I had tried to cough up favorite songs in the ditch of my fucked-up brain."

As Scott notes, he decided to title this "Vol 1" as "there are a thousand more songs."