STREAM: Fawn Wood's Stunning New Album Honouring the Female Spirit, Kikawiynaw

Plains Cree/Salish singer Fawn Wood's new album is almost too good for words. 

But, beautiful, powerful, moving, and raw but pulsing with strength are a few we can start with.

Titled Kikāwiynaw meaning "our mother," Wood's latest collection honours the female spirit. Her clear, warm, and expressive voice is an open door—guiding you into her round dance, hand game, and traditional songs. Once inside, you're greeted with layered, ethereal harmonies and occasional gentle instrumentation that gently wrap you in their warmth.

Wood's music invites you to connect with your spirit as she travels through themes of longing, loss, remembrance, family, celebration, and gratitude.

It's an invitation your ears and heart can't refuse.

STREAM: Fawn Wood's new album, Kikāwiynaw, below:

Video: Caley Watts Band - "The Wolf Song"

The Caley Watts Band's The Wolf Song begins as a slow howl before picking up into a quick trot and bringing us down some west coast trails, heads nodding to the rhythm.

I imagine game trails, hunting and rabbits. Images of wolf cubs come to my mind, and then young pups testing their strength against the others'. If The Caley Watts Band from Bella Coola drew inspiration for this song from the wild, it's worked to bring the author back into the woods in his imagination.

Bella Coola is the traditional territory of the Nuxalk Nation, who have been there for an estimated 10,000 years, if not longer. There is a rich culture of storytelling there. In traditional narratives told by Aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Coast, supernatural beings were known to take the form of animals, birds or fish in the human world. In their own villages, these beings lived among the people as humans. Many stories tell of the encounters between humans and animal or supernatural beings, sometimes even with traditional masks and dance that were preserved through the times, even though potlatching and masks were at one time not allowed.

Is Caley Watts really a wolf being, singing the songs of her ancestors?

Watch: The Caley Watts Band - "The Wolf Song":

VIDEO: Ant Loc - "Hands Of Vengeance"

Here's a new video from Salish hip-hop artist Ant Loc of Savage Family for his track Hands Of Vengeance.

Ant Loc of Savage Family hits us up with a hard hitting, revolutionary banger and video for Hands Of Vengeance that speaks of social injustices and powering through it. While a solo project by Ant Loc, this still has the overtones of the Savage Family collective in it and hits us with truth and knowledge. Boom.