It’s voting season. On Saturday, South Carolina and Nevada will weigh in on the next presidential candidates, and on Monday you can vote for the winners in My Spilt Milk’s New Orleans Music Awards. We’ll have our ballot up Monday along with a write-in option to make sure that your voices are heard.

It seems only appropriate that on the day of the Iowa Caucuses My Spilt Milk announces that fans of music in New Orleans will have yet another chance to have their say. In December, we announced that this would be the first year for My Spilt Milk’s New Orleans Music Awards, and now we can announce that the event will take place Thursday, April 7 at The Howlin’ Wolf.

1. “Stepping Outside” - Val Hollie: The first track from New Orleans’ Val Hollie’s upcoming self-titled EP, which is due out November 13 at the Saturn Bar.

2. “This Must Be the Place” - Kishi Bashi: Kishi Bashi recorded his cover of this Talking Heads song for a collection of 45s, and again for his upcoming album, String Quartet Live!, November 13. 

One of my favorite albums of 2014 was AF the Naysayer's The Autodidact Instrumentals Vol. 1. The tracks began as part of a project with a Baton Rouge rapper, and when that fell apart he was left with a collection of instrumentals that had a clear, strong mood with a dub-like sense of space and groove.

Earlier this year, I talked to beat maker AF the Naysayer about one of my favorite albums of last year, The Autodidact Instrumentals, Vol. 1 and Dolo Jazz Suite—a regular gathering of beat makers, DJs, and hip-hop producers.

This week's "Freshly Spilt Milk" soundcloud playlist includes jangle pop from The Cairo Gang, soul from Willis Earl Beal, glitchy techno from Oslo, and a sunny instrumental from Joey Bada$$'s producer.

In 2013, “Dolo Jazz Suite” events started showing up on Facebook. It wasn’t clear what a Dolo Jazz Suite was, though a quick check on YouTube revealed that it was more hip-hop than jazz. Or maybe not, according to Amahl Abdul-Khaliq, who performs as AF THE NAYSAYER (all caps, according to his website).

“‘Dolo’ is New York for slang for ‘myself’,” he says. “It’s a play on words: Dolo jazz—jazz for one’s self.”