Stephen Sanchez Goes Crate Digging for 12 Albums to Get to Know Him By: Nat King Cole, Lord Huron, Tom Odell

Crate Digging asks artists to dig into their record collection to find the LPs that everyone should hear. This time, Stephen Sanchez picks out 12 records to get to know his sound as he releases his sophomore full-length, Love, Love, Love.

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Stephen Sanchez’s newly released sophomore album, Love, Love, Love, continues the artist’s love affair with ’60s-style crooning. The 11-track collection is full of blue-eyed soul and grooving pop-rock, throwback tunes in a thoroughly modern package. So how does a musician in 2026 become so infatuated with such classic songwriting stylings? Well, we decided to ask him.

Joining Consequene at Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles, Sanchez sat down for a Crate Digging taking us through the records that influenced his own music. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of classic albums, like Nancy & Lee by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable. But Sanchez tips his hat to more modern artists who are also looking back as they create forward-thinking songs, like Jalen Ngonda (Come Around and Love Me), Richard Hawley (Lady’s Bridge), and Tom Odell (Long Way Down).  There are even deep cuts like Through a Dark Wood by Sea Wolf and Country Sleep by Night Beds.

Unsurprisingly, all the records share a similar theme: They’re all about love, love, love. Whether it’s the darker, more mysterious elements of romance, or that “rip open your shirt, run through the dunes” feelings of true adoration, these dozen LPs all align with the themes and sounds on Love, Love, Love.

Check out Stephen Sanchez’s full Crate Digging video above (or via YouTube), and read about each of his picks below. You can also pick up or listen to the albums below; do the same with Love, Love, Love via Apple Music, Qobuz, Amazon Music, or by getting it on vinyl and CD here.

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood – Nancy & Lee

First album I throw up on the list — which is amazing because I discovered it here in LA at Amoeba Records — It was Nancy & Lee, the album Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood did back in ’68. I love this record. It just makes me feel so in love in like a very mysterious way. It feels a little dark in some regard. And it also feels like some sort of dream sequence that you can’t really escape from in like an alternate world. I just love, love that album so much. And the haunting tones of both their voices. It just feels like two ghosts are singing. And I guess they are now because they’re both — well, no, one of them’s gone. Nancy is still here. Thank God we still have Nancy.

Jalen Ngonda – Come Around and Love Me

Amazing record. Incredible. I feel like it embodies everything any artist that has grown up loving the ’60s Motown feels. It’s just like the perfect, perfect homage or recreation with such a unique spin. It’s amazing. And his voice is absolutely outrageous. And I love this record. It makes me want to come around and love him and myself and others. Just makes me feel good. It’s so good.

Stream Come Around and Love Me on Apple Music, Qobuz, or Amazon Music | Buy on Vinyl/CD

Vista Kicks – Booty Shakers Ball

Another one I’d throw out there, a California band from up north in Sacramento, Vista Kicks, Booty Shakers Ball. It’s amazing. And they have tons of rock ‘n’ roll love songs on there that just feel so good and so unique. It feels like there are memories of the coast and like being wild on the coast with your first love and running around aimlessly throughout the night without any sense of it ending. So, I love that record so much. It’s an essential for me.

Lord Huron – Strange Trails

Way back, the first record I ever got was Lord Huron’s sophomore record, Strange Trails. It feels like it just embodies this like mysterious world that’s written out with characters without names. And it has this old crooner feel to it while also feeling very singer-songwriter now. I love that record so much. It’s the first record I ever bought. There was a girl I was dating at the time and I begged her to buy it for me in the eighth grade, and it cost $25 and she spent her money that was supposed to be for dinner on that record for me. So, shout out to that lady from the eighth grade.

Marlon Williams – Make Way for Love

Another love record, kind of niche: Marlon Williams, New Zealand songwriter, singer, has this record called Make Way for Love. There’s a song on that record in particular that I really love called “Beautiful Dress.” It’s a great song, great record as a whole. Again, another amazing vocalist that has this crooner feel to it. Obviously, I pull from a lot of crooner inspiration in my own music and that old feel, Motown, and he’s just got such a way with it. Again, feels like Motown on the beach. It’s just awesome.

Stream Make Way for Love on Apple Music, Qobuz, or Amazon Music | Buy on Vinyl/CD

Richard Hawley – Lady’s Bridge

Flipping now over across the pond again. Richard Hawley, old school guy, has a record called Lady’s Bridge. It is one of the best albums I’ve listened to in a while. He’s very new for me. He just feels like such a timeless person, like he came from way back in the day, just teleported. Like he didn’t want his career to end, so he created a time machine and launched himself into our time to keep the music going. And I love his music so much. It just makes me feel so good and makes me want to dance with my partner at home. It’s just outrageously good. Really, really great. And more mature feeling as well in the songwriting.

Tom Odell – Long Way Down

Moving on from crooners, an artist that I love so much who’s a dear friend of mine, Tom Odell. His record Long Way Down is one of my favorites. I remember I was in Zurich and I was sitting out by the water on the lake listening to it for the first time and songs like “Grow Old with Me” and “Hold Me” at a time where I wasn’t very in love. I felt so much love, and it’s amazing how you can have an album soundtracking something that is not even happening presently in your life, and yet you still feel like you’re in that place of your life the moment you put on that record. At that time, I wasn’t in love, but it made me feel so in love with nowhere to put that love. Holy cow.

Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – I Had a Dream That You Were Mine

There’s an artist project that was done with Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam, and they put out this record together called I Had a Dream That You Were Mine. It felt like such an incredible soundtrack to my youth, almost like my coming-of-age record. It was full of songs about heartbreak and losing the one you love as well as dreaming a thousand times over that they’d finally love you in return. It just felt so right because at that point in life you see that girl in your class and you’re like, “Oh my God, I hope they love me,” and then they just never pay attention to you ever. It feels like this was a really important record for me in my life and I love it so much. It’s such a good body of work.

Nat King Cole – Unforgettable

From the lineup of artists that I grew up loving, Nat King Cole is one of them, and his record Unforgettable is an unforgettable one for me. Feels like if I’m ever hosting a dinner party or caught in my feels, I put that record on a turntable, analog, an old Zenith record player blasting through those old speakers. Those beautiful songs — it just never fails to reignite the fire when it goes out. It feels like, “Oh man, me and my partner are going through a hard time. We’re not really connecting.” Throw that on, make some dinner, and boom — we’re in love. We’re making love. It’s good. Life’s good again.

Sea Wolf – Through a Dark Wood

Kind of a niche band again, there’s this band called Sea Wolf. This guy named Alex Church is an amazing songwriter that has written this world that is Sea Wolf. It’s like very dark folk-rock. And this album called Through a Dark Wood happens to be one of my favorite records that he ever put out, which is actually recent. I think it came out 2020 or something like that. And it just feels like it leads you down this dark path of feeling love in a way that just feels very heavy. It’s still beautiful, but it’s almost like looking at the ocean at night. It’s still beautiful, but it feels like there’s this heaviness to it in a way that makes you feel melancholy in an even deeper way. And I love that his music makes me feel that way. And this record in particular makes me feel that way. Just has that mystery that Lord Huron has as well.

Paolo Nutini – Last Night in the Bittersweet

I was in a studio in New York and I was doing some stuff for our record Angel Face way back in the day. This song called “Through the Echoes” by this guy named Paolo Nutini was being played in the room next door just on the speaker as this mixer was doing his thing. And I remember going in there, I asked, “What is this record?” He’s like, “Oh, it’s on Last Night in the Bittersweet.” I was like, “This is amazing.”

I remember listening through this whole record and this voice — it’s so rare when a record just gets you just because the voice is so good. It doesn’t matter if the songs are shit or not. The voice is so good that you’re just like, “This is just everything.” And it’s even better when the voice is great and all of the songwriting accompanies it at the same level. That record for me just feels like this: you rip your shirt open and you’re running through the dunes kind of thing. It’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful and it talks about death in a really beautiful way as well.

Night Beds – Country Sleep

I think the last one I would say is Night Beds. Long lost band, completely gone, it seems. Their album Country Sleep, which was done in Nashville and with a lot of the same people that I worked on a lot of different records with. It’s just a beautiful album. Again, I think I have some sort of weird obsession with the darkness of love and it feeling again like that visual of the ocean at night. It just feels mysterious and like something you get pulled into and lost in. And this record’s kind of that.

I don’t know, I just see love in a deeper way that feels mysterious. Like it’s fleeting, like you’re almost at the end of it, but you’re still in it. But I think it’s true: love is this drifting thing that you know you have to kind of run after and grab onto, but then eventually it slips from your grasp. And then so does life and so do all the memories you have and everything around you. And yeah, I love that record. I’ve been Stephen Sanchez. Go listen to all that music because there’s a million different records out there to discover.