best dressed ghost – Funhouse
New Jersey punk rock outfit best dressed ghost are preparing to release their latest EP Let’s Go Home in the next few weeks, looking to build upon the raucous, mischievous beginnings set out on predecessor Dead Rock. If lead single ‘Funhouse’ is anything to go by, the new EP more than lives up to these ambitions. With equal parts brooding shadow and chaotic energy, the song carries a reckless sense of fun, something accentuated by dashes of surf and skate rock sensibilities, not to mention the anarchic vocal delivery. What emerges is something at once fun and slightly dangerous, a spark which might not last long but is determined to burn as hot and bright as possible in the meantime.
Watch the video created by nino + stef dressed ghost below:
Let’s Go Home will be released on the 12th March, so keep an eye on the best dressed ghost Bandcamp page.
Celestine Manno – If You Were Around
Connecticut-born songwriter Celestine Manno won attention back in 2023 with Once You’ve Seen It All, a distinctively sincere album which sat somewhere between indie folk and Sylvan Esso-esque pop. Now Manno has returned with brand new single ‘If You Were Around’ and the emotional resonance has only grown. A song which not only serves as a remembrance to Manno’s mother but an exploration of how loss might impact our lives moving forward. “My mom felt like California personified. Through stories and photographs, I’ve concocted my own memory of her that’s bright, witty, and effortless,” Manno explains. “Written on the 20th anniversary of her death, ‘If You Were Around’ reflects on the absence of her guidance through womanhood, and acceptance of the passage of time. Who would I have become with her influence? How differently would I have been shaped?”
‘If You Were Around’ is out now and available from the usual places.
Eric Angelo Bessel – Double Helix
“[An] enveloping slice of avant garde ambient, soaring with a weightless grace beyond the suffocating confines of our terrestrial life.” So we wrote of ‘Non-Diegetic Sound’, taken from Eric Angelo Bessel‘s Mirror at Night last year. A sound indicative of the album as a whole. “Nothing is quite what it seems within this space, true to Mirror At Night‘s promise to evade simple description,” we continued. “The futuristic vibe is balanced by the nostalgic tones of the Mellotron, and the synths blur the line between the organic and digital. A record that isn’t one thing or the other but everything all at once, offering different reflections depending on your perspective.” Now Bessel is back with a new 7″ EP Mirror At Night B-Sides to push ever further into this mysterious territory, and lead track ‘Double Helix’ lives up to expectations. Dreamlike and drifting, emerging full of ambiguous meaning as though dug from deep in the distant past or else visiting from some time or space we are yet to encounter.
Garet Camella – Gnats (feat. Mukiss)
Midwest-born, LA-based Garet Camella is preparing to release new EP Just Passing Through, a collection of songs with roots in his early twenties, now revised and recorded to revive something which might otherwise have been forgotten. First taste ‘Gnats’ is a suitably nostalgic slice of folk rock to introduce the project, rising from humble beginnings into a full band duet. Camella is joined by Caeleigh Featherstone, AKA Mukiss (who you might know as part of Saintseneca), and the chemistry between the vocals forms a major part of the track’s development. Camella’s searching, uncertain delivery in the opening minute grows in conviction as Mukiss joins and the instrumentation blooms, the song playing like connection made in real time.
Just Passing Through will be released soon.
Party of the Sun – Abandon’s Grip
We’ve followed the work of New Hampshire-based folk trio Party of the Sun (Ethan McBrien, Rory Hurley and Garrett Cameron) across a number of years, most recently back in 2024 with the release of double single Giver // River. “Songs rich in invention and always tied to the environment,” we wrote of the project, “concerned with searching for new ways to evoke life in its complicated beauty.” Out via Trailing Twelve Records, Party of the Sun’s new release The Twin EP represents a continuation of this style, dating back as far as 2019 and “shaped,” per the label, “as a single, continuous emotional arc.” With a main body of bodhrán, slide guitar and finger-picked steel string but with a real attention to negative space too, the result is every bit as thoughtful and organic as anything the trio have released to date. Listen to single ‘Abandon’s Grip’ now:
The Twin EP is out now via Trailing Twelve Records.
The Pretty Flowers – To Be So Cool
“Written within a city (and wider country) shaken by turmoil, be it the unprecedented wildfires or equally tinderbox political moment, [The Pretty Flowers] found themselves driven by the surrounding atmosphere, the anxiety and chaos of their surroundings seeping into the tracks themselves.” So we wrote of the LA indie rock outfit’s forthcoming album Never Felt Bitter back in January, single ‘Came Back Kicking’ highlighting how they turned to barrelling energy as though in defiance. Latest track ‘To Be So Cool’ is no different, a song bound by an irrepressible sense of forward motion which again carries a rebellious air. “’To Be So Cool” is one of my favorite songs on the album, and it’s a blast to play live,” Green explains. “The lyrics just seemed to kind of flow and I didn’t try and overthink writing them at the time. Some months later when I was watching the film Withnail & I for the umpteenth time, I noticed that the lyrics seemed to connect to the film, in how the “I” character sees Withnail going through life. Maybe a student in a community college English class will tease that idea out in an essay at some point.”
Watch the video directed and produced by Tambi Haron with director of Photography Nate Klein below:
Never Felt Bitter will be released on 27th March. Order it now from The Pretty Flowers Bandcamp.
Swapmeet – I Know!
South Australia four-piece Swapmeet formed in 2021, though really burst on the scene in 2024 with their debut EP, Oxalis. The release shapeshifted between each of its five songs, the quartet managing to capture the spirit of being a young person in the twenty-first century, constantly moving between love, fear, hopelessness and grief and often embracing several simultaneously. Having now signed with Winspear, Swapmeet are now back with new single ‘I Know!’ to introduce the next stage of their career. Again pairing jangle and fuzz with a buoyant energy, the track represents the very best of the project. A sound able to encompass both sardonic slacker bite and cathartic alt rock release, rising from sly, taut beginnings into something with serious size and heft.
If you wanna hurt me
If you wanna try
If I had your heart in my hand
Would you want mine
‘I Know!’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.
Taroug – Najet
Back in January we introduced Taroug, the recording project of German–Tunisian drummer and electronic music producer Tarek Zarroug, and the new album Chott, forthcoming via Denovali Records. Single ‘1995’ highlighted how Taroug “blends digital and organic sounds to create conceptual soundscapes able to evoke the full richness of personal history,” as we put it. “blending a nostalgic, melancholic minimalism with moments of bright intensity.” With the album’s release on the horizon, latest track ‘Najet’ leads the audience further into this style. The bass-centric, layered sound is adorned with Tunisian instrumentation, melding the traditional and the contemporary and charging the record with a depth that stems in equal parts from culture, history and geology.
Thin Lear – Witness
Back in February we introduced Many Disappeared, the new album from Matt Longo’s Thin Lear with Mothman-themed single ‘Silver Bridge’. The story is just one of a whole file of supernatural stores which came to inspire [the record],” we wrote, “which uses all things weird and unexplained as a way to explore themes altogether more human and personal.” With the release on the horizon via First City Artists, Thin Lear has shared latest track ‘Witness’, a song which delves into an experience far more personal but no less confronting. “My friend and I came across a dying cat on the road,” Longo shares. “My friend was nonchalant. But I was utterly horrified. The incident is still a touchpoint for me, every time I come upon the same powerless feeling, whether it be through the loss of a loved one or the general anxiety that the veil between this world and the next is quite thin.”
Watch the video by Ali Aschman below:
Many Disappeared will be released on the 24th April via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now from the Thin Lear Bandcamp page.
villagerrr – Locket
Following on from 2024 full-length Tear Your Heart Out and subsequent deluxe edition which came out last year, Ohio-based indie project villagerrr will release their fifth album Carousel this May via Winspear. The previous record saw Mark Scott explore his close connection with hometown Chillicothe, and the new record chooses another relationship to put under the microscope. Though this time it is not related to place but the act of making art itself, namely the attempt to communicate in earnest with another person within a world which often seems designed to hinder such a thing. In the spirit of this theme, Scott dropped his guard and opened villagerrr up to outside influence more than ever before, with an enviable list of friends and collaborators joining to elevate Carousel into the project’s richest sound to date. Listen to lead single ‘Locket’ now, a suitably sincere number which risks vulnerability in order to communicate more faithfully.
Watch the video directed by Trevor Hock below:
Carousel will be released on the 29th May via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.
Wolfschmidt – file
Born within the industrial wastelands of Gothenburg, which has lately become the artistic hotbed of the Swedish city, Wolfschmidt is a ‘nu-gaze’ quintet following the lineage of contemporaries like OVLOV, DIIV and Nothing. Having developed this style across a number of releases since their inception in 2021, Wolfschmidt are back with new single ‘file’ and the track suggests the band are really finding their groove. It’s an epic alt rock number which faces up to feelings of stasis with a combination of hope and fatalism, looking to break free even while the same cycles seem to repeat. But with a quiet-loud dynamic and a propulsive momentum, the result is ultimately cathartic, Wolfschmidt burning through their frustration through sheer energy.
‘file’ is out now and available from the usual places.