Eric Harm – Blood Stirred Up In Me
Longtime Titus Andronicus drummer Eric Harm has announced his solo debut record, All The Wrong Moves, due for release at the end of the week via Freeman Street Records. Produced by Patrick Stickles, and sharing the same indie rock, power pop and punk rock foundations as the (especially later) Titus Andronicus releases, the album focuses on a central character that Harm describes as ““the petty tyrant of the most pathetic kingdom.” Lead single ‘When You Move Back In’ introduced things with a triumphantly catchy take on self-deprecation, and now second single ‘Blood Stirred Up In Me’ offers another glimpse. Again built on big guitar lines that cry out to be played loud, it’s a timeless and celebratory power pop song that seems destined for beer-soaked shout-alongs.
Kramies – We’re All Dead
Fresh off the back of 2025 full-length Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, which blended autobiography and fiction to create a sound at once dreamlike, nostalgic and “full of the mysterious allure [the project] has always offered,” Kramies has now returned with brand new single ‘We’re All Dead’. If Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour was something of a metamorphosis away from the persona developed on Kramies’s self-titled 2022 debut, then this single suggests the songwriter is far from finished with his personal transformation. With the recording process stripped right back to Derek Lee LaJoie and drummer John Panza, and a widescreen, almost orchestral sound that suggests quite the opposite, the track presents another face in what is quickly becoming a Bowie-esque series of them. An ultimately direct exploration of what it means to live (and die) and what we leave behind, the title’s morbid tone of belying the affirming sentiment underpinning the message.
Legit Smitty – Be My Sweet Escape
Back in the summer we previewed This Living Ain’t That Hard, a new album from Jake Smith’s Legit Smitty written in the aftermath of a near-death encounter and full of the kind of emotional honesty such an experience might trigger (Smith says he is more determined than ever, we quoted in our piece, to “continue to share his heart in order that others might feel more at home in their own skin”). With the album now out in its entirety, Legit Smitty has shared new single ‘Be My Sweet Escape’, and the track is every bit as heartfelt and forthright as its predecessor. The song melds the confessional charm of bedroom pop with a more electrified alt country spirit, and emerges all the more emotive for it. “Take every last part of my heart / and throw it in the dirt one time,” as Smith sings in a typically impassioned verse, “and take every last part of who you are / and hold it up real high.”
‘Losin You’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.
l__evi – Summer Ain’t Over
Chances are you know Levi Nattrass from his work as Drench Fries, a project we covered most recently back in 2025 with the release of single ‘Camera‘. But now Nattrass how a new project, appropriately titled l__evi, and single ‘Summer Ain’t Over’ offers the ideal introduction. What could be called a summer song or, perhaps more fittingly, an anti-fall song, the track taps into the refusal to acknowledge the end of something positive, be it an attempt to willingly extend the moment, positive thinking-style, or else a plain act of self-delusion. “They’re sayin’ there’s a chill in the air / but I don’t feel it,” as Nattrass sings in the opening. “They’re sayin’ that the daylight’s gettin’ scarce / but I don’t believe it.” The result is tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless committed in its execution, possessing that Prine-esque blend of playfulness and sincerity.
And I don’t wanna hear
no fuckin’ Bon Iver
Just give me Toby Keith and Alan Jackson
Hey did you hear the news today,
the mayor’s new decree,
summer ain’t over til Halloween
Watch the video shot by Nattrass with Elyse Lankford below:
‘Summer Ain’t Over’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.
Lo Barnes – Heaven Was His Name
With a steady, creeping build and spaghetti western sensibility, new single ‘Heaven Was His Name’ shows the full evocative depth of Margate-based Lo Barnes. Released in anticipation of forthcoming EP HEAVEN pt I: the veil, the track opens with a taut, nocturnal tone and slowly asserts itself, a picture of duplicity and disillusionment sketched first through hushed despondence and then thunderous cathartic release. “And his name echoed out ‘cross the roses / and his word turned to dust in the flame,” Barnes sings at the climax, “and the wind callin’ out cryin’ heaven / and his word turned to dust in the flame / they don’t love you like I do,” and it is the ambiguity of that final line which really embodies the nuance with which the song works. “Initially I feared that this closing sentiment inferred that these were the protagonist’s words, and she was still caught in the web of her deceiver, but they could also be the lie she was told to keep her there,” Barnes explains. “Not knowing the end of the tale, despite being its author, inspires me to believe the song and its characters have a life of their own.”
Magdelena Abrego – A Friendship Buried
You might know Magdalena Abrego as one half of Deerlady (alongside Mali Obomsawin), whose 2024 record Greatest Hits was one of our favourites of that year. But now the Chicago-born, New York-based artist has released her first ever solo album, Xolo. The record take its name from the Xoloitzcuintli, a breed of hairless dog that in Mexican culture was a gift from the Gods to help guide recently deceased humans to the afterlife. A fitting title for a collection of songs that explore extremely personal themes of memory and loss. “For me, processing what I’ve been through so publicly feels like an act of rebellion against the structures that encourage us to carry our suffering alone,” Abrego describes. “What I know now is that there is a kind of power in looking backward to understand the ones who came before us as not simply gone, but alive in the ways we show care, in the gestures we repeat without knowing where they began, and in what we choose to pass on.” A cyclical combination of field recordings, electronic pop structures and more traditional songwriting, the album is best experienced as a whole, but the deeply affecting ‘A Friendship Buried’ will give you a good introduction.
Max Bien Kahn – Baby Green (Flannel Shirt)
Be it using a shopping list as a jumping off point to explore the physics of a relationship (‘List II‘), or incidental encounters as ways to meditate on life’s existential questions (‘Skipping Stones‘, ‘Neightbors‘), Max Bien Kahn‘s latest full-length Baby Green makes it its mission to collect the seemingly mundane multitude of details which constitute a life and assemble them into something able to tease out the intangible big picture. With the album now out in full, Kahn has shared the title track to further cement this style. A song about encountering someone once held dear after a significant absence, and how such an experience carries a strange duality. On the one hand, it reveals how specific details persist through the years untouched by the decay of time, yet on the other, clear memories are revealed to have be false after all.
When I saw you on the street again
You looked like a friend
Old friend
Where you beenI remembered your blue eyes
But now I see
They’re green green
Baby green
Melissa Weikart – Contact
We have featured a couple of songs from Paris-based songwriter Melissa Weikart in recent months, as she geared up to release new album Contact via Midnight Special Records, impressed with how her work exists at an unlikely crossroads between “experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop.” The record was finally released last week, and to celebrate Weikart has unveiled a video for the title track, a song that underpins the record’s thematic concerns. “It became clear to me very early on that ‘Contact’ would become the title track of the album,” she explains. “The song encapsulates the central theme of desire to seek authentic connection with myself, the people around me, and perhaps even one or two extraterrestrial beings along the way.” A lush piano-led song that warps and bows with a gentle surrealism, evoking the strange, unreal feeling of calling out into a dark unknown, looking for a response.
Contact is out now via Midnight Special Records and available from the Melissa Weikart Bandcamp page.
Savanna Ruth – Bad Thoughts
Recording under the moniker Burr Oak, Chicago‘s Savanna Dickhut made a name through her ability to combine raw emotion and ethereal atmosphere to tell stories of authentic depth. Now adopting the name Savanna Ruth to herald a new era, Dickhut has recently released brand new full-length The Baseball Diaries to push her worker further than ever before. Retaining the narrative bent and emotional heft of Burr Oak but delving into territory far more personal than ever before, the Savanna Ruth project could be seen as both an evolution and revolution, sounding like a culmination of what came before it, yet also marking a pivot towards new territory. Standout single ‘Bad Thoughts’ is a good place to jump in, typifying both the introspection reflection of the release and the blend of vulnerability and fearless with which Savanna Ruth moves through it.
Watch the video below, directed and edited by Todd Diederich, with camera by Andy Resek:
The Baseball Diaries is out now via Easy Does It Records and available from Bandcamp.