These themes are apparent from the very beginning. Opener ‘The Ground Here’ is rich with a sense of place both past and present, longing for the familiar rhythm of distinct seasons, and centring on the anxiety of living through human-induced destruction. Houdei wrote the track following a move from her home in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri to Topanga in southern California, an area devastated by the Palisades wildfire in early 2025. “[The California] landscape is undeniably beautiful,” she explains. “I, however, being painfully aware of how strained the land had grown to be during years that I lived there, longed for natural bodies of water and the simple rainstorm.”

Why must I be quiet
I have grown to long to doubt
The ground here’s turned to dust yeah
All the lizards running about
I walk in search of grassland but the hills have all burned down
I see it in my reflection
May the river wash me out

It is not just the name of the record that is important to this release. This Bed Was Made For Me is Biita Houdei’s first release under her own new name (her given name is Lisa, and she previously recorded under the moniker LéPonds), which was gifted by her aunt and translates from Farsi as “unique”. “I proudly take this name,” Houdei says of receiving this gift. “It makes me feel that much closer to my Persian heritage.” One of the strengths of the collection is the melding of influences, pulling in threads of this family heritage and weaving them into Houdei’s own, very much American, lived experience. What sound like timeless US folk songs take surprising turns, adorned with gentle orchestral elements and playful flourishes. ‘Frog Song’ has the whimsical simplicity of a children’s rhyme, while ‘Burnin’ is suffused with the slow build and incense-scented atmosphere of a ritual, Houdei’s voice moving from whisper to full-throated cries. Each track rewarding those who give it the space and time of repeated listens, eschewing the contemporary urge to seize attention with blunt force to instead foster a more collaborative relationship between artist and listener, one of mutual attention, curiosity and wonder.

Far from a solo endeavour, collaboration was key to the creation of the record too. Celebrated songwriter Haley Heynderickx, who leads on production for the first time in her career, is a central presence in the songs. The pair met when Houdei opened for Heynderickx in 2018, a moment that sparked a strong bond and creative synergy. Before making This Bed Was Made for Me they headed to rural Oregon for a writing retreat, and upon their return brought the same sense of cosy solitude and connection to the studio. The songs came into being over the course of ten days which Houdei says “began with fermented tea and ended with a shared meal together,” the recording process a practical embodiment of the spirit of an album all about the ways in which we shape, and are in turned shaped by, one another and the world around us.

More than a neat anecdote, this origin story feels fundamental to the very sound of the release. How else to bring an album of careful, patient songs to life other than a careful, patient process? Because more than the ten days in the studio, This Bed Was Made for Me was crafted in the slow forging of a friendship over eight years, not to mention the life lived before it. Even the preparation of tea and sharing of a meal together feels important in this light, the album earning its authenticity by stacking moment upon painstaking moment with no thought of cutting corners in the name of efficiency.

The mindset is evoked most clearly in a parallel project Houdei undertook alongside the record, sewing a patch for each tracks, and then combining them into the quilt you can see on the cover. “Making the quilt was laborious. Taking the cover photo was laborious’ says Houdei. “No shortcuts, but rather a manual and tangible approach. I am thankful for the time it took.” Because, more than a prop for the artwork, the finished object became a tangible symbol the ethos of the album, one particularly poignant in this age of automation. “I encourage people to dive deeper into everything that they choose to consume,” she continues. “It is not my intention to sound pretentious, but instead, I am trying harder to explain the gratitude I have for being able to craft every part of this album— using my hands, my brain, my voice, my visions. To me, it is an all encompassing work of art.”  For all of its nuanced meanings, there’s a hidden irony to the title of This Bed Was Made for Me. Because in truth, with help from a number of friends, Biita Houdei made this bed herself, and wants to remind you that your bed is there to be made too.

This Bed Was Made For Me is released via Basin Rock and Father/Daughter Records. Order it now from the Biita Houdei Bandcamp page.

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There’s a new Jane Schoenbrun film hitting theatres right now, and like We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow before it, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma comes complete with a score by Alex G. Waxwork Records will be putting out two releases in support of the movie, first with a soundtrack that collects several of Alex G’s compositions along with needle drops from the likes of Okay Kaya, R.E.M. and Counting Crows, then a full score later in September. Single ‘Pain Is The Heart of Love’ introduces the tone, a song crafted by Alex G with vocals from The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan which encapsulates the alluring mix of physical and ethereal which has long marked Schoenbrun’s work, as well as the blurred line between reality, memory and dreams.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) will be release on the 21st August and you can pre-order it now.

Bonnie Hook – songbird

Back in 2025, Bonnie Hook (AKA Detroit songwriter Katlyn Sartor) released diadem, an EP which introduced an experimental brand of folk music which draws upon everything from ambient to psych. The result was something simultaneously personal and mysterious, intimate in its intention yet unafraid of pushing towards ambiguity. Set for release next month, Bonnie Hook’s new full-length whitelodge builds upon this style, further widening the sound and increasing its transportive qualities. Take single ‘songbird’, a lush and patient track indicative of the kind of richness Sartor can conjure, its lyrics stripped back to a poetic abstraction yet never lacking for emotional clarity.

songbird you’ll wait to fly
into our string of time
open foreboding eyes
though it may take a while
to coo

Cooper Kenward – Bit Better

“Step outside, walk the dog / SSRI shades on / Feel alright, feel okay / Nothing new just another day.” So sings Cooper Kenward in the opening lines of ‘Bit Better’, the first taste of a new album coming via Soggy Anvil Records which sees the Northern California songwriter employ an ostensibly sunny sound to delve into some rather deep, existential themes. Indeed the first verse encapsulates the mood of the track, where a sense of self-reflection meets the inherent hope of a new day, a vibe as bound up in the country twang as the lyrics themselves, though never without a certain tongue-in-cheek fatalism chasing behind. The result plays as both an optimistic mantra for the depressed person and wry joke at the end of the world, though in Cooper Kenward’s hands, these two things need not be mutually exclusive.

History, they say is dead
Images mean nothing at all
Music is just a bore
Ring cam shows horsemen
at the doooooor

And I’m sure we’ll get another chance soon
To do what we’ve done
But a little bit better

‘Bit Better’ is out now via Soggy Anvil Records and available from the usual places.

Essy Sparrow – Weak at the Knees

This October, songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist Essy Sparrow will release new EP Gossip From a Coastal Town. As the title suggests, the album is deeply rooted in a sense of place, not only painting a picture of life within a Cornish town but evoking its wider landscape of heritage and history, the myriad of personal memories and narratives which weave together to form the story of any given environment. “Some of these songs are true, some are exaggerated and some are straight up lies for fun,” Sparrow explains. “I became obsessed with the idea of writing music like rumours—emotional snapshots rather than perfect autobiographical truth.” The result is often whimsical but never lacking heart, as displayed by latest single ‘Weak at the Knees’. A bright folk song in which any bittersweet rumination or self-deprecative confession is vastly outweighed by the fondness at its core. “I wanted it to sound like a traditional coastal wedding by the sea,” Sparrow continues. “A village showing up to watch a couple renew their vows on a hillside. I wanted to sum up love, summer and the feeling of the UK coast as much as possible.”

Gossip From a Coastal Town will be released on the 2nd October and you can pre-order it now.

Lane Hartley – I Am Not Ashamed

No Home, the forthcoming new record from LA-based artist Lane Hartley, is something of a team effort. It features contributions from a long list of musicians, including Mary Lattimore, Seth Kaufman of Floating Action and David Hartley of The War On Drugs, who elevated the collection of ten songs with a combination of collaboration and intuition, taking Hartley’s often dark lyrics and brightening them with lush arrangements and a community spirit. “All of the players on this record really brought it to life in such a cosmic way,” says Hartley. “They instilled so much childlike wonder and fun into the making of the album. It inspired me to keep going.” Lead single, ‘I Am Not Ashamed’, which takes its name and ethos from the memoir by fifties Hollywood star Barbara Payton, is our first taste. A breezy and timeless folk rock song, it possesses a tough defiant streak, a dogged determination not to be cowed by shame. As Hartley describes, “It’s about knowing that whatever you’ve done to survive, you still deserve love.”

Lost Film – Blossom Rot

‘Blossom Rot’, the new single from Western Massachusetts indie pop band Lost Film, is in some ways the perfect late summer indie pop song. As the title suggests, it is inspired by gardening (or more precisely, learning to be more laidback and trusting to avoid losing fruit to the titular rot), but there’s something more than that too. Wrapped in Casio arpeggios and a sweetly pensive shimmer, it captures the carefree contentedness of a warm and quiet evening as the sun begins to set and paints everything in a rosy, nostalgic glow. Indeed, nostalgia is perhaps the key emotion, due in at least some small part to the band’s choice of background entertainment while recording. “While Max (Newman, who adds percussion) and I were tracking this one,” explains lead Jim Hewitt, “we had Disney’s 1994 Summer classic, Camp Nowhere on which really set the tone for the session.” Jordan Lawlor (of M83) then came on board to lend his mixing talents, which only amps up the effect further.

The Male Pattern – I’m a Soldier

We’re not certain a satirical concept album described as “Springsteen meets Ween” was on our bingo card of releases in 2026, but sometimes you only realise you’ve been waiting for something when it finally arrives. I Was Shot in the Heart! by The Male Pattern is exactly that, telling the story, as per lead Will Schwartz, of “an unnamed suburban dad as he navigates his acrimonious divorce, spends too much time watching TV and on the computer, gets addicted to pills, loses his job as a mortgage broker, shoots and kills a small-time drug dealer, finds God, and commits suicide by cop at a 24/7 Stop and Shop in White Plains, NY.” Featuring Daniel Bateman of Frog fame, single ‘I’m a Soldier’ sets the tone of the record, where the undeniable irony and playfulness do nothing to undermine the heartbreaking loneliness running through its heart. An anthem of America in 2026, where vapidity, ridiculousness and mean-spirited self-interest feel like symptoms of some dark, cursed pathology lurking beneath the surface.

Ok Cowgirl – Rock N Roll Ruined My Life

Led by Leah Lavigne, Brooklyn‘s OK Cowgirl released their debut Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut back in 2024, winning acclaim with an unguarded, often introspective style of indie rock. Set for release this month via Easy Does it Records, follow-up Rhinestone Cowgirl builds upon these foundations with new levels of confidence, both increasing the scale and widening the scope of the songs to create a bona fide slice of American rock. The result is understandably conflicted in tone, set as it is within a country rigged against so many of its people. Yet it is the energy and drive which most catches the attention, Lavigne and co. pressing on with life and grasping its joys as their own display of revolt. Take new single ‘Rock N Roll Ruined My Life’. “I wrote this song to myself and to so many friends who have struggled to justify staying the course while pursuing this precarious path of being an artist,” Lavigne explains. “It is not an easy path, and as an artist with a day job I have had periods of time where I’ve grown resentful of music for taking up all my time-off requests and keeping me in a job without healthcare. I wrote this song to vent those feelings, and every time I sing the tongue-in-cheek hook I am reminded how untrue it is. Music is the most fulfilling and joyful part of my life. That’s the beautiful thing about giving yourself space to feel your challenging feelings–you’ll often find they’re misnamed.”

Watch the video directed, filmed and edited by Matt Birkenholz below:

Rhinestone Cowgirl will be released on the 21st August 21st via Easy Does It Records.

Paul Spring – Tell Me That You Love Me

The work of Saint Cloud, MN-based songwriter Paul Spring is nothing if not varied. His work shifts from project to project with the idiosyncratic vision of a true artist. The last time we featured his work, he was “combining electronic and Medieval influences,” as we wrote of 2022 release Thunderhead, “casting Spring as some strange bard that wanders into your village with tunes so odd and unfamiliar they sound like sorcery,” but latest full-length Barnstorm is very different. After meeting a group of Irish musicians and developing a working chemistry when touring in 2025, he wanted to make the most of the encounter, returning months later to record the album in Inchiquinn in County Galway. Tadhg Ó Raghallaigh (Uilleann piper), Ben Duffy (drums), Sam Wright (bass) and Macdara Ó Faoláin (bouzouki) joined to flesh out the sound, creating a cross-pollinated style born of folk and baroque traditions. The result is varied and ever-changing across the record, but latest single ‘Tell Me That Your Love Me’ captures the detail and drama perfectly.

Routine Caffeine – Porcelain Doll

We’ve covered Louisville trio Routine Caffeine several times in recent years, from 2024 EP Weeds Under Concrete Stones to the 2025 single ‘Green Glass‘, each utilising a blend of dreamy haze and forward motion to explore themes of nostalgia, memory and the passing of time. Now the band are back with brand new single ‘Porcelain Doll’ and the track again exists within the push and pull between the past and the present, its insistent rhythm softened by an almost ethereal air, all while a sense of tension simmers beneath the surface. The result is beguiling and ominous in equal measure, something only amplified as the song progresses towards its evocative conclusion. “Dancing inside a frame / The roses bloom, then fall away,” Katie O’Brien Kelley sings in typical cryptic fashion. “Echoing, spiral stairs / Oh, how it was to walk in there.”

Slow Down Molasses – Follow (Eric’s Trip Cover)

We last featured Slow Down Molasses back in 2021 with the release of their album Minor Deaths, an album of clever details and visceral weight which explored the dark contemporary moment. “There is no prevailing mood or conclusion,” we wrote, “just a committed decision to embrace the energies of the contemporary moment in all of their frustrations, aggressions, vulnerabilities and dread.” Something of a hiatus has since followed, though now the Saskatoon outfit are back and gearing up for what promises to be a busy new era ahead, promising some of their most succinct and ferocious songs to date. To celebrate this return, SLM have turned to what they consider to be one of Canada’s most iconic acts, Eric’s Trip, recording a cover of the gloriously boisterous ‘Follow’ together with old friend Jeanette Neufeld. As they explain:

To say Eric’s Trip and their various members’ bands made an impact on me would be a massive understatement. There may not be a more important and more loved Canadian band for us than Eric’s Trip. They blew my teenaged mind and opened up an amazing world of lo-fi, noisey, but tuneful music for me. Inspiring quiet mornings listening to gems like Behind the Garage and Allergic to Love, road trips listening to Forever Again straight through, late nights blasting ragers like Follow, Anytime You Want and Sunlight and many, many hours letting my guitar feedback swell into the perfect lo-fi My Bloody Valentine moments that filled Eric’s Trip records.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2026 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With the album’s release on the horizon, Perennial have unveiled latest single ‘Ready! Steady! Go!’, another blast of relentless energy that somehow combines raucous punk rock with an air of 60s cool. The juxtaposition is just one of the many which mark the sound of Modernism—the record dense yet propulsive, experimental but intuitive, caustic and welcoming—and ‘Ready! Steady! Go!’ embodies the vibe perfectly. A song at once buoyant and bruising which seems to want to both dance with you and slap you around that face, earning each of the three exclamation marks in its title as it barrels towards its conclusion in under two minutes. Watch the video, directed, filmed & edited by the band, below:

Modernism will release on 18th September via Safe Suburban Homes (UK) and Ernest Jenning Record Co. Order a copy now from the Perennial Bandcamp page, includingCD and a limited edition white vinyl.

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For those unfamiliar, Thomas Dollbaum combines the stylings of alt-country that are very much en vogue with a beefier brand of heartland rock, tracing a lineage back through Molina and Springsteen as far as van Zandt, though there’s another set of influences that cannot go unmentioned. A parallel bloodline of writers (think Breece D’J Pancake, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown) who capture the beauty and sorrow in an often rough and tumble Southern existence. Interestingly, arguable heir apparent Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, whose short story collection Sleepovers is one of the best contemporary example of this literary genre, writes the liner notes and has a great interview with Dollbaum in Southwest Review, which digs deeper into the album’s literary influences, from Raymond Carver to the poetry of Jay Hopler, C.D. Wright, Joy Harjo and Philip Levine.

The country-rock-album-as-short-story-collection might not be a new idea, but paired with the aforementioned immediacy with which the songs were recorded, Birds of Paradise feels less like a set of penned vignettes and more like short glimpses at lives themselves. Each song drops the listener alongside its characters within their Southern homeland, people often on the margins of society, eking out a living within the transient space between a lost past and unknown future. Lead single ‘Dozen Roses’, arriving after the subdued and tender opener ‘Visitation’, plays like the album’s mission statement in this regard. A meditation on loss and the soothing wonder of the natural world that’s full of taut energy and forward motion, even while the narrator cycles back to the same sentiment, repeating themselves with increasing urgency.

When you were still around
I’d carry you across the river
I’d ramble through the dark until the time would deliver
Before the time would deliver

Many of the songs on Birds of Paradise are repetitive in this way, swinging back around to the same verses as if Dollbaum is working through thoughts in real time, lingering over memories both positive and not so much. This internal world provides a neat counterbalance to the present tense of many of the tracks which is altogether more transient. Our narrator(s) look for sure ground in the uncertainty of the in-between, or at least acceptance that the time spent on the “backroads leading to I-95” or “rambling through the pines” is not so much a path towards something as the body of life itself. Poignant closer ‘Blue Meets Blue’ confronts the idea head on, an ostensibly a fatalistic track (“There’s nowhere to go this is just a circle,” as Dollbaum sings, “there’s nowhere to run this is just landlocked blues”) that transforms acquiescence into a kind of charged catharsis.

It’s not too much of a reach to say this cyclical nature evokes another of the album’s key themes. Imagery of nature is abundant, and its rhythms extend across the songs as a backdrop to the very human emotions that often take centre stage. A place choked with vine and timber, where the waterbirds are strange and tall and coyotes howl at night. You only have to peek at the album art (an incredible embroidered quilt by Cora Nimtz) to understand the kind of picture Dollbaum paints across the record. Nature as something vivid and precious and undeniably peculiar, like some half-understood miracle which happens to occur all around. Yet, true to its setting, Birds of Paradise has dirt beneath its fingernails. Wonder and violence sit side by side. No more directly than on ‘Rabbits’, where the childhood innocence and bursting life is depicted as its own inversion, kids running through the burnt fields of Okeechobee with iron bars, trying to beat their siblings to the song’s titular prey as their mother watches on, keeping count.

This same mix of animation, desperation, melancholy and absurdity run through many of the songs, regardless of their subject matter. Take ‘King’s Landing’, with its childhood dream of a pilot’s license and the freedom it offers giving way to the mundane (“So lets go home and watch Judge Joe Brown / And reruns of Cops episodes in our home town”), though without ever extinguishing the desire and imagination which kicked off the fantasy in the first place. Or ‘Pulverize’, where a narrator fights the urge to look back through forward motion, then ‘Coyote’, where stasis seems to hold latent potential, as though some drastic act might materialise out of boredom itself. ‘Big Boi’ sees a teenaged Dollbaum act as chauffeur for a feuding couple strung out and desperate and looking to score. “Big Boi showed me his tattoos all down his arms,” Dollbaum sings, “said he got his nickname for being so goddamn large,” before switching the tone several shades darker, painting the titular character as a victim of the opioid crisis with the deft brevity of a poet.

Scars all from the emergency room
Asked me if I could fill a script too
Says he’s in a lot of pain right now
Who am I to say no to him anyhow?

Dollbaum might have recorded the album in the blink of an eye, but these are songs born of a lifetime in the worlds they inhabit. Places ignored by many, full of the kind of sensations we all too often forget. The dejection and sadness, yes, plus the weight of aborted dreams and all associated regrets, but also a nascent wonder which sits at the edge of our vision. A peculiar light which illuminates the future, colours the pictures of our memories. This might be human or mystical or else just something out in the wild, but we would do better if only we looked for it. Even if it can never really offer a satisfactory answer to whatever afflictions we’re called to bear. “I know you never believed / And me not in a long while,” as Dollbaum sings on opener ‘Visitation’, a fitting conclusion if you view the album as a cycle in itself. “But the older I get, the more I do magical thinking / About how the birds ride out on the sky / How the echoes hang out in the wind / How them ghosts are here in the light/ But you cant talk to any of them.”

Birds of Paradise is out now via Dear Life Records and available from the Thomas Dollbaum Bandcamp page.

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Back in June we introduced Recurring Common Dream, the forthcoming EP from Great Klons, describing how the release ups the ante on its rather chaotic predecessor. Written and recorded amid a time of turmoil both personal and political, the EP sees Scott Klon and co. expand their already inventive, genre-bending sound to match the uncertainty of the moment. After lead single ‘More Beauty in the Rain‘, Great Klons are now back with follow-up ‘Hidden Signage’. A vivid slice of indie pop rooted in both driving percussion and fresh guitar which uses vocal harmonies and electric violin to further amp up the emotional resonance. And emotional the track is, proceeding with a decidedly wistful air, reflecting on imperfect times with the inevitable fondness we hold for the past.

‘Hidden Signage’ is out now on streaming services.

henry o henry – The Fool

Born in Dublin but now “thirty years a US immigrant,” henry o henry makes music that observes the US from the perspective of an adopted son. He has spent years “absorbing the country’s mythologies” while working various trades across the country (an image that evokes Whitman’s I Hear America Singing), but he has retained ties with his roots too. “Ireland is the DNA of the thing,” as he puts it, “the thing before every other thing.” In September, he will release an album Apocrypha on Western Vinyl. It brings together a collection songs in the lineage of Cale and Drake and Cohen, which function as dispatches from his personal vantage point, or as the press release puts it “the specific weight of being somewhere for a long time without quite being from there.” Lead single ‘The Fool’ is the ideal entry point, a song worn and wistful and weathered but with a glint in its eye, moving with a sincerity and easy grace that comes with experience.

Josaleigh Pollett – Cherry

We’ve written about Josaleigh Pollett‘s new full-length If I Let It Quiet plenty in recent months, with singles like ‘Radio Player‘, ‘The Witness‘, ‘Like a River‘ and ‘Bed of Quiet‘ all suggesting the album will be a fitting follow-up to its predecessor In the Garden, By The Weeds. With the record out now via Audio Antihero and Lavender Vinyl, the Salt Lake City-based artist has shared final single ‘Cherry’ in celebration, and the track is every bit as evocative as we’ve come to expect. Displaying Pollett’s uncanny ability to combine the resonant emotion of memory with the tactility of the present moment, the song emerges through dappled electronics and announces itself with forthright clarity.

We break like belonging,
We’re broken like bread,
When you look you don’t see it,
Don’t know where we’ve been,
From two of us brothers
To both of us dead,
Laid to rest in the 90’s
in the back seat of a van

Jude Brothers – Desire & Devotion

Jude Brothers describes herself as an “Arkansas-forged and New Mexico-moulded folksy leaning singer songwriter with a penchant for whimsy and tender heartedness,” which is just about the perfect introduction. Later this year, she will release Dogwood Maiden Voyage, a collection of timeless folk songs built on the foundations of harp and voice, which she says “reckons with the costs of surrendering wholly to love.” Latest single ‘Desire & Devotion’ does just that, a hymn-like timeless folk song that is suffused with all the doomed romance of a Brontë novel. “How can you doubt me now?” Brothers asks in the line that gives the track its title, “My love ain’t no solemn vow! It is a churning sea.”

King’s Evil – S/T

Stemming from a discussion at a tiki bar back in early 2020, King’s Evil is a new project between Sami Martasian of Puppy Problems and JM Dussault of (T-T)b. The pair, already established as some of Boston‘s most interesting songwriters, imagined a new vehicle for songwriting where the stakes were slightly lower and the scope for invention expanded. A place where they might take risks otherwise avoided in their usual work. The eventual result, a self-titled EP coming via Worry Bead Records, is a testament to the power of such a spirit of working, one which eschews the usual desire to plan and demo songs in order to fully lean into the moment, not to mention that of collaboration. “To hear them say it,” as the label states, “King’s Evil is a project explicitly about the community and solidarity you build in proximity to other artists you admire. Finding energy and freedom in allowing someone else you admire to figuratively root around in your brain.” Listen to the title track now:

Legit Smitty – Picture In My Wallet

Jake Smith, aka Legit Smitty, wrote his forthcoming new record This Living Ain’t That Hard following a serious car accident while on family vacation in Hawaii. Such a near-death event understandably brought a newfound perspective, and the album is an expression of that. As Smith puts it, he is more determined than ever to “continue to share his heart in order that others might feel more at home in their own skin.” Latest single ‘Picture In My Wallet’ is a good introduction, a downbeat but still hopeful song which Smith says “details how his love will remain unchanging, as will his faults.”

‘Picture In My Wallet’ is available now on streaming services. Stay tuned for news on This Living Ain’t That Hard.

oh, hooray – MY BROTHER’S NEW BLACK EYE

A few weeks ago we featured a couple of tracks from the city has teeth i think i saw them once, the new record from Houston‘s oh, hooray. We described those songs as “fatalistic, furious and at least halfway triumphant,” calling them “dispatches from the American present, a time we might label ‘late capitalism’ if only the late didn’t seem such an overly optimistic diagnosis.” That description holds up across the record, but some songs are more personal in scope than others. A good example is ‘MY BROTHER’S NEW BLACK EYE’, which details an exasperating relationship with the title’s mercurial sibling. “‘MY BROTHER’S NEW BLACK EYE’ is about my brother,” describes lead Jamie McDonald. “I love him, I hate him, I am confused by him, I support him, I resent him. No matter how much he has alienated myself or my family, he will always be just that. My Brother.”

the city has teeth i think i saw them once is out now and available from the usual places.

Promiseland BBQ x Tory Silver – Where’d All the Firemen Go?

Promiseland BBQ is the recording project of Ross Weidman, originally from West Virginia and now based in Pasadena. We last featured his music back in 2023, writing about the album Murder In The Friendly City, which explored his parents hometown in blue collar Appalachia following the death of his mother. He released another EP, Promiseland BBQ Airways, last year, and is now back with a new standalone single, ‘Where Did All the Firemen Go?’ Altogether more lighthearted than the last album, Wediman says the song, a full band arrangement including Tory Silver on vocals, “imagine[s] a world where everyone got the job they wanted,” a laidback and swaying country rock jam that sees a cast of characters swap professions and bemoans the loss of a certain brand of smalltown hero.

You can download ‘Where Did All the Firemen Go?’ now from the Promiseland BBQ Bandcamp page.

Sand Duney – Saw You In the Roses

September will see the release of Plant Material, the debut full-length from Sand Duney (Portland, Oregon songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jess Jones), via the triple threat of Orindal Records, Anything Bagel and Bud Tapes. As per the press release, the record “explores a deepening of selfhood, love, and understanding the natural world,” while searching for “hope and a daily rhythm in a world that’s changing in massive and indecipherable ways.” Our first glimpse is ‘Saw You In the Roses’ a giddy, ambling psych pop song that continues the signature Sand Duney style, what we have described in the past as “equal parts meditative and energetic.” Jones plays every instrument, from guitar and bass to pedal steel, organ and drums, layers which reel and swim around her relaxed and composed vocals. Check out the video, directed and edited by Dawn Riddle, below:

Plant Material will be released on 4^th September and is available to pre-order from the Sand Duney Bandcamp page.

Sera Cahoone – Not How I Hoped

Alongside drumming for acts such Carissa’s Wierd and Band of Horses, Seattle’s Sera Cahoone has developed rich oeuvre of solo work, starting with the dusky, melancholic self-titled album back in 2006. Twenty Years on, Cahoone is preparing to release her fifth full-length I’ve Missed You All These Years via Sub Pop, and it seems time has only deepened her warm and aching sound. As its title suggests, latest single ‘Not How I Hoped’ confronts disappointment and regret with unerring candour, the clarity of Cahoone’s voice supported by a vivid arrangement featuring violin, pedal steel, piano and Hammond organ. “This song flew out of my broken heart many moons ago,” Cahoone explains. “It was the first song I wrote for this record. It’s quite sad, but writing it really helped me work through those hard feelings.”

Watch the video below, made by Cahoone herself along with Adam Evarts and Arriba Media LLC:

I’ve Missed You All These Years will be released on the 28th August via Sub Pop and you can pre-order it now.

W. Y. Huang – Running Into Walls

Last month, we introduced On Stranger Hills, the forthcoming new record from Singapore-born, New York-based singer-songwriter W. Y. Huang. Lead single ‘Born to Lose’ “owe[d] a debut to both Daniel Johnston and Adrienne Lenker and drawing on [Huang’s] own immigrant experience,” and now W.Y. Huang has unveiled a second track to further generate anticipation. Titled ‘Running Into Walls’, it’s an introspective indie folk song that the press release says “stages a tender reckoning with inherited trauma and the unbearable weight of survival.” It’s set during a late-night train ride, and captures perfectly the sense of solitude and emotional clarity that such journeys often evoke, mimicking the brain’s tendency to ruminate as the carriage falls silent and dark landscapes fly past the window.

‘Running Into Walls’ is out now and available from the usual places.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With singles ‘Everything’ and ‘Closer’, London duo atmos bloom have indicated the dreamy depths of their new album Everythingness, as well as the push and pull between influence and experimentation which marks their shoegaze-inflected sound. “[‘Closer’] finds Gratton and Paterson looking for contentment in the present and the constant change it represents,” we wrote of the latter single, “something achieved with a woozy, almost ethereal sound that sits on a knife edge between lucidity and dreams, sanding the edges off of reality in order to consider it more fully.” With the release of Everythingness fast approaching via Spirit Goth Records, atmos bloom have shared latest track ‘It’s Enough’, and again the song finds itself caught between competing forces. Namely the difficulty of living up to the expectations of different people, each with their own distinctive image of you in their head.

Chris Acker – Overdrafted

“A country-folk lamentation about the cruel thing banks do when you have less than zero dollars.” That’s how the press release describes ‘Overdrafted’, the new single from New Orleans-based songwriter Chris Acker. His first new music since 2024 album Famous Lunch, the song explores what he calls the “half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined.” As we wrote back in 2024: “Behind Acker’s trademark absurdity is the essential troubadour tale, where the confused dreamer collides with the banalities of life and comes to feel cursed for his failings.” But what’s remarkable is, despite the self-deprecation and wry humour, there’s some strange beauty here too, a heartwarming sense of camaraderie with everyone who finds themselves “in the red but still trying to tread.” You certainly won’t hear a more affecting account of having to make do with single ply toilet paper this year.

Jacob Brodovsky – Beneath It All

The songs of Jacob Brodovsky have never been afraid to delve into the personal, with new album Tell The Kids We Tried meditating, as we put it, “on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” but latest single ‘Beneath It All’ pushes further than most. Brodovsky had been the proud director of a Jewish summer camp, a place where he had spent over two decades of his life, only to recently face backlash from some members of the wider community for liking a social media post about a benefit show Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. An ugly situation developed, with the pressure tipping over into full-blown harassment, leaving him little choice but to resign and leave the place which had come to feel like a second home. “I wrote ‘Beneath It All’ about trying to hold onto the community that raised me while it shrinks into itself,” Brodovsky explains. “A community of good people, many of whom blinded by trauma, grief, and a refusal to acknowledge harm.” The album track featured the fantastic Charlotte Cornfield, while a new alternate live version sees Keiran Placatka, Dominique Adams and Leith Ross join instead:

Tell The Kids We Tried is out now via Make My Day Records and available from Bandcamp.

Jonathan Something – Country Rose

Recording under the moniker Jonathan Something, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Searles won acclaim through the late 2010s and early 2020s, writing prolifically across rock, folk and pop styles, though emerged from the period disillusioned with the industry and music more generally. “I was finding it hard to identify with being an artist anymore,” he explains. “It didn’t bring me the same joy or comfort it used to, and I found that the only way for me to really enjoy music again was to stop making it.” Cue several years away from songwriting, a spell only broken when ill health pushed him back towards music, even if at first merely sitting at a piano now caused him anxiety. “Eventually, I realized that I needed to turn it into something useful,” Searles continues. “I needed to use it as a catalyst to start thinking more seriously about spirituality and growth and the changes I needed to make in my life. And that journey became [new album] One More Lonesome Cowboy Song.” The record will be released this autumn via High Shelter, but for now you can listen to single ‘Country Rose’ for a taste of existential, transformative tone which marks the songs. Watch a live performance of the track recorded by Dogstar Films below:

One More Lonesome Cowboy Song will be released on the 16th October via High Shelter.

LAPÊCHE – Phantom Of Cinder

Brooklyn’s LAPÊCHE began life back in 2016 as the solo project of Krista Holly Diem, but has since grown into a full-blown band. Drawing on shoegaze and post-punk, they make indie rock songs that are both shadowy and catchy, centering on a sense of considered patience that the band says is born from “a shared language of healing, honesty and presence.” Back in February, they released a new record Autotelic via Tiny Engines, a collection of emotionally intricate but very much listenable rock songs. One standout was album closer ‘Phantom of Cinder’, a typically restrained track about how we hold on to shards of the past like splinters in our skin. “This song came from feeling haunted by old versions of myself,” Diem describes. “It is about the things we carry, the memories that refuse to disappear, and the moments that shape us long after they have passed. Sometimes healing is not about letting go. Sometimes it is about learning to live with what remains.” Watch the Jacob Halpren-directed video for ‘Phantom of Cinder’ below:

Autotelic is out now via Tiny Engines and available from the LAPÊCHE Bandcamp page.

Mama’s Broke – Build It Up

The recording project of Canadian pair Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria, Mama’s Broke has made a name over the last decade or so with a rootless, ever-searching style of folk music which played like the songs of old. Stories to be shared around campfires and small town bars before packing up and hitting the road once more. Latest album Reunion, coming later this summer via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, continues this style, possessing a timeless quality that suggests these aren’t so much new songs as memories passed down through the ages. As single ‘Build It Up’ attests, the result is at once intimate and urgent, delivered with the earnest conviction of those unwilling to let go of this world we’re slowly destroying. “If you don’t build it up,” as the telling refrain states, “somebody else will tear it down.”

Nick Bellerose – maybe i think

Montreal’s Nick Bellerose spent nearly two decades living a double life. His career as an international diplomat saw him travel the globe, “handling global crises in the foreign service.” But, privately, his true calling was music, something he used as an anchor to himself when thousands of miles from home. A couple of years ago, things changed. A series of tragedies, spearheaded by the death of his mother, led him to pick up a guitar and start to sing, making the decision to swap “the world stage of diplomacy for the visceral truth of the microphone.” Bellerose cites the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen as influences, something plainly clear in latest single ‘maybe i think’. Characteristically bittersweet, the track explores heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming.

Perennial – Modernism

Formed in Connecticut over a decade ago, Perennial are a self-styled “modernist punk” band who have blown away sweaty basement shows across the globe with their punk rock patchwork style that knits together just about every left-field and out-there style you can think of. The press release describes their forthcoming new record (aptly titled Modernism) as “Op art to dance to”, but the better metaphor is the tagline of a “1,200 second action painting”, as Perennial streak and splatter disparate elements of their seemingly endless record collection into hectic patterns that feel at once reverential and totally new. The real triumph is how Perennial keep these eccentric experiments so catchy and immediate (two words you may now immediately associate with sub-2-minute melange of free jazz, ambient electronica, big beat, dub and Musique concrète), as the opener and title track attests. Check it out below:

Sharp Pins – Saturday Sun

The project of Chicago’s Kai Slater (who you may also know from Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe), Sharp Pins is an outlet for lo-fi garage pop that could have come swaggering straight out of the swinging sixties. Not content with putting out two records last year (which clocked in with a combined total of 35 tracks), Slater is already back at it, announcing plans to re-release the album MOD MAYDAY 23, first released on tape a couple of years ago when he was still a teenager, via K Records and perennial. “[MOD MAYDAY 23 is] The soundtrack to my 18th summer riding a Chinese Taotao 50cc scooter around Taqueria Moran and four tracking my Sta-Prest-Dreams,” Slater describes. “I thought it would be cool to record a bunch of songs that never really got recorded in a semi-more-thought-out-way.” And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a brand new Sharp Pins single too. Titled ‘Saturday Sun’, it’s another slice of throwback pop music that’s sure to soundtrack the rest of the summer.

‘Saturday Sun’ is out now via the Sharp Pins Bandcamp page. MOD MAYDAY 23 will be released on 4^th September via K Records and perennial.

Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker – Sigils of Decay (for João da Cruz e Sousa)

Next month, American Dreams will release the third edition of Songs for Sad Poets, a collaborative project between Tehran-based composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn writer/philosopher Eugene Thacker, inspired by the tradition of poètes maudits or ‘cursed poets’. As Thacker describes, “[the term] referred to obscure or unknown poets who had endured some form of suffering and who felt compelled to write about it.” In the duo’s hands, this inspiration becomes something haunting, soundscapes that mould ideas from poetry, philosophy and music into new forms.  The first two volumes were entirely instrumental, but this new one is a little different. Amini fed Thacker’s poems into voice synthesis software and then processed and layered the output until any notion of “voice” is dissolved in noise. Lead single introduces how this sounds, a tribute to late nineteenth-century Brazilian symbolist poet João da Cruz e Sousa.

Wishy – All The Rage

“An unapologetically romantic track which creates the slightly intoxicated state of the title in all of its headspinning glory, refusing to dial down the lyrics in order to fully embrace the headspace. As though to be in love is to experience everything saturated and bright.” So we wrote of ‘Lovesick’, the lead single from Wishy‘s new full-length Nature’s Pill back in June, the Indianapolis outfit’s first full-length since the celebrated Triple 7 back in 2024. With the album slated for release via Winspear this autumn, Wishy have put out ‘All the Rage’ to keep the anticipation high. Thematically, the track is diametrically opposed to its predecessor, existing in the aftermath of a break-up and seeking solace amid the gloom. However, take a casual listen and you’d never know it. Because, for all of the bummed out frustration and wistful longing of the lyrics, the sound itself is buoyant and bright, a twee spirit which leans into the rhythm of the sound as though to cleanse itself via momentum alone.

Nature’s Pill will be released on the 2nd October via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the Wishy Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in 2024, Richmond, Virginia’s canaries released a self-titled EP, six songs that announced their brand of noisy lo-fi fuzz pop. One home-recorded demo aside, they have been quiet since then, that is until returning last week with a double single, released to coincide with a short tour with fellow Richmond locals Star Sign. Both new songs are great, but opener ‘horsepower’ just about takes it. The opening minute is a wordless rush, raw guitar and building percussion gathering into something genuinely exhilarating. Highly recommended if you like your pop songs on the heavier side and slathered in shoegaze-ish fuzz.

Frontlawn – Jenny Says

New Oberlin-based project Frontlawn have unveiled their debut single ‘Jenny Says’ as a calling card for their tender style of folk. The recording project of songwriters Tyler Buckser-Schulz and Viv Tullis, as well as a variety of friends, Frontlawn is clearly a labour of love, and their lead single sets out their intentions from the off. Recorded live to further the emotional immediacy of the sound, ‘Jenny Says’ is subtle but undeniably rich, possessing the closeness of bedroom pop yet brought to life by a full band, including Meredith Grotevant’s lap steel which adds a wistful country twang. Lyrically, the track is thoughtful and earnest, able to conjure both specific moments and images as well as a more reflective assessment of life’s constant yearning. An act to keep an eye on for sure.

Great Klons – More Beauty in the Rain

“[An] inventive collision of genres, as indie rock, psych, folk and Krautrock influences all coalesce into a singular sound able to explore ideas of instability within the contemporary moment.” So we wrote of an EP by Great Klons back in 2024, songwriter Scott Klon drawing on a wide palette to meet a chaotic present. Though if the circumstances surrounding that release were tumultuous, then latest EP Recurring Common Dream only ups the ante. Devasting wildfires, parental illness, the encroachment of pernicious technology… and that’s just on lead single ‘More Beauty in the Rain’. The track has a decidedly mid-00s feel, carved out of a blend of organic and digital textures and lifted by male-female harmonies, simmering as though always on the verge of firing into something altogether more propulsive yet for the most part retaining its understated, tonally ambiguous rhythm.

‘More Beauty in the Rain’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Hadnot Creek – The End Of The Road

Back in May we introduced Hadnot Creek, the recording project of Charlottesville songwriter Robert Sawrey and his rotating band of supporting musicians (including former members of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Kendall Street Company, no less), in preparation for the release of new full-length The End Of The Road. After single ‘River of Love’ gave a flavour of what to expect (“fans of the likes of James McMurty are sure to find much to love,” as we wrote, “Hadnot Creek sketching a decidedly existential picture of life and death without losing a toe-tapping rhythm”), Sawrey and co. are back with the title track. “[The song] is loosely based on two things,” he explains. “An ill advised camping trip to Vermont I took in 1976 (yes I’m that old) and the suicide of an old friend who battled bouts of mental illness. He was a gifted poet and naturalist.” The result is every bit as evocative as you might expect from this description, with vivid imagery (“Black flies so thick / you could kill them with a rake”) combining with an overarching sense of reflection to paint a picture of a man at the dead of night. A person lost in the wilderness or else the dark twists of his own head and confessing as much as plainly as he knows how.

Hana Stretton – salt / stove

Hana Stretton returns later this summer with a brand new record, the much-anticipated follow-up to 2023 sleeper hit Soon. Titled tiarn, the collection of eleven songs was self-recorded in small-town coastal Australia, taking inspiration from the experience of watching whales pass on a nearby migration route to ruminate on feelings of anxiety and loss caused by living through ecological crisis. Stretton takes this heavy subject matter and spins it into something characteristically calm and evocative, as evidenced by lead singles ‘salt’ and ‘stove’. Fans of Soon will instantly recognise the spacious compositions and warm production, but the first two songs hint at a step toward the ambient, with diverse samples and careful electronics evoking a whole world, ambiguous and dreamlike. Check them out below:

Tiarn will be released on 7^th August via brierfield flood press. If you’re in Aus, be sure to snag a copy of the limited first edition LP, which comes with a beautiful blind embossed eel design. And for those in other locations, records are apparently coming soon.

Lesley Mok – williams landing

Based in New York City, Lesley Mok is a percussionist and interdisciplinary artist whose work spans sound, installation, film and theatre. Next month, Mok will release a new record, titled transient, which label American Dreams describe as “an assemblage of sonic vignettes suffused with introversion, poignancy, nostalgia, and contemplative observation.” Named after the street where Mok grew up, latest single ‘williams landing’ is a piece of opaque but strangely affecting ambient music that not only explores the uncanny nature of memory but attempts to evoke it in the listener. “Memories can feel both elusive and fuzzy in the way they sit in my body,” Mok explains. “But sometimes with a bit of attention and time, details come into focus, and a once-vague memory can suddenly become clear, like a photo negative. I hope that this track can be a space where listeners can resonate with the experience of remembering, no matter how fleeting or fragmentary a memory might be.”

transient will be released via American Dreams on 17th July. Pre-order it now via Bandcamp.

oh, hooray – STATISTICALLY ME / WASTELAND2

oh, hooray is a little more than your usual folk pop outfit. Describing themselves as “an art project that makes celebratory sad music,” the band practise a multimedia approach, supporting their sound with everything from film and stop motion to theatrical and dance-centred performance. In the wrong hands, such artistic diversity might prioritise style or substance, but as latest LP the city has teeth i think i saw them once attests, oh, hooray is rooted in an authentic and impassioned emotional core. Take recent single ‘WASTELAND2’, a slow burn slice of bedroom pop which paints the current moment with equal parts devotion and doom. Or sister track ‘STATISTICALLY ME’, which channels Bright Eyes in its fervent, almost desperate delivery. Both songs play like dispatches from the American present, a time we might label ‘late capitalism’ if only the late didn’t seem such an overly optimistic diagnosis. Fatalistic, furious and at least halfway triumphant, if only because they still have the energy to raise their voice to scream.

today i woke up wishing i didn’t
collecting the last cut of my unemployment
i tried to be right, right in the middle of it
but it’s an eye of storm that i stopped chasin’
so the day that i die i’ll be in blissful anonymity
just a percentage on a screen
statistically me

the city has teeth i think i saw them once is out now and available from the usual places.

Piu – Home

Piu might be the solo recording project of Vancouver Island-based songwriter and composer Priyanka Chakrabarti, but new album Milao is anything but the product of a single person. With a title which translates as “to come together,” the record turns to family history, drawing on the songs and melodies made familiar by the matriarchal line of Chakrabarti’s lineage, passed down the generations and ultimately from Chakrabarti’s mother to herself. The result is at once highly personal and inherently historical, rooted in specific details yet shaped by the partition and other national events. Latest single ‘Home’ is the ideal introduction, where layers of modular and analogy synths combine with striking vocals to create a sound expansive enough to do such grand themes justice. “‘Home’ explores the idea of finding belonging within yourself, wherever you are,” Chakrabarti explains. “Written from experiences of moving through unfamiliar spaces, the piece reflects the search for connection amid uncertainty and change. ‘Home’ is both a place of return and an ongoing process of becoming.”

Shredded Sun – Skyscraper

All three members of Chicago indie rock band Shredded Sun, that’s Nick Ammerman, Sarah Ammerman and Ben Bilow, previously played in trash-pop outfit Fake Fictions, which “tore through Chicago’s underground from 2004 to 2009.” Later, they reinvented themselves as Shredded Sun, which despite not fully hitting its groove until 2022, has been pretty prolific since then. Their sound pulls ingredients from all corners of the indie rock pantry, resulting in something that feels both reassuringly familiar and freshly unpredictable. Later this summer, Shredded Sun will release a new record, Never Odd or Even, via Repeating Cloud. Lead single ‘Skyscraper’ is our first glimpse, a song that combines jangly hooks with Replacements-style rock grit.

SIKADE – greedy heart

Oslo-based singer, songwriter, harpist and producer Linnea Vestre, aka SIKADE, has been releasing a steady stream of singles in recent times as she gears up for the release of her debut full-length. So far songs like ‘body of water‘ (“embodies the balance between intimacy and scale which marks the project”) and ‘eleven‘ (“the line between sensuality and symbolism dissolves […] pushing towards a lushness which is almost cinematic”) have raised the anticipation for the record, and latest single ‘greedy heart’ only furthers the excitement. An embodiment of both the yearning at the heart of the forthcoming album and the dreamy compassion with which Vestre brings it to life, and the ideal balm to the oppressive summer heat which has descended upon us.

‘greedy heart’ is out now via streaming services.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2026 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now based in Naarm/Melbourne but originally from San Diego, Bella Cloud says she is “at heart a wanderer, using music as a reflective surface for her travels and navigating through interpersonal relationships.” Following last year’s EP The Limerent (that we described as “emotionally charged and richly immersive”), new single ‘Spin’ focuses on the melancholy sense of reflection that haunts New Year’s Day. But it is also threaded with a kind of hope, a feeling of possibility. After all, New Year’s is not just the end of something, but a new beginning too. “‘Spin’ feels like both a eulogy, “Cloud describes, “for a period of time that encapsulated a really important relationship and my early twenties and also a prayer to myself that I might become more rooted within myself in the coming year.”

Cameron Knowler – Placer Camp Blues (Nagra Demo)

Back in 2025 we wrote about CRK, an album by Arizona songwriter Cameron Knowler on Worried Songs. “A meditation of Knowler’s hometown of Yuma, Arizona both in its physical presence and historical weight,” as we put it, “all achieved via a style of instrumental folk both traditional and visionary.” Now Knowler has returned with ‘Placer Camp Blues’, a single written as part of the Just Cause Vol. 2 compilation and released via Castle Dome Records, to further this style. Recorded in his own home on a 1920s Martin guitar using a Nagra tape recorder, the song evokes Jimmie Rodgers or the earliest Dylan. Ostensibly little more than a minimalist instrumental sketch, the song nevertheless carries its own narrative weight, proceeding with the reflective, slightly mournful tone of a humble life lived by routine.

Fugue State – Floating

We’ve covered a number of singles from Fugue State‘s new album After Nothing Comes in recent weeks, with tracks like ‘Dark‘ and ‘So What Is There?‘ introducing Dan Langa’s unique ability to dissolve the border between solo and ensemble work, as well as composition and improvisation. The album is finally coming out later this week via Switch Hit Records, and a final single has been released to pave the way. ‘Floating’ finds Fugue State at its most organic, with Elias Stemeseder taking the lead for what at least begins as a restrained, almost hesitant sound. But as the track progresses, the sound blooms into something altogether richer and the vocals rise with it, before things fall back into a more ambiguous, muted style once more. “What do you think about love?” asks the repeated refrain across the track, “and the ocean between us?” A question framed in any number of different tones, each one seeming to ask something very specific and only furthering the cryptic power of the song.

After Nothing Comes will be released on 22nd May via Switch Hit Records and is available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

Helicopter Leaves – It Really Never Did

After a drip-feed of singles since the start of the year, Sabrina Nickels, the new album by Helicopter Leaves (the project of Beach Bunny’s Anthony Vaccaro) is now out in the world. In case you’re not already onboard, Helicopter Leaves has highlighted one more track as a single, the opener and in some ways focal point ‘It Never Really Did’. “When I was going through old demos to attempt to brainstorm how I would go about making a new Helicopter LP,” Vaccaro describes, “‘It Never Really Did’ would constantly jump out as the spark that lit the whole tree on fire.” It’s a fitting introduction, a joyous and cathartic indie rock song that wastes no time, bursting to life without prologue or preamble. “This being the album opener is fully an intended choice,” says Vaccaro. “Sadly in this day and age no one has time, or should I say attention, for music. Starting out without a riff, without a moment to realize what is even happening the track begins.”

mmj – nobody knows

A few weeks ago, Purity Ring’s Megan James announced that she would be picking up an acoustic guitar and performing a solo opening set for the band’s mammoth US tour. She christened this solo act mmj, and has now announced her forthcoming debut album under the moniker on Captured Tracks. The record promises to be a collection of what she describes as “folk songs refracted through a haunted lens,” more organic and analogue than anything in Purity Ring’s oeuvre. As James puts it ”everything has been touched by real hands, tape, tubes or all the above.” Details on the album will follow, but for now we have lead single ‘nobody knows’,  a rich and atmospheric song about the limitations of human experience.

Nobody knows
a fallen star
from wildfire ash
raining down on the yard

paer – Mean It

We last wrote about LA duo paer back in 2025 with single ‘Power Lines‘. “Delve into the hazy richness of the sound and you’ll find there’s an entire world beneath the surface, exploring ideas of grief and mourning with real nuance,” we wrote of the track. “The aftermath of loss, the song suggests, is a delicate balance. A push and pull between the past and the future where the seeming opposite desires to commemorate and move on must be handled with care.” Now paer are back with ‘Mean It’, a single on Anxiety Blanket Records (released in preparation for a brand new EP) which harks back to the mid-noughties era of dream pop. But within the hazy shimmer of the sound lies considerable complexity, the track refusing the escapist tendencies of the genre to present something far more conflicted. After all, there’s a fine line between self-protection and avoidance, and the lushness of the sound is challenged by a vibe almost claustrophobic, as though paer are aware that any attempt to find safe harbour from the world carries its own form of risk.

‘Mean It’ is out now via Anxiety Blanket Records and available from the usual places.

Pearla – Sky Is White

With Pearla’s latest album Song Room now out in the world, the New York artist has shared final single ‘Sky Is White’ to celebrate the release. After the declaration of love that was ‘Loved By Me‘ and the active attempts to combat unhappiness detailed on ‘Imagine Your Face‘, ‘Sky Is White’ offers another thoughtful engagement with personal suffering and efforts to move beyond it. “If the thoughts are in my mind / And my mind in my skull / And my skull in my body / And my body is small,” as Pearla sings in one verse, “Then the thoughts must be smaller / Than I even think they are / How can they hurt me?” Such ruminations are delivered with a hushed intimacy, pulling the audience right into the very mental space being described. That paradoxical place where the evident smallness of our interior thoughts bely the gravity they can exert on our lives. Song Room might not offer a complete escape from this pull, but it does muster an opposite force that might one day prevail.

Polhawan – Ride On

Back in March, we featured ‘No Sweat’, the debut single from Polhawan, the new project of Bristol‘s Tim Rowing-Parker (Woahnows, Immy). The song was “cryptic, strange, fresh and confident,” we said back then, “tak[ing] a sunny, surfy sound and applies it to something altogether more supernatural.” It was the first glimpse of EP Wild Mountain Time, which was finally released on Breakfast Records last week. What the liner notes describe as “like some mythical meeting between Fairport Convention and Parquet Court,” the record is formed of a moreish blend of folk and slacker rock that’s only going to sound better when summer hits. ‘Ride On’ is a good introduction, a lively and carefree song about relinquishing worries and expectations. “‘Ride On’ is about letting go,” says Rowing-Parker. “To me, our experiences can often feel measured and quantifiable, we’re so used to that. I’d love to be better at just letting life wash over me and living in a way that feels more natural and in the moment.”

Sari Lightman – The Way I Saw You

Best known as one half of experimental bands Tasseomancy and Lightman & Lightman with twin sister Romy, Sari Lightman is now striking off alone, announcing her debut solo record, The Way I Saw You, on Night Bloom Records. Produced by Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, the record promises to be a more straightforward take on the folk genre. Our first glimpse is the title track, a song inspired by LA writer/artist/seventies cultural icon Eve Babitz who went into self-imposed isolation after suffering third degree burns following an accident with a match. “She yearns to be remembered the way she was in her writing—sensual and carefree,” Lightman explains on how this inspired a song about aging and feminine identity. “To live in the rose, immortal, blossoming inside a body of work. I went down a theological rabbit hole with the rose. I thought about Dante’s Paradise and all those feminine saints stashed in the petals, like an exquisitely scented sexy hotel.”

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“Recorded while the Canadian songwriter was pregnant and unsurprisingly explor[ing] motherhood,” we wrote of Abigail Lapell‘s forthcoming album Shadow Child, “the tracks emerged stripped back and stark, a stylistic move at least in part dictated by Lapell’s difficult experiences with IVF and miscarriage that comes to paint the journey to parenthood in all of its too-often unspoken truth.” After singles ‘Hazel’ (“soothes and mourns in equal measure, addressed to the existentially vague child, be they in the womb, the future or memory”) and the title track, Lapell has now shared latest single ‘So Long’ ahead of the album’s release this May via Outside Music. This time welcoming BC songwriter Pharis Romero in support, the track displays the maritime imagery which runs through the record, and explores love as something both elemental and haunting.

So long, my love, so long
Out upon the great dark sea
How long, my love, how long
How long away will you be?

Watch the video by FITDG, Fernando Iannicelli, below:

Shadow Child will be released on the 8th May via Outside Music and you can pre-order it now from the Abigail Lapell Bandcamp page.

Fugue State – So What Is There?

“A shape-shifting track which shimmers with a beguiling cyclical, or rather spiral, rhythm, constantly circling itself while still moving towards new ground.” That’s we described ‘Dark‘, the previous single from Fugue State‘s upcoming album, After Nothing Comes. An example of the unique approach Dan Langa and his collaborators took for the album, a process which blurs the distinction between solo and ensemble, composition and improvisation, as well as the human and the digital. As we continued: “once the ‘human’ element is complete, Langa and co. take the recordings and pass them through a myriad of digital manipulations, sampling, distorting and re-harmonising the sounds into strange echoes of themselves.” With the album now little over a month away, Fugue State has shared latest single ‘So What Is There?’ to further introduce these techniques, and highlight the contribution of Javanese singer, composer and educator Peni Candra Rini, who left a significant mark on the record after spending a day recording with Langa at the Figure 8 Studio. “That session with Peni ultimately shaped the sequencing of the record,” he describes. “Her presence offers potent moments of respite within an often dense, maximalist soundworld.”

Garet Camella – Balance

LA-based singer-songwriter Garet Camella spent the best part of a decade in the indie rock band Indigo Wild, but in the last few years has gone back to his roots, writing and recording under his own name. A couple of years ago he released Mont Michel Archives, a collection of demos and older songs that he had discarded. The release felt like finding an old box of polaroid photographs, snapshots of previous times and places made all the more evocative by the light leaks and specks of dust. Now Camella is about to return with a new EP, Just Passing Through, which resurrects five songs from his past, this time with an extra layer of polish. After first taste ‘Gnats‘, new single ‘Balance’ further introduces the release, an earnest indie rock song that hits like a breath of fresh air with it’s hopeful driving momentum and heart-on-sleeve momentum. Fans of the mid-2000s indie rock golden age will find lots to like for sure.

Hadnot Creek – A River of Love

The recording project of Charlottesville songwriter Robert Sawrey and an ever-changing array of collaborators including Ben Laderberg (Kendall Street Company), Zach Samel, Lee Sargent and Tyler Sargent (former members of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah), Colin Lagenus (USA is a Monster), Austin Patterson and Jimmy Williams, Hadnot Creek has established itself as a prolific, personality-filled vehicle for good old fashioned outsider folk music. Sawrey and co. are preparing to release the project’s sixth full-length The End of the Road this June, and single ‘A River of Love’ indicates the record will continue this authentic, idiosyncratic style with equal parts heart and invention. Fans of the likes of James McMurty are sure to find much to love, Hadnot Creek sketching a decidedly existential picture of life and death without losing a toe-tapping rhythm.

Jillian Lake – Apple

Vancouver-based songwriter Jillian Lake has been releasing a number of singles in recent times, from ‘Cold Where You Are‘ (a single “equally attuned to emotional forces and their significant gravitational pull”) and ‘Human‘ (“an intensely personal song which reckons with the self in the most intimate way possible, displaying Lake’s turn towards richer arrangements while still evoking the austere stillness of an empty room”). All in preparation for the release of her second release, Is All This Mess Mine?. The EP, now released, “is a project about stopping and looking around at all the chaos around and wondering how I got stuck right in the middle of all of it,” Lake explains. “This collection of songs are all different realizations about myself and the way my mind works, the way I react, the way I feel, the way I get stuck, and all the messy bits.” Latest single ‘Apple’ offers Lake at perhaps her rawest yet, using the image of spoiled fruit to delve into feelings of expendability within a relationship. “Apple came from a place of feeling disposable,” Lake continues. “Like someone had already decided you weren’t worth keeping, and you’d started to believe them.”

Is All This Mess Mine? is out now and available via streaming services.

Leah Senior – Mothersong

Naarm/Melbourne-based “folk diviner” Leah Senior has built a considerable following over the last ten years, releasing four albums and sharing stages internationally with the likes of Wilco, Jessica Pratt and Iron & Wine. In June, she will release new record Pt. Roadknight via Third Eye Stimuli (Australia) and SPINSTER (USA), a collection of 70s-style pastoral folk and psych-tinged pop songs that explore the natural world and the variety of ways we interact with it. Lead single ‘Mothersong’ is a great introduction. Written “to ease a friend’s anxiety as she transitioned into motherhood,” this is a bright and vibrant folk pop song that’s nevertheless wrapped in a healthy dose of British backcountry weirdness, gazing back fifty years or so to a time that itself was looking back toward much older traditions. Check the very apt video below:

Pt. Roadknight is due for release on 19^th June. Pre-order it now from the Leah Senior Bandcamp page.

Ruth Garbus – I Think I’m Ready Now

Ruth Garbus has announced her new LP Profound will be released this June via Orindal Records. It’s the follow-up to previous full-lengths Kleinmeister (2019) and Alive People (2023), and it seems the album will continue the journey set out across its predecessors. Kleinmeister presented “the environment as a museum of trash,” we wrote in our review, a state which mirrored Garbus’s frame of mind. A “great drifting detrital mass looms over both the landscape and conscience,” we continued, “the past not buried but everywhere, clogging up the present and the future too, refuse refusing to degrade.” While Alive People felt like an attempt to reach through or beyond this mess, reflecting on, among other things, “creative insecurities, irony as armour and the manifold dimensions of any one personality.” But Profound seems to have taken several steps further. More assured in tone and execution, newly willing or able to communicate directly, audaciously, and, yes, happily. The title of opener and lead single ‘I Think I’m Ready Now’ sets the tone, a song about relinquishing a certain degree of control over art so that it might emerge more easily and authentically.

Breathing where the dragon is hiding is a lucky game
In the pink of your surroundings you can let go of shame
The lemon drops of failure all dissolve
And the sick of sweet pretending just a veil of gauze

Watch the visualizer made by Garbus herself below:

Profound will be released on the 12th June via Orindal Records and you can pre-order it now.

Sasha Adrian – Always, Almost

Based in Copenhagen, Sasha Adrian makes emotive indie pop songs that combine diary-like earnestness and wryly humorous cynicism. She already has two EPs to her name, 2023’s Token and 2024’s Shell, and is now “stepping into her debut album era” with new single ‘Always, Almost’. It’s a love song, but not in the conventional sense. Focusing on a relationship that has run its course (and then some), it finds a narrator stuck between the immediate heartache of breaking things off and the slower, self-deceptive suffering of holding onto something that is already dead. It’s catchy, sassy and sad, delving into a messy life with gentle sincerity and blunt candour. “Oh it’s so easy to conflate longing with love,” as she sings, “It’s time I learned to separate wanting and not.”

Suzanne Vallie – River of Angels Wings

Suzanne Vallie began work on her new record, Moonshiner Springs, during a very difficult time. Dealing with both chronic illness and grief following the death of her father, she grew increasingly weak and isolated. “It occurred to me I should document my new songs while I had the strength to do it,” she says on her decision to record demos at home on an old Panasonic tape recorder. She shared some of these songs online, and thus began a period of revitalization. Old friends and new began to send encouragement, and as Vallie puts it “my gumption got amped and my medicine kicked-in.” She enlisted the help of Carly Bond and Mat Davidson, and together they created something special. “Moonshiner Springs is an album created by the illumination and gifts born in times of grief and frailty,” Vallie describes. “As steady as hardship arrives, so too comes friendship, flying to the rescue.” Lead single and opener ‘River of Angels Wings’ is an early glimpse, the perfect introduction to the record’s bewitching atmosphere.

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Fast forward a little under two years and Just Cause are at it again. Just Cause Vol. 2 takes the blueprint of the original and expands upon it. There are over double the number of contributing artists, with an impressive total of sixty three songs from all corners of our current musical moment. Many of the artists have featured on these very pages (some multiple times), including the likes of Ben Seretan, Caitlin Pasko, Erika Dohi, hemlock, Mal Devisa, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Nico Hedley, Pleasure Systems and Sam Wenc. There’s such a mix of genres, feelings and styles that there truly is something for everyone, and the minimum donation of $10 is brilliant value in anyone’s book.

But of course the compilation is about more than music. It is again raising money for another vital cause. All proceeds of Just Cause Vol. 2 go to the Immigrant Defense Project, who work tirelessly to fight the mass imprisonment and deportation of immigrants in the US. As their mission statement puts it: “IDP has remained steadfast in fighting for fairness and justice for all immigrants caught at the intersection of the racially biased U.S. criminal and immigration systems. IDP fights to end the current era of unprecedented mass criminalization, detention and deportation through a multipronged strategy including advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.”

Just Cause Vol. 2 is out now and available via Bandcamp.

Cover art by Aldrin Regina Valdez

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