Brimheim has now anounced brand new full-length Fables, set for release in February 2027 via Tambourhinoceros, and second single ‘Somebody Else’ was just as central to this new era of the project. Written in the same epiphanic week as ‘My Collection’, the track further establishes the vision of the record, one with a real sense of certainty in regards both style and theme. “My previous record was deliberately eclectic, drawing from many contrasting references,” Brimheim explains. “This time, I wanted cohesion. I’ve tried to accomplish that through working with a loose set of dogmas: Everything played by hand, no pitch correction on vocals, and lyrics needed to have an element of the extraordinary. The result is an organic record that, to me, feels out of time.”

Taking inspiration from seventies songwriters and cabaret jazz, the result is playful, sensual and in possession of a suggestively dark underside. A surreal exploration of identity and our desires to escape it told with the singular style of an artist finding their true voice. “Fables is a search for what is human and for what still holds meaning — within myself and in our dystopian times,” Brimheim continues. “I make art and music to make sense of a foundational feeling of alienation. With this record I was especially interested in recapturing the lost magic and imagination I had access to as a child.”

Watch the video below, directed by Stine Emil, produced by Monster Crotch with director of photography Rie Windfeld Skou:

Fables will be released on the 5th February via Tambourhinoceros and you can pre-order it from the Brimheim Bandcamp page.

Photo by Jasko Bobar

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Decidedly bittersweet in nature, opener ‘Miracle Drug‘ represents “a nascent crush brought to life in all its longing and shimmering potential,” as we wrote, “where the line between melancholy and possibility is porous and the world itself feels new.” ‘Running Through the World‘ follows, a self-described “anthem of nonconformity” which chooses, as we’ve stated previously, “to pursue love and optimism regardless of how intent the world seems to be on erasing such things,” while the pillowy drift of ‘Room Service’ gives into the allure of daydreaming about this possibility. A similar hopefulness could be said to inform ‘Solutions‘, though the tone is very different, swapping out the charge and certainty of its predecessors in favour of a sound altogether more contemplative. “A song delivered from the mire of the present, dreaming of a fresh start that’s not yet quite in reach and all the more alluring for it,” was how we described it. “A romantic vision of a possible future that’s so compelling it carries an urge to scrunch up your life and begin anew.”

And things don’t slow down from there. ‘The Right Line‘ juxtaposes difficult themes with smooth grooves and ‘EZ Ways’ pairs a similarly wistful reflection with an insistent sense of forward motion, as though caught between the urges to look back and move on, before ‘Fantasy TBD‘ lets go of the handbrake to offer the most boisterous and cathartic cut on the record. “What might be the band’s most propulsive single to date,” we wrote, “the song grapples with the long tail of a break-up, attempting to break free from the spell of a relationship that won’t quite let you go.” Van Chamberlain seem to take this imperative literally, their attempt to break free sounding exactly as forceful and determined as such an action should. Closer ‘Dream Life’ emerges from the wake of this, moving slowly, almost hesitantly, as though stepping into the too-bright light of a new day. But while there’s still a clear nostalgic haze to the sound, there’s a distinction to be made from the earlier songs on the record. A willingness to separate the dream from waking life, to move on with the past in tow but not colouring every waking moment.

Dream life
Heaven knows that we tried
So lets meet up in dream life

As Far As the Eye Can See is out now and available from the Van Chamberlain Bandcamp page.

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But this outward focus is only part of the Cloudbelly’s remit. Throwing The Game just as concerned with the personal and the internal. ‘Poppa‘ follows ‘Oh, Antarctica!’ on the record and flips the direction of its perspective entirely to explore memories of a loved one and the ways in which dignity might be maintained through the trials of old age. The song focuses on Laitman’s grandfather, “a man,” as we wrote previously, “who lived for the wilderness yet ultimately found himself in a high-rise caring for his ailing wife.” As the press release puts it: “If there is a contradiction in the coexistence of tenderness and grief, this song doesn’t seek to resolve it. The contradiction itself is the emotional event.”

This willingness to consider the whole gamut of experience represents the real strength of the release. Cloudbelly manage to combine the social and personal, internal and external and even ideas of the past and future into a coherent, heartfelt whole. The resulting songs are often deceptively deep, tracks like ‘Phantom Lung‘ pushing beyond the conventions and expectations of the genre to do something more nuanced. “A love song but not in the traditional sense,” we wrote of the track, “detailing the slow disintegration of a friendship as it moved from closeness to distance,” where even the wistful fondness of the sound is juxtaposed against the more fatalistic ending. Elsewhere there are moments even more thematically inventive, such as single ‘Bend‘ and its meta-commentary on the plight of the artist. “The track a direct confrontation between an artist and their critical inner voice,” as we wrote, “but it’s one conducted not with fire and fury but a triumphant gentleness, as though understanding that any internal pain requires healing more than anything else.”

Therefore, though the (almost) title track ‘Throw The Game’ is something of a narrative outlier on the record, seeing Laitman switch the focus away themselves in order to inhabit the headspace of a past lover,it also serves as an encapsulation of the release’s ambitious spirit. A dispatch from the beginning of a fraught road trip where the sour atmosphere seems to forecast an encroaching end, the song is familiar story told from a novel perspective, possessing all the yearning and catharsis of the best indie rock but inherently more interesting for its willingness to attempt something new. “I don’t recognise you when you get like this,” Laitman sings in the opening lines, “sharp and defensive and passive aggressive / and I can’t find the thread of your love for me.” Like much of Throwing The Game, what follows is confessional in tone and affirming in its honesty, yet above granting the satisfaction of neat endings or easy epiphany. Watch the video filmed and directed by Nick Duncan below:

Throwing The Game will be released on the 13th November and you can pre-order it now from the Cloudbelly Bandcamp page.

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Follow-ups Unravel and Internal Systems pushed these ideas further, refusing to romanticise the struggle of living in an exploitative society while searching for a worthwhile existence all the same. “[The album] challenges the heroism too often misapplied to such experiences, refusing to subscribe to the idea there’s anything noble about suffering,” we wrote of the former. “’I’m not a part of your cult of positivity,’ as Water continues on ‘Legoset Life’. ‘I’m not strong, so please stop saying it’.” Single ‘Spiders’ represented the cornerstone of the release, a compassionate song which took the humble yet enduring purpose of the titular arachnid and repurposed it as a metaphor for those struggling for meaning within the present. “Perhaps,” as we continued in our piece, “in a world that can feel dark and vast and dislocated, all any creature can do is continue to build the small things they are able to, whether it brings them comfort or joy or simple distraction, just to prove they are still alive.”

Early in 2027 Guidon Bear will return with Home Sick, a brand new full-length via Antiquated Future Records, and the album feels like a culmination, not only of the project but the thirty years of collaboration Water and Maley have shared. Consisting of fifteen genre-bending tracks packed to the brim with their trademark lyricism, Home Sick is a maximalist affair, leaning into the idiosyncrasies that have made their work special with a triumphant delight, a sense of celebration that bleeds into the themes and tone of the songs themselves. Because, while there is still a direct engagement with the trials of the contemporary moment, be it climate change, fascist cruelty or whatever else, it is often directed towards those standing in opposition rather than the evils themselves. Trans trailblazers Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and their Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries organization feature, as does Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, the Washington State organizer who has drawn the ire of ICE for his work with farmworkers, not to mention a myriad of natural and non-human things which offer sites of liberation and healing for those attentive enough to seek them out. Check out the first two tracks from the album now:

Home Sick will be released on the 12th January via Antiquated Future and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

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A few weeks ago we introduced The Temptation of Thieves, a new album by LA-based songwriter Alex Gardner. “As the title of the record and single ‘Robin Hood’ suggest, the story of everyone’s favourite outlaw is central to the record,” we wrote, “though English and German romanticism, ancient Greece, modernist poetry, fairy tales and folkloric traditions all hold an influence, as well as the conventions and myths of classic folk and blues.” The album was released last week, and so we thought we would share opener ‘Mule Song’ to give a further taste of what to expect. A calm and composed song that sees backing band the Golden Apples (that’s Lauren Slusser, Dan Komin, Karter AKA and Jason Wyman) joined by Graham Jacobson on clarinet, it reference a whole host of different stories, from the Biblical burning bush to the Grimm fairy tale of The Seven Ravens. The perfect introduction to a record built on the foundation of hundreds of years of literary tradition.

Blond in Car – Shaky Day (feat. Jay Som)

Robin Schorr’s Blond in Car has experienced a stratospheric 2026, touring with Two Lips and CMAT and winning widespread acclaim with singles like ‘Bad Dad’. So it is fitting that she’s capping off the year with the release of her brand new full-length GLIDER, both to celebrate prior achievements and set the scene for an even bigger 2027. Brought to life with equals parts lush nostalgia and forward thinking freshness, the dream pop of GLIDER really stands apart for its emotional honesty, something clearly apparent on standout track ‘Shaky Day’. Featuring Jay Som, who also produced the record, the single is an ode to the person who helps us negotiate those moments when panic starts to spiral and darkness closes in. “If you are lucky, you have that person in your life who will talk you down when you’re crashing out,” Schorr explains. “For me, that person is most often my older sister Lynn, who knows me and my ups and downs. She knows just how to remind me that whatever mood is running rampant is nothing we haven’t seen before. And just knowing I can get her on the phone, gives me immediate peace and perspective – she’s my rescue remedy.” The result is a welcome expansion of the view of mental health, pushing beyond the familiar messages of self-empowerment to give thanks to those who are there for us when we need them most. Watch the video directed by Gabriel Fuller-Rodriguez below:

GLIDER is out now and available from the usual places.

The Burning Hell – Never Work / Sarah Connor

Across recent years, The Burning Hell has established themselves as one of the premier bards of our apocalyptic age, be it 2023’s Garbage Island (what we called “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world”) or 2025’s Ghost Palace. “Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll in a familiarly impish mood,” as we wrote:

pouring scorn on materialist bourgeois distractions with an oddball lyrical journey. Strangers named Jason, collectors of medieval swords, a Buddhist book club in the sky frequented by long-haired former tennis pros and part-time Rabbis. No, it’s not a new Pynchon novel. The Burning Hell are back.

With a vast North American tour just finishing and a substantial set of Australian dates already pencilled in for 2027, now is as good a time as any to get familiar with The Burning Hell, and considering the current situation, we suggest pairing the title track from 2020s Never Work with more recent single ‘Sarah Connor Was Right’. The first is an enlivening rejoinder to our exploitative age of productivity, while the latter offers a similarly acerbic and witty take on the rise of the robots. Because while technological developments in recent years might have made the freedom of ‘Never Work’ possible, capitalist reality bends in a different direction.

You can find The Burning Hell on Bandcamp.

Hayden – Outta Nashville

Last month, we featured the song ‘Time Has Been More Kind’ by Toronto‘s Hayden (calling it “what might be the most country-adjacent Hayden song to date”). It was the lead single from The Recent Past, his tenth album, released on his own newly-revived label Hardwood Records, originally set up back in 1994. The album was released last week, and we couldn’t resist sharing another track to celebrate. Perhaps the standout is ‘Outta Nashville’, a song inspired by a legend about country rock songwriter Charlie Daniels, who apparently approached record producer Bob Johnston “to preemptively bail him out of jail before he got himself into trouble.” “I’ve always been interested in the lore of my favourite musicians, especially from the golden era of the mid 50’s to the mid 70’s,” Hayden explains. “This particular story struck a chord, it’s both amusing and heartbreaking.” Which as it turns out, is a pretty good description of the song too.

JoJo Worthington – Dig A Bone

Back in September we previewed BAPTIZED II, the new EP from Montreal-based songwriter JoJo Worthington leading up to eventual full-length ARMOUR OF GOD, with single ‘Ever Ender Star Infinity‘. “Turning its attention to the heavens, the track mines everything from Magic: The Gathering to astrophysics to synthesise its own spirituality,” we wrote, “not least the latter’s idea that we consist of stardust which dates right back to the Big Bang […] and allows celestial magic to once again colour reality.” With the EP now out in full, Worthington has shared latest track ‘Dig A Bone’ to set the tone for the release. This time the song finds inspiration closer to home, drawing on an experience of sneaking out of home as a child on a school night and the guilt on being caught, though it is more about Worthington’s mother. “My mom has always been a reflection of God’s character,” she says. “It’s about seeing all the good in her and wrestling with my own spiritual beliefs and working through these childhood events as an adult in romantic relationships.” To complete the track, Worthington’s mother actually plays harp on the song, sealing the themes and form of the release.

LAPÊCHE – Double Knotted

We’ve featured a number of tracks from LAPÊCHE‘s new full-length Autotelic in recent months, with songs like ‘Phantom of Cinder’ and ‘Parallel Park‘ displaying the how the project “channels a nineties sensibility without ever descending to cheap nostalgia,” as we wrote, “not least thanks to the committed, complex style in which they work.” With the album out now via Tiny Engines, LAPÊCHE have shared a video for the track ‘Double Knotted’. Another beguiling example of their nuanced style, the song juxtaposes the calm exterior and turbulent interior to explore the strange nature of experience and the resilience required to navigate it successfully. “This song is about grounding yourself in the midst of chaos, finding balance amid uncertainty and motion,” Krista Holly Diem describes. “It’s not about achieving perfection or gaining control, it’s about persistence and presence.”

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

lots of hands – anything for now

“A song which harks back to their nostalgia-laced lo-fi roots with a stark, stripped-back atmosphere […] dark and shadowy, squealing guitar and repetitive loops undulating over electronic percussion, [Billy] Woodhouse and [Elliot] Dryden both contributing soft, understated vocals that deliver lyrics both opaque and suggestive.” So we wrote of ‘grapevine‘ by lots of hands back in May, the Newcastle upon Tyne duo building upon the foundations of their 2025 debut into a pretty room. Again released via Fire Talk, latest single ‘anything for now’ continues this evolution, Woodhouse and Dryden welcoming outside collaboration into the recording process for the first time in the shape of Mike O’Malley (caroline, My New Band Believe) who co-produced the sound and contributed guitar, creating their most polished style to date. One imbued with a newfound clarity, even if the lyrics still carry the cryptic dimension which has become part of the lots of hands spirit. “This song has been through about 4 stages,” Woodhouse explains. “It started as 3 different tracks me and Elliot worked on individually, before combining them. We recorded this version down in London next to the best pastry shop we’ve ever been to. Such a luxury to have this experience, and meet Mike from caroline who really took this song to a different level.”

thieves of a nation
listen to the pennies shaking
ships out on the water
no one gives but someone’s taking
she tried to warn you
but you’re so sick that you ignored her
you’ll find in the morning
you’re just a good boy who takes his orders

Pale Ramon – The Nose

“Building with admirable patience [and] a lush atmosphere gradually tipping towards something more urgent,” we wrote of opener ‘The Mirror’ from Pale Ramon‘s new LP The Yawn back in June, the single offered “a picture of something like desperation, told with both the immediacy of the moment and the fondness of personal history.” The Brooklyn outfit, founded by Kevin Plessner and Emanuel Ayvas, have now unveiled the record in full, and the result only furthers this balance, triangulating a sweet spot between art rock invention, post-punk cool and something more emotionally earnest. Take latest single ‘The Nose’, a song which draws on all of the above to explore the seductions and contradictions of a life led online, where one’s existence can be curated into fictional ideals and outrage fuels the perpetual posting motion. Pairing sleek rhythms with jarring angles, not to mention a twitchy, almost nervous tempo, the result perfectly captures the duality of social media, where a slick polished surface hides a frantic, many tentacled monster squirming underneath, a beast created by all of our fears and desires.

Westhead – Alright Now, Right Now

Westhead is the recording project of Chicago songwriter, producer and engineer Max DiFrisco, whose work combines folk songwriting with lo-fi indie pop. After a three album hot streak between 2021 and 2023, Westhead returns with a brand new single, ‘Alright Now, Right Now’. Produced by Jack Henry (Free Range, Friko, Post Animal) and recorded in the countryside in Morgantown, Indiana, the song features contributions from a host of friends who provide the usual instruments (guitar, bass, drums) as well as mandolin, dulcimer and sax. The result is densely layered and wrapped in a warm droning fuzz, glowing with an intensity that lights up the spare but emotive lyrics. “Guess I’m doing alright now,” DiFrisco sings at the end, as if suddenly coming to in a moment of perspective, “Yes I’m doing alright now, right now.”

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“Both albums are crafted from layered arrangements of piano and various keyboards and synths which sound decidedly curious in their approach,” as we wrote in a preview back in October, “designed, as [Bennett] puts it, to feel like you are ‘walking through an unfamiliar place you want to keep exploring and never have to circle back to where you started.'” Because while these are two distinct records and function as such, they originated as a single album and work on that level too, with a sense of linearity running through the pair to maintain a sense of progression. “Steloken offer[s] warm and fond soundscapes before Circulation pushes deeper into a more improvised, abstract state,” as we continued, “the twin releases playing like a real statement of intent from an artist looking to wide the frame of their work.”

The fact the title of Steloken was taken from his daughter’s mispronunciation of skeleton gives an indication of the headspace Bennett tried to create for the release. “I want to get back to that innocent place where the language is unwritten, technique is just kinetic energy in your body, and the art is fluid and devoid of self-consciousness,” he explains. “It’s the same reason people seek out a first-take recording, before you really ‘know’ a song. I’ve watched my kids paint and play piano. At first, you marvel at how abstract and simple everything is. Then it’s like Eve biting into the apple. Suddenly you need to draw shapes, form chords, understand harmony. Your art gets worse for a long time before you can find your way back to that original freedom. I’m trying to unplug the conscious mind and release the muscle memories and all of the feelings.”

Ahead of the full release next month, Robbie Bennett has shared a new pair of singles ‘Footprints in the Ash’ and ‘Vermiculite’, and this sense of discovery is abundantly clear in both. ‘Vermiculite’ marks Bennett’s maiden experimentation with a vocoder, offering a newfound sense of freedom which seems an intrinsic part of the release. “Removing the conventional limits of my voice felt incredibly freeing,” he explains. “I was suddenly unburdened by all the inhibitions and expectations I’d developed around my own singing voice.” On the other hand, ‘Footprints in the Ash’ offers discovery in a different form, the track stemming from Bennett’s time out in the wilderness of the Pine Barrens, specifically the juxtaposition of burnt land and colourful new growth. The result teases another key strand of the project, with the compositions notable for the fact that Bennett leaves in both ends of the emotional spectrum, as eager to communicate the grey and black as he is the brilliant colour.

Steloken and Circulation will both be released on the 11th December via American Dreams. Pre-order both from the Robbie Bennett Bandcamp page.

Main photo by Kait Privitera

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The dream is far from the only menacing vision Cronin outlines in the book, though it is perhaps one of the most dreadful. A child made to watch as the familiar turns strange and violence closes in, the end of the world ultimately unfolding not just with the loss of her own parents, but perhaps by their very hand. The image resurfaced upon playing Cronin’s new record The Bruise, out now via Orindal Records and A Moth Object. A release which follows in the footsteps of predecessors Bloodless and Big Dread Moon to present the personal as a portentous experience, the real world coloured by the spectral presence of ghouls, ghosts, God and His absence, but, significantly, does so from different circumstances. Now a parent herself, we find Cronin newly aware of her position as a link in a familial line. Mother and child, a pattern repeated. A chain of spectres over her shoulder. A baby in her lap, peering up, starting to cry.

Opener ‘Black Water’ plays as a direct engagement with these ideas, Cronin keenly aware of the duality of motherhood, her ability to bring relief with a familiar face or else a fanged destruction. It’s “about the poisonous kind of pain that some of us inherit from our parents,” as she explains. “I’m on both sides of that now, as a mother and a daughter.” Even the act of giving birth itself is presented as its complicated bipolar whole. Not just a continuation of life but also a form a death, as though mortality shimmers within the animal experience of pain and blood, the ever-present shadow side of the otherwise brilliant coin so often held aloft. “When I first wrote this song, I wasn’t sure what the imagery was about, but it felt emotionally true,” Cronin continues. “Two years after I finished it, I had a harrowing experience while giving birth to my second child. That nearness to death and life felt like something the song prophesied.”

With death seeping into even the most metaphorically pure of images, and Claire Cronin hardly being known for the brightest of sounds, you will not be surprised to learn The Bruise is a record dark in theme and tone. Beyond the existential terror of the personal lies grander visions of the same. The world in which Cronin gives birth is one cowering in the face of a myriad of interlinked catastrophes, from the collapsing climate, genocide and war to the alarming greed and hubris of the billionaire tech elite. There likely hasn’t been a day in human history where the world did not feel on the brink of an end of some kind, yet the contemporary moment feels especially precarious. The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity. The gyre is widening, the falcon is deaf. You know how it ends. The fires that choked the songs of 2021’s Bloodless have only grown more intense in the intervening years, so how could The Bruise be anything other than apocalyptic? Blue Light of the Screen quotes Elaine Showalter: “The human imagination is not infinite, and we are all bombarded by these plot lines every day. Inevitably, we all live out the social stories of our time.” It stands to reason, when the stories of our time are reaching their conclusion, we live out our own end.

Which is to say The Bruise is a kind of personal eschatology developed in situ. An album inspired by doom in its various guises, be it cultural doom, personal doom or the doom of the family, its folk sound enriched by the slow black depths of doom metal and its various avant garde drone/ambient relations. Cronin’s husband and collaborator Ezra Buchla was more involved than ever, performing strings, guitars, percussion, piano electronics and whispered bass harmonies, as well as recording and mixing the song’s in the couple’s home in Berkeley, California. Plus Julia Holter (harmonium), Tashi Wada (synth), John Dieterich (of Deerhoof, on synth), Jeffrey Byron (percussion) and Mark Wessels (musical saw) also lent their talents, summoning a sound loaded with the weight of metal yet without its immediate intensity. A soul without a body, or else a body without a soul. All feeling and no catharsis. Suffering without meaning. Yearning without release.

Take the despair of ‘Before the End of Time’, a song which sees Cronin attempt, and ultimately fail, to list the things she will miss when everything is said and done. “Helicopter search beam / thought it was the holy ghost,” she sings in the song’s central line, one which encapsulates the mood of the entire album. The miracle revealed to be an optical illusion is the most galling of things, not least because of what such a mistake reveals about the would-be witness. A childish faith unveiled and then extinguished within the same moment. Pathetic desires bubbling up despite everything. The absence of the divine doubled in the embarrassment.

From there, to the creeping beat of a bodhrán, The Bruise marches on. “If anyone above has a song of love / I can’t hear it now,” goes the despondent ‘There Is No Sound’, a track which rings with the alarming clarity of silence, while all is neither calm nor bright on the Claire Cronin version of ‘Silent Night’, the traditional hymn snared by the profane as she details a childhood home, the drab, desperate environment coloured by the afflictions of those who inhabit it (there’s a “humming of mistaken words,” the trees are “a seasonless green,” the cars on the street “shine like some set of teeth” and the grass can be heard “struggling to grow underneath”). Again the maternal figure is central, a presence at once conspicuous and opaque, making anguished confessions while simultaneously retaining a fundamentally incomprehensible air. Another parent cast canine in the eyes of a child, albeit this time a more subtle transmogrification. The mother as knowing, unknowable, wild.

I remember you wanting to die
To be up with your Jesus on high
But you drove us to school with a glint in your eye
and you hid in the dark like a dog in the park
who does not want to come back inside

Informed by a celtic spirit and images of war, the electrified ‘Poison Ivy’ stirs itself with something like solemn fury, while ‘Save a Little Hell’ and ‘Iris in Pyre’ counter with a torpid weight. The tracks move slow enough to trap the listener in their lethargy, the sonic equivalent of our contemporary woe, draped like a wet blanket and clinging close to the skin. “’Iris in Pyre’ is about how it hurts to see terrible things,” Cronin explains. “I’m singing about burning the irises of my eyes, of dyeing my clothes black in a kind of funeral pyre. The images in the song speak to threats of violence, social sickness, and fascist displays of power. It’s the feeling I get when reading the news.”

This feeling gestures towards George Steiner’s idea of ‘absolute tragedy’. “A point, gathering all blackness to it,” which Cronin explores in Blue Light of the Screen. The absolute tragedy is governed by senseless villains and totally devoid of hope or meaning. Suicidal stories that play out within, as per Cronin, “a universe where hell is all that waits for us.” A world, perhaps, where even parents become werewolves and maul their offspring. Where such curses follow the bloodline, poisons pass between generations. The absolute tragedy is a wheel destined to forever turn.

The fatalism continues across the closing tracks, not least ‘Wait in Nothing’ with its arrogant adversaries and predators, and appears to reach its nadir on closer ‘House in the Pines’. “Hope is what you had when you were nine,” as Cronin sings in the refrain. “Now it’s bigger than that / It’s a white cloud when you’re running out of time.” Populated by garbage on fire and bare winter shapes, the song sets out into the bleak landscape of the record and, much like the second grade Cronin in her werewolf dream, finds not solace but doom. “Straight out of hell, I heard a bell / Deep in the ground at the back of the yard,” she sings. “I shut my ears and then appeared / some angel snake with a silver guitar.”

But while it is tempting to read the apparition as Satan himself come to punctuate the apocalypse’s final sentence, thus sealing Claire Cronin’s absolute tragedy, there is another reading which cannot be ignored. One tied to the central tension which has long proved the engine of her work. Because as terrible as the underworld might be, especially when found within your own garden, it cannot exist in divine isolation. A demon from hell is proof of heaven, just as silence implies the existence of its inverse. A fear of the end suggests a love for the present. What if God might only be revealed in negative? “The only reason I might want to draw a circle in chalk and ask a demon to enter is to see if I could really make it happen,” Cronin writes in a salient section of Blue Light of the Screen. “If the demon came, then I would know that God’s reality was laced into our own.” Hope is what you had when you were nine but now it is bigger than that. Salvation might be found in its own antithesis, and this is the time of wolves.

The Bruise is out now via Orindal Records and A Moth Object and you can get it from the Claire Cronin Bandcamp page. Various editions are available, including a limited edition cassette and a hand drawn zine of lyrics and art by Cronin herself.

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Breaking a habit of working solo, the record was the first in which Kyla Marlena invited outside support, assembling of band from some of the city’s most talented musicians. Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), Julian Psihoigos (Georgia Harmer, Katie Tupper), Felix Fox (BADBADNOTGOOD, Jonah Yano), Jasper Smith (Benjamin Dakota Rogers), Karen Ng (The Weather Station), Noah Williamson (Sonder) and Jaiden Davis-Jones all contribute, with Jonas Bonnetta (Evening Hymns) mixing and Kevin McPhee mastering the result. The aforementioned energy is amplified by this collaboration, each moving part contributing to the momentum of the sound and its myriad of left turns.

With the album set for release later this week, Kyla Marlena has unveiled latest single ‘In Paint’, and the track speaks to these ideas both stylistically and thematically. A song which not only sits central to the meaning of the album, but also serves as a kind of meta-commentary on its creation. “‘In Paint’ is about the tension between wanting to outgrow our ingrained patterns and fearing the loss of control that comes with that, as well as the added complexity of navigating that alongside another person,” Marlena explains. “There’s a lot of unease and dissonance in that, which the instrumentation mirrors. We rarely play on top of one another, but there’s a constant sense, almost a threat, that we might. When all that tension finally erupts at the end, it acts as a sort of wish fulfilment. The music resolves something the lyrics don’t quite manage to.”

Watch the video below, directed, shot and edited by Jo Hirabayashi, and co-directed by Kyla Marlena:

Hold Time will be released on the 6th November via idée fixe and you can pre-order it now from the Kyla Marlena Bandcamp page.

Photo by Tess Disturnal, cover art by Eric Tkaczyk

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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 been

I 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.

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Alongside core members Berman (vocals), Ricky Lorenzo (guitar), Dana Guth (bass) and DJ Nelson (drums/samples), the new album welcomes Daniel Juergens into the Little Oso fold, bolstering the sound with synthesizer and samplers, as well as viola and violin by Elisabeth Fuchsia. Juergens also recorded and mixed the release, with Andy Tyler Clarke (Spirit of the Beehive, Cloud Nothings) mastering, and the result is by far the richest and most complex the project has sounded to date. But more than a mere stylistic evolution for the band, this development is inherently tied to their thematic interests too. We live in a world where the line between physical and digital existence is porous, machine learning is thrust upon us, and perhaps most strikingly, we’re surrounded by things we could never truly make our own no matter what the tech overlords might claim. Such heady themes require a careful balance of intricacy, fury and good old fashioned human feeling, and Little Oso 2.0 appear ready to meet the moment.

I don’t need much, I just need this
(A place I’ve never been)
Will someone please give me the cheat code to
(A place I’ve never been)

The song comes complete with a video to further the themes, directed and written by Jeannette Berman with director of photography Dean Luis Chuquimongo and editor/colorist Ricardo Lorenzo, and featuring 3D Animator by Haven.

Simulation Games will be released via Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home in late spring/early summer 2027. The single is available now from Bandcamp.

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