Back in 2023 we wrote about Somethinghood by A Box of Stars, an album which saw “the Burlington outfit weave what is best described as a sense of complete attention,” as we put it, “a focus which elevates what might seem ordinary situations into something almost sublime.” Now Macaulay Lerman and co. are back with Walnut Street, a brand new record which doubles down on the style to capture both the beauty of life’s smallest details and the implicit sadness which stems from the knowledge that everything will one day fade away. Single ‘Remain’ is the ideal place to jump in, a typically lo-fi and authentic track which carries a flame of love despite the looming threat of loss around.

Alden Hellmuth – Microfictions

“Tether is a fitting name for the release,” we wrote of Alden Hellmuth‘s new album on LEITER back in May, “speaking to both the connection between Hellmuth and her supporting cast—bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet)—and how group, and indeed the audience, act something like a leash within the spontaneity of improvisation. The musicians might play themselves out into unexpected territory, but there’s always a line to bring them back into the heart of the group.” After single ‘Face the Wall’ kicked things off, Hellmuth has now shared latest track ‘Microfictions’. The opening number on the album, ‘Microfictions’ wastes no time in pitching the audience into the depths of her adventurous approach, drawing on Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music to create a style of improvisation centring on melody. Scurrying percussion adds a sense of urgency, while Hellmuth’s trademark sax skates over the surface with virtuosic personality.

Tether will be released on the 26th June via LEITER and you can pre-order it now.

Cheekface – I Don’t Work Here

LA trio Cheekface have made a name in recent years with mischievous brand of indie rock. Their music combines post punk angles and playful pop bounce with a droll talk-singing style of vocal delivery to create something sometimes caustic, often irreverent and always dialled into the ridiculous age we call the present. For anyone left uninitiated, latest single ‘I Don’t Work Here’ bundles up the Cheekface aesthetic into a tidy three minutes, railing against everything from the surveillance state to the steady creep of the corporate into civic life with equal parts swagger and seethe. A world where everyone is watched yet perpetually lonely, and unrealistic demands come from bosses and customers alike.

Dog Shaped – Please Hold

In part rising from the ashes of former band Sue Your Landlord, Dog Shaped is songwriter Emily Cabarle alongside Nicholas Djukic Cocks (lead guitar), Michael McCanna (lap steel), Matt Shuham (drums), Angelo Ross (keys, backing vocals) and Freddy Haug (bass). With an EP slated for release next month, Cabarle and co. have shared single ‘Please Hold’ to introduce their sound. A song described by the band as “a power ballad about wanting to be close and connect with friends/lovers but being scared of what happens when you’re vulnerable,” it confronts the needling doubt of fearing you are too much for those around you while pining for acceptance and connection. Watch the video produced and directed by Mars Alba below:

‘Please Hold’ is out now via streaming services.

Jacob Brodovsky – Kids

Back in April we introduced Tell The Kids We Tried, the forthcoming full-length from Winnipeg songwriter Jacob Brodovsky, describing how the album “meditate[s] on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” with a set of characters “attempting to build a life within a world where the future seems unwilling or unable to materialise.” Latest single ‘Kids’ addresses this style more directly than anything on the record, written while Brodovsky was wrestling with what it meant to have a young child and another on the way while the future of civilisation seems so bleak. “For me, having children has been a massive source of both optimism and dread,” he explains. “Being around children and watching them discover themselves is such an incredible gift to behold, while also terrifying to realize all the ways they could hurt themselves and the limits of my own abilities to protect them.”

Tell The Kids We Tried will be released on the 10th July via Make My Day Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Kate Prascher – Jubilee

Later this summer, Memphis-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter Kate Prascher will release new full-length Sunday Afternoon. The follow-up to 2024’s Shake the Dust, the record sees Prascher build upon her distinctively honest, unguarded style of folk. Lead single ‘Jubilee’ embodies both the atmosphere and emotional clarity of the release, the sound with one foot in the past but always looking forward, allowing memories and hopes for the future to sit side by side. “I wrote it while walking on an old train trestle in Rosendale, New York, a town ringing with the eerie history of a stone quarry, carrying memories of my hometown across it,” Prascher explains. “By the time I climbed down from the track, the song was mostly written. It’s a lyrical exploration of the word ‘jubilee’ as both a signal of celebration and of forgiveness.”

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

MEGGO – just my luck

Following on from 2025 EP eavesdropper ;; death stories, Montreal-based songwriter MEGGO is returning this summer with the next chapter of a trilogy of releases, with lead single ‘jaws of life‘ giving a taste of what to expect earlier in the year. Now she is back with new track ‘just my luck’, a song which allows repressed anger to bubble the surface, not only as a form of simple catharsis but also to clear the ground in order for the process of healing to begin. “There’s a part of me that needs to yell and scream. I don’t call on her that often, but she’s in there!” MEGGO explains. “‘just my luck’ is what comes from that inevitable explosion. It’s about letting go of grudges and making room inside yourself for forgiveness. It acknowledges where there is pain, looks right at it, and lays it bare so that it no longer needs to be carried. What’s left is compassion and peace in its wake.”

Two Runner – Strawberry Rhinestone

Described by label Gar Hole Records as “a warm reassurance for anyone who’s gotten dressed up just to come home alone,” ‘Strawberry Rhinestone’ is the lead single from Two Runner’s upcoming new album Porchlight. The Northern Californian duo, songwriter Paige Anderson and fiddler Emilie Rose, have lived a life steeped in folk music, growing up in the mountains and playing from a young age, and the experience shines through in the Two Runner sound. The single is a slice of lively barroom bluegrass, equal parts wistful and reassuring as it delivers a message both wise and world weary. “”Love is in your favor if you can outlast the bad ones.”

Some lovers are like the mountains
Some lovers are like the ocean
Some of them stick like velcro
And some leave in mysterious ways

‘Strawberry Rhinestone’ is out now via streaming services.

W. Y. Huang – Born To Lose

We last wrote about Singapore-born, New York-based singer-songwriter W. Y. Huang back in 2024 with the release of the EP Knots. The release possessed “a fluidity and ease suggestive of an artist who has spent time exploring their tastes and honing their craft,” we wrote. “One ready to share something intimate.” Fast forward a couple of years and W. Y Huang is preparing to release his debut full-length On Stranger Hills, and lead single ‘Born To Lose’ suggests the album will be even more honest and personal. With a lo-fi sound which owes a debut to both Daniel Johnston and Adrienne Lenker and drawing on his own immigrant experience, Huang “explores the loneliness and anxiety of what it means to be invisible in a foreign land,” as the album notes explain, “tracing the edges of belonging, where memory and place begin to blur.”

‘Born to Lose’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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

This phenomenon is central to Somethinghood. Present in the desert sky of opener ‘Sorbet’, or a kitchen’s steam and sunlight in ‘Heaven’. And furthermore it’s used as the foundation for more philosophical musings. Take ‘Museum of Light’, a track which uses the underappreciated miracle of hot water as the basis for metaphysical contemplations, and comes to find beauty and sustenance in everything. “My sink spills god when I run the faucet,” Lerman sings. “Hot water holy father I’m coming back to life.”

I saw bankers buying flowers
And babies clutching fingers
Of mothers who weren’t always
But forever now shall be
I saw Catholics praying
Buddhists meditating
Atheists existing
And that’s proof enough for me

Which isn’t to say there’s no unease in the songs. ‘Jenny When the Blues‘ is marked by a tangible loneliness, ‘Motion Sickness’ by a premature mourning, and the striking ‘Frankie is Alive’ is entirely balanced on the knife-edge of mortality. However, what darkness there is on the record only serves to highlight the delights it holds too, as though life’s ephemeral nature is an inherent part of its joys. ‘Frankie Alive’ is the perfect example, a strikingly fond track which charts the life of dog against a backdrop of news both brutal and banal. Bushfires in the outback, dolphins in the canals of Venice, Ozzy Osbourne opening a chain a gothic BBQ restaurants. The news grows increasingly astounding as the song develops, from extraterrestrial contact to the separation of the soul from the body, all while the titular hero outlives science and expectation.

On the day Frankie turned 30
She became the first dog to ever turn 30
And above packed arena seating
She was knighted in front of a crowd of one billion

The contrast of catastrophes and miracles is typical of Somethinghood, even if the miracles are not always as obvious as Frankie’s. “The world you know is ending / You can feel it in the quiet,” goes ‘Big Hole in the Sky’, “in the junkyard breeding lightyears / of upturned cars on fire.” But against the apocalyptic imagery, the track operates on another plane. The ground level existence, a sense of love persevering against everything else. The song, and indeed the album as a whole, not only serves as a confrontation of our unravelling world, but also the near divine moments of peace we might still find within it.

Somethinghood is out now and available from the A Box of Stars Bandcamp page.

The post A Box of Stars – Somethinghood appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Combining the sensibilities of lo-fi rock and slow burn country rock, Vermont‘s A Box of Stars have made a name re-examining life’s small moments in search of their weight and meaning. Single ‘Jenny When the Blues’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, a tender, near-whispered folk duet which blooms into life across its runtime, drawing the listener through a seemingly ordinary moment to reveal the depth beneath the surface.

‘Jenny When the Blues’ is out now. Find A Box of Stars in all the usual places.

Cooper Wolken – Hold Me Under

Back in March we premiered ‘So Down‘, the lead single from Cooper Wolken‘s new album Chapters on Earth Libraries. “The album sees Cooper Wolken apply such observations to his personal life,” as we explained, “mining the fine details to illuminate the fundamental truths at the core of his experiences, no matter how vulnerable this might make him.” The album has now been released, and latest single ‘Hold Me Under’ continues this introspective, unguarded mood. A song which combines shimmering textures with an urgent edge, Wolken again pacing out into the woods of his childhood and finding something sacred there.

I left those woods behind my home
The place where I first heard your song
Then I saw your face, unexpected place
If we meet again, if we meet again
If we meet you can

Hold me under holy water

Chapters is out now via Earth Libraries.

Graves – Cavin’ In

Last month we introduced Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts, the upcoming album by Graves on Perpetual Doom and Curly Cassettes, with single Little ‘Dumb Dogs’. The song highlighted how the album represents “a throwback to Nashville’s golden age, loaded with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia and a wry humour that brings new vigour to a timeless style.” Latest track ‘Cavin’ In’ continues the vibe, what the label describes as an “upbeat downer” which evokes the bygone simplicity of the previous age while offering a self-deprecating melancholy too, utilizing this style to explore age old themes of regret and mortality.

Olivia Reid – Central Park West

Following 2021 debut Earth Water, Olivia Reid is releasing a series of new songs this year, and latest ‘Central Park West’ highlights the careful arrangements and emotional depth which marks her work. Written after the passing of her aunt and uncle, the track is an effort to preserve specific memories of times shared, its mourning leavened by an overriding gratitude. Because though illness altered and ultimately ended the walks in Central Park Reid would share with her family, she makes a point of choosing to cherish what they shared rather than lament what is lost.

Paper Lady – Swan Song

The esoteric Allston, Massachusetts project Paper Lady has won our attention on several occasions in recent months, from the dense shoegaze spiritualism of ‘Five of Swords‘ to the excoriating romance-gone-bad ‘Starcross‘, the latter “burn[ing] with what could be spurned fury or frustrated embarrassment,” as we put it, “building nonetheless into with unerring intensity of an ancient curse.” Ahead of new EP Traveling Exploding Star, latest single ‘Swan Song’ sands down the sharpest edges of the previous tracks yet loses none of the intensity, building from smouldering beginnings into an all-out blaze, the sound’s sluggish melancholy transcended in a final moment of release.

Traveling Exploding Star is out now and available via streaming services.

Puppy Angst – TKO

Lead vocalist and guitarist Alyssa Milman (Past Life, Blushed), Puppy Angst is a Philly-based outfit which draws upon everything from dream and power pop to shoegaze to capture life’s contradictions. Hence the PA sound embraces raw energy and dreamy hazy, and Milman’s writing is happy to explore vulnerability and strength within the same song. Released via Fire Talk‘s digital singles imprint Open Tab, new single ‘TKO’ is an encapsulation of the sound, its momentum possessing a cathartic empowerment even as the vocals announce their fatalistic conclusions.

Maybe I’m a masochist
I’ll put you first if you insist
Baby I’m a pacifist
Don’t wanna fight so I let you win
I let you win

‘TKO’ is out now and available from the Puppy Angst Bandcamp page.

Rival Consoles – Coda

Back in October we wrote about Now Is, an album by London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West’s Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. A record which “sets out to explore the full spectrum of minimalism and the moods which can result,” as we explained, “from anxious isolation to playful curiosity and everything in between.” New single ‘Coda’ is equally ambitious in its reach, looking to portray the duality of the nocturnal environment through haunting quiet and pulsing energy. What results is a soundtrack for the spectrum of night, from the still darkness of an empty room to the house clubs glittering on across the city.

Wombo – Thread

We’ve covered Wombo a number of times in recent years, culminating in last year’s full-length Fairy Rust on Fire Talk Records. A released we described as “a collection of songs which explores the contemporary preoccupation with the unreal.” This month sees Wombo return with Slab, an EP which looks to harness the outfit’s instinctive creativity, favouring immediacy over perfection with stylistic freedom and scratch take guitar. Single ‘Thread’ hints at the result—a picture of a band in constant motion, always looking to challenge themselves with new directions while nevertheless growing increasingly assured upon the ground they’ve made their own. Watch the video directed by Wombo’s own Cameron Low below:

Slab is out now via Fire Talk Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Yvonne Hercules – Phoenix

Based in Cambridge, Yvonne Hercules is a singer-songwriter whose work draws on the rich lineages of folk, Blues and soul, tying them together with a contemporary twist. Last week she released Olive, a brand new EP on Trapped Animal Records, a collection of songs which “celebrate the strength of Black Women and the ability to rise up and overcome adversity” and fully captures her rich and varied style. Closing track ‘Phoenix’ is perhaps the standout, a soulful, quietly epic ode to Hercules’s mother and her resilience and compassion in the face of adversity.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2023 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.