In February we previewed Shadow Child, the latest album from Abigail Lapell which was recorded while the Canadian songwriter was pregnant and unsurprisingly explores motherhood. “The tracks emerged stripped back and stark,” we wrote, “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.” With the release fast approaching, Lapell has shared the title track along with a video to further introduce this style. “I recently found all my old super 8 films, and I thought this odd little black and white claymation might fit well with ‘Shadow Child’, a song about pregnancy and childbirth – creation and transformation,” she explains. “But when I actually tried pairing the two, it was crazy. The unedited ‘backwards’ visuals fit the song exactly perfectly – like down to the second. Complete with the final reveal of the figure’s shadow, and then my own hands in silhouette, returning it to a formless blob. I couldn’t believe it.”

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.

Air Mail – Won’t You

Following on from singles ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ (“uses a melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance”) and ‘Moss Song’ (“its warm tones and languid rhythms allowing in the outside environment, playing like spring blooming in real time”), Niko Francis’s Air Mail has unveiled debut LP a.m. Continental with latest track ‘Won’t You’. Again falling somewhere between Lenderman-esque alt country and the sun-drenched pop of acts likes Cut Worms, the track explores the sensation of a relationship being slowly dismantled by forces beyond anyone’s control. It meditates not only on the pain of a separation but the enduring fondness that survives beyond physical remove. “As long as words are sincere / and what you want is clear,”  Francis sings in the first verse, “as long as you still feel near, even when you’re far from here / won’t you stay and love me?”

Ben Auld – Red Bandana

This May, Norwich-based artist Ben Auld will release Loserdom, a brand new album via Safe Suburban Home and Repeating Cloud which signals something of a sea change. Whereas Auld’s previous work tended towards the twee end of indie folk, the new record draws on influences like Tony Molina and Teenage Fanclub to offer loud, scrappy and spirited style of power pop. Lead single ‘Red Bandana’ heralds this new sound, as well as the mix of unabashed sincerity and tongue-in-cheek charm which marks his writing. “I was trying to write something that captured the explosive pang that can happen when you reflect on places you’ve lived and people you’ve known,” Auld explains of the single. “That sudden reminder of a life you used to have, the impossibility of returning to it, and the pain of living in the past.”

Frog – Je Nes Sais Pas

When cult favourites Frog put out their 1000 Variations of the Same Song album last year, we didn’t think they were actually aiming for the big four figures. But follow-up The Count arrived hot on the heels of its predecessor and now the New York outfit are already gearing up to release the third full-length in the cycle, Frog for Sale. Described as an album “about how money sometimes gets in the way of love,” the record sees the Bateman brothers take inspiration from the likes of Buddy Holly and Paul McCartney, again switching up the Frog sound while maintaining that idiosyncratic charm that’s made them so beloved. Lead single ‘Je Nes Sais Pas’ is available now, a track of bright energy and fading dreams, not to mention a trademark wit and humour. “You’re just no good anymore since you went away and didn’t darken any door,” as Bateman sings in one typical verse. “Now you got your hair like Anna Wintour except poor.”

Jillian Lake – Human

“Attuned to emotional forces and their significant gravitational pull, namely the strange tension of watching a loved one attempt to navigate a difficult period, willing more than anything to save them from the turmoil but conscious of being dragged into the mire yourself.” So we wrote of ‘Cold Where You Are’ by Jillian Lake last month, a single which embodies the balance between compassion and suffering which marks the Vancouver-based songwriter’s work. Now Lake has shared brand new single ‘Human’ and this balance has never been more evident. It’s 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. A place where there is nowhere to look but inwards, no matter how uncomfortable. “’Human’ is a song I wrote about the fear that you’re losing pieces of yourself, and starting to not recognize yourself,” Lake explains. “I remember the first time I saw the Eiffel tower I was so amazed and astonished. When I went back to Paris years later I just stared at it and didn’t really feel anything. It scared me that I lost that sense of wonder. I missed the old version of myself.”

‘Human’ is out now via streaming services.

Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – Wing Song

We’ve followed the idiosyncratic, ever-inventive songwriting of Matthew Squires for a number of years now, from his ‘Ballad of Norm MacDonald‘ and quasi-cover ‘Poor Men Southeast of Portland‘ to ‘Song of a Cactus‘ in 2024. Now, having moved to Ithaca, New York, Squires has teamed up with Zach Totta of Sunk Coast for a new track, and the result is no less distinctive. With vocals that rival Daniel Johnston in their ability to echo Kermit the Frog, the song is classic Matthew Squires, proving that genuinely compassionate music need not leave playfulness or strangeness at the door. “In the face of the absurd, it’s there I’ll find my answer,” he sings in one fitting verse, “I’ll decode the hidden words inside the movements of a dancer: / It’s the story of a king who forgot if he has merit / He sprouts himself some wings and then he sings ‘til all can hear it.”

Old Amica – Bländverk

“A record which explores time with Old Amica’s signature care and patience […] suspended in a negative space seemingly disconnected from anything tangible, memories floating by in abstract grace.” That’s how we described the Swedish duo’s album För alltid back in 2024, again noting how their blend of organic and digital sensibilities manages to evoke memory in all of its emotional depth. With a new full-length set for release next month via Whitelabrecs, Old Amica are now back with ‘Bländverk’, a spare piano-based track that again explores the poignant, often ethereal world of recollection. Stretched across ten minutes, the song mimics the gauzy filter memory can bring, where the reality of a moment is softened, a monument worn smooth by the passing of time.

Sulka – All Bets Off

This summer Glasgow-based songwriter Lukas Clasen, AKA Sulka, will release new full-length Bute on Lost Map and No Soap Records. Following last year’s single ‘Halloween’, that as we said previously combined “subdued vocals with an eerie backdrop of distorted guitars and synths,” he has now released a second track from the album to further whet appetites. Titled ‘All Bets Off’, it’s an ostensibly charming indie pop song that nevertheless delves into a toxic relationship. And not your average one either. Written from an equine perspective, it explores the exploitation at the heart of horse racing. “The song was partly inspired by a storyline in the TV show The Sopranos, where Tony buys a race horse and develops a genuine love for it,” Clasen explains. “I thought writing a song from the horse’s perspective would make an interesting device for exploring the ups and downs of a volatile relationship”

Tory Silver – Microwave

Pittsburgh-based Tory Silver makes a brand of indie rock that she says “[channels] the small joys and inevitable uncertainties of residing in a body.” She has a new record, In Through the Front with Lasers, coming at the end of May via Michi Tapes and has unveiled new single ‘Microwave’ in anticipation. The song is set in the cold chill of dawn, our narrator sat bleary-eyed in their kitchen, enjoying the quiet ahead of a day of selling their body for what Silver describes in an Instagram post as a “silly grocery job under crapitalism.” There’s a healthy does of existential dread sure, but there’s also enough garage rock crunch for it to feel rousing too. An anthem for the masses forced to drag themselves out of bed every morning to keep on keeping on.

Scrambled eggs
On my plate
Getting cold
Microwave

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“Uses [a] melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange (but recently all too familiar) sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance. It’s laidback and understated, but with a quiet power, and ends on a note of defiance, if not quite hope.” So we wrote of ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ by Air Mail back in November, the song which introduced how Chicago-based artist Niko Francis uses a lo-fi indie pop to achieve a striking emotional clarity. New single ‘Moss Song’ might explore humbler themes but is no less resonant, its warm tones and languid rhythms allowing in the outside environment, playing like spring blooming in real time. The result is patient, unhurried and most welcome on a grey February morning. As though within its easygoing flow is a reminder that the world moves slowly yet surely, and the only real path to contentment is to learn to match its speed.

Blue Communications – Australian Summer / Simple Delight

Naarm trio Blue Communications have only existed for about a year, but have already begun to win  over hearts and minds with their eclectic and energetic live set. Now the band have released their first recorded music, double single Australian Summer / Simple Delight, via Southern Exposure Records. The two tracks are a fitting introduction to a band that combine catchy punk, sunny Antipodean jangle and lo-fi experimentalism. Aine Keogh takes the lead on ‘Australian Summer’, which as its title suggests is a hazy and sun-drunk folk-inflected song that evokes long and lazy summer days. ‘Simple Delight’ on the other hand is something of a tempo change, Billie Burrow taking over vocal duties in an urgent and barrelling punky pop song the band say is “about anti-fascist action and queer punk culture.” As captured in the joyously repeated line:

Pushing nazis to the ground
Such a simple delight man!

Australian Summer / Simple Delight is out now via Southern Exposure Records and available via the Blue Communications Bandcamp page.

Brightmoon – Lies About The Sky (Shudder to Think cover)

The recording project of husband and wife duo Billy and Becca Mohler, Brightmoon takes its name from the imaginary kingdom in the animated show She-Ra and the Princess of Power. In the cartoon, the land is dreamlike and shrouded in mystery, and it was exactly such sensations which the Mohlers wished to convey with their hybrid shoegaze, indie rock and dream pop aesthetic. However, make no mistake, Brightmoon offer more edge and emotional bite than simple nostalgia. “Poetry and songwriting are the best outlets for me. It’s cheesy to say this, but they’re like therapy. I put my struggles and demons in my songs,” Becca shares. Billy adds: “Our music is a catharsis. For us, it’s a break from the challenges of daily living, and we want to provide that kind of respite for others.” With their debut EP coming soon via Noon Records, the duo have shared a cover of Shudder To Think’s ‘Lies About The Sky’, the ideal introduction to a band that can provide shimmering textures and pummelling energy in equal measure. Watch the video below with animation and editing by Vincent U.

‘Lies About The Sky’ is out now via Noon Records.

Brown Horse – Twisters

Norwich-based purveyors of “slacker twang” Brown Horse are nothing if not prolific. They announced themselves to the world with 2024 debut Reservoir (which was one of that year’s stand-out records), and returned with sophomore effort All the Right Weaknesses little over a year later. Their style fits the zeitgeist perfectly, a rough and dusty mix of country and indie rock that very much in vogue at the moment, think (roughly) equal parts Jason Molina, Neil Young and Lucinda Williams. And they’re very good at it too. All of which is to say that expectation is high for the next Brown Horse record, Total Dive, which is due for release barely a year since the last one. Our first glimpse is ‘Twisters’, another confident and wearily optimistic mid-tempo country rocker that would sound perfect on a sunny afternoon cruise once spring has sprung in a couple of weeks.

Helicopter Leaves – Moreoff More Off Than On

“I wanted to invest in it myself—take the more adult serious step. Grow up.” So explains Anthony Vaccaro of Sabrina Nickels, the latest album from his solo project Helicopter Leaves. Having made a name as guitarist and co-songwriter in Chicago rock band Beach Bunny, Vaccaro’s solo work has thus far remained very much a side project, 2023 debut Get Stuck In recorded in the basement of his grandparents’ house. However, anyone who spent time with that record would have said considerable vision and potential within the idiosyncratic sound, and now Vaccaro is determined to level up with the new album and give Helicopter Leaves the attention it deserves. The basement was swapped for Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio and longtime Beach Bunny collaborator Sean O’Keefe’s home studio, and a newfound commitment followed, though Vaccaro still plays all the instruments and retains the same personal spirit. Just take lead single ‘Moreoff More Off Than On’, a track charged with all the adventure and experimentation that makes the project special.

Sabrina Nickels will be released on the 27th March via Noyes Records and you can pre-order it now.

JJerome87 – Brush Me Like A Horse

You likely know Joe Newman as part of the critically acclaimed indie rock outfit alt-j, though fans will soon come to know him as something altogether different. For having signed with Mushroom Music / Virgin Music Group, Newman is adopting the moniker JJerome87 and setting out solo. Lead single ‘Brush Me Like A Horse’ serves as the calling card for the new project. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Carlos De La Garza, there’s a notable Californian flavour to the track, Newman reaching for elements of gospel, Motown and blues. But beneath the sunny spirit is something altogether more surreal. The almost Kafkaesque story of man who, as the title alludes, finds himself slowly turning in to a horse. Something between a cautionary tale and act of wish fulfillment which probes what can happen when the outside world begins to see us differently.

‘Brush Me Like a Horse’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Nice Weather – Room Tone

Based in Philadelphia, Nice Weather in an ambient project which, as per the artist, looks to explore “the baritone guitar as an environment rather than an instrument.” Serving as both an introduction and mission statement, lead track ‘Room Tone’ is atmospheric in an almost literal sense. A song named after the filmmaking term for the sounds within a space with no dialogue or intentional noise, that is, the audio presence of an ostensibly ‘silent’ environment, ‘Room Tone’ is a live to tape improvisation which owes equal debts to the work of Mary Lattimore and David Lynch. A soundscape in which apparently empty space carries its own mood and charge, and the contours of sound itself mark out the emotional landscape of a given space.

‘Room Tone’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Pearla – Be Around

Back in October we wrote about ‘To Love Something’, a single from Nicole Rodriguez’s Pearla which built upon the style of 2023 album Oh Glistening Onion, The Nighttime Is Coming, “again searching for those small details which lift an otherwise mundane existence into something significant.” Now Rodriguez has announced a brand new full-length Song Room, and lead single ‘Be Around’ suggests the Pearla sound is continuing to grow. “This song is about the feeling of isolation that comes with being a highly sensitive and emotional person, and worrying that it makes you hard to be around or hard to love,” Rodriguez explains. “It’s about that feeling of being ‘too much’—the fear of what would happen when people see what is really within you.” This tension between interior and exterior worlds is a key concern of the record, notably how the outside threatens to change the inside, the ways in which love might expand or collapse us, and the relative impacts of resisting this change or else submitting to its inevitable pull.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – The Hunt In Edson

We last wrote about The Rural Alberta Advantage back in 2023 when the Toronto based indie rock darlings put out their fifth full-length, The Rise & The Fall. The album saw lead Nils Edenloff shake off the associated anguish inherent within the act of writing songs to pen another stellar collection and put his own self-doubt to rest. Fast forward two years and The RAA are back with ‘The Hunt in Edson’, a brand new single on Saddle Creek that shows Edenloff and co. are ready to put themselves through it all over again. Inspired by a pair of unrelated true events, the song explores the bracing experience of being under the most severe of pressure, be it caught in the jaws of a predator or stood on the edge with a rope around your neck. The result is every bit as thoughtful and cathartic as fans of the band will have come to expect, and we can only hope there’s a sixth album sitting somewhere down the line.

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The recording moniker of Chicago-based artist Niko Francis, Air Mail makes lo-fi indie pop inspired by the likes of Alex G and MJ Lenderman. The latest in the Future Gods Unearth series, new single ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ uses this melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange (but recently all too familiar) sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance. Written amid news on the genocide in Gaza and wildfires in LA, Francis describes the song as “a quietly striking meditation on connection and collapse, written from the stillness of a bedroom but echoing far beyond it.” It’s laidback and understated, but with a quiet power, and ends on a note of defiance, if not quite hope.

Where you are, you belong
Can’t destroy, what you can do
Can’t erase, what is ours
Because we, we are wide awake

‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ is out now via streaming services.

Basciville & Ailbhe Reddy – Your Own Head

Next year will see the release of the sophomore album by Basciville, the folk rock project of Wexford brothers Cillian and Lorcan Byrne. To announce the release, the duo have unveiled lead single, ‘Your Own Head’, a collaboration with Dublin singer-songwriter Ailbhe Reddy. It’s a stark and searing duet, beginning with the spacious emotion of a dark and empty room before swelling with the band’s signature cinematic intensity. “’Your Own Head’ was the first song written from the batch of songs that would become the second album. One of those songs that falls out in one go and thematically ties everything together,” Basciville describe. “It laments the ways we compromise the self in the name of love, religion and society at large. It touches on the balance between some global moral duty, the pull to be present and keeping the self safe.”

‘Your Own Head’ is out now via streaming services.

eillah – Amaranth / My Own Mouth

The best part of four years since release of album in my head, Peoria-born, Chicago-based songwriter eillah has returned with brand new double single Amaranth / My Own Mouth. With guidance from producer, engineer and drummer Jack Henry, eillah uses the tracks to push their sound in new directions, lifting the inherent ethereality of the lo-fi aesthetic which marked the last record and transplanting it into a newly rich folk style. The result exists in-between states—be that ambiguity and clarity, rawness and polish, reality and dreams—and opens up a whole new avenue for eillah to explore moving forward. A style uniquely positioned to mine the full depth of an emotional landscape and present an inner world in all of its beauty and contradiction.

Evelyn – Three Eagles

Evelyn is recording project of California-born, New York-based artist Dani Lencioni, who makes inventive indie pop that’s thick with the lived-in soul of alt country. Released later last week, the latest Evelyn single ‘Three Eagles’ is a great example, a rich and swaying song that “responds to the dissonance between everyday beauty and the grief of current events.” Produced by Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee collaborator Nick Kinsey, the song was recorded in his Hudson Valley studio and has all the warmth and authenticity of its analogue recording set-up. “I try to put myself to sleep, I try to take my time and breathe,” Lencioni sings in the chorus, which perfectly captures the track’s sense of desperately trying to feel ok in an often hostile world. “I try to think of something sweet, I’m screaming in my dreams.”

Laika Songs – Visitor

This December sees Evan Brock’s Laika Songs return with second album I can feel an ending, picking up the threads in the wake of debut record Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light while pushing the project in new sonic directions. Together with a band featuring Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) on guitar, Dominic Angelella on bass and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty) with drums and sequencer, Brock blends the organic and the digital to create songs full of curiosity. A sound fitting for a record all about the slow, circuitous process of self-discovery, where the truth is something caught in glimpses when you least expect it. Opener ‘Visitor’ embodies this style, embracing confusion and clarity as two parts of the same whole, though always reaching for those small glimmers where the path forward is revealed.

LEYA – Weaving (YHWH Nailgun Version)

Following on from a rework of single ‘Corners’ by Channel Beads earlier in the year, a reimagining we described as “a heightened version of the original, playing like the interstitial space between the Now and the Then with all the instinctive longing left intact,” LEYA have invited experimental rock outfit YHWH Nailgun to reconceptualise another track from their acclaimed 2024 EP I Forget Everything. Driven by Marilu Donovan’s harp, the original offered a mood somewhere between medieval and ethereal, though YHWH Nailgun conjure an altogether more subterranean vibe. One no less ambiguous or alluring, though this time glinting not with a celestial grace but instead the dark, metallic edge of the underground.

Peiriant – Pwls

“With an experimental sound that draws on everything from folk and post-rock to classical and sound art, mid Wales duo Peiriant combine traditional and electronic styles with samples and found objects for semi-improvised pieces [resulting] in an almost sculptural approach to music.” So we wrote of the work of Rose and Dan Linn-Pearl back in 2024 upon the release of single ‘Taflu D​ŵ​r’, a track born of the push and pull between violin and electric guitar. With new album Plant coming via Recordiau NAWR, Peiriant are back with single ‘Pwls’, and while it’s every bit as finely crafted as its predecessor, it also shows marked stylistic differences too. Because, living up to its title (‘pulse’ in English), ‘Pwls’ displays a newfound rhythm and movement, the violin, played pizzicato, skating over a Moog bassline and infusing the atmospheric sound with a constant sense of motion.

Sam Woodring – 1,000 Ways to Die

You might recognise Maryland-born artist Sam Woodring from a number of different projects, be it the post-hardcore outfit Two Inch Astronaut which made a name in the 2010s, or the genre-bending Mister Goblin which rose from its ashes. Each offered a chance at reinvention, and now Woodring is setting out under his own name to instigate another stylistic change. Though ostensibly a solo endeavour, Mister Goblin drew on a range of collaborators to bring its varied sound to life, but new EP Mechanical Bull, out via Pretzle Records, sees Sam Woodring eschew all outside influence, and indeed anything beyond simple guitar and vocals. Opener ‘1,000 Ways to Die’ shows how this modest arrangement lacks nothing for emotional power, submerging itself in childhood memories to explore ideas of fear, fondness and nostalgia with a style that’s at once playful and entirely heartfelt.

Me and my sister sitting on the sofa
Counting down death till our eyes glazed over
Didn’t register as such
Didn’t count for much too much
Back then
She said what’s on the other channel
I said Nick Cannon’s Wild N’ Out
But the kid next door has Faces of Death on VHS
We should see what that’s about

Tōth – Not Broken

Back in October we shared ‘Spiraling’, a single from Tōth (AKA Alex Toth from Rubblebucket), ahead of a new release via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy. “The song appears relatively spare on the surface,” we wrote, “but as Toth details an experience of precarious love it blossoms into something altogether richer and more immersive, the sound rising to meet the interior weather of its singer. The result manages to evoke the duality of human being, where benign surfaces mask roiling energy beneath the surface, always threatening to spill into the world.” The album, titled And The Voice Said and set for release next February, is full of such duality, as highlighed by new single, ‘Not Broken’. A track which confronts a default setting of negativity with its polar opposite, looking to puncture pessimism by sheer force of will. “I wrote this as a message to myself: a response to my darkest feelings about life,” Toth explains. “I may not show it outwardly, but my default is to be a pretty fucking negative guy. So I selfishly wrote a song that would hopefully help me feel a little better from time to time.”

And The Voice Said will be released on the 23rd February via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy and you can pre-order it now.

Wendy Eisenberg – Will You Dare

Earlier this year, New York‘s Wendy Eisenberg announced her signing to Joyful Noise Recordings with a standalone single ‘I Don’t Miss You’, which we said “meditate[d] on human connection from a novel perspective… [with] their trademark mix of technical intricacy and intuitive improvisation.” Now they are back with another single, titled ‘Will You Dare’, which displays another side to their diverse practice. What Eisenberg calls “a simple little song about true love and the passage of time,” the track is sun-dappled and deceptively simple, drawing inspiration from the greats of seventies folk and country in its disarming candour and ultimately proving audacious in its willingness to cut to the heart of the matter. ‘Will You Dare’ is the real question,” as Eisenberg explains. “Do you dive into the impossibility of true love, be shameless, even though if you’re doing it right it’ll rip you to shreds?”

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