However, as latest single ‘Human Bean Instruction Manual’ demonstrates, this new era of Pickle Darling does not jettison the idiosyncratic charm which has won the project so many fans. Nor does a commitment to forthright communication elide any sense of ambiguity. Indeed, this is a song all about such ambiguity, and how learning to embrace the doubt inherent within growing up in this strange present. “I just turned thirty and there’s no damn manual for this,” as Mayo explains. “Transitioning out of being a young adult in 2025 is like suddenly landing on a hostile planet our bodies haven’t adapted to.”

As if to mirror this tangle of uncertainty, the song sprawls to near seven fuzzy minutes. A track perhaps not direct in terms of style, but every bit as forthright as its predecessor when it comes to the message it carries. As Mayo concludes: “Everything we thought was important doesn’t mean shit. Everything is out to attack us, so all we can do is form our alliances and hang on tight.”

Watch the visualiser by Christiane Shortal below:

‘Human Bean Instruction Manual’ is out now via Father/Daughter Records and available from Bandcamp.

Photo by Nick Robinson

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Back in May we introduced Part Of The Problem, Baby, the new full-length from Fortitude Valley coming this August on Specialist Subject Records, with single ‘Sunshine State‘. “A track which finds [lead Laura] Kovac addressing her younger self,” we described, “delving into the person she was before and during her move from Brisbane to the UK, and how the competing desires for home and escape never really go away.” With the album’s release edging closer, Fortitude Valley are back with new track ‘Video (Right There With You)’. “The song is about trying to get inside the head of someone you love, and how hard it can be surviving together in what feels like an increasingly hostile and scary world,” Kovic explains. “It also plays into the central theme of the album, which is about feeling distant from people you care about, both literally and figuratively.”

Watch the video directed by Stuart Laws below, shot as the band performed at the Machynlleth Comedy Fest and starring comedian Celya AB.

Part Of The Problem, Baby is out 1st August on Specialist Subject Records and you can pre-order it now from the Fortitude Valley Bandcamp page.

 French for Rabbits – Gold and Blue

Ahead of the Matariki holiday and an upcoming winter tour around Aotearoa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based outfit French for Rabbits have returned with brand new standalone single, ‘Gold and Blue’. Written by lead Brooke Singer in a prolific period before the birth of her son, the track meditates on the future and the mysterious ways in which it realises itself, be it through chance, fate or an intuitive reaching forward. The song comes complete with a video by director Martin Sagadin and cinematographer Bill Bycroft. “For the video, we wanted to throw the listener through time and space,” Singer explains, “feel a gasp for breath as they tumble them through the present and past to moments of change, connection, and fluctuation.”

‘Gold and Blue’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Glenn Echo – Give + Take

The project of Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Matt Gaydar, Glenn Echo is an outlet for patient and introspective folk music. Gaydar has just released a new Glenn Echo EP, No Believer, a collection of five songs recorded with help from Will Stratton that showcase this style perfectly. Second track ‘Give + Take is perhaps the standout, opening with the warm country croon of guitar before settling into a slow, contemplative momentum. “Been driving away, over the county line,” Gaydar sings in the opening line which immediately captures the song’s sense of night-time hush, “past the firehouse, all through the night, blind driving, silent.”

Jess Kerber – Tropical Storm

We’ve written about a number of singles from Jess Kerber‘s debut album From Way Down Here in recent months, describing how the Nashville-based songwriter melds traditional folk and contemporary electronic sensibilities to bring her emotive style to life. ‘Next to You’ rose from a dreamy haze to clarity, while ‘Never Again’ introduced the themes of loss and belonging so central to the record. With the album now out via Felte Records, Kerber has released latest single ‘Tropical Storm’. Another poignant, wistful slice of nostalgic longing, rooted in the specific imagery of memories as imprinted on the young mind. Watch the video edited by Kerber herself below:

From Way Down Here is out now via Felte Records and available from the Jess Kerber Bandcamp page.

Jeffrey Martin – Edge of Lost

With albums like One Go Around and Thank God We Left The Garden, Portland, Oregon songwriter Jeffrey Martin has developed an evocative brand of folk concerned with both the personal and the societal, centring the classic Americana style within the unique circumstances of the present (“The climate is collapsing, diseases rising, robots striving to take over the globe, and still there’s not enough money for the people who actually need it,” as we wrote of the latter album, “still the future holds a distant promise, the past haunts with its glory and regret”). Out via Fluff and Gravy Records, new single ‘Edge of Lost’ is every bit as heartfelt and urgent. Inspired by Davey Schaupp’s No Place to Grow Old, a documentary interviewing people experiencing homelessness or the threat of it across Portland, the song explores the strange contradictions of such a life. Where existence is at once heavier than it should be yet also translucently thin, the eyes of society sliding past as you though barely exist at all. “I tried to capture the chasm between the housed and unhoused,” Martin explains, “and how the psychological burden of that divide is a very difficult thing to hold as people try to navigate their way out of homelessness.”

Jillian Lake – Tactile

“There’s a city in my head,” sings Jillian Lake on latest single ‘Tactile’, a line repeated across the track in what might be warning or explanation. Based in Vancouver, the singer-songwriter has made a name with intimate, personal folk songs, though has increasingly pushed her sound into richer, more urgent territory without sacrificing any of the heartfelt charm. The new single is a lesson in how effective such a combination can be. Indeed, the refrain can be held as a key to the song’s spirit, presenting an exploration of grief in all of its complexity, an emotional landscape as bustling, nuanced and contradictory as any urban space. ‘Tactile’ is about how grief is this invisible and intangible thing that is so hard to navigate,” Lake explains. “A scraped knee, a black eye, a broken arm—is so much easier to make sense of than something you can’t pinpoint. Something you can’t bandage or brace.”

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

Jouska – Flower Moon

Jouska is the recording project of  Norwegian songwriter and producer Marit Othilie Thorvik. Originally a duo, the project started out making pop-orientated electronic music, but now that it’s Thorvik alone, the atmosphere has evolved into something more intimate and introspective. New single ‘Flower Moon’, Jouska’s first since 2023 record Suddenly My Mind Is Blank, leans into dream pop dimension of the project to invoke a sense of detachment, the vocals drifting through a wash of ethereal tones as though untethered yet longing for solid ground. “I was anxious,” as Thorvik explains, “distracted by things at home. Physically in one place, emotionally somewhere else, missing out on both.”

múm – Mild At Heart

Icelandic experimental royalty múm have established themselves as one of the most interesting and atmospheric projects since their inception in the nineties, each of the six previous albums building upon the last while always exploring new territory. Their first full-length in over ten years, History of Silence finds the band as ambitious as ever. An album “recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years,” the release blends electronic and analogue sounds to explore ideas of distance in our fast-changing world, the songs rejecting linear progress to instead embrace tangents and digressions. Take the way lead single ‘Mild at Heart’ shifts and drifts across its length, a controlled, ever-curious track that shows the power of understatement while also reaching towards new ground.

Watch the video filmed & edited by Sigurlaug Gísladóttir below:

History of Silence will be released via Morr Music on 15th September. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

The Noisy – Twos

Back in 2024 Philly dream pop outfit The Noisy released The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, an album written for and funded by the queer community which served as a celebration of their kinship, performance, joyous excesses and plurity. Now The Noisy are preparing to release a deluxe version of the record via Audio Antihero, appropriately titled The Secret Ingredient is Even More Meat, offering reimagined versions of the songs. Single ‘Twos’ and its gloriously cinematic video by Sam Cush indicates the new direction they take. “I wrote this song like a pop song but wanted the production to bend towards Mannequin Pussy with sludgy guitars and twinkly keys,” frontperson Sara Mae Henke explains. “The music video literalizes the too much-ness of the story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Grey Gardens meets two dates to the prom.”

‘Twos’ is out now via Audio Antihero and available from Bandcamp.

Tyler Bradley Walker – Because of the Many

We introduced The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me, the debut solo album from Tyler Bradley Walker, back in May, describing how the artist best known as one half of electronic rock duo Gone to Color was every bit as ambitious and adventurous in his solo work. ” Single ‘Moon Broke Quiet’ offered “a spacious, evocative soundscape which seems to sit at an angle to reality,” we wrote, “everything a little stark and surreal and strange […] occup[ying] that nocturnal liminal space between waking life and dreams.” With the album now out, TBW has shared opening track ‘Because of the Many’ as a new single, an experimental pop protest song that takes aim at modern day USA. The track’s idiosyncrasy and slow-burn intensity is intensified with a video every bit as odd.

Out gunned, not done
The fucking light is green
No one eats their eggs that way
Wise man funny man
Write your own story
Very large worlds untouched untouched

Watch the video directed by Andrew Petersson and produced By Carson Cox (Mod Visual) below:

The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me is out now and available to purchase from the Tyler Bradley Walker Bandcamp page.

Will Orchard – Something’s Gotta Go

If you’ve been reading VSF over the last few months, you may know that Nashville-via-New England songwriter Will Orchard has a new record, Behind the Shadow Glass, coming out later this year. The initial two singles ‘Down’ and ‘Nothing Fog’ gave a pretty good idea of what to expect, and now we have a third cut to further whet appetites. Titled ‘Something’s Gotta Go’, the song finds Orchard with his sleeves rolled up as he digs through the dirt. Crunchy Americana meets Neil Young folk rock which sees him picks through internal knots and tangles that have been tripping him up over the years. “[The song] is a cathartic release, and an acknowledgement of self-inflicted pain.” Orchard describes. “It’s about getting into the pattern of never being satisfied with yourself. Calling the song finished was somewhat of a challenge because of how raw and in some ways, non-poetic it felt. But that’s the spirit of the song, just putting it all out there and letting go of your will to try so hard.”

Wombo – Neon Bog

“Feeling every inch the product of a band nearing ten years together, [Danger in Fives] finds the Wombo sound realised in its purest form,” we wrote of the Louisville trio’s new album coming later this summer on Fire Talk Records, “combining the experimentation and risk-taking which marked their earlier releases with the growing confidence so evident on Fairy Rust. That is, the sound of project which has come to understand its spirit and ambitions and is now committing to them with total conviction.” Latest single ‘Neon Bog’ shows just how deep such conviction runs, the band embracing happenstance and happy accidents during the recording process to create something as atmospheric as it is idiosyncratic.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Cameron Lowe along with assistant director Scotty “Sleepy” Anderson. The film leans further into the haunting tones of the song, using practical effects a la Michel Gondry. “I’ve been watching a lot of the TV show Ghost Adventures and have been somewhat haunted by the implications of the paranormal,” as Lowe explains. “I thought the video was a good outlet for expressing that in an abstract way.”

Danger in Fives is out on the 8th August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now from the Wombo Bandcamp page.

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With the release of Moonlight Hotel fast approaching, Tom Lark has shared brand new track, ‘Fuselage’. Again occupying fertile psych folk territory, the track is no less assured yet nevertheless decidely moodier than its predecessor. Where ‘Rock & Roll Baby’ possessed a loose-limbed confidence, ‘Fuselage’ is all shadowy attitude and brooding edge, a stylistic change which heralds a different reaction to the volatile conditions. Here the carefree spirit falters, change suddenly something dangerous and daunting. With the realisation comes a certain sense of resistance, that inner self-preservation which tells us to retreat to the familiar and refuse to recognise reality as is now exists. But accompanying this desire is a secondary emotion, one which comes to inform the tone of the track. A sense of frustration at this hesitancy and stasis. A desire to kick through the defensive barriers we create around ourselves in order to regain a sense of forward motion.

Watch the video, directed by Sam Kristofski, below:

Moonlight Hotel is out on the 4th April and you can pre-order it now.

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With a new collection on the way, Greta O’Leary has now returned with ‘Baptised at the Desktop Computer’, a new single which offers an altogether more domestic scene but sacrifices none of the invention or evocative imagery. Described as a song ” touching on childhood religious experiences and growing up playing The Sims,” the single offers a surreal picture which feels very much of those years around the millennium. A time in which the promise of a digital future collided with darker eschatological prophecies, as though at the precipice of great change a certain dread bubbles to the surface.

O’Leary confronts such strange forces with all the absurdity they deserve, the song rising from a simple folk number into something more urgent as tales of possession and exorcism are detailed, the chugging beat and drum machine supported by Cass Basil, whose bass growls like some unnatural voice of its own.

Sitting at the family computer
He walks in clutching a paper bag
Plastic bottle of holy water
come forth now it’s time

Tip your head child, you’re being baptised
At the desktop computer by your dad

The song comes complete with a video directed by O’Leary along with Adam Rohe. Watch below:

‘Baptised at the Desktop Computer’ is out now and available from the Greta O’Leary Bandcamp page.

The post Greta O’Leary – Baptised at the Desktop Computer appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The project of Agriculture’s Leah B Levinson, Cali Bellow makes music concerned with the tension and interplay between the interior and exterior, real and fictional. Thematically, new album Ciao Bella owes as much to Dark Souls and The Muppets as it does Ursula Le Guinn and Joanna Russ, not to mention the environment of Altadena, California. A deep consideration of ideas of artifice and abstraction which always challenges limitations, be they of genre, gender or spirituality. Taking inspiration from songs like ‘Full Of Happiness’ by H.O.T. and ‘I, Me, Mine’ by Godflesh, as well as the hyperactive soundtracks of games like Sonic, new single ‘Goldin Scepter’ is a microcosm of the wider album. A myriad of influences deconstructed and rearranged in order to build a world of its own. “I wanted to pull on the zany character that a lot of ska, funk and pop music teases and push it to a more monstrous effect,” as Levinson explains.

country girl – your favorite girl

Blending an upbringing in classical music with a present love of pop, country girl creates music to bring to life those small personal experiences which make life worth living. Having recently signed with the FADER Label, the project is now back with a new single ‘your favorite girl’, the ideal introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the project. “A song about the movie scenes we film, direct, and act in our heads while in the frenzy of a crush,” as the artist explains. That pressing desire to be a main character in story, however small that story might be. Even if it just means being someone else’s favorite girl.

I wanna look you in the eye
Oh man it gets me every time
I wanna shine inside your world
I wanna be your favorite girl

‘your favorite girl’ is out now via FADER label and available from the usual places.

Death And The Maiden – Waratah

Based in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand trio Death And The Maiden take not only their name from an engraving by Edvard Munch, but their entire atmosphere. A meeting of strength and vulnerability, shadow and light. Moreover, a willingness to embrace ambiguity within a sound which draws upon everything from electronic, folk and psych to house and dance. Released via Fishrider Records (southern hemisphere) and Occultation Recordings (northern hemisphere), new album Uneven Ground is perhaps their most experimental to date, though conversely sees them embrace pop too. Single ‘Waratah’ displays such contradictions in all their alluring layers, allowing freedom and restraint to sit side by side.

dog eyes – drive

“A reach towards an almost cinematic brand of pop that leaves none of the emotion behind,” we wrote of ‘moment’ by dog eyes, “where friendship is at once the most intimate and soaring experiences one might be lucky enough to hold in their life.” The song typified the Oakland band’s new album holy friend, which explores how relationships and connection not only shape us but morph over time. With the record now out via Grand Jury Music, dog eyes have released a new single, ‘drive’. An example of the more folk-adjacent side of the album, the song tells the story of a road trip into the mountains with all the quiet seclusion of the leafy backroads, gentle guitar and ramshackle percussion sparkling sleepily behind sincere vocals. The result feels like a small and sweet moment grasped in its moment of transience and fixed to tape.

I would not say words if I did not mean them
Tired of monotony
Just drive this Sequoia please
To some distance where I cannot see
Where I’ll forget how to tell where I am

Dogwood Tales – driver’s side fantasy

Based in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Dogwood Tales originated in 2016 with Ben Ryan and Kyle Grim and soon expanded to become a full band with the addition of Danny Gibney (bass), Stephen Kuester (pedal steel) and Jake Golibart (drums). Working within a country-inflected rock style, the project has released a number of albums and EPs, most recently Rodeo via WarHen Records, and is putting out a brand new tape later this summer. Latest single ‘driver’s side fantasy’ introduces the sound, occupying that post-Drive-By Trucker’s sphere alongside the likes of MJ Lenderman. Watch the video filmed by Travis Legg below:

‘driver’s side fantasy’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Dwi Riana x Orkes Garasi – Ku Bisa

Indonesian-Canadian artist Dwi Riana has made a name for working across genres, finding inspiration in everything from folk, hip hop and traditional music to bossa nova and jazz, and new single ‘Ku Bisa’ is the project of yet another direction. “I had the amazing opportunity of composing for an Indonesian short film titled A Day Apart on the Seventeenth, directed by Noel Pendawa,” they explain, a process which saw them team up with Toronto-based Indonesian Keroncong band, Orkes Garasi. Channelling the themes of Pendawa’s film, the song explores ideas of homesickness by melding Keroncong and folk styles, and the result sees the narrator turning to dreams as their only mode of escape.

‘Ku Bisa’ is out now via streaming services.

Mother Sun – Giant Bog

“I think with these songs we wanted to create a record that sonically speaks to the magic that is constantly unfolding all around in the natural world.” That’s how lead Jared Doherty describes Mother Sun’s latest album, Meadow 6, which is coming soon via Earth Libraries. Fittingly, many of the songs originated when playing guitar outside in the garden, with the Kamloops, BC outfit not only exploring the diversity of nature but humanity’s relationship with it. Something to escape into, to explore and study, cultivate and exploit. Crafted from a vivid psych-rock sound that reaches towards jazz, krautrock and retro folk, the album comes to form an environment of its own, as captured by new single and closer, ‘Giant Bog’. A sprawling track which serves as a kind of retro-futurist hothouse within which all manner of things can sprout and grow wild.

Stephen Becker – I Held An Echo

This October, Stephen Becker is releasing his new full-length Middle Child Syndrome via Record Euphoria. The album sees the LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter work in the indie-psych tradition of the late noughties/early 2010s, adding jazz and baroque pop sensibilities to a more traditional singer-songwriter style. An effort, at least in part, to rise above the mundane present, as though to be trapped within conventions is to be restricted by the same inability to communicate effectively that haunts our everyday lives. Single ‘I Held An Echo’ hints at the widescreen scope of the resulting sound, though the glitch and shimmer of the dreamlike arrangement hints at the precarity of any attempt to escape our usual constraints.

Middle Child Syndrome is out on the 25th October via Record Euphoria and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Yammerer – ESZ – Erth Station Zebra

How do you convince people to engage with album-length work in this age of streaming and algorithmic playlists? Liverpool’s Yammerer have one potential solution. Erth Station Zebra might be packaged as an album on Bandcamp and the like, but the release is intended as a single composition. Or as the band put it, “a transcendent odyssey” which runs through six movements across its forty-four minutes. Previous releases like Reality Escape Resort might have positioned them in the contemporary post-punk revival, but there was always something different about the outfit. An extra level of ambition and invention. Erth Station Zebra sees them embrace this side of their work wholeheartedly, leaning into transportive psych to not only revitalise the appetite for in-depth pieces of work, but position themselves as one of the UK’s most interesting projects to keep an eye on moving into the future.

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Fallout, the forthcoming album from Grand Rapids trio Major Murphy on Winspear, is an album concerned with cycles of ruin and renewal. Drawing equally from the wells of nineties indie and seventies soft rock swagger, the sound lives up to these themes with a careful balance of lightness and weight. The result is something not so much overcome by the turbulence of our times but able to surf atop of it. Lead single ‘Time Out’ typifies the style, where the pressing momentum of the drums is matched by an easy-going spirit, highlighting the band’s ability to be at once punchy and languid.

Even water falling don’t run to an end
Somehow, somewhere it will collect
and life begins again

Marem Ladson – A Song to the Siren

Hailing from the northern Spanish region of Galicia and now based in Brooklyn, Marem Ladson makes introspective music that draws on folk and pop and her home country’s rich tradition. Following 2023 EP Baby Light, Ladson has released a standalone single, a gently haunting take on ‘Song to the Siren’, Tim Buckley’s much-covered doom-laden classic. Ladson’s version is soft and intimate but loses none of the original’s power, loneliness and longing washing together as the narrator find themselves shipwrecked in search of love. The cover originally appeared on the Musicians For a Free Palestine benefit album, a compilation organized by Babehoven’s Maya Bon, Andy Molholt and Raquel Denis, which is still available and very much worth your time.

make yourself at home – High

Hailing from Nashville, Tennessee, make yourself at home—that’s Billy Campbell (lyrics/rhythm guitar), Zach Tittel (lead guitar), Thomas Luminoso (bass) and Husam Suboh (drums)—is a band working at the intersection of shoegaze, noise rock and indie. ‘High’, their latest single via Second Floor Recording Co., serves an the ideal introduction for those unfamiliar with their sound, where angsty desperation meets carefree defiance. “Fucking up, falling down / Another year of trying not to drown,” as Campbell sings in the opening lines. “How can I say what’s on my mind / When all I wanna do is go get / high?” Hopelessness has never sounded so cool.

Nate Terepka – The Woods

“A few years back I did an exercise where I took a several-hours-long night walk in the woods of Maine and thought through every year of my life from birth to present in chronological order, remembering as much as I could,” explains Nate Terepka. “I was surprised by how many forgotten memories were stirred up and came out of it with a feeling of empathy for my younger self, as well as a strong desire to not repeat past mistakes.” He wrote new single ‘The Woods’ the next morning, the latest taste of his upcoming album Not Yet which encapsulates an EP willing to grope into the messy heart of life in order to hold aloft its love and truths. Intuitive in its rhythms yet finely crafted in style, ‘The Woods’ represents the work of an accomplished artist driven by emotional necessity. Watch the video with animation by James Thatcher below:

Not Yet is out on the 19th July and available to pre-order now via Bandcamp.

Noa Jamir – Indebted

“This is a song written for Little Noa, who often struggled with standing up for herself,” explains New Orleans-based songwriter Noa Jamir of new single ‘Indebted’. “While writing it, I channelled all of the things I wish I’d said in moments when I needed to defend myself, but felt too powerless to do so.” The resulting track presents an assured brand of folk rock which pairs an understated sound with almost conversational vocals. The track builds subtly across its runtime but never quite breaks its controlled burn, though the result is all the more powerful for it. There is no need for yelling or bombast here. The message is simple and full of conviction. Able to operate on its own terms.

I’m tougher than I look
My thoughts would scare you off
if I told you everything
And you’re not quite as tall as I recalled you to be
I used to let you look down on me
Now, we’re standing eye to eye
Eye to eye

Saffron – Star Child

Late last month, San Diego psych pop outfit Saffron released a four track cassette by way of farewell. The band, comprising mainly of Ali Mehraban Ramirez (Guitar, Vocals, & Songwriting), Galia Shakked (Guitar and Vocals), Audrey (Drums), Ryan Ebaugh (Guitar and Saxophone) and Cameron Rogers (Bass), made a name for themselves with their experimental live shows, which saw songs morph form set to set in an exercise in freedom and improvisation. The tape is a little different, presenting Saffron at their most “pop,” four songs crystallized into a final, perhaps more easily digestible form. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on final track ‘Star Child’, a sunny and easy-going, Yo La Tengo-style indie pop song that’s all shambling percussion and hooky guitar.

Solid Blood – All I Need

Penned over a span of several years between Brooklyn and Houston, Solid Blood’s new EP Western Sun feels very much a product of the various environments in which it was created. Graham W. Bell looks to preserve the small details of life amid a wider unease, carving out an introspective, inquisitive space in which we might shelter from the dire state of the world. With the EP coming soon via Rue Defense, lead single ‘All I Need’ introduces the style. Where warmth and intimacy are shadowed by an awareness of the wolves at the door.

Wanda What – Big Tree

Building on the nostalgic brand of bedroom pop that made previous LP Startin’ Drama a success, new full-length Dyke TV sees Wanda What (AKA LA’s Harmony Reynolds) push their self-described ‘dyke rock’ sound to new heights. There’s a central tension to the Wanda What project, one which might be crudely described as the friction between dreams and reality. There’s a tangible desire for the glamour and celebrity of stardom, something Reynolds owns wholeheartedly within the Wanda What persona, though this is balanced by a more earnest, down-to-earth side too. It’s no surprise then that Dyke TV vacillates between moods—playful and serious, ironic and sincere—but what makes the project so exciting is its willingness to embrace this duality. With a newfound country twang, latest single ‘Big Tree’ offers a glimpse of the human behind the personality, landing somewhere between sincere bedroom pop honesty and lonesome cowboy croon.

‘Big Tree’ is out now via Youth Riot Records and available from the usual places. Dyke TV is coming soon.

Yon Loader – Another Year

After sketching out a series of demos which would come to form his self-titled debut album, James Stuteley of Aotearoa project Yon Loader took the songs to an array of friends and collaborators who helped realise their full potential. Those involved is something of a who’s who of the New Zealand indie scene with members of acts like members of Recitals, Welcomer, For Everest, Model Home, Fouler, First Move and Bad Friend all contributing, as well as engineer and producer Harry Lilley. With the album’s release pencilled for later this year on Tiny Engines, Lead single ‘Another Year’ shows how this team elevate the Yon Loader sound into something as hefty as it is detailed, Stuteley’s intimate emo-adjacent lyricism given all the supporting momentum it deserves without being overwhelmed.

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This past summer, the band recorded new EP In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home, and invited Auckland’s The Black Quartet to add strings to the tracks. The result elevated the French for Rabbits style to some of its most vivid and dramatic forms to date. We previewed the release with single ‘Leech‘ back in October. “An exploration of ‘the push and pull of love’ suffused with ethereal harmonies and a soaring atmosphere,” as we described. “At once epic and fragile, the lingering melancholy burning away to reveal the rousing chorus.” An array of details both subtle and stark coalescing into something forthright.

What emerges is a perfect marriage of the early and later French for Rabbits sensibilities, where rustic charm and elegant polish can coexist. Songs like ‘Baring Head’ typify this style, a sonic representation of rugged coastline which sounds windswept and isolated and inviting all at once. The natural landscape in all its ambiguity, welcoming and uncaring and all the more mysterious for it.

The title track is perhaps the clearest example of this style. An epic five minutes which swoops over vast distances, a bird’s eye view of tenderness and violence and that strange place between the two. “When the fog has lifted all will be revealed,” Singer offers. “Like a gem formed through the pressure of the years / Or a bomb blast, car crash, landslide, nose dive / Losing my balance between happiness and fear.” But true to the French for Rabbits style, in probing into this ambiguity they emerge with a growing conviction, and the cathartic brightness of the closing refrain

In the end I won’t be coming home
Through the rocks and all the burnt out fields
Through the mist, a shot, a frozen gun
In the hands of her…

In the end I won’t be coming home
Through the frozen fields
In the end I won’t be coming home

In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home is out now via AllGood Absolute Alternative Records and available from the French for Rabbits Bandcamp page.

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Working between soul, jazz and R&B, Portland, ME-based artist Angelikah Fahray is a rising star of the New England scene, winning attention with a sound willing to embrace both haunting and sensual styles. Latest single ‘In My Coffin’ is the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar. A slow, sultry croon which envelopes the audience, the song occupies an ambiguous tone which never quite shows its hand. Is it romantic, bitter, melancholic? Or perhaps all three spun into an enthralling web?

‘In My Coffin’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Casual Technicians – On A Trip To Nowhere

Though now separated by geography, all three members of Casual Technicians have a long history with the music scene in Portland, Oregon. Tyler Keene and Nathan Baumgartner were founding members of And And And while Boone Howard fronted The We Shared Milk and the Boone Howard band. This experience shined through on Four Corners EP, the latest release from Repeating Cloud, where the band offer a confident and playful sound that’s not only willing to experiment between genres but to meld them together seamlessly. Opener and single ‘On a Trip to Nowhere’ plays something like the bummed-out dispatch from contemporary existence a la talons’ as processed through a laidback Steely Dan warmth.

there’s so many times that I’m tired and I’m in the basement
working on stuff and I take a nap
and I go out in the backyard and cut the grass
and shave it down as close as my old head

I feel beefed up but burnt down
burping up bubbles from a weird old beer
that looks like its been open for a half of a year
imagine that

makes me wish it was later in the day

French For Rabbits – Leech

Towards the end of next month, Aotearoa dream pop band French For Rabbits return with a brand new EP In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home. The follow-up to 2021 LP The Overflow, the four song release was recorded this past summer with strings from Auckland’s The Black Quartet and sees an evolution of the French For Rabbits style that we’ve previous described as “translucent and melancholic and alive.” Latest single ‘Leech’ is the perfect introduction, an exploration of “the push and pull of love” suffused with ethereal harmonies and a soaring atmosphere, at once epic and fragile, the lingering melancholy burning away to reveal the rousing chorus.

Cause your love is my only comfort
And your love is my only reward
But if my heart is a leech and you’re still out of reach
All I’m left with is all of my thoughts.

German Error Message & Noah Kittinger – It’s night and you’re alone

The latest release in Furious Hooves‘ Furhoof Halloween Split Series, It’s night and you’re alone offers two ambient instrumental tracks—one by German Error Message and one by Noah Kittinger (of Bedroom)—which live up to the release’s title and offer the ideal Halloween soundtrack for those looking beyond the cliched and the camp. The songs were written six years, eleven months and one day apart from one another, though despite the gap somehow seem to be in conversation. Paul Kintzing’s ‘10.30.16’ plays as a walk down a lonely forest path as night descends, its slowly gathering momentum mimicking the kind of latent dread which comes down with the dark, while Kittinger’s ‘10.1.23’ offers a different sort of night-time passage. A lonely journey through a darkening countryside as viewed from the window of a train, and furthermore one complicated by the liminal strangeness of such an experience. Time both upended and hauntologically conspicuous, your own reflection mirrored back to you in the glass, both part of the view and not.

It’s night and you’re alone is out now via Furious Hooves. Get it via Bandcamp.

Library Card – Cognitive Dissonance

Drawing inspiration from acts like Protomartyr and Life Without Buildings as well as poets such as Anne Clark, Rotterdam’s Library Card are a band of contradictions. Dissonant yet melodious, rambunctious yet taut, volatile yet cool. Lead by Lot van Teylingen and featuring Emre Karayalçin, Kat Kalkman and Mitchell Quitz, the outfit are now preparing to release their new EP Nothing Interesting, and single ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ serves as a encapsulation of this incongruous sound. An examination of the competing forces which coexist within us, an internal struggle between the desire to be selfish and altruistic.

Unspeakable
Unthinkable
Do we simply stare at what’s horrible and forgive it?
Do we simply notice but not see at all?
Truth is a beautiful illusion
Where is your truth now

‘Cognitive Dissonance’ is out now via AT EASE. Get it from the Library Card Bandcamp page.

MVSO – Hold Clear

A collaboration between songwriter/vocalist duo Mat Vairo and Saumon Oboudiyat, MVSO originated as little more than a space for the pair to experiment with music, though soon developed into something more considered and official. The result is Proprioception, an EP pencilled for release in spring 2024 which sees the artists explore universal themes of life, death and the passing of time through a decidedly personal lens. This allows them to take on the biggest ideas while also recording a specific moment in their lives and the position of their friendship within it. Single ‘Hold Clear’ hints at the evocative, simmering style this takes, where the intimacy of the personal opens out into something cryptic and deep.

MX LONELY – Rest In Salt

With their new EP SPIT coming on Candlepin Records early in 2024, Brooklyn‘s MX LONELY have unveiled single ‘Rest In Salt’ to signal their pivot towards a heavier alt rock/shoegaze aesthetic. With Rae Hass taking over lead vocal duties, the song pitches the listener into a shadowy, foreboding world full of needling intensity and crushing weight, the vocals emerging from within this tumult like the helpless cries of the damned. “’Rest In Salt’ is about being trapped in purgatory, pure and simple,” as Hass explains, “about being ridden with anxiety and stuck to the couch. It’s that feeling of jealousy for the dead and the tinge of guilt that follows. When you lie so still you think you can almost remember the freedom of being nothing at all.”

SPIT is out on the 6th February via Candlepin Records and you can pre-order it now.

See Jazz – 1982

Described as a band for “uncool people everywhere scattered to the edges of contemporary anywheres,” See Jazz might be the solo vehicle of Aaron Pfannebecker, though the endeavor is far from a one-person project. Forthcoming album Is This Anything?, out next month via Flower Sounds, sees the likes of Adam Langellotti (Kurt Vile and the Violators), Jed Smith (My Teenage Stride and Jeanines) and Zara Bode (Sweetback Sisters) lend their talents to bring to life a sound at once ethereal and danceable. Take single ‘1982’, so airy if feels on the verge of drifting upwards and away, though all the while anchored by Pfannebecker’s vocals and their exploration of the stubborn nature of human perspective.

Is This Anything? is out on the 10th November via Flower Sounds and you can pre-order it now.

Wet Fruit – Dandelions at the Gate

Hailing from Portland, OR, Wet Fruit take inspiration from a grab bag of genres to create their own singular sound. New album Dandelions at the Gate, out now via Half Shell Records, has indie rock, punk, psych and experimental DNA. But far from an unwieldy mutant, the result is something honed and cohesive. Take opener and title track, its dreamy textures and harmonies cut through with a propulsive energy, giving the sense of escalating towards some moment of chaos or clarity. But as songs like ‘St. Charles’ show, the band are about more than hectic rhythms, stripping away the frenetic elements in favour of something more drifting. Like a late-night drive, sealed into your own little world and estranged from passing cars, left instead to consider the finer textures of solitude.

Dandelions at the Gate is out now via Half Shell Records.

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Despite having been together for more than a decade and releasing a plethora of singles and EPs, Brisbane‘s Babaganouj had never put out a full-length album. That is, until Jumbo Pets dropped via Coolin’ By Sound last week. And the long gestation period shows in the vivid confidence of the dream pop/indie rock hybrid sound. Take single ‘She Wears Velvet’, a collision of hypnotic rhythms, playful details and cathartic peaks, all tied together by lead vocals from Harriette Pilbeam (AKA Hatchie). A song which captures the Babaganouj spirit in its ability to offer vulnerability and affirmation simultaneously.

Cosmo Sheldrake – Bathed in Sound

London-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Cosmo Sheldrake has made a name crafting inventive and endlessly curious soundscapes which draw upon inspirations from across the natural world. Previous album Wake Up Calls was built around recordings of British birds on the red and amber endangered lists, but forthcoming record Wild Wet World pushes deeper into nature, quite literally. An album of aquatic environments which promises everything from plaintive whale song to clicking parrotfish and snapping shrimp. Lead single ‘Bathed in Sound’, which is being released as part of Brian Eno’s EarthPercent Charity campaign, welcomes the listener into the world of its title—an ancient place of great majesty which seems to be already in mourning. As though feeling the consequences of human activity within the very water, and the slow drift toward a silence they did not choose.

glow in the dark flowers – Stay Close to Me

With their self-titled album coming coming later this month on Born Yesterday Records, New Douglas, Illinois duo glow in the dark flowers have unveiled latest single ‘Stay Close to Me’ to welcome us to the newest iteration of their sound. Having started collaborating back in the late 00s and developing a scuzzy garage rock style with their band The Funs, the pair have continually reinvented their work while staying true to their spirit, and the latest single signals a further step in this evolution. With its fuzzy textures and buoyant rhythm, the track is evidently born from The Funs DNA, but offers a more mature and poetic vision too.

Lila Tristram – shelter

Next month, Where It’s At Is Where You Are (wiaiwya) will release home, the new album by East London singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, artist and writer Lila Tristram. It’s the follow-up to 2020’s sister EPs Our Friends pt. I & II, promising a continuation of Tristram’s distinctively delicate brand of folk, combining intricate fingerpicking with gently melancholic vocals. First two singles ‘january’ and ‘caravan’ captured this tone perfectly and the latest, ‘shelter’, is no different. At its core a piece of timeless British folk music, all misty moors and rolling green hills, it’s elevated with gentle atmospherics which add a glowing ethereal layer that rises to the surface across the two minute runtime.

Lucy Liyou – Dog Dreams (개꿈)

Lucy Liyou is a San Francisco-based songwriter and composer who draws upon ambient, jazz and sound poetry to create impressionistic, collage-like soundscapes. Described as “a rumination on the doublesidedness of trauma and love,” forthcoming album Dog Dreams (개꿈) utilises such a style to explore the nuances and contradictions of life, looking to broach the big questions not so much with straightforward answers but something more ambiguous. This extends right to the record’s title, because though the Korean term 개꿈 downplays the significance of dreams, Liyou takes them seriously. “‘Dog Dreams’ is about desire,” they explain. “It is about naively rejecting “dog dreams” (개꿈)—a Korean term used to dismiss and diminish dreams as nonsensical impossibilities—and endlessly searching the mercurial “face” of desire.” This is explored further through a music video and interactive video game, further manifesting this abstract sense within aural, visual and tactile fields.

Mox – 4lilmonkeys

With LP Heart coming in a few weeks on Cherub Dream Records, Merced, California‘s Mox has unveiled new single ‘4lilmonkeys’ to give further insight into her sound. The record promises to follow in the lineage of Alex G, combining boundless creativity with tangible emotion, and the new track shows just how effective the mix can be. A song that might be about the titular monkeys making residence in Mox’s brain, or perhaps serves a metaphorical view of her childhood as a little monkey herself, starting as a woozy childlike hallucination and escalating into something with real weight.

The National Park Service – What is the sound?

Rochester, NY label (and VSF favs) Lily Tapes & Discs are kicking off the year with two reissues. Last summer’s sold out Jason Calhoun release ben c, this is for you is getting another run, complete with new artwork by Jeremy Ferris, and Room For Love by Lily Tapes staple The National Park Service is getting its first ever physical release. Originally released digitally in March 2019, Room For Love is what the label describe as “a massive statement built of meditations from the brink of parenthood,” a patient, gentle and deeply personal collage of guitars, keys, drums, samples, field recordings. Second track ‘What is the sound?’ captures the atmosphere beautifully, meditative guitar sliding across subtle percussion and ambient textures.

Stuck – The Punisher

“They’ve got good news / it’s so sick living in a fanfic” reveal Stuck on ‘The Punisher’, opening track from the upcoming LP Freak Frequency on Born Yesterday Records. “They’ve got good news / There’s new life springing from a death cult.” Politically-charged post-punk might be a dime a dozen these days, but rarely does a band commit to their ideas so completely. Drawing on everything from Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism to the mindless cycles of bombast and ruin portrayed by FromSoftware’s Dark Souls and Bloodborne, Stuck offer an image of the West in its crazed death-throe contortions, a public driven mad at the intersection of violent history and bleak (non-)future. As ‘The Punisher’ demonstrates, the result leans on neither sneering humour nor all-out gloom, but a darkly incandescent sound born of the contradictions of our age.

A whole new dark age!
It’s burning bright with a hot white rage!
What did we do before light?

Watch the video directed by Zack Shorrosh below:

Freak Frequency is out on the 26th May via Born Yesterday Records and available to pre-order now.

Tom Lark – Radio Blaster

Shannon Fowler had parked his Tom Lark moniker for the past seven years, favouring instead the more pop-centric style of alternate project Shannon Matthew Vanya, but the Ōtautahi-born, Auckland-based songwriter has returned to Tom Lark for his first full-length album, Brave Star, out later this year on Winegum Records. Lead single ‘Radio Blaster’ gives an insight into the psych-inflected folk style of the record, a patient and thoughtful introduction which shimmers with a desert heat and the slightest cosmic overlay. “Sunburnt psychedelic folk fit for sensitive cowboys to meander and philosophise to,” as the artist describes it, like staring off at the horizon as the sun dips and the sky reveals its real depth.

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The songs began to form during long stretches Fullbrook spent exploring the area with her dogs, finding inspiration in its minutiae as illustrated in lead single, ‘The Crab/Waterbaby’. The landscape began to seep in in other ways too, ostensibly small details have large implications, like how the perpetual dramatic motion of the tides evokes those unseen forces far beyond our control that nevertheless push and pull our lives in unexpected directions.

Latest single ‘Dorothy Bay’ is perhaps the best illustration of the record as a whole. The heaviest song on the album (and maybe of the entire Tiny Ruins catalogue), it showcases the rich, complex arrangements that spring from the well of collaboration between Fullbrook and her long-time bandmates—Cass Basil (bass), Alex Freer (drums), and Tom Healy (electric guitar). Watch the psychedelic video, directed by Alexander Gandar and shot on location at Manukau Harbour, below:

Ceremony will be released on 28th April via Marathon Artists and Ba Da Bing Records. You can pre-order it now from the Tiny Ruins Bandcamp page.

Cover photo by Frances Carter, album art by Christiane Shortal

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