Now Other Vessels are back with ‘Sea Legs, their first release since Empty Afternoon, and one which suggests a slight change of tone for the band. Because while the considered, heartfelt style is continued, the new track sees Haney and co. lean into the pop sensibilities which bubbled beneath the surface of the previous EP. What results is something newly buoyant and every bit as sincere, the song leavened by a sunny rhythm and furthered by the earnest delivery. “I won’t call it God,” Haney sings in a moment which captures this feeling perfectly. “Because that feels like a memory that I buried in the yard with the bones of my pet lizard and the letter from the bank / they only loved me for my money and then they took that love away.”

Photo by Kylie Bly

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All of which is important to consider when introducing his new project, Wine Country. The band, which sees Kivel joined by pals Andy Aylward and John Zakoor, feels like both the pinnacle of this journey and its complete antithesis. The sound of someone arriving at their ideal destination at the exact moment they stop actively trying to get there. The liner notes for the debut Wine Country record, Hard Times, put the terms “written” and “composed” in inverted commas, a small gesture which speaks volumes. Because these are not songs finely wrought or painstakingly crafted brick by brick. Rather they just arrived, epiphany-like, Kivel a willing lightning rod struck by a bolt of pure inspiration. “[I] can’t explain how it was written or where it came from,” Kivel describes of the title track in an Instagram post. “But it felt like someone was speaking through me when I put those words together for the first time

Musically, Wine Country finds Matt Kivel at his freest. In the past he has drawn on cinema and literature, folk music and ambient music and experimental jazz. But here, in keeping with the overall vibe, things just flow where they want. Long, meandering pieces of psych-tinged art rock, improvisational lyrics that nonetheless feel charged with poetry and meaning. A testament to the value of committing to something without inhibition, and allowing the result to speak on its own terms rather than being edited and overworked beyond its proper shape. Hard Times is inspiration uncut. Not so much an attempt to communicate something otherwise incomprehensible as an embrace of the incomprehensible itself.

Hey baby we were born to die
Let’s face the facts of letting days go by
Pain don’t hurt

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But if you thought When Horses Would Run was inventive, then just wait until you hear what is coming next. Because the new Being Dead full-length EELS, forthcoming next month on Bayonet Records, takes everything that made its predecessor special and pushes it further. Travelling to Los Angeles for a fortnight of writing and recording with John Congleton, the pair pushed themselves to embrace the singular spirit of their work. The result is a record that’s more intense, more raucous and darker than anything which has come before, without sacrificing that mischievous persona.

A key intention of the album was to never retread old ground, and Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy live up to the desire to create a fluid, ever-shifting record that keeps the audience guessing right down to the final minutes (could a release that opens with a song called ‘Godzilla Rises’ be any different?). Single ‘Van Goes’ offers the first glimpse of the darker tone, though this wouldn’t be Being Dead if was just that simple. Because while there’s a shadowy quality, with vocal harmonies that might grace a candlelit medieval hall, there’s an undeniable surf-rock vibe on show too, and in the chaotic breakdowns that punctuate the taut rhythm, there’s even the suggestion of something futuristic.

‘Firefighters’ continues the trend. Its opening suggests a dense garage rock behemoth but the song refuses to sit still long enough to solidify into a single shape. Bright harmonies seep into the gaps between the heaviest moments, like the ghost of some retro pop outfit trapped within a lightning storm, and the electric energy drives things forward with its volatile momentum. Most recent single ‘Nightvision’ flips this on its head, its subdued opening recalling the off-the-wall pop of Dear Nora, though soon the acoustic rhythm builds into something folk-inflected and nocturnal. And if the songs are shapeshifting entities, then they are only microcosms of EELS as a record. As though with each song, the wider world of the album is brought into relief, each a tile in a mosaic which exists as something larger than its whole.

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The recording project of Chicago-based violinist and songwriter Mallory Linehan, Chelsea Bridge is something of a shapeshifting entity. One as likely to entice the listener in with hazy dreamscapes as it is blast them with intense noise, willing to present sensual and detached sensibilities side by side. Perhaps not a shapeshifter, then, but rather something fluid, an amorphous thing able to exist across and between fixed points. It is therefore fitting that new album K, coming next month via Whited Sepulchre, could be described as both the most accessible and experimental Chelsea Bridge record to date. A collection of songs which sees Linehan reach for pop sensibilities as naturally as she might classical or avant garde, as though to prove such a distinction is of little consequence to an artist fully embracing an intuitive mode of working. Single ‘The Morning’ introduces the result, where plucked violin seems to work hand over hand to tease a lush pop soundscape into life.

cryer mya – Leylines

Based in south London by way of Bristol, cryer mya is the new recording project of songwriter Rishi Saluja. Having previously played in bands with psychedelic influences, Saluja uses the moniker to combine such sensibilities with more personal tastes in soul and folk, resulting in a richly realised sound sure to grab the ears of fans of Sam Evian and Alice Phoebe Lou. Lead single ‘Leylines’ provides the first taste of the cryer mya style, taking a languid summer rhythm and populating it with vocals both heartfelt and searching, the easygoing warmth belying the depth of a track which explores themes of spirituality and mystery.

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

 Ead Wood – Menu

Ead Wood might hail from Bristol in the UK, but their Americana-inflected sound positions them closer to acts like Friendship than any of their British brethren. Following on from last year’s EP A Sparkling Gift, the outfit have returned with new single ‘Menu’ on Breakfast Records. A song which typifies the balance between sincerity and playfulness which marks the Ead Wood sound, delving into an ostensibly mundane situation to reveal the deeper meanings beneath the surface. “‘Menu’ is a (somewhat) lighthearted song about decision making anxieties,” as lead Ed Soles explains. “[That feeling] of being frozen in fear of making the wrong choice, even in those situations where it may not seem to even matter. This is never more apparent than ordering at a restaurant, where I often get the same as whoever I’m with to avoid having to make my own decision, even if it’s not something I want.”

‘Menu’ is out now via Breakfast Records and available from Bandcamp.

Holy Matter – Prince Gloom

This autumn, Leanna Kaiser will release her debut album under her Holy Matter moniker. Titled Beauty Looking Back, the record explores “the changing seasons of life and the passage of time,” featuring intimate meditations on the cyclical patterns of past, present and future that attempt to capture the paradox of time and how we experience it. Namely, how things seem at once immutable and ever-changing. “Holy Matter comes from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers,” Kaiser explains. “There’s one passage that has stayed with me, since – a page with the repeated mantra ‘I change; I am the same.’ This, I would say, is the best description of what this album is about.” Latest single ‘Prince Gloom’ is dreamy and diaphanous, unfurling in a slow, almost tropical swirl.

Japandroids – Chicago

Seven years after their last record, Vancouver indie rock legends Japandroids have announced one last album before they lay the project to rest. Billed by duo Brian King and David Prowse as a parting gift to fans, Fate & Alcohol seems intent on going out in a blaze of glory. “On our last record we wanted to broaden the definition of a Japandroids song,” King explains, “and purposely left our demos quite open and malleable so that we had more flexibility to experiment in the studio.” If lead single ‘Chicago’ is anything to go by, this translates to a sound that’s bolder and more widescreen than anything Japandroids have made to date. Which is saying something for a band who have always been unapologetically maximalist, combining punk rock energy with good-time, fists-in-the-air classic rock.

Kitty Fitz – Laughing Stock

Inspired by both 90s power pop and contemporary pop songwriters like Lorde and Caroline Polachek, the work of London’s Kitty Fitz combines a sometimes chaotic, danceable energy with candid and introspective explorations of turbulent relationships and self-doubt. Less poppy than last year’s debut EP All My Own Stunts, new single ‘Laughing Stock’ has been honed on the live circuit for over a year, forgoing the more bombastic synth pop elements in favour of something a little more poignant. What Fitz describes as “the epitome of me attempting to pass off my own fear of commitment and rejection as character flaw, as being cool and aloof, or once again feeling in a way ‘unloveable,'” the song’s breezy surface is something of a facade, beneath which squirm anxious thoughts and fears.

Maya Ruth – oblivion

“Chapped lips / But nothing like the harshness of smoke / We fall asleep restlessly / Counting the years on our toes.” So sings Maya Ruth in the opening of new single ‘Oblivion’. A song which began life as a poem before morphing into a grungy rock hit, the track mines the banality of every day life for its inherent absurdity, offering a bittersweet sound of sweet textures and edgy bite. The result is both alluring and slightly unnerving, as though beneath the monotony of our normal experience lies something more exciting, something more dangerous. “Die with me here / And you’ll be asking for more,” as Ruth sings in the chorus. “Doesn’t it scare you? / But don’t you feel good?”

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

Merce Lemon – Backyard Lover

Following recent single ‘Will You Do Me a Kindness’, what we called “a song that ebbs and flows between quiet introspection and a wild, barely-restrained energy,” Pittsburgh songwriter Merce Lemon has announced a new record, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. Released via LA label Darling Records, the album promises to marry quiet vulnerability with cathartic power, something immediately apparent on lead single ‘Backyard Lover’. What starts as a warm and swaying country song, complete with propulsive percussion and wistful pedal steel, gathers into a sharp point of wailing guitar and emotional release. It’s a glimpse at a theme that winds throughout the record, and Lemon’s work in general.  “So many of my songs are touched by and explore death, specifically in relation to the loss I experienced of my best friend when I was fifteen years old,” she explains. “That loss has forever changed me and who I am in my relationships to lovers, friends, family.”

Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild will be released on 27^th September via Darling Records. Pre-order a copy now from the Merce Lemon Bandcamp page.

Nuisance – Holy Basil

Over recent years, few could have done more to work against the traditional studio-based recording process than William Seidel and Ryan Weber of Nuisance. Whether working as part of Eric & Magill or REW<<, Weber has created albums in some of the world’s remotest areas while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, while Seidel has worked on music in hotels and mini-cab taxis during his extensive travels. Not to mention their development of the virtual sounds database Poetic Devices which underpins Nuisance releases. The pair are now back with Squash Blossom Necklace, a new full-length which furthers their exploration of possibilities within this frame of working, bending genre conventions in order to incorporate pop, folk, electronic and classical sensibilities into something unique to them. Listen to single ‘Holy Basil’ now:

Sylvia – Found and Lost

With members hailing from all over Australia, Sylvia is a Melbourne/Naarm-based band which is equally diverse in its points of reference. Gemma (vocals/guitar) is one half of dream pop duo Earache, Murray (drums) used to power Brisbane noise-rock outfit No Sister, Dee (bass) also plays in dystopian industrial band Red Hell while Sean (guitar) spent time in powerviolence as part of Canberra’s Hygiene. United as Sylvia, the result draws on all of this past experience to create something straddling shoegaze, power pop and indie rock, while maintaining a certain intensity of noise too. New EP II is a good place to jump in, with single ‘Found and Lost’ seeing noisy rock and twee pop collide in a short, sharp burst.

variety – Plover

Earlier this year, Austin-based outfit variety—That’s Jordan Emmert (Porcelain/Pleasure Venom), Nick Stout (New Strangers), Rhys Woodruff (Borzoi/Leche) and Zach Wood (Borzoi)—released ‘Plover’, the first single of their forthcoming album pencilled for release this autumn. A twitchy rush of anxious energy, the song uses the titular wader and ornithological themes more generally to paint a picture of an ecosystem gripped by a constant tension. As though every environment is a network of individuals with competing desires, be they animal or human, and each organism is set on edge by the presence of everything else. Watch the video directed by Taylor Browne below:

‘Plover’ is out now and the variety album is coming soon.

Wild Pink – The Fences of Stonehenge

Following on from 2022’s hit ILYSM and John Ross’s successful collaboration with Laura Wolf under the moniker lilts, Wild Pink have signed with the good folks at Fire Talk and announced new full-length album, Dulling The Horns. But if Ross’s recent output has seen discursions into dreamy and often ornate pop styles, the new record is a recentering of Wild Pink as a rock band. One ready to be more immediate, less polished and finely crafted. “I wanted to make economical songs,” as Ross explains. “Music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking.” First single ‘The Fences of Stonehenge’ leads the way, heralding not only a fresh collection of songs but what feels like a new era for the band. One which finds them revitalised and ready to commit wholeheartedly all over again.

Dulling The Horns is out on the 4th October via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

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It promises to as intense and direct as ever, which is definitely the case on lead single and opening track ‘If It’s Gone’. A searing but kind-spirited song about the end of a relationship that focuses on coming to terms with loss rather than pining for the past. “I went through a breakup on day one of the pandemic,” explains frontman Tyler Jordan:

‘If It’s Gone’ kind of opened up the floodgates, and a lot of the other songs on this record were written afterward, so it feels really fitting that this is the first song on the record. I’m kinda hoping I don’t have to write any more break up songs, and if this is the last one I ever write, I’d be ok with it. I feel really proud of this one.

Watch the video, directed by Callum Scott-Dyson below:

Lived Here For A While will be released via Keeled Scales on 7th June. Pre-order it now from the Good Looks Bandcamp page.

Photo by Jackie Lee Young

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Hamilton, Ontario indie rock outfit Dark Mean have been making music for well over a decade now, introducing themselves with a self-titled album back in 2011 and returning every few years with new songs to prove the project is still alive and kicking. Their first release since 2016, ‘Working Hard’ feels like a dispatch from a reality faced by a huge number of acts these days, where cycles of inspiration and hiatus are governed by work schedules and personal responsibilities. A song fired by the twin forces of frustration and passion and driven by the urgency of the ticking clock.  “I haven’t forgot your name / I’d give it to you if you ever came,” as one verse plays. “I’ve still got a lot to say / I’ll tell you about it someday.”

Grocer – Caterpillar Pilled

“‘Packrat’ finds Grocer at their most collaborative, trusting in the bonds which have now developed between the members to make something far greater than the sum of its parts.” So we wrote of the first single from the Philly band’s new album Bless Me, coming later this spring on Grind Select, which promises to elevate Grocer’s trademark volatility to new heights. Latest single ‘Caterpillar Pilled’ embodies this spirit, possessing both brash energy and off-the-wall charm. With constant changes of speed, the song is always on the verge of unravelling into chaos but manages to cling on by its fingertips, emerging all the more triumphant as a result. Watch the video by Nicholas Rahn below:

Bless Me is out on the 19th April via Grind Select and you can pre-order it now.

hemlock – Garbage Truck

Back in 2022 we mentioned talk soon by Chicago’s hemlock, describing single ‘to carry’ as “a song of hushed yet heartfelt vignettes which rises toward an impassioned finale, providing snapshots of love in its various guises.” The project has since gone on to put out several further releases, including the single ‘monarch‘, a month-long song-a-day challenge album and a live session, but now hemlock is teaming up with the good folks at Ghost Mountain Records to celebrate the second anniversary of the talk soon release with the album’s first ever vinyl run. To mark the occasion, hemlock has unveiled a video for the single ‘Garbage Truck’ directed and edited by lead Carolina Chauffe and filmed along with Daniel Joseph and Reed Everette. Check it out below:

The talk soon vinyl is out on the 10th May via Ghost Mountain Records and you can pre-order it now.

Lamplight – S/T

Back in January we previewed the self-titled album Ian Hatcher-Williams’s Lamplight on Western Vinyl, what we called “an exploration of how one’s sense of identity shifts and changes according to any number of present conditions, not least the place we call home at any given time.” With the record now out, Lamplight has shared the title track as a final single, which serves to not only underline the intentions behind the album but the Lamplight project as a whole. After experiencing a profound mixture of love and grief on contemplating the inevitable end of an intimate relationship, Hatcher-Williams found comfort in the concept of reincarnation, as well as a poem by Mark Strand titled ‘Love Silhouetted by Lamplight’ (from which Lamplight would come to take its name). “I’m too high
the lamp light, you’ve / caught me crying,” as he sings:

now we’re laying here uncovered
our legs braided around each other

i’m fixated on the future
that one day we lose the other

come back to, for a moment
that’s just long enough notice

we’re cosmically together
a bond older than each other

The song comes complete with a video which further develops these themes:

Lamplight is out on now via Western Vinyl and available from the Lamplight Bandcamp page.

Margaux – DNA

Back in 2019 we wrote about More Brilliant Is The Hand That Throws The Coin, the debut EP by Margaux released via Massif Records, describing how the juxtaposition of bright energy and syrupy dreamscape on single ‘Palm’ “serve[d] to bring to the life to duality of people too, as though beneath the outward face of our feelings lies depth more expansive and strange.” With a debut full-length on the way later this year, The Brooklyn singer-songwriter has now returned with ‘DNA’, another nuanced picture where longing and confrontation can occur simultaneously, and a floating drift can quickly escalate towards a cathartic climax. It’s apparently the first song from an album due later in the year, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for more info.

The debut Margaux full-length will be released later this year via Massif Records.

May Rio – Fun!

Stretching the definition of a solo project, New York‘s May Rio sometimes plays with a classic guitar/drums band, and others an arrangement of cello, piano and saxophone. The latter, what she calls the Elegant Ensemble, gives its name to the new May Rio album. A collection of rearrangements of previously released tracks, scrubbed clean of the gloss of studio production and presented anew as an assemblage of their essential parts. There is one brand new track too though. Titled ‘Fun!’ it’s a song about a teenage car accident delivered with the idiosyncratic blend of playfulness and grace which runs through Rio’s work. “The day I got my driver’s permit, aged sixteen,” she describes, “I borrowed my mother’s forest-green Isuzu Trooper for a trip to a new movie showing at the mall,” only the adventure was cut short at a junction.

Sweet sixteen I get to take a spin
Windows rolled down wind’s all on my skin
T-boned by a speeding stoner hard
Momma’s Trooper’s totaled but what’s worse
Is it was fun

Watch the video directed by Ben Gordon below:

Elegant Ensemble is out on the 3rd May.

Meagre Martin – Malcolm

Meagre Martin‘s Gut Punch, released last year on Mansions and Millions introduced the Berlin-based band’s ability to broach the most pressing social themes of the moment with both confidence, fire and relatability. “The gut punch of the title therefore refers not so much to the Meagre Martin sound but rather the subject matter they take on,” as we put it in a preview. “The world as a series of debilitating blows.” New single ‘Malcolm’ continues this style to great effect, leaning into a more guitar-led sound to better evoke the track’s rebellious nature. An ode to Malcolm in the Middle at once fond and discordant, teasing out themes of precarity and generational trauma from within nostalgic memories of the show.

I’m human too,
We break the rules
That’s nothing new
Why settle down
You start to drown
So pull me out

Robert Ouyang Rusli – Elizabeth’s Voicemail

Brooklyn-based composer and artist Robert Ouyang Rusli took on their most ambitious project to date with the soundtrack for Julio Torres’s Problemista, a new film coming later this month via A24, starring Torres alongside the likes of Tilda Swinton. The artist, who also records under the moniker Ohyung, created over fifty songs for the score, looking to match the surreal world Torres has created with something just as agile and inventive. Single ‘Elizabeth’s Voicemail’ serves as an enticing glimpse of the project’s full scope, the film bleeding into the soundtrack in the same manner the music pours into the film. Orchestral arrangements of synths and choral vocals are accentuated with sounds from the colourfully whimsical film-world, creating what the press release describes as “rhythmic backdrops for the bureaucratic nightmares of the American immigration system.”

The Problemista soundtrack will be released on the 15th March, and the film itself on the 22nd.

W. Y. Huang – Life Just Lately (feat. Granata)

Facing the sudden onset of chronic pain, Singapore-born, New York-based singer-songwriter W. Y. Huang turned to music as an outlet. His new EP Knots, coming later this spring, serves as an exploration of pain and healing, as well as the more general transience of things and the ebb and flow of hope. First single ‘Life Just Lately’ introduces this with a bright and breezy indie pop style, welcoming New York rap artist Granata to further the track’s unguarded tone and capture the mood of the release as a whole. “This EP was a deeply personal endeavour, both in how the songs came together and the writing process,” as Huang explains. “It all blossomed from a very vulnerable place.”

‘Life Just Lately’ is out now and available from the W. Y. Huang Bandcamp page. Knots will be released in May.

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It was a release of impressive freedom and real promise, something Photokem are now looking to build on with the release of their second EP, Half Ton Pet. They released lead single, the warm and laidback acoustic pop song ‘Gillie’, a few weeks back, and have now followed up with the title track. Multilayered and poignant, the song brings together piano and electronic beats and Acheampong’s weary but affecting vocals. The result is something like a slightly more low-key and raw take on the kaleidoscopic pop of Justin Vernon’s later work, treading the line between melancholic and joyful as it snakes through peaks and troughs and moments of film-grained negative space.

Cover art by Julio Moreno

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you may tell from my outfit that I am a cowboi, but the fact that I am a cowboi changes what cowbois are. I can tell from your last name that you are a Smith, but the fact that you are a Smith changes who the Smiths are. I can tell from your flag that you are American, but the fact that you are American changes what America is. The work of Pelvis Wrestley is to alter identity markers by claiming and participating in them in order to subvert their direction and meaning in the larger world.

ANDY, or: The Four Horsegirls of the Apocalypse is a continuation of this project, not only pushing the country sensibilities further but reimagining exactly what Americana can mean.  ‘Found a Friend’ opens with lush washes of synth, a cowboy fever dream as experienced in their bed after a long ride home, while ‘No One You Know’ adds an eighties sleekness and offbeat charm. There’s the sense of witnessing a stylistic evolution in real time, with genre conventions being bent out of shape and the artist just as curious in and surprised by the result as the audience. “I don’t how to hold in my hand what I hold in my heart,” as Violet sings on ‘Act2ualize’ I got my finger on the pulse of it, but that is just the start.”

This presents in a number of ways. Tracks such as ‘Horse Dreams’ feel like country songs twisted strange, while those like ‘Holy Host’ bend so far out they end up far closer to baroque pop. The (kinda) title track ‘Andy’ splits the difference between these two styles, unfurling from a simple acoustic pluck and distorting strange with electronic interference before rising into an almost orchestral richness in the second half. And then ‘The World is a Bucking Horse’ ups the tempo to create a cathartic and triumphant finale which sits closer to contemporaries like Spencer Krug. If country music is a microcosm of a wider identity, then Pelvis Wrestley offer a timely reminder of the truth behind the prevailing wisdom. They might not make Americana in the style accepted by those dominant in the genre, but without displacement and change, America would be something else entirely.

ANDY, or: the Four Horsegirls of the Apocalypse is out now via Earth Libraries and available from Bandcamp.

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‘It’s Only a Matter of Time’ is the perfect example of the style. A track lead Nora Predey wrote after revisiting the home of a childhood friend years down the line. “Someone else lived there now, but was thankfully not home,” Predey explains. “Therefore I could snoop. I took the opportunity to walk into the backyard to the water and the loneliness of memory overcame me. My memory of the way it was visually superimposed itself on every contrast, clashing with the unpeopled space of the present.” Brought to life with a subtle yet intricate folk rock sound, the result is something dreamlike yet somehow more real for it. As though the truth of experience lies not within the plain state of any given moment but what exists beyond it. Be that the long chains of memories both traumatic and fond, or wishes for what might come next.

on the floor helpless
an arrested state
out of phase, off center
out of reach and turned away

The coexistence of so many conflicting emotions is central to the Large Brush Collection sound, and that they maintain such a delicate and complicated manoeuvre across Off Center is a testament to the sincerity with which it was written. ‘Arm’s Length’ “ebbs and flows between dreamy and anxious,” we wrote previously, “floating along sedately before rupturing with stabs of stormy guitar and clattering percussion.” The effect is to reduce the distance between the telling and the emotional experience itself, as if Predey doesn’t so much contemplate life from a remove but pull the listener right into its trenches. “I always wanted to be somebody / Who could treat their life like a game,” as she sings on opener ‘To Be Somebody’, “but I can’t.”

Off Center is out now and available from the Large Brush Collection Bandcamp page.

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The recording project of Oakland-based illustrator and lettering artist Kyle Benson, Company Vacation uses music as a way to delve deeper into the everyday, and in doing so invites the listener to notice and appreciate the magic in the small details. Out at the beginning of Feruary, new album Okay Headspace feels like the culmination of these ideas, and succinct single ‘I Have a Little Room in My House’ serves at the nostalgic, buoyant prologue. “As a kid, I dominated the family computer. It was steroids to my tiny brain,” Benson explains. “My parents kept it opposite the TV, centrally located in the family room, to keep anyone from using it to look at porn. Having a computer room felt like the luxury of the rich.”

Lately, I’ve been feeling small
But I feel a whole lot cuter
When I play computer

I have a little room in my house
it has a chair and a desk
it’s where I get on the Internet

Watch the video below, with animation by Jared Clark Gay and illustration by Benson himself:

Okay Headspace is out on the 9th February and available to pre-order now.

 Creekbed Carter Hogan – If I Was

With a self-titled album on its way Gar Hole Records, Austin songwriter Creekbed Carter Hogan has released single ‘If I Was’ to introduce their unwavering style of folk. The record sees the trans artist both catalogue the past and confront the present, with Hogan searching for ways to survive and find community in a society which too often seems to have been built to prevent such endeavours. “If I was a loaded gun / You might / Treat me better,” they sing, hinting at the defiance which sits at the heart of their work, an anti-capitalist song which yearns for something more.

Watch the video directed by Jordan Moser below:

Creekbed Carter is out via Gar Hole Records on the 22nd March and you can pre-order it now.

Den Der Hale – Donkey Skin

With their evocative blend of psych, folk and post-rock, Sweden‘s Den Der Hale established themselves as a mysterious force back in 2019 with EP Harsyra, and having now signed to FatCat Records, forthcoming album Pastoral Light looks set to build upon these foundations to paint a bleak picture of humankind’s decimation of the natural world. After the foreboding simmer of Bela Tarr-inspired ‘Horse From Turin’, the five-piece are back with new single ‘Donkey Skin’. A track which draws on the seventies animation of the same name to create an ethereal sound at once alluring and dangerous, doing for French fairy tales what Lankum do for Irish folk tales.

Hatis Noit – Jomon

Having featured in David Lynch’s Manchester International Festival showcase in 2019 and appearing in Rick Rubin’s Showtime documentary series Shangri-La, Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit released the superlative debut album Aura on Erased Tapes in 2022. “Words cannot describe everything we feel,” she explained in the liner notes. “How can one accurately verbalise the sensation we feel when we’re a newborn and our mother holds us in her arms, and we feel her skin on our cheek […] Music is a language that can translate that sensation, feeling, the memory of love.” The description goes some way to describing the album’s tactile, enveloping sound, one all the more impressive for the fact that it is conjured exclusively from Noit’s voice, looped and layered into entire worlds. Made with Berlin-based Taiwanese-Japanese media artist NAOWAO, the new video for the single ‘Jomon’ brings this to life even further, matching the almost shamanistic sound with visuals every bit as mystical, collapsing the apparently divided spheres of human, natural and spiritual experience onto a single plane.

Aura is out now via Erased Tapes and available from Bandcamp.

Kaia Kater – The Internet

Born in Montreal and now based in Toronto, Kaia Kater makes music inspired by Canadian folk music, her father’s Grenadian heritage and the Appalachian music of her college years in West Virginia. Planning to release a new record sometime in 2024, Kater kicked off the year by releasing a new single, ‘The Internet’. A bright and tumbling folk song, it captures the strangeness of communicating with loved ones at a digital remove, replacing physical proximity with a stream of ones and zeros pinged around the world via satellites and fibre optic cables. “I can only talk to you through the Internet,” Kater sings, “in bits and in bytes and right angles.”

Large Brush Collection – Arm’s Length

Back in September we wrote a preview of Off Center, the forthcoming record by Austin folk rockers Large Brush Collection. “The band combine intuitive rhythms with intricate detail to conjure soundscapes able to explore the most personal of things,” we wrote, impressed with their ability to explore thorny issues with nuance and tenderness. The album comes out at the end of the week, and in anticipation Large Brush Collection have unveiled one last single. Titled ‘Arm’s Length’, it is perhaps the most important track of all. “This was the first song I brought to the group when Dan (Magorrian) and Gaby (Torres) and I began playing together,” describes songwriter/bassist Nora Predey. “And we all really connected over it. In a way, I think it became the foundation of the band.” With Torres’s flute and snaking melodies, the song ebbs and flows between dreamy and anxious, floating along sedately before rupturing with stabs of stormy guitar and clattering percussion.

LOUD HOUND – Comet

The project of New Jersey singer-songwriter Tommy Florio, LOUD HOUND is a project that crafts polished pop songs made emotive and interesting with lo-fi guitar and introspective lyrics. Following last year’s album It’s Okay To Be Lonely Part II, LOUD HOUND has returned with a brand new single ‘Comet’, which exists at the quiet, melancholy end of Florio’s stylistic repertoire. This is due to the circumstances in which it was created. “[I] rented a house in the middle of the mountains of Pennsylvania so I could clear my head after the most gut-wrenching break up,” Florio describes. “I needed to isolate myself from the world to understand what just happened and process my emotions so I could slowly get back to myself.” But it’s not all hushed heartbreak, Florio’s tired voice reaches out for hope and healing, and the energetic electronics that support the chorus suggest they might be on the horizon.

Lutalo & Claud – Running

‘Running’ is a joint single between Vermont-based songwriter Lutalo and Brooklyn’s Claud, a song which lands at the super catchy sweet spot between indie rock and pop. Both artists released records last year, Lutalo with AGAIN on Winspear (which we described as “blend of folk, rock and soul which…critique capitalist and racist systems”), and Claud with Supermodels on Saddest Factory Records, both of which established them as some of the freshest new indie pop talent around. The new single is no different, an upbeat, driving indie pop song which explores a tricky relationship with a domineering parent. It comes complete with a video directed by Eleanor Petry which sees the pair act out this relationship in a beautifully warm and grainy seventies colour palette.

‘Running’ is out now via Winspear. Listen via streaming services and purchase a download from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.

Sam Evian – Wild Days

If the soulful psych pop of 2021’s Time To Melt saw Sam Evian embrace a retro aesthetic, then forthcoming album Plunge sees the New York songwriter take things to a whole other level. Carved from the lush pop that marked the seventies, the record is written from the perspective of Evian’s parents, tracing a story of love in all of its complexities and complications. A team of friends including Liam Kazar, Sean Mullins, El Kempner (Palehound) and Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief) all offered their talents, following Evian’s orders to keep things fun and immediate. “No-one knew the songs or what the plan was,” he explains. “We kept it loose and fun. This was the spirit of the sessions. No headphones, no playback, minimal overdubs, or bleed. Fast and loose.” Lead single ‘Wild Day’ gives a glimpse as to what to expect from the album, where the nostalgic haze is leavened by the spontaneity of the process.

Watch the video by CJ Harvey below:

Plunge is out on the 22nd March via Flying Cloud Recordings/Thirty Tigers and you can pre-order it now.

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