Back in March we introduced Spellbreaker, the new full-length from LA pop duo Bouquet. Having not put out a record for a decade, the release sees interdisciplinary artist, writer and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and songwriter and producer Max Foreman evolve the project while staying true to its spirit, with singles ‘Hold On‘ and ‘Moon Was Made‘ showing off “a rich and romantic style,” as we put it, “that championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses.” With the album now out, Bouquet have shared the title track—a song which confronts suffocating societal expectations, both in terms of their subliminal pull on us and the agency to be found in rejecting their logic.

Coral Grief – Rockhounds

Seattle trio Coral Grief are set to release their debut album Air Between Us this summer, a joint relase between Suicide Squeeze Records (digital), Anxiety Blanket Records (vinyl) and Den Tapes (cassette) which promises to represent a notable addition to the current dream pop revival. Because though the krautrock and synth pop styles underpinning the project might be drawn from the past, Coral Grief do so much more than peddle nostalgia. Rather, they take familiar sounds and recombine them into something entirely new, as displayed by lead single ‘Rockhounds’. It’s a track of ethereal tones and intricate detail built around a spine of sleek drum loops. The lyrics hint at the core themes of a release all about travel and exploration, championing not the productive gains of such things but rather the inherent value of the process. “I love beachcombing and searching for small treasures,” frontperson Lena Farr Morrissey explains. “This song is an ode to that process, especially when you don’t find anything but it was still worth the journey.”

Watch the video directed and edited by Nick Shively below:

Air Between Us will be released on the 18th July via Suicide Squeeze Records, Anxiety Blanket Records and Den Tapes and you can pre-order it now.

Horsepower – Excalibur

Horsepower, the project of NYC songwriter Charlotte Weinman, is preparing to release a self-titled debut EP next month via Rose Garden, and Weinman has shared new single ‘Excalibur’ to introduce the release. Produced by brother Noah Weinman (of runnner fame), the song offers a glimpse at the heavier dimension of the Horsepower project, following the tender, dreamy tones of previous track ‘Are You Blushing?’ with something altogether more charged and raw. The result is both earnest in tone and inventive in execution, Weinman drawing on her background in theatre writing and performance to convey personal fury in an unapologetically heightened, dramatic register. “I grew up as a massive fan of Hole and Sleater-Kinney and Kim Gordon, and I’ve always generally had a huge attraction to women who are being serrated and disgusting with their language and presence,” Weinman explains, “and not aestheticizing their anger—“feminine rage” etc.—but expressing it with a critical mass of urgency and conviction to dress it up or perform it any other way.”

Watch the video directed by Jonas Bishop Hayes below:

Horsepower will be released on the 27th June via Rose Garden.

OK Cool – Waawooweewaa

Back in 2023 we wrote about Chicago-based project OK Cool, describing how album fawn saw duo Bridget Stiebris Haley Blomquist rise from “a rich lineage of forebears, from contemporary bedroom pop to Midwest emo and feedback-soaked shoegaze” while still “keeping things fresh and experimental.” Now OK Cool are preparing to release follow-up Chit Chat in August on Take A Hike Records, and lead single ‘Waawooweewaa’ suggests the album will build upon these foundations. It’s a track which combines emo confession with an infectious forward motion to create something genuinely cathartic despite its dark tone. “I wish I could say fuck it / and walk out into the lake,” as the final verse goes. “My entire life relies on being far away /  i’m sorry, it’s my own fault.”

Paola Bennet – Landmines

Drawing on a mix of folk, pop and rock sensibilities, Boston-born, New York-based songwriter Paola Bennet is an artist unafraid of the personal, her music delving into intimate themes of illness, desire and relationships with equal parts tenderness and weight. Described as “agony put to sound,” new single ‘Landmines’ shows the full range of this style within a single track. An examination of a friendship conducted in its aftermath, where residual bitterness and burgeoning regret are matched with more complicated emotions. The identity-shaking experience of losing a person from your life when you had always imagined them a part of it. The poignant croon of the opening conjures the vulnerability of such a situation, and the gradual introduction of rock energy drives the track towards its fiercely cathartic climax.

Soot Sprite – Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon

We’ve featured a number of tracks from Soot Sprite‘s new full-length Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon in recent months, what we’ve called “a call to arms to fight against the forces that make contemporary life so difficult, and a reminder of the radical potential within empathy and community” that focuses on both a societal (on tracks like ‘All My Friends Are Depressed‘ and ‘Days After Days‘) and personal (‘Vicious Cycles‘) level. With the album now out via Specialist Subject Records, the trio have unveiled the title track to celebrate. A mission statement for the record and an embodiment of its cathartic defiance and determination. “As long as there’s blood in my body / I’ll never stop raging against the dark that’s gonna crush me,” as lead Elise Cook sings. “And as long as there’s air to breathe / I’ll do everything just to show you my teeth.”

Star Moles – Key Change

Recording under the moniker Star Moles, multi-instrumentalist Emily Moales has put out a wide range of releases since 2017, with a myriad of singles and covers sitting alongside full-lengths like Camelot, released via Earth Libraries. The oeuvre is a lesson in the potential of bedroom pop, refusing to settle for genre conventions to push the style in new directions. Again out via Earth Libraries, latest single ‘Key Change’ is a worthy addition to the catalogue. A track representative of Moales’s growing boredom with idealised romance of polished pop, choosing to instead get its hands dirty and dig into the messy guts of what love really means. The result is off-kilter and idiosyncratic and all the more believable for it, unfurling as a stream-of-consciousness with little filtered out.

Tyler Bradley Walker – Moon Broke Quiet

Perhaps best known as one half of electronic rock duo Gone to Color, Tyler Bradley Walker is now preparing to release his debut solo album, The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me, next month. Gone to Color have always broken new ground with their work, blurring the boundaries between pop, rock and concert music with traditional and electronic instrumentation, and lead single ‘Moon Broke Quiet’ suggest Walker’s solo work is no less ambitious. A spacious, evocative soundscape which seems to sit at an angle to reality, everything a little stark and surreal and strange. Tim Rutili of Califone fame adds his distinctive vocals, and the result occupies that nocturnal liminal space between waking life and dreams.

Watch the video by Chris Del Rio below:

‘Moon Broke Quiet’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Willi Carlisle – Beeswing

After the acclaim of 2024 album Critterland, Missouri songwriter Willi Carlisle is wasting no time getting back in the saddle with Winged Victory, a brand new full-length coming next month via Signature Sounds Recording Inc. The quick turnaround is perhaps at least in part explained by the urgency of the tracks therein. These are folk songs driven by (or in opposition to) the ever collapsing present, as though sensing that it is within moments of great change and suffering we might be allowed to imagine new ways of living. But far from pie-in-the-sky utopian dreaming, the album acknowledges the blood and sweat required to achieve such a thing, something made clear by Carlisle’s rendition of ‘Beeswing’. “I wanted the record to include a song about romantic love that had ideas about freedom and victory,” Carlisle explains. “For me, the song turns on the line ‘And they say her flower’s faded now / from hard weather and hard booze / but maybe that’s the price you pay for the chains you refuse.’ If you want to be untouchable by the regular world, maybe freedom is actually a really expensive thing, and maybe you have to try really hard to reach it.”

The post Weekly Listening: May 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in March we wrote about ‘Hold On’, a single from LA’s Bouquet which teased the duo’s first full-length album in a decade, Spellbreaker. The song was a slice of dream pop “rich and romantic [in] style,” as we put it, that “championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses.” Now Bouquet are back with new track ‘Moon Was Made’, offering a further glimpse at the record. A vintage Linn Drum machine is paired with the hi-hats of an old Roland rhythm box to weave a sound almost ethereal in its analog charm, all supporting lyrics which push and probe for answers amid an enveloping sense of uncertainty.

Watch the video shot and directed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs below:

‘Moon Was Made’ is out now and available from the Bouquet Bandcamp page.

Bug Crush – Mikey Told Me

With a new four-song EP Somehow I go in circles all the time set for release next month, Brooklyn-based songwriter Carolyn Fahrner, AKA Bug Crush, has unveiled new single, ‘Mikey Told Me’. Written after first moving to the city and living in less than perfect housing conditions, the track finds Fahrner tapping into the universal, slightly surreal experience of discomfort in a new place, where everything feels a little hazy and out of sync. “I wasn’t sleeping well because my bedroom floors were three inches uneven. In my groggy waking hours, I wandered around Brooklyn and frequently passed by a store called Mikey’s Hook Up. I thought it was a funny name and it stuck in my head. I wanted to write a song that wasn’t really about me, or anyone I knew, but I think it inevitably ended up being a reflection of my experiences in the world.”

‘Mikey Told Me’ is out now and available from the usual places, Somehow I go in circles all the time will be released on the 16th May.

JLJR – Thumbtack

“Adopts a tone both reflective and defiant to chart the end of a distinctive kind of relationship. One troubled and difficult to live through, yet equally one whose closure takes something from you too.” That’s how we described ‘Arms For Eyes’, the lead single from JLJR new EP The Rest of Your Life, coming soon on Paper Moon Records. Latest single ‘Thumbtack’ is no less reflective in style. A mosaic of iPhone takes and tape loops which weaves a lo-fi representation of memory itself, while the disarmingly sincere vocals meditate on grief to give the ostensibly inviting sound a real emotional edge.

The Rest of Your Life is out via Paper Moon Records.

Myriads – Call It Quits

Described as “a study of love, happiness, depression, and the search for meaning in these universal human experiences,” Find Ourselves Again is the new EP from Portland, OR-based outfit, Myriads. The work of frontperson Maria DeHart has morphed over the years, evolving from a solo endeavour built upon acoustic and later loop pedal foundations into the full band which would become Myriads, though has maintained a sincere, confronting tone throughout the arc. The new EP represents the next step in this process, blending elements of bedroom and dream pop with the heft and energy of indie rock to communicate in a typically unguarded, empathetic manner. Single ‘Call It Quits’ embodies the style, its wistful fondness counterbalanced with fuzzy weight, capturing the experience of a break-up in all of its conflict and longing.

Old Man of the Woods – Anticipating

“Tendrils is a collection of devotionals, written at a yearning distance from their beloveds. It’s the recognition of the vines that bind us to all we adore, at times only felt once they become taut, begin to quiver, reverberate, fray, snap, curl.” So describes Miranda Elliott of the new album from Old Man of the Woods, set for release this June. Recorded during a residency at the Culterim Gallery in an abandoned German sanatorium, the album explores the close relationship of preservation and decomposition, evolving the goth pop of previous releases like Votives and Triptych I to increasingly evocative results. Lead single ‘Anticipating’ provides a hint of the haunted vibe therein, playing like a private party for one held in memory of all that came before which nevertheless, as per its title, holds hope in the possibility that that which has been lost might be accessible some way down the line.

Tendrils will be released this June.

Penny & the Pits – Pool Party

“Lacks none of the mood or bite of the Motherhood sound, [Penelope] Stevens matching head-banging heft with an abstract, poetic lyricism which plays like a personal journey into the strange currents and slacks of this thing we call life.” So we wrote of ‘Montenegro on Ice’, the first single from Penny & the Pits‘ debut album Liquid Compactor, forthcoming this summer via Forward Music Group. Described as “a gritty, adventurous punk-rock album that processes feminist joy, rage and revenge,” the record harnesses this energy for both fun and fury, something exemplified by latest single, ‘Pool Party’. A surf punk number full of playfulness and bite which again highlights the imagination of the project, telling the delightfully dark story of a girl gang hell bent on revenge against the men who have wronged them.

Watch the video by director of photography Amelia Bailey below, with art direction by Audrey Kirk and Penelope Stevens and editing/colouring by Nicole Cecile Holland:

Liquid Compactor is out on the 27th June via Forward Music Group and you can pre-order it now.

Rose Haven Motor Hotel – Trasig

If any one feature marked Things Don’t Stay, the 2024 EP by Jackson-based project Rose Haven Motor Hotel, it was a sense of perpetual change, the style switching from traditional folk to alt-country swagger and back again on a whim. The release was “appropriately titled,” as we put it, “not only evoking the overarching wistfulness which marks the release, but also speaking to the stylistic fluidity which occurs across the five songs.” Released in preview of a forthcoming EP, latest single ‘Trasig’ sees Ben Atkinson continues to push the project towards new styles and influences. An instrumental guitar track he describes as “George Harrison meets Delicate Steve meets a biker gang.” A song of retro richness and a notable mean streak which refuses to outstay its welcome and maintains an air of mysterious cool as a result.

Slake – Votive

Back in March we introduced Slake, the recording project of self-described ‘lesbian doom folk’ songwriter Mary Claire, with single ‘Bonecollector’. Serving as “both a window into the singular vision of the Californian artist and an embodiment of the collaborative spirit which brings their work to life” as we put it, the track was the first glimpse of Slake’s new album Let’s Get Married, coming this June with Cherub Dream Records. New single ‘Votive’ further grounds this style and suggests all of the album is delivered with the same shadowy atmosphere and intimacy that made its predecessor so striking. Against the backdrop of a subtle yet poignant arrangement, it is Claire’s vocals which represent the heart of the track. A voice that plays as both a plea and a prayer, looking for a way to move beyond present suffering or else come to understand the purpose of the pain in order to better withstand it.

Soot Sprite – Vicious Cycles

With the release of new album Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon fast approaching on Specialist Subject Records, Soot Sprite have shared final single ‘Vicious Cycles’ to further whet appetites. We’ve previously described the album as “a call to arms to fight against the forces that make contemporary life so difficult, and a reminder of the radical potential within empathy and community,” and the new single zooms in on the most personal experiences to explore how such a mission might look on an individual level. “‘Vicious Cycles’ is about addressing your patterns of behaviour and the damage done in previous relationships,” as lead Elise Cook explains. “The fear of retribution for the smallest of hiccups that sticks with you long after the impacting relationship is done. The thought that you’ll never fully shake it off.”

I can’t wash off the oil from your spill
Part of me is always blackened by your will
Try to leave it in the years
But I still shake with fear
The eggshells stab like little spears

Sucker Crush – Stranger

Echoqualia is the latest EP from Sucker Crush, the recording project of Oakland-based songwriter Marissa Deitz. Built from a myriad of home recordings made between 2016 and 2021 and elevated beyond the sum of its parts with extra work in the subsequent years, the release has been long in the making, and this extended gestation period only served to add to its richness and weight. “A lot has happened in that time (personally, politically, pandemically…),” as Deitz says, “and it’s a strange and beautiful thing to hold these songs as they are now.” Lead single ‘Stranger’ highlights the signature blend of chamber pop and electronic sensibilities of the EP, its gentle, airy style belying the orchestral depth of the sound, and Deitz’s vocals equally notable for their simultaneously hushed and powerful tone.

Yoshika Colwell – There’s Got To Be A Loser Babe

“Pushing the folk sound into ethereal, almost cosmic territory, the song again embraces the satisfying weirdness of dreams, where logic might not adhere to the ordinary laws of such things, yet feels like logic all the same.” So we wrote of Yoshika Colwell‘s ‘Last Night’ back in February, but despite the single’s dreamy aesthetic, its heart was firmly rooted in the physical world. The track features on Colwell’s debut full-length On The Wing, an album coming this summer on Blue Flowers which further mines the more ethereal territories of folk to explore real life experiences. “This album is a bit of a shrine I suppose to all of the pivotal experiences that shaped me during my twenties and it’s also, I feel, a tentative lean towards hopefulness for the future,” Colwell explains. “It is, at its core, an album about acceptance and release, and freedom from old binds […] The process felt quite ritualistic, akin to writing down the things you know you need to let go of on a piece of paper and burning it.” Watch the video for latest single ‘There’s Got To Be A Loser Babe’ by Tilly Wace below:

On The Wing is out on the 25th July via Blue Flowers and you can pre-order it now.

The post Weekly Listening: April 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Having orbited around one another in the LA music scene for a short while, Derek Ted and Braden Lawrence gradually began to collaborate, helping one another with solo work, producing other artists, then eventually writing original material as a duo. The product of the relationship is beaming, a brand new project which will release its debut self-titled EP this June via Rose Garden, and lead single ‘slow sinkin’ gives a flavour of what to expect from the outfit. With Field Medic adding guest vocals, the track possesses all of the earnestness fans of Ted and Lawrence’s solo work will know well, the bright rhythm and heartfelt tone the sonic equivalent of shaking clarity into a clouded mind. “Lyrically, it’s about looking back on the past and how easy it is to get caught up in your own BS,” the band explain. “It’s our most acoustic track on the EP, and we wanted it to feel more natural and organic.”

Watch the video directed by Olivia Alonso Gough with cinematography and colour by Michael Greenwood below:

Beaming EP is out on the 13th June via Rose Garden and you can pre-save it now.

Bouquet – Hold On

Almost a decade since their previous album was released, LA-based dream pop duo Bouquet are preparing to unveil a brand new full-length. Consisting of interdisciplinary artist, writer and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and songwriter and producer Max Foreman, the project made a name with a rich and romantic style that championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses, and new single ‘Hold On’ represents a continuation of the style. With Pennypacker Riggs providing vocals and guitar and Foreman vocals, synthesizer and drum machine, the song is a lesson in precision, not drowning the audience in reverb and haze but instead beckoning them into its ethereal, wistful world.

Course – Hue Mirror

Led by Jess Robbins, Chicago synth pop outfit Course formed in the months before the pandemic, so adapting to challenging conditions has always been part of the project’s DNA. Their third album Hue Mirror is no exception. After suffering with chronic pain for years, Robbins was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition ankylosing spondylitis, and wrote the record within the vertiginous early days of processing the news. The lead single and title track introduces the tone of the record, one delivered with equal doses of tenderness and fear. “I wrote this song during the confusion and uncertainty of my future,” Robbins explains. “The song touches on the idea of how a medicine for this disease comes at a price, the pain I had been having for so long, and the sneakiness of not knowing when the next flare will come.”

You find me again
And again
Driving fear
Comes over me
In the light of pain

Hue Mirror is out on the 25th April and you can pre-order it via the Spondylitis Association of America, with all proceeds being donated to research.

Jess Kerber – I Wonder If I’ll Forget This

Born to musician parents, and a guitarist herself since the age of twelve, Nashville’s Jess Kerber makes warm and timeless songs that feel like worthy entries to the American folk tradition. New single ‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is a case in point, a wonderfully understated track that aches with real emotion. Kerber’s vocals are flanked by acoustic guitar and the barely-there texture of organ drone, an arrangement that allows the songwriting to shine through. It’s impressively mature, particularly in the way it combines genuine vulnerability with a sense of steadfast tenacity, a sensation Kerber likens to “the feeling of being little and learning to swim, grabbing the edge of the pool.”

‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is out now via Felte Records and is available on streaming services.

JLJR – Arms For Eyes

With new EP The Rest of Your Life coming soon via Paper Moon Records, JLJR has shared new single ‘Arms For Eyes’. Building upon the mix of emotion and narrative which marked the JLJR debut, the track adopts a tone both reflective and defiant to chart the end of a distinctive kind of relationship. One troubled and difficult to live through, yet equally one whose closure takes something from you too. “It’s a reflection on the disintegration of a bad friendship,” as JLJR puts it, “and the struggle to be yourself after someone robs you of part of your identity.”

‘Arms For Eyes’ is out now via Paper Moon Records.

Luah – Wanting You

“Something like a memory, or rather several memories superimposed. A way in which to not so much return to the past as view it more vividly, somehow striking in both its intimacy and remove. That place we long for but can never return to.” So we wrote of ‘Ocean O. (home 4 the holidays)’ by Brendan Paul Sullivan’s Luah back in January. It was a song which embodied the sincerity and heart of the project, not to mention the gentle patience with with emotion is brought to life. With album Some Blue Heaven coming next month, latest new single ‘Wanting You’ takes this sense of patience even further. A layered, slow burning psych folk song that taps into the rhythms of the diurnal cycle, moving from day to night as it progresses and gradually coalescing into something almost cosmic.

Molly Ganley – Comparisons

Last week saw the release of Eldest Daughter, the debut album from NYC indie folk artist Molly Ganley. Described as “a nostalgic and honest account of finding your way,” it’s a very human record about growth and change and navigating life’s strange turns with as much grace as is possible. One standout is ‘Comparisons’, a track that sits at the centre of the album and proves the perfect introduction to what Ganley does so well. Backed by pedal steel, piano and backing vocals from country folk duo Raising Daughters, the song confronts the futile and needless woes that result from comparing oneself to others.

Monnone Alone – Dry Doubt

Eighteen months ago, Melbourne‘s Monnone Alone released single ‘Loose Terrain’, a stellar slice of jangle pop where bright playfulness was shadowed by the slightest mark of wistful longing. With three albums already under their belt, the track seemed to be a culmination of their talents and experience, only for the project to settle into a prolonged period of radio silence. Such quiet can go one of two ways in the music industry—positive or negative—but luckily for us, in Monnone Alone’s case, the answer is the former. Because while they might have have appeared inactive from the outside, the truth was they were hard at work on brand new full-length, Here Comes the Afternoon. Pencilled for early May, the release is a joint endeavour, with Lost And Lonesome (Aus), Meritorio (EU), Safe Suburban Home (UK) and Repeating Cloud (US) teaming up to spread the record far and wide. Album opener and new single ‘Dry Doubt’ suggests ‘Loose Terrain’ was anything but a flash in the pan, so the date can’t arrive soon enough.

Orchid Mantis – Spirit Circle

Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the Orchid Mantis project as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles, each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux. Coming this spring on Daydream Records and Start-Track, the latest Orchid Mantis full-length Possession Pact pivots towards a nineties slowcore style, channeling forebears like Low, Bedhead and Codeine to offer a new dimension to the project. Opener and lead single ‘Spirit Circle’ typifies the understated brooding atmosphere. A song bathed in shadowy textures and melancholic quiet, always threatening to rise into something more intense but for the most part maintaining its muted darkness.

Steven van Betten & Andrew Rowan – Cloud Behind the Sun

Back in 2023 we wrote about Friends and Family, the debut solo full-length by Steven van Betten on Future Gods which highlighted the LA songwriter’s distinctively compassionate, humane style. Now van Betten has returned with brand new EP Cloud Behind the Sun, though has parked the solo venture in favour of continuing a collaboration with composer Andrew Rowan which stretches back more than a decade. The lead single title track shows the three-song release to be every bit as thoughtful and heartfelt as its predecessor, taking the ostensibly ordinary experience of passing an ex on the street and mining the moment for all of its depth and weight. Something made possible not least thanks to Rowan’s almost cinematic arrangement, its intricacy revealing itself as slowly yet decisively as spring through a thawing winter ground.

Wryn – Only Thing

We’ve covered a couple of singles by Californian songwriter Wryn in recent weeks, with both ‘Snake‘ and ‘Slow Down‘ introducing the themes of change and self-actualisation which run through their upcoming full-length, Shapes. The record’s release is fast approaching on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and Wryn has returned with new single ‘Only Thing’ to further expand upon these ideas. The song opens with a spare, almost hesitant tone, but gradually builds in momentum, as though deciding to embrace life’s inevitable forward motion. “Life is always shifting and evolving,” as Wryn puts it, “and that’s a good thing. Change is the only constant.”

Watch the suitably literal video directed by DanTroon-Sazani below:

Shapes will be released on the 28th March via Righteous Babe Records and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – I don’t love you

Writing of release Spring Songs in April of last year, we described how Lahore-born, Orlando-based songwriter Zoya Zafar utilised a controlled, unadorned style to communicate a considerable depth of feeling. “Zafar uses minimalism not as an austere stylistic choice but as a tool to hone her music’s emotional weight,” as we put it, “suffusing it with warmth despite its direct and unfussy arrangement.” New single ‘i don’t love you’ is no less charged in its mood, beginning life with no accompaniment other than acoustic guitar before Max Helgemo helped evolve it into something richer without sacrificing the poignant spareness.

The post Weekly Listening: March 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.