“Strange DIY songs for strange DIY times,” is how we’ve described the work of California‘s Derek Ted in the past, though 2021’s KEEP TRYING hinted at a warmer, sentimental side. Latest single ‘someday soon’ develops this aspect of Ted’s work, finding a ray of light in otherwise dark circumstances and working to persevere if only for the sight of it. “I wanted to capture that pure magic you feel when you’re first crushing on someone special,” Ted explains. “Like a springtime daydream played out in your head.”

gotten used to having my heart wasted
but then you came around
could it be true?
there’s beauty on the horizon
i’d wait around all just if just for you

For Breakfast – Orfordness Lighthouse

Ahead of their forthcoming EP Trapped in the Big Room on Glasshouse Records, London-based art rock outfit For Breakfast have unveiled brand new single, ‘Orfordness Lighthouse’. The single is as detailed and inventive as you might expect from a seven-piece band, each member bringing their own musical sensibilities to achieve a sound incorporating everything from dream pop and noise rock to trip hop and psychedelica. The brass and flutes of ‘Orfordness Lighthouse’ weave a nuanced, playful sound, though this is anchored by a post-rock depth which rises as the song progresses and thunders into the cathartic conclusion.

Horseface – Sanakirjan Takana

Based in Umeå, Sweden, Horseface work at the intersection of dream pop and post-punk to create their immersive songs. Next month sees the release of their latest album Sanakirjan Takana on Sing a Song Fighter and they have shared the title track by way of an introduction. With rhythmic percussion and synths/mellotron from David Lundberg (of Gösta Berlings Saga), the song combines emotive atmospherics with off-kilter charm. The title, which translates as “behind the dictionary,” alludes to a short story by the mother of the lead vocalist which was sadly only found after her untimely passing, and there’s a sense of cryptic fondness running through the sound.

King Ropes – Greedy

Bozeman, Montana outfit King Ropes won our attention back in 2021 with the release of Way Out West, an album which took inspiration from the rural landscape and mindset as well as a healthy slice of weirdness. Songs marked “by odd wisdom and surreal images, all cloaked in a psych-inflected air that only accentuates the strangeness,” as we put it. With trauma, reincarnation and inexplicable ailments, this balance between natural beauty and eeriness is again a feature of new LP Super Natural, out next month on Big and Just Little, as shown by latest single ‘Greedy’. A deadpan stream of consciousness which captures the vibe of an album that is a ramshackle ode to both the grace and difficulty of our strange world.

Super Natural is out on the 26th May and you can order your copy from the King Ropes Bandcamp page.

Mal Not Bad – Oven

The recording project of Los Angeles-based visual artist and musician Mallory Hauser, Mal Not Bad makes a lush brand of indie folk which blurs the line between mundane reality and ethereal dreams. Ahead of new EP Continuous Short Feature Film and a EU/UK tour with Illuminati Hotties, Mal has released the single ‘Oven’. A slow, foggy track which captures this spirit perfectly. “Smells like something’s burning,” Hauser sings, the delivery more sluggish than panicked as dissonant tones scramble the once-pillowy sound, like a nightmare where the terrible is happening but you can hardly move.

Continuous Short Feature Film is due to be released later this year.

Sinead O’Brien – There Are Good Times Coming

Ahead of debut album Time Bend and Break The Bower, out via Chess Club Records this summer, Ireland’s Sinead O’Brien has unveiled latest single, ‘There Are Good Times Coming’. The song captures the idiosyncratic aesthetic O’Brien has developed, one reliant on words and images as much as sound, and able to be at once twitchy and fluid, alluring and menacing, forthright and mysterious. “Throw a coin in the fountain,” O’Brien sings. “A curse in your name / A praise in vein of kindness / There are good times coming / For love or for money there are good times coming.” Check out the video directed by Chloé le Drezen below:

Time Bend and Break The Bower is out via Chess Club Records on the 10th June and you can pre-order it now.

Yves Jarvis – At the Whims

We’ve followed the work on Montreal‘s Yves Jarvis since his days recording under the moniker Un Blonde, always appreciating how Jarvis maintains such a sense of detail and invention in his sound. Ahead of new album The Zug on ANTI-, Yves Jarvis is back with brand new single ‘At the Whims’. Described as depicting “the arc of civilization,” the track uses psych pop as the thread to weave a tapestry of human history, starting with creation and extending out into a time yet to be realised. A future marked by collapsing empires, as foretold in all empires past.

The Zug is out on the 13th May via ANTI- and you can pre-order it from the Yves Jarvis Bandcamp page.

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If Go Back was in some way an album about returning from the city, then new album Way Out West is what comes after. To be released this June, the record takes direct inspiration from the rural landscape and mindset. A Montana record, made at home, about home. “I’m trying to carve out a sound for us that reflects our Montana roots,” he explains. “I’m trying to evoke the open space. Rural, open— just where we’re from.”

The mood is caught by lead single, ‘Magical Floating Eye’, an unsettled, creeping track that blurs the banal and the mystical. There’s something Lynchian in both the lyricism and delivery, the easy-going rhythm interrupted intermittently by odd wisdom and surreal images, all cloaked in a psych-inflected air that only accentuates the strangeness. But beneath it all, somewhere between the peculiar demands and esoteric vibes, something else stirs. Something that looks surprisingly like hope.

Say something smart, say something funny
walk backwards, speak in tongues
A magical floating eye on a blue plate hanging on a wall in a motel in Deer Lodge, Montana
might make you free

Way Out West is out on the 11th June and you can pre-order it now from the King Ropes Bandcamp page, including on CD and LP.

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The influence of musical history is even more overt in the forthcoming King Ropes record, Go Back Where They Came From. Recorded between Brooklyn and Tacoma across three sessions squeezed into breaks on tour, the album compromises entirely of covers, the band offering reworkings and interpretations of classic songs from the likes of Elton John, Steve Earle, Al Green and Talking Heads.

The goal of the record is far more than emulation. “Most of what I know about songwriting I’ve learned by covering other people’s songs,” Hollier explains. “But I’ve never been interested in copying the original version of a song. The covers I love to hear are when someone takes a great song, and makes it into something new.” A successful cover for King Ropes is not that which is closest to the original, rather a re-imagining that does justice to the creative and emotional power that the first artist worked with.

The process was therefore one of de- and reconstruction. “On this album, we’ve tried to strip the songs down to the bare bones, and then build them back up again and take them pretty far from their original context,” Hollier continues. “I’ve been thinking about cover songs for a long time, and I thought it would be fun to try a covers album with a bunch of songs from all over the map, and take those songs in a bunch of directions.”

Their version of ‘Girls Like Us’ by Mike Ferrio’s Tandy is the perfect example. Taking the slow burn country spirit of the original and pushing it into a newly vivid territory, King Ropes offer a brighter song, the added flourish of trombone from Lucy Hollier lending a real richness. With it’s quiet power, Ferrio’s original occupied a space akin to the too-dark afternoon of a deep winter sunset, and while the King Ropes version is no less wistful, there’s a longevity to the light in the track—a summer’s dusk where the sun’s honeyed drop does not come with the same sense of loss.

Check out the video by Kathy Kasic of Metamorph Films below:

Go Back Where They Came From is out on the 22nd May and you can find more on the King Ropes website.

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