Based in Brooklyn, Ben Van Bonn has made a name combining the traditional and the contemporary, taking a classic American fingerpicked style and reaching in new directions. Debut album Myth of the Middle Rung displayed how evocative this style could be, with singles like ‘Concord, MA’ highlighting a distinctive combination of archaic and digital sensibilities which created something delicate, spacious and shot through with some cryptic ancient power. Now Van Bonn is back with Further Than Thought, a new full-length which strips things back further, forgoing any vocals and removing all instruments but guitar and electric bass. Named after an aquatic portal in the Farallon Islands, first single ‘Great West Arch’ doubles down on intricate fingerpicking to transport the audience to the Californian coast, and serves as a timely reminder that less is often more.

Further Than Thought is out on the 29th November and available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

Blue Deputy – Cypress

Blue Deputy was formed by Andy Bunting in Philadelphia in 2020, and immediately won fans with the self-produced single ‘New Jersey’. Since then, Bunting has moved to Belfast and recruited Caoilfhinn McFadden (bass) and Cathal Francis (guitar and vocals) to form the current Blue Deputy lineup. The band are currently working on their debut EP, and new single ‘Cypress’ is perhaps our first taste of that. Released via new Dalliance Recordings imprint Under The Rolling Y, the song combines everything from soft bedroom pop and lyrical folk rock to the emotional intensity of Midwest emo. Bunting’s vocals smoulder and sway over steady percussion, subtle synths and wistful slide guitar, all coming together to from something that feels soft and raw with a clear-eyed clarity.

Daughter of Swords – Alone Together

Daughter of Swords is the solo project of North Carolina‘s Alex Sauser-Monnig, who you may also know as one third of Mountain Man and one half of The A’s. Their debut album, Dawnbreaker, came out in 2019, and followed a similar folk blueprint to those other projects. But the last few years have been ones of great personal change for Sauser-Monnig, and new single ‘Alone Together’ very much reflects that. Created with help from log-time pals Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso), and TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), the song pulses with synths and blossoming electronics, driven forward on a stream of potent guitar and muscular percussion. It’s a dispatch from what label Psychic Hotline describe as “[a] fresh chapter of exploration and liberation,” exuding a buoyant confidence as we all trudge on through the barrage of bad news and complicated feelings.

Elori Saxl – Grows Along The River Fast

“Arrangements which combine digitally processed recordings of natural phenomena with analogue synths, MIDI samples and woodwind by Stuart Bogie, evoking not only the interplay between geography, ecology and human development in the area, but also the emotional landscape which results.” So we wrote last month when introducing Earth Focus, the new album from  New York-based composer Elori Saxl on Western Vinyl. A soundtrack to the PBS documentary of the same name, the record evokes the Southern Californian topography, especially along the LA River, highlighting the environment’s rhythms and changes, so it is fitting latest single ‘Grows Along The River Fast’ offers a different take to first single ‘Grows Along The River Slow’. A variation which switches up the length and tempo to offer a different picture of the same waterway, susceptible as it is to the varying conditions of the land.

Max García Conover – coming up low

A new month, a new single from Max García Conover, and this time he has company. ‘coming up low’ sees Buenos Aires’ Paula Prieto and New England’s Ben Cosgrove lend their talents, joining Conover on what is a characteristically sincere and tender track. Because while there are more voices in the mix, the song is a lesson in understatement. Mining the image of the moon in all of its isolation and pale sympathy, not to mention the way it encapsulates the stark power of a simple image. “I watched you dress in the soft light of the moon,” as one verse goes, “I was desperate and I was hopeless except for hoping that you wouldnt notice / I watched you dress in the soft light of the moon.” Elsewhere the night comes crashing down, and worst fears are realised, yet the lasting impression is that familiar blend of melancholy and hope experienced when looking up to see the moon rising again.

All month the moon coming up low coming up low coming up low
I awoke and you were missing and you left me a letter in the kitchen

Pocket Full of Crumbs – Ice Water

This summer, San Francisco outfit Pocket Full of Crumbs released In My Hands I Hold A Lucky Cricket, a full-length album on Cherub Dream Records. With its marriage of post-punk, alt rock and shoegaze, the record embraces the twin forces of gauzy texture and crushing weight to create something which nods to the nineties while keeping its eye fixed firmly forward. It saw an admirable degree of variation across the songs—from the twitchy energy of tracks like ‘Blink’ to the altogether heftier ‘In My Home’. Fan favourite ‘Ice Water’ offers yet another dimension, where increased clarity grounds a downbeat and ambiguous sound which threatens to spill over into dark chaos but never quite does, highlighting an understanding of mood and sense of control which is sometimes lacking within the genre.

Sonya – Inside & Out

Sonya released their debut At What Cost? earlier this year, a succinct collection of songs as comfortable offering late-night emotion as it was an upbeat swagger. If this duality marked the album, then new single ‘Inside & Out’ confronts such an idea head on. Another example of Sonya’s fantastic ability to sound at once confessional and carefree, intimate feelings communicated without sacrificing any of sense of confidence or attitude. With a taut rhythm that pulls the audience in and a singalong finale keeping them there until the close, the song is yet more evidence that the star of Sonya is rising and one to watch in the coming months.

‘Inside & Out’ is now available via streaming services.

Steph Cameron – Today

Having just announced a UK and European tour along with fellow Canadian songwriter Abigail Lapell, Saskatoon’s Steph Cameron has shared new single, ‘Today’. Her first new release in seven years, the single offers a glimpse of a full-length forthcoming next year on Neon Moon Records, and sees Cameron build upon the atmospheric and thematically charged style of folk which made previous records Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady and Daybreak Over Jackson Street so special. A song as assured as it is emotive, simmering with brooding longing as it contemplates complex ideas of identity and history with a straightforward confidence. “’Today’ is a song about reconnecting with both our living and ancestral communities,” she explains. “It is about the pain of turning away from your identity and the strength and pride found in turning toward it.”

‘Today’ is out now via Neon Moon Records. You can find the dates of the Steph Cameron and Abigail Lapell tour here. 

Stephen Becker – Range

The forthcoming album from  LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Stephen Becker, Middle Child Syndrome is a record concerned with change in all its guises, exploring the duality of permanence and decay inherent within existence itself with a distinctively personal slant. “The album sees Becker lean into this unorthodox style with an almost stream-of-consciousness immediacy,” we wrote in a preview, “as though the audience is given a direct invitation into his daily existence.” With vocals from Alena Spanger, latest single ‘Range’ puts forward a more subdued, restrained aspect of the record, the absence of drums creating a kind of torpor into which anxious thoughts inevitably seep, and the slow drift of time offers not peace but unease.

Microcosm of your parents, brother left LA
By this age you already had Michael I was late
Melody recycled wind me up and watch me spin

I’m not lost, I’m just outside my range
I’m not lost, I’m just a little spaced

This Lonesome Paradise – Into the Ether

Led by E. Ray Béchard, This Lonesome Paradise specialise in a dark and mysterious brand of Western noir. Last week they released a new record, Luna Nocturna, via Bad Vibes Good Friends, a collection of eight songs that we previously described as “a meditation on the American Dream with all its brutality, broken promises and betrayals.” Likening it to a Cormac McCarthy novel, the label describe the album as “an evocative journey through desolate landscapes and haunting narratives, capturing the raw essence of the American West.” This is very much apparent on centrepiece and standout track ‘Into the Ether’, a slinky and surreal slow-burn rock song that feels like a midnight cruise along a desert highway, taking us deep into the shadowy heart of the nation.

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We introduced the record back in October with ‘De Algo Hay Que Morirse‘, a song about Craig’s habit of dreaming of accidently driving people to their doom which captures this spirit. “I used to drive people off of cliffs, bridges, etc to our deaths and wake up,” she describes. “When I dreamt the dream with my Argentine partner, he responded, ‘You have to die of something–De algo hay que morirse.'” As the song built from its gentle beginnings, it overcame the sense of loss and guilt. “I’m alive and I can’t believe my luck,” as Craig sings around the halfway mark, finding “a carefree joy in accepting her own mortality.”

‘Of Least Resistance’ follows a similar pattern. A song delivered half in English, half in Spanish where Weeper probe at the possibility of a freedom achieved via radical acceptance. The sense that a certain degree of surrender might encourage rather than limit agency. Allow one to shake free of the stifling attempt at control.

Working through such questions is central to the Weeper project. As though the camaraderie of the band members helps them extend a similar fondness and kindness to their selves. “I can’t seem to stop singing about being a friend to myself,” as Craig explains. “I have always been interested in what friendship is made of. As a band, Weeper has gotten to know itself through making this album—and like many bands, at the heart of what we do is a deep friendship.” The result is a tangible sense of trust and confidence which allows Weeper to push into difficult spaces—often within themselves. As highlighted on opener ‘Vipassana’, which confronts situations in which words perhaps fail, though music perhaps conveys what needs to be said.

All of this is aided by Weeper’s willingness to move with such fluidity. Be that between folk and rock styles, upbeat and melancholic moods, or indeed English and Spanish lyrics. “Weeper is down to move and be moved,” as their bio puts it, capturing the diversity of their aims. If the goal of their songs is to explore what friendship is made of, then the answer seems to be a little bit of everything. The fun moments, the dark, the times they show up for you and you them, and even those occasions where things are less than perfect. “Friends aren’t good or bad,” Craig as sings on the reflective pop of ‘Hard Friend’, “you show them what you have / and you give the benefit / of your doubt when you can.”

Weeper is out now via Ghost Mountain Records and available from Bandcamp.

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A release which “accepted this state of things, viewing honesty as the first step towards moving forward.” That’s how we described It’s Been a Long Year Vol. 1, the recent EP by the Montreal-based songwriter Alex Nicol. It was a collection of songs “written in a time when the pandemic only underlined years of chronic neglect and saw once bustling towns pushed further into decay,” which presented a lingering sense of loss with a wry playfulness. This December sees Nicol add a second batch of songs to the EP for a full-length album, Been A Long Year Vol​. ​1 & 2, and new single ‘Working On My Tan’ dials into this mood again to offer sound attuned to both the sadness and mysteriousness of the world we have created.

Watch the video by Jérémie Boivin below:

Been A Long Year Vol​.​1 & 2 is out on the 1st December and you can pre-order it now.

Christopher Tignor – Forms In a Flame

Writing of previous single ‘Ritual of a Thousand Limbs‘, we described how Christopher Tignor’s new album The Art of Surrender “explore[s] instinctive territory, pushing the violin towards an almost atavistic sound which foregoes too much planning or intention to instead embrace raw movement.” The album is out now via Western Vinyl, and final single ‘Forms In a Flame’ is the jewel at the heart of the release. A mammoth, near thirteen-minute collision of poignant classical and urgent electronic styles, fragile, aching violin joined by glitter atmospherics and galloping percussion.

Daneshevskaya – Challenger Deep

Daneshevskaya‘s forthcoming album Long Is The Tunnel, out next month on Winspear, presents a peculiar image of time. One “where the past, present and future are treated not as distinct things but rather parts of an encompassing whole,” as we wrote of single ‘Somewhere in the Middle‘. It’s a fitting device for a record which explores how personal histories and present experiences come to shape the world as we experience it. Latest track ‘Challenger Deep’ is typical of the poetic tone of Daneshevskaya’s work, the wistful fondness of the delivery landing somewhere between lullaby, hymn and love song.

There’s a foxhole prayer I say
A mistake I like to make
Saving you for the end
It’s all pinks and reds
There’s a dog chasing the fence
And now I’ll never see you again

Will you wait for me
Where there is no later on
Will you wait for me at the end, the end

Watch the video filmed by Madeline Leshner and edited by Zach Stone below:

Long Is The Tunnel is out via Winspear on the 10th November and you can pre-order it now from the Daneshevskaya Bandcamp page.

Gilded Lows – Brave

After learning the trade as part of Austin jazz punk outfit Dead Swagger, Spencer Carter has since turned his attention to new project Gilded Lows. Taking some of the croon of the previous band and adding a healthy dose of cowboy attitude, Gilded Lows follows a lineage descending from Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Nick Cave. A country style charged by Spencer’s baritone to sound both full of longing and supremely confident. That old cowboy spirit where the wish for a better life is matched only by nostalgia for what was. The result is a present at once fatalistic and self-deprecating. “I’m not brave / I’m not sweet,” Spencer sings at the close of the track, “In fact, I’m the one who’s terrified of feeling much of anything.”

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

Middle Sattre – Pouring Water

“It’s my way of processing internalized homophobia, religious trauma, and shame from growing up gay in the Mormon church,” explains lead Hunter Prueger of Middle Sattre. Writing songs as an act of both confrontation and defiance. The project started as a solo project in Salt Lake City and has since blossomed into a eight-piece in Austin, retaining the intensely personal tone while pushing the instrumentation in all sorts of interesting directions. The result, as captured by new single ‘Pouring Water’, lands somewhere between Sufjan Stevens and Typhoon, where collaboration brings a immersive richness to the sound but never occludes the intimate lyricism at the track’s heart.

Riley Skinner – Dirty

Based in Minneapolis, singer-songwriter Riley Skinner makes music that invites the listener into a world of honest and courageous vulnerability. Next month, she will release new album Surrender, a record that explores queer identity through the lens of the natural world, embracing its inherent chaos to experience the peace and acceptance at its heart. Latest single ‘Dirty’ is a great example, a quietly powerful folk rock song about finding the bravery to be your true self. “When I wrote ‘Dirty’,” Skinner describes, “I was thinking about the ways in which we withdraw from closeness and love because we feel we are not worthy or deserving of receiving it.”

Surrender releases on 10^th November and you can pre-order it now from the Riley Skinner Bandcamp page.

TESHA – Like a man

Back in 2019, we wrote about Growing Pains II by Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based artist TESHA. A collection of songs we called “ethereal yet rooted in personal suffering,” it drew on the likes of  Bjork and Fever Ray to combine experimental electronics with an otherworldly power. Now TESHA is back with a brand new single, ‘Like a Man’, which seethes with righteous anger as it takes aim at the patriarchy and the ongoing unrest in her home country. A dark and pulsating pop song, it urges an end to the masculine posturing and the blind search for power, instead finding strength in compassion and vulnerability.

‘Like a man’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Upper Narrows – My Lottery Dream

While We’re Warm, the upcoming album from Upper Narrows on Repeating Cloud, represents a meeting point between digital and organic sensibilities. “[Tyler] Jackson’s delivery [provides] that human core to what could otherwise be an almost extraterrestrial soundscape,” as we put it in a preview. “His voice [adds] a warmth so often lost in synth pop, and helps the album to live up to its name.” The final single before the album’s release, ‘My Lottery Dream’ furthers this style, leading the listener into a detailed, technological soundscape with the vocals as a guiding hand. But despite the blips and bloops, it maintains a real heartfelt humanity.

Weeper – De Algo Hay Que Morirse

‘De Algo Hay Que Morirse’, the new single from Buenos Aires-based indie pop band Weeper, was written about a recurring dream experienced by lead Mary Craig. “I used to drive people off of cliffs, bridges, etc to our deaths and wake up,” she describes. “When I dreamt the dream with my Argentine partner, he responded, ‘You have to die of something – De algo hay que morirse.’” The song starts gentle and heartfelt as it reflects on the dream’s sense of loss and guilt, but builds in energy as it progresses. “I’m alive and I can’t believe my luck,” Craig sings around the halfway mark as she comes to find a carefree joy in accepting her own mortality.

‘De Algo Hay Que Morirse’ is out now via streaming services.

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Following on from the magnificent Tender on Whited Sepulchre Records, Denver‘s Allison Lorenzen has returned with brand new single, ‘The Fourth Cycle’. The song probes into the multitude of emotions which accompany significant change, from bereavement to impetus and everything in between, without too much by way of intent or judgement. Rather its slow sound sits within this conflicted headspace, examining the situation’s each and every nuance, if only to ground itself as things around it shift and alter.

Annie Sumi x Brava Kilo – Chattels

A vehicle for artists Annie Sumi and Brava Kilo to work through their histories, Kintsugi is described as an “anti-racist, interactive, multi-disciplinary art installation” which explores ideas of heritage and historical trauma in the context of the Japanese Canadian internment. The installation opens this week at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto, and the duo are also releasing an EP of the same name. Kintsugi, the Japanese practise of mending what was broken. First single ‘Chattels’ draws upon archival documentation which listed the belongings stolen from their ancestors during this period, both acknowledging the injury sustained through such losses and applying the imagery to the wider experience of alienation and stigma.

You can find out more about the project on the Kintsugi Installation webpage.

Gillian Stone – Raven’s Song

Writing of single ‘Amends‘ back in July, we described how Toronto/Tkaronto-based artist Gillian Stone combines post-rock and folk to explore themes of addiction and mental health struggles, with that track focusing on the anger stage of grief. Latest single ‘Raven’s Song’ continues the development, moving onto the bargaining period and complicated by what Stone calls a “state of limerence.” It’s a song which captures a mind seized by obsession through natural imagery. Stone carrying a torch through a nocturnal forest, a place of dark rivers and eyes in the night, hoping to go down to the water and snuff out the fierce burn in her hands. The song’s video was co-directed by Emma Buchanan and Amir Heidarian along with Stone herself. Watch below:

‘Raven’s Song’ is available now from the Gillian Stone Bandcamp page.

H.C. McEntire – Soft Crook

Following her 2020 sophomore solo album Eno Axis, H.C. McEntire has returned with a brand new single. Titled ‘Soft Crook’, the song is what McEntire describes as “an exercise in vulnerability and trust,” a slice of stark country rock that explores her experiences with depression. A refusal to shrink away from the experience in all of its struggle and pain, looking the beast right in the eyes and finding power somewhere deep within. Albeit not the power of bold action, but instead the quiet, lasting courage that comes with treating yourself with kindness and understanding. “The chorus became an anthem, of sorts,” McEntire describes, “a mantra for letting go of guilt in needing these things—whether medication or TV shows or other vices—to offer myself some grace.”

Do whatever dose you need to
to make it through the night

Half Gringa – Miranda

With new EP Ancestral Home coming early in 2023, Chicago‘s Half Gringa has shared the first single ‘Miranda’ as an introduction. A song which builds upon the themes seen on 2020’s Force to Reckon and last year’s single ‘Sevenwater’, it nevertheless takes a more introspective tone. The change mirrors the recording process, which saw Isabel Olive move away from the fast-paced collaboration of recent albums and back to the intimacy of her earlier solo work. “I love collaborating, but at heart, I’m very introverted,” Olive explains. “Having a rich inner life is essential to me, which I think can overlap with both collaboration and solitude. I sense that each project I work on demands something different of me, and I’ve been trying to listen to my own instincts for that more and more.” Check out the video directed by Olive along with Robert Salazar below:

‘Miranda’ is out now and available from the Half Gringa Bandcamp page. Ancestral Home will be released on the 27th January.

June McDoom – Stone After Stone

Raised in South Florida and now based in New York, June McDoom is readying the release of her self-titled debut EP on Brooklyn label Temporary Residence Ltd. Her music is influenced by a love for 60s and 70s folk, intricate jazz and early soul discovered while studying a degree in Jazz Performance, and the reggae of her childhood home. McDoom takes all the ingredients of typical folk music and updates it for new audiences and a new era, exploring themes of self-discovery and self-acceptance along the way. Lead single ‘Stone After Stone’ is a good example, the timeless vocals swirling amidst instrumentation that is rich and multi-layered, despite its hushed nature.

Kathryn Mohr – Holly

With new release Holly coming soon on The Flenser, California-based multi-instrumentalist Kathryn Mohr has shared the title track as the latest single. Building upon the spacious lo-fi soundscapes of 2020 album As If, the song sees Mohr embrace a stormier ambience, something drawn perhaps from the surroundings of rural New Mexico where she recorded the album with Madeline Johnston (Midwife). What results is no less introspective than the previous record but somehow larger, as though Kathryn Mohr has excavated a larger space within herself, complete with its own climates and depths.

wanted / need her / tell her father
hero holly / feeling sorry
heat up heaven to unsettle
feel it / hold it / take it slowly
out of reach of my hands

Holly is out via The Flenser on the 21st October and you can pre-order it now

Weeper – Petal

Based in Buenos Aires, Weeper is the project of Mary Craig, José Sanchez and Agustina Perrotta. Their latest release, an EP called Morale out now on Ghost Mountain Records, arose from a break the band took from working on a full-length album, a collection of six songs they describe as “self-soothing” which aim to comfort and console amidst life’s worries. Lead single ‘Petal’ illustrates this nicely, combining melancholy and solace with its fingerpicked twelve-string guitar and gentle melody. “Hanging on like a petal,” Craig sings, “aching through season,” on a track Weeper describe as “an ode to accompanying oneself through life.”

Ziyad Al-Samman – Hard To Say

After spending time in various bands around London, half-Syrian, London-based songwriter Ziyad Al-Samman decided to go it alone, developing a distinctive brand of psych pop which employs equal parts fun and feeling. Out via Handsome Dad Records, new single ‘Hard To Say’ is the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, a dreamy track which overlays retro nostalgia to the pressing present moment, serving as both a tribute to and subversion of classic pop. “I always wanted a charming and pompous ‘lala’ sing along on a track, much used by my favourites Pulp and Blur in their early writing, and this just fit the song perfectly,” Al-Samman says. “I like the innocence and playfulness it brings to the climax of the song. Did you know ‘la’ actually means ‘no’ in Arabic?” Watch the video directed by Andrea Mae Perez below:

‘Hard to Say’ is out now and available from all the usual places.

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The first taste of the record is ‘Across the City’, a polished power pop jam that belies its lo-fi roots. Kaleta wrote and recorded the record in various Airbnbs in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, and ‘Across the City’ attempts to capture the sense of uncertainty and excitement of living in an unfamiliar city. There’s a sun-soaked easiness to the arpeggiated guitars, but there’s a wistful edge too, sights and sounds and smells of the city evoking a vivid, bittersweet nostalgia for a certain someone.

Ultimately, despite being immersed in the bustle of millions of other people, it’s a song about a solitary existence. “My friends in Buenos Aires would always comment how everyone leaves the city in the summertime to escape the unbearable heat,” Kaleta explains, “and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be totally alone in the capital. Beautiful, peaceful, surreal, and, ultimately, very lonely.”

‘Across the City’ is out now and available from the Tincho Bandcamp page.

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