Toronto-based indie rock outfit Arenas are gearing up to the release of their debut full-length Truth Come Alive this spring, and new single ‘Quitting’ gives an indication of what to expect. Described by the band as “a snapshot of the fear associated with giving up on something,” the track uses a blend of playful energy and tangible weight to celebrate the cathartic joy of throwing in the towel. The result owes as much to acts like Pixies as it does contemporary post-punk, and packs a real punch with its sardonic charm. In a world of productivity and parasitic middle managers, giving up might be one of the last radical acts left available to us.

Brown Horse – Corduroy Couch

We featured Brown Horse‘s debut album Reservoir when writing about our favourite releases of 2024, praising their sometimes nostalgic, sometimes Gothic brand of folk rock. Maintaining the sense of momentum, the band are wasting no time with their second full-length, All the Right Weakness, which will be released this spring via Loose Music. Lead single ‘Corduroy Couch’ is available to listen to right now, a song which melds alt country and slacker rock to offer the same sense of sincerity, urgency, specificity and strangeness which marked the previous release.

We watched The Matrix on a corduroy couch
The smell of the ocean was drying on your skin
Your big retriever’s name was Hank
And I know I’ll miss him

The Burning Hell – Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board

Writing of the album Garbage Island back in 2023, we described how The Burning Hell lived up to their name, making “everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock,” to offer “a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world.” Coming soon via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND, the new Burning Hell album Ghost Palace continues this mission, albeit with the requisite correction that the world it is being released into is now comfortably mid-apocalypse. Single ‘Bottle of Chianti, Cheese And Charcuterie Board’ finds Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll in a familiarly impish mood, pouring scorn on materialist bourgeois distractions with an oddball lyrical journey. Strangers named Jason, collectors of medieval swords, a Buddhist book club in the sky frequented by long-haired former tennis pros and part-time Rabbis. No, it’s not a new Pynchon novel. The Burning Hell are back.

Watch the video directed by Graeme Patterson below:

Ghost Palace is out on the 7th March via You’ve Changed Records and BB*ISLAND and you can pre-order it now.

Byland & The Bones of J.R. Jones – Jubilee

“Trac[es] the disappointment and exasperation loaded into any search for belonging, while arcing towards a sense of acceptance.” That’s how we described Heavy For A While, last year’s album by Albuquerque-born, Seattle-based artist Alie Renee Byland, AKA Byland, praising the release for its willing to allow “competing and seemingly contradictory emotions to occupy the same space.” With a tour with Deep Sea Diver on the horizon, Byland has teamed up The Bones of J.R. Jones for new single, ‘Jubilee’. It’s a duet that utilises the chemistry between the vocals to great effect, mining a sense of hushed intimacy in its slow bloom before the poignant drama of the weighty finale.

Constant Follower – Almost Time To Go

Towards the end of 2024, we introduced The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, the forthcoming album from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower, singles like ‘Whole Be‘ and ‘All Is Well‘ highlighting how the band have adopted a newly ethereal sound to explore a myriad of themes from parenthood to addiction and recovery. With the album’s spring release fast approaching, Constant Follower have unveiled new single, ‘Almost Time to Go’. Berlin’s Andy Aquarius adds harp, crafting a sound shadowy yet shot through with light, carrying a message of endurance in a typically compassionate manner.

The Coral Gables – Heavy Load

New York-based trio The Coral Gables have made a name combining country twang with good old fashioned rock and roll, not to mention a distinctively smart lyrical style. Latest single ‘Heavy Load’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, bringing to life an existential wander around the streets of Washington DC by riffing on the Bob Dylan classic ‘Mississippi’. I’ve been through the wringer / I’ve been through hell,” lead Kenny Hoffman sings in the opening lines. “I’m walking through a city / That I used to know well.” The sound itself is full of warm country tones and easy-going confidence, yet Hoffman’s vocals carry a tangible edge. Something which sits at the intersection of desperation and wry fatalism, the voice of a man baffled by the world occurring all around him.

I’m doing what I can
Doing what I must
I’m serving my sentence
And the sentence was just
It’s not an undue burden
I’m reaping what I sowed
I’m carrying a heavy heavy heavy load

Dayydream – Fucked Up

Led by Glasgow-based visual artist and musician Chloe Trappes and featuring Loup Havenith (drums), Samuel Rafanell-Williams (lead guitar) and Dillon Salvi (bass guitar), Dayydream is a project which straddles shoegaze, slowcore and indie rock to create a sound both hazy and deep. Latest single ‘Fucked Up’ embodies this style, its title perhaps belying the song’s inviting warmth but describing its confessional tone to a tee, the sound suspended with a light mist yet not without its own internal force. The drums lead a gradual build across the track’s length, but any expectation of a shoegaze crescendo is unfounded, instead allowing a more understated, emotive air to be the lasting impression.

Molto Ohm – Sponsored #1

Molto Ohm is the new project from Italy-born, Brooklyn-based artist and composer Matteo Liberatore which examines the contemporary moment—where the rise of digital connection seems inversely proportional to relations within the physical world, and the fabric of society is changing if not disintegrating altogether. The electronic sound combines dance beats and shimmering melodies with vocal samples and environmental sounds, leading to something ostensibly intimate but ultimately alienating in its synthetic form. Ahead of debut album FEED on New Focus Recordings, single ‘Sponsored #1’ introduces the style. A track which “delves into the commodification of self-care,” as Liberatore describes, “where the quest for mental well-being is shaped by algorithms and consumer-driven promises of a better you.”

FEED is out on the 21st March via New Focus Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

Pink Must – Morphe Sun

Based on mutual genre-bending inclinations and a deepening chemistry, Pink Must is the new recording project of Brooklyn-based sound artists and musicians Mari ‘More Eaze’ Rubio and Lynn Avery. Forthcoming via 15 love, their self-titled debut is both something of an introduction and mission statement. It establishes an interplay between polish and dissonance, as well as an often wryly sardonic vocal style and conscious resistance to easy labelling at every turn. Take opening track ‘Morphe Sun’, a glitchy song Avery describes as “almost a remix of itself” which presents a vainglorious figure from the perspective of a friend who can’t help but find some part of their personality charming. “u hated the sunset / didn’t match the shade of the palette / u wore that day / could have been worse,” as the second verse goes. “reignited / the taste of smoke in teeth / gotta confess i kinda found it sweet.”

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Latest single ‘Two Circles’ encapsulates the duality of such ideas. A song which allows competing and seemingly contradictory emotions to occupy the same space. “[The track] feels like it changes meaning each time I get to sing it,” Byland explains. “I see myself in this song. I see others. I see love, pain, anger, frustration, joy, shame, angst, everything and nothing.” The sound’s hushed restraint approaches this with an attentive care, giving equal weight to every shade of feeling, and ultimately emerging with a decidedly empathetic tone. “To me, this song feels like meeting another version of yourself at the bar and experiencing for yourself the curiosity and compassion that you might lend a stranger,” as co-writer Jake Byland puts it. BYLAND is not afraid to present the difficult alongside the hopeful, and thus carries the authenticity of emotions truly lived.

Photo by Rachel Bennet

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Based in South London, Alice Boyd is a singer-songwriter and sound artist who looks to address our increasingly disconnected position within the wider ecological system. This might be through residences and performances in botanical gardens, travelling to collect field recordings or even making music with plants themselves. As the title suggests, new single ‘Life in Cities’ finds Boyd mourning this separation from nature and pining for a more interconnected way of living. A hushed, reflective folk song which gazes out at its surroundings with a heavy heart. “Life in cities now / sleep no more,” as the opening lines go, “stare out my window / ’til the break of dawn.” Melancholy not as a form of pessimism, but rather a feeling born of knowing what nature could offer us should we let it in. Watch the video by Edith Morris below:

‘Life in Cities’ is out now and available from the Alice Boyd website.

BYLAND – Postcard

BYLAND, the recording project of Albuquerque-born, Seattle-based artist Alie Renee Byland, will next year release a new full-length album Heavy For A While. Latest single ‘Postcard’ gives an insight into what to expect from the release. Mournful but never without hope, the song explores the concept of searching for a place to call home within a world in which things too often fall away. Meagan Grandall of Lemolo sings the last verse before joining Byland for the final chorus, something which elevates the song both stylistically and thematically. “Meagan is someone whose friendship fostered so much of my own growth, and whose music and voice warms and inspires me,” Byland explains. “In the final chorus, we both sing the main melody, doubling each other, which feels almost like a sister comforting another sister in this life of too often ‘goodbyes’.”

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

Jackie West – Tiny Flowers ii

Back in 2022 we wrote about ‘Amelia‘, a single from New York-based songwriter Jackie West which offered a picture of close friendship in all of its persistence and comfort. But working within this warm sound was something more mysterious, dipping beneath the surface fondness to evoke the intangible connections we might share with other people. Released via Ruination Record Co., new single ‘Tiny Flowers ii’ builds upon these foundations, drawing the audience in with tenderness yet remaining distinctively ambiguous in its overall tone. The opening verse’s wistful fondness is undercut by the refrain: “I don’t fall in love like that anymore.” The line complicates the second listen and every one thereafter, its gravity subverting the track’s structure and perspective from what the sound might originally suggest.

‘Tiny Flowers ii’ is out now via the Jackie West Bandcamp page.

Jacob Faurholt – Words Whispered From the Sand

We’ve long admired the work of Jacob Faurholt, most recently with album When the Spiders Crawl and single ‘Madness on the Rise‘. The latter was a song “exploring mental struggles with Faurholt’s characteristically empathetic and understanding style,” as we wrote, [but carrying] a certain starkness too as the electric guitar rumbles with palpable weight, a formidable force bubbling up around fragile vulnerability.” With new album Burn Burn Here out now, Faurholt has shared single ‘Words Whispered From the Sand’, which embodies the record’s foreboding yet tender tone. Faurholt recorded the album at his home studio beneath his children’s bedroom, its hushed quiet as much a practical necessity as anything else. The result feels like being invited into an artist’s home to listen to what comes out in the still hours of the night.

Burn Burn Here is out now and available via the Jacob Faurholt Bandcamp page.

Luke De-Sciscio – Clever Ghost

Heaven, the latest full-length album from songwriter Luke De-Sciscio, felt like the work of an artist finding their true voice. “As though,” as we put it in our review, “having built up momentum across the years, De-Sciscio was able to record an album free of overthinking and overworking, instead tapping into an intuitive flow which charges the songs with a sense of poetic authenticity.” Not one to squander this headspace, De-Sciscio has returned with ‘Clever Ghost’. The stripped-back folk sound splits the difference between warm intimacy and tortured loneliness, playing like the patient confession of a man caught between memories and dreams.

‘Clever Ghost’ is available now on a variety of streaming platforms.

Oh, Rose – Back 2 U

We’ve followed Olympia’s Oh, Rose since the release of their exceptional SEVEN, so it was with great excitement that we saw Olivia Rose and co. have returned with brand new single, ‘Back 2 U’. Their first release since 2019’s While My Father Sleeps, the song shows a newly pop/dance dimension to the Oh, Rose sound. But however changed the style might be, it is the sense of returning which stands out most clearly. “I remember when I wrote this I wondered who/what I was going back to. Songs have a funny way of revealing themselves and we took our time with this one,” Rose explained in an Instagram post. “Right now I’m gonna leave it at back to music, back to friendship, back to y’all in a way that feels lighter than before… I hope this song can be a roadmap to LOVE.”

ask me where I am
the maps they all trace back
back to you

Speedrun – Hysteria

‘Hysteria’ is the new single from Speedrun, the “indie chic” project of New York’s Nina Lüders. Named after the psychological condition that was originally considered unique to women (the word originates from “hystera”, the Greek word for uterus), the song explores what Lüders describes as “the false equivalency of female rage as psychosis, independence as irritability, autonomy as threat.” Beneath the angular guitars and propulsive percussion and indignant backing vocal (“do what the fuck I want!”) lies an uplifting message of female solidarity and empowerment. “This song is for the mothers and sisters in my life who raised me,” Lüders describes, “and taught me to turn my rage into light, compassion, and forgiveness.” Watch the lyrics video by John Filmanowicz below:

‘Hysteria’ is out now via streaming services.

talker – Drag Your Feet

“I’ve said that the songs on my new record are my most honest songs ever,” says Celeste Tauchar of talker of her forthcoming debut album, “but that doesn’t always just mean being honest with others. Sometimes, it means accepting a hard truth for yourself.” This is particularly true of latest single ‘Drag Your Feet’, a song written after the long decline of a five-year relationship. It’s a hooky indie rock song that marbles sadness over the end with a sense of relief in finally admitting the truth, a big messy catharsis that burns a new hopeful path into the future.

‘Drag Your Feet’ is out now via streaming services.

WILDES – heartbreak is silent

Following the release of debut album Other Words Fail Me back in January, Ella Walker’s WILDES is readying a new EP for release next Spring. Titled Subsidence, the record promises to see the Anglo-Irish songwriter and producer return to her roots, recorded at home with the help of long-time collaborator Matt Wiggins. Walker says the EP “centres around the abrupt end of a loving relationship that left me quite devastated and shocked,” and lead single ‘heartbreak is silent’ tackles this theme head on. It’s a pulsing synth pop song with a calm, clear-eyed centre, capturing the strange mixture of strength and vulnerability that follow in the aftermath of heartbreak.

‘heartbreak is silent’ is out now via the WILDES Bandcamp page.

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