The brand new Trails and Ways full-length Open Water will be released soon, and the band have shared two singles to reintroduce themselves after their time away. Described by the band as a song “about making peace, learning Spanish, and swimming open water,” first single ‘Patiently’ immediately re-establishes what made the group so fun back in the day. And its upbeat, positive sound carries a fitting message too. A reminder that life is richer in company, and that social isolation can be overcome, written and performed by a trio who worked through that very process themselves to bring the track to life.

Follow-up ‘Young’ is no less accomplished, though dials down some of its predecessor’s energy to offer something more sleek and dreamy. But despite the decidedly hazy sound, there is still a central rhythm to the song, a sense of forward momentum which speaks to the themes of growth and maturation which inform the track. “When we were young / we didn’t sit, too much to do,” as the opening verse goes, “now we’re settled down / we don’t move over the ground like we used to.”

Both ‘Patiently’ and ‘Young’ can be found on the Trails and Ways Bandcamp page.

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“I wanted to give myself the agency to distort all truths to see what jumped out to me as truthful in a reactive, and sometimes illusionary or misleading, sense–in all of this faulty rawness,” the San Francisco-based artist explains of the release. “I was really drawn to sounds and images that felt satisfyingly ‘false’–I was drawn to Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures, my favorite drag queens in Los Angeles who magically bombed every Monday, Ryan Trecartin’s A Family Finds Entertainment, Sunik Kim’s Potential, and so much more. I wanted frenzy that felt disembodying–so disembodying that this time of my life could conjure a laugh.”

With the album’s release quickly approaching, Lucy Liyou has returned with brand new single ‘Crisis (Identity)’. One of several hinge points within the MR COBRA narrative, the song confuses the line between crisis and epiphany, its protagonist Babygirl coming to embrace the dualism or chimeric tendencies of their character. Not quite grasping whether the admission is an exercise in masochism, liberation or both simultaneously. We follow the track from the initial clarity (such an identity is unruly, shameful, an act of performance or else a plain crisis) into something far more nuanced and interesting. That is, the realisation that perhaps any one person’s identity is too large to fully capture with any blanket label. That parts of us will always clash with others, and that contradiction is not an aberration but an inherent feature. Which means that MR COBRA does not represent the classic, affirming arc so familiar in artistic identity quests, but instead something more difficult, messy and real.

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The recording moniker of Chicago-based artist Niko Francis, Air Mail makes lo-fi indie pop inspired by the likes of Alex G and MJ Lenderman. The latest in the Future Gods Unearth series, new single ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ uses this melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange (but recently all too familiar) sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance. Written amid news on the genocide in Gaza and wildfires in LA, Francis describes the song as “a quietly striking meditation on connection and collapse, written from the stillness of a bedroom but echoing far beyond it.” It’s laidback and understated, but with a quiet power, and ends on a note of defiance, if not quite hope.

Where you are, you belong
Can’t destroy, what you can do
Can’t erase, what is ours
Because we, we are wide awake

‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ is out now via streaming services.

Basciville & Ailbhe Reddy – Your Own Head

Next year will see the release of the sophomore album by Basciville, the folk rock project of Wexford brothers Cillian and Lorcan Byrne. To announce the release, the duo have unveiled lead single, ‘Your Own Head’, a collaboration with Dublin singer-songwriter Ailbhe Reddy. It’s a stark and searing duet, beginning with the spacious emotion of a dark and empty room before swelling with the band’s signature cinematic intensity. “’Your Own Head’ was the first song written from the batch of songs that would become the second album. One of those songs that falls out in one go and thematically ties everything together,” Basciville describe. “It laments the ways we compromise the self in the name of love, religion and society at large. It touches on the balance between some global moral duty, the pull to be present and keeping the self safe.”

‘Your Own Head’ is out now via streaming services.

eillah – Amaranth / My Own Mouth

The best part of four years since release of album in my head, Peoria-born, Chicago-based songwriter eillah has returned with brand new double single Amaranth / My Own Mouth. With guidance from producer, engineer and drummer Jack Henry, eillah uses the tracks to push their sound in new directions, lifting the inherent ethereality of the lo-fi aesthetic which marked the last record and transplanting it into a newly rich folk style. The result exists in-between states—be that ambiguity and clarity, rawness and polish, reality and dreams—and opens up a whole new avenue for eillah to explore moving forward. A style uniquely positioned to mine the full depth of an emotional landscape and present an inner world in all of its beauty and contradiction.

Evelyn – Three Eagles

Evelyn is recording project of California-born, New York-based artist Dani Lencioni, who makes inventive indie pop that’s thick with the lived-in soul of alt country. Released later last week, the latest Evelyn single ‘Three Eagles’ is a great example, a rich and swaying song that “responds to the dissonance between everyday beauty and the grief of current events.” Produced by Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee collaborator Nick Kinsey, the song was recorded in his Hudson Valley studio and has all the warmth and authenticity of its analogue recording set-up. “I try to put myself to sleep, I try to take my time and breathe,” Lencioni sings in the chorus, which perfectly captures the track’s sense of desperately trying to feel ok in an often hostile world. “I try to think of something sweet, I’m screaming in my dreams.”

Laika Songs – Visitor

This December sees Evan Brock’s Laika Songs return with second album I can feel an ending, picking up the threads in the wake of debut record Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light while pushing the project in new sonic directions. Together with a band featuring Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) on guitar, Dominic Angelella on bass and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty) with drums and sequencer, Brock blends the organic and the digital to create songs full of curiosity. A sound fitting for a record all about the slow, circuitous process of self-discovery, where the truth is something caught in glimpses when you least expect it. Opener ‘Visitor’ embodies this style, embracing confusion and clarity as two parts of the same whole, though always reaching for those small glimmers where the path forward is revealed.

LEYA – Weaving (YHWH Nailgun Version)

Following on from a rework of single ‘Corners’ by Channel Beads earlier in the year, a reimagining we described as “a heightened version of the original, playing like the interstitial space between the Now and the Then with all the instinctive longing left intact,” LEYA have invited experimental rock outfit YHWH Nailgun to reconceptualise another track from their acclaimed 2024 EP I Forget Everything. Driven by Marilu Donovan’s harp, the original offered a mood somewhere between medieval and ethereal, though YHWH Nailgun conjure an altogether more subterranean vibe. One no less ambiguous or alluring, though this time glinting not with a celestial grace but instead the dark, metallic edge of the underground.

Peiriant – Pwls

“With an experimental sound that draws on everything from folk and post-rock to classical and sound art, mid Wales duo Peiriant combine traditional and electronic styles with samples and found objects for semi-improvised pieces [resulting] in an almost sculptural approach to music.” So we wrote of the work of Rose and Dan Linn-Pearl back in 2024 upon the release of single ‘Taflu D​ŵ​r’, a track born of the push and pull between violin and electric guitar. With new album Plant coming via Recordiau NAWR, Peiriant are back with single ‘Pwls’, and while it’s every bit as finely crafted as its predecessor, it also shows marked stylistic differences too. Because, living up to its title (‘pulse’ in English), ‘Pwls’ displays a newfound rhythm and movement, the violin, played pizzicato, skating over a Moog bassline and infusing the atmospheric sound with a constant sense of motion.

Sam Woodring – 1,000 Ways to Die

You might recognise Maryland-born artist Sam Woodring from a number of different projects, be it the post-hardcore outfit Two Inch Astronaut which made a name in the 2010s, or the genre-bending Mister Goblin which rose from its ashes. Each offered a chance at reinvention, and now Woodring is setting out under his own name to instigate another stylistic change. Though ostensibly a solo endeavour, Mister Goblin drew on a range of collaborators to bring its varied sound to life, but new EP Mechanical Bull, out via Pretzle Records, sees Sam Woodring eschew all outside influence, and indeed anything beyond simple guitar and vocals. Opener ‘1,000 Ways to Die’ shows how this modest arrangement lacks nothing for emotional power, submerging itself in childhood memories to explore ideas of fear, fondness and nostalgia with a style that’s at once playful and entirely heartfelt.

Me and my sister sitting on the sofa
Counting down death till our eyes glazed over
Didn’t register as such
Didn’t count for much too much
Back then
She said what’s on the other channel
I said Nick Cannon’s Wild N’ Out
But the kid next door has Faces of Death on VHS
We should see what that’s about

Tōth – Not Broken

Back in October we shared ‘Spiraling’, a single from Tōth (AKA Alex Toth from Rubblebucket), ahead of a new release via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy. “The song appears relatively spare on the surface,” we wrote, “but as Toth details an experience of precarious love it blossoms into something altogether richer and more immersive, the sound rising to meet the interior weather of its singer. The result manages to evoke the duality of human being, where benign surfaces mask roiling energy beneath the surface, always threatening to spill into the world.” The album, titled And The Voice Said and set for release next February, is full of such duality, as highlighed by new single, ‘Not Broken’. A track which confronts a default setting of negativity with its polar opposite, looking to puncture pessimism by sheer force of will. “I wrote this as a message to myself: a response to my darkest feelings about life,” Toth explains. “I may not show it outwardly, but my default is to be a pretty fucking negative guy. So I selfishly wrote a song that would hopefully help me feel a little better from time to time.”

And The Voice Said will be released on the 23rd February via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy and you can pre-order it now.

Wendy Eisenberg – Will You Dare

Earlier this year, New York‘s Wendy Eisenberg announced her signing to Joyful Noise Recordings with a standalone single ‘I Don’t Miss You’, which we said “meditate[d] on human connection from a novel perspective… [with] their trademark mix of technical intricacy and intuitive improvisation.” Now they are back with another single, titled ‘Will You Dare’, which displays another side to their diverse practice. What Eisenberg calls “a simple little song about true love and the passage of time,” the track is sun-dappled and deceptively simple, drawing inspiration from the greats of seventies folk and country in its disarming candour and ultimately proving audacious in its willingness to cut to the heart of the matter. ‘Will You Dare’ is the real question,” as Eisenberg explains. “Do you dive into the impossibility of true love, be shameless, even though if you’re doing it right it’ll rip you to shreds?”

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Recording under the moniker Bernardo, vocalist, guitarist and producer Sonia Bernardo combines elements of jazz, indie rock and alt-soul to create songs which owe equal debts to her Portuguese and British heritage. Last week saw the release of Secrets Of Six-Figure Women, Bernardo’s debut full-length album which builds upon the promise of early releases to realise this sound fully—a record packed with confidence and sophistication which meditates on what it means to strive and desire within contemporary society. Single ‘Bobby’s Song’ serves as an ideal entry for the uninitiated, highlighting the sleek mood, intricate detail and assured attitude of the release as a whole.

EERA – Honey, do you see me

The recording project of Berlin-based Norwegian artist Anna Lena Kirsten Bruland, EERA has made a mark in recent years with a moody brand of dream pop. New full-length I’ll stop when I’m done, coming soon via Test Card Recordings, has picked a suitably evocative subject to further the style. Taking its title from a quote by Marilyn Monroe, the album explores the lives of the iconic starlets of Hollywood’s Golden Era, as well as those of the characters they brought to life on the silver screen. Ahead of the album’s release, EERA has shared new single ‘Honey, do you see me’, a track inspired by Billy Wilder’s sixties classic The Apartment. “I was fascinated by the fact that the main character (an intelligent and beautiful woman) is madly in love with a man who has a wife and the boss of a big company,” Bruland explains. “It affected her self-confidence with this man playing with her feelings, promising her the ‘world’ etc. I wanted to write a song from her side of the story but also exaggerate these types of feelings in the song, where you almost feel a bit mad. The desperation of trying to be loved by someone who really doesn’t want to be with you takes over your self-worth. You forget about yourself, and all the focus is on him.”

I’ll Stop When I’m Done will be released on the 26th September via Test Card Recordings.

ear – Ceremony

The project of Yaelle Avtan and Jonah Paz, ear make glitchy collages of indie pop and electronic music that draw on the duo’s background in “experimental electronic hardcore” and twee folk. Following some near-viral success on streaming services with early singles, ear recently released their debut album The Most Dear and the Future, which presents their unique and oddly compelling style to the world proper. Each of the eight songs are short and sweet, slipping effortlessly from gentle, near-whispered pop to headphone-shaking electronica in the blink of an eye. It all feels very now. Like indie pop for the age of short form video, kind of wild and hyperactive but also sad and lonely in a way that’s not easy to describe, nostalgic for something that has never existed. It would fit on the soundtrack to the next Jane Schoenbrun film for sure. You could really start anywhere, but ‘Ceremony’s is my current favourite, so check it out below.

His His – Hardcore Band

We last wrote about His His, AKA Toronto-based songwriter Aidan Belo, back in October 2024 with the release of EP Good Gold, with songs like ‘My Friend Wants to be a Freemason‘ offering “a gentle and folk-inflected [sound] that wears an air of weary wistfulness like the grain in an old film photograph.” Now Belo is returning with brand new EP ’25 via Victory Pool, and single ‘Hardcore Band’ indicates the direction of the release. Recorded entirely to a Tascam cassette deck, the track finds His His at its most fuzzy and intimate, maintaining the earnest tone which has long marked the project and dialling up the closeness through a gauze of DIY texture. Lyrically, the song takes on the age old problem of any folk songwriter. Namely, all of your friends wishing you were in something cooler like a hardcore band instead.

Jamie Lidell & Luke Schneider – The Passing

Fans of experimental music will no doubt be familiar with Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider, the former one of the UK’s premier practitioners of neo-soul, the latter a renowned pedal steel player pioneering within the genre of ambient country. But their new collaborative album is something different. One designed to aid in the inner explorations brought about by Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy, and awake to the true depths of art’s potential. “A mind is often found more exposed during psychedelic experiences,” Lidell explains. “Specifically in a therapeutic setting, where trust is key to approach issues and work through events in the way of growth. This is music to support and guide the listening with or without psychedelic sensory heightening.” Single ‘The Passing’ is a suitably immersive introduction, regardless of whether you go in sober or substance-assisted.

Jonny Tex – Heifer

Hailing from Boston, MA, Jonny Tex is a youth pastor turned songwriter who makes what has been described as “post-faith slacker rock.” Out via Happene Twice, debut single Heifer / Cherubhead welcomes listeners into this distinctive style, with the lead track pairing playfulness, peculiarity and something more grievous. A song inspired by “Texas floods and Southern dread” which twists the easygoing rhythms and droll swagger of the slacker genre into strange shapes, a sense of desperation needling beneath the surface as the clatter of percussion veers between roguish and unnerving. “I don’t wanna be / Cattle in a flash flood where I’m / Tangled in the trees,” as Tex sings in one verse. “Sucking on salinity for all eternity / Buried by the water that just washes over me / Everything i had / I’d give it all away.”

Mia Wilson – Face To Face

Southern California singer-songwriter Mia Wilson is preparing to release her self-titled debut full-length via Royal Oakie Records this November. The album continues the lineage of LA records from the sixties and seventies, taking inspiration from released like Tapestry by Carole King, Heart Food by Judee Sill and Jackson Browne’s Late For the Sky. Latest single ‘Face To Face’ embodies the lush, honeyed light of this sound, not to mention Wilson’s warm and wistful croon. What results is something rich and welcoming and charged with longing, Wilson’s piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes accentuated by further instrumentation from Skyler Lusteg (bass buitar, acoustic guitar) and Tim Ramsey (acoustic and electric guitars, organ, percussion, bass VI, Mellotron, pedal steel, bass harmonica, string).

Watch the video filmed by Julia Schwebel and edited by Skyler Lusteg below:

Mia Wilson will be released on the 14th November via Royal Oakie and you can pre-order it now.

Petey USA – Anything In Between

Earlier in the year, Petey USA released The Yips, a concept album set within the fictional dive bar The Yips Tavern, imagining a series of interactions between the diverse clientele who all, in one way or another, struggle through life and experience the dreaded titular phenomenon. Ahead of a fall headline tour, Petey is releasing A Case of The Yips, a new extended version of the record complete with three bonus tracks, one of which is being released now as a single. Described by the artist as “a song about being scared about any possible outcome,” ‘Anything In Between’ was written as a b-side to album favourite ‘Ask Someone Else’ though is far more than a handmaid. Better to think of it as the small devil on the shoulder versus the angel of ‘Ask Someone Else’, corrupting the encouragement of the previous track with a creeping sense of doubt. But, true to the Petey USA sound, the result burns through its anxious concern with equal parts unguarded sincerity and cathartic momentum, making for a worthy addition to barstools at The Yips.

A Case Of Yips will be released later this year.

Weirs – Everlasting

“To ponder whether Weirs exist in defiance or deference of their forebears is to miss the point completely. This is not an attempt to raze conventions, nor reproduce them. But rather imagine how folk could and should sound today.” So we wrote of the North Carolina outfit’s new album Diamond Grove, coming next month via Dear Life Records. Lead single ‘‘I Want to Die Easy’ introduced the style. “A hymn” as we continued, “delivered not from the still air and stone of a cathedral but God’s own Earth,” and now Weirs have returned with new track ‘Everlasting’ to further ground the album’s terrestrial textures. It’s an instrumental recorded during a late night improvisation session and furthered with layers of field recordings. These additional sounds range from drain grates at wastewater plants and street preachers in bus terminals to a walk the old “cow cemetery” in the woods at Diamond Grove farm and scooping cheese curd from the vat in Cedar Grove. The result feels like an accumulation of the area’s history, years superimposed to create something able to transcend the ordinary flow of time.

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With the promise of an album on the horizon, LUCKY have now returned with brand new single, ‘Friends’. Produced and mixed by Joe Santarpia (Mac DeMarco), mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk (Kevin Morby, Woods, Rose City Band) and again released via Royal Oakie Records, the song taps into a buoyant rhythm to bring to life a sense of fondness suitable for its title. St James’s vocals harness this energy to great effect, their affirming spirit shaded by a slightly wistful quality too, as though aware that good times are always on the verge of ending but determined to hold on for as long as possible. But when the chorus comes around and the full swagger of the sound kicks in, such concerns are left by the wayside, the listener swept up along with everything else by LUCKY’s unadulterated joy.

Artwork by Alexandra Bowman, photo by Scott Padden

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With the release of Kin imminent, Fletcher Tucker has returned with new single ‘Great Flowering Mind’ to further introduce the mission behind the album. Tucker describes the track as “a song of kinship with the more-than-human—boulders, rivers and trees, spirits of place and long-dead ancestors,” and the result is as grand and sweeping as such subject matter deserves. A song slow but never still, as though attuned to a different scale of time, or rather several simultaneously. That is, a song able to evoke an almost geological expansiveness without sacrificing any level of detail—bleached bones, unfurling smoke, mountain lion scat, mossy stones—and thus one able to hold every facet of a landscape with equal devotion and curiosity. An achievement which not only transports the listener but shifts them towards the frame of mind the record is championing. As Tucker continues:

[‘Great Flowering Mind’] is a song which describes and embodies the practice of kin-making (kinning). It is the heart-center and thesis statement of Kin. It is my personal story of uncovering belonging, and endeavoring to re-enchant my chosen homeplace (Big Sur)—establishing totemic nodes of relationality, cultivating awareness, reciprocity, and communion. This is, simply put, the great spiritual undertaking of my life: becoming kin.

Watch the video shot by Fletcher Tucker on Esselen Tribal land, currently known as Big Sur, California, below:

Kin will be released on the 15th August via Gnome Life Records and you can pre-order it now from the Fletcher Tucker Bandcamp page.

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DUG have now announced their debut, titled Have At It!, will be released in September, and offered the title track to further whet appetites of fans. A world away from the darker tones of its predecessor, the single offers an infectiously bright sound which repurposes gospel sensibilities for the contemporary age. Existential musings delivered with toe-tapping rhythm and unapologetically sincere vocals. “Have At It! came from a text message my dad sent to our family WhatsApp group during COVID,” O’Reilly explains. “At the time, there was that short phase when everyone thought COVID could spread through surfaces. My mum was really worried, so she decided to get a will written. She took a photo of it and shared it in the group chat. In response, my dad sent a picture of his will—a napkin with the words ‘Have at it!’ scribbled across the front.”

Watch the video directed by Ellius Grace below:

Have At It! will be released on the 19th September via Claddagh Records/Decca and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Rosie Sco

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The title track kicks things off, with Hoffman “using the impatient frustration of a slow-healing injury to delve into unpalatable truths about herself and the desires therein,” as we continued in the preview, “baring vulnerabilities and reckoning with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness.” The song also introduces the newly rich eggcorn sound, the album seeing Hoffman record with a full band for the first time. Bandmates Ali Gummess (violin) and Karen Moran (viola) feature throughout, Peter Craft and Alex Doolittle added drums, while Brian Mello (lead guitar) and Ben Tudor (upright bass) also make cameos. “I’ve always felt very protective of my songwriting,” Hoffman says. “It feels very private and sacred and I’ve been scared to have other people influence the process but this has been rewarding both interpersonally and artistically.” A process which feels very much in keeping with the thematic concerns of the record.

Yet for all of its collaborative spirit, eggcorn is a personal project, and Observer Effect is an inherently personal record. ‘Solo Party’ is an examination of social isolation and the ways we can change in short spaces of time, ‘Phorest’ an intimate picture of romantic longing, while ‘do 2 u’ combines both moods into something more complicated, where the twin desires for company and peace sit side by side. ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ “finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour,” we wrote in April, “as its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa.” The tender ‘Sunday Morning Visages’ on the other hand is haunted by the absence of another person. “Sometimes the breeze is the brush of you moving / hallucinate your approach on the carpet,” Hoffman sings in the opening lines, the rest of the track essentially chasing that invisible body back through time. Recalling all the things that were, reimaging what might have been. Exploring the ways in which we preserve moments from the past, the ways we curate them in our heads, and ultimately how such experiences can come to govern our lives long after their physical existence has ended.

What if you knew you only had one day
would you do anything differently
squander the moment in search of the moment
foment my legs and splay them open wide
or twisted tight

Observer Effect is out now via Spirit House and available from the eggcorn Bandcamp page.

Cover diorama by Caroline Dewison, Cover design and photography by Ginger Fierstein

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sachi’s mirror is now returning with room to receive, an EP set for release later this month including a run of cassettes via Cone Shape Top Imprint. “Across five tracks, Pan explores the sonic capabilities of her instrument, melding violin with synthesizers, field recordings, and voice to craft icy-hot string textures, crepuscular melodies, and pulsing emotional undercurrents,” the label describes. “An alchemy of ambient vignettes, dreamy exotica, avant-garde classical composition, and art-pop sensibilities, room to receive reimagines a closed door as a shining portal.”

The first cut from the EP, ‘heat resonance’ embodies the care and craft of this style, once again matching precise detail with a sense of sweeping space. What results is something which complicates the distinction between the composed and the improvised, each detail feeling at once exact and organic, bound by an internal logic in the manner of a fantastic dream. Pan’s vocals and her signature violin only elevate this mood further, adding emotional resonance to the shimmering world and marking sachi’s mirror as a project to watch moving forwards.

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Lead single and title track ‘See It All’ is the ideal introduction to the record. The song has roots in a psychosomatic episode which turned out to be an inflection point in Lizzy Dutton’s path towards improving mental health. It opens as a relatively simple folk song but unfurls into something as vivid and enveloping as the experience itself. Alek Barkats and Geoff Saba add piano and clarinet respectively, bringing to life the album’s orchestral sensibilities and furthermore highlighting its ability to be at once inventive and intuitive.

Oh, well I think I’m going mad
I know there’s something there
There’s something there

I hope you see it all

See It All is out on the 25th April via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

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