“Recorded in his own home on a 1920s Martin guitar using a Nagra tape recorder, the song evokes Jimmie Rodgers or the earliest Dylan. Ostensibly little more than a minimalist instrumental sketch, the song nevertheless carries its own narrative weight, proceeding with the reflective, slightly mournful tone of a humble life lived by routine.” So we wrote of Cameron Knowler‘s ‘Placer Camp Blues (Nagra Demo)’ back in May, a track which built upon previous album CRK with real lo-fi charm. Continuing this series of demos, Knowler has now shared ‘El Centro’, another song recorded to Tascam which swaps his familiar acoustic sound for an electric guitar, painting a sparse yet evocative picture of Californian desert life in all its rugged, sun-bleached and almost esoteric personality.

‘El Centro (Cassette Demo) is out now via Castle Dome Records and available from Bandcamp.

JP Harris – Say Darling Say

JP Harris might have been embedded within country music for a decade and a half, releasing records and touring across the states and beyond, but he still feels he sits a slight angle compared to the rest of the scene. An outsider artist in the classic sense, pursuing his own singular, idiosyncratic sound which draws upon everything from old school blue collar musicians to punk rock attitude and the daring of the avant garde. New album Shaving a Dead Man, forthcoming this autumn via Bloodshot Records, collects a series of traditional songs shone through this prism, resting on the classic cornerstones of banjo and fiddle yet emerging sounding fresh and new. Listen to opener and lead single ‘Say Darling Say’ now:

Shaving A Dead Man will be released on the 23rd October via Bloodshot Records and you can pre-order it now.

Kate Prascher – Thousand A Million

“Embodies both the atmosphere and emotional clarity of the release,” we wrote of ‘Jubilee’, the lead single from Kate Prascher‘s upcoming full-length Sunday Afternoon, back in June. “The sound with one foot in the past but always looking forward, allowing memories and hopes for the future to sit side by side.” This collision of the vintage and contemporary is typical of the Memphis-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter’s work, Prascher finding fertile ground in the ambiguous space between things, be it mystery and clarity or the old and the new. Something again evident on new track ‘Thousand A Million’. A richly warm number rooted in the landscape of the present, the song nevertheless casts an eye back towards those who lived and worked in that very same space back through the generations. “I wrote it with my ancestors in mind and with a feeling of wide, open plains,” as Prascher explains to Glide Magazine.

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

Leilani Patao – what

If you’ve been following the work of Hawaiian-American musician and songwriter Leilani Patao in recent months, you’ll know their music can pack an emotional punch, though often chooses to eschew the usual bombast or melodrama for something more joyful. Released in anticipation of a new deluxe edition of their EP daisy, recent single ‘kiddy scissors‘ typified the style with its celebration of queer love, and though latest track ‘what’ concerns very different subject matter, that sense of heart and control again shines through. “I wrote this song a few years ago when I felt my most frozen,” Patao explains of a track about the helplessness so many of us feel in the face of the contemporary political moment. “I felt really powerless and I felt terrified of what could happen if I started putting these stances into my songs.” But, in true Patao fashion, courage eventually wins out, not least because it becomes clear selfish concern can no longer be enough. “I can’t just protect what I’ve got anymore because it’s being taken away from me anyways. I can’t lay low; I can’t be quiet.”

lonalih – Have You Heard

Selected Short Stories, the new EP from Hamburg folk artist lonalih on new basement, is a release which lives up to its name. Built upon a bed of guitar, piano and strings, and resting on Lina Lohmann’s light yet emotive vocal style, each of the five tracks present their own narrative snapshot of a specific moment. The pieces favour texture and sensation over explicit detail, yet transport the listener all the same. “The songs remind of clear early morning light or an after-hour private choir practice,” as the label puts it. “Words inspired by human bond, girlhood and the motif of true name.” The result is five vignettes painted in the same soft tones as the album’s artwork. Airy, evocative and bright.

Melissa Weikart – Crash

Existing beween the poles of experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop, the work of French-American songwriter Melissa Weikart has long known how to enchant an audience. A sound that welcomes the listener in with an expert sense of control, yet nevertheless constantly surprises, finding a line between craft and spontaneity which proves a fitting vehicle for exploring emotions in all their strange peculiarities and universal pull. Latest single ‘Crash’ is the ideal starting point for the uninitiated, what Weikart herself has described on social media as “a love song to friends near and far, the people with whom we traverse the mundane, the extraordinary, and all the messiness in between.” Lush, immersive and slightly warped at the edges, a world to step inside which always seems ready to shift beneath your feet. Watch the video directed by Pierre Petit, with the help of Filip Rzedzicki, below:

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

Scout Gillett – Gonna Change

Scout Gillett was born in Missouri, cut her teeth in Brooklyn and now finds herself in LA, a fact which seems to inform her second full-length Tough Touch. Released back in March via Slouch Records, the album presents a sense of unfolding momentum, pitching the listener into the ongoing journey of its creator and the heady of mix of experiences which result, making for a sound that’s not afraid to show uncertainy or fragility but always holds an assured confidence too. As though in keeping in motion, Gillett intentionally confronts difficulty and thus enables a sense of constant growth. The fittingly titled single ‘Gonna Change’ is a good place to start, possessing both the vulnerability and soulful swagger that is present across the record, as well as a hard won wisdom that quits fighting against the current of change and instead goes with the flow.

Its always gonna change
Nothing stays the same

Tough Touch is out now via Slouch Records and available from Bandcamp.

Sweetbreads – Ben

Following on from January single ‘Punisher of Love’, which we described as “an exploration of [the] contemporary rat race, delving into the weight of expectations and self-sabotage which results,” Melody Stolpp’s Sweetbreads is back with a brand new track ‘Ben’. Displaying both the storytelling and sincerity which has become a staple of the project, the song is decidedly bittersweet, yearning for the titular character with equal parts bright fondness and melancholic longing. “It’s my one and only unrequited love song,” as Stolpp explains. “Looking back, it feels like a sweet little time capsule for a very rough year. Now I see it as a tribute to my younger self and to all the naive hearts who find themselves in complicated situationships.”

Ben / Satisfy is out now and available from the usual places.

wAHb – Still

wAHb is the self-described “Post Americana” project of Laramie, Wyoming-based songwriter and musician Caleb Bristol and various collaborators. Originally intended as a vehicle for an exploratory, noise-based style of music which drew on sounds from everyday life, wAHb has gradually evolved towards a more considered brand of folk, though the spirit of the earlier era remains in the atmospheric layering of samples fleshing out the arrangements. As latest album Whiteman shows, the result might be born in the country western tradition, but is quick to separate itself from its forebears, losing all the nostalgia and kitsch romance of the genre in favour of something altogether more raw. Take opener ‘Still’, playing as if it has been dug up from someplace deep out on the Wyoming plateau, or else picked up on a lonely radio, its wavelength unknown. A transmission of which Molina himself would be proud, restrained in tone yet weighed by the ache of a lifetime of small heartbreaks.

Whitmer Thomas – Candy Corn

If you’ve spent some time in front of a screen large or small in recent years, chances are you’ve come across Whitmer Thomas, be it in hit films such as Weapons and Friendship, shows like Big Mouth or his own HBO comedy special. But aside from being an actor and comedian, Thomas is also a musician. He has put out a couple of joyously tongue-in-cheek releases which possesses his comic spirit while preserving a sense of earnestness, never descending into parody. Nowhere is this clearer than on ‘Candy Corn’, Thomas’s brand new single and first with the good folks at Fire Talk. A playful but sincere depiction of youth in all its chaos and vulnerability, wrapped in the latent wistfulness present within any act of retrospection. The song comes complete with a suitably zany video, including guest appearances from Joe Pera and Cameron Christopher:

‘Candy Corn’ is out now via Fire Talk and available from Bandcamp.

Winter – hollow (mixtape version)

We last wrote about Brazil-born, New York-based songwriter Samira Winter, AKA Winter, last summer with the release of full-length Adult Romantix via Winspear. “A record concerned with all the pain and potential within a major move in life,” as we described, “evolving the shoegaze/dream pop styles introduced on 2022 debut Some Kind Of Blue with everything from Elliott Smith-esque acoustic emotion to the concision and texture of Rather Ripped-era Sonic Youth.” With a new project on the horizon, Winter has returned with ‘hollow (mixtape version)’, a reimagining of the closing track from Adult Romantix which hints at the future direction of the outfit. Because while the original offered a cloudy, ethereal four minutes, enveloping the listener in its hazy shimmer, the mixtape version is charged with an entirely different energy. A song succinct and bound by forward motion, clocking in at almost half the length of its twin sister yet no less atmospheric for it.

Watch the video directed by Sophie Hur below:

‘hollow (mixtape version)’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now based in Naarm/Melbourne but originally from San Diego, Bella Cloud says she is “at heart a wanderer, using music as a reflective surface for her travels and navigating through interpersonal relationships.” Following last year’s EP The Limerent (that we described as “emotionally charged and richly immersive”), new single ‘Spin’ focuses on the melancholy sense of reflection that haunts New Year’s Day. But it is also threaded with a kind of hope, a feeling of possibility. After all, New Year’s is not just the end of something, but a new beginning too. “‘Spin’ feels like both a eulogy, “Cloud describes, “for a period of time that encapsulated a really important relationship and my early twenties and also a prayer to myself that I might become more rooted within myself in the coming year.”

Cameron Knowler – Placer Camp Blues (Nagra Demo)

Back in 2025 we wrote about CRK, an album by Arizona songwriter Cameron Knowler on Worried Songs. “A meditation of Knowler’s hometown of Yuma, Arizona both in its physical presence and historical weight,” as we put it, “all achieved via a style of instrumental folk both traditional and visionary.” Now Knowler has returned with ‘Placer Camp Blues’, a single written as part of the Just Cause Vol. 2 compilation and released via Castle Dome Records, to further this style. Recorded in his own home on a 1920s Martin guitar using a Nagra tape recorder, the song evokes Jimmie Rodgers or the earliest Dylan. Ostensibly little more than a minimalist instrumental sketch, the song nevertheless carries its own narrative weight, proceeding with the reflective, slightly mournful tone of a humble life lived by routine.

Fugue State – Floating

We’ve covered a number of singles from Fugue State‘s new album After Nothing Comes in recent weeks, with tracks like ‘Dark‘ and ‘So What Is There?‘ introducing Dan Langa’s unique ability to dissolve the border between solo and ensemble work, as well as composition and improvisation. The album is finally coming out later this week via Switch Hit Records, and a final single has been released to pave the way. ‘Floating’ finds Fugue State at its most organic, with Elias Stemeseder taking the lead for what at least begins as a restrained, almost hesitant sound. But as the track progresses, the sound blooms into something altogether richer and the vocals rise with it, before things fall back into a more ambiguous, muted style once more. “What do you think about love?” asks the repeated refrain across the track, “and the ocean between us?” A question framed in any number of different tones, each one seeming to ask something very specific and only furthering the cryptic power of the song.

After Nothing Comes will be released on 22nd May via Switch Hit Records and is available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

Helicopter Leaves – It Really Never Did

After a drip-feed of singles since the start of the year, Sabrina Nickels, the new album by Helicopter Leaves (the project of Beach Bunny’s Anthony Vaccaro) is now out in the world. In case you’re not already onboard, Helicopter Leaves has highlighted one more track as a single, the opener and in some ways focal point ‘It Never Really Did’. “When I was going through old demos to attempt to brainstorm how I would go about making a new Helicopter LP,” Vaccaro describes, “‘It Never Really Did’ would constantly jump out as the spark that lit the whole tree on fire.” It’s a fitting introduction, a joyous and cathartic indie rock song that wastes no time, bursting to life without prologue or preamble. “This being the album opener is fully an intended choice,” says Vaccaro. “Sadly in this day and age no one has time, or should I say attention, for music. Starting out without a riff, without a moment to realize what is even happening the track begins.”

mmj – nobody knows

A few weeks ago, Purity Ring’s Megan James announced that she would be picking up an acoustic guitar and performing a solo opening set for the band’s mammoth US tour. She christened this solo act mmj, and has now announced her forthcoming debut album under the moniker on Captured Tracks. The record promises to be a collection of what she describes as “folk songs refracted through a haunted lens,” more organic and analogue than anything in Purity Ring’s oeuvre. As James puts it ”everything has been touched by real hands, tape, tubes or all the above.” Details on the album will follow, but for now we have lead single ‘nobody knows’,  a rich and atmospheric song about the limitations of human experience.

Nobody knows
a fallen star
from wildfire ash
raining down on the yard

paer – Mean It

We last wrote about LA duo paer back in 2025 with single ‘Power Lines‘. “Delve into the hazy richness of the sound and you’ll find there’s an entire world beneath the surface, exploring ideas of grief and mourning with real nuance,” we wrote of the track. “The aftermath of loss, the song suggests, is a delicate balance. A push and pull between the past and the future where the seeming opposite desires to commemorate and move on must be handled with care.” Now paer are back with ‘Mean It’, a single on Anxiety Blanket Records (released in preparation for a brand new EP) which harks back to the mid-noughties era of dream pop. But within the hazy shimmer of the sound lies considerable complexity, the track refusing the escapist tendencies of the genre to present something far more conflicted. After all, there’s a fine line between self-protection and avoidance, and the lushness of the sound is challenged by a vibe almost claustrophobic, as though paer are aware that any attempt to find safe harbour from the world carries its own form of risk.

‘Mean It’ is out now via Anxiety Blanket Records and available from the usual places.

Pearla – Sky Is White

With Pearla’s latest album Song Room now out in the world, the New York artist has shared final single ‘Sky Is White’ to celebrate the release. After the declaration of love that was ‘Loved By Me‘ and the active attempts to combat unhappiness detailed on ‘Imagine Your Face‘, ‘Sky Is White’ offers another thoughtful engagement with personal suffering and efforts to move beyond it. “If the thoughts are in my mind / And my mind in my skull / And my skull in my body / And my body is small,” as Pearla sings in one verse, “Then the thoughts must be smaller / Than I even think they are / How can they hurt me?” Such ruminations are delivered with a hushed intimacy, pulling the audience right into the very mental space being described. That paradoxical place where the evident smallness of our interior thoughts bely the gravity they can exert on our lives. Song Room might not offer a complete escape from this pull, but it does muster an opposite force that might one day prevail.

Polhawan – Ride On

Back in March, we featured ‘No Sweat’, the debut single from Polhawan, the new project of Bristol‘s Tim Rowing-Parker (Woahnows, Immy). The song was “cryptic, strange, fresh and confident,” we said back then, “tak[ing] a sunny, surfy sound and applies it to something altogether more supernatural.” It was the first glimpse of EP Wild Mountain Time, which was finally released on Breakfast Records last week. What the liner notes describe as “like some mythical meeting between Fairport Convention and Parquet Court,” the record is formed of a moreish blend of folk and slacker rock that’s only going to sound better when summer hits. ‘Ride On’ is a good introduction, a lively and carefree song about relinquishing worries and expectations. “‘Ride On’ is about letting go,” says Rowing-Parker. “To me, our experiences can often feel measured and quantifiable, we’re so used to that. I’d love to be better at just letting life wash over me and living in a way that feels more natural and in the moment.”

Sari Lightman – The Way I Saw You

Best known as one half of experimental bands Tasseomancy and Lightman & Lightman with twin sister Romy, Sari Lightman is now striking off alone, announcing her debut solo record, The Way I Saw You, on Night Bloom Records. Produced by Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, the record promises to be a more straightforward take on the folk genre. Our first glimpse is the title track, a song inspired by LA writer/artist/seventies cultural icon Eve Babitz who went into self-imposed isolation after suffering third degree burns following an accident with a match. “She yearns to be remembered the way she was in her writing—sensual and carefree,” Lightman explains on how this inspired a song about aging and feminine identity. “To live in the rose, immortal, blossoming inside a body of work. I went down a theological rabbit hole with the rose. I thought about Dante’s Paradise and all those feminine saints stashed in the petals, like an exquisitely scented sexy hotel.”

The post Weekly Listening: May 2026 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After the success of 2024 full-length Stab!—an album which, as we described, combined “shoegaze textures and post-punk energy into something as immersive as it is momentous”— Gothenburg outfit Agent blå are back with new single ‘Shapes’. Energised by the positive experience of releasing the previous record, the band attacked the new material with fresh vigour, the song coming exactly a decade after their debut release but sounding as committed and impassioned as ever. The result, which offers a picture of a person navigating the choppy waters of trauma with Agent blå’s signature mix of intensity and ethereality, also represents their first step into the future, laying the groundwork for the next stage in their evolution.

Cameron Knowler – La Paz

Writing back in March, we previewed Cameron Knowler new album CRK with single ‘Secret Water’. “Imagine the guitar work of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn combined with the older string band tradition from Appalachia and you’d be getting somewhere close,” as we put it. “But true to the CRK spirit, the result is also specific to Arizona, working to conjure the landscape in both fine detail and broad strokes.” With the album now out via Worried Songs, Knowler has shared another single ‘La Paz’. Set around a ghost town north of Yuma, Arizona, the track is mournful but never hopeless, twin acoustic guitars painting a wistful reflection on the passing of time.

The Convenience – Western Pepsi Cola Town

“The immediate sense of the track is one of bright confidence, though something else moves beneath the surface,” we wrote of ‘Dub Vultures’ from The Convenience‘s upcoming LP Like Cartoon Vampires on Winspear. “A counter force of sharp angles and acerbic attitude which lends an undeniably dark undercurrent […] As though the momentum isn’t some dependable force but rather an unstable chain of motion.” With the release of the album fast approaching, the New Orleans duo has unveiled new single ‘Western Pepsi Cola Town’ to ramp up the excitement. A track no less momentous or changeable in style, typifying The Convenience’s metamorphosis from whimsical indie pop act into something between post-punk and art rock, a transformation which nevertheless retains the sense of playfulness which marked their previous releases.

Like Cartoon Vampires is out on the 18th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

Foxtails Brigade – Gimme A Sign

“A poignant ode to those who exist at some kind of angle to the conventional modes of living, too often shunned by the cultural and political gatekeepers of their time.” So we wrote of ‘Forevermore’, the lead single from forthcoming full-length Red Album by Foxtails Brigade last month. Latest track ‘Gimme A Sign’ further introduces the style of a record which sees the San Francisco project push further into pop than ever before. The band say “clockwork nylon guitar riffs and unconventional kitchenware percussion” remains at the core of their sound, but the new single shows how retaining such signature features does not preclude a pivot towards anthemic pop. “Gimme a sign, something I could recognize,” Laura Weinbach demands in the chorus, her words embodying the underlying urgency which propels the track forward.

‘Gimme A Sign’ is out now. You can sign up for early access of Red Album on the Foxtails Brigade website.

Larum – O Choruscans

We covered a couple of singles from Larum‘s The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Part Two, an album on Puremagnetik which sees Chet Doxas and Micah Frank reimagine the work of abbess, theologian, mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen to demonstrate, as we put it in a preview “how the techniques and conventions of the twelfth century can used to create novel sounds within the contemporary moment.” Latest single ‘O Choruscans’ furthers this style with a subtle blend of woodwind and electronics, its layered approach drawing the listener into its almost spiritual world. The result is neither medieval nor futuristic but instead collapses the distinction between the two. Not old, not new, but timeless.

Neighbourly – Thread Count

“The concept of this EP was simply to have fun together making it.” So describe Vancouver Island psych rock outfit Neighbourly of their new release Get In, coming this summer on Earth Libraries. A release which promises to champion the possibilities when a group of friends get together and create without pressure or expectation. If lead single ‘Thread Count’ is anything to go by, the enjoyment and spontaneity of the process bled into the music itself. Built around a central bassline and Lauren Giorgio’s sardonic vocal style, the song combines post-punk attitude with an altogether more mischievous air, bending the aloof cool so typical of the genre with a tongue-in-cheek playfulness.

Nymphlord – Call Me Up

Back in 2023 we reviewed Mothers Cry And Then We Die. by Nymphlord on Lauren Records. “If the opening track is a representation of falling into a dream,” we wrote, “then the entire EP is a larger recreation of the feeling. A descent into a memory of a past generation which nevertheless works through the pressing issues of the present.” Now Nymphlord is back with new EP Rough Blue Blanket, and lead single ‘Call Me Up’ introduces the release’s intimate tone. Taking inspiration from sources as diverse as sixties folk and nineties grunge, the song celebrates the small moments within the everyday which together add up to form the fondest of memories.

Rainwater – Shadow

The first single of what promises to be a busy year for Blake Luley’s Rainwater, ‘Shadow’ sees the project lean further towards post-punk than ever before. The song originated as Luley observed his long early morning shadow one day and soon shifted into a wider exploration of associated themes. Namely what Luley labels his ‘shadow self’, which houses the buried parts of his identity. “As I’ve become more and more of a ‘real adult’, I’ve had to strategically bury so many aspects of my identity in the service of productivity and responsibility” he explains. “Having a child and being a teacher both reinforces keeping that shadow hidden, while also allowing little moments of my child-like shadow self to be tall and proud.” With equal parts lightness and weight, the result traces the fluctuations of this shadow as it shifts across days and circumstances—sometimes scary, sometimes shameful, sometimes the small secret that keeps you going through the day.

Tom Lark – Dive On In

With a number of singles in recent months, Tom Lark has gradually introduced the diverse tone of new album Moonlight Hotel. Be it ‘Rock & Roll Baby’ “using a laidback brand of psych folk to take on the rollercoaster ride that is life,” as we put it, or the altgether darker ‘Fuselage’, a song “all shadowy attitude and brooding edge,” as we wrote, “where the [previous] carefree spirit falters, change suddenly something dangerous and daunting.” With the full album now out, Tom Lark has shared final single and focus track ‘Dive On In’. With a languid rhythm that might be read as relaxed or melancholic, the song takes on climate anxiety with Shannon Fowler’s signature sense of juxtaposition. Pay no attention to the lyrics and you might enjoy a calm if slightly wistful sound, but dig any deeper and you’ll discover a dizzying dread beneath the surface. How do we live in a world on fire? How do we live with ourselves when there seems to be nothing we can do?

Triathalon – Down

Funeral Music, the new album from Triathalon upcoming on Lex Records, aims to provide exactly what its title promises. “It is not every day you come across an album built around the maxim ‘play this at my funeral’,” as we wrote back in February. But after single ‘RIP’ heralding what might be the NYC project’s “darkest and most unguarded collection of songs to date,” Triathalon are back with new single ‘Down’. Fans will recognise the spirit of previous releases persisting on the new track, but the extra layers of gloom and grit twist the languid pop into something altogether new. If Triathalon are known for sunny tones then we’ve hit the dusk period, where the light is failing and a long nocturnal dark stretches out ahead.

Funeral Music will be released on the 16th May via Lex Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Weekly Listening: April 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With the album coming soon on Worried Songs, Cameron Knowler has returned with new single, ‘Secret Water’. A cast of musicians join the track, adding fiddle, upright bass and mandolin and highlighting how Knowler expands the traditional guitar instrumental style into something richer. Imagine the guitar work of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn combined with the older string band tradition from Appalachia and you’d be getting somewhere close. But true to the CRK spirit, the result is also specific to Arizona, working to conjure the landscape in both fine detail and broad strokes.

The post Cameron Knowler – Secret Water appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Last week saw the release of Melody Trail, the new record from the ever-prolific Sam Sodomsky’s The Bird Calls. Again put out by Ruination Records, the album in part deals with Sodomsky losing his position at Pitchfork after Condé Nast’s decision to absorb the site into GQ last year, pulling the rug from under his feet and throwing into doubt one of the last bastions of independent music criticism. But anyone expecting a minor key downer will be sorely disappointed, instead drawing on a range of left of centre pop and folk to create something quite unlike any previous The Bird Calls work. The title track is probably the best place to start, a catchy and breezy acoustic strum that somehow sounds both weary and hopeful, vowing to make a fresh start if not quite committing to actually doing it.

And I’m trying to get my life back
Riding on the right track
Time to move on

Born Ruffians – Mean Time

Having made their name in the indie rock boom of the 00s, Toronto’s Born Ruffians have constantly evolved over their near-two-decade lifespan, resisting the temptation to settle into a groove or rely on nostalgia to instead push their sound to new dimensions. Forthcoming this summer via Wavy Haze and Yep Rock Records, their new album Beauty’s Pride represents another reinvention, embracing change alongside the real-life experience of becoming a parent, as highlighted by lead single ‘Mean Time’. A “sort of autobiographical/speculative non-fiction inspired by Nabokov’s beautiful autobiography Speak, Memory,” as vocalist/guitarist Luke Lalonde puts it. “It’s about those two black voids, the before and the after, and all of the extraordinary moments in between.”

Beauty’s Pride is out on the 6th June via Wavy Haze Records and Yep Roc Records.

Cameron Knowler – Felicity

CRK, the (quasi-)self-titled by Arizona musician Cameron Knowler forthcoming on Worried Songs, is fundamentally a record of time and space. A meditation of Knowler’s hometown of Yuma, Arizona both in its physical presence and historical weight, all achieved via a style of instrumental folk both traditional and visionary. Together with a video featuring local landmarks ranging from the purple Gila Mountains to lettuce fields and a long abandoned adobe prison, single ‘Felicity’ offers the listener an introduction to this style. A soundscape littered with features of the past, indeed shaped by their weight, yet one which is neither overburdened by the load nor bewitched by the seductive will to return to that former place.

Watch the video shot, edited and directed by Steven Perlin below:

CRK will be out on the 4th April via Worried Songs and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Elskavon – How Cold

Elskavon’s new album Panoramas, coming this summer via Western Vinyl, sees Chris Bartels continue to evolve the project, drawing on everything which came before but finding a novel form. As lead single ‘How Cold’ shows, this involves challenging preconceptions of genre and style, crossing boundaries and questioning conventions, be it around what exactly a song or album can be, or indeed the role vocals can play within this. This exploratory mindset allows for a real authenticity to develop, creating an emotional resonance unhindered by any constraints. “This album is a deep dive into everything that’s shaped me as a creator,” as Bartels explains. “My favorite songs and albums are tied to memories and seasons—beautiful, painful, grand, and small—and those experiences inform everything I do.”

Panoramas is out on the 20th June via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

Fake Dad – Machinery

Consisting of Andrea de Varona and Josh Ford, LA’s Fake Dad make crunchy pop rock that’s concerned with both having fun and making a point. With new EP Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine on the horizon, the duo have unveiled single ‘Machinery’ to introduce this style. It’s a track which originated after a bad experience at a musical showcase, where female artists were forced to play into their own objectification in order to earn attention. “This song was written as a response to the way this kind of woman on woman (or more generally, artist on artist) hate perpetuates these spaces while the real culprits—our sick, sad society governed by narcissistic, billionaire white men—totally fly under the radar,” de Varona explains. “In the end, the man is the real one we’re calling out. The one that we’re sick and tired of watching get what they want, while we sit back eating from their palm.”

‘Machinery’ is out now and available at the usual places. Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine is coming soon.

Hour – Hallmark (Live at Philamoca, Philadelphia)

Following on from beautiful 2024 album Ease the Work, a release we described in our review of last year’s best releases, as “perform[ing] the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness,” Philadelphia ensemble Hour are returning this month with new live album Subminiature on Dear Life Records. Collected across two years of live performances, the album serves as what the label calls “a capstone for the band’s oeuvre to date,” offering versions of pieces from Tiny Houses and Anemone Red alongside brand new arrangements to best represent a project that’s always adapting and evolving. Different songs recorded at different shows, performed by a changing cast of musicians across various months and years, yet all linked by the same spirit. That vital piece of the Hour DNA which commits to such fluidity as a fundamental part of what the project represents.

Watch the video directed/edited by Matt Ober below:

Subminiature is out on the 14th February via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Larum – O Virga Mediatrix (feat Bill Orcutt)

The recording project of Chet Doxas and Micah Frank, Larum combines woodwind and electronics to create a sound full of detail and intangible depth, something evident on 2022 EP The Music of Hildegard von Bingen Part One, which occupied a unique intersection between the early medieval and avant garde cutting edge. As the title suggested, the release was only the first instalment of the project, and this April Larum will return with appropriately named follow-up The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Part Two. Again the result is almost paradoxical in form, managing to imbue the work of an eleventh-century theologian, mystic and composer not just with contemporary resonance but a sense of pioneering potential. Featuring guitarist and composer Bill Orcutt, single ‘O Virga Mediatrix’ embodies this aesthetic, the track representing a thread which stretches away from the present in both directions, inviting the audience to following towards the mysterious spaces beyond.

MacGregor Burns – Put It All On Me

Described as “a new wave sad boy anthem that is a longing cry to pass the blame,” ‘Put It All On Me’ is the latest single from LA-based singer-songwriter MacGregor Burns. Previous tracks ‘Silent Answers‘ and ‘Can’t Go Back‘ highlighted the artist’s idiosyncratic style, “combining nostalgic nods […] while forging a new path forwards, [looking] for further clues in the fertile space between the familiar and the new.” ‘Put It All On Me’ continues this vibe but with some stylistic differences. Namely the lack of guitar, leading to a decidedly wistful sound that nods to the likes of the Psychedelic Furs but nevertheless carries its own bright forward motion.

‘Put It All On Me’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Royal Oakie Records – Canyon Country: LA Fires Benefit Compilation

“[Displays] a sense of cohesion and togetherness which hints at the radical potential within the collective, something we need to remember now more than ever as the suite of challenges which marks the contemporary moment only widens and deepens,” so we wrote of if only i could fly, a compilation in support of those affected by the LA fires organised by  Little Mazarn, hemlock and Jolie Holland. But we could easily have been writing about Canyon County, the new benefit compilation from Royal Oakie Records too. Featuring a mix of unreleased and album tracks from the likes of Holy Matter, Half Stack, Michael James Tapscott and Lauren Helene Green, the comp is what the label describe as a “love letter to Los Angeles and its surrounding canyons and coastlines,” as embodied by the languid warmth of Sandy’s ‘Band Without A Song’.

The Taxpayers – At War With The Dogcatchers

Portland, Oregon emo outfit The Taxpayers might have been on hiatus from releasing new music for going on a decade, but this March puts an end to that. Released via Ernest Jenning Record Co., their latest full-length Circle Breakers reckons with the changes in the world in the time since their previous record, with understandably dark results. Alongside the global pandemic, continued climate breakdown and turn towards reactionary politics were a series of personal tragedies too, and the record sees The Taxpayers pushing through a seemingly unending experience of loss with both fury and hope for something better. Latest single ‘At War With The Dogcatchers’ draws on a run-in with the titular enemies after a deceased friend’s dog was seized and taken to a pound. A song about “loving the broken things in spite of the dogcatchers of the world,” as the band explain, “and trying to find meaning in those things amidst the tragedies.”

Watch the video by Preston Spurlock below

Circle Breaker will be released on the 21st March via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Yael S. Copeland – 2AM

“Unable to lose the romantic notion that things can be different, can improve. Mellow Submarine looks for good thoughts amid the chaos, and might just have you believing they are just around the corner after all.” So we wrote of Yael S. Copeland‘s most recent full-length back in 2023, applauding the manner in which the Queens-based songwriter looks to preserve the small, fleeting moments within an often calamitous world. Detailing an after hours encounter between two receptive strangers, new single ‘2AM’ is no different, offering a distinctively nocturnal tone to conjure a sense of ethereal romance. A sort of lightning-in-a-bottle sensation both characters can only cling to while it lasts. “You know we / Will probably be / only friends / for this night,” as Copeland sings in the chorus, “Maybe till the morning?”

The post Weekly Listening: February 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.