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.

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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.

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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?”

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