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.”

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