Single ‘Man’s World’ occupied the angry end of this spectrum, railing against the patriarchal structures of society and the cruelties and violence it too often imparts on women. Which is not to say there’s no playfulness in the song, Cat Clyde’s distinctive blend of emotive folk rock and boisterous rockabilly creating a sound that’s able to convey more than one mood simultaneously. This nuance and depth is what marks Mud Blood Bone, matching the ambition of its thematic concerns, always shifting, changing and making space for more than one emotion.

Take the difference between the wistful, crepuscular folk number ‘Dark Blue’ and racing catharsis of ‘Wanna Ride’, not to mention the cool bluesy swagger of ‘Hold My Hand’. Then there’s ‘My Love’, a cover of Marty Robbins’s 1960 classic which sweeps and flows like some grand landscape of its own. “I heard the original Marty Robbins version of this song in 2023. Hearing it felt like a great clue in my search for meaning in love,” Clyde explains of the latter. “It reminded me of the love that surrounds me in the natural world, and how it all lives within me as well. That love is accessible to me in every tree I touch, in every bird song I hear, in all the places I go, in the earth below me, the sky above me—it’s all a mirror to the love that lives within me, the love from my ancestors, from my past lives, my gods and my guides and beyond.”

But while this stylistic variety might appear scattershot on first glance, spend any amount of time within the record and an internal logic begins to emerge. A cyclical pattern which rejects linearity to mirror nature itself, Cat Clyde finding both energy and solace within the peaks and troughs of organic life. Which is how the hectic, mischievous personality of penultimate track ‘Press Down’ can lead into the slow croon of ‘Another Time’. There are times for frantic, joyful motion, others for reflection, periods of dieback and growth. A sentiment brought to life in a single elegant verse of the album’s closing track. “Hold me close now baby / Press your cheek to mine / Pull me deep into the dream / So I can live inside,” Clyde sings, “Like a flower in springtime / That must bloom and die.”

Mud Blood Bone is out now via Concord Records and you can get it from the Cat Clyde Bandcamp page.

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Next month the Canadian songwriter Cat Clyde will release Blood Bone Bone, a new full-length album on Concord Records. An effort to reposition or reimagine her relationship with love, the record sees Clyde turn her indigenous Métis heritage for inspiration, as well as the wide natural world, and serves as a expression of everything from exasperation and fury to personal growth and joy. New single ‘Man’s World’ falls at the former end of that spectrum, though repurposes its anger into something cathartic. “This is an expression of the frustration I feel existing as a woman in a patriarchal world,” Clyde explains. “It sometimes feels difficult to be on a 24 hour clock rather than a 28 day cycle, and a 12 month year instead of a 13 month year. I love and crave masculine energy when it’s strong, protective, and emotionally aware. It has been difficult and deeply disappointing to have had experiences dealing with masculine energy that is childish, cowardly, and encroaching on the feminine space. ‘Man’s World’ touches on my own ideas of what being a woman means in this society and how dangerous and violent it can be for a woman’s heart.”

Watch the video directed and shot by Lukas Hyrman below:

Mud Blood Bone will be released on the 13th March via Concord Records and you can pre-order it now.

Dayydream – Proximity

Back in 2025 we introduced Dayydream, the Glasgow-based indie rock project led by visual artist and musician Chloe Trappes. “Straddles shoegaze, slowcore and indie rock to create a sound both hazy and deep,” we wrote of single ‘Fucked Up’, “its title perhaps belying the song’s inviting warmth but describing its confessional tone to a tee, the sound suspended with a light mist yet not without its own internal force.” Now Dayydream are about to release Trace, and EP which builds upon these foundations to delve into the strange, melancholic way the past persists into the present. True to this mood, the sound is often restrained and reflective, the tracks playing as though in the aftermath of something, Trappes and co. left alone but for the footprints on the ground, the fading fog of breath on glass. Single ‘Proximity’ is a good place to dive in, the upbeat rhythm of its opening belying the weight at its heart, a burden which slowly twists the sound into something altogether more hefty and dense.

‘Proximity’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Trace will be released soon.

jack k – Welcome To The New World

A cross-gen collaboration between composer Jack Kilburn and his father, British poet Mark Kilburn, the forthcoming jack k album 8 Tracks sits at the intersection of music, narrative and memory. Using primarily guitar and piano, Jack creates soundscapes which gesture towards ambient and alt-jazz, and coupled with Mark’s distinctively Brummie spoken-word delivery, the songs come to represent not only reflection on personal experience and family history but something stranger and more abstract. A hauntological sense of imagined pasts and aborted futures which works to evoke the off-kilter, often melancholic sensation of the contemporary British moment. True to its title, ‘Welcome To The New World’ is the ideal entry point into this style. A track spacious and stark, as barren as the society evoked by Kilburn’s plainspoken lyricism, where the new world is not much of a world at all, but rather just the fading echoes of what we imagined as it falls away from us.

8 Tracks will be released soon.

Lamplight – Year 2083

“An exploration of how one’s sense of identity shifts and changes according to any number of present conditions, not least the place we call home at any given time.” That’s how we described the self-titled album by Lamplight back in 2024, the Western Vinyl release seeing Virginia songwriter Ian Hatcher-Williams grapple with a life which led out of a cult in his home state to a job in tech in NYC before eventually circling back around to returning to Virginia to marry a childhood friend. Glimpse at the title of the latest Lamplight single ‘Year 2083’ and you might think Hatcher-Williams has switched focus from the past towards the distant future, though in reality the song is very much embedded in the present. With hemlock adding supporting vocals, the track possesses all of the warmth of the previous album, not to mention the same emotional openness. As though written from within the fluidity of the current moment, with Hatcher-Williams working to establish what is important in real time. Grab it from Bandcamp now, with all proceeds going to MPLS mutual aid.

Lemoncello – Meet Me Halfway

There’s a very contemporary tension within Lemoncello‘s latest single ‘Meet Me Halfway’. A complicated relationship between intimacy and distance. A sense of push and pull. Out now via Claddagh Records, the song sees Irish duo Laura Quirke (guitar/vocals) and Claire Kinsella (cello/vocals) create a soundscape that’s spare yet loaded with latent feeling, as though the true weight of the track lies just outside of the frame. An atmosphere fitting for a song which explores how even though we’re now able to communicate more freely than ever before, we’re somehow as far apart as we’ve ever been. “To be so connected / And yet so disconnected,” as a pertinent line states. “What’s the point in speaking / With so much left understood.” But rather than settle for a dismayed commentary on such conditions, ‘Meet Me Halfway’ pushes further, reaching for the kind of concerted effort required on both sides of a relationship in order to sustain connection. Watch the video below, wih creative direction by Sophie O’Donovan, editing by AK Heisterkamp and title design by Stina Sandstrom:

‘Meet Me Halfway’ is out now via Claddagh Records and available from the usual places.

new body electric – every day

“It all started with a trumpet,” explain Portland, Oregon-based band new body electric (Aaron Peterson, Evan Smoker and Leah Vautar), but their music has come a long way since then. Following on from a self-titled album in 2024 which drew on everything from funk, electro and jazz to enliven its indie pop sound, the band have returned with new single ‘every day’ to continue to explore new ground. Full of easygoing groove, the result is assured in style if not in substance, the track’s lyrics delving into various personas we adopt to get through day to day existence. But no matter how blurry a sense of self might be thanks to the demands of living, new body electric are here to show this need not necessarily defeat us. Better to commit to the rhythm and groove your way on through.

‘every day; is out now and available from the usual places.

Paul Bergmann – West Rock

“A pleading dirge; a manic rumination on the human condition at the foot of a geological anomaly in New Haven, CT.” That’s how musician Paul Bergmann described his latest single ‘West Rock’, a song released in anticipation of forthcoming full-length Connecticut Cowboy. Across a total of sixteen releases, Bergmann’s work has shapeshifted from one album to another, moving from scrappy folk punk to sleek piano-led croons, not to mention psychedelic excursions too. But it has always been bound by an overarching thematic concern with existential ideas of life, death and all the dreams therein. As the above description might suggest, ‘West Rock’ sees Bergman return to the most immediate, raw form, pitching the audience into a shadowy world and barking confessions at us through the gloom. Think of the nocturnal volatility of acts like Bambara crossed with the Jason Molina’s bitter poetry and you’re getting close to the result.

Run Remedy – Jessie’s Girl

The alter ego of US-born, UK-based songwriter Robin Koob, Run Remedy embraces both the serious and silly sides of life in its folk rock sound, something embodied by latest single, a reimagining of Rick Springfield’s 1981 hit ‘Jessie’s Girl’. This version not only plays with the sound, swapping out the guitar solo for banjo, but also flips the gender to transform the track into a queer anthem. “I swear if I’m back home driving around South Jersey, ‘Jessie’s Girl’ will come on within the hour (shout out 95.1WAYV),” Koob explains. “It’s been stuck in my head my whole life. That level of cringey yearning is timeless, so obviously I had to make my own sapphic spinoff.” The single comes complete with a video to further cement the changes. “The original video is pure camp, so I basically Weird Al’d it with rainbow kids,” Koob continues. “We recreated almost every shot in one day, gorilla-shooting around Manchester, spared my bathroom mirror, and ended the day passing around the wig. Everyone looked better in it than I did, which feels correct.”

‘Jessie’s Girl’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Spirited Followers – Returning

Back in September we wrote about Cardiff-based experimental folk rock outfit Spirited Followers, describing how the project reaches across a huge range of influences to inform its singular sound. “With members hailing from Cyprus, India and Wales, Ireland, and England, the diversity of inspiration is perhaps unsurprising,” we explained, “though the work of Spirited Followers pushes beyond those backgrounds too. You’ll hear elements of Appalachian mountain music in the stark guitar, as well as a Greek flavour among several others.” Released via Libertino‘s new sister label BWGIBWGAN, latest single ‘Returning’ is no less ambitious, mining ancient songwriting traditons for their devotional power while still positioning their sound on the cutting edge of the contemporary movement too. It a glimpse at the band’s reflective side, “reframing themes of death,” as the label put it, “through warmth, acceptance and spiritual calm.”

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The title refers to a slang term for a drunk or a wanderer. “I’ve always felt like a rounder,” Clyde explains. “I feel the term encapsulates the lost and searching nature of railroad hobos, cowboys, gold miners, adventurers—a rounder is someone who moves around through natural landscapes looking for answers, to make sense of it all through movement and experience. To find something or some place that could feel like home, to belong to the land and feel a part of something greater.”

Nowhere is this ethos clearer than on the rollicking opening track, which has recently gotten the video treatment, a love song to both a person and the rejuvenating effect of constant change and motion. “During the making of this record I felt very lost and low,” Clyde continues of the album as a whole, “and felt the songs were a way for me to explore myself and venture more deeply into my own natural landscape within. I was a down rounder, low down but still a rounder.”

Down Rounder is out now and available from the Cat Clyde Bandcamp page. Clyde is also currently on tour in the UK and Europe supporting Lissie. Buy a ticket for the remaining dates on her website.

Tue, Feb 28 Koko | London, UK
Wed, Mar 1 Banquet Records | Kingston Upon Thames, UK
Fri, Mar 3 Melkweg | Amsterdam, Netherlands

Photo credit: Strummer Jasson

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Describing themselves as “a quixotic mix of American post-punk and ’80s post-hardcore,” East Vancouver Aversions combine heavyweight riffs, pounded percussion and acerbic vocals to comment on our contemporary moment. Loosely based on the visual essay About Face by graphic novelist Nate Powell, Aversions say ‘New Whip’ is a song about “how the impact of generational thinking shapes the people we become, and the beliefs and opinions we’ll go to any lengths to enforce…shin[ing] a light on how toxic masculinity is passed down like a gene.”

‘New Whip’ is out now via the Aversions Bandcamp page.

bedbugz – if i cried, we’d both drown

Back in June we wrote about Canterbury outfit bedbugz and their self-titled single on Tonetic Records. “With its upbeat rhythm and searching vocals, the title track is a bittersweet tale of young love,” we described, “while the b-side sets out further into shoegaze territory.” The debut bedbugz full-length all hail the goblin king! is out later this week, and lead single, ‘if i cried, we’d both drown’, shows how the band have knitted these styles into something of their own. A sound which owes a debt to both bedroom pop and indie rock without quite belonging to either, and offers a delightful blend of sincere emotion and noisy charm. Check out the video by Elliott Sirota-Gott and Tom Postgate below:

‘if i cried, we’d both drown’ is out now via Tonetic Records.

bmq – Spontaneity

Tokyo‘s bmq have been at work for fifteen years, though it is only now they are releasing their debut full-length album, Order, Spontaneity and the Body. Drawing inspiration from fields as diverse as post-punk, krautrock, ambient and US indie rock, the record feels like it utilises every month of this gestation period, weaving a finely honed style which constantly tests the line between control and volatility. Take single ‘Spontaneity’, which explores the tension between repetition and change with a simmering energy, unpredictable but always harnessed by an understated confidence. The sound of a band who have spent a long time working out what they want to say and how they want to say it.

Burs – Nearly

Back in September, Toronto‘s Burs released their latest album Holding Patterns, a record which blended various shades of indie, folk and dream pop to allow the quartet to explore a myriad of different moods and settings. What resulted was a rich and often ethereal collection of songs able to change with fluid ease, from the vast, spacious opener ‘The Year Now’ to the urgent ‘Lily’. But it is perhaps latest single ‘Nearly’ which best encapsulates the Burs style. The restrained acoustic intro heralding the considerable chemistry of their dual vocal style, the track slowly deepening with subtle layers of textures and warmth.

Once again I find myself awake inside a dream
Two of us and me, myself and I
Four on the floor, one in the door, a light
Out of purgatory darkly shines

Cat Clyde – Mystic Light

Next February sees the release of Down Rounder, the latest album from Ontario‘s Cat Clyde. Writing back in 2019 we described Clyde’s sound as encompassing “everything from folk and rock to blues and jazz, leading to a sound that swaggers with attitude and smoulders with smoky emotion, and lead single ‘Mystic Light’ suggests the new record builds upon these foundations to offer a fresh vision of the country style. One crafted from personal emotion but imbued with something more ancient and mysterious too. Watch the video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick below:

Down Rounder is out on the 17th February and you can pre-order it now.

Caroline Strickland – Invoice

New York’s Caroline Strickland unveiled her debut single, ‘Invoice’, this month. A confessional track which pits deceptions and truths against one another, exploring the ways in which honesty can hurt the hardest, and lies hold small victories of their own. All set within a swirling moment of love persisting beyond a relationship, and a job with zero fulfilment or worth, Strickland’s vocals burning with a smoky intensity as she navigates both. “It makes you feel devastated, feel like letting go,” as Strickland’s own perceptive take puts it, “feel like California, feel like rock and roll.” Coming clean might be cathartic, but creating fictions might just be the best escape route.

Maybe with the extra cash
I’ll take a trip Ireland
Pretend my name is Marianne
play some music I can drown in
Remind myself it’s over
Standing on the streets of Sligo

Dignan Porch – Electric Threads

Led by South London’s Joe Walsh, Dignan Porch made a name across the 2010s with a distinctive blend of psych rock and fuzz pop, working with labels such as Captured Tracks and Art Is Hard along the way. With Walsh having now moved to Manchester, next February sees the release of a brand new album Electric Threads, this time a joint release by the stellar trio of Hidden Bay, Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home Records. The title track gives a glimpse into the newest iteration of the project. A combination of earnest emotion and off-kilter playfulness which refuses to recognise any distinction between fun and melancholy.

Electric Threads is out on the 23rd February via Repeating Cloud, Hidden Bay and Safe Suburban Home Records and you can pre-order it now.

Lina K.O. – Two-Player Mode

Brooklyn-based artist Lina K.O. is gearing up to release new EP Earth Apple next month, and the latest single serves as a great introduction to her sound. Falling on the rockier side of what she herself describes as “digitally-infused melancholic indie,” the song combines Bridgers-esque indie folk with a grungy weight to achieve its delightfully ambiguous tone. Where doubt and assurance act as perfect counterbalances against one another, Lina K.O. singing with reflective wisdom even within the confusing immediacy of the moment. Check out the video by Mike White and Lina K.O herself below:

Earth Apple is out on the 13th January and you can pre-order it now.

Luke De-Sciscio – The Tourist

There are prolific songwriters and then there is Luke De-Sciscio. Reaching double figures of full-length albums at only thirty, De-Sciscio has consistently honed his work and challenged prior expectations, forever circling around that elusively perfect way in which to communicate what needs saying. Through a series of highs (e.g. being booked to support the likes of Cat Stevens and Jose Feliciano) and lows (the COVID-induced cancellation of said shows), he has not stopped in this search, and new album if one thing were different, nothing would be the same feels like the closest he’s yet come to reaching that mythical ideal. Take closer ‘The Tourist’, seven minutes plus of stark passion and poignance. The culmination of everything which has been before.

Niall Summerton – Human, Dying

You would be forgiven for taking a quick listen to the work of Leeds-based songwriter Niall Summerton and concluding his work to be that of warm, easy-going assurance. But as the name of new single ‘Human, Dying’ gives away, his work uses this welcoming richness as way into the weightier, darker themes of the human experience. With new album What Am I Made Of? coming soon via Tiny Library Records, the new song offers the perfect example of this style. Confronting the heaviest question of them all, Summerton threads anxieties around mortality into the textures of the everyday, and in doing so not only captures a compassionate view of the subject but also something of its pervasive, ever-present weight.

What Am I Made Of? will be release in April 2023 via Tiny Library Records.

Stella Rose – Angel

Following on from the success of debut single ‘Muddled Man’ a few weeks ago, New York-based singer, poet, and musician Stella Rose has shared brand new track, ‘Angel’, via Kro Records. After the insistent energy of the first single, ‘Angel’ offers an altogether more reflective tone, swapping out the electrified intensity for something slower and richer. What results is a strange ode to melancholy, exploring how sadness can serve as the shadow to highlight the brighter parts of life. The song comes with a video directed by Primordialfreaks, who explains how the film aimed to capture the light and dark of the song. “It’s a sad but also triumphant song, like a celebration of loss and loneliness and how the most difficult things can make life more pure in a strange sort of way.”

‘Angel’ is out now via Kro Records.

Sun Kin – I Know This One

We’ve written a fair bit about Kabir Kumar’s Sun Kin this year, from the upbeat pop of single ‘I Wanna Believe‘ to the deep, thematically rich ambient styles of painting whales part 1  and 2. Somewhere in the mix Kumar found the time to release another single, ‘I Know This One’, ironically a song about the creative frustrations which emerge when you set the bar too high and push every new piece to be a genre-bending prototype. Luckily, there’s an antidote to such a malady—dropping any notions of genius and appreciating the simple joys of life. Namely hanging out with your cat.

i’m always saying
how i can’t behave
right in front of you
there sits a bowl of your food
i poured in the morning
of this blessed day

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Swim Camp – Pretty Bird
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Indian Never Die
Pedro The Lion – Quietest Friend
Cat Clyde – Anymore
She Keeps Bees – Coyote
Cartwheel – Nothing
Tempertwig – Comfort Blanket
Downhaul – Wires / Enough
Witching Waves – Eye 2 Eye
LISA – Primitive Us
Yamachan – Rose Gold Blue
Spelling Reform – The Second Coming
Faith & Majesty – Summer Fling
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Jeffrey Silverstein – Easy Rider
Ronnie Rogers – Leaning On
Nanami Ozone – Alone Too
Fresh – Willa
Perfume V – Perfume Homes Movies
Hand Habits – Can’t Calm Down
MUNYA – Benjamin
LUNCH – Forget Everything
Control Top – Chain Reaction
Prudence – Euphoria
Cult Film – Bored to Death
Walking Bicycles – Fat Cat
Lost Dog – DFT
Sharkmuffin – Serpentina
Bandy – Trying to Reach You
Gold Connections – Like a Shadow
AllegrA – Spoon or Fork
Parkway & Columbia – Wondering and Wandering
la loye – to live underwater
Kitchen – Claws
Spectator – Waves
Sailor Boyfriend – The Battle of Sugarhill
Ladada – My Van
The Exbats – 2027
Adir L.C. – Reacting
minihorse – Drink You Dry
Trevor Stott – Halfway in the Night
Tyler Burkhart – Waiting For You
Or Sobre Blau – Mártires

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

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Earlier this month, Clyde returned with a brand new two-song single, All the Black, a release that further develops her sound. The title track forms from a slow shuffle, Clyde’s vocals shaking themselves from a sultry croon into something more urgent. As such, the tone is pitched somewhere between yearning and dangerous, the loneliness of the track’s restraint hiding a more ominous undercurrent, some wildness that lurks beneath.

This may be killing us
But at least it kills the pain
If i could soak up all the black
I would soak up all the black

I lay here weeping
while you’re sleeping like a baby
You know I’m leaving
But you’re just the same

I watch you dreaming
Hoping its me your seeing
But I know you don’t need me
Anymore

All The Black is out now and available from the Cat Clyde Bandcamp page., where you can also find her debut full-length, Ivory Castanets.

Photo by Strummer Jasson

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