Australian duo Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell, AKA Armlock, are releasing album Seashell Angel Lucky Charm later this summer on Run For Cover Records, and single ‘Ice Cold’ is the ideal point at which to dive in. The Armlock style beams electronic music through the prism of indie rock, conjuring sounds at once ethereal and eccentric, something the album opener encapsulates perfectly. A lesson in minimalism which rather than forgo detail, offers it with a sense of purpose and control. Be that in the simple beat and subtle textures, or the pared-back lyricism which lends the track its ambiguous charm.

Ice cold ankle deep
Head tilt, turn a cheek
I won’t be around for the rest of the week
Takes one to know one
We were born in the air sign
I’m gonna come back with the sword you left behind

Seashell Angel Lucky Charm is out on the 12th July via Run For Cover Records.

Cereus Bright – Ride

Following on from recent EP Boys, a release we described as “an ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” Knoxville’s Cereus Bright is back with ‘Ride’, a brand new single via Nettwerk. Boys preached the value of giving in to life’s unpredictable currents, and the new single follows in a similar vein. A brightly peppy track imbued with enough forward motion to propel even the most uncertain person to confront their fears and seize the bull by the horns. “Do you wanna ride?” as the chorus asks, and with the momentum of the drums and warm psych-inflected textures, it’s difficult to refuse the offer. Watch the video below with visuals by Peel:

‘Ride’ is out now via Nettwerk.

 César Alvarez – Normal, IL

“Would it be okay to wander off?” asks César Alvarez on ‘Normal, IL’, the opening track from new album egg. “I’ll take the shitty car, I’ll leave the credit cards / Drive to the Midwest, sleeping at rest stops / Play jazz on the sidewalks.” Delivered with a tone somewhere between wistful longing and boundless curiosity, the song introduces an artist navigating the competing wills to preserve the moment and escape for good. Where life’s tiny details represent the component parts of everything we hold dear. Things to drag around year after year, things to hold tight to your chest in the hope of better days. “A few years ago I was under-employed artist parent trying to figure out how to survive capitalism and still be a composer,” Alvarez explains. “I was genuinely trying to figure out if we could keep surviving in NY. This song is that feeling of being about to give up.”

Gold Dime – Denise

Recently, New York art rock/post punk outfit Gold Dime released album No More Blue Skies via No-Gold, an album which took avant garde sensibilities and elevated them into cinematic experiences. Led by Andrya Ambro (formerly of Talk Normal), the project has long reached for increasingly inventive and immersive sounds. The new record feels like the closest they have come to the zenith of such a style, what the liner notes describe as “a widescreen, fiercely intense, hair standing up on the back of your neck kind of art rock.” Take opener and single ‘Denise’, a song somehow at once opaque and charged with clarity, Ambro’s vocals cutting through the volatile sax and shifting percussion to blur the line between foreboding and transcendence.

Watch the video directed by Andrya Ambro and Joe Wakeman below:

No More Blue Skies is out now via No-Gold and available from the Gold Dime Bandcamp page.

Kathryn Mohr – Cut (Low Cover)

Originating from a conversation between The Flenser and Planning For Burial’s Thom Wasluck, Your Voice Is Not Enough is a compilation of covers celebrating the breadth and beauty of Low‘s musical oeuvre. A whole host of Flenser artists and friends are involved, with VSF favs Midwife and Allison Lorenzen joined by Drowse, Have A Nice Life, Cremation Lily and Holy Water among others. The latest single sees Kathryn Mohr take on ‘Cut’, maintaining the sparse simmer of the original while deepening its shadowy corners with an electrified edge. “It was the lyrics that immediately drew me into this song,” Mohr explains. “The intimacy of a hair cut. The loss of a version of someone you knew as they turn themselves inside out to survive. It’s one of the saddest things in the world to me, watching someone harden and loose themselves to their pain.”

Your Voice Is Not Enough is out on the 24th May via The Flenser.

LEOBLU – full moon & snow boots

Julia Carlsson’s LEOBLU has caught our ears on a number of occasions in recent times, be it the gloom pop of single ‘Cake‘ or more recently a collaboration with Sad Dad which probed into the strangeness of love. “The impression is not one of grand gesture and romantic inevitability,” we wrote of the later, “but rather the sense of being exposed to mysterious forces. The physics of things larger than yourself, moving life beyond your control.” With new EP Blu Lucid Nightmare coming later this year, LEOBLU has returned with single ‘full moon & snow boots’, and again the track sees Carlsson setting personal emotions against larger, almost mystical backdrops. As though the natural world was our own longing manifest. Watch the video, shot in California by Hannah Gonzalez, below:

Blu Lucid Nightmare will be released later this year.

My Best Unbeaten Brother – Time on Our Hands, Spider-Man

Back in January we told you about My Best Unbeaten Brother, the latest project from the Parker brothers of Nosferatu D2, The Superman Revenge Squad Band and Tempertwig. Back then we were writing about standalone single ‘Slayer on a Sunny Day’, but as promised the band are now readying their debut mini-album Pessimistic Pizza, which will be release via Audio Antihero. To whet appetites, they have released lead single ‘Time on Our Hands, Spider-Man’, a mid-to-late-00s style indie rock song electrified with desperate emotion. Ben Parker says the song is about, “being a father and being a son, passing on memories of years and years of processing stuff and turning it into landfill indie, how we all need a Spider-Man or a Superman and how this doesn’t change the older you get,” which goes some way to illustrating the mixture of sadness, sincerity and frustration that sit just below the up-tempo surface.

Wild Yaks – Desperado

With almost two decades and (roughly) five albums under their belts, Wild Yaks have made a name with an affirming and often riotous brand of rock music, filling the gap between hopes and realities with a carefree embrace of the present. Out next month via Ernst Jenning Record Co. latest album Monumental Deeds feels like both a continuation of this spirit and the culminative product of twenty years spent pining and singing and howling at the moon. Born on a drive back to Florida lead Rob Bryn took with his 79-year-old mother, single ‘Desperado’ is a fitting combination of desperation and defiance. When the ghosts of past selves and possible futures are strung out on the road before you, sometimes the only option is to roll the windows down, put the pedal to the metal and feel that wind in your hair.

Watch the video below filmed on VHS tape by Renée Muza and edited by Sameer Kapoor:

Monumental Deeds is out on the 21st June via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – Clumsy

“Time allowed Zafar opportunity to understand the tracks beyond the usual level, and thus gradually shape them towards their ideal, essential form.” So we wrote of Zoya Zafar‘s Some Songs, an album interrupted by real life difficulties which only came to realise itself more fully in the intervening years. Tracks like ‘Sweet Talk’ “condens[e] months of suffering into a single prayer released into an empty room,” as we put it in a preview, a testament to the value of patience and care brought to life with a tender folk pop style. Latest single ‘Clumsy’ invites the listener further into this space, a song produced by friend Gia Margaret which shares Margaret’s quiet, sometimes cryptic sincerity. “You were the light in the dark,” as Zafar sings, “giving away your sad, sad heart / living inside a house of cards.”

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With album Mirror, Reflect coming in May via Winspear, Amy O has shared single ‘Dribble Dribble’ by way of introduction. The record charts the experience of new motherhood during the pandemic, where twin forces of uncertainty and isolation ran a deep seam of precariousness through everything. But as ‘Dribble Dribble’ shows, Amy O documents this time with compassion and playful curiosity, the lo-fi pop sound lifting rhyming schemes from the books she read to her daughter to offer a mood at once fun and incisive, and Glenn Myers’s backing vocals further the conversational closeness.

Please don’t let the tide rush in
Held unburdened by the wind
A roomful of familiar
No catastrophes within

Bloomsday – Dollar Slice

The recording project of Brooklyn’s Iris James Garrison, Bloomsday introduced itself back in 2020 with debut Place to Land, an album which charted the fear, loss and joyous freedom inherent within the quest to find one’s true identity. But despite the personal subject matter, collaboration has always been an inherent part of the Bloomsday DNA, and new album Heart of the Artichoke is certainly no exception. Coming this summer on Bayonet Records, the release see Iris joined by Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Maya Bon (Babehoven), Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.) and Chris Daley, and proves to be not only a celebration of togetherness and community but a testament to the enduring presence of friendship itself. Lead single ‘Dollar Slice’ is a great place to jump in, the cornerstone of the album which hints at the sound’s devotional quality. “I’m not religious,” Garrison says, “But I am into the idea of mystical, higher power—whatever that means – and that power seeing me, and my bullshit, and calling it out. That’s kind of godly to me.”

Cereus Bright – Boys

We introduced Boys, the new EP from Knoxville‘s Cereus Bright, back in February with single ‘Drifting’. “An ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” as we put it, “which offers comfort not through the promise of agency but rather the unforeseen benefits of letting oneself relax into the drift.” With the EP now out via Nettwerk, Cereus Bright has released the opener and title track as a final single. Inspired by stories of a “hard, complicated figure” of a grandfather, the song delves into the tangled world of cause and effect not so much in search of an answer but to instead reveal the layers of complexity which define any given person. As the artist explains: “It’s essential to reckon with the people or institutions that have affected us or hurt us, but some times truly understanding is impossible.” The song comes complete with a video filmed by Follow The Leader which you can watch below:

Boys is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

Fresh – Merch Girl

London punks Fresh have made a name with a heart-on-the-sleeve brand of rock, with tracks like ‘Babyface‘ and ‘Morgan & Joanne‘ typifying the bittersweet celebration of the queer experience offered by LP Raise Hell. Ahead of tours with Teenage Halloween and Los Campesinos!, Fresh are releasing a brand new EP Merch Girl on Specialist Subject Records next month, and have unveiled the title track for an early taste. It’s a song “about living in that space between wanting something and achieving something” as lead Kathryn Woods explains, centring on the titular character as they yearn to break free from the sidelines and make art of their own. “Standing at the back of the room / Wishing I could do what they do,” as Woods sings, “After all, I could play that guitar part better / I could hit those drums much harder / I could sing that song far louder // But I’m just a merch girl.”

I’m tired of living like this
Letting people talk over me for years and years and year and years
Gonna start doing things my way
Gonna write a song with a voice so strong it knocks you sideways

I’m not just a merch girl

Hour – Ease the Work

Though named after an image from a tragic Greek myth, Hour‘s 2018 album Anemone Red had more quotidian concerns. “Hour present the same heartbreak and longing as it occurs today,” we wrote in our review, “repressed and layered behind our day-to-day responsibilities, manifest not in blood-dripped flowers but the slow, sad progression of the world around us.” The project, led by Michael Cormier-O’Leary, returns this spring to build upon this foundation with Ease the Work, a brand new release on Dear Life Records. Challenging any clear distinction between composition and improvisation, the album performs the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness. Listen to the title track now:

Jack Name – Cherie’s Eyes

Described as a “homage to the IRL world and its twisted and varied romance with the worlds of our minds,” Fabulous Soundtracks is the fourth album from Los Angeles-based musician Jack Name, out this May on Maple Death Records. Each song on the record is intended as a mini-soundtrack to a specific scene, and Jack Name runs the gamut of genres and stylistic influences in order to create cinematic soundscapes able to elevate these moments into their full surreal potential. Single ‘Cherie’s Eyes’ is the first example of this singular effort, presenting a sound at once odd and strangely intuitive, as though Fabulous Soundtracks functions within the logic and physics of dreams, where everything is off-kilter yet charged with meaning.

 Logan Lynn – To Be Of Use (Smog Cover)

Songwriter, producer, filmmaker, television personality and activist Logan Lynn is releasing new LP SOFTCORE this June on Kill Rock Stars. The album, written in the aftermath of a break-up, serves as a vehicle of rebirth. “A record of my coming alive again, and coming back to myself in the face of pretty extreme betrayal,” as Lynn puts it. “It’s a party album in a way—loud, wild, unhinged and abrasive at times—but it’s also a collection of tender songs about longing and togetherness.” A cover of Smog’s ‘To Be Of Use’ opens the album, a plaintive track which slowly gathers momentum, as though Lynn uses Bill Callahan as a way to shake off the shrouding gloom and turn a new page.

Magana – To My Love

Last month we introduced Magana‘s new album TEETH on Audio Antihero with the single ‘Paul’. “A song where grief is transcribed almost verbatim,” as we put it, “and tenderness, strangeness and plain disbelief can exist simultaneously.” With the album out today to coincide with the Worm Moon’s peak illumination, Magana has released final single ‘To My Love’ to further introduce the witchy rock atmosphere. A strange sound for a strange world, made by an artist determined to use every style available to best communicate their own experience of trying to exist within it.

Pina Palau – We’ve Got No Time At All

“The birds outside my window, they are singing as if the world was still the same.” So opens ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’, the centre point of Get a Dog, the sophomore album by Pina Palau. It’s a song that very directly captures the despair felt by young people across the globe, describing a world of war and mass shootings, heatwaves that “no AC can get us out of.” The Swiss artist put a career in medicine on hold to pursue her musical career, and her creative work is driven by the same fascinations that led her to the path to becoming a psychologist—what label Mouthwatering Records describe as “a desire to understand unvarnished humanity—the motivations, emotions and stories that shape our lives.” Which is why ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’ stands out on an album full of varied emotions. A rare track that stares down a generation’s biggest concerns head-on, blowing out into furious noise in its cathartic climax.

We’re still young they say we have time
But the truth is: we’ve got no time at all

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I attempted to take the mundane and make it abstract. When you put something familiar in an unfamiliar place, you see it differently. To get there, I explored more mythological and otherworldly ideas and sounds than ever before—while trying to retain the core intimacy of songwriting that I’ve always strived for. I hope what we made is a perfect balance.

If ‘Chasing the Feeling’ “errs towards the optimistic side of things,” as we wrote, “or at least finds itself unable to shake the lingering possibility there might exist a better way to live,” then new single ‘Drifting’ learns to lean into the flow of life in order to arrive at such a destination. An ode to every tired soul and person without direction which offers comfort not through the promise of agency but rather the unforeseen benefits of letting oneself relax into the drift.

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The Cherries are Speaking, last year’s album by Dan Knishkowy’s Adeline Hotel, represented “another step in Knishkowy’s exploratory path,” as we described. “One with no set end or direction, but one pressing on with larger goals in mind. A part of a greater body of work which comes into view one record at a time, edging closer to whatever the full picture might be.” This October will provide the next stage of this journey as Adeline Hotel is releasing new full-length, Hot Fruit, again via Ruination Record Co. A record, as per Andy Cush’s album notes, “characterized by that push-pull interplay between composition and improvisation,” with Winston Cook-Wilson and Scree’s Ryan El-Solh, Carmen Rothwell and Jason Burger all lending their talents. The title track captures the blend of craft and spontaneity perfectly.

Beti Masenqo – much of anything

Beti Masenqo is a songwriter out of California who has recently unveiled debut single, ‘much of anything’. A track which introduces her style of delicate, often reflective folk which ties together melancholy and joy with a wistful thread. Here specifically on the subject of love, where tenderness doubles as a kind of tenuousness. A spell to submit to or break. “Fell asleep in Mexico, fever in the night / I know this must be obvious but your were on my mind,” Masenqo sings in the opening lines. “Felt compelled to tell you that, just to prove I tried / your fingerprints were on my chest, my soul was left behind. I know you will be gone / can’t think this will be much of anything.”

Cereus Bright – Chasing the Feeling

Cereus Bright, the recording project of Knoxville freak-folk songwriter Tyler Anthony, has been operating for the best part of a decade, though the sound has undergone a constant evolution in the interim. Having recently signed with Nettwerk, Anthony has been sharing a run of singles to show off the latest face of Cereus Bright. A style which follows the reflective tone of 2021’s Give Me Time with a newfound focus on the future, looking forwards and confronting all the mystery, uncertainty and potential therein. Latest track ‘Chasing the Feeling’ errs towards the optimistic side of things, or at least finds itself unable to shake the lingering possibility there might exist a better way to live. “’Chasing the Feeling’ charts the kinds of longings we all have,” as Anthony explains. “It’s nostalgic… it felt important to make it more subtle and melancholy. For me, that’s what the core of this feeling really is—a quiet desire to return to something better than today.” Watch the video shot by Ross Bustin and edited by Corey Campbell below:

‘Chasing the Feeling’ is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

KMRU – Along A Wall

The first release from KMRU‘s own label OFNOT, new album Dissolution Grip emerged from a period of study at Berlin’s Universität der Künste, where, under the tutelage of Jasmine Guffond, he used field recordings in a novel manner. Rather than including these recordings directly, he used their waveforms as a guide for his own compositions, essentially tracing over the real-world sounds and recreating them as digital soundscapes. Take single ‘Along A Wall’, a bonus track on the digital release, where the wind of Nairobi is recreated in all of its fickle movement with nothing but electronic tones.

Kramies – Days Of (acoustic version)

Back in 2022 we wrote about the self-titled album by Kramies, describing it as “what feels like the culmination of a career to date. Where everything is consolidated and offered in its most fully realised form. Life in all its surreal wonder and visceral reality. Kramies, told as truthfully as possible, whatever form that truth takes.” Having teamed up with VanGerrett Records and with a new album coming next year, Kramies has unveiled the functionally titled EP, The Original Undecorated Takes from the Kramies LP. Four songs from the album as they appeared when acoustic demos. Lead single and opener ‘Days Of’ highlights the difference from the original, the stark depth swapped for a more intimate sound, though one retaining all of the emotional power.

Pretty Bitter – What I Want!

Self-described “psychedelic synth pop gumball machine” Pretty Bitter is Emelia Bleker and Miri Tyler, along with multi-instrumentalist Zack Be, drummer Jason Hayes and guitarist Chris Smit. Together the outfit craft a sound which lives up to their label, where inventive pop sensibilities are blended with driving indie rock energy and some of the sardonic lyricism and delivery familiar to riot grrrl and post-punk. Latest single ‘What I Want!’ utilises this sound to take on eating disorders and the process of recovery. A combination of gallows humour and rising catharsis which eviscerates those responsible for the outside pressures behind such an experience.

If you’re lonely
Try being someone else

If you’re shrinking
At least they love you while you hate yourself

Could you tell I was not well?

Sinai Vessel – Tangled

Aside from some outtakes and demos, ‘Tangled’ is the first release from Caleb Cordes’s Sinai Vessel since 2020’s stellar full-length Ground Aswim, and introduces the next step in the project’s evolution. The Asheville-based songwriter has long won acclaim for his distinctively emotive and searching style, though Cordes truly stands out for the way in which he layers in other emotions too. This is on full display on ‘Tangled’, where a gentle warmth belies the thread of paranoia running beneath the surface. “We are at the mercy of a tangled web of wires / Snaring one another / strung up by our words,” Cordes sings, voice barely breaking a murmur. “Intent is one among a set of signs / if misaligned, you’ll misinterpret.” Once this dimension of the track clicks, you’ll never quite hear it in the same manner, the hushed style no longer sounding intimate so much as lonely, walled off from others and no longer trusting words as a reliable means to bridge the divide.

There’s no poison like
Believing an enemy’s in sight
When there’s no threat at all

Soft Covers – The Real Housewives of Porpoise Spit

In October, Naarm/Melbourne-based indie pop band Soft Covers will release their debut album Soft Serve on Little Lunch Records and Hidden Bay Records. Previous EP Permanent Part Time set out a jangly DIY aesthetic, and the new record sees the trio go bigger in every regard—instrumentally, thematically, and in terms of ambition—without sacrificing the authenticity that made the original songs so great. Lead single ‘The Real Housewives of Porpoise Spit’ is a great introduction for those unfamiliar, taking the nostalgic fondness of retro jangle pop and injecting a certain momentum, not to mention a playful lyricism that blurs the line between wistful and witty.

Tamra – Omens, Silos

Based between Boise and Los Angeles, Tamra is a band, as per the press release, “animated by the idea that, though there’s nothing to do, there’s still something to say.” Their debut EP Light Reading emerges from the dead expanses of the American landscape and lead single ‘Omens, Silos’ introduces this aesthetic with a staccato, opaque poetry. It melds early 00s college favourites with Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison and a turbulent undercurrent of Midwest emo. The result, with its distorted guitar and vocals that rise and fall on sonic updrafts, is oddly captivating, both gloomy and not, full of inelegant beauty like a deserted stripmall under a bruised and stormy sky.

Light Reading will be released later this year.

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