Having won acclaim as part of noise pop outfit The Beatings, Cameron Keiber went on to start the project Eldridge Rodriguez, releasing albums like Slightest of Treason and Atrophy which explored a plethora of contemporary issues with equal parts passion and disillusionment. Now recording under his own name, Keiber is returning next spring with new full-length Nurser, a record which continues this examination of the current state of things with a newly immediate, personal edge. The addition of loops and beats offers a new dimension too, though as single and opener ‘Habsburg Jaw’ shows, it is Keiber’s distinctive vocals and lyricism which represents the sound’s core. A track about depression and the insidious impact of those who belittle its dimensions, Keiber’s delivery slightly weary and a little bit wry as it challenges those who believe all it takes is a bit of bootstrap pulling and positive thinking. But above all else it’s empathetic in its picture of someone straining within such a hostile world.

Nurser will be released on the 14th March via Midriff Records.

Camille Schmidt – Stanley

“Each of the six songs on the album deal with the different masks we might hide behind, [but] the very nature of its creation see the true [artist] reaching out from behind the disguise.” That’s how we described Camille Schmidt‘s Good Person back in June, a release which explored ideas of authenticity and the lack thereof with a sense of cathartic release. With the Brooklyn artist’s debut full-length Nude #9 coming early next year, Schmidt has returned with equally affirming new single, ‘Stanley’. A song which displays the richer sound of a growing supporting band without sacrificing any of Good Person‘s raw immediacy, pairing a gathering momentum with a sense of aimlessness to bring to life a playful, idiosyncratic vibe. Watch the video directed by Henry Nelson and produced by Brooke Goldman below:

Nude #9 is out on the 10th January and you can find more on the Camille Schmidt website.

Chris Chism – Drive My Car

“Focusing on the working class experience and following a lineage through Dylan and van Zandt, Richmond, Indiana’s Chris Chism delves into the personal to emerge with a more universal picture of life’s joys and struggles.” So we wrote back in 2023 when covering the North Carolina-based songwriter’s EP Things Has Changed. Now Chism is back with ‘Drive My Car’, a song which taps into melancholic peace of a night alone on the road. “I like to drive my car at night / get lost in the dark / everything gets left behind,” Chism sings in the opening lines, finding some sense of direction within the dark isolation. “The road goes on and on / the headlights show my way.”

‘Drive My Car’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Cici Arthur – All So Incredible

Cici Arthur is a new collaboration between Toronto artists Joseph Shabason, Chris A. Cummings and Thom Gill. Cummings previously recorded under the name Mantler, releasing jazz, lounge and R&B-inflected pop via Tomlab, and Cici Arthur sees Shabason and Gill bend their sound towards such styles to give Cummings’ writing and vocals the grand, vivid backdrop they deserve. A stellar cast of guests like Owen Pallet, Nicholas Krgovich, Phil Melanson and Dorothea Paas lend their talents too, and the result is a lesson in both cinematic scale and artistic control. Lead single ‘All So Incredible’ shows off the aesthetic in all its technicolour glory:

Watch the video edited and directed by Nicholas Krgovich below:

Way Through is out on the 21st February via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

CULTBABY – mr. pouch

Moniker of LA-based multidisciplinary artist Richard Benjamin Greer, CULTBABY is less a name and more the key to the project’s themes and style. Born into a small Christian Metaphysical organization in Berkeley, CA, Greer’s origin story is far from typical, and though he left the group with his mother at a young age, his links to the group—be they literal or psychological—persisted for far longer. Forthcoming via Anxiety Blanket Records, new CULTBABY release cut the arm, preserve the body is a compilation of recordings which explores this experience, pairing a detailed picture of collapsed relationships while preserving fondness for those involved. The album is both stylistically and narratively ambitious, but single ‘mr. pouch’ gives an idea of what to expect. Watch the video directed by The Fanza below:

cut the arm, preserve the body is out on the 21st February via Anxiety Blanket Records.

Goon – Death Spells

Having just signed with Born Losers Records for an upcoming full-length, LA’s Goon have shared standalone new single ‘Death Spells’ as something of a reintroduction. The track emerged from a difficult period in the life of lead Kenny Becker, and its plaintive opening plays as something of a dirge. “Death spells are coming down / don’t go outside,” as the opening lines go. “Helpless for higher ground / helpless to hide.” But slowly it blossoms with the addition of xylophone and vocal harmonies as well as various chirps and chimes, and by the close begins to sound less like some lament as a talisman offered in protection against such loss. The entire Goon band joined for the recording, including founding guitarist Drew Eccleston on backing vocals, and the result takes on a communal power. “I wanted everyone to play on this one,” Becker explains. “It feels really special, and comforting. The way your friends gather around you in tough times, when you’re hurting, to make music together.”

‘Death Spells’ is out now via Born Losers Records and available from Bandcamp.

Luah – Small Time

Writing back in 2023, we wrote about the work of Luah—the Florida-born, Baltimore-raised and Kingston, New York-based songwriter Brendan Paul Sullivan—through single ‘To Relate’. “A slow unfurling of a song,” as we put it, “as though in committing to the flow, Sullivan not only accepts the changeable currents but finds beauty in every small eddy and pull.” Now preparing to release a new album, Luah is back with ‘Small Time’, another downbeat, assured track full of swampy twang and lo-fi textures. With the languid, slightly woozy flow comes a certain sense of reflection, as though the echoed backing vocals chasing Sullivan’s lyrics are emerging from some other time or plane.

‘Small Time’ is out now via streaming services.

Mol Sullivan – On the Balcony

Cincinnati songwriter Mol Sullivan kicked off 2024 with GOOSE, an album “set deep in those early days of a new beginning,” as we put it, “where everything feels possible yet tenuous and a little too vivid to bear,” and has released a series of videos in support of the record through the months (we recommend the title track and ‘Cautiously‘ in particular), though is closing out the year by reaching back into the past to polish an old gem. First recorded in 2013 in her aunt and uncle’s basement, ‘On the Balcony’ offers a glimpse of a more lo-fi version of the Mol Sullivan sound, albeit here remastered for the re-release. But although it might differ stylistically to the polished sound of GOOSE, the track still evidently possesses the same DNA, its hushed intimacy full of the compassion and confessional honesty that has come to mark Sullivan’s work.

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

Oldest Sea – All Shall Love Me And Despair

Originating as the solo project of Sam Marandola but now expanded to become a full band, Oldest Sea is a vessel built to navigate the heaviest seas of experimental folk, pushing into dark, tempestuous waters in order to most fully explore soundscapes at once elemental and otherworldly. Latest release Judith Slaying Holofernes serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, a two-song collaboration with masters of the genre Have a Nice Life. Opening track ‘All Shall Love Me And Despair’ embodies the release’s weight, rising from hushed beginnings with a stark insistence towards its transcendently dark climax, possessing all the Old Testament drama of the double single’s apocryphal title.

othermusic – pretty please

A new project between Portland, OR’s Ezekiel J. Rudick (Young Elk, goodgrief etc.), Kathrin Skiff and Tony Reyes, othermusic combines richly fuzzed synths with dramatic drums and guitars to create a shoegaze sound able to straddle both delicate emotion and crushing heft. Single ‘pretty please’ serves as the perfect introduction, its tender, almost music box opening soon ceding way to a thunderous march, the track thereafter cycling with a quiet-loud dynamic able to evoke both closeness and distance. “Can you / please find / a way / to be kinder / to me / so I / can fall / asleep,” the lyrics ask, situating the audience in the heart of a troubled relationship. “Come on / pretty please?”

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Seattle’s 129,600, the recording project of Jade Tcimpidis, is preparing to release their debut album Granular Convection with Ghost Mountain Records. Described as exploring the “limits of tradition in the consumer era,” the album sees Kalen Walther (bass), Kirsten Ourada (drums) and Neil Welch (baritone saxophone) join Tcimpidis to conjure a sound which straddles dustbowl folk and art pop invention, all while reaching towards psych and jazz. Lead single ‘Techi’ highlights this singular style, where all manner of details spin from a taut rhythm, making for a twitchy, volatile mood. Tcimpidis’s vocals are equally frantic, and coupled with the sax evokes the paranoid vibe of Coppola’s The Conversation, with all its schemes and surveillance.

‘Techi’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Casters – Memory

Casters is the recording project of Andrew Strader and a rotating cast of supporting musicians, based in Brooklyn via Nashville and Knoxville. With EP Walk on Home coming soon via Like You Mean It Records, Strader has shared single ‘Memory’ to give an indication of what to expect from the release. This time featuring Neil MacLean (Home Visions, Griffin Moyer) on keys/synths and Connor James (Pat & The Pissers) on drums, the track draws on Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again to explore the impossibility of returning to a place you’ve left behind. All cast in a dreamy drift that marbles fondness and regret into sound so rich you could suspend yourself within it.

Chris Chism – On The Run

Focusing on the working class experience and following a lineage through Dylan and van Zandt, Richmond, Indiana’s Chris Chism delves into the personal to emerge with a more universal picture of life’s joys and struggles. New EP Things Has Changed develops this style, and single ‘On The Run’ is the perfect place to jump in. A semi-autobiographical portrait of a young person beaten down by life—loosing those close to them, experiencing brushes with the law, and generally searching for reasons to continue on amid a slew of misfortune—though one captured with the patience and empathy only hindsight can bring.

 Hit Bargain – Degree Decree

Featuring members who are/have been parts of acts like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Beach Fossils and Cold Beat, Hit Bargain is a LA-based project led by Nora Singh which aims to stare the worst excesses of our society square in the eye. It is of no surprise then that new album A DOG A DEER A SEAL is charged by equal parts manic fervour and anxious frenzy, playing like the fevered delirium of a country’s dying mind. Single ‘Degree Decree’ might clock in at barely two minutes but portrays this mood in all of its maniacal panic, where the technological hubris of consumerism encroaches on our world as a synthetic blight.

Check out the video directed by Katharine Antoun below (though those with photosensitive epilepsy should note there are flashing images):

A DOG A DEER A SEAL is out on the 10th November via Get Better Records and you can pre-order it now.

June Rosewell – a solid state

Nashville songwriter June Rosewell recently released a new EP, the dog bit at such an angle. It’s a collection of songs in which frustration and tenderness coexist and hope refuses to ever quite evaporate. Take single ‘a solid state’, a track about moving home which sees Rosewell’s intimate croon relays scenes with an everyday poetry. “In the morning we were packing up our boxes,” the opening lines play, “and our friends / Brushed our backbones with their warm thumbs while they sent us off again.” Later the song reveals the significance of the EP’s title (“The dog bit at such an angle where I thought I’d need a stitch”), and endeavours to show the invisible bonds that persist even as all that is familiar is upended.

Sitting quietly in a pair in the back seat of mother’s car
While she hummed along to songs she chose to deaden worry’s roar
We’re moving states, we’re moving states
A solid state, a solid state

the dog bit at such an angle is out now and available from the usual places.

Kendl Winter – Humming Mantra

Beginning as a way to both explore the clawhammer banjo and share this process with fans and peers, Kendl Winter’s forthcoming album Banjo Mantras originated in a daily practice of improvisation. “The banjo mantras started off as morning writings, like morning pages but in musical form,” she explains. “Daily pen to paper, fingers to strings, listening, feeling, sliding and thumbing my way around my open back banjo.” But the more Winter committed to the concept, the more she became attached to the ideas which emerged, and eventually decided to expand the resulting mantras into fleshed out soundscapes. First single ‘Humming Mantra’ channels the Pacific Northwest’s verdant summertime, full of small details and a sense of invigorating clarity.

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

leoblu – dirty windows

“It’s unclear if the events [portrayed] are autobiographical or fiction,” we wrote of leoblu‘s ‘cake‘ back in January, “but the emotions are so keenly felt that whether these things actually happened seems almost besides the point.” The project of Åland-based songwriter Julia Carlsson, leoblu complicates the divide between truth and fiction in order to locate a deeper emotional honesty, weaving a layered and controlled sound that has been described as ‘dark pop’. Latest single ‘dirty windows’ pushes further into this style, taking the titular image to explore the cycles of stasis and rejuvenation that come with depression. Again the sound is beguilingly understated, growing subtly across its length as though slowly thawing from a deep freeze.

Watch the video shot and edited by Jonathan Carlsson below:

‘dirty windows’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Mali Velasquez – Shove

Next month Mali Velasquez is releasing full-length I’m Green on Acrophase Records. An album, as we described in a preview of single ‘Bobby‘, which explores “how our relationships with ourselves can be so conflicted and uneasy, and the way in which this is governed by our experiences with those around us.” Homing in on a specific relationship with a sound somewhere between vulnerable and visceral, latest single ‘Shove’ delves into the way our actions can be detrimental within such experiences no matter how pure the motivation. “I wrote this song in an attempt to explain the feeling of seeing myself doing the wrong things in the perfect moment,” as Velasquez puts it.

I’m Green is out on the 13th October via Acrophase Records.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Conductors

Next month sees the return of Canadian indie stalwarts The Rural Alberta Advantage with their brand new full-length The Rise & The Fall on Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek. Though, despite their experience, latest single ‘Conductors’ explores how the process of writing songs gets no easier no matter how many records you have under your belt. “There is so much I love about being in a band. But one of its most fundamental aspects causes me more mental anguish than anything else, and that’s actually writing songs,” as Nils Edenloff explains. “When I’m able to tune out the doubting voice in my head and get it done, there’s no greater feeling. But often the devil wins and it’s easier to just run away.” This time it took drummer Paul Banwatt’s threat to use AI generated lyrics for Edenloff to shake off the doubt, and the video by Good Job Hi Five channels Adam Curtis to foreground the sense of human creativity struggled against the encroachment of systems and machines.

Why, why do I run?
From the work and the words before it’s done
Sometimes I’m always waiting on what will never come
Before it’s done, now every thought weighs a ton
Taking it on the chin for a while
Taking it like a champ for a while

The Rise & The Fall is out on the 6th October via Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek and you can pre-order it now.

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