“This project was a lot of, just like songs about waking up to the reality we’re in, coping with that and seeing ourselves as victims of it, but then also as participants in it,” explain Georgia‘s Bayou Princess of their fittingly titled new album Dance Tunes for the End of the World upcoming via Indecent Artistry. “And navigating that as a band, rethinking what does a band mean? Or what can it mean, back to that silliness. I don’t want to be a business or a brand. Just an expression of daily living.” The style is introduced perfectly by latest single ‘He Keeps Talking’, a track which seems to barrel towards the encroaching apocalypse and embrace the entropic movement which results, sounding neither ironic nor flippant in the process, but attuned to the reality of a world in turmoil.

Big Warm Bed – June Bug

The new recording project of Leeds-based musician Jacob Andrews, Big Warm Bed has been long in the making. Having cut his teeth with years in the local scene, playing in projects with members of Adult DVD and English Teacher, as well as touring the US with Far Caspian frontman Joel Johnston, Andrews has slowly stepped out and introduced his own work. A long-awaited debut full-length is currently pencilled in for the early months of 2027, but for now we have single ‘June Bug’ to tide us over. Moving away from the post-punk snarl of his collaborators, Big Warm Bed slots into the wistful corner of indie rock, weaving a compassionate picture of friendship and the importance of being there for the ones you love. True to the theme, a full band join Andrews to bring the sound to life, with Niall Summerton (drums), Meg Lama (vocals/synth), Tom Kettleton (saxophone), Jacob Cracknell (bass/vocals), Chris Aitchison (guitar/vocals) and Connal Doo (guitar/vocals) all lending their talents. Watch a live session recorded at The Calm Farm and directed by Andy Little below:

‘June Bug’ is out now via Dance To The Radio and available from the usual places.

Cameron Keiber – Haunted Castles

Back in 2025, Cameron Keiber released full-length Nurser via Midriff Records, an album which confronted the modern world with the scathing eye it deserves. “There’s no hesitance or lily-livered attempts at peace here,” as we concluded in our review, “just a clear fuck you to all those who try to impose their own will upon innocent others.” Fast forward two years and Keiber is back with The Tide, a follow-up which pushes further than its predecessor, embracing the beauty of imperfection both stylistically and thematically and championing the power of the human in a world quickly tipping towards digital oblivion. Opener and single ‘Haunted Castles’ welcomes the listener into the release, opening with a poignant sense of reflection but soon kicking into gear and building into something urgent and cathartic. You’ll notice the beats of Nurser have been replaced by real drums, the guitars have doubled in size, and most importantly Keiber stands atop of if all fervent and compassionate as ever.

Cloudbelly – Phantom Lung

“Holy gods inside me / Why can no one love me / Without running aground?” So ask Cloudbelly on their latest single ‘Phantom Lung’.  The latest track to be unveiled from the project’s forthcoming full-length Throwing the Game, the single is a love song but not in the traditional sense, detailing the slow disintegration of a friendship as it moved from closeness to distance. A warm arrangement foregrounds the intimacy that is being lost, and there is no questioning the fondness which underpins the entire endeavour, though as the sound swells at the conclusion of the track, the answer to the initial question is ultimately fatalistic. “Maybe no one should come in / Nobody, now.”

Throwing The Game will be released on the 13th November and you can pre-order it now.

Darren Hayman – Darling, All the Time

If you’ve been reading VSF over recent months, chances are you know that cult UK songwriter Darren Hayman has been undergoing the mammoth task of making his vast back catalogue available online for the first time (a project you can read about in more depth here). All manner of rarities and deep cuts are being unveiled in the process, with some gems saved from obscurity along the way, but latest release I’m Your Team is one of the most notable to date. The full-length album had been sitting incomplete for a number of years, Hayman prioritising other musical commitments and dealing with artistic insecurities, though came to be viewed in a fonder light by its creator as time passed by. Inspired by the success of the aforementioned re-release project, Hayman has now decided to put out the album in full via Audio Antihero. Recorded in the wake of 2022 album You Will Not Die, I’m Your Team digs further into the same ground to perfect the contemplative, emotive style. “Sometimes after making an album you don’t want to go into a different direction,” Hayman explains. “You want to go deeper into it, and I felt I was just getting the hang of this stripped, slow, emotional music.” Listen to the title track now:

Eliza Edens – Old Home Video

Continuing to pave the way for full-length Death Drive, coming later this month via First City Artists, Eliza Edens has shared new single ‘Old Home Video’. While previous track ‘Hot & Mean‘ was certainly personal (“turning its attention to the queer experience in the contemporary moment, especially the rollercoaster of dopamine highs and lows facilitated by the access we’re granted into the lives of others by social media”) ‘Old Home Video’ takes things even further. A song Edens wrote while their mother was living with dementia which not only struggles with the cruelty of that present but also begins grieving in anticipation for the inevitable loss. As you might expect, the result is the most poignant and unguarded track on a release full of them, the very sound marbled with a combination of fondness and sorrow.

Death Drive will be released on the 30rd October via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now.

Fleur Geurl – stone in the stew

Back in September, Brooklyn-based songwriter Danielle Sorokin, AKA Fleur Geurl, released full-length 11:11, a collection of chamber folk songs which allow the personal and the mystical to blend together into something with real weight. It is not uncommon for recent folk music to bare its vulnerable heart in order to communicate more authentically, and there’s certainly an open, confessional dimension to Sorokin’s work, but where Fleur Geurl stands apart from its contemporaries is its willingness to play with the tension between display and concealment, clarity and opacity. Take single ‘stone in the stew’, a track indicative of the headspace of a record caught between cold reality and portentous dreams.

soon, I’ll sink into the stew
I’ll let it be true, I am too
a hue of geranium blue
soaks every room
every room

Generifus – Bird Beak

We last wrote about Spencer Sult’s Generifus back in 2024 with the release of Summerberrys, an album which provided “a welcome expansion of the Generifus universe,” as we put it, “again using Sult’s eye for the seemingly mundane details of day to day living to explore themes of growing up in the Pacific Northwest amid the wider backdrop of a hostile world.” Now Sult is set to return with brand new record Pulling on the Seam, and lead single ‘Bird Beak’ hints at the direction of the album. A meditation on hard truths and dashed dreams that comes to accept that moving on doesn’t always mean a clean break, the shrapnel of the past destined to remain embedded no matter how far we might run towards the horizon.

Good Wild Gods – Breathe It In

After meeting on tour in 2017, Luke Sital-Singh and Ben Cramer (AKA Old Sea Brigade) quickly developed a strong creative rapport, working together under the moniker Good Wild Gods and releasing the EP All The Ways You Sing In The Dark in 2020. Both artists returned to the successful solo careers thereafter, though a reunion at Cramer’s Swedish home studio rekindled the project once again, the duo this time pushing things further than before to embrace something closer to a full band richness. Sometimes I Go Missing is the result, a full-length album which builds upon what All The Ways… established yet reaches much further. “‘Sometimes I Go Missing’ is the culmination of many years we could have never seen coming,” as Sital-Singh explains. “We made the music we wanted to make.” Listen to latest single ‘Breathe It In’ now:

Sometimes I Go Missing will be released on the 19th March 2027 via Nettwerk Music Group and you can pre-order it now.

Kin Hana – Shōmetsu / Kodō

“Manages to locate the yearning for connection and community which has persisted from our first days, and will persist to the last,” we wrote of ‘Earthrise’ from Kin Hana‘s new LP Howling World forthcoming via Black Meadow. “The result centers the mythic presence of both the past and the future, twin otherworlds which loom large over the present, warping the material of our existence with equal parts pessimism and possibility.” The track embodied the spirit of an album concerned with how we engage with a world at once woeful and wondrous, moving with equal parts curiosity and dread in the hope of making sense of our irrational present. With the album just days away, Kin Hana has unveiled new single ‘Shōmetsu / Kodō’ to further tease the release. A mighty, haunting track which extends over eight minutes, Aaron Hodges joined by Jared Ashdown (Open Head), Gabriel Birnbaum (Wilder Maker) and Otto Hauser (Vetiver, Espers) to push the sound from a mournful piano piece into a cataclysmic doom metal number.

Left Tracks – Popcorn Lung

We last wrote about Left Tracks back in 2023 with the release of their EP End Times Hauling, describing how the collaboration saw Phil Di Leo (DI LEO) and Kabir Kumar (Sun Kin) use group together to imagine a new future in the wake of COVID and the adjacent catastrophes. “[The EP] sits on the precipice of disaster but makes a decision to envisage a different world,” we wrote, “working on the logic that no significant change can occur without first rekindling a sense of imagination.” The project has expanded and evolved in the interim, not least with last year’s record LT2, and now Di Leo and Kumar are back with brand new single ‘Popcorn Lung’ to further mark the direction of travel. A new, heftier version of Left Tracks bolstered by Sam Thorne (bass guitar) and Mark Edwards (drums, percussion) which is capable of both intricate detail and sweeping energy, playing with the tension between lightness and weight to evoke the strange physics of a codependent relationship.

Nick Bellerose – baby

“Paint[s] the experience of falling in love in all of its overwhelming glory with Bellerose’s trademark style, where cinematic richness meets the intimacy of DIY folk.” So we wrote of ‘About Us‘ by Nick Bellerose back in the summer, the DC-based songwriter channelling the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen in his authentic style. With EP maybe, someday now announced, Bellerose has shared latest single ‘baby’, and the result is no less sincere. Based within the liminal space between the end of a relationship and the kindling of another, the track “is less about knowing where love might lead than allowing yourself to feel something again” as the press release explains, and possesses all the earnest, homespun charm you want from such a song.

young friend – michael wakes up

Next month Vancouver-based songwriter Drew Tarves, AKA young friend, will release brand full-length New Entertainment via Nettwerk, and single ‘michael wakes up’ highlights how the records signals an ambitious new era for the artist. Foregoing the simplicity of a single narrative arc, the track instead presents a series of vignettes in order to paint a larger picture, each adding up to a mosaic of the human experience in all of its wonders and heartache. “’michael wakes up’ follows a number of characters that are all experiencing different realities in their lives,” Tarves explains. “Michael being told by Shelly that she doesn’t love him any longer, John winning the lottery with his daughter’s birthday as his numbers, Damien being let go from his company but continuing to do what he loves. These people are all experiencing their own beautiful stories.” Watch the video directed by Zachary Vague & Drew Tarves below:

New Entertainment will be released on the 6th November via Nettwerk and you can pre-order it now.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2026 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Releasing this song is an exercise in killing my perfectionism,” explains Ottawa‘s abijah of latest single ‘Mountainside’, the track having been written before any of the songs on the 2025 EP Turning, yet sitting in a drawer waiting its turn to be set free. “I wrote the song in the February of 2024 at about 3 a.m. in a symbolism-obsessed, half-dreaming state,” they continue. “It’s hard for me to recall actively writing it — it feels more like I lassoed the song down intact from the dream world.” More than a neat origin story, this idea seems to make up the very fabric of the sound, everything slightly out of kilter yet somehow more cohesive for it, as though operating according to laws slightly stranger and more alluring than any conventional wisdom. What results is a single that’s starkly evocative and loaded with symbolism, a yearning search guided not so much by logic as the implicit desires of the unconscious.

Adjenai – Everything Bagel

Written amid grief and discomfort while caring for a loved one with dementia, Adjenai‘s forthcoming release Did It Hurt? Was It Fun? began more as an exercise in self-care more than anything else, the songwriter aiming to soothe themselves through the act of making music, though eventually it became clear the result was something they wished to share with the world. “I was writing songs to process my feelings,” as the Los Angeles-based songwriter explains. “It wasn’t until I was walking with my mom after we spread my aunt’s ashes in Alaska that I said, ‘I think I need to try again with my artist project. I think these songs might be for someone else to hear.” First single ‘Everything Bagel’ captures the decidedly personal spirit of the release, turning its attention to the fond (and not so fond) details of childhood to sketch out the triumphant feeling of finally being out and proud.

Cameron Knowler – Skipping Town

In recent months, Cameron Knowler has been sharing a series of homespun demos, with tracks like ‘Placer Camp Blues‘ and ‘El Centro‘ grounding themselves in both a sense of history and place with their spare yet evocative arrangements which embrace the limitations of the humble cassette recorder. The final track from this collection, ‘Skipping Town’ continues the style with a bittersweet ode to home, its slow and wistful textures proving the ideal conclusion to a series all about the weight of the past and what it might offer us moving forwards. “This tune to me is related to my hometown of Yuma, AZ, the feeling of desperately wanting to leave and return to a place that you left,” Knowler explains. “Leaning into the sparsity, and being in the sunniest place on Earth.”

‘Skipping Town’ is out now via Castle Dome Records and available from Bandcamp.

Cloudbelly – Bend

Cloudbelly continue to pave the way for their forthcoming new album Throwing The Game with new single ‘Bend’. ‘Oh, Antarctica!‘ and ‘Poppa‘ have already shown the release’s emotionally resonant nature, looking to the future and the past respectively, and the latest track continues this style by looking not forward or back, but inwards. “Tell me again / Scarlet voices in my head / ‘Bout how I’m / So grandiose and / How it shows in the ways I’ve chosen / To write on my precious hours,” Corey Laitman sings in the opening verse, the track a direct confrontation between an artist and their critical inner voice. But it’s one conducted not with fire and fury but a triumphant gentleness, as though understanding that any internal pain requires healing more than anything else.

All of that brightness gone sour
Am I a coward
Corroded by rust and
Discontent and a lack
Of trust

Watch the video filmed and directed by Nick Duncan below:

Throwing The Game will be released on the 13th November and you can pre-order it now.

Eliza Edens – Hot & Mean

“While there might be a certain recklessness to the abandon with which Edens faces this new era, it is all part of deeper pact to seize the moment while it is still present. A joyous, if slightly dangerous, celebration of being alive.” So we wrote of Death Drive, the forthcoming album from Eliza Edens, the Brooklyn songwriter emerging from a difficult period with a newfound lust for life. Latest single ‘Hot & Mean’ is no different, turning its attention to the queer experience in the contemporary moment, especially the rollercoaster of dopamine highs and lows facilitated by the access we’re granted into the lives of others by social media. “The chorus is as much directed at myself than it is to anyone else,” Edens explains. “I hope we can all be sloths and move at the speed of geologic time, at least every once in a while.”

Death Drive will be released on the 30rd October via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now.

Jennah Barry – Old Friends

With albums like Young Men and Holiday, Nova Scotian artist Jennah Barry established herself as one of Canada’s finest songwriters, managing to delve into difficult themes and confront hard truths while always maintaining an overarching sense of compassion, in large part thanks to her striking vocal style. After a five-year hiatus. Barry has now returned with new single ‘Old Friends’ with Forward Music Group, and the track is every bit as lush and subtly powerful as we’ve come to expect. A song which explores the passing of time and the emotional weight it so often carries, capturing the ways in which once pressing feelings are smudged into the backdrop of our lives, no longer immediate yet nonetheless colouring the very fabric of existence.

J.W. Ricci – Realization

We last wrote about J.W. Ricci back in May with the release of Through a Frame / Pollen Drop, a debut solo guitar double single which introduced a new era for North Carolina-based songwriter. For having played in bands for a decade while working exploitative jobs (the “twin meat grinders of the music industry and life,” as we put it), he now finds himself in a newly stable position and eager for a creative fresh start. “There’s an clear sense of authenticity to Through a Frame / Pollen Drop as a result,” as we wrote, “each track recorded live with no overdubs and feeling like an artist not only reflecting on their journey to the present, but also coming to understand a healthier path they might follow from here on in.” Now J.W. Ricci is back with new single ‘Realization’, a track every bit as considered as those which preceded it, moving with a calm grace that nevertheless carries its own reflective, almost mournful edge.

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

The Male Pattern – I Was Shot in the Heart!

The last time we checked in with the protagonist of I Was Shot in the Heart!, the new album from The Male Pattern, he was rapidly sinking into the dark side of life, fresh off a divorce and thrown into trouble by a harebrained scheme to make a quick buck. “Firearms and narcotics have never been a good mix, especially not when the characters involved are quite so desperate, and an ostensibly foolproof plan to rob a small-time dealer inevitably tilts towards disaster.” With the album now out via Audio Antihero, Will Schwartz has shared the title track and closer to hint at the ‘happy ending’ offered by the release. “Our guy has struggled against the confines of his putrid personality, seeking fruitlessly for love, glory, meaning, or at the very least self self-annihilation in the form of screen addiction and benzo abuse,” as Schwartz explains. “He finally finds what he’s looking for in a shootout with police at a White Plains Stop and Shop.”

Sammy Weissberg – II – String Quartet no.2

Brooklyn-based composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Sammy Weissberg is preparing to release his new album Music for Strings and Brass via Dear Life Records this November, and lead track ‘String Quartet no.2’ highlights how he channels the spirit of late-Romantic and modernist composers to paint a picture of everyday life in all its elaborate detail and humble simplicity. “This was the first movement I composed for String Quartet No.2,” Weissberg explains. “I used the melodic material as a foundation to write the rest of the piece, and it’s loosely based on the traditional symphonic form. The quartet was composed with a conventional structure, but this movement was written intuitively, almost like a stream of consciousness. I wrote the melodies while singing on my bike. It feels more lyrical, like a folk song.”

Sasha Adrian – Punch

“Reimagines the traditional boundaries of a love song to explore a form of relationship not so often explored,” we wrote of Sasha Adrian‘s ‘wish that i had called you’ back in June. “Namely the incredibly close bond formed between teenage friends, where every emotion is heightened and you are certain the relationship will continue perpetually.” Now the Copenhagen-based songwriter has returned with ‘Punch’, a brand new single which continues this examination of less publicised sides of relationships with a raw yet compassionate meditation on ghosting and growing apart. “Losing a friendship is a slow kind of heartbreak,” Adrian says. “It’s hard to find words for it because we haven’t really been taught how to talk about it. Do you tell a friend that you’re growing apart? Can you ghost someone you’ve known for over ten years? Honestly, I don’t know—I just know it hurts deeply to love someone who’s walking away.”

Son Lux – Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

This autumn sees the release of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a film directed by Bassam Tariq which casts Mahershala Ali as a devoutly religious hitman, and the soundtrack by Son Lux is every bit as inventive and bewildering as the movie itself. Driving electronic beats capture the energy of the action, but an array of mysterious and mystical electronic flourishes deepen the soundscapes into something more interesting, mirroring the film’s pairing of visceral violence and metaphysical majesty to create a style that manages to be urgent, contemplative and reverent simultaneously. The soundtrack will be released physically by Waxwork Records and digitally by This Is Meru, and the title track is available now to introduce what to expect.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother will be released via Waxwork Records & This Is Meru and you can pre-order it now.

Stonefruit – Friendship Food Mart

Featuring Olivia Langan (guitar, vocals), Gavin Wallace (bass), Jory Gomez (drums) and Jerry Cannon (guitar), Stonefruit is an indie rock outfit based in Bozeman, Montana who set out to capture the full nostalgia and strangeness of the American experience. Earlier this year, the band released their debut album Good News Only and single ‘Friendship Food Mart’ is an ideal introduction to the side of the country they look to evoke. Described as “a love letter to the flyover states of middle America,” the song is the sonic equivalent of driving through a landscape of parking lots and shopping malls, those sprawling edge of town hinterlands that might be exciting or depressing, depending on your frame of mind.

Sweetbreads – The Anvil

Melody Stolpp’s Sweetbreads has shared a number of single in recent months, all leading up to new album Punisher.  ‘Punisher of Love‘ was “an exploration of [the] contemporary rat race, delving into the weight of expectations and self-sabotage which results,” while more recently ‘Open Mic‘ fought to keep the love of art amid the inevitable tussle between ambition and disappointment. With Punisher now finally released, Sweetbreads has released new single ‘The Anvil’, perhaps the happiest song on the record which embraces the radical potential of kindness and positivity. “They say to write what scares you most. I was honestly so terrified writing the lyric ‘You are good’,” as Stolpp explains. “As an extremely self-critical person, taking that weight off and practicing radical self love can be really challenging. In today’s world, we are constantly beating ourselves down and pushing ourselves to be more productive under the pressures of capitalism. Resisting these forces and believing you are enough is a revolutionary act. You matter because you are a living, breathing being. I hope this song can serve as a reminder of that to anyone who hears it.”

Punisher is out now and available from the usual places.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in 2021, Brooklyn-based bassist, composer and singer Carmen Quill released Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere, a debut album which emerged more from personal need than any sense of creative practice. The songs consisted of nothing beyond vocals, upright bass and background noise but were able to tackle the most intimate of subjects, from romantic relationships to the loss of a parent. Quill’s latest full-length Harmless, to be released this November via Ruination Record Co., builds upon this framework, their compositions slowly yet surely blooming from minimalism towards something richer and deeper. As the title track suggests, this is often achieved by way of the mantra or incantation. The song rises out of a simple, repeated set of questions (“Why do I feel so helpless? / Why do I feel so aimless? / Nothing I do is harmless”) towards a considered engagement with themes of agency and complicity in the age of televised genocide and rampant inequality. As Quill explains: “I wrote ‘Harmless’ in a moment when I was feeling acutely the everyday sensation of not knowing what to do with myself when I look around and see so much big shit going wrong.”

Charlotte Greve – Lighter Blue

After ‘Membranes‘ (“considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings”) and ‘Own Lap‘ (“an eleven-minute epic brought to life with full orchestral grandeur which nevertheless never loses sight of the personal amid the sweeping majesty”), Charlotte Greve continues to introduce her forthcoming album WATERBODIES with the release of latest single, ‘Lighter Blue’. Centering on geological imagery and underlined by a beguilingly rhythmic pull, the track considers the curative potential of art, as though the will to create can illuminate the otherwise shadowy avenues of our lives and allow us to live with newfound meaning. “The silent crater/volcano represents a period of disconnection from making art and feeling out of touch with it,” Greve explains. “Tiptoeing around, feeling lost and ungrounded because something essential is missing. In that state, doubt about all things arises, making space for insecurity to flourish. The moment music arrives again, suddenly everything makes sense, the path is lit and you can just walk on it. The forever torch, showing you the way to live your life, gifting you melodies that carry you through the day with purpose.”

Watch the video, shot, edited, and produced by Annika Nagel, below:

WATERBODIES will be released on the 2nd October via New Amsterdam and you can pre-order it now.

Chloë Ester – Bitter End

Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, Chloë Ester is a songwriter who announced herself back in 2020 with debut EP Dying All The Time, establishing a narrative-led brand of indie rock which was happy to blur genre lines in order to capture a sense of simultaneous vulnerability and empowerment. Now Ester is preparing to return with follow-up EP I Could Be The One to further this style, widening the palette and scope of her sound without sacrificing any of the rawness and heart which makes it so engaging. Single ‘Bitter End’ is an ideal entry point, a reflection on a break-up which pairs personal uncertainty with upbeat brightness to explore the tension between regretful introspection and the desire to let go.

Cloudbelly – Poppa

Described by the band as a “meditation on intimacy, belonging, and the things that complicate them,” Cloudbelly‘s third full-length Throwing The Game promises to take the indie folk formula of its predecessor i know i know i know and push it to the edges of the genre, creating something sprawling and shape-shifting in order to explore the full contours of an emotional landscape which stretches both back into the past and out in the future. After lead single ‘Oh, Antarctica!‘ saw Corey Laitman and co. face down what we called “the dispiriting experience of mourning the future in a present world which seems to be tilting in a bad direction,” follow-up ‘Poppa’ turns its attention in the opposite direction to explore the memories of a loved one, and how dignity can persevere through the trials of later life. Namely Laitman’s grandfather, a man who lived for the wilderness yet ultimately found himself in a high-rise caring for his ailing wife. As the press release puts it: “If there is a contradiction in the coexistence of tenderness and grief, this song doesn’t seek to resolve it. The contradiction itself is the emotional event.”

The Fourth Wall – Future Memory

“Combs through the contradictions of the immigrant experience in order to voice feelings otherwise impossible to convey […] a mixture of hope, denial and genuine love which not only subverts expectations but confounds any attempt to properly reassess.” So we wrote of The Fourth Wall‘s Return Forever back in 2024, Stephen Agustin’s ambitious and confronting writing earning the record a place among of favourite albums on the year. Now the Portland-by-way-of-Hawaii project is back with brand new album Memories of the Future, and the release might somehow top its predecessor in terms of depth and scope. Using Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and Frederic Jameson’s work on sci-fi and postmodernism as starting points, Agustin explores the collective failure of the imagination when it comes to dreaming of the future, and the personal and political stasis which results. What emerges is the apocalyptic vision our present time deserves, where the hyperactive stimulation of the digital age masks a fundamental emptiness. “How long will it take / To see the future as a memory,” asks closer ‘Future Memory’, a fitting conclusion to a fatalistic yet clear-eyed album about a world in crisis.

Watch the video by Agustin below:

Memories of the Future is out now via DevilDuck Records and available from The Fourth Wall Bandcamp page.

Hour – Pearls

Last month we introduced Ghost Bridge, the new album from Hour coming soon via Dear Life Records, with the title track. “A song, clocking in at near ten minutes which must rank among [Michael] Cormier-O’Leary’s most ambitious and thematically loaded to date,” as we wrote. “The level of detail is striking but there is no ounce of ostentation. Lesser acts might be overwhelmed if tasked with exploring concepts of loss and mortality, prone to slipping into maudlin excess, but with a unique blend of compassion and abstraction, it seems Hour are up to the task.” The achievement is made possible by a rich ensemble cast, and William H. Travis’s video for new single ‘Pearls’ manages the unenviable task of catching them all gathered in one place (with the notable exception of flute player Adelyn Strei), offering a rare chance to see Hour in its (almost) complete form. “I think his footage succeeds in demonstrating the love we all share for one another in our large, many-tentacled band,” as Cormier-O’Leary says. “It’s a perfect moment in time, a pearl if you will.”

Ghost Bridge will be released on the 9th October via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it from the Hour Bandcamp page.

How Strange It Is – Tough Luck

This autumn, Portland, Oregon outfit How Strange It Is will release their new album THERE IS NO EVIL with Disposable America and Pleasure Tapes. Consisting of Jordan Krinsky (vocals, guitar, synth), Caleb Ballard (additional vocals, guitar, clarinet, synth), Annie Miranda (bass), Annie Fifer (additional vocals, guitar) and Kyle Gordon (drums), the band have developed a fuzzy brand of indie rock across a pair of past releases, and the new record only furthers this style. Take latest single ‘Tough Luck’, an atmospheric, almost ethereal track which cycles through the whole gamut of emotions to capture the strange experience of life. “This song leans into the comedy of circumstance,” the band explain. “When you’re going through it and the world keeps throwing cosmic jokes at you. When you meet up to have a post-mortem with your ex and love songs start playing on the radio. It could be a cinematic moment where you realize you’re still in love but its actually over and that’s ok. The rollercoaster of those feelings.”

Watch the video below, directed by Jess Poe and edited by Poe & Jamison Winternintz:

THERE IS NO EVIL will be released on 20th October via Disposable America and Pleasure Tapes and you can pre-order it now.

John Van Deusen – There Is A Way Home

John Van Deusen made a name fronting celebrated Seattle outfit The Lonely Forest for the best part of a decade, releasing two EPs and four full-lengths in the 2000s/2010s. But his solo work is undoubtedly his most ambitious undertaking to date. Released across two years, forty track double album As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise confronts Van Deusen’s personal struggles with faith, depression and suicidal ideation, drawing on influences as disparate as The Beach Boys, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins and Death Cab For Cutie in the process. After the first part was released back in 2025, John Van Deusen is now sharing Pt. 2 to finally complete the project. “What does it mean to be depressed while worshipping God?” he asks in the album notes. “What does it say about being human?” As the title might suggest, As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise is able to sit with suffering without reducing the entirety of existence to its confines, and wise enough to contemplate the mystery of God even as the immediacy of pain threatens to obscure our connection to the metaphysical. Listen to single ‘There Is A Way Home’ now:

Kin Hana – Howling World

You might know Hudson Valley songwriter and guitarist Aaron Hodges from his work under the moniker Longshoreman, or as part of the psych-folk band Nighttime, but more recently he has adopted the name Kin Hana to usher in a new era of drone/doom-adjacent folk. Next month, Kin Hana will release Howling World, a new full-length which feels like an embodiment of Hodges’s vision, where personal intimacy is matched by an elemental, almost otherworldly atmosphere (Jason Molina and Béla Tarr are cited as touchstones). The result, as highlighted by the lead single title track, manages to communicate both immediate, instinctive emotion (be that wonder, longing or dread) and genuine thematic depth. “This song came out of René Magritte’s painting Young Girl Eating a Bird,” Hana explains. “I was drawn to the contradiction in the image—she seems to be turning away from the world while at the same time literally devouring a piece of it. There’s something wild and irrational about the act that I felt I understood without being able to fully explain. The ‘howling world’ became both the senseless world she’s turning away from and the one she’s suddenly part of. I realized that feeling ran through much of the record, and the song eventually gave the album its name.”

Kyla Marlena – 21

“To me, this record feels alive. Like it has a pulse,” explains Toronto-based cellist and songwriter Kyla Marlena of her debut album Hold Time. “It’s dynamic within and between songs, it can be unpredictable.” Forthcoming this November via idée fixe, the record is something of a pivot for an artist who started out writing instrumental compositions in relative solitude, offering a rich folk rock sound forged through serious collaboration. Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), Julian Psihoigos (Georgia Harmer, Katie Tupper), Felix Fox (BADBADNOTGOOD, Jonah Yano), Jasper Smith (Benjamin Dakota Rogers), Karen Ng (The Weather Station) and Noah Williamson (Sonder) all lend their talents, Marlena not so much instructing these musicians as corralling their energies, leading to a sound that’s authentic and organic. Lead single and album opener ’21’ gives an indication of what to expect, showing how Marlena explores themes of memory and time in a manner which subverts expectations, forgoing the hazy dreaminess which so often accompanies such ideas in favour of something more immediate, scrappy and raw.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Black water, black water / I am still your daughter.” So sings Claire Cronin on the lead single and opening track of her new full-length The Bruise, immediately positioning the record as a continuation of the project established across a series of releases dating back at least as far as 2015’s Over and Through. Cronin’s music, much like her 2020 memoir-cum-film-study Blue Light of the Screen, collapses the distinction between the worldly and the otherworldly, the living and the dead. A study of personal experience which functions as both ritual and lament, always bending towards the uncanny, loaded with eerie symbols, ominous portents and the shining glint of transcendence. As ever, Cronin is joined by Ezra Buchla, who contributes viola, piano and synth as well as vocals and processing, plus a handful of other guests, resulting in a sound that pushes folk towards its most atmospheric frontiers, be that haunted drone or crushing doom metal. The Bruise will be released via Orindal Records and Cronin’s own new imprint A Moth Object in October, complete with a booklet of lyrics and art, but for now submerse yourself in the somber glory of ‘Black Water’ and we’ll have more to say soon.

The Bruise will be released on the 9th October via Orindal Records and A Moth Object and you can pre-order it now.

Cloudbelly – Oh, Antarctica!

We last covered Western Massachusetts band Cloudbelly back in 2024 with the release of i know i know i know, an album driven by “a sense of hard won conviction,” as we put it. “Lessons learnt not via bright epiphany but the slow grind of living through difficult circumstances. Understanding how to not only roll with the punches but rise from knockout blows.” With a new LP on the horizon, Cloudbelly have now returned with lead single ‘Oh Antarctica!’ to whet appetites. Like its predecessor before it, the track find Corey Laitman and co. facing down challenges with a sense of determination, not least the dispiriting experience of mourning the future in a present world which seems to be tilting in a bad direction. As ever, the result unafraid of darkness yet always charged with energy, and as attuned to the personal moments as the wider global scene.

‘Oh, Antarctica’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Great Klons – Visions of Exile

We have featured several singles from Great Klons, the recording project of Rochester‘s Scott Klon, in recent months. ‘More Beauty in the Rain’, explored “devasting wildfires, parental illness [and] the encroachment of pernicious technology… [with a] decidedly mid-00s feel”, while ‘Hidden Signage’ was “a vivid slice of indie pop rooted in both driving percussion and fresh guitar.” Both songs were taken from an EP, Visions of Exile, which was released last week. The record sees Klon joined by Ben Morey, Katie Morey and Billy Martin, who together whip up a singular style that they say draws on “krautrock, psychedelic surf and indie dream pop.” Tonally it lands somewhere between wistful and weary, everyday worries and self-deprecation sitting side by side with something that feels dangerously like hope. Nowhere is this more apparent that on the title track, a grooving psych pop song about the unease that sits beneath a comfortable surface. “It’s a song that touches upon a common theme in Great Klons’ work,” as the press release puts it. “Hell is often having something to lose.”

koleżanka – Single Wooden Bullet

Following on from 2023 album Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes, Kristina Moore’s koleżanka is set to return this September with brand new record Zone 2, a release which explores the liminal space between trauma and health in the wake of an injury. After lead single ‘Lessons in Textiles‘ worked towards reworking oneself in the wake of loss, subsequent track ‘Levers and Pulleys’ furthered the style. The song “plays like recovery unfolding in real time,” we wrote in our preview. “A process not necessarily as joyous nor neatly linear as we might hope, rather something won hour by hour, day by day as the cells replicate and repair themselves, and the body relearns the world according to its new shape.” With the release of Zone 2 coming soon, koleżanka has shared brand new track ‘Single Wooden Bullet’, a song which takes inspiration from Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch to imagine a life after death, be it figurative or literal, and the embrace of imperfection which such a state might demand.

Lael Neale – Slip Away

Last year Lael Neale released Altogether Stranger, an album which “seem[ed] to promise more of the tight, electrical minimalism established across previous LPs [but] in reality holds some of Neale’s most adventurous work to date,” as we wrote in our review. “Because scratch the sleek surface and you’ll find a dizzying concoction of moods and influences, the album a mirror of the odd, alluring city which serves as its setting, enemy and muse.” Refusing to rest on her laurels, Neale is preparing to return with new LP As Killers Do, the inaugural release from her new label Consensual Sound, and the album promises to be every bit as ambitious. Take lead single ‘Slip Away’, a track which uses her trademark blend of dreaminess and urgency to explore the transience inherent within any human existence, though one which focuses not on the fear or grief of such a fact of life, but the reassuring justice mortality will inevitably mete out, regardless of a person’s status. “We act as little gods. Assuming great import. All that we build, create, collect and become, to be taken away,” Neale explains. “We are not gods. The only consolation I have in a world of megalomaniac billionaires and sociopathic leaders. They all will die. We all will die. The Earth will go on.”

Watch the video below featuring analog stop motion paintings by Neale herself and camera by Guy Blakeslee:

As Killers Do will be released on the 20th November via Consensual Sound and you can pre-order it now.

Marika Che – Bonfire of Tragedy

“Packs an emotional punch yet delivers it within a breezy warmth, drawing the audience in with an easy-going rhythm and assured vocal style. A debut this might be, but there’s clear experience within its craft, and you’d be hard pushed to find a more pleasant soundtrack as summer blooms.” So we wrote of ‘Edge of the Storm’, the lead single from Marika Che‘s LP Bright Flame back in June, the track positioning the LA-based songwriter somewhere between dream pop and Waxahatchee-esque folk rock. With the release of the record approaching, Che has now returned with latest single ‘Bonfire of Tragedy’ to further introduce the emotional depth of the release. “The first song I wrote on the album, shortly after my dad passed away,” Justad explains. “I felt a little lost, and very lonely in my experience of grief.” But from this low point comes a moment of catharsis, as she continues:

I was driving home one night and had this vision of a massive bonfire and all these people being drawn to the warm glow in various states of wellbeing. It was a place to drink, dance, sing, tell stories, unburden yourself without worrying about judgment. A place to howl at the moon and befriend a stranger. It’s pretty sentimental, I guess, but it’s what I needed at the time. This song became that for me, and I feel the cure of it every time I sing it onstage for a room full of people.

Nick Bellerose – About Us

Back in July, we introduced the work of Nick Bellerose, a former international diplomat who decided to pivot more fully towards songwriting in response to a period of personal upheaval. With elements of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen, first single ‘maybe i think’ was “characteristically bittersweet,” as we wrote, “the track explor[ing] heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming,” and latest track ‘About Us’ is no less emotive. This time, Johnny Cash classic ‘Ring of Fire’ serves as inspiration, the song painting the experience of falling in love in all of its overwhelming glory with Bellerose’s trademark style, where cinematic richness meets the intimacy of DIY folk.

NOIA – As Per My Last Email

The recording project of Barcelona-born, Brooklyn-based artist Gisela Fullà-Silvestre, NOIA released her debut album gisela to acclaim in 2023, though has since had to endure one of the most difficult periods of her life, navigating personal loss amid a wider picture of turmoil across the world. The first NOIA release since the debut tackles this experience head on, using a distinctively experimental style of pop to evoke the absurd contemporary phenomenon of never switching off. “It’s what happens when ‘just circling back’ becomes a way of life,” Fullà-Silvestre explains. “A song about the slow collapse of hyperfunctionality, that state of being permanently ‘on,’ answering messages at midnight, running on notifications instead of sleep, until you’re less a person than a broken, over-wired robot still sending polite replies.”

The track comes with a video directed by Varya Rootwood with movement director Viva Soudan, which furthers the themes of the song by taking the office environment out into the natural world, representing how the boundaries between work and life have been eroded in our hypercapitalist society.

‘As Per My Last Email’ is out now via streaming services and available from the NOIA Bandcamp page.

Val McCallum – Fifty Fifty

Chances are, if you’re familiar with the name Val McCallum, it’s down to his forty-year stint as the sideman of Jackson Browne, or maybe thanks to his guitar playing with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Randy Newman and Sheryl Crow. But while he might seem most comfortable as a collaborator, he is also a stellar songwriter in his own right, his work representing something of a well-kept secret among the LA music scene (if an artist who has been covered by Phoebe Bridgers could still be called a secret). But after developing a partnership with the Berlin-based lyricist and producer Rudi Maier, McCallum looks finally set to announce himself on a wider stage with As If We Didn’t Know, a full-length which serves as a long overdue introduction for listeners unfamiliar with his talents, and merely confirmation for those who always knew. The record isn’t out until spring 2027, but lead single ‘Fifty Fifty’ is here to whet appetites. A fittingly filmic folk song about the roles we play in trying to escape our own lives and the people who help lead us back towards authenticity, all the more resonant when you consider McCallum is the son of Hollywood stars Jill Ireland and David McCallum, not to mention the stepson of Charles Bronson.

As If We Didn’t Know will be released on the 19th March 2027 and you can pre-order it now.

Winter – hide-a-lullaby (feat. Peel Dream Magazine)

We’ve featured a couple of tracks from Winter‘s upcoming Romantix Mixtape in recent times, an EP which sees the New York-based artist reimagine the songs on 2025 full-length Adult Romantix. After lead single ‘hollow (mixtape version)‘ (“A song succinct and bound by forward motion, clocking in at almost half the length of its twin sister yet no less atmospheric for it”), Winter enlisted Soccer Mommy for a new version of ‘without you‘ which offered “a cinematic representation of love, loneliness and longing.” And the star guests keep on coming, with latest track ‘hide-a-lullaby’ inviting Peel Dream Magazine to help reshape the sound, stripping things back to an intimate acoustic arrangement which foregrounds the vocals, and further amplifies the songwriting which might otherwise be submerged beneath gauzy textures.

Romantix Mixtape will be released on the 18th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Winspear Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Oh we had time, well you know, at times
Time was all we had
Our distances fell flat to parallel horizons
Not quite happy, not quite sad

‘Garbage’ possesses the lonely intimacy of an empty room, nothing but plucked guitar and vocals for the opening half before layers of samples build like memories flashing past. ‘November’ is also full of sober feeling. As we wrote in a preview, the track takes “the melancholy of the titular month and infus[es] it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love.” A similar momentum drives ‘Fascinated’, the first full song on the record which immediately pitches the audience into the cathartic spirit of the Cloudbelly sound. It’s an anthemic introduction, compete with pounded percussion and singalong chorus of the tears-in-your eyes, empowering variety, but its again shaded with a sense of tender intimacy, a refusal to gloss over life’s anxieties and complications.

What results is a sense of hard won conviction. Lessons learnt not via bright epiphany but the slow grind of living through difficult circumstances. Understanding how to not only roll with the punches but rise from knockout blows. “So it’s been strange sailing these days,” as Laitman sings on ‘Bloom’, “The nights turn my empty pockets out / And fill them with moon, and the wind / And the wild, blooming bruise / Of beginning again.” With resilience comes the hope of something better and kinder. Days in which they might step out of their body, or finally burst into bloom.

i know i know i know is out now via Strange Library Records and available from the Cloudbelly Bandcamp page.

The post Cloudbelly – i know i know i know appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Following last year’s ‘November’, which we said “[took the] melancholy of the titular month and infus[ed] it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love,” Cloudbelly have now released another single from the record. ‘If You Want’ was actually the first track they completed for the album and proves the perfect introduction for new listeners. What the label describe as “an impassioned conversation between two voices residing in the same body, reckoning with a tendency to run from the things you want the most,” the song starts slow and syrupy, warm and nostalgic but tempered with a sharp edge of loss and regret and conflicted emotion.

The post Cloudbelly – If You Want appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Moves through sounds and emotions like scenes in a dream, seemingly disparate thoughts and feeling united by an uncanny common thread.” So we wrote of Water Words, an album by Bay Area artist Asha Wells which combined a number of genres to “sit in the strange space at the heart of any new relationship,” as we continued, “the period where nothing is decided in any one direction, the potential of both promise and regret latent within every detail.” Next year, Wells is releasing a brand new EP Tears of a Clown on Anxiety Blanket Records and first single ‘Impermanent I’ shows a clear evolution of this style. A piece of idiosyncratic pop which melds the experience of classical training with a willingness to push beyond conventions to mine the fertile ground outside.

Cloudbelly – November

Last year we featured ‘Leavened‘ by Montague, Massachusetts‘s Cloudbelly, introducing Corey Laitman’s expansive yet personal style which “[found] assurance in their contemplation of identity and relationships.” New single ‘November’ is no less heartfelt and confident, taking the melancholy of the titular month and infusing it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love. “Say my love’s marked ‘return to sender’ / Teach me mercy, cold November,” as Laitman sings. “Hungry lungs, my love’s the space between the notes / I meant them, every word I ever spoke.” Here, the onset of winter is both a threat and a reminder, as well as something which might yet be outrun.

Daphne’s Demise – Bedroom Window

The solo project of Sarnia, Ontario’s Zoë L, Daphne’s Demise has made a name with a home-recorded blend of indie pop, folk and ambient sensibilities. However, the new ‘Bedroom Window’ represents something of a change, with the track seeing Daphne’s Demise take to the studio with a full band. What emerges is a country-inflected labour of love which taps into the dreamy richness of the seventies. But within the enveloping wistfulness and languid drift lies something more direct. “No more can I be / The one that you keep inside your head,” as the opening lines play, “Looming over me is a thing I just won’t see / Can’t watch it spin.”

Through the bedroom window
See it light up green
And fly away

Dead Bandit – Staircase

The recording project of Ellis Swan and James Schimpl, the music of Dead Bandit might be instrumental, but it is decidedly lyrical in spirit. Swan is known for haunting murder ballads within his solo work, while multi-instrumentalist Schimpl weaves expansive soundscapes. So it followed that the debut Dead Bandit album From the Basement combined these sensibilities into a raw, shadowy sound which merged Southern Gothic needle and hauntological strangeness. Again on Quindi Records, new album Memory Thirteen is no less evocative, with single ‘Staircase’ presenting a cryptic mood. Is the past returning to haunt the present? Or is that the future we glimpse breaking through the clouds?

Humbird – Child of Violence

“Another blue sky morning,” sings Humbird’s Siri Undlin on new single ‘Child of Violence’, “In the land of the free to believe / Lies on the Internet and the glamor of money / Missing the real thing.” The Minnesota artist has been releasing a number of singles via Nettwerk in recent months, channelling the politically charged folk rock of yesteryear, and the new track is perhaps the most direct and cutting yet. A song which refuses to treat acts of violence within the US as tragedies or aberrations, but rather a cornerstone of the entire national project. And perhaps most importantly, it identifies how honesty around this fact is central to any hope of change.

I could be a break in the chain
I could be a piece of the change
When I talk about it
I’ll call it by its name

Little Kid – Something to Say

Back in 2020, Toronto‘s Little Kid released Transfiguration Highway, an album “at least in part inspired by an enduring interest in Christian mysticism,” as we described, “and themes of epiphany and revelation allow [lead Kenny] Boothby to explore his own growth.” Next year will see Little Kid return with A Million Easy Payments, a new full-length on Orindal Records, which finds Boothby and co. again probing at the line between the corporeal and the spiritual. Lead single ‘Something to Say’ offers a picture of reality so keenly observed that a sense of latent mystery begins to suggest itself, and with it the possibility of transcendence.

Nora Roy – No Steppy Snik

“Sometimes I want to pull my teeth out / unzip my skin / start over.” So sings Nora Roy on ‘No Steppy Snik’, a new single which pairs surreal detachment and forthright confession to welcome the listener deep into its heart. Joined by Julian Fader (guitar) Brett Nash (bass) and Daniel Siles (drums), Roy follows this dreamlike thread through murmured quiet and towering peaks, though for all of the song’s unreal qualities, the parting sense is that of having been told something true which might not have been communicable any other way. “You love / Like a snake I saw,” as Roy continues, “in a magazine / some time.”

‘No Steppy Snik’ is out now and you can find Nora Roy on streaming services.

Parademaker – Utah

The recording project of Houston‘s Shaun Clarkson, Parademaker creates folk in the mould of John Prine, where heartfelt emotion and wry humour intertwine to form a picture of a specific period and place. New album Good Shit is full of such songs, but single ‘Utah’ encapsulates the spirit perfectly. A story of the second coming where Jesus is kicking about America, looking for somewhere to settle down. “This time he came to live and not to die,” as the lyrics offer. But that’s not to say Christ has no standards when it comes to potential homes. “You won’t find me in Utah / the Latter-day Saints and the petite bourgeoisie ain’t seen a cage they didn’t want to climb inside.”

You won’t find me in U-hecking-tah
the worst damn state that you ever saw
along with Texas, Florida, most of Indiana
and the whole goddam Bible Belt

Prism Bitch – City Nights

Albuquerque’s Prism Bitch originated when Lauren Poole and Chris Walsh met at a small theatre group and imagined creating a band as a piece of performance art. But upon adding Lilah Rose and Teresa Cruces to the line-up, they found themselves shedding the performance aspect and becoming the real deal. Establishing their rambunctious and often flamboyant brand of garage rock, debut full-length Perla showed the switch was more than justified, and it is fitting that new single ‘City Nights’ sees the outfit return to their theatrical roots. A sleek, sensual eighties bop which comes complete with a delightfully tongue-in-cheek video filmed at the Albuquerque public access studio, directed by Lauren Poole with cinematography by Colemar Nichols:

‘City Nights’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: December 2023 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Latest single ‘Leavened’ follows on from this. A track built on a bed of gentle, dreamy synths, over which Laitman’s vocals are left to drift. But as the song progresses this backdrop gradually swells with rich ambient tones and vocal harmonies, a steady increase which never quite reaches any cathartic crescendo yet nevertheless realises a certain power. This is turn lifts Laitman’s delivery into its own confident space, the lyrics finding assurance in their contemplation of identity and relationships.

and sometimes I’m a cowboy
and sometimes, I’m a girl
but mostly I’m a pale blue thief
whose water drank the world

‘Leavened’ is out now and available from the Cloudbelly Bandcamp page. thou / them will be released later this year on Signature Sounds.

The post Cloudbelly – Leavened appeared first on Various Small Flames.