Now David James Allen has returned with brand new single ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’. Taking some inspiration from Frederick Knight’s ‘I’ve Been Lonely (For So Long)’, the track adopts a sunny tone for what is essentially a statement of defiance. A vow to confront life’s struggles head on, standing on your own two feet, fists raised and ready for anything. The sound is suitably rich and assured, with layers of guitars, bass, drums and electric piano, alongside organ from Andrew Ivens, building into something of a buoyant momentum. “On the surface, ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’ sounds like a breakup song, but I think of it more as a departure song,” Allen explains. “It’s not about any one person. It’s about those moments in life when someone you’ve relied on is suddenly gone, and you’re forced to learn how to navigate the world on your own.”

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‘May To One’, the charged, simmering new single from Nashville based songwriter and musician Anna Grace Odom, might be an inherently personal track, but that doesn’t mean it’s themes are not more widely applicable. “This song is a confession and an offering,” Odom explains. “I wrote it on my little brother’s birthday, in the spot in my childhood bedroom where I wrote every song as a teenager. I’d just finished my first year of college and was feeling like I was letting everyone down at once (family, friends, God, myself).” As she started playing the track live, a curious thing happened. Members of the audience starting approaching with their own reads of the lyrics, and how it evoked their own personal guilt and shame. It’s a reminder of the universality of such concerns, as well as the power of music to transform confessions into acts of communal release.

‘May To One’ is out now and available from the usual places.

David James Allen – The Moonlight Waltz

Back in February we wrote about ‘By Your Side’, a single by David James Allen from forthcoming album Jubilation Potpurri. “An ode to the safe harbour of a significant other,” as we described the track, “where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove.” Now the Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has returned with brand new single ‘The Moonlight Waltz’ to further whet appetites, and this time the focus is on an attempted escape of an altogether different kind. Full of equal parts heartbreak and romance, the track is a country song in the classic sense, celebrating the potential within a good old fashioned barroom while nodding to the all too familiar loneliness which haunts the edges of such a place.

‘The Moonlight Waltz’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Fishwife – All Good Wives

The fact that Fishwife’s Lenny Moynihan and Jos Cubie first met in an oyster shack during a storm might seem like the sort of throwaway factoid that often populates a band’s bio, but in this case the origin story seems to be central to the project’s DNA. Because this is a duo that makes music bathed in shadow and charged with energy, full of an almost Gothic atmosphere that’s at once enigmatic and enveloping. Take debut single ‘All Good Wives’, which transposes Ellen Hutter’s relationship with Nosferatu onto Moynihan’s own experiences living in Los Angeles, merging the corporeal and ghostly into something as alluring as it is ambiguous. With vocals recorded in an abandoned ghost train ride and organ in a Grade II listed church, you’ll do well to find a more evocative track. Watch the video directed by Ellen Moynihan below:

‘All Good Wives’ is out now and available from the usual places.

The Huntress and Holder of Hands – Beasts We Are

“A sound that holds space for anger, confusion, sadness and compassion, as well as an inherent sense of hope that’s built into the very fact of its existence.” So we wrote of MorganEve Swain’s  The Huntress and Holder of Hands project earlier in the month, with new album Babylon representing “the perfect example of this nuanced style, confronting the corrupt and violent present without forgetting ideas of redemption and sanctuary too.” Latest single ‘Beasts We Are’ displays Swain’s uncanny ability to convey such conflicting emotions within the same sound, the tender tones carrying both fondness and fury simultaneously. “‘Beasts We Are’ is about ghosts and the stories we tell ourselves,” she explains. “It’s about the planet, and the world, and our responsibility to the place we call home. It’s about ugly pasts and shared histories, and shared grief. It’s about where we find ourselves now as a species and an appeal to each other to care enough to do something about it.”

Babylon will be released on the 5th June and you can pre-order it now.

Lydia Luce – Baby Blues

“A track which originated in the depths of a period of suffering yet nevertheless asserted the potential of recovery, as though in some way instigating not only the rest of the record but also the path back to health Luce’s life would take.” So we wrote of ‘Belly’ from Lydia Luce‘s most recent full-length Mammoth back in 2025, summing up a record which charted a course through pain towards healing. Fast-forward a year and Luce is back with ‘Baby Blues’, a very different song, yet one still chronicling a difficult path through a life-changing period. “It’s about my experience postpartum,” Luce explains. “I also fully produced and recorded this at home which is something I’ve been wanting to do for so long. I wrote this during his naps and I posted a clip on Instagram and so many moms and parents found it and encouraged me to release it. I am so proud to share this one as it feels so raw to me in this stage of my life.”

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

Swapmeet – 2 C U

We’ve covered a couple of singles from Swapmeet‘s debut album Mount Zero in recent months, with ‘I Know‘ (“A sound able to encompass both sardonic slacker bite and cathartic alt rock release, rising from sly, taut beginnings into something with serious size and heft”) and ‘Sand‘ (“A more reflective and earnest track which mourns that which is lost within contemporary youth, where a thousand distractions rob some of the magic away from the experience”) highlighting different dimension of the Aussie band’s sound. With the record coming later this summer via Winspear, Swapmeet are now back with latest single ‘2 C U’, and this time they are at their most jubilant. The track opens almost hesitantly yet soon explodes into a bright and hazy rhythm in no time at all, playing like excitement bottled up and committed to sound.

Watch the video by Rhys Scarabosio below:

Mount Zero will be released via Winspear on the 17th July. Preorder it now from the Swapmeet Bandcamp.

Shaina Hayes – Timid

“Québec-based artist Shaina Hayes runs a vegetable farm in her hometown, a fact which is more than an interesting tidbit to add to a bio,” we wrote back in March when covering single ‘Flourish‘. “Because spend any time with Hayes’s music and you’ll come to appreciate a kinship between both of these pursuits: an attention to detail, a deep-rooted connection to the land and its life, not to mention an overarching patience that allows her to reflect upon the present with admirable clarity.” Hayes’s latest single ‘Timid’, out now via Bonsound, follows in this style, leaning into introversion and the ways in which we might nurture our own interior worlds. “I wanted to explore the idea that even at our most articulate, the way we express ourselves is just a tiny glimpse into what’s actually going on inside us,” she explains. “That we contain whole, unseen universes. Ultimately, Timid is a song about everything we feel but rarely manage to express.”

Trails and Ways – Next of Kin

“A reminder that life is richer in company, and that social isolation can be overcome, written and performed by a trio who worked through that very process themselves to bring the track to life.” So we wrote of ‘Patiently’, the triumphant return of Trails and Ways after going on a decade away. Eager to capitalise on the fresh momentum, the Oakland group have returned with brand new single ‘Next of Kin’. Somehow simultaneously expansive and intimate, the track is Trails and Ways doing what they are best at, evoking a tangible sense of emotion without losing any of the brightness and movement. Lyrically, it meditates on the strange moment of the present, where small personal hopes are impinged upon by an increasingly precarious global situation wracked by war, climate breakdown and extractive industry.

Vesuvian – Hecate in the Highlands

Back in February we introduced Vesuvian, the Philadelphia-based band consisting of Garret Bollin (guitar, vocals), Joey DeGrado (vocals, guitar), Bill Magerr (bass) and Gavin Caffrey Perez-Canto (drums and percussion), with single ‘Fortunate Death’. The first taste of their new self-titled album, the track was “certainly not your usual scrappy punk number,” we described, “drawing upon the work of Julio Cortázar and accounts of Mesoamerican history to create something cathartic and boisterous.” With the full-length coming soon via Worry Bead Records, Vesuvian have returned with new track ‘Hecate in the Highlands’. Opening with an impromptu choral opening that was initially meant as a joke, there’s a distinctively playful vibe to the song, embracing retro rock sensibilities alongside droll near-spoken vocals in a way which might at first seem almost ironic. But it soon becomes clear Vesuvian are committed to the sound with full sincerity, and as such the track becomes the perfect calling card for the entire release. “At times we thought we’d have to shelve the whole thing,” DeGrado says, “but it turned out as the song I’m most proud of.”

I hadn’t seen a soul in a hundred years
So I let him sit beside me and I let him bend my ear
But when his night came mine stayed bright
The way it always does every single lonely night

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“A song which shows how the age-old themes of work, loss and responsibility are as much a facet of contemporary folk as any other era.” That’s how we described ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)‘ last summer, the first taste of David James Allen‘s forthcoming album Potpurri Jubilation. The Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist “writes classic country songs,” as we continued, “full of aching longing, wistful reflection and undying hope, as well as a small cosmic twist,” and latest single ‘By Your Side’ further cements these sensibilities ahead of the album’s release later this year via Littleknown Records. “There’s something in the way that she loves me / that keeps me warm through the coolin’ of the night,” Allen sings in the opening lines, immediately pulling the listener into the warmth and fondness of the track. An ode to the safe harbour of a significant other, where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove. Tune in and allow the pressures of work, money and self-doubt to dissolve, if only for a while.

Fugue State – We Are Lasting

The new collaborative project fronted by Northampton, MA-based composer, producer and engineer Dan Langa, Fugue State refuses the typical distinction between solo project and traditional ensemble. An outfit which treats collaboration as its own form of compositional methodology, Langa practising what the press release describes as “an obsessive cultivation of studio recordings with a rotating cast of musicians, transformed into spectral, unrecognizable forms.” Released to celebrate signing with Switch Hit Records, and featuring vocalist Maia Friedman (Dirty Projectors, Coco) and VSF fav Erika Dohi on piano, single ‘We Are Lasting’ provides our first glimpse into this new world. The style draws on Langa’s wealth of experience across music, film and multimedia, as well as the sensibilities of its collaborators, though also follows the direction the present moment suggested. “That improvisation became the foundation, and we slowly built everything on top of it,” as Langa describes. “This was the first track that really found its identity, and I often found comfort in it during the creative process—whether for inspiration or just a moment to breathe.”

Gia Margaret – Everyone Around Me Dancing

“A picture of solitude not as some lonely retreat but rather the path towards recognising the wider connection of things. That sweet dark warmth of the whole world.” That’s how we described Gia Margaret‘s 2023 album Romantic Piano, a collection of careful, considered compositions which held a kind of melancholic curiosity for its surroundings. Now Margaret is gearing up to release her much anticipated follow-up, an album titled Singing coming via Jagjaguwar this spring, and opening track and lead single ‘Everyone Around Me Dancing’ suggests a continuation of such themes. The record might be the first to properly feature vocals since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer (the consequence of illness, as we covered when reviewing Mia Gargaret), but it is far from a simple reversion to a previous mode of working. Rather, Margaret considers every lesson learnt through the difficult process, the resonance of every person she has ever been. The vocals might have returned, but Singing understands something greater. The voice is only part of who we are. There are deeper ways of communicating.

Watch the video directed by Catherine LoMedico below:

Singing will be released on the 24th April via Jagjaguwar and you can pre-order it now.

Little Lungs – The Heat

Little Lungs is a Baltimore folk rock project led by songwriter Leena Rhodes. With Brendan Russell (bass), Eli Simms (drums), Ricky Schwarzenberg (guitar) and an assembly of other friends and collaborators in support, Rhodes creates soundscapes inherently intimate yet often sweeping too. Songs personal, compassionate and often affirming, driven by equal parts warmth and energy. Next month, Little Lungs will put out the full-length album The Heat, and Rhodes and co. have shared the title track to establish the mood and themes of the record. A typically emotive track build around Rhodes’s vocals and the braid of tenderness and strength they are able to evoke. “Face down against the bed frame / You woke to the fire alarm,” she sings, in an opening snapshot that captures the vulnerability on display throughout.

Mary Ocher – The Narrative (First Movement)

“Has roots in the early twentieth century, both in terms of the minimalist sensibilities and the overarching themes, but it is impossible to think of the intra-war period of the 1900s without hearing ominous echoes of the present day.” So we wrote of Mary Ocher‘s forthcoming album Weimar back in January. The challenging, politically-charged album was introduced by lead single ‘The Dance’ (what we called “a mournful dirge for that which is slipping through our fingers”). And now Ocher has shared taut, plaintive new single ‘The Narrative (First Movement)’. Though it is perhaps the video which will earn the most attention. The expressionist piece is by Boris Eldagsen, one of the first ‘reputable’ artists to explore the possibilities of AI who nevertheless carries a strictly critical approach to the nascent medium (back in 2023 Eldagsen refused the Sony World Photography Award after winning for an AI-generated image). Whether this self-awareness might justify the use of such artistically disheartening technology is still very much in question, and personally we’d query whether the video achieves anything which might be unobtainable via more organic means, but if nothing else it fits into Ocher’s overall project in its willingness to push into uncomfortable places and ask the audience to examine exactly how they feel.

Weimar will be released on 13th March and is available to preorder via Bandcamp.

Miserable chillers – Bikeman

“I’ll be the bike, man / the basket and the bell / the breath before I fell / Open skin up to the air / my mouth to taste the day.” So sings Miguel Gallego in the opening lines of ‘Bikeman’, the delightfully smooth and strange introduction to Miserable chillers‘ latest album, Innocent victims, coming soon via Baby Blue. The New York-based composer and artist has covered plenty of ground with the Miserable chillers project over the years, moving from devotional to danceable and back again, or else occupying both moods simultaneously. But the uniting spirit across all releases has been one of curiosity, a mood delivered in sleek, eighties-adjacent pop that allows Gallego to push into surreal territory without losing an anchor to real life. With its anthropomorphic bicycle, ‘Bikeman’ might be the perfect encapuslation of the Miserable chillers aesthetic, and one which whets appetites for the full release.

Natalie Jane Hill – Colors

Natalie Jane Hill‘s forthcoming record Hopeful Woman is one of our most eagerly anticipated releases of the first half of this year. A collections of ten modest but supremely assured songs that explore love in its many facets. Hot on the heels of ‘Never Left Me’ and ‘I Thought Love Meant’, Hill has unveiled a third track, ‘Colors’ another richly imagined but still down to earth rumination on romance. “Simply put, ‘Colors’ is a love song- specifically about the beginning period of falling in love with someone,” Hill describes. “But it’s also about having a better understanding on personal boundaries and not losing yourself entirely in the potential of something new. It’s being able to enjoy the colorfulness of it, while leaving space for the mystery, too.” The song has a fittingly Spring-like feel, tender like new green shoots and ripe with a glorious sense of possibility.

Old Man of the Woods – Edges of Pleasure

Taken from the album Tendrils, Old Man of the Woods‘ most recent single ‘Meditation’ was “a self-described  ‘breathy, minimal ritual'” as we wrote in 2025, “[a song] which performs its own form of transubstantiation, taking a desire which might otherwise appear absurd and changing it into something charged and devotional.” Miranda Elliott appears to have taken such a style to heart, because new album Cape Perpetua sees the Seattle-based artist embrace aesthetics both religious and ecological to push their ambient avant-pop into an increasingly sacred terrain. Elliott intends to release a track every week, building up to the full release in March, and opener and single ‘Edges of Pleasure’ highlights the meditative style. A song of swirling layers which draws on the choral accumulation of Gregorian chants to conjure something that’s at once otherworldly and fundamentally present.

Turner Cody – Recognize a Friend

In a present milieu where country songs are as likely to be about Disneyland and Pepsi as heartbreak and whiskey, St. Louis-based songwriter Turner Cody shows that the traditional and alt forms of the style can coexist. Out via Capitane Records, latest full-length Out for Blood has all the thematic concerns of the giants of the field, mining the American psyche to explore ideas of freedom and fate, individualism, sin and salvation in a way which would make Van Zandt proud. Yet, as songs like single ‘Recognize a Friend’ show, there’s a playfulness within his style too. An idiosyncrasy which, by way of Prine, allows Cody to sit as comfortably next to his alt-country contemporaries as the old masters. The narrative of the track is a familiar one. Ordinary man Billy finds himself gradually growing despondent as he drifts from youthful optimism into the doldrums of normal living. The personification of an entire demographic which finds itself slipping out of its countercultural pep.

Watch the video below, directed and shot by Cam Kennedy, with editing by Ben Chace, co-direction by Ben Chace and color grading by Thomas de Hemptinne:

Out For Blood is out now via Capitane Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Yum Yum Tree – Shine

It has been nineteen years since Georgia-based indie rock outfit The Yum Yum Tree released their last album Paint By Numbers, a hiatus long enough to make even the most optimistic fans fear for the future of the project. After all, the band have other things to think about, not least lead Andy Gish who has spend over two decades as an ER nurse, as well as working in harm reduction. But good things come to those who wait, and this April will see The Yum Yum Tree return with brand new full-length Turn Down the Noise, an album which builds upon the foundations of its predecessor while proudly displaying the extra wisdom, self-awareness and emotional bravery which comes with near enough twenty years of living. Single ‘Shine’ embodies the spirit of the release, packing that nineties-flavoured indie rock punch while showing a newly unguarded, introspective personality. “Shine is about wanting something that doesn’t belong to you,” as Gish explains, “being able to sit with that and still wanting the best for them.” Watch the video directed by Katherine Lucas below:

Turn Down The Noise will be released on the 10th April and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

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Not many albums can claim to draw on inspiration as widely as Good Times, the new full-length from Alexei Shishkin on Rue Defense. Recorded with a spur-of-the-moment immediacy, the record sees Shiskin reaching for whatever happened to be around during the recording process, often writing the music first then adding lyrics about whatever topic might be in mind. Hence recent singles about video games (‘Disco Elysium‘) and football (‘Tiki Taka 2006‘), and new single ‘Ode to Carl Dennis’ switches things up again. As the title suggests, the track turns to literature for its inspiration, Shishkin drawing on one of his favourite poets. “[Dennis] has a poem called “At Home With Cézanne” that I had read the night before and really enjoyed,” he explains. “Again, Brad and I wrote the bulk of the music first, and then I fit lyrics to the music. I couldn’t find the text of the poem anywhere online, so here’s a picture of it. I took his characters, but tried to re-imagine them in a slightly different, parallel universe.”

David James Allen – Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)

Based in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canadian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist David James Allen writes classic country songs, full of aching longing, wistful reflection and undying hope, as well as a small cosmic twist. With new full-length Jubilation Potpourri set for release on 2026, Allen has shared brand new single ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)’ to set the tone. A song which shows how the age-old themes of work, loss and responsibility are as much a facet of contemporary folk as any other era. “I wrote ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)’ just after I got laid off,” Allen explains. “At the time, I was the sole provider for my family, and the weight of that reality hit pretty hard. The song came out of reflecting on that pressure—not just mine, but the collective squeeze so many people feel when work dries up, when bills pile up, and when life becomes a grind.” But rather than dwell on the darkness, Allen instead offers a remedy, reminding us how healing (re)connection can be in a challenging, often lonely life.

Dylan Henner – We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked

“Late one evening, I was listening to the radio alone at home. I couldn’t find the station I wanted, so I shifted the dial around for a while. Between frequencies, fading in and out of fidelity, I found a station I’d never heard before. To my amazement, the station was broadcasting my own memories. Memories from when I was seventeen.” So explains Dylan Henner of his new album Star Dream FM (forthcoming this autmn via Phantom Limb), the mysterious producer taking this fantastical concept as the basis for a collection which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past. Single ‘We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked’ shows just how rich an experience this proves to be, Henner elaborating an ambient style with piano, marimba, digital choir and synths to prove how human a digital soundscape can be. Personal details might be scant for this secretive artist, yet, perhaps counterintuitively, few acts welcome listeners so close within their work.

Hannah Frances – Surviving You

“Both continues the mission of its predecessor and begins to move beyond it.” So we wrote of ‘Falling From and Further’, the lead single from Hannah Frances‘s new album Nested in Tangles, coming this autumn via Fire Talk Records. The song took “the folk song as a backbone only,” we continued, “elaborating the sound with layers of prog and jazz sensibilities so that the track becomes a world of its own without ever losing the core thread of personal vulnerability which has long run through Frances’s work.” Exploring ideas of generational trauma and the coping mechanisms we develop in response, second single ‘Surviving You’ further builds on this style. Frances utilises the full depth of her jazz-inflected folk rock sound to chart a path towards health and self-acceptance. “It’s a personal account of receiving harm from people who have projected their own pain onto me, who refuse to see themselves or take accountability for the impact of their actions,” she explains. “I was reckoning with my rage, and recognizing how much I’ve lived in survival mode for the majority of my life. This is for anyone who grew up in a turbulent and harmful home and is learning to affirm their lived experience.”

Watch the video filmed by Derrick Alexander, edited and colored by Vanessa Castro, and directed by Frances herself below:

Nested in Tangles will be released on the 10th October via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it from the Hannah Frances Bandcamp page.

Kitba – Wolf’s Mouth

“Proof that art can offer a picture of identity more nuanced than simple labels,” we wrote of Kitba‘s self-titled album back in 2023. “A deeper understanding reached via an embrace of confusion. Identity as an ongoing thing.” Fresh from I’ll Send You A Sign, a collaborative release with Dan Knishkowy under the name R&D, Kitba (AKA Brooklyn-based harpist and songwriter Rebecca El-Saleh) is preparing to return with a brand new full-length, Hold the Edges. The record continues and deepens this exploration of identity with a typically lush, detailed and intuitive sound. With the album set for release next month via Ruination Record Co., single ‘Wolf’s Mouth’ serves to introduce the record’s searching tone and its embrace of ambiguity. As though realising the path to self-discovery is not a finite number of epiphanic steps but rather something convoluted and unending, full knowledge always just out of reach. “The song is based on a recurring childhood nightmare where I was in a room with a filing cabinet in the corner and a large wolf that would open its mouth,” El-Saleh describes. “I would place my head inside its mouth and then wake up. I never got to see beyond the bite and I often wonder what was in the cabinet and why.”

Watch the video by Dani Shapiro below:

Hold the Edges will be released via Ruination Record Co. on 19th September and is available to pre-order now.

Piggietails – Cycling Song

Piggietails are a four-piece from Naarm/Melbourne, comprising of Cal Blackburn, Jet Noonan, Izzy Hardisty and Tino D’Onghia. In September, Spoilsport Records will release their self-titled record, a collection of ten songs which introduce the band’s signature easygoing charm and a low-key style they refer to as “everyday music.” The label describe how Piggietails draw inspiration from “eighties Australiana guitar pop, the indie rock stylings of Yo La Tengo and a splash of the revivalist jangle of the noughties.” So, as you might expect, their songs are a little bit jangly but not too twee, favouring gentleness over detailed maximalism. Lead single ‘Cycling Song’ is our first taste, a soft indie pop song that nevertheless has some of the freewheeling energy its title suggests.

SIKADE – body of water

The recording project of Oslo-based singer-songwriter, harpist and producer Linnea Vestre, SIKADE makes an ethereal brand of music, combining alt, indie, dream pop and folk influences into something at once delicate and enveloping. With a debut SIKADE album on the horizon, Vestre has released new single ‘body of water’ via label re:memory. Adding a shoegazey sheen to the sound, the track embodies the balance between intimacy and scale which marks the project, drawing the listener in with hushed, harp-led verses before the chorus arrives in waves of drama and intensity. “A body of water / that’s how she sees you,” the track opens, “a silvery surface / the face of a mirror.” Imagery characteristically striking and ambiguous which gives the sense of having been pulled into a portentous dream.

Soup Dreams – Wonderdog

Next month, Philadelphia’s Soup Dreams will release their debut LP, Hellbender, via Candlepin Records and Pleasure Tapes. The band combine the slight twang and songwriting chops of country rock with some lo-fi fuzz and raw indie rock energy, meaning fans of Merce Lemon, Sadurn, Tuxis Giant and the burgeoning countrygaze scene will finds lots to like. Following the runaway lead single ‘Radiator Baby’ and the heartfelt follow-up ‘Red Bird’, the band have unveiled one final single to herald the record. Titled ‘Wonderdog’, the song is an aching lament but not as you know it, the hazy textures and melancholic reflection countered with equal forces of energy and weight, all driving towards a conclusion that’s as energetic and is it cathartic.

Tiberius – Felt

Introducing Troubadour, the new album from Boston farm emo outfit Tiberius, last month, we described how lead Brendan Wright and co. use the album to reckon with fundamental questions both artistic and personal. Who do you want to be? What role should music play in the decision? Lead single ‘Sag’ was thus understandably conflicted, “pulled in all directions by competing emotions,” as we put it. “Uncertainty, doubt, desperation, a recurrent yet skittish determination to embrace some inner truth. With the album’s release via Audio Antihero edging nearer, Tiberius have shared another single, ‘Felt’. A track which essentially serves as the inflection point which birthed the record, where Wright was forced to confront their identity without the crutch of other people. “When I wrote ‘Felt’, I was fairly fresh out of a breakup and was spending a lot of time looking for distractions,” they explain. “Instead of tackling some bigger questions, and engaging in a healthy recovery, I was tucking away my feelings into compartments and distracting myself with casual dating. I was spending some late nights slipping into the backstories of strangers’ lives—exhilarating, but merely theatrical. It never eased the issue at hand. I was alone, and I was terrified to sit with that.”

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