Hayden has been releasing an emotionally rich and thematically deep style of folk music for the past three decades, mining the ostensibly ordinary moments of life for all of the implicit beauty and meaning. His recently announced tenth album The Recent Past promises to be a worthy contribution to this oeuvre. Lead single ‘Time Has Been More Kind’ gives a hint as to what to expect, a song which took inspiration from musical royalty to become what might be the most country-adjacent Hayden song to date. “One of my favourite concerts was country legend Ray Price opening for Willie Nelson at Massey Hall in 2009,” he explains. “He played with a classic old-school ensemble including pedal steel and double fiddles. It was perfection. To match the regretful, longing, rosy retrospection of the song’s narrative, I tried to channel that feeling and atmosphere on this recording.” Adam Hindle (brushed drums), Miranda Mulholland (fiddles), Matt Kelly (pedal steel) and Ben Whitely (upright bass) also lend their talents, and the result is every bit as rich and wistful as its title suggests.

His His – Carousel

The recording project started by Toronto-based songwriter Aidan Belo upon moving out to his family hobby farm, His His has spent the past few years crafting an unguarded style of folk that blends nostalgia, fondness and warmth into a bucolic present. The 2025 single ‘Hardcore Band‘ sound “His His at its most fuzzy and intimate,” as we wrote, “maintaining the earnest tone which has long marked the project and dialling up the closeness through a gauze of DIY texture,” and new single ‘Carousel’ builds upon these ideas. A track recorded to tape at home and possessing all the heart such a homespun practice entails, and still retaining enough rough edges to lend an emotional authenticity too.

Hour – Sky is Blue

“Nothing is hurried, yet there is nevertheless an urgency to the poignant, curious sound. 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.” So we wrote in a feature on the project’s new full-length Ghost Bridge back in August, Michael Cormier-O’Leary assembling a talented, diverse team of musicians to explore ideas which might overwhelm the average songwriter or band. Following on from the title track and ‘Pearls‘, Hour are teasing the full release with new song ‘Sky is Blue’ and the track is every bit as poignant and aspiring. A reversal of the typical song about grief, the piece is written from the perspective of the departed rather than the survivor, Heeyoon Won (Boosegumps, 22º Halo) adding vocals which are gentle yet weighted with the responsibility of reassurance. It is often tempting to infantalise the dead, imagine them poor souls succumbed to something final and unexpected, but here the whole concept of mortality is flipped on its head. What if it is us here on earth who are naive, yet to fully appreciate the path we must eventually follow? What if the deceased mourn our confusion and pain?

You will travel the same way
with astonishing speed
like so many have done before

Watch the film by Cormier-O’Leary (though be warned, there are flashing lights):

Ghost Bridge will be released on the 9th October via Dear Life Records and you can pre-0rder it from the Hour Bandcamp page.

Karl Mattar – Light Gleams

After spending the best part of a decade recording under the moniker Interbellum, releasing albums like Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night (which offered a “fluid, collage-like style,” we wrote, “[which] feels at once haunted by the past and permeable to the outside world”), Lebanese songwriter Karl Mattar is reverting to his own name for forthcoming full-length The Weather of the World. Recorded in Beirut amid Israel’s war on Lebanon, the album came to life within the chaotic, cruel centre of our historical moment, and the fundamental uncertainty of Mattar’s position sees him turn to personal emotion in order to evoke the shared grief of the region. Lead single ‘Light Gleams’ is the ideal introduction, a track which details the end of a relationship within a contemporary Beirut marked by bombs and pounding rain.

Light gleams
Across the water
And I’m a stranger
Don’t you know me?
Thunderous and blinding-bright
Explosions in the night
And I’ve been listening to the rain again

Ken Wohlrob – Snowdrift

Back in December we wrote about ‘William‘, a song by musician and composer Ken Wohlrob which showed a more instinctive, meditative side to an artist principally known for work with acts like End of Hope, Swarm of Flies, Northern Heretic and Eternal Black. “A track,” as wrote, “which seemed to repel all attempts to develop it beyond its core guitar riff.” Wohlrob’s new album Forgotten Music doubles down on this style, embracing intuition over laboured craft to evoke a sound analogous to the subconscious. One which might seem mysterious or ambiguous, yet retains a sense of deeper order, as though meaning might be found if only we are prepared to delve far enough into its depths. Take the mantra-like new single ‘Snowdrift’, an ostensibly simple song which creates richness not through intricate musicianship but rather making space for contemplation.

Kyla Marlena – Bit the Bullet

“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.” So we wrote of ’21’, the opening track from Kyla Marlena‘s forthcoming album Hold Time back in September, the Toronto-based songwriter introducing an album charged with dynamism and a sense of life. With the record coming next month via idée fixe, Marlena has now shared new single ‘Bit the Bullet’ to further establish the tone. The song embraces a slightly less mature take on the end of a relationship to harness the energies which stem from immediate reactions. “A lyric like ‘guess that I’m the winner / I had the final say’ is not a real belief I hold. There are no winners and losers,” Marlena explains. “But it felt liberating to express ‘forbidden’ thoughts. The energy in the studio was especially high for this one and it felt important to keep in idiosyncratic moments captured in the recording. Playful moments caught by room mics, for example, felt integral to the song by the end.”

Max Bien Kahn – List II

With a couple of recent singles, Max Bien Kahn has introduced his forthcoming new album Baby Green, “a record which,” as we wrote in a preview, “takes a big swing in order to capture the full spectrum of human experience as witnessed from one person’s perspective.” The result takes mundane encounters and makes them into something poignant, be that something as simple as conversing with a neighbour (‘Neighbours‘) or something even more incidental (‘Skipping Stones‘). Latest track ‘List II’ is no exception to this style, using a shopping list as a starting point to sketch a relationship and the longing which underpins it, painting a picture that is fond and romantic yet shaded by something else too. As though every magical thing is haunted by the possibility of its eventual loss.

partygirl – scars

With lead by Pagona Kytzidis supported by Francesca Pastore’s (guitar), Jonathan Ashley (drums), Claire Lin Jenkins (violin), Andrew Jordan’s (bass), and Jenna Love (sax), it is fair to say Brooklyn’s partygirl is a maximalist affair. Having won a fanbase with a striking live show, the six-piece are now preparing to release their debut full-length, and the album promises to possess every bit of the bombast and catharsis that has made their sets so special. Never one to pull any punches, Kytzidis uses the record to confront the tumultuous in all of its violence, injustice and strangeness, and soaring single ‘scars’ embodies the energy and weight with which partygirl commit to the mission. Watch the video directed and edited by Jenna Love below:

‘scars’ is out now via streaming services.

Robbie Bennett – Sister b/w The Light on Your Face

You might know Robbie Bennett as the keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist for rock royalty The War on Drugs, though in 2020 he set off on a solo career too. Self-released debut Permanent World introduced a rich and personal style of composition, and this December, Bennett is following up with not one but two new full-lengths on American Dreams. Both albums are crafted from layered arrangements of piano and various keyboards and synths which sound decidedly curious in their approach, designed, as he puts it, to feel like you are “walking through an unfamiliar place you want to keep exploring and never have to circle back to where you started.” A sense of progression and discovery exists between the records themselves, with Steloken offering warm and fond soundscapes before Circulation pushes deeper into a more improvised, abstract state, the twin releases playing like a real statement of intent from an artist looking to wide the frame of their work. Listen to singles ‘Sister’ and ‘The Light on Your Face’ now:

Steloken and Circulation will both be released on the 11th December via American Dreams. Pre-order both from the Robbie Bennett Bandcamp page.

This Frontier Needs Heroes – Cadaques Cowboy

Brooklyn-born, Barcelona-based songwriter Bradley Lauretti, better known as This Frontier Needs Heroes, has made a name over the last fifteen years with a diverse and unapologetically DIY style of folk that champions both storytelling and emotional authenticity. Latest album Homage to Catalonia promises to further this body of work, as highlighted by new single and album opener ‘Cadaques Cowboy’. It’s a song about Salvador Dalí’s alleged encounter with a UFO on the Costa Brava which paints its central character as something between Don Quixote and a hero from a Spaghetti Western. A man in search of metaphysical possibility within the legends of Cadaqués, though finding more confusion than anything else.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2026 #1 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.

For those unfamiliar, Thomas Dollbaum combines the stylings of alt-country that are very much en vogue with a beefier brand of heartland rock, tracing a lineage back through Molina and Springsteen as far as van Zandt, though there’s another set of influences that cannot go unmentioned. A parallel bloodline of writers (think Breece D’J Pancake, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown) who capture the beauty and sorrow in an often rough and tumble Southern existence. Interestingly, arguable heir apparent Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, whose short story collection Sleepovers is one of the best contemporary example of this literary genre, writes the liner notes and has a great interview with Dollbaum in Southwest Review, which digs deeper into the album’s literary influences, from Raymond Carver to the poetry of Jay Hopler, C.D. Wright, Joy Harjo and Philip Levine.

The country-rock-album-as-short-story-collection might not be a new idea, but paired with the aforementioned immediacy with which the songs were recorded, Birds of Paradise feels less like a set of penned vignettes and more like short glimpses at lives themselves. Each song drops the listener alongside its characters within their Southern homeland, people often on the margins of society, eking out a living within the transient space between a lost past and unknown future. Lead single ‘Dozen Roses’, arriving after the subdued and tender opener ‘Visitation’, plays like the album’s mission statement in this regard. A meditation on loss and the soothing wonder of the natural world that’s full of taut energy and forward motion, even while the narrator cycles back to the same sentiment, repeating themselves with increasing urgency.

When you were still around
I’d carry you across the river
I’d ramble through the dark until the time would deliver
Before the time would deliver

Many of the songs on Birds of Paradise are repetitive in this way, swinging back around to the same verses as if Dollbaum is working through thoughts in real time, lingering over memories both positive and not so much. This internal world provides a neat counterbalance to the present tense of many of the tracks which is altogether more transient. Our narrator(s) look for sure ground in the uncertainty of the in-between, or at least acceptance that the time spent on the “backroads leading to I-95” or “rambling through the pines” is not so much a path towards something as the body of life itself. Poignant closer ‘Blue Meets Blue’ confronts the idea head on, an ostensibly a fatalistic track (“There’s nowhere to go this is just a circle,” as Dollbaum sings, “there’s nowhere to run this is just landlocked blues”) that transforms acquiescence into a kind of charged catharsis.

It’s not too much of a reach to say this cyclical nature evokes another of the album’s key themes. Imagery of nature is abundant, and its rhythms extend across the songs as a backdrop to the very human emotions that often take centre stage. A place choked with vine and timber, where the waterbirds are strange and tall and coyotes howl at night. You only have to peek at the album art (an incredible embroidered quilt by Cora Nimtz) to understand the kind of picture Dollbaum paints across the record. Nature as something vivid and precious and undeniably peculiar, like some half-understood miracle which happens to occur all around. Yet, true to its setting, Birds of Paradise has dirt beneath its fingernails. Wonder and violence sit side by side. No more directly than on ‘Rabbits’, where the childhood innocence and bursting life is depicted as its own inversion, kids running through the burnt fields of Okeechobee with iron bars, trying to beat their siblings to the song’s titular prey as their mother watches on, keeping count.

This same mix of animation, desperation, melancholy and absurdity run through many of the songs, regardless of their subject matter. Take ‘King’s Landing’, with its childhood dream of a pilot’s license and the freedom it offers giving way to the mundane (“So lets go home and watch Judge Joe Brown / And reruns of Cops episodes in our home town”), though without ever extinguishing the desire and imagination which kicked off the fantasy in the first place. Or ‘Pulverize’, where a narrator fights the urge to look back through forward motion, then ‘Coyote’, where stasis seems to hold latent potential, as though some drastic act might materialise out of boredom itself. ‘Big Boi’ sees a teenaged Dollbaum act as chauffeur for a feuding couple strung out and desperate and looking to score. “Big Boi showed me his tattoos all down his arms,” Dollbaum sings, “said he got his nickname for being so goddamn large,” before switching the tone several shades darker, painting the titular character as a victim of the opioid crisis with the deft brevity of a poet.

Scars all from the emergency room
Asked me if I could fill a script too
Says he’s in a lot of pain right now
Who am I to say no to him anyhow?

Dollbaum might have recorded the album in the blink of an eye, but these are songs born of a lifetime in the worlds they inhabit. Places ignored by many, full of the kind of sensations we all too often forget. The dejection and sadness, yes, plus the weight of aborted dreams and all associated regrets, but also a nascent wonder which sits at the edge of our vision. A peculiar light which illuminates the future, colours the pictures of our memories. This might be human or mystical or else just something out in the wild, but we would do better if only we looked for it. Even if it can never really offer a satisfactory answer to whatever afflictions we’re called to bear. “I know you never believed / And me not in a long while,” as Dollbaum sings on opener ‘Visitation’, a fitting conclusion if you view the album as a cycle in itself. “But the older I get, the more I do magical thinking / About how the birds ride out on the sky / How the echoes hang out in the wind / How them ghosts are here in the light/ But you cant talk to any of them.”

Birds of Paradise is out now via Dear Life Records and available from the Thomas Dollbaum Bandcamp page.

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Back in 2022, Texas-based songwriter and DIY stalwart Brody Price released Win A Trip To Palm Springs, what we described as “an authentic engagement with the difficult side of life” which nevertheless “refus[ed] to succumb to maudlin yearning or fatalistic cynicism, instead working with enough patience and curiosity to allow the full spectrum of emotions to coexist.” Now Price is set to return with brand new record Leaf Miner’s Daughter, to be released via Gar Hole Records this autumn, and single and album opener ‘Breathing Again’ suggests he is once more prepared to wrestle with hope and despair in his distinctive alt-country style. The subject matter could hardly be darker, dealing with the real-life instance when Price and his wife tried to help two victims of a shooting outside their home in Fort Worth (one of which died while they administered CPR), and again the song’s mission seems to be an attempt to fight off complete doom despite its constant assault. How does one go on living in a country (or indeed entire world) which seems to be collapsing? What hope can be scavenged within the ruins of this disaster? Brody Price might not have the answers, but he’s out there trying to help all the same.

Leaf Miner’s Daughter will be released on the 9th October via Gar Hole Records and you can pre-order it now.

Charlotte Greve – Own Lap

“Considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings [with a] bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, [which] flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last.” So we wrote of ‘Membranes’, the lead track from Charlotte Greve‘s new album WATERBODIES, forthcoming via New Amsterdam. The German-born, Brooklyn-based composer, singer and saxophonist has now shared latest track ‘Own Lap’, the clearest indication yet of both the record’s playful invention and the scale of the intentions which underpin it. Dedicated to her late grandmother and two friends who have moved through adversity, “strong people,” as Greve describes, “who had the ability and strength to keep their head up and keep going,” the song is an eleven-minute epic brought to life with full orchestral grandeur which nevertheless never loses sight of the personal amid the sweeping majesty. Or rather, it is a song which locates the majesty within the personal experience of the everyday.

Jason Calhoun – Enjoy Losing

Last month we introduced revelations of divine love, the new full-length album from Jason Calhoun coming soon via Dear Life Records. It’s the latest offering from “an artist on a mission, or else just asking questions,” as we put it, “someone in perpetual search for something elusive, be it mere solace or transcendence”. The release could be seen as a kind of metacommentary on this quest, coming to understand how the revelations of its title will not arrive as a grand epiphany but in the accumulated experience gleaned from day to day. Latest single ‘Enjoy Losing’ is an embodiment of this spirit, delving into the piecemeal nature of anything artistic or spiritual, as well as the patience required as a result. “[The] title comes from playing chess.com on my phone,” as Calhoun explains:

Going in I decided I wouldn’t learn how to win through theory, but instead through trial and error. I really had to learn to enjoy the game even when I was losing. You can call it poetics if you’re so inclined but that losing process feels tied to my musical and spiritual practice. I’ve learned to be patient with the way my music takes form just as I have tried to learn to welcome difficulty with open arms. The textural piece finds me with a contact mic and a rosary in hand, a representation of my ever-present search for divine love.”

Kate Prascher – They Will Fall Down

After singles ‘Jubilee‘ and ‘Thousand a Million‘, Tennessee-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter Kate Prascher continues to prepare for the release her new album Sunday Afternoon with latest single ‘They Will Fall Down’. A “collision of the vintage and contemporary is typical of [her] work,” we wrote of her music previously, “Prascher finding fertile ground in the ambiguous space between things, be it mystery and clarity or the old and the new,” and the new song is no exception. A lush and wistful reflection on the end of the world, the track plays as something of a homespun waltz, managing to evoke both the gravity of impending conclusions while retaining a sense of sincerity and fondness too.

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – What’s Going On?

From ballads about Norm MacDonald to satirical covers of viral conservative country hits, the work of Ithaca, New York-based songwriter Matthew Squires is as surprising as it is inventive. His new project with Zach Totta of Sunk Coast is by no means an exception. Our first taste of new EP Easy Answers To Harder Questions, single ‘Wing Song’ showed how quirk is not mutually exclusive to emotion (“with vocals that rival Daniel Johnston in their ability to echo Kermit the Frog,” we wrote, “the song is classic Matthew Squires, proving that genuinely compassionate music need not leave playfulness or strangeness at the door”), something which latest number ‘What’s Going On?’ really hammers home. With a zany yet caustic personality which would make Thomas Pynchon proud, the song paints a picture of the contemporary US in all of its bizarre idiosyncrasies. But for all of its cartoonish colour and wit, the tone remains locked in a kind of reflective melancholy, as though beneath the dazzling surfaces lies a fundamental emptiness which the modern day has no way to fill.

Max Bien Kahn – Neighbours

San Francisco-born, New Orleans-based songwriter Max Bien Kahn is preparing to release his fifth solo album Baby Green this autumn, a record which looks to capture the full spectrum of life in all its bittersweet nuance. The large and the small sit side by side, bereavement next to dancing in bars, favourite shirts alongside fatherhood, as MBK collapses the line between the significant and insignificant to evoke the very fabric of existence and all its messy threads. The result is tender, often joyous and occasionally heartbreaking, songs which treat life as a privilege no matter what any one day might throw at you. Take latest single ‘Neighbours’, which manages to mine the ostensibly mundane experience of nodding hello to a familiar face in the neighbourhood for all of its uplifting delight, and all without a trace of irony, even if the repeated assertion “I’m not afraid of strangers” suggests something telling about the contemporary moment.

You see that guy down the street
He lives right around the corner
He’s such a friendly neighbor
We’re gonna say hello

He’s taking out the trash now
Rolling the cans to the curb
I’m not afraid to stop and say hello
To all my neighbors

Baby Green will be released on the 23rd October and you can pre-order it now.

Old Man of the Woods – Venus in Virgo

Earlier this year, Miranda Elliott’s Old Man of the Woods released album Cape Perpetua, an album of songs which “employ a certain minimalism, especially in their beginnings, though as a means rather than an end,” as we wrote in our review, “As though by stripping down the present into an ascetic simplicity, Old Man of the Woods is able to push through into another world entirely.” Now Elliott has returned with new single ‘Venus in Virgo’, what the Seattle-based artist describes as “a spell for self preservation” which bends towards post-punk with taut, angular tones and punchy rhythms. But above this newly propulsive groundwork remain the ethereal tones of the project, Elliott’s vocals swirling and slurring with what could be sensual suggestion or sardonic bite.

Protomartyr – Sounds We Cannot Hear

“Another eighty-one dead since dawn / Spiders crawling ‘cross the ceiling / Next door there’s voices moaning / Can’t tell if they’re coming or going.” So sings Joe Casey in the opening lines of Protomartyr’s new single ‘Sounds We Cannot Hear’, the first taste of the Detroit outfit’s seventh studio album, Hotel Usona. Charged with horror and laced with sly humour, the song introduces an album which promises to confront the contemporary American moment in all its pathetic neuroses and heinous excesses, Protomartyr evolving their sound with the addition of horns, tubular bells, xylophone and more, yet retaining the intensity which has long marked them as the real deal amid a crowd of post-punk pretenders. Just consider the needling dread of the opening segment, or indeed Casey’s repeated refrain at the close, a chorus which starts like something of a defeated elegy and rises in sheer desperation. Is there any agency left in a society which engineers gross inequality at home and mass slaughter abroad? If this track is anything to go by, we’re left with two meagre options. We can bury our heads in technological distraction and try to pretend it isn’t happening, or, like poet Hart Crane who is referenced in the second verse, choose to dive headfirst from the ship into the oblivion below.  Watch the video directed by Danny Scharar and Harris Mayersohn, and starring comedian/actor Nate Varrone, below:

Hotel Usona will be released on the 25th September via Domino and you can pre-order it now.

Shredded Sun – Cruel Streak

“Their sound pulls ingredients from all corners of the indie rock pantry, resulting in something that feels both reassuringly familiar and freshly unpredictable.” That’s how we described Chicago‘s Shredded Sun back in June, as jangly-yet-gritty single ‘Skyscrapper’ introduced new full-length Never Odd or Even, coming soon via Repeating Cloud. With the release of the album now just over a week away, Shredded Sun have returned with brand new track, ‘Cruel Streak’. As the title might suggest, this number shows a more raucous dimension to the Shredded Sun sound, though again the swagger and attitude are cut with a certain nostalgic tone too, as though within the boisterous momentum lies a wistful longing for something more.

waltzerr – ciggy b

Later this month, Seattle-based indie rock outfit waltzerr will release new full-length Tomorrow Will Be Better via nonprofit label Share It Music. Originating as the solo project of vocalist and songwriter Emily Waltzer, waltzerr has now grown into a trio with the addition of Anthony Coraggio (bass) and Schuyler Jensen (guitar), and has made a mark in the local music scene with a mix of high energy and unguarded emotion. This combination forms the heart of the new album, Waltzer and co. finding room for both confessional quiet and full-blown catharsis, as demonstrated by vivid lead single, ‘ciggy b’. For while the track might be reflective in tone, looking back on a past relationship and what might have been, the sound itself has its eyes firmly on the horizon, galloping forward with considerable momentum and heft. Who says nostalgia can’t pack a real punch?

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It could be tempting to view such efforts with pessimism. This prolific artist, releasing record after record, still covering new ground in search of a solution to the problem. Only to assume such a position would be to a) underestimate the achievements of Calhoun’s work to date, and b) misunderstand the reason the search is perpetual in the first place. It is not that there is no answer out there, more the answer needs to be continual. Rarely are we so lucky as to get a blinding light along the road to Damascus. The path to comfort and contentment is more like a thirst to be sated. We must constantly go to the well.

With this in mind, Jason Calhoun’s latest album, revelations of divine love, could be read as both a continuation of his ongoing project and a metacommentary on its purpose. Coming next month via Dear Life Records, the album takes its title from the collected works of Julian of Norwich, using the wisdom of the fourteenth-century anchoress as the catalyst for a meditation on what it means to find contentment. “Julian of Norwich says ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’,” Calhoun explains. “These days, I’ve been having my doubts that this is true. As no solution to the issue at hand, I look for the revelations of divine love in my life, and I find them—in my partner asleep on the floor in our studio, my survival of a social interaction with a stranger, being bad at chess.” None of these things can flip a switch and change a life, few will necessarily count for much a week or month away, but this steady accumulation of ephemeral moments is what sustains a life. Gives it colour and warmth and, ultimately, meaning.

The result is unsurprisingly intimate, if still shot through with the very sense of restlessness that drives its creation, meaning Calhoun’s picture is far more complex than a simple catalogue of sentimental charms. Consider the latest single ‘what we deserve’. An embodiment of the concision and curiosity which marks the record, the song clocks in barely over a minute yet is pulled in every direction by colourful lines of synths and below that a pounding drum which persists undistracted, ensuring the force of these flourishes is limited. As though for all the small delights we find before ourselves, the beat of something larger will always sound behind us. “‘what we deserve’ is perhaps the most simultaneously playful and relentless I get on this record, Calhoun explains. “The title comes from existential thoughts about daily joys against the backdrop of global politics […] Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is whether we deserve the mess we’re in and whether we’re in it due to our own callow joys.”

Watch the track’s accompanying video, courtesy of Calhoun’s dog and a Go Pro camera:

revelations of divine love will be released on the 7th August via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now from the Jason Calhoun Bandcamp page.

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“Rise in the west, set in the east / do what I want, go where I please / just gravity keep holding me.” So sings Abbey Blackwell on ‘Rise and Set’, the lead single from the Seattle-based artist’s forthcoming album Dream a Day. Emerging from the aftermath of a relationship, the song is at once playful and heartbroken, existing in that disorienting space where everything you thought you knew is upended and you are left to hope at least physics will hold true. The arrangement is built to support Blackwell’s distinctive vocals, building from acoustic beginnings into something far richer with the help of Norman Robbins (electric guitar, lap steel) and Evan Woodle (drums, percussion). The result transforms a decidedly personal experience into something universal.

DoYeon Kim – The Beats of Distant Thunder

It is telling that Brooklyn-based composer, improvisor and vocalist DoYeon Kim is one of, if not the only, Gayageum player within contemporary music. Her embrace of the centuries-old Korean zither within her boundary-pushing work is indicative of Kim’s willingness to harness both cultural traditions and cutting edge vision in order to bring to life her singular sound. Her first release as a bandleader, forthcoming album Wellspring is an encapsulation of this spirit and sign of its radical potential. Because, with Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Henry Fraser (double bass) and Mat Maneri (viola) in support, the record sees Kim utilise these sensibilities to create something of a sonic manifesto. A desperate, timely plea for humanist connection within an otherwise fractured world. “This is the first time I open my hand to the world, a first greeting,” Kim explains. “I wish people hearing this music [receive] energy and comfort. I want to be there with them.” Listen to first single ‘The Beats of Distant Thunder’ now:

Mudgoose – Yum Cha Takeover

The recording project of Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based songwriter Fletcher Ng, Mudgoose put out album Chasing Horse a few weeks ago, introducing a sound that sits somewhere in the middle grounded between slowcore, bedroom pop and alt-country, with sprinklings of a slacker vibe thrown in for good measure. Recorded to tape with a Tascam 4-track, the songs are textured, hazy and patient, delivered as though through the fog of memory and further clouded by a drink or two. Single ‘Yum Cha Takeover’ is a good place to dive in, the opening so slow its almost sedated, the vocals emerging from beneath these rhythms with what might be resignation or desperation. “[The] lyrics are loosely based on an embarrassing moment in which I screamed at a group of strangers to get out of my kitchen during a party,” Ng explains, though the resulting track is by no means a funny anecdote. More a murmured plea from the end of a rope, one last attempt to communicate something before fatalism settles for good.

Otracami – Perfect Reach

We’ve featured a couple of singles from Otracami‘s new album Runoff in recent months, first ‘Please‘ back in January then ‘Sirens’ a few weeks later.  Taking the story of Persephone from Greek myth, the latter saw Camila Ortiz weave “mythic elements with personal reflection,” we wrote, asking “How far do the obligations of loyalty extend? […] When you are linked to a person involved with something bad, how much responsibility are you expected to take?” With the album coming this week via Figure & Ground, Otracami is back with ‘Perfect Reach’. A song written during a winter School of Song class with Adrianne Lenker and partly inspired by the novel Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, it sees Ortiz lean into a darker, almost threatening atmosphere. “I was writing in a way that was less directly narrative and more vibes-based, using images, feelings, textures,” she explains, though a narrative thrust is implied by the very mood. A certain sense of guilt, even villainy marks the shadowed sound. The sensation of having committed a regretful act and having to acknowledge the fact.

Ramsey Thornton – Rocking

Back in October, we featured ‘Riverside’, a single by Tulsa-based songwriter, banjoist, and drummer Ramsey Thornton. It was released to announce his signing with the good folks at Gar Hole Records, and at the time we mentioned how a full-length record was in the pipeline. Well that time has now come. Titled I Called It! and set for release in May, the album collects 13 songs that perfectly introduce Thornton’s warm, down-to-earth sound. “I like my music to sound natural,” he describes. “These are songs that I wrote around my kitchen table. I recorded them with my friends. I hope they just sound like me.” New single ‘Rocking’ is a great example, Thornton’s fingerpicked guitar backed with drums, bass and lap steel to conjure something that feels both understated and emotionally deep.

runo plum – butterflies

Following on from 2025 full-length patching, an album we described as “equipped to elucidate the highs and lows of life,” Minneapolis songwriter runo plum is sharing brand new EP Bloom Again this May via Winspear. Released in support of an upcoming West Coast tour and SXSW, the EP sees plum expand upon her diaristic, emotionally-charged style, as introduced by lead single ‘butterflies’. “I showed you butterflies / You took ‘em in and burned them alive / In a house buried in smoke,” she sings in the song’s opening verse, “shoved myself to the ground to lay low.” The blunt, bleak lyricism is juxtaposed with the warm richness of the sound itself, the track playing like a confession or unburdening, runo plum unveiling all of her doubts and disappointments as though the only path to new growth is by clearing the ground.

The Same Sky – Sad Songs

Montreal ‘outsider pop’ band The Same Sky have a new record, Haunting in the Mountains, on the way via Casa Joven. Following lead single ‘What’s Left’, which we described previously as “a track where dreamy textures meet an almost mechanical sense of forward motion,” the four-piece have now unveiled a second preview, titled ‘Sad Songs’. Existing at the heavier end of the post punk / shoegaze spectrum, the song is soaked in fuzz and noise, siren-like guitar riffs and violent percussion carrying the minimal lyrics toward something almost ritualistic. “The track moves through hypnotic repetition like a ritual, closer to a chant than a traditional song,” describes lead Joseph Simon. “Unless ‘traditional’ means a psychotic monk howling through a wall of distortion.”

This Lonesome Paradise – Unending

When previewing This Lonesome Paradise‘s upcoming release Death Motels back in January, we described how the album “position[s] the project as one working slightly outside of time with a sound that conjures a mythic past while always facing forwards.” Following on from single ‘Changelings’, what we called a “brooding, Lynchian number as dark as the night itself,” This Lonesome Paradise have shared new single ‘Unending’ to celebrate the release of the record. Another shadowy slice of desert rock which plays as something both stark and romantic, the cinematic sound and E Ray Béchard’s pathos-filled vocals combining into an evocative picture of America. A landscape littered with broken dreams and unrealised futures, dark and dangerous and haunted by the ghosts of all that was sacrificed to establish itself upon the world.

Watch the video directed, shot and edited by David Lampley on Super 8 film below:

Death Motels is out now and available from the This Lonesome Paradise Bandcamp page.

Thomas Dollbaum – Dozen Roses

Born in Tampa and now based in New Orleans, songwriter Thomas Dollbaum has put out several releases in recent years, 2022 LP Wellswood and 2025 EP Drive All Night, though grew frustrated with the slow process as recording was hampered by a variety of factors. For latest album Birds of Paradise, coming this May on Dear Life Records, Dollbaum was determined to buck this trend. After writing for no more than three months, he enlisted the help of most trusted collaborators Nick Corson, Josh Halper and MJ Lenderman and travelled to Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi to work with producer/engineer Clay Jones. There, the album came to life in a handful of days, the recording process finally matching the urgency and charge that Dollbaum’s style of music demands. Lead single ‘Dozen Roses’ serves as a window into the album and its themes, tapping into the magic and beauty of the natural world to enliven personal memories, and ultimately displaying the lightning-in-a-bottle intensity these songs promise to bring.

Watch the video by ALLUVIAL below:

Birds of Paradise is set for release on 22nd May via Dear Life Records. Order it now from the Thomas Dollbaum Bandcamp page.

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The EP’s title, repurposed from a line said by Elinor to Marianne in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility (“Had I not been bound to silence I could have produced proof enough of a broken heart even for you”), forms the basis of this mission. “Lifting the idea out of the romantic context in which Austen was writing,” we wrote in our preview back in January:

Cormier-O’Leary uses Proof Enough to explore the innate desire to communicate and evidence one’s feelings within a familial setting. That is, to not only display our emotions to those around us, but to prove their validity and depth. The family unit is tight yet hierarchical, bound by figures of authority, though no one version of its life, be that exterior or interior, is more true than any other. Everything, spoken and unspoken, holds an equal significance. Only in the whole can we come to see reality.

Opener ‘Marilyn’ embodies the speculative, narrative-based style Michael Cormier-O’Leary adopts across the release, “blending,” as we continued, “fiction and autobiography to fully capture the cross-generational dynamics at play.” The titular five-year-old protagonist draws new worlds as a way to escape family life, not only evoking a distinctly youthful experience but also holding up a mirror in which older generations might recognise their own deep-seated desires. For adults also long find respite from everyday existence, even if the wish takes a different form from that of their children. The result sees Cormier-O’Leary expertly delineate the gap in understanding between the generations which persists despite shared commonalities. “It’s a story about a five-year-old named Marilyn who escapes into her crayon drawings to block out the noise of her home life and her parents’ desire but inability to do the same,” he explains. “In the song’s outro, there are two restated melodies that oscillate back and forth chromatically, suggesting a family unit out of sync or at least having a particularly bad day.”

This willingness to span the generations continues across Proof Enough, and forms a key part of its compassionate tone. The first song Cormier-O’Leary wrote for the project, ‘Del’ takes its name from his paternal grandfather and delves into the silences which can settle between fathers and sons, picking at the ways in which a failure to communicate represents both difference and, ironically, kinship, and how others ways of signalling closeness might emerge. “There’s some way even though it’s unspoken, that a kind of bond could occur with these two people that can’t really talk to each other,” Cormier-O’Leary explains. “They’re both internalizing the same songs.” Likewise, as with ‘Marilyn’ before it, the track is also able to hold apparently competing emotions simultaneously, recognising silence as a gesture of kindness or forbearance as well as something frustrating and limiting.

Maybe he thinks
Silence means safety
From all the harmful
Words he could say

The rest of the EP unfolds in a similarly nuanced manner. ‘Sky Is Blue’ grapples with mortality, especially the blast radius of death and how it impacts a family unit. The song is delivered from the perspective of the ailing individual and imploring those who will survive them to embrace life after their passing. ‘Gouache’ deals with death of a different kind, a child who breaks with the expectations of their lineage and buries a certain aspect of their identity, while the honeyed glow of ‘Staring’ considers the beauty of transience in order to better appreciate the present moment, however much water has already passed beneath the bridge.

Closer ‘Pressed Flowers’ follows a similar theme, though exists at the opposite end of the spectrum. A song written in the wake of a wedding which looks to preserve the memories much like the activity of its title. An effort to cling onto the most precious of moments which by its very nature evokes the inevitable pull of loss. Notable events like weddings make this experience clear. But Proof Enough demonstrates how something similar occurs each and every day. There are special moments within the mundane which might be lost if we do not make the effort to catch them. And these moments come in a variety of forms, flavours and shades, much like any set of relations. One final reminder, then, that every family is a complicated system, and each individual contributes to its ever-changing shape.

Proof Enough is out now via Dear Life Records and available from the Michael Cormier-O’Leary Bandcamp page.

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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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Michael Cormier-O’Leary uses a speculative, narrative-based style to delve into this idea, blending fiction and autobiography to fully capture the cross-generational dynamics at play. Nowhere is this clearer than on lead single ‘Marilyn’, a song which follows its five-year-old protagonist as she attempts to escape family life by drawing new worlds of her own. “Marilyn / is off in her own little world again,” goes the opening verse, “where a crayon can / turn us into clowns / turn us inside out.”  Yet this youthful experience serves as a mirror too. It brings into relief the adult longing to also escape life with no more than a blank sheet of paper, as well as the gap in understanding between the generations, as though each is broadcasting on a slightly different frequency. “It’s a story about a five-year-old named Marilyn who escapes into her crayon drawings to block out the noise of her home life and her parents’ desire but inability to do the same,” Cormier-O’Leary explains. “In the song’s outro, there are two restated melodies that oscillate back and forth chromatically, suggesting a family unit out of sync or at least having a particularly bad day.”

Photo by Abi Reimold

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