Longtime Titus Andronicus drummer Eric Harm has announced his solo debut record, All The Wrong Moves, due for release at the end of the week via Freeman Street Records. Produced by Patrick Stickles, and sharing the same indie rock, power pop and punk rock foundations as the (especially later) Titus Andronicus releases, the album focuses on a central character that Harm describes as ““the petty tyrant of the most pathetic kingdom.” Lead single ‘When You Move Back In’ introduced things with a triumphantly catchy take on self-deprecation, and now second single ‘Blood Stirred Up In Me’ offers another glimpse. Again built on big guitar lines that cry out to be played loud, it’s a timeless and celebratory power pop song that seems destined for beer-soaked shout-alongs.

Kramies – We’re All Dead

Fresh off the back of 2025 full-length Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, which blended autobiography and fiction to create a sound at once dreamlike, nostalgic and “full of the mysterious allure [the project] has always offered,” Kramies has now returned with brand new single ‘We’re All Dead’. If Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour was something of a metamorphosis away from the persona developed on Kramies’s self-titled 2022 debut, then this single suggests the songwriter is far from finished with his personal transformation. With the recording process stripped right back to Derek Lee LaJoie and drummer John Panza, and a widescreen, almost orchestral sound that suggests quite the opposite, the track presents another face in what is quickly becoming a Bowie-esque series of them. An ultimately direct exploration of what it means to live (and die) and what we leave behind, the title’s morbid tone of belying the affirming sentiment underpinning the message.

Legit Smitty – Be My Sweet Escape

Back in the summer we previewed This Living Ain’t That Hard, a new album from Jake Smith’s Legit Smitty written in the aftermath of a near-death encounter and full of the kind of emotional honesty such an experience might trigger (Smith says he is more determined than ever, we quoted in our piece, to “continue to share his heart in order that others might feel more at home in their own skin”). With the album now out in its entirety, Legit Smitty has shared new single ‘Be My Sweet Escape’, and the track is every bit as heartfelt and forthright as its predecessor. The song melds the confessional charm of bedroom pop with a more electrified alt country spirit, and emerges all the more emotive for it. “Take every last part of my heart / and throw it in the dirt one time,” as Smith sings in a typically impassioned verse, “and take every last part of who you are / and hold it up real high.”

‘Losin You’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

l__evi – Summer Ain’t Over

Chances are you know Levi Nattrass from his work as Drench Fries, a project we covered most recently back in 2025 with the release of single ‘Camera‘. But now Nattrass how a new project, appropriately titled l__evi, and single ‘Summer Ain’t Over’ offers the ideal introduction. What could be called a summer song or, perhaps more fittingly, an anti-fall song, the track taps into the refusal to acknowledge the end of something positive, be it an attempt to willingly extend the moment, positive thinking-style, or else a plain act of self-delusion. “They’re sayin’ there’s a chill in the air / but I don’t feel it,” as Nattrass sings in the opening. “They’re sayin’ that the daylight’s gettin’ scarce / but I don’t believe it.” The result is tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless committed in its execution, possessing that Prine-esque blend of playfulness and sincerity.

And I don’t wanna hear
no fuckin’ Bon Iver
Just give me Toby Keith and Alan Jackson
Hey did you hear the news today,
the mayor’s new decree,
summer ain’t over til Halloween

Watch the video shot by Nattrass with Elyse Lankford below:

‘Summer Ain’t Over’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Lo Barnes – Heaven Was His Name

With a steady, creeping build and spaghetti western sensibility, new single ‘Heaven Was His Name’ shows the full evocative depth of Margate-based Lo Barnes. Released in anticipation of forthcoming EP HEAVEN pt I: the veil, the track opens with a taut, nocturnal tone and slowly asserts itself, a picture of duplicity and disillusionment sketched first through hushed despondence and then thunderous cathartic release. “And his name echoed out ‘cross the roses / and his word turned to dust in the flame,” Barnes sings at the climax, “and the wind callin’ out cryin’ heaven / and his word turned to dust in the flame / they don’t love you like I do,” and it is the ambiguity of that final line which really embodies the nuance with which the song works. “Initially I feared that this closing sentiment inferred that these were the protagonist’s words, and she was still caught in the web of her deceiver, but they could also be the lie she was told to keep her there,” Barnes explains. “Not knowing the end of the tale, despite being its author, inspires me to believe the song and its characters have a life of their own.”

Magdelena Abrego – A Friendship Buried

You might know Magdalena Abrego as one half of Deerlady (alongside Mali Obomsawin), whose 2024 record Greatest Hits was one of our favourites of that year. But now the Chicago-born, New York-based artist has released her first ever solo album, Xolo. The record take its name from the Xoloitzcuintli, a breed of hairless dog that in Mexican culture was a gift from the Gods to help guide recently deceased humans to the afterlife. A fitting title for a collection of songs that explore extremely personal themes of memory and loss. “For me, processing what I’ve been through so publicly feels like an act of rebellion against the structures that encourage us to carry our suffering alone,” Abrego describes. “What I know now is that there is a kind of power in looking backward to understand the ones who came before us as not simply gone, but alive in the ways we show care, in the gestures we repeat without knowing where they began, and in what we choose to pass on.” A cyclical combination of field recordings, electronic pop structures and more traditional songwriting, the album is best experienced as a whole, but the deeply affecting ‘A Friendship Buried’ will give you a good introduction.

Max Bien Kahn – Baby Green (Flannel Shirt)

Be it using a shopping list as a jumping off point to explore the physics of a relationship (‘List II‘), or incidental encounters as ways to meditate on life’s existential questions (‘Skipping Stones‘, ‘Neightbors‘), Max Bien Kahn‘s latest full-length Baby Green makes it its mission to collect the seemingly mundane multitude of details which constitute a life and assemble them into something able to tease out the intangible big picture. With the album now out in full, Kahn has shared the title track to further cement this style. A song about encountering someone once held dear after a significant absence, and how such an experience carries a strange duality. On the one hand, it reveals how specific details persist through the years untouched by the decay of time, yet on the other, clear memories are revealed to have be false after all.

When I saw you on the street again
You looked like a friend
Old friend
Where you been

I remembered your blue eyes
But now I see
They’re green green
Baby green

Melissa Weikart – Contact

We have featured a couple of songs from Paris-based songwriter Melissa Weikart in recent months, as she geared up to release new album Contact via Midnight Special Records, impressed with how her work exists at an unlikely crossroads between “experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop.” The record was finally released last week, and to celebrate Weikart has unveiled a video for the title track, a song that underpins the record’s thematic concerns. “It became clear to me very early on that ‘Contact’ would become the title track of the album,” she explains. “The song encapsulates the central theme of desire to seek authentic connection with myself, the people around me, and perhaps even one or two extraterrestrial beings along the way.” A lush piano-led song that warps and bows with a gentle surrealism, evoking the strange, unreal feeling of calling out into a dark unknown, looking for a response.

Contact is out now via Midnight Special Records and available from the Melissa Weikart Bandcamp page.

Savanna Ruth – Bad Thoughts

Recording under the moniker Burr Oak, Chicago‘s Savanna Dickhut made a name through her ability to combine raw emotion and ethereal atmosphere to tell stories of authentic depth. Now adopting the name Savanna Ruth to herald a new era, Dickhut has recently released brand new full-length The Baseball Diaries to push her worker further than ever before. Retaining the narrative bent and emotional heft of Burr Oak but delving into territory far more personal than ever before, the Savanna Ruth project could be seen as both an evolution and revolution, sounding like a culmination of what came before it, yet also marking a pivot towards new territory. Standout single ‘Bad Thoughts’ is a good place to jump in, typifying both the introspection reflection of the release and the blend of vulnerability and fearless with which Savanna Ruth moves through it.

Watch the video below, directed and edited by Todd Diederich, with camera by Andy Resek:

The Baseball Diaries is out now via Easy Does It Records and available from Bandcamp.

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

There’s a new Jane Schoenbrun film hitting theatres right now, and like We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow before it, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma comes complete with a score by Alex G. Waxwork Records will be putting out two releases in support of the movie, first with a soundtrack that collects several of Alex G’s compositions along with needle drops from the likes of Okay Kaya, R.E.M. and Counting Crows, then a full score later in September. Single ‘Pain Is The Heart of Love’ introduces the tone, a song crafted by Alex G with vocals from The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan which encapsulates the alluring mix of physical and ethereal which has long marked Schoenbrun’s work, as well as the blurred line between reality, memory and dreams.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) will be release on the 21st August and you can pre-order it now.

Bonnie Hook – songbird

Back in 2025, Bonnie Hook (AKA Detroit songwriter Katlyn Sartor) released diadem, an EP which introduced an experimental brand of folk music which draws upon everything from ambient to psych. The result was something simultaneously personal and mysterious, intimate in its intention yet unafraid of pushing towards ambiguity. Set for release next month, Bonnie Hook’s new full-length whitelodge builds upon this style, further widening the sound and increasing its transportive qualities. Take single ‘songbird’, a lush and patient track indicative of the kind of richness Sartor can conjure, its lyrics stripped back to a poetic abstraction yet never lacking for emotional clarity.

songbird you’ll wait to fly
into our string of time
open foreboding eyes
though it may take a while
to coo

Cooper Kenward – Bit Better

“Step outside, walk the dog / SSRI shades on / Feel alright, feel okay / Nothing new just another day.” So sings Cooper Kenward in the opening lines of ‘Bit Better’, the first taste of a new album coming via Soggy Anvil Records which sees the Northern California songwriter employ an ostensibly sunny sound to delve into some rather deep, existential themes. Indeed the first verse encapsulates the mood of the track, where a sense of self-reflection meets the inherent hope of a new day, a vibe as bound up in the country twang as the lyrics themselves, though never without a certain tongue-in-cheek fatalism chasing behind. The result plays as both an optimistic mantra for the depressed person and wry joke at the end of the world, though in Cooper Kenward’s hands, these two things need not be mutually exclusive.

History, they say is dead
Images mean nothing at all
Music is just a bore
Ring cam shows horsemen
at the doooooor

And I’m sure we’ll get another chance soon
To do what we’ve done
But a little bit better

‘Bit Better’ is out now via Soggy Anvil Records and available from the usual places.

Essy Sparrow – Weak at the Knees

This October, songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist Essy Sparrow will release new EP Gossip From a Coastal Town. As the title suggests, the album is deeply rooted in a sense of place, not only painting a picture of life within a Cornish town but evoking its wider landscape of heritage and history, the myriad of personal memories and narratives which weave together to form the story of any given environment. “Some of these songs are true, some are exaggerated and some are straight up lies for fun,” Sparrow explains. “I became obsessed with the idea of writing music like rumours—emotional snapshots rather than perfect autobiographical truth.” The result is often whimsical but never lacking heart, as displayed by latest single ‘Weak at the Knees’. A bright folk song in which any bittersweet rumination or self-deprecative confession is vastly outweighed by the fondness at its core. “I wanted it to sound like a traditional coastal wedding by the sea,” Sparrow continues. “A village showing up to watch a couple renew their vows on a hillside. I wanted to sum up love, summer and the feeling of the UK coast as much as possible.”

Gossip From a Coastal Town will be released on the 2nd October and you can pre-order it now.

Lane Hartley – I Am Not Ashamed

No Home, the forthcoming new record from LA-based artist Lane Hartley, is something of a team effort. It features contributions from a long list of musicians, including Mary Lattimore, Seth Kaufman of Floating Action and David Hartley of The War On Drugs, who elevated the collection of ten songs with a combination of collaboration and intuition, taking Hartley’s often dark lyrics and brightening them with lush arrangements and a community spirit. “All of the players on this record really brought it to life in such a cosmic way,” says Hartley. “They instilled so much childlike wonder and fun into the making of the album. It inspired me to keep going.” Lead single, ‘I Am Not Ashamed’, which takes its name and ethos from the memoir by fifties Hollywood star Barbara Payton, is our first taste. A breezy and timeless folk rock song, it possesses a tough defiant streak, a dogged determination not to be cowed by shame. As Hartley describes, “It’s about knowing that whatever you’ve done to survive, you still deserve love.”

Lost Film – Blossom Rot

‘Blossom Rot’, the new single from Western Massachusetts indie pop band Lost Film, is in some ways the perfect late summer indie pop song. As the title suggests, it is inspired by gardening (or more precisely, learning to be more laidback and trusting to avoid losing fruit to the titular rot), but there’s something more than that too. Wrapped in Casio arpeggios and a sweetly pensive shimmer, it captures the carefree contentedness of a warm and quiet evening as the sun begins to set and paints everything in a rosy, nostalgic glow. Indeed, nostalgia is perhaps the key emotion, due in at least some small part to the band’s choice of background entertainment while recording. “While Max (Newman, who adds percussion) and I were tracking this one,” explains lead Jim Hewitt, “we had Disney’s 1994 Summer classic, Camp Nowhere on which really set the tone for the session.” Jordan Lawlor (of M83) then came on board to lend his mixing talents, which only amps up the effect further.

The Male Pattern – I’m a Soldier

We’re not certain a satirical concept album described as “Springsteen meets Ween” was on our bingo card of releases in 2026, but sometimes you only realise you’ve been waiting for something when it finally arrives. I Was Shot in the Heart! by The Male Pattern is exactly that, telling the story, as per lead Will Schwartz, of “an unnamed suburban dad as he navigates his acrimonious divorce, spends too much time watching TV and on the computer, gets addicted to pills, loses his job as a mortgage broker, shoots and kills a small-time drug dealer, finds God, and commits suicide by cop at a 24/7 Stop and Shop in White Plains, NY.” Featuring Daniel Bateman of Frog fame, single ‘I’m a Soldier’ sets the tone of the record, where the undeniable irony and playfulness do nothing to undermine the heartbreaking loneliness running through its heart. An anthem of America in 2026, where vapidity, ridiculousness and mean-spirited self-interest feel like symptoms of some dark, cursed pathology lurking beneath the surface.

Ok Cowgirl – Rock N Roll Ruined My Life

Led by Leah Lavigne, Brooklyn‘s OK Cowgirl released their debut Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut back in 2024, winning acclaim with an unguarded, often introspective style of indie rock. Set for release this month via Easy Does it Records, follow-up Rhinestone Cowgirl builds upon these foundations with new levels of confidence, both increasing the scale and widening the scope of the songs to create a bona fide slice of American rock. The result is understandably conflicted in tone, set as it is within a country rigged against so many of its people. Yet it is the energy and drive which most catches the attention, Lavigne and co. pressing on with life and grasping its joys as their own display of revolt. Take new single ‘Rock N Roll Ruined My Life’. “I wrote this song to myself and to so many friends who have struggled to justify staying the course while pursuing this precarious path of being an artist,” Lavigne explains. “It is not an easy path, and as an artist with a day job I have had periods of time where I’ve grown resentful of music for taking up all my time-off requests and keeping me in a job without healthcare. I wrote this song to vent those feelings, and every time I sing the tongue-in-cheek hook I am reminded how untrue it is. Music is the most fulfilling and joyful part of my life. That’s the beautiful thing about giving yourself space to feel your challenging feelings–you’ll often find they’re misnamed.”

Watch the video directed, filmed and edited by Matt Birkenholz below:

Rhinestone Cowgirl will be released on the 21st August 21st via Easy Does It Records.

Paul Spring – Tell Me That You Love Me

The work of Saint Cloud, MN-based songwriter Paul Spring is nothing if not varied. His work shifts from project to project with the idiosyncratic vision of a true artist. The last time we featured his work, he was “combining electronic and Medieval influences,” as we wrote of 2022 release Thunderhead, “casting Spring as some strange bard that wanders into your village with tunes so odd and unfamiliar they sound like sorcery,” but latest full-length Barnstorm is very different. After meeting a group of Irish musicians and developing a working chemistry when touring in 2025, he wanted to make the most of the encounter, returning months later to record the album in Inchiquinn in County Galway. Tadhg Ó Raghallaigh (Uilleann piper), Ben Duffy (drums), Sam Wright (bass) and Macdara Ó Faoláin (bouzouki) joined to flesh out the sound, creating a cross-pollinated style born of folk and baroque traditions. The result is varied and ever-changing across the record, but latest single ‘Tell Me That Your Love Me’ captures the detail and drama perfectly.

Routine Caffeine – Porcelain Doll

We’ve covered Louisville trio Routine Caffeine several times in recent years, from 2024 EP Weeds Under Concrete Stones to the 2025 single ‘Green Glass‘, each utilising a blend of dreamy haze and forward motion to explore themes of nostalgia, memory and the passing of time. Now the band are back with brand new single ‘Porcelain Doll’ and the track again exists within the push and pull between the past and the present, its insistent rhythm softened by an almost ethereal air, all while a sense of tension simmers beneath the surface. The result is beguiling and ominous in equal measure, something only amplified as the song progresses towards its evocative conclusion. “Dancing inside a frame / The roses bloom, then fall away,” Katie O’Brien Kelley sings in typical cryptic fashion. “Echoing, spiral stairs / Oh, how it was to walk in there.”

Slow Down Molasses – Follow (Eric’s Trip Cover)

We last featured Slow Down Molasses back in 2021 with the release of their album Minor Deaths, an album of clever details and visceral weight which explored the dark contemporary moment. “There is no prevailing mood or conclusion,” we wrote, “just a committed decision to embrace the energies of the contemporary moment in all of their frustrations, aggressions, vulnerabilities and dread.” Something of a hiatus has since followed, though now the Saskatoon outfit are back and gearing up for what promises to be a busy new era ahead, promising some of their most succinct and ferocious songs to date. To celebrate this return, SLM have turned to what they consider to be one of Canada’s most iconic acts, Eric’s Trip, recording a cover of the gloriously boisterous ‘Follow’ together with old friend Jeanette Neufeld. As they explain:

To say Eric’s Trip and their various members’ bands made an impact on me would be a massive understatement. There may not be a more important and more loved Canadian band for us than Eric’s Trip. They blew my teenaged mind and opened up an amazing world of lo-fi, noisey, but tuneful music for me. Inspiring quiet mornings listening to gems like Behind the Garage and Allergic to Love, road trips listening to Forever Again straight through, late nights blasting ragers like Follow, Anytime You Want and Sunlight and many, many hours letting my guitar feedback swell into the perfect lo-fi My Bloody Valentine moments that filled Eric’s Trip records.

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