This sense of duality was no less of a feature on subsequent single, ‘Not Broken‘. “A track,” as we put it, “which confronts a default setting of negativity with its polar opposite, looking to puncture pessimism by sheer force of will.” With the release of the record fast approaching via EggHunt Records and Northern Spy Records, Tōth has unveiled a brand new single ‘Thoughts Are Like Clouds’, and again the song embraces apparent contradiction in order to explore its themes more fully.

Described as an ode to meditation, ‘Thoughts Are Like Clouds’ pairs a ruminative sound with immediate, stream-of-conscious-style delivery, allowing Tōth to convey how an ostensibly disciplined, rigouress practice can in reality lead to states of curiosity and freedom. A sense of rhythm runs through the track too, as though to reinforce the fact meditation is not some static experience but one of genuinely fluidity, though as the song develops a certain sense of chaos and desperation seep into its sound. A reminder that for all of the knowledge and self-acceptance which can stem from such reflection, there’s no bulletproof method to insulate yourself from the pressures of living.

“I’m pretty sure I was in a recovery meeting and a friend of mine shared with the group in a thick New York accent ‘thoughts are like clouds in the sky of your brain or whatever’ and it tickled me deeply,” Tōth explains. “Also that description came up in one of my daily meditation readings. You need only to witness and let the clouds pass (…or whatever). The thing about spiritual practice and spirituality for me is: It’s deadly serious but it only works if I don’t take it or myself too seriously. I love how disciplined practices like meditation and staying sober help me be the most free and child-like.”

Watch the video directed by Michael Leviton and Tōth below:

And The Voice Said will be released on the 23rd February via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy and you can pre-order it from the Tōth Bandcamp page.

Photos by Michael Leviton, album layout/design/artwork by Bucky Boudreau

The post Tōth – Thoughts Are Like Clouds appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The recording moniker of Chicago-based artist Niko Francis, Air Mail makes lo-fi indie pop inspired by the likes of Alex G and MJ Lenderman. The latest in the Future Gods Unearth series, new single ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ uses this melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange (but recently all too familiar) sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance. Written amid news on the genocide in Gaza and wildfires in LA, Francis describes the song as “a quietly striking meditation on connection and collapse, written from the stillness of a bedroom but echoing far beyond it.” It’s laidback and understated, but with a quiet power, and ends on a note of defiance, if not quite hope.

Where you are, you belong
Can’t destroy, what you can do
Can’t erase, what is ours
Because we, we are wide awake

‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ is out now via streaming services.

Basciville & Ailbhe Reddy – Your Own Head

Next year will see the release of the sophomore album by Basciville, the folk rock project of Wexford brothers Cillian and Lorcan Byrne. To announce the release, the duo have unveiled lead single, ‘Your Own Head’, a collaboration with Dublin singer-songwriter Ailbhe Reddy. It’s a stark and searing duet, beginning with the spacious emotion of a dark and empty room before swelling with the band’s signature cinematic intensity. “’Your Own Head’ was the first song written from the batch of songs that would become the second album. One of those songs that falls out in one go and thematically ties everything together,” Basciville describe. “It laments the ways we compromise the self in the name of love, religion and society at large. It touches on the balance between some global moral duty, the pull to be present and keeping the self safe.”

‘Your Own Head’ is out now via streaming services.

eillah – Amaranth / My Own Mouth

The best part of four years since release of album in my head, Peoria-born, Chicago-based songwriter eillah has returned with brand new double single Amaranth / My Own Mouth. With guidance from producer, engineer and drummer Jack Henry, eillah uses the tracks to push their sound in new directions, lifting the inherent ethereality of the lo-fi aesthetic which marked the last record and transplanting it into a newly rich folk style. The result exists in-between states—be that ambiguity and clarity, rawness and polish, reality and dreams—and opens up a whole new avenue for eillah to explore moving forward. A style uniquely positioned to mine the full depth of an emotional landscape and present an inner world in all of its beauty and contradiction.

Evelyn – Three Eagles

Evelyn is recording project of California-born, New York-based artist Dani Lencioni, who makes inventive indie pop that’s thick with the lived-in soul of alt country. Released later last week, the latest Evelyn single ‘Three Eagles’ is a great example, a rich and swaying song that “responds to the dissonance between everyday beauty and the grief of current events.” Produced by Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee collaborator Nick Kinsey, the song was recorded in his Hudson Valley studio and has all the warmth and authenticity of its analogue recording set-up. “I try to put myself to sleep, I try to take my time and breathe,” Lencioni sings in the chorus, which perfectly captures the track’s sense of desperately trying to feel ok in an often hostile world. “I try to think of something sweet, I’m screaming in my dreams.”

Laika Songs – Visitor

This December sees Evan Brock’s Laika Songs return with second album I can feel an ending, picking up the threads in the wake of debut record Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light while pushing the project in new sonic directions. Together with a band featuring Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) on guitar, Dominic Angelella on bass and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty) with drums and sequencer, Brock blends the organic and the digital to create songs full of curiosity. A sound fitting for a record all about the slow, circuitous process of self-discovery, where the truth is something caught in glimpses when you least expect it. Opener ‘Visitor’ embodies this style, embracing confusion and clarity as two parts of the same whole, though always reaching for those small glimmers where the path forward is revealed.

LEYA – Weaving (YHWH Nailgun Version)

Following on from a rework of single ‘Corners’ by Channel Beads earlier in the year, a reimagining we described as “a heightened version of the original, playing like the interstitial space between the Now and the Then with all the instinctive longing left intact,” LEYA have invited experimental rock outfit YHWH Nailgun to reconceptualise another track from their acclaimed 2024 EP I Forget Everything. Driven by Marilu Donovan’s harp, the original offered a mood somewhere between medieval and ethereal, though YHWH Nailgun conjure an altogether more subterranean vibe. One no less ambiguous or alluring, though this time glinting not with a celestial grace but instead the dark, metallic edge of the underground.

Peiriant – Pwls

“With an experimental sound that draws on everything from folk and post-rock to classical and sound art, mid Wales duo Peiriant combine traditional and electronic styles with samples and found objects for semi-improvised pieces [resulting] in an almost sculptural approach to music.” So we wrote of the work of Rose and Dan Linn-Pearl back in 2024 upon the release of single ‘Taflu D​ŵ​r’, a track born of the push and pull between violin and electric guitar. With new album Plant coming via Recordiau NAWR, Peiriant are back with single ‘Pwls’, and while it’s every bit as finely crafted as its predecessor, it also shows marked stylistic differences too. Because, living up to its title (‘pulse’ in English), ‘Pwls’ displays a newfound rhythm and movement, the violin, played pizzicato, skating over a Moog bassline and infusing the atmospheric sound with a constant sense of motion.

Sam Woodring – 1,000 Ways to Die

You might recognise Maryland-born artist Sam Woodring from a number of different projects, be it the post-hardcore outfit Two Inch Astronaut which made a name in the 2010s, or the genre-bending Mister Goblin which rose from its ashes. Each offered a chance at reinvention, and now Woodring is setting out under his own name to instigate another stylistic change. Though ostensibly a solo endeavour, Mister Goblin drew on a range of collaborators to bring its varied sound to life, but new EP Mechanical Bull, out via Pretzle Records, sees Sam Woodring eschew all outside influence, and indeed anything beyond simple guitar and vocals. Opener ‘1,000 Ways to Die’ shows how this modest arrangement lacks nothing for emotional power, submerging itself in childhood memories to explore ideas of fear, fondness and nostalgia with a style that’s at once playful and entirely heartfelt.

Me and my sister sitting on the sofa
Counting down death till our eyes glazed over
Didn’t register as such
Didn’t count for much too much
Back then
She said what’s on the other channel
I said Nick Cannon’s Wild N’ Out
But the kid next door has Faces of Death on VHS
We should see what that’s about

Tōth – Not Broken

Back in October we shared ‘Spiraling’, a single from Tōth (AKA Alex Toth from Rubblebucket), ahead of a new release via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy. “The song appears relatively spare on the surface,” we wrote, “but as Toth details an experience of precarious love it blossoms into something altogether richer and more immersive, the sound rising to meet the interior weather of its singer. The result manages to evoke the duality of human being, where benign surfaces mask roiling energy beneath the surface, always threatening to spill into the world.” The album, titled And The Voice Said and set for release next February, is full of such duality, as highlighed by new single, ‘Not Broken’. A track which confronts a default setting of negativity with its polar opposite, looking to puncture pessimism by sheer force of will. “I wrote this as a message to myself: a response to my darkest feelings about life,” Toth explains. “I may not show it outwardly, but my default is to be a pretty fucking negative guy. So I selfishly wrote a song that would hopefully help me feel a little better from time to time.”

And The Voice Said will be released on the 23rd February via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy and you can pre-order it now.

Wendy Eisenberg – Will You Dare

Earlier this year, New York‘s Wendy Eisenberg announced her signing to Joyful Noise Recordings with a standalone single ‘I Don’t Miss You’, which we said “meditate[d] on human connection from a novel perspective… [with] their trademark mix of technical intricacy and intuitive improvisation.” Now they are back with another single, titled ‘Will You Dare’, which displays another side to their diverse practice. What Eisenberg calls “a simple little song about true love and the passage of time,” the track is sun-dappled and deceptively simple, drawing inspiration from the greats of seventies folk and country in its disarming candour and ultimately proving audacious in its willingness to cut to the heart of the matter. ‘Will You Dare’ is the real question,” as Eisenberg explains. “Do you dive into the impossibility of true love, be shameless, even though if you’re doing it right it’ll rip you to shreds?”

The post Weekly Listening: November 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With a new release on the horizon via Egghunt Records and Northern Spy, Tōth has shared the single ‘Spiraling’ as an early preview. Grounded by the signature trumpet and guitar, the song appears relatively spare on the surface, but as Toth details an experience of precarious love it blossoms into something altogether richer and more immersive, the sound rising to meet the interior weather of its singer. The result manages to evoke the duality of human being, where benign surfaces mask roiling energy beneath the surface, always threatening to spill into the world. “Trance / the zombie walk of your and my romance,” he sings in the opening lines, “distracting us until our eyes could open / the feeling that we never stood a chance / this is dangerous I need to relax.”

It comes complete with a video shot by in one take Michael Leviton at Owl Music Parlor, a visual equivalent of the song featuring Toth himself, where everything is stripped back to apparent simplicity, only for new layers of meaning to emerge. “You can see me losing my mind over the course of the video,” he says. “At one point the mic literally falls apart, and I’m trying to keep it together while singing ‘When I’m really woke I won’t be scared to listen…’ It’s chaos, but the perfect metaphor for the song.”

‘Spiraling’ is out now via Northern Spy and Egghunt Records and available from the Tōth Bandcamp page.

The post Tōth – Spiraling appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Clever Girls recently unveiled a brand new single from the album. Titled ‘Baby Blue’, the song dials back the raucous bite of ‘Spark’ in favour of raw sentiment. Jean says it’s “about the absolute euphoria that occurs when love and emotional safety are reciprocated in the face of loneliness,” and the track glides effortlessly between a sense of solitude and one of connection. Subtle guitars sparkle and swirl like thoughts in the quiet of an empty room, while the beat that kicks in after the chorus sounds uncannily like the intimate thump of a human pulse.

‘Baby Blue’ was initially written three years ago, but wasn’t recorded until early 2020. It has since taken on renewed meaning, recalling what Jean describes as “the darkest days of the pandemic” in the spring of 2020. “I spent all of May, while Vermont was still very much on lockdown, in complete isolation with the exception of my cat,” they explain. “It was exactly the type of experience that the song was born out of in the first place—feeling isolated, and cut off from the world even when it was still turning—if not on fire—outside of my door.”

Constellations is out on 20th February on Egghunt Records and you can pre-order it now from the Clever Girls Bandcamp page.

Cover photo by Kay Dargin

The post Clever Girls – Baby Blue appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Titled ‘Spark’, the song feels like an evolution for Clever Girls, meatier indie rock elements adding a raw directness to the dreamy emoti-pop of previous songs. The verses sit in lulls between bursts of big guitars and crashing drums, Jean’s vocals at times soft and unassuming but always edged with something darker. As the title suggests, the song uses the imagery of starting a fire to explore similarly destructive and purging phenomena in our lives.

Therefore, ‘Spark’ might have all the emotion of previous Clever Girls songs, but there’s a sense of violence that’s new. Images of gasoline and fights and buried teeth sit next to vulnerable sentiment, a juxtaposition that is perhaps best illustrated in a line near the beginning. “And this hallway stinks like piss,” Jean sings, in a moment that mixes grimy reality with something tender, “but I still feel her fingertips pressed against my lips.”

The post Clever Girls – Spark appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Bad Flamingo – Fire

“Give a man a mask,” said Oscar Wilde, “and he will tell you the truth.” The mysterious band Bad Flamingo have taken the idea to heart, favouring a cryptic anonymity that goes right through to actual masks. Without biographical details clouding the mix, we’re left to focus on the music, with new single ‘Fire’ showing off an ethereal Western atmosphere that creeps and crawls into a sparse yet infectious rhythm. The result is something pitched halfway between cowboy swagger and soulful pop, sounding inviting yet also dangerous too, as though a sharp edge lurks beneath the croon.

The track comes complete with a suitably atmospheric Super 8 video, so be sure to check it out below:

You can find more on Bad Flamingo via their website, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Garden Centre – Wide Sea

In preparation for the release of their third album, A Moon for Digging, on Specialist Subject Records and Kanine Records, Brighton’s Garden Centre has unveiled a brand new single. ‘Wide Sea’ shows off a new full-band Garden Centre line-up, with principle songwriter Max Levy joined by members of Porridge Radio for a newly collaborative sound. Not that Levy’s distinctive style is in any way ironed out, the track full of the strange curiosity and energy that has long represented the Garden Centre sound.

“‘Wide Sea’ is a song about being incredibly worried about somebody, and to devoting yourself to worry,” the band explain, though insist the track is actually positive. “Coming through a period of constant fear for a person you love can peel the glue from your eyes. The horizon can overwhelm you with an accepting vastness, and you can find a little bit of comfort again in being unable to know or control the world around you.”

A Moon For Digging is out on the 1st November via Specialist Subject Records (UK)/Kanine Records (US).

Nina Keith – In The Woods We Both Saw It, Weren’t Dreaming

Nina Keith is a Philadelphia-based composer, who is about to release her debut full-length  MARANASATI 19111. Built from “textured piano arrangements laced with vocals, flute, electronics and found sounds,” the album builds on foundations of contemporary classical music to create something something uniquely haunted and human. For a record that promises to delve into a “personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents,” lead single ‘ In The Woods We Both Saw It, Weren’t Dreaming’ is the perfect introduction, if just for that title alone. The piano-led track is quietly moving and oddly reassuring, a lament and a balm rolled into one. It’s a confident and distinctive taste of an album that could be very special indeed.

Antonioni – Stutter-Step

Returning with a new EP, The Odds Were All Beating Me, Seattle’s Antonioni have evolved from the languorous jangle rock of previous release Lullablaze into something altogether heavier and darker. While their past music flirted with grunge, the new is a full-bodied embrace, the powerful vocals of Sarah Pasillas driving a newfound energy and emotional immediacy.

Single ‘Stutter-Step’ is the perfect example, weaving lines of insistent energy into a hefty whole, meaning that the sound has both an urgency and a deeper, slow-burning dimension too. The track comes complete with a video by artist  Kyle Todaro, with the improv choreography of Matte Demon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjbyahC2G4

The Odds Were All Beating Me is out now via Den Tapes and you can grab it from the Antonioni Bandcamp page.

Side Saddle – Ink & Dirty Strings

The recording project of New York’s Ian McGuinness, Side Saddle make a reflective brand of power pop that balances joy and angst to the perfect degree. Ahead of the forthcoming EP, Waltermelon, the band have unveiled lead single ‘Ink & Dirty Strings’, a track that shows off Side Saddle’s ability to combine moods to craft their own style. Charting the choppy waters of a long distance relationship, the track is at once melancholic and energetic, as though only through missing someone can you truly appreciate what they mean to you.

Special Friend – Before

Special Friend is a Paris-based duo raised from a cocktail of 90s genres, drawing on grunge, shoegaze and pop to create something lusciously textured and hazy, Erica (drums) and Guillaume (guitar) sharing the vocals. The press release describes a “naive, honest and spontaneous DIY nature” that saw the band play their first show after four months and record an EP a year later, and something of this attitude shapes the sound of debut single ‘Before’, providing a sense of wonder that permeates the track.

Filmed by Marion Sautron and edited by Erica, the single’s video is “an existential crisis on a background of light, even joyful music,” taking inspiration from David Hockney’s pink clouds.  Check it out below:

‘Before’ is out via Howlin Banana Records.

Cartalk – Noonday Devil

Cartalk is the solo project of LA-based songwriter Chuck Moore who took the moniker from a text to a dear friend—”Love our car talks.” If such conversations are intimate and thematically fluid then Cartalk is determined to create a similar feel in the music, blending grunge and Americana into something heartfelt and full of momentum.

New single ‘Noonday Devil’ is a case in point, the guitars swelling and drums galloping as Moore rides the crest. Lyrically, the song is reflective but self-consciously so, recognising how patterns and conventions can shape the passage of time. Cartalk is here to dismantle such order, freeing one to live in the way that best suits them.

It’s a sentence break
Comma between patterns
Oh the love you gave
I’ve got a noonday devil

Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster – Educated Guesses

You probably know Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s voice if not his name. As the lead of Water Liars he proved himself a master of walking the line between folk and indie rock, combining great writing, expressive delivery and powerful instrumentation. The Arkansasan now has a burgeoning solo career, and is set to release his sophomore record Take Heart, Take Care later this month of Big Legal Mess Records.

Cut from “humid Southern nights and kudzu-encased vistas,” the album shows all of Kinkel-Schuster’s songwriting talents, representing American vignettes that are both detailed character studies and something much wider, serving as glimpses into the universal processes of hurting and healing. Single ‘Educated Guesses’ teases a newfound glimmer to Kinkel-Schuster’s tone too, the overwhelming dark of Water Liars not lost but somehow lifted, if not quite in the rear-view then at least not nailed over one’s eyes. Check out the video by Kyle Taubken below:

Take Heart, Take Care will be released on 30th August on Big Legal Mess Records.

Mount Sharp – Apostate

Formed somewhere between a Brooklyn rooftop and a boat in Maine, Mount Sharp combines the poetic songwriting of Swood (Sarah Wood) with Bryan Bruchman’s frenetically noisy sensibilities. With Ryan Zumsen and Maia Macdonald adding a rhythm section, 2014’s WEIRD FEARS EP was a lesson in uninhibited energy—be that born of excitement or anxiety.

Back with their first new music since that release, Mount Sharp have added Sal Garro and Jonathan Pilkington Kahnt on drums and bass and developed their sound into something more contemplative without loosing any of the spirit that marked them previously. Therefore, ‘Apopstate’ is an evolution, indebted to the past but shaped by present conditions, concerned with the personal and the political when exploring what it means to be pushed away from someone or something.

Surely I’m not made of bone and blood
Surely I’m something that’s never or always been
Am I still earning your love?
Do I remind you of someone you could dream of?

Pearla – Daydream

Pearla is the moniker of Brooklyn’s Nicole Rodriguez, a songwriter who knits threads of folk, pop and psychedelica into an evocative, mystical whole. New single ‘Daydream’ finds the sound perfected, the delicate minimalism belying the intricacy at work behind the vocals. “This song is about clinging onto a memory until it becomes distorted in your mind,” Rodriguez explains, “and turns into an almost absurd attempt to escape the present.”

Written after time spent rehabilitating primates in South Africa, and during an obsessive period reading Brontë novels, ‘Daydream’ offers memory and fiction as two forms of fantasy into which we can escape, spaces outside of the harsh realities of life that should be protected and celebrated.

Cataldo – Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs

“Anybody who has survived his childhood,” Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” Literally Main Street, the forthcoming record from Eric Anderson’s Cataldo, is crafted from a similar sentiment. Utilizing his trademark knack for writing songs that manage to be at once playful and emotional, the album sees Anderson take stock of life from the hinterland of middle age, an eye of a storm where longing for the future and nostalgia for the past cancel one another out.

“I tried to write songs about what it was really like growing up in a weird small town,” Andersen explains, “not a tarted up banjo-and-suspenders version of what people imagine it might be like,” and such a philosophy is clear on single ‘Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs’. This is hindsight without rose-tinted spectacles, memories shaken from the sepia-toned warmth and resurrected in all of their awkward, nervous energy. Check out the video by Dan Fromhart below:

Literally Main Street is out on the 27th September

That’s all for Vol. 27 folks. If you liked what you found, be sure to check the tag for previous editions of Bright Sparks.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 27 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The song, inspired by the first open casket funeral he attended as a child, as well as the death of his first dog, Noah. As you might expect, the sound is sad and remorseful in a child-like sort of way, the existential anxiety of adults not yet formed so that his grief can occupy a pure, selfless sort of level.

Subsequent albums like Tethered Rendering, Whatever Reason and last year’s Thumper doubled down on the sad vulnerability, working emo sensibilities through fogged, weary soundscapes. With each release came a newly developed outlook, Molly Drag serving as a lesson in craft as Hansford worked on new ways to bring his visions and feelings to life. The result grew more succinct and atmospheric as time went on, the pain and nostalgic longing presented in a way that might just allow in some rays of light.

The forthcoming record, Touchstone, might just be the album where the light finally begins to overwhelm the darkness,  signalling a new dawn for Molly Drag. “Touchstone feels like the beginning of a new segment for this project I started five years ago,” Hansford told The FADER, who premiered the new single. “It’s not as gloomy as it once was. Personally I’ve noticed a lot of things around me change and how I react to my surroundings. I definitely am a lot happier than I use to be whilst recording this record. Everything seems clearer now.”

All we have to go on for now in lead single ‘Out Like a Light’, and though the video (created by Elijah Zimmerman) is suitably morose, there is something in the sound that suggests a change, however subtle, is underway. The guitar still sounds stark and lonely, but offers a gentle glow, like a lamp in an empty room. When the animation in the video suddenly blooms into technicolor, you realise that the song sounds warm and, dare I say it, hopeful.

Touchstone is out on the 4th October via EggHunt Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Molly Drag – Out Like a Light appeared first on Various Small Flames.

MUNYA – Benjamin

“I don’t really understand how I make music,” says Josie Boivin, who records under the moniker MUNYA. “I feel like it’s coming from another world.” The sentiment feels apt for the Montreal-based songwriter, her vivid and crystalline style drawing from synth pop and psychedelica to form a languid, dream-laden sound. After three EPs in 2018, Boivin is back with the debut self-titled MUNYA full-length, and single ‘Benjamin’ sets the tone for the release.

With a natural elegance and bilingual lyrics, the track explores how prior experiences can get in the way of present events with an intuitive feel, past heartbreak undermining the possibility of new love. However, MUNYA takes this with a light spirit, acknowledging the ubiquity of such vulnerabilities and in doing so relinquishing the neuroses that can develop around them, clearing the way for new relationships.

Control Top – Chain Reaction

Philadelphia-based trio Control Top are set to release their record, Covert Contracts, next month on Get Better Records. “With a covert contract, the trick is that the agreement is only known by the person who makes it,” explains vocalist and bassist Ali Carter of the record’s title. “The other person is oblivious. Consent is impossible. A void of communication opens up a world of misunderstanding.” Hence Control Top’s scathing style of post-punk that looks to shine a light on the insidious systems that have a hold on society, all in the hope of rekindling some sense of autonomy with patriarchal capitalism, as made clear by single ‘Chain Reaction’.

Ricochet downward spiral
One more word and it goes viral
Light the wick, pull the trigger
What started small is getting bigger

I’m looking for an open door
But all I see is a broken mirror

la loye – to live underwater

Based in the Netherlands, la loye is an indie folk outfit built around the songwriting of Lieke Heusinkveld. With a hushed tone and restrained style, the sound belies the fact that there are six members in the band, though close listening reveals the depth and detail that constitutes their delicate soundscapes, as gauzy and intimate as a spider’s web and catching Heusinkveld’s warm, whispered vocals for all to see. Latest single ‘to live underwater’ is the perfect example, formed with craft and care, the subtle emotion emerging slowly but with great conviction.

Spectator – Waves

The recording project of Megan Rooney and Jeffrey Albert from St. Louis, Spectator is a collaboration in the most fundamental sense. Both were writing songs before they met, though once together these ideas interacted and merged, leading to hybrid songs that were neither Rooney’s nor Albert’s—they were Spectator’s. Ahead of a new album Charlie, Baby on Nordic Records, Spectator have put out a brand new single, ‘Waves’. The song gives an insight into the evocative and richly emotional style of the duo, Albert’s vocals bringing to mind the compassionate grandeur of Frederick Squire and bringing to life a song that finds hope in even the darkest of places.

Charlie, Baby will be released on Nordic Records and you can pre-order it now.

The Exbats – 2027

A father/daughter duo from Bisbee, Arizona, The Exbats make a brand of frenetic punk that they describe as “more troublegum than bubblegum.” Earlier this year, they put out an album, E is 4 Exbats, on Burger Records which collected their favourites songs from previous tapes in a full-length release. Single ‘2027’ gives a good idea as to what to expect from the band, racing into life with feverish drums before Inez McLain’s vocals enter with a tangible attitude, confident and fierce and taking no shit from no one.

minihorse – Drink You Dry

After lending his talents to a variety of Michigan bands over the past few years, Ypsilanti’s Ben Collins started his own band, minihorse, with a debut EP released in 2016. Their forthcoming record, Living Room Art, will be the band’s debut full length, and guest stars a number of familiar faces including Fred Thomas, Kelly Moran and Anna Burch.

The latter appears on lead single, ‘Drink You Dry’, a thundering introduction to the minihorse sound that tempers into gentle lulls periodically. Collins’ vocals lend the whole thing a soaring quality, the heavy cloud of guitars not blotting out the lyrics but holding them aloft.

Tyler Burkhart – Waiting For You

Tyler Burkhart is a DIY artist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who operates in the classic bedroom pop territory of melancholic nostalgia. After releasing a full-length album back in 2018, Burkhart is back with a brand new single with Berlin label, Feel Flows Records. ‘Waiting For You’ is trademark Tyler Burkhart, with a intimate, almost vulnerable sound, his words emerging with such earnestness that they sound like secrets told in confidence.

‘Waiting For You’ is out now on Feel Flows Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Sharkmuffin – Serpentina

Consisting of Tarra Thiessen (guitar/vocals), Natalie Kirch (bass/vocals) and Jordyn Blakely (drums/vocals), Sharkmuffin makes a raucous brand of indie rock that straddles both the artistic and anthemic poles of the genre. After the success of the previous album, the trio are back with a brand new EP, Gamma Gardening, out via Exploding in Sound Records.

The release is a concept album centred on “a space dominatrix named Serpentina that takes a job as receptionist [and] has an affair with a genetic engineer scientist who she codes a designer baby with that can withstand crazy atmospheric pressure, breathe underwater and never age.” As ever which such schemes, things don’t go to plan, with “The Atomic Gardening Society” getting wind of the situation and stealing the baby, causing Serpentina to hang herself with a belt. So… just your average dystopian EP with a narrative arc that would be at home in Ancient Greece.

Trevor Stott – Halfway in the Night

Trevor Stott is a songwriter from St. George, Utah, who makes a stirring brand of country rock that blends existential concerns with cathartic energy. The title track of his debut album, ‘Halfway in the Night’ is a great place to start for those wishing to grow acquainted with Stott’s music, his gravelly vocals offering an organic emotion as the instrumentation pushes an insistent sense of motion. Stott’s voice is prone to stretching and almost breaking, the feeling so keen as to appear almost desperate, and the result is a sound that sweeps you up within its earnest course.

Walking Bicycles – Fat Cat

Chicago post-punk outfit Walking Bicycles have been on hiatus ever since releasing To Him That Wills The Way back in 2014, an album which told the story of guitarist Julius Moriarty’s three-year spell in prison. This year is going to change that, with the band’s fifth record, Chooch, coming this spring via Highwheel Records. If lead single ‘Fat Cat’ is anything to go by, the time away has done nothing to quell Walking Bicycles’ cynical and boisterous attitude, the break only providing more time to stew in the mess of inequality and greed that marks our time. Hence this song, a cutting and caustic middle finger to the men pulling the strings.

Downhaul – Wires / Enough

Richmond’s Downhaul craft a lyrical brand of emo that balances intelligent songwriting with the sincere, pensive style of the genre in a way that fans of The Hotelier no doubt appreciate. Their album Before You Fall Asleep is set for release on Refresh Records at the end of the month, and lead single ‘Wires / Enough’ does more than enough to whet the appetite. Taking the alienating process of growing up with an honest vulnerability, the song probes the psychic cost of becoming yourself in a society fraught with expectations and preconceptions.

Gold Connections – Like a Shadow

Gold Connections is the recording project of Will Marsh of Charlottesville, Virginia. Marsh was a school friend of Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo, and the latter helped record and produce the self-titled debut Gold Connections EP which came out last year on Fat Possum Records. This was followed by the full-length album Popular Fiction on EggHunt Records, and this year sees Marsh unveil Like a Shadow, another EP on EggHunt that continues his guitar-driven, brooding sound that is very much of our time. “Like A Shadow,” Marsh explains, “and especially its single of the same name, is about the struggle to move forward into a world that seems both infinitely precarious and abundant.”

Well you know I see them waves rising
Don’t say I never said nothing
Just I’d rather be a dead man
Than love like a shadow

Like a Shadow is out via EggHunt Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Witching Waves – Eye 2 Eye

London’s Witching Waves have a reputation for ferocious energy and an uncompromising post-punk aesthetic, as displayed on 2016’s Crystal Cafe. The band are now back with a new record, Persistence, on Specialist Subject Records, and as the title suggests the album is committed to “continuing in spite of difficulty,” as displayed by its urgent and assertive sound.

Lead single ‘Eye 2 Eye’ shows off Witching Wave’s distinctively frenetic style, drummer Emma Wigham providing the lead vocals with backing from guitarist Mark Jasper, leading to a shout-a-long chorus that rises above the angular instrumentation. The album was recorded directly to tape without over-dubs, and the unprocessed energy is the band’s greatest strength—possessing a bite that cannot be reproduced by any amount of technical wizardry.

Black Belt Eagle Scout – Indians Never Die

We have been big fans Black Belt Eagle Scout, the project of Portland’s Katherine Paul, since we first heard their latest album, Mother of My Children, back in 2017. Since then, The Black Belt Eagle Scout stock has risen immeasurably, re-releasing the album on Saddle Creek last year. They recently released a video for ‘Indians Never Die’, a song we previously described as “about the strength and persistence of indigenous peoples, their power and will in the face of oppression and attempted annihilation, not just of themselves but of the entire planet.” Directed by queer Diné filmmaker Evan James Atwood, the video was shot on the ancestral lands of the Chinook, Chinnuk Wawa, and Tillamook tribes and provides a beautiful backdrop to a powerful song.

Mother of My Children is out now and you can get it from the Black Belt Eagle Scout Bandcamp page.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 22 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A new volume will be posted every few weeks and will offer a collection of really great songs that we’re determined not to let slip past our radar.

Lazy Legs – Bed Head

We’ve featured Lazy Legs previously, describing the Chicago (soon to be Portland) outfit’s sound as “a heavy mix of shoegaze and noise pop, a million miles from the sugary sweet jangle at the other end of the genre’s spectrum”. The band are readying their sophomore album, Crawler, and have released the first track ‘Bed Head’ in anticipation. Wrapped in a blanket of fuzz, the track ruminates on reasons to leave your bed in depressive, run-down vocal melodies. It’s shoegaze repurposed for an age of ennui, and has certainly whet my appetite for the album.

You can get ‘Bed Head’ on a name-your-price basis from the Lazy Legs Bandcamp page.

Windbury Street – Skinny Jeans and Sweaters

‘Skinny Jeans and Sweaters’ is the new single from “one man indie rock project” Windbury Street, based in Virginia. Part slacker rock mumble, part heart-on-sleeve emo, the song fronts up to a sense of creeping disaffection and growing older, all run through an appealing college-radio filter.

If you like what your hear, head over to the Windbury Street Bandcamp page and check out their debut album which was released on a name-your-price basis last month.

Ian Terry – Cut

Short, sharp and sad, Ian Terry’s new single ‘Cut’ is a take on so-called ‘call-out culture’, a digital age plea that’s as heartfelt and poignant as any traditional folk track. The Delaware songwriter uses simple acoustic guitar to back his wistful vocals, falling somewhere between the bedroom pop artists and the indie folk revival, and creating a succinct and satisfying number.

You can grab the track and a handful of other releases via the Ian Terry Bandcamp page.

all-caps LADD – Computer Kids

Taken from their upcoming The Whole EP, ‘Computer Kids’ finds New York’s all-caps LADD practising a dark, foreboding energy that conjures both post-punk and indie rock. With the downbeat vocals threading between frantic guitars and drums, and eventually rising is squally yelps, the whole thing has a claustrophobic, overwhelmed feel, as though some great force is passing all around us. And this makes sense, considering the themes of the song. As the band explain: “‘Computer Kids’ grapples with future shock, the feeling of being left behind by accelerating technological change, from the point of view of kids raised in the dial-up era of the internet.”

Find all-caps LADD on Bandcamp and Facebook.

Philippa Zawe – Time

Based in Birmingham, Philippa Zawe combines folk and soul to create organic music built around her versatile voice. This September sees the release of her debut EP, Road of Hope, and the first single, ‘Time’, acts as a great introduction. A considered, slow-paced track, the single utilises the entire vocal range, switching from casual conversational comments to strikingly effecting croons to produce something that ebbs and flows with human warmth.

Road of Hope is set for release on the 8th September and you get get it from the Philippa Zawe Bandcamp page.

Miseryslims – Onto Elm Street

Taken from the recently released second EP from Manitoba band Miseryslims, ‘Onto Elm Street’ is a jangly slice of indie rock, the drums and vocals driving though the fuzz with resolute energy. With surfy vibes lapping at the edges too, the song emerges as the perfect candidates to soundtrack your final days of summer, upbeat and bright with just a little melancholy peeking through.

The appropriately named EP Two is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Big Baby – Not That

Virginia three piece Big Baby, consisting of Ali Mislowsky, Chris Smith and Brian Dove, make an upbeat lo-fi jangle pop to rival the main players in the field. This July saw them release Sour Patch, a four-song record on EggHunt Records.  With Mislowsky’s emotional vocals surfing the bright summertime instrumentation, ‘Not That’ encapsulates the EP. However the bouncy nature of the song hides a sadness rooted deep within the creative process. “Sour Patch is about the worst year I had after graduating college. I couldn’t catch a break and it felt like everything was crumbling from every direction.” How better to shake loose of the blues that with some cathartic indie pop?

Sour Patch is out now via EggHunt Records, and you can get in from Bandcamp.

Happy Abandon – Severed Seams

Happy Abandon are putting out a new album, Facepaint, this month via Schoolkids Records, and single ‘Severed Seams’ sets the tone. Orchestral indie pop, the track is an emotive slow-burner dealing with loneliness and loss, the spacious atmosphere of the track punctuated with small details, moments of beauty forming is the cracks and gaps.

Facepaint is to be released on the 25th August via Schoolkids Records.

Steakhouse – National

The music of San Francisco outfit Steakhouse is a curious thing to pigeonhole, drawing on electronic, art rock and post-punk to conjure images of a wide, strange America. Following up their 2014 self-titled full-length, the band have unveiled a new track, ‘National’, complete with appropriately atmospheric video. Progressing with hypnotic rhythm, the track has a dreamily detached feel that brings to mind unspoken violence, and slightly removed from its own descriptions by shock or awe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wHg6Bauzw

Keep an eye on the Steakhouse Bandcamp and Facebook pages for more news.

Francis – Swing

Formed in 2006, Sweden band Francis have experienced a number of changes in their lifetime, both stylistically and in terms of line-up. However, retaining the same personnel as on 2016’s Marathon, the outfit are back with a new single, ‘Swing’, a dreamy retro summer song that meanders with a wistful edge, focused on the passing of time. As lead Petra Mases says: “This is what ‘Swing’ is about, the wave that comes with all the memories. There is no valuation, nothing to change, just memories from what once was. Suddenly ten, twenty, thirty years has passed. What happened there?”

‘Swing’ is out now on Strangers Candy and you can get it from Bandcamp.

pastel – Silhouette

pastel is the recording project of Gabriel Brenner, a visual artist and musician based in Los Angeles. His new EP, absent, just dust, is coming out on the 25th of August, and the lead single ‘Silhouette’ has left us intrigued. Brenner, who has maternal Pima and paternal Cherokee heritage, wrote the EP as an attempt to confront the lasting violence and trauma of colonialism and its impact on contemporary Native identities. While we hope to get a fuller review up soon, for now you should listen to ‘Silhouette’ echo and flicker as though distorted by time.

Pre-order absent, just dust now from the pastel Bandcamp page.

Check out the previous editions of Bright Sparks to find a whole host of great music, and if you prefer something a little more in-depth then head to our Reviews section.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.