“Highlights how grand need not equate to ostentatious.” So we wrote of ‘Cartwheels For Coins‘, a recent single from Way Through by Cici Arthur, the new collaboration between Toronto artists Joseph Shabason, Chris A. Cummings and Thom Gill. “Because for all of the richness of the [project’s] sound, there’s a grounded quality to it too. A kind of attention to detail which allows each track to become its own little slice of life.” With the album out now via Western Vinyl, Cici Arthur are back with the opener and title track as a final single. The perfect encapsulation of the record’s ability to exist as something both cinematic Technicolor and drably human. “What good are dead ends when I’m looking for a way through?” as Cummings sings. ““When the miracle you’d hoped for never comes it’s hard to take, but it’s your fault for hoping.”

Way Through is out now via Western Vinyl and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Dusty Lucite – Old Feelings (feat. D. Crane)

Led by H.L Stratton-Kuhta, Portland, Oregon-based indie outfit Dusty Lucite reach across a whole myriad of genres to bring to life a sound as colourful and idiosyncratic as it is fun. Latest album Normal Harder serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, pitching the listener into a singular world carved from psych-inflected pop and folk. The album is something of a grab bag, mixing raucous garage rock numbers with sedate, dreamy croons, and thus no one single can quite capture the experience, but standout ‘Old Feelings’ is perhaps the best place to dive in. It’s a song which embodies both the playful spirit and emotional depth of the Dusty Lucite sound, enlisting D. Crane (of BOAT, Unlikely Friends) to add to the swirl of melancholic contemplation.

Normal Harder is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dwi Riana x Julie Meunier – Elsewhere

Back in 2023, songwriters Dwi Riana and Julie Meunier teamed up for single ‘World War X‘. “An exchange between lovers which begins as a seemingly innocuous conversation but ratchets up with every sentence,” as we wrote, “soon precipitating into an argument which draws the relationship’s tensions out into the open.” Now the pair have reunited for brand new track ‘Elsewhere’. What they describe as “a love song for winter,” the single celebrates those cold days that send you into cosy refuge, as well as the self-reflective peace which descends along with the snow. “When it snows here in Toronto, I can’t help but think of where I come from,” Dwi Riana explains. “As each snowflake chaotically float along in the air, I think about all the little choices I’ve made in life to end up here.”

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

Eli Carvajal – Fear of Love

Across a number of albums, London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal has made a name with a markedly unguarded, earnest style, combining folk and pop sensibilities into something at once playful, curious and heartfelt. Following on from 2024 release Eat Shiitake Now, Carvajal is kicking off 2025 with a new single ‘Fear of Love’. It’s a song of two halves which emerged from a period of transition which in turn suggests his next direction. “The first [half] came in March 2022, isolated at home in Watford, aching to start a new life in Japan,” as Carvajal explains. “The second came a year later in Higashikitazawa, Tokyo, surfacing for air after a year afraid. This is a bridge between my last life and this one, my last album and the next. Hydrangeas were harmed.”

Fime – Better Half of a Dollar

Having made waves with 2019 EP Sprawl, the rise of Fime was in many ways derailed just as it was beginning, the LA outfit suffering the consequences of 2020 and everything that time brought with it. A period of mourning and self-reflection followed, before they teamed up with Melina Duterte (Jay Som) to record full-length Sweeter Memory, an album which grappled with nostalgia as the bittersweet, counterproductive force it can so often be. With this context in mind, new single ‘Better Half of a Dollar’ feels like the dawning of a new era. One which has decided to lift itself from beneath the past and all of its unrealised dreams to contend with the present on its own terms. A song as searing and intense as anything Fime have written to date, with lead Beto Brakmo declining the temptation to retreat into nostalgia, instead staring the precarious, volatile present dead in the eye and refusing to blink.

Watch the video directed by Hailey Ruffner below:

‘Better Half of a Dollar’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Leoblu – livingroomfloor

“An indie pop song filtered through a digital prism, it combines synths, beats and Carlsson’s signature vocals to create something at once emotional and oddly mesmerising.” So we wrote of ‘PEACHES’ by Åland-born, Berlin-based producer Leoblu last year, the song continuing the artist’s willingness to test genre expectations to reach new ground. Latest single ‘livingroomfloor’ is no different, evoking the intimate space of its title to explore the immediate experience of love, Leoblu creating a beguiling pop soundscape which is at once grounded and ethereal, alluring and strange. “Love is full of contradictions,” as Leoblu puts it. “It can be overwhelming yet fragile, euphoric yet filled with doubt. ‘livingroomfloor’ is about letting yourself feel it all, and trying to stay present in these feelings.”

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

Mumble Tide – Pea Soup

“Grounds both the style and theme of the album, offering a sound undeniably sad yet reaching towards something more uplifting.” That’s how we described ‘Mawpao’ from Mumble Tide‘s forthcoming full-length Might As Well Play Another One on Breakfast Records. The song typified a release written as duo Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers moved through a break-up to genuine friendship. Latest single ‘Pea Soup’ embraces this space in all of its contradictions, juxtaposing bright power pop tones with morose bedroom pop reflection to emerge with a picture of a moment with all the dark, light and undecided future left intact. “‘Pea Soup’ is one big lumpy splurge, Leonard explains, “scribbled down on a hot day hiding away in my bedroom. It’s a bit of throwback to OG Mumble Tide with a chorus too big to slurp in one go.”

Watch the video by Mumble Tide, with colour and title card by Steph Dutton, below:

Might As Well Play Another One will be released via Breakfast Records on the 1st May and you can pre-order it now from the Mumble Tide Bandcamp page.

naya mö – reverb boy

We’ve featured a number of singles from naya mö‘s forthcoming debut EP Dealing With Ghosts in recent months, with ‘wanderlust‘ “draw[ing] on the grunge and alt-pop of the nineties and the soaring indie rock of the mid 00s [to create] something that sparkles with possibility despite being coated in gritty fuzz and shadowy reverb” and ‘outsider‘ “tap[ping] into a gauzy shoegaze style to create an enveloping sense of loneliness, though [one] charged with enough energy to face this darkness with a steely defiance.” Latest track ‘reverb boy’ continues the dreamy aesthetic to offer a picture of the titular character—a figure adrift from everything yet able to make his voice heard around the world. “The EP is about the ghosts that haunt my mind and body—good and bad, dark and light, love and fear,” Mö explains. “Shadows of memories, ideas, regret, and people linger in my head. I wrote songs about them and drenched them in distortion, reverb, and fuzz.”

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

Palmyra – Arizona

Emerging from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Palmyra is a folk rock outfit consisting of trio Teddy Chipouras, Mānoa Bell and Sasha Landon. Next month sees the release of new full-length album Restless on Hey Boy Records, and the band have shared new single ‘Arizona’. Described as “a little dose of summer in the dead of winter,” the song evokes the affirming joy of a road trip with a fresh, vivid Americana style, where everyday worries seem to evaporate within the languid rhythms of easy forward motion. “I was in a haze in Arizona come back won’t it come back,” as the opening lines detail:

Hours felt like days and I was happy for the first time in a while
I was at a payphone in Sedona calling someone falling
Up over my head and back to Boston leave me in the desert please

Leave me open
Arizona

Restless is out on the 28th March via Hey Boy Records and you can pre-order it now.

Triathalon – RIP

It is not every day you come across an album built around the maxim ‘play this at my funeral,’ but Triathalon’s forthcoming full-length Funeral Music is exactly that. The New York trio (Adam Intrator, Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne) thought long and hard about what might soundtrack their respective requiems when writing their fifth record, and the result is perhaps their darkest and most unguarded collection of songs to date. Ahead of its release in May on Lex Records, Triathlon have shared single ‘RIP’ to give an indication of the mood. A song so shadowy and dramatic is sounds almost sublime. “The aim for ‘RIP’ was to kick start feelings on what it felt like to listen to a late 90s rock song for the first time as a kid in your parents car in the backseat and asking to hear it louder,” as Intrator explains. “‘RIP’ has a double meaning; it’s about both dying and being reborn.”

Wishy – Fly

Back in January we featured ‘Planet Popstar’, a single by Wishy from the Triple Seven sessions which saw Kevin Krauter’s vocals “[land] somewhere between impassioned and laconic, while supporting harmonies from Nina Pitchkites work to leaven the heavy thicket of guitar to create something almost ethereal,” as we wrote. “And this otherworldly tone is a fitting match for the track’s themes, something of a message beamed into space into the hope it might be received, no matter how far away from earth the recipient might be.” The Indianapolis outfit have now announced the Planet Popstar EP, coming this spring on Winspear, and latest single ‘Fly’ is everything fans of the band have come to love. This time Pitchkites takes lead vocals for a song that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.

Someday, babe, I don’t wanna feel the way
I don’t need to know the taste
Of not being with you

Watch the video below, filmed by Wishy themselves with editing, color grading and title card by Bobby Sheppard:

Planet Popstar is out on the 25th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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Husbands – Mexico

Husbands are a duo separated by geography, Danny Davis living in Seattle and Wil Norton in Oklahoma City. If the circumstances go some way to explaining their forthcoming album’s lengthy gestation (After the Gold Rush Party had been planned for 2016) then they are not apparent on the songs themselves. There’s something of the late 00s buzz band aesthetic at work, sun-bleached rock unafraid to dip its toe into the dreamy, tropical ends of the genre. However, as single ‘Mexico’ shows, the tracks come complete with undercurrents of something more morose—like shadows and sudden breezes, or the sunset sorrow of summer evenings.

“I spent last summer housesitting with my wife in Costa Rica,” Davis explains. “I spent the summer surfing, writing music and playing poker with the locals. It was the best time of our lives, but it also wrecked us.” Because the trip was something of an eye-opener, not so much in terms of what was in Costa Rica, but rather what was waiting back home. “We came back to Seattle, disillusioned about our days spent looking at code, working in cubes working 9-5s with no end in sight.” ‘Mexico’ is the response, a single based around the type of pipe dream fantasy that we know will never happen, yet lean on nonetheless.

Kelly Hoppenjans – If I Had You

Channeling the spirit of riot grrrl while maintaining a folk sensibility, Nashville’s Kelly Hoppenjans makes music of empowerment, facing up to expectations and staring them down. Her debut full-length, OK, I Feel Better Now, is an album about breaking moulds and realising your true self, encouraging people to fill their own space in the world without apology or embarrassment.

Single ‘If I Had You (Love Letter From A Padded Cell)’ is a case in point. Exaggerating and subverting the bunny boiler ex trope, the song confronts the glorification of obsession and fixation in relationships, asking why creepy and/or violent situations are held up as romantic or honorable. “I’d do anything to keep you, if I had you,” Hoppenjans sings amid the buoyant sound, the unhinged heart of the track dressed in brightness. “The album, as a whole, deals with the experience of being a woman in the world and accessing our power as women,” she explains. “I feel there is so much power in taking control of the narrative around the so-called ‘crazy ex-girlfriend,’ and saying, ‘You think that’s crazy? Oh no, this is crazy’.”

OK, I Feel Better Now is out on the 18th October.

Leah Dunn – Oakland

Based in the Bay Area in California, Leah Dunn is a songwriter with diverse influences, from the folk majesty of Joni Mitchell to the atmosphere and noise of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Released earlier this summer, her first EP Oakland displays how perfect such a marriage is, combining tenderness with a brooding atmosphere to create authentic and emotional songs driven by Dunn’s insistent vocals.

The title track is a perfect introduction for new listeners. Rising to life from a wistful wash of field recordings and reflective guitar, Dunn’s delivery emerges with the gentle croon of a lullaby. The lyrics themselves are concerned with something lost, an unease that works in juxtaposition to the sound, though soon a defiant refrain is found, repeating itself like mantra and growing in impact with every cycle.

I gave my soul to a lonesome mystery

Gutter Sparrow – Sheridan

Gutter Sparrow is the recording project of John Mosloskie. After previously writing and singing for Holler Wild Rose, Mosloskie set out solo, releasing his debut, The Fear of Forgotteness in 2017. The record was a lesson in patient, melancholic folk music, songs carved out of the intricacies of history and relationships and shaped into sad and striking sounds.

With the follow-up album, The Waker Dreams, set for release this autumn, Gutter Sparrow has unveiled a brand new single that continues such a style. The intimacy and warmth of ‘Sheridan’ is indicative of Moslokie’s sound, warm and fond and possessing the Kozelekian knack for sounding conversational and poetic in the same breath.

The Waker Dreams is out on the 25th October on Meadowlands Records and you can find more on the Gutter Sparrow website.

Soot Sprite – Bleed

Exeter trio Soot Sprite operate at the intersection of shoegaze and bedroom pop, crafting songs polished with an alternative sheen that lends a real intensity to the emotion. Set for release next month via Specialist Subject Records, their latest EP, Sharp Tongue, develops this aesthetic into something moody and dark but human too, balancing a simmering anger against vulnerability, a willingness to open up.

Lead single ‘Bleed’ is our first taste of the release, a track which finds an insistent rhythm yet is willing to change when needs be, breaking down into a heavy reverberation at the midpoint. Thematically, the song charts the insidious harm of friendship turned sour. ‘Bleed’ is about “toxic friendships and recognising them in your life and in others,” explains lead Elise Cook. “It’s all the niggling signs of someone acting like your friend and confidant whilst casually putting you down and chipping away at your self esteem, and the damage that leaves.”

Fime – Solo/Together

Based in Los Angeles, Beto Brakmo, Chase Cook and Maxine Garcia combine to form Fime, an alt rock band indebted to the genre’s 90s heyday. Recorded and produced by Melina Duterte (AKA Jay Som), Fime’s latest EP is set for release on the 11th October and you can hear the first single now.

‘Solo/Together’ utilises a quiet/loud dynamic to huge effect, crafting a sound that is smoky and sultry one minute then soaring the next. “How do you see without (Absolutely knowing)?” they demand in the cathartic refrain. “How do you feel without (Absolutely knowing)?” The song comes complete with an excellent video directed by Hailey Ruffner, so be sure to check that out below.

Sprawl is set for release on the 11th October and you can find Fime on Bandcamp.

Kate Teague – Sweetheart

“I’m just trying to be as real as possible,” says Oxford, Mississippi songwriter Kate Teague. “My songs are like journal entries. And I rarely filter myself.” Her self-titled debut EP is a product of such an artistic style, a rich tapestry of emotions that nevertheless maintains a near conversational tone. The balance is an interesting one, allowing Teague to delve into a kind of natural poetry, the incidental poetry of daydreams where the various strands of any given moment stitch into a beautiful whole.

The final single from the EP, ‘Sweatheart’ shows all this and more, playing subtlety and directness off against one another, both in terms of the sound and lyrical style. Because, for all of the delicate melodies and rich arrangements, there is a steely centre to the song that refuses to concede an inch to expectations. “Don’t call me sweetheart, I can frown if I want to,” Teague declares, breaking the romantic tropes of the folk genre to reclaim respect and autonomy. “Is the smile on my face that makes you feel you can put me to shame?”

Kate Teague is out on the 20th September and you can pre-order it now.

Sea Caves – Dart

Led by singer Sydney Rohrs and writer Shiloh Halsey, Sea Caves are a band interested in the rhythms of life—how circumstances, feelings and emotions can often be found to exist in recognisable patterns. These shapes might be hidden in the ground-level experience of every day living, but a slight change of vantage or remove from the usual conditions reveals them all the same. Sea Caves operate on such a level, creating music to be experienced rather than analysed, though closer looks will find a considered engagement with (or subversion of) forms and patterns.

As new single ‘Dart’ attests, the ability to recognise such patterns can be a source of optimism, allowing one to move beyond and start afresh. “You get into these rhythms,” Halsey explains, “but when those rhythms start to dissolve, you look to find them and they’re just not there. So you learn to recognize and explore new ones.” Change, however painful and uncertain, can be a force for good.

Beautiful Dudes – Shape I’m In

Led by Tom Bevitori, Nevada City’s Beautiful Dudes make what they describe as “rocking real dude music.” Set for release with the ever-reliable Mama Bird Recording Co., their self-titled debut out this autumn promises to be a return to classic punk rock, foregoing any experimentation or frivolity in favour of a high-energy commitment to the cause.

The album’s first single, ‘Shape I’m In’ explores the reality that lurks behind even our best days. A ‘pink cloud’ is the transient feeling of contentment and joy that come with early sobriety, and the song is positioned in the aftermath of such an experience, where the positivity has fallen away. “It felt so empowering to believe in the concept of freedom,” Bevitori explains, “and to be such a positive force with a mindset for change. But when the cloud went away, I was left with the weight of life, wavering health, and the emotional burdens of society. In the end, all the realness of life is still there, and when the cloud opens up, we are left living with life on life’s terms.”

Radio is to be released via Mama Bird Recording Co on the 28th October and you can pre-order it now.

That’s all for Vol. 28 of Bright Sparks, but be sure to stick around the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 28 appeared first on Various Small Flames.