The project of Agriculture’s Leah B Levinson, Cali Bellow makes music concerned with the tension and interplay between the interior and exterior, real and fictional. Thematically, new album Ciao Bella owes as much to Dark Souls and The Muppets as it does Ursula Le Guinn and Joanna Russ, not to mention the environment of Altadena, California. A deep consideration of ideas of artifice and abstraction which always challenges limitations, be they of genre, gender or spirituality. Taking inspiration from songs like ‘Full Of Happiness’ by H.O.T. and ‘I, Me, Mine’ by Godflesh, as well as the hyperactive soundtracks of games like Sonic, new single ‘Goldin Scepter’ is a microcosm of the wider album. A myriad of influences deconstructed and rearranged in order to build a world of its own. “I wanted to pull on the zany character that a lot of ska, funk and pop music teases and push it to a more monstrous effect,” as Levinson explains.

country girl – your favorite girl

Blending an upbringing in classical music with a present love of pop, country girl creates music to bring to life those small personal experiences which make life worth living. Having recently signed with the FADER Label, the project is now back with a new single ‘your favorite girl’, the ideal introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the project. “A song about the movie scenes we film, direct, and act in our heads while in the frenzy of a crush,” as the artist explains. That pressing desire to be a main character in story, however small that story might be. Even if it just means being someone else’s favorite girl.

I wanna look you in the eye
Oh man it gets me every time
I wanna shine inside your world
I wanna be your favorite girl

‘your favorite girl’ is out now via FADER label and available from the usual places.

Death And The Maiden – Waratah

Based in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand trio Death And The Maiden take not only their name from an engraving by Edvard Munch, but their entire atmosphere. A meeting of strength and vulnerability, shadow and light. Moreover, a willingness to embrace ambiguity within a sound which draws upon everything from electronic, folk and psych to house and dance. Released via Fishrider Records (southern hemisphere) and Occultation Recordings (northern hemisphere), new album Uneven Ground is perhaps their most experimental to date, though conversely sees them embrace pop too. Single ‘Waratah’ displays such contradictions in all their alluring layers, allowing freedom and restraint to sit side by side.

dog eyes – drive

“A reach towards an almost cinematic brand of pop that leaves none of the emotion behind,” we wrote of ‘moment’ by dog eyes, “where friendship is at once the most intimate and soaring experiences one might be lucky enough to hold in their life.” The song typified the Oakland band’s new album holy friend, which explores how relationships and connection not only shape us but morph over time. With the record now out via Grand Jury Music, dog eyes have released a new single, ‘drive’. An example of the more folk-adjacent side of the album, the song tells the story of a road trip into the mountains with all the quiet seclusion of the leafy backroads, gentle guitar and ramshackle percussion sparkling sleepily behind sincere vocals. The result feels like a small and sweet moment grasped in its moment of transience and fixed to tape.

I would not say words if I did not mean them
Tired of monotony
Just drive this Sequoia please
To some distance where I cannot see
Where I’ll forget how to tell where I am

Dogwood Tales – driver’s side fantasy

Based in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Dogwood Tales originated in 2016 with Ben Ryan and Kyle Grim and soon expanded to become a full band with the addition of Danny Gibney (bass), Stephen Kuester (pedal steel) and Jake Golibart (drums). Working within a country-inflected rock style, the project has released a number of albums and EPs, most recently Rodeo via WarHen Records, and is putting out a brand new tape later this summer. Latest single ‘driver’s side fantasy’ introduces the sound, occupying that post-Drive-By Trucker’s sphere alongside the likes of MJ Lenderman. Watch the video filmed by Travis Legg below:

‘driver’s side fantasy’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Dwi Riana x Orkes Garasi – Ku Bisa

Indonesian-Canadian artist Dwi Riana has made a name for working across genres, finding inspiration in everything from folk, hip hop and traditional music to bossa nova and jazz, and new single ‘Ku Bisa’ is the project of yet another direction. “I had the amazing opportunity of composing for an Indonesian short film titled A Day Apart on the Seventeenth, directed by Noel Pendawa,” they explain, a process which saw them team up with Toronto-based Indonesian Keroncong band, Orkes Garasi. Channelling the themes of Pendawa’s film, the song explores ideas of homesickness by melding Keroncong and folk styles, and the result sees the narrator turning to dreams as their only mode of escape.

‘Ku Bisa’ is out now via streaming services.

Mother Sun – Giant Bog

“I think with these songs we wanted to create a record that sonically speaks to the magic that is constantly unfolding all around in the natural world.” That’s how lead Jared Doherty describes Mother Sun’s latest album, Meadow 6, which is coming soon via Earth Libraries. Fittingly, many of the songs originated when playing guitar outside in the garden, with the Kamloops, BC outfit not only exploring the diversity of nature but humanity’s relationship with it. Something to escape into, to explore and study, cultivate and exploit. Crafted from a vivid psych-rock sound that reaches towards jazz, krautrock and retro folk, the album comes to form an environment of its own, as captured by new single and closer, ‘Giant Bog’. A sprawling track which serves as a kind of retro-futurist hothouse within which all manner of things can sprout and grow wild.

Stephen Becker – I Held An Echo

This October, Stephen Becker is releasing his new full-length Middle Child Syndrome via Record Euphoria. The album sees the LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter work in the indie-psych tradition of the late noughties/early 2010s, adding jazz and baroque pop sensibilities to a more traditional singer-songwriter style. An effort, at least in part, to rise above the mundane present, as though to be trapped within conventions is to be restricted by the same inability to communicate effectively that haunts our everyday lives. Single ‘I Held An Echo’ hints at the widescreen scope of the resulting sound, though the glitch and shimmer of the dreamlike arrangement hints at the precarity of any attempt to escape our usual constraints.

Middle Child Syndrome is out on the 25th October via Record Euphoria and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Yammerer – ESZ – Erth Station Zebra

How do you convince people to engage with album-length work in this age of streaming and algorithmic playlists? Liverpool’s Yammerer have one potential solution. Erth Station Zebra might be packaged as an album on Bandcamp and the like, but the release is intended as a single composition. Or as the band put it, “a transcendent odyssey” which runs through six movements across its forty-four minutes. Previous releases like Reality Escape Resort might have positioned them in the contemporary post-punk revival, but there was always something different about the outfit. An extra level of ambition and invention. Erth Station Zebra sees them embrace this side of their work wholeheartedly, leaning into transportive psych to not only revitalise the appetite for in-depth pieces of work, but position themselves as one of the UK’s most interesting projects to keep an eye on moving into the future.

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The work of Royal Leamington Spa’s Bastien Kalb has always reached wide in search of inspiration, be it toward Zinedine Zidane for 2015’s Dinking In The Shadows of Zizou or Giallo and 70s crime flicks for 2020’s The Killing of Eugene Peeps. Latest record Organ Recital, out next month on Gearbox Records, is no less ambitious. Something of a sequel to Eugene Peeps, the album is conceived as a fantasy world beyond our own, a dimension distinct from reality if not entirely insulated from it, various elements leaking through just as real sounds and sensations might enter a dream. Single ‘In The Woods’ displays just how immersive such a style can be, VHS textures and cinematic strings combining into a collision of real and unreal.

Cynthia Hamar – Shaken

Cynthia Hamar is a Métis singer-songwriter from Alberta who has just released brand new single ‘Shaken’ on Neon Moon Records. With its languid rhythms and evocative delivery, the track finds a balance between soulful confidence and poignant sadness, led by the kind of bitter assurance gained only from learning the hard way. “‘Shaken’ is an internal conversation about trauma,” Hamar explains, “recognizing the deep groaning and the need to let go of the pain to embrace a brighter future.” Hamar wrote the song over a period of years, addressed to herself amid changing family dynamics and relationship issues. “It’s written from a point of exhaustion,” she continues, “surrendering to a solution and I hope it inspires the listener to process their own pain and see the comfort in choosing to forgive and move on.”

Rise up and take the place you been
Designed for from the start
Leave the haunted place behind my friend,
Boldly make your mark
But you gotta let it go
love knows when to let it go
I know

Dolfiin Alexander – Free Wheeler

Dolfiin Alexander is set to release new album Free Wheeler via Anxiety Blanket Records on the 1st July, with the title track offering a glimpse of what you can expect. The release was for the most part written and recorded during a summer road trip through Germany, Italy and Estonia, and the single possesses that hybrid blend of wonder and melancholy unique to travelling. Its lo-fi textures and heartfelt vocals capture a heightened awareness of both the surroundings and the self, appreciative of the small moments yet already mourning their passing.

Free Wheeler is out on the 1st July via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

Emily Fairlight x The Shifting Sands – Head Above

Ahead of collaborative album Sun Casts A Shadow on Fishrider Records and Occultation Records, Emily Fairlight and The Shifting Sands have unveiled brand new single, ‘Head Above’. The track serves as a perfect introduction to the stripped-back intimacy of the album, where stylistic excesses are stripped away in favour of direct emotion. “We never meant it to result in an album,” explains The Shifting Sands’ Mike McLeod. “We went to record a song or two and got on a roll. After making heavily layered sonic pop albums with the Sands, where I’d hide behind my songs with layers of guitars and synths and bury my vocals, I wanted to get past that. This album sounds like playing in your lounge, a complete work that captures a special moment.”

Free Lunch – Burnt O

Bournemouth duo Free Lunch are set to release mini-album Dumbwaiter this July on Devil Town Tapes, and single ‘Burnt O’ gives an indication what to expect from the release. Drawing from their parents’ record collection (Neil Young and Supertramp are cited) and possessing a rich country twang, the song builds with a loveably leftfield sensibility, harking back to the lo-fi beginnings of the Free Lunch project and culminating with best duelling banjos this side of the Chattooga River. Just one slice of a release described as “an audio scrapbook of characters—mostly loners and oddballs, but each with a heart of gold.”

Hunter Ellis – For the Beast (feat. Lady Dan)

Later this summer, Earth Libraries are releasing Princess Daddy, the new album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Hunter Ellis. Recorded between Prairie Sun and Hunter’s own Koala Pocket Studios and featuring an array of friends and guests, the LP draws on Ellis’s Californian roots to develop a psych- and surf-inflected sound. Single ‘For the Best’ shows how such a sound can produce a nuanced and immersive atmosphere, with labelmate Lady Dan lending vocals to a soundscape simultaneously stark and colourful.

Princess Daddy is out on the 26th August via Earth Libraries and you can pre-order it now from the Hunter Ellis website.

Matthew Bailey – Full – Time Hobby

Matthew Bailey views forthcoming album Peachfruit as a collection of short stories. The Toronto-based songwriter, guitarist, producer and recording engineer uses each track to interrogate the influence memories can have on our sense of identity and history. Written while on tour playing guitar for Andy Shauf, single ‘Full – Time Hobby’ wrestles with Bailey’s experiences in the music industry, and how its insidious facets, be they rooted in finances or pride, can wither the purity of creation and lead the artist away from the reason the work started in the first place.

Melanie MacLaren – Orion

Back in August we wrote about Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren with the single, ‘Graveyard Shift‘, a song which “possess[ed] the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” New track ‘Orion’ lives up to this style, its slow, rich opening soon giving way to a palpable urgency. A declaration of love and intent rising on a bed of synths and pedal steel, MacLaren’s voice at once affectionate and fierce. “And I know I said that I would die before I settle down,” she sings, the sentimental tone wielding a cynical edge, “but Jesus Christ, its just nice when you’re around.”

‘Orion’ is out now and available to purchase from the Melanie Maclaren Bandcamp page.

Sigh Down One – Durocher

Sigh Down One is the recording project of Vancouver resident Sasha J. Langford, who this month released their latest album, Desire, or a Common Place. Signalling something of a pivot away from the ‘contemplative grunge’ of previous records, the album sees Langford embraces a vivid dream pop aesthetic, swapping out raw energy in favour of drifting richness. Single ‘Durocher’ channels the Lynchian brand of dream pop, its tender tones possessing a certain otherworldliness which gradually gathers a sense of weight, taking the listener by the hand to show them something new.

Slim Wrist – The Soft

Consisting of Edinburgh duo Fern Morris and Brian Pokora, Slim Wrist combine the organic and the digital to conjure an unconventional pop somewhere between Sylvan Esso and Kraków Loves Adana. With album Closer For Comforting forthcoming later this year, the pair have released new single ‘The Soft’, a perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with the band’s dreamy and dramatic style. A sound at once spacious and detailed, its glitching electronics washed with lush textures, the fragmented beat eventually making good on its promise to kick into rhythm as Morris’s vocals soar above.

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Esther Rose – Don’t Blame It on the Moon

Based in New Orleans, Esther Rose is a singer-songwriter whose work continues the long and storied tradition of American folk. Rose’s latest single ‘Don’t Blame It on the Moon’, her first new music since 2017’s debut album This Time Last Night, is a wonderfully simple but bitingly honest folk song, a dialogue between two lovers that has all the barely restrained heartbreak of the country greats.

“I hope you’re worth all this heartache”
She said / outside the bar at 2 A.M.
She said, “All this pain is gonna break us down, I can’t take it”
She said, “Don’t make me cry, I’ve got my makeup on
and I haven’t had a drink in so long

Blood Cultures – Flowers For All Occasions

Blood Cultures is a cryptic “individual (or group of individuals)” from New Jersey that make a compelling brand of psych-pop while masking their identities with balaclavas. The inspiration came from a mass hijacking of local television broadcasts in 1990s NJ, the usual programming replaced by mysterious sounds and images by an anonymous infiltrator. Blood Cultures position themselves as the second coming of this unexplained phenomenon, a faceless, nameless entity looking to worm its way into your homes and minds, perhaps hoping to leave an impression on a new generation so that esoteric message might live on.

You can find Blood Cultures on Bandcamp and Youtube.

The Painters – Pieces of Life

Montreal indie pop band The Painters, led by Alex Bourque, have a new album on the way on Egg Paper Factory. This is good news in itself, but what’s even better is that the band have released an outtake from the record to raise anticipation a little. ‘Pieces of Life’ sees the band, led by Alex Bourque, continue with their bright and nostalgic indie pop aesthetic that we last heard on 2016’s Specks of Dust. There are shades of Velvet Underground and Nap Eyes in the laid-back vibes and pseudo-philosophical musings, but with more of a lo-fi folk angle, right down to the withering birdsong at the end.

Why do I need everybody to like me?
If I’d rather be alone

Craig Finn – Something To Hope For

Following on from 2017’s We All Want the Same Things, Craig Finn is set to release his third solo album this spring. I Need a New War continues Finn’s brilliant and humane songwriting while adding further dimensions and textures through a larger instrumental palette, leading to what might be his richest, most atmospheric release to date. This is displayed in latest single ‘Something To Hope For’, the light, almost celebratory tone balanced against Finn’s distinctive sing-speak delivery.

The only kind of dreams you ever seem to have
are bad dreams

I Need A New War is out via Partisan Records on the 26th April and you can pre-order it now.

Pieket – Eternal Recurrence

Pieket are a band from Dhaka in Bangladesh. Sinjan Saadat, Syed Wadud, Hasib Mahmud and Rushnaf Wadud combine to create lo-fi indie pop in the fashion of Mac DeMarco. Their latest EP, Powerpoint Depresentation, is out now, and opening track ‘Eternal Recurrence’ acts as a good introduction. The song begins with a ruminative intro, eventually giving way to languid percussion and slacker-inspired vocals, bright guitar lifting everything out of bummed-out bedroom pop territory.

Emily Fairlight – Body Below

Emily Fairlight is a folk singer who lives in Dunedin, New Zealand. Fairlight makes self-described “doom folk,” which has earned comparisons with PJ Harvey (for the vocals), Will Oldham (for the writing) and Calexico (for the conjured atmosphere). Her new album, Mother of Gloom, was recorded in Austin, Texas, adding a Southern Gothic edge to the collection of rich and emotive folk songs. The album’s first track, ‘Body Below’ delves straight into weighty emotion, the label describing Fairlight’s voice as “stark and haunting […] teak-hard yet soft as crushed velvet” in some indication of the juxtaposition of power and vulnerability on display. If this is anything to go by, Emily Fairlight is about to follow the likes of Nadia Reid and Aldous Harding as the next breakout New Zealand folk artist.

Barrie – Saturated

Brooklyn’s Barrie might revolve around the work of lead Barrie Lindsay, though it’s anything but a solo project. Drawing on the talents of Dominic Apa, Spurge Carter, Sabine Holler and Noah Prebish, Barrie has recorded Happy To Be Here, an album that celebrates collaboration and inclusivity to become something larger than the sum of its parts. New single ‘Saturated’ is as good a place as any to dive into the band’s silky pop sound, with the track standing out as pure even to the band themselves. “It came out fully formed, sounding mostly like how it sounds now,” explained Lindsay. “It’s minimal and exposed, kind of vulnerable but in a confident way. I want people to relate to that state of pure, open saturation. I want this song to feel like a crush.”

Happy To Be Here will be released on the 3rd May via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

Shane Leonard – Empire Builder

Shane Leonard is a name that pops up periodically here at Various Small Flames, with his work as Kalispell and appearances on records from the likes of Field Report and Jeremy Squires, (not to mention helping to record and produce music with Simon Balto and Anna Tivel). However, Leonard also records solo under his own name, and 2019 will see the release of a brand new album, Strange Forms.

Giving a taste of what’s to come, lead single ‘Empire Builder’ is a bright amalgamation of folk and rock, the calm energy of the song complementing Leonard’s quiet philosophising. The lyrics are balanced between confusion and peace, the unanswered and unanswerable questions of life framed not as sources of crippling doubt but mysteries to acknowledge and appreciate from outside.

Gold Light + Snakemusk – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Meeting in Asheville in 2017, Joe Chang (aka Gold Light) and Beau Campolong (Snakemusk) found they shared an appreciation of the tragic heartbreak of classic country records and started making music together. Full-length album Shadows In The Shallows is the result of the collaboration, channelling the big players in folk and country to create a traditional Americana fit for the twenty-first century. Lead single ‘The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter’ is the perfect example, a narrative-driven, lovelorn track with an almost otherworldly edge, 70s folk coloured by the strangeness of Carson McCullers’ South Gothic style.

Cus the heart is a lonely hunter it seems
But your heart will miss it’s mark if it comes after me
Like a dog gone and barked up the wrong tree
Cus the heart’s gonna go wherever it please

The Chats – Pub Feed

The premiere practitioners of in-your-face, off-the-wall punk, The Chats burst onto our radar in 2017 with the raucous tongue-in-cheek EP, Get This In Ya. After a year of growing success, the Aussie trio are back with a brand new single, ‘Pub Feed’, and it’s a pleasure to report that the growing recognition has done nothing to dampen their forthright, absurd style. As the title suggests, the song finds the band hungry in a pub chain and slavering over the options. Whether it’s beef and gravy, chips and tomato sauce, chicken schnitty or parmigiana, it doesn’t really matter. Only one thing is important:

All I want, and all I need
All I crave is a good pub feed.

The track comes complete with a video directed by Matt Weston and shot by Ben Blenner, with
camera assistance from Wilson Bambrick.

The Pub Feed “7 is out now and you can get it from The Chats webpage.

JW Ridley – Homesick (Out The Blue)

JW Ridley has been steadily building a collection of songs demonstrating his incisive, emotionally-resonant sound, and latest single ‘Homesick (Out The Blue)’ is no exception. Blending the woozy melancholy of Radiohead with an insistent energy more akin to post-punk, the song is something of a juxtaposition, the momentum of the sound masking something altogether more drifting in the sentiment of lyrics. Indeed, such a contrast could be said to be a key theme of the track. “It’s about the things we hold on to,” Ridley explains, “or the things that never really leave us.”

‘Homesick’ is out now via Handsome Dad Records.

Ruthie – Spirit Now Moves

Ruthie is the new recording project of Naomi Baguley, who you might know as the former front of cult punk outfit, Bruising. Taking a new direction, Ruthie now peddles an altogether more luscious sound, taking equals parts folk and indie rock and crafting a 70s-inspired middle ground. Inspired by David Szalay’s novel All That Man Is, new single ‘Spirit Moves Now’ not only highlights Ruthie honeyed style but also the considered approached to songwriting that underpins it, Baguley creating an admirable thematic and emotional depth.

Check out a video from Kamil Dymek below:

You can find all relevant links on the Ruthie website, and listen to more on Spotify and Soundcloud.

The Curfews – Rose

The Curfews are a fuzz pop band who have recently relocated from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Santa Cruz, California. Their latest single ‘Rose’ shows off their style very nicely, the hazy style distorting an otherwise upbeat sound and giving the whole thing a carefree edge, a kind of loose-limbed stride forwards irrespective of whatever might be weighing you down.

Blush – Forever Is a Long Time

The recording project of Maura M. Lynch, along with Jonathan Campolo (drums, piano, vocals), Nicholas Campolo (guitar) and Andrew Chugg (bass, synth), New York’s Blush makes an intimate brand of bedroom pop that hinges about Lynch’s restrained vocal style and the warm instrumental arrangements. Following on from 2017’s self-titled debut album, Blush is back with a brand new single, ‘Forever is a Long Time’, taking the soft earnestness of Free Cake For Every Creature and adding something a little more pressing so as to exist halfway between bedroom pop and garage rock.

Shutups – Yellowjacket

Oakland-based duo Shutups is a band based on a connection deeper than most. After being college friends, life and geography separated Mia and Hadley, but after an accident left Hadley housebound, the bond persevered and grew. Shutups became the mechanism with which to realign life, a reason to continue despite difficulty. “It didn’t feel like a happy ending movie plot,” Hadley says of his eventual re-emergence into the world. “I came out depressed and not wanting to do anything. The band saved me.”

Four EPs later, the band have honed their angular pop punk style for a debut full-length, Every Day I’m Less Zen. Lead single ‘Yellowjacket’ serves as an introduction, it’s urgent and off-kilter style creating a frantic abandon that lifts the act above its peers, the pair’s obvious connection allowing a tight-knit yet idiosyncratic sound. Check out the video shot edited by Braith Miller below:

Head to Bandcamp for more from Shutups.

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