“This project was a lot of, just like songs about waking up to the reality we’re in, coping with that and seeing ourselves as victims of it, but then also as participants in it,” explain Georgia‘s Bayou Princess of their fittingly titled new album Dance Tunes for the End of the World upcoming via Indecent Artistry. “And navigating that as a band, rethinking what does a band mean? Or what can it mean, back to that silliness. I don’t want to be a business or a brand. Just an expression of daily living.” The style is introduced perfectly by latest single ‘He Keeps Talking’, a track which seems to barrel towards the encroaching apocalypse and embrace the entropic movement which results, sounding neither ironic nor flippant in the process, but attuned to the reality of a world in turmoil.

Big Warm Bed – June Bug

The new recording project of Leeds-based musician Jacob Andrews, Big Warm Bed has been long in the making. Having cut his teeth with years in the local scene, playing in projects with members of Adult DVD and English Teacher, as well as touring the US with Far Caspian frontman Joel Johnston, Andrews has slowly stepped out and introduced his own work. A long-awaited debut full-length is currently pencilled in for the early months of 2027, but for now we have single ‘June Bug’ to tide us over. Moving away from the post-punk snarl of his collaborators, Big Warm Bed slots into the wistful corner of indie rock, weaving a compassionate picture of friendship and the importance of being there for the ones you love. True to the theme, a full band join Andrews to bring the sound to life, with Niall Summerton (drums), Meg Lama (vocals/synth), Tom Kettleton (saxophone), Jacob Cracknell (bass/vocals), Chris Aitchison (guitar/vocals) and Connal Doo (guitar/vocals) all lending their talents. Watch a live session recorded at The Calm Farm and directed by Andy Little below:

‘June Bug’ is out now via Dance To The Radio and available from the usual places.

Cameron Keiber – Haunted Castles

Back in 2025, Cameron Keiber released full-length Nurser via Midriff Records, an album which confronted the modern world with the scathing eye it deserves. “There’s no hesitance or lily-livered attempts at peace here,” as we concluded in our review, “just a clear fuck you to all those who try to impose their own will upon innocent others.” Fast forward two years and Keiber is back with The Tide, a follow-up which pushes further than its predecessor, embracing the beauty of imperfection both stylistically and thematically and championing the power of the human in a world quickly tipping towards digital oblivion. Opener and single ‘Haunted Castles’ welcomes the listener into the release, opening with a poignant sense of reflection but soon kicking into gear and building into something urgent and cathartic. You’ll notice the beats of Nurser have been replaced by real drums, the guitars have doubled in size, and most importantly Keiber stands atop of if all fervent and compassionate as ever.

Cloudbelly – Phantom Lung

“Holy gods inside me / Why can no one love me / Without running aground?” So ask Cloudbelly on their latest single ‘Phantom Lung’.  The latest track to be unveiled from the project’s forthcoming full-length Throwing the Game, the single is a love song but not in the traditional sense, detailing the slow disintegration of a friendship as it moved from closeness to distance. A warm arrangement foregrounds the intimacy that is being lost, and there is no questioning the fondness which underpins the entire endeavour, though as the sound swells at the conclusion of the track, the answer to the initial question is ultimately fatalistic. “Maybe no one should come in / Nobody, now.”

Throwing The Game will be released on the 13th November and you can pre-order it now.

Darren Hayman – Darling, All the Time

If you’ve been reading VSF over recent months, chances are you know that cult UK songwriter Darren Hayman has been undergoing the mammoth task of making his vast back catalogue available online for the first time (a project you can read about in more depth here). All manner of rarities and deep cuts are being unveiled in the process, with some gems saved from obscurity along the way, but latest release I’m Your Team is one of the most notable to date. The full-length album had been sitting incomplete for a number of years, Hayman prioritising other musical commitments and dealing with artistic insecurities, though came to be viewed in a fonder light by its creator as time passed by. Inspired by the success of the aforementioned re-release project, Hayman has now decided to put out the album in full via Audio Antihero. Recorded in the wake of 2022 album You Will Not Die, I’m Your Team digs further into the same ground to perfect the contemplative, emotive style. “Sometimes after making an album you don’t want to go into a different direction,” Hayman explains. “You want to go deeper into it, and I felt I was just getting the hang of this stripped, slow, emotional music.” Listen to the title track now:

Eliza Edens – Old Home Video

Continuing to pave the way for full-length Death Drive, coming later this month via First City Artists, Eliza Edens has shared new single ‘Old Home Video’. While previous track ‘Hot & Mean‘ was certainly personal (“turning its attention to the queer experience in the contemporary moment, especially the rollercoaster of dopamine highs and lows facilitated by the access we’re granted into the lives of others by social media”) ‘Old Home Video’ takes things even further. A song Edens wrote while their mother was living with dementia which not only struggles with the cruelty of that present but also begins grieving in anticipation for the inevitable loss. As you might expect, the result is the most poignant and unguarded track on a release full of them, the very sound marbled with a combination of fondness and sorrow.

Death Drive will be released on the 30rd October via First City Artists and you can pre-order it now.

Fleur Geurl – stone in the stew

Back in September, Brooklyn-based songwriter Danielle Sorokin, AKA Fleur Geurl, released full-length 11:11, a collection of chamber folk songs which allow the personal and the mystical to blend together into something with real weight. It is not uncommon for recent folk music to bare its vulnerable heart in order to communicate more authentically, and there’s certainly an open, confessional dimension to Sorokin’s work, but where Fleur Geurl stands apart from its contemporaries is its willingness to play with the tension between display and concealment, clarity and opacity. Take single ‘stone in the stew’, a track indicative of the headspace of a record caught between cold reality and portentous dreams.

soon, I’ll sink into the stew
I’ll let it be true, I am too
a hue of geranium blue
soaks every room
every room

Generifus – Bird Beak

We last wrote about Spencer Sult’s Generifus back in 2024 with the release of Summerberrys, an album which provided “a welcome expansion of the Generifus universe,” as we put it, “again using Sult’s eye for the seemingly mundane details of day to day living to explore themes of growing up in the Pacific Northwest amid the wider backdrop of a hostile world.” Now Sult is set to return with brand new record Pulling on the Seam, and lead single ‘Bird Beak’ hints at the direction of the album. A meditation on hard truths and dashed dreams that comes to accept that moving on doesn’t always mean a clean break, the shrapnel of the past destined to remain embedded no matter how far we might run towards the horizon.

Good Wild Gods – Breathe It In

After meeting on tour in 2017, Luke Sital-Singh and Ben Cramer (AKA Old Sea Brigade) quickly developed a strong creative rapport, working together under the moniker Good Wild Gods and releasing the EP All The Ways You Sing In The Dark in 2020. Both artists returned to the successful solo careers thereafter, though a reunion at Cramer’s Swedish home studio rekindled the project once again, the duo this time pushing things further than before to embrace something closer to a full band richness. Sometimes I Go Missing is the result, a full-length album which builds upon what All The Ways… established yet reaches much further. “‘Sometimes I Go Missing’ is the culmination of many years we could have never seen coming,” as Sital-Singh explains. “We made the music we wanted to make.” Listen to latest single ‘Breathe It In’ now:

Sometimes I Go Missing will be released on the 19th March 2027 via Nettwerk Music Group and you can pre-order it now.

Kin Hana – Shōmetsu / Kodō

“Manages to locate the yearning for connection and community which has persisted from our first days, and will persist to the last,” we wrote of ‘Earthrise’ from Kin Hana‘s new LP Howling World forthcoming via Black Meadow. “The result centers the mythic presence of both the past and the future, twin otherworlds which loom large over the present, warping the material of our existence with equal parts pessimism and possibility.” The track embodied the spirit of an album concerned with how we engage with a world at once woeful and wondrous, moving with equal parts curiosity and dread in the hope of making sense of our irrational present. With the album just days away, Kin Hana has unveiled new single ‘Shōmetsu / Kodō’ to further tease the release. A mighty, haunting track which extends over eight minutes, Aaron Hodges joined by Jared Ashdown (Open Head), Gabriel Birnbaum (Wilder Maker) and Otto Hauser (Vetiver, Espers) to push the sound from a mournful piano piece into a cataclysmic doom metal number.

Left Tracks – Popcorn Lung

We last wrote about Left Tracks back in 2023 with the release of their EP End Times Hauling, describing how the collaboration saw Phil Di Leo (DI LEO) and Kabir Kumar (Sun Kin) use group together to imagine a new future in the wake of COVID and the adjacent catastrophes. “[The EP] sits on the precipice of disaster but makes a decision to envisage a different world,” we wrote, “working on the logic that no significant change can occur without first rekindling a sense of imagination.” The project has expanded and evolved in the interim, not least with last year’s record LT2, and now Di Leo and Kumar are back with brand new single ‘Popcorn Lung’ to further mark the direction of travel. A new, heftier version of Left Tracks bolstered by Sam Thorne (bass guitar) and Mark Edwards (drums, percussion) which is capable of both intricate detail and sweeping energy, playing with the tension between lightness and weight to evoke the strange physics of a codependent relationship.

Nick Bellerose – baby

“Paint[s] the experience of falling in love in all of its overwhelming glory with Bellerose’s trademark style, where cinematic richness meets the intimacy of DIY folk.” So we wrote of ‘About Us‘ by Nick Bellerose back in the summer, the DC-based songwriter channelling the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen in his authentic style. With EP maybe, someday now announced, Bellerose has shared latest single ‘baby’, and the result is no less sincere. Based within the liminal space between the end of a relationship and the kindling of another, the track “is less about knowing where love might lead than allowing yourself to feel something again” as the press release explains, and possesses all the earnest, homespun charm you want from such a song.

young friend – michael wakes up

Next month Vancouver-based songwriter Drew Tarves, AKA young friend, will release brand full-length New Entertainment via Nettwerk, and single ‘michael wakes up’ highlights how the records signals an ambitious new era for the artist. Foregoing the simplicity of a single narrative arc, the track instead presents a series of vignettes in order to paint a larger picture, each adding up to a mosaic of the human experience in all of its wonders and heartache. “’michael wakes up’ follows a number of characters that are all experiencing different realities in their lives,” Tarves explains. “Michael being told by Shelly that she doesn’t love him any longer, John winning the lottery with his daughter’s birthday as his numbers, Damien being let go from his company but continuing to do what he loves. These people are all experiencing their own beautiful stories.” Watch the video directed by Zachary Vague & Drew Tarves below:

New Entertainment will be released on the 6th November via Nettwerk and you can pre-order it now.

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