Much has occurred since we first featured Adeem The Artist back in 2016, the Knoxville-based songwriter going on to earn national recognition with their convention-challenging style of folk and country, a style embodied by acclaimed records like Cast-Iron Pansexual and White Trash Revelry. Ideas of spirituality and faith have always been central to the project, not to mention the intrinsic doubt and suffering which comes attached to any serious contemplation of such concepts, so it is fitting that Adeem The Artist’s next record Christians for Goliath is a bona fide Christian album which challenges the tendency of the genre to champion decidedly un-Christian values. “There is this massive wave of evangelical Christianity in America that is largely rejecting the basic tenets of what Christian values are supposed to be,” as Adeem says. “When it’s being done in the name of a God who calls for equity, justice, and radical hospitality, that is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.” The confronting and urgent project was made in Nashville with none other than John Darnielle, and Rich Mullins-inspired lead single ‘Hard To Get’ is a direct collaboration with The Mountain Goats, so you know the mission has the right people on board. Watch the lyric video below:

Christians for Goliath will be released on the 11th December via Four Quarters Records / Thirty Tigers and you can pre-order it now.

Alex Gardner & the Golden Apples – Robin Hood

Writing back in 2023 of album Highly Attainable Dreams, we described the work of LA-based songwriter Alex Gardner as “a kind of outsider folk for the twenty-first century,” drawing on everything from Michael Hurley to classic American literature. Next month sees the release of The Temptation of Thieves a new album by Alex Gardner & the Golden Apples, and this time he casts an even wider net for inspiration. As the title of the record and single ‘Robin Hood’ suggest, the story of everyone’s favourite outlaw is central to the record, though English and German romanticism, ancient Greece, modernist poetry, fairy tales and folkloric traditions all hold an influence, as well as the conventions and myths of classic folk and blues. Such albums were really made to be experienced in full, but ‘Robin Hood’ is available now, providing both a taste of Gardner’s idiosyncratic style and a glimpse into the mind of a heroic scoundrel.

The Temptation of Thieves will be released on the 7th November

Annelise Eppen x An Triangles – Promise

It took a three-month silent meditation retreat for Annelise Eppen to decide her songs were worth collecting into an album, the Massachusetts songwriter using the contemplative space to fully envision the hushed reckoning that is her debut full-length Heaven is Available. Having worked to record the released with Doug Poppe (An Triangles), the album will be released in 2027, though Eppen has shared lead single ‘Promise’ as a taster. Delivered with a spare, lo-fi folk aesthetic, Eppen and Poole channel the meditative spirit of the album’s origins to offer a genuinely spiritual style of music, where humble quiet is matched by a burning desire or indeed desperation to commit to God. The result is as much a vow as a song. A commitment to living more truthfully, more receptively, more inconspicuously, made in the silent relationship we share with our creator. “This is the time to make a promise / But make it in the dark and keep it quiet / This is the time to tend the fire / To listen to the songs and get inspired,” as Eppen sings in the opening verse. “But now’s the time that I will listen / I got a little taste of what I’m missing.”

Hockitay – redstar

“A casual listen… suggests this struggle might have come good, the sound full of apparent heart and fondness,” we wrote of Hockitay‘s ‘half smile‘ back in August. “Though dig a little deeper and it seems the dismay might have just found a new focus. Because, as the above line shows, there’s an existential confusion to at play, the intimacy not so much straight romance as a kind of confession.” Now Montreal artist has shared EP redstar in its entirety via Future Gods and the result is every bit as deep and conflicted, moving between themes as disparate as AI, cosmology and personal identity in order to explore the experience of being alive in a contemporary age full of artifice. Released as a final single, the title track encompasses all of these ideas within one genre-bending song, and serves as the ideal entry point for those about to dive in.

Watch the video directed by Renaud Jacob below:

redstar is out now via Future Gods and available from the Hockitay Bandcamp page.

Michael Feuerstack – Who We Are

Over the past three decades, Montreal-based songwriter Michael Feuerstack has slowly cemented his place among the most celebrated and enduring songwriters in Canadian music, establishing a vast and diverse oeuvre and securing two JUNOs in the process. Before releasing under his own name, Feuerstack used the moniker Snailhouse, and to celebrate thirty years of work, he is returning in 2027 with The Snailhouse Songbook, a double album with Forward Music Group which reimagines a choice selection of songs from the period. Lead single ‘Who We Are’ sets the tone, full of the nuanced, bittersweet spirit which marks so much of Feuerstack’s writing. “At its core, ‘Who We Are’ is a song about being alone in the crowd,” he explains. “How do we seek balance in tending to the isolated and mysterious parts of ourselves while also digging deep into love, patience and kindness as we navigate the outside world? There is a darkness in it, but there’s a beauty that prevails, and a humour that’s maybe almost imperceptible.”

New Balance – Dunce

Back in 2025 we teased a new album from Jeremy Leasure’s New Balance with double single Lemon Slice / Pocket Change, the songs’ ostensibly relaxed sound hiding something much darker as Leasure explored “little devastations.” Now New Balance are finally gearing up to release that album, and as the title To Live And Die In LA, the theme of catastrophe looms large in the shape of natural disaster and human cruelty. Latest single ‘Dunce’ finds Leasure and co. stuck within this disorientating experience, questioning everything in the face on the encroaching ruin. “’Dunce’ came about somewhat by accident,” he explains. “Written a few days after watching Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life, I found myself singing ‘I’m the dunce of the universe’ throughout the day without realizing that I’d picked it up from a line Brooks says in the film. It led me to interrogating all the ways that I could be barrelling forward in the wrong direction. Could my belief systems be false? Am I really as confident about these things as I think? If I flipped all of my beliefs would my life be any better? At the end of the day it feels unlikely, but it’s important to live an examined life, otherwise there’s no way to grow.” Watch the video directed and edited by Hallee Morvan and Jeremy Leasure below:

To Live And Die In LA will be released on the 20th November via Anxiety Blanket Records.

Sammy Weissberg – Brass Quintet No. 1 Mvt. II

Last month, we introduced Music For Strings and Brass, the forthcoming record from Brooklyn-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Sammy Weissberg. Writing of lead single ‘String Quartet No.2 Mvt. II’, we described how the album sees Weissberg “channel the spirit of late-Romantic and modernist composers to paint a picture of everyday life in all its elaborate detail and humble simplicity.” Now he’s back with another glimpse, this time at the record’s second work, a brass quintet that’s all the more melodic and charming following the grand impressionistic emotion of the strings. “[For the second movement] I was feeling very inspired by both Yamandu Costa and ML Buch,” Weissberg describes. “While both songwriters typically compose in a guitar-centric fashion, I thought it would be a fun challenge to translate their influence on me to a totally different instrumentation.”

SNEAL – THE QUEEN

Formed of Michael Coleman, Kurt Kotheimer, Hamir Atwal, Luke Bergman and Katie Jacobson, self-described “organ donor art factory” SNEAL is a “manifestation of these collected organs in a single body that was able to make it to the studio on the train.” Which is to say, the Queens-based project is more than the sum of its parts. New album Military Time welcomes a rotating casts of guests too, with the likes of Sam Evian and Jason Burger just some of the faces which pop up, and is unsurprisingly both the most ambitious and fully-realised release from SNEAL to date. Opener and single ‘The Queen’ sets the tone, a track full of languid swagger and left-field lyrics which plays something like a slow-motion trip through some strange hymenopteran world.

everything is breeding impossibly slow
there’s not a single egg in the nest
suddenly i’m feeling impossibly low
i’m so hot
and the canopy’s wet
i’m so hot and the canopy’s wet

Military Time is out now via Baby El Records and available from Bandcamp.

Wendy Eisenberg – Mmeeaanniinngg Bbuussiinneessss” b/w “Tthhee Wwaallllss”

Earlier this year, Wendy Eisenberg released a self-titled album on Joyful Noise Recordings. The record received much acclaim, including from us, drawing upon all of Eisenberg’s experience and genre-bending innovation to present their most comprehensive and certain artistic statement yet. But if the record itself wasn’t inventive enough already, they have just dropped an unexpected follow-up, or rather companion piece, which takes two of the standout tracks and (quite literally) bends and stretches them into new forms. Closer ‘The Walls’ doubles in length, but ‘Meaning Business’ reaches a mammoth 37 minutes, transformed from what was in essence a folk song into something as imaginative and theoretically ripe as a John Cage composition. “I want to write songs that feel infinite,” Eisenberg explains. “I want to write songs that transcend their production, that can weather the changes. It’s probably a holdover from my jazz training, the desire to hear my material in different contexts…Why not literally stretch them, and my songs, out? I want to feel when a slowed-down song becomes ambient music, becomes jazz, becomes something else.”

The post Weekly Listening: October 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Releasing this song is an exercise in killing my perfectionism,” explains Ottawa‘s abijah of latest single ‘Mountainside’, the track having been written before any of the songs on the 2025 EP Turning, yet sitting in a drawer waiting its turn to be set free. “I wrote the song in the February of 2024 at about 3 a.m. in a symbolism-obsessed, half-dreaming state,” they continue. “It’s hard for me to recall actively writing it — it feels more like I lassoed the song down intact from the dream world.” More than a neat origin story, this idea seems to make up the very fabric of the sound, everything slightly out of kilter yet somehow more cohesive for it, as though operating according to laws slightly stranger and more alluring than any conventional wisdom. What results is a single that’s starkly evocative and loaded with symbolism, a yearning search guided not so much by logic as the implicit desires of the unconscious.

Adjenai – Everything Bagel

Written amid grief and discomfort while caring for a loved one with dementia, Adjenai‘s forthcoming release Did It Hurt? Was It Fun? began more as an exercise in self-care more than anything else, the songwriter aiming to soothe themselves through the act of making music, though eventually it became clear the result was something they wished to share with the world. “I was writing songs to process my feelings,” as the Los Angeles-based songwriter explains. “It wasn’t until I was walking with my mom after we spread my aunt’s ashes in Alaska that I said, ‘I think I need to try again with my artist project. I think these songs might be for someone else to hear.” First single ‘Everything Bagel’ captures the decidedly personal spirit of the release, turning its attention to the fond (and not so fond) details of childhood to sketch out the triumphant feeling of finally being out and proud.

Cameron Knowler – Skipping Town

In recent months, Cameron Knowler has been sharing a series of homespun demos, with tracks like ‘Placer Camp Blues‘ and ‘El Centro‘ grounding themselves in both a sense of history and place with their spare yet evocative arrangements which embrace the limitations of the humble cassette recorder. The final track from this collection, ‘Skipping Town’ continues the style with a bittersweet ode to home, its slow and wistful textures proving the ideal conclusion to a series all about the weight of the past and what it might offer us moving forwards. “This tune to me is related to my hometown of Yuma, AZ, the feeling of desperately wanting to leave and return to a place that you left,” Knowler explains. “Leaning into the sparsity, and being in the sunniest place on Earth.”

‘Skipping Town’ is out now via Castle Dome Records and available from Bandcamp.

Cloudbelly – Bend

Cloudbelly continue to pave the way for their forthcoming new album Throwing The Game with new single ‘Bend’. ‘Oh, Antarctica!‘ and ‘Poppa‘ have already shown the release’s emotionally resonant nature, looking to the future and the past respectively, and the latest track continues this style by looking not forward or back, but inwards. “Tell me again / Scarlet voices in my head / ‘Bout how I’m / So grandiose and / How it shows in the ways I’ve chosen / To write on my precious hours,” Corey Laitman sings in the opening verse, the track a direct confrontation between an artist and their critical inner voice. But it’s one conducted not with fire and fury but a triumphant gentleness, as though understanding that any internal pain requires healing more than anything else.

All of that brightness gone sour
Am I a coward
Corroded by rust and
Discontent and a lack
Of trust

Watch the video filmed and directed by Nick Duncan below:

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

Eliza Edens – Hot & Mean

“While there might be a certain recklessness to the abandon with which Edens faces this new era, it is all part of deeper pact to seize the moment while it is still present. A joyous, if slightly dangerous, celebration of being alive.” So we wrote of Death Drive, the forthcoming album from Eliza Edens, the Brooklyn songwriter emerging from a difficult period with a newfound lust for life. Latest single ‘Hot & Mean’ is no different, 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. “The chorus is as much directed at myself than it is to anyone else,” Edens explains. “I hope we can all be sloths and move at the speed of geologic time, at least every once in a while.”

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

Jennah Barry – Old Friends

With albums like Young Men and Holiday, Nova Scotian artist Jennah Barry established herself as one of Canada’s finest songwriters, managing to delve into difficult themes and confront hard truths while always maintaining an overarching sense of compassion, in large part thanks to her striking vocal style. After a five-year hiatus. Barry has now returned with new single ‘Old Friends’ with Forward Music Group, and the track is every bit as lush and subtly powerful as we’ve come to expect. A song which explores the passing of time and the emotional weight it so often carries, capturing the ways in which once pressing feelings are smudged into the backdrop of our lives, no longer immediate yet nonetheless colouring the very fabric of existence.

J.W. Ricci – Realization

We last wrote about J.W. Ricci back in May with the release of Through a Frame / Pollen Drop, a debut solo guitar double single which introduced a new era for North Carolina-based songwriter. For having played in bands for a decade while working exploitative jobs (the “twin meat grinders of the music industry and life,” as we put it), he now finds himself in a newly stable position and eager for a creative fresh start. “There’s an clear sense of authenticity to Through a Frame / Pollen Drop as a result,” as we wrote, “each track recorded live with no overdubs and feeling like an artist not only reflecting on their journey to the present, but also coming to understand a healthier path they might follow from here on in.” Now J.W. Ricci is back with new single ‘Realization’, a track every bit as considered as those which preceded it, moving with a calm grace that nevertheless carries its own reflective, almost mournful edge.

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

The Male Pattern – I Was Shot in the Heart!

The last time we checked in with the protagonist of I Was Shot in the Heart!, the new album from The Male Pattern, he was rapidly sinking into the dark side of life, fresh off a divorce and thrown into trouble by a harebrained scheme to make a quick buck. “Firearms and narcotics have never been a good mix, especially not when the characters involved are quite so desperate, and an ostensibly foolproof plan to rob a small-time dealer inevitably tilts towards disaster.” With the album now out via Audio Antihero, Will Schwartz has shared the title track and closer to hint at the ‘happy ending’ offered by the release. “Our guy has struggled against the confines of his putrid personality, seeking fruitlessly for love, glory, meaning, or at the very least self self-annihilation in the form of screen addiction and benzo abuse,” as Schwartz explains. “He finally finds what he’s looking for in a shootout with police at a White Plains Stop and Shop.”

Sammy Weissberg – II – String Quartet no.2

Brooklyn-based composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Sammy Weissberg is preparing to release his new album Music for Strings and Brass via Dear Life Records this November, and lead track ‘String Quartet no.2’ highlights how he channels the spirit of late-Romantic and modernist composers to paint a picture of everyday life in all its elaborate detail and humble simplicity. “This was the first movement I composed for String Quartet No.2,” Weissberg explains. “I used the melodic material as a foundation to write the rest of the piece, and it’s loosely based on the traditional symphonic form. The quartet was composed with a conventional structure, but this movement was written intuitively, almost like a stream of consciousness. I wrote the melodies while singing on my bike. It feels more lyrical, like a folk song.”

Sasha Adrian – Punch

“Reimagines the traditional boundaries of a love song to explore a form of relationship not so often explored,” we wrote of Sasha Adrian‘s ‘wish that i had called you’ back in June. “Namely the incredibly close bond formed between teenage friends, where every emotion is heightened and you are certain the relationship will continue perpetually.” Now the Copenhagen-based songwriter has returned with ‘Punch’, a brand new single which continues this examination of less publicised sides of relationships with a raw yet compassionate meditation on ghosting and growing apart. “Losing a friendship is a slow kind of heartbreak,” Adrian says. “It’s hard to find words for it because we haven’t really been taught how to talk about it. Do you tell a friend that you’re growing apart? Can you ghost someone you’ve known for over ten years? Honestly, I don’t know—I just know it hurts deeply to love someone who’s walking away.”

Son Lux – Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

This autumn sees the release of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a film directed by Bassam Tariq which casts Mahershala Ali as a devoutly religious hitman, and the soundtrack by Son Lux is every bit as inventive and bewildering as the movie itself. Driving electronic beats capture the energy of the action, but an array of mysterious and mystical electronic flourishes deepen the soundscapes into something more interesting, mirroring the film’s pairing of visceral violence and metaphysical majesty to create a style that manages to be urgent, contemplative and reverent simultaneously. The soundtrack will be released physically by Waxwork Records and digitally by This Is Meru, and the title track is available now to introduce what to expect.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother will be released via Waxwork Records & This Is Meru and you can pre-order it now.

Stonefruit – Friendship Food Mart

Featuring Olivia Langan (guitar, vocals), Gavin Wallace (bass), Jory Gomez (drums) and Jerry Cannon (guitar), Stonefruit is an indie rock outfit based in Bozeman, Montana who set out to capture the full nostalgia and strangeness of the American experience. Earlier this year, the band released their debut album Good News Only and single ‘Friendship Food Mart’ is an ideal introduction to the side of the country they look to evoke. Described as “a love letter to the flyover states of middle America,” the song is the sonic equivalent of driving through a landscape of parking lots and shopping malls, those sprawling edge of town hinterlands that might be exciting or depressing, depending on your frame of mind.

Sweetbreads – The Anvil

Melody Stolpp’s Sweetbreads has shared a number of single in recent months, all leading up to new album Punisher.  ‘Punisher of Love‘ was “an exploration of [the] contemporary rat race, delving into the weight of expectations and self-sabotage which results,” while more recently ‘Open Mic‘ fought to keep the love of art amid the inevitable tussle between ambition and disappointment. With Punisher now finally released, Sweetbreads has released new single ‘The Anvil’, perhaps the happiest song on the record which embraces the radical potential of kindness and positivity. “They say to write what scares you most. I was honestly so terrified writing the lyric ‘You are good’,” as Stolpp explains. “As an extremely self-critical person, taking that weight off and practicing radical self love can be really challenging. In today’s world, we are constantly beating ourselves down and pushing ourselves to be more productive under the pressures of capitalism. Resisting these forces and believing you are enough is a revolutionary act. You matter because you are a living, breathing being. I hope this song can serve as a reminder of that to anyone who hears it.”

Punisher is out now and available from the usual places.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With singles ‘Everything’ and ‘Closer’, London duo atmos bloom have indicated the dreamy depths of their new album Everythingness, as well as the push and pull between influence and experimentation which marks their shoegaze-inflected sound. “[‘Closer’] finds Gratton and Paterson looking for contentment in the present and the constant change it represents,” we wrote of the latter single, “something achieved with a woozy, almost ethereal sound that sits on a knife edge between lucidity and dreams, sanding the edges off of reality in order to consider it more fully.” With the release of Everythingness fast approaching via Spirit Goth Records, atmos bloom have shared latest track ‘It’s Enough’, and again the song finds itself caught between competing forces. Namely the difficulty of living up to the expectations of different people, each with their own distinctive image of you in their head.

Chris Acker – Overdrafted

“A country-folk lamentation about the cruel thing banks do when you have less than zero dollars.” That’s how the press release describes ‘Overdrafted’, the new single from New Orleans-based songwriter Chris Acker. His first new music since 2024 album Famous Lunch, the song explores what he calls the “half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined.” As we wrote back in 2024: “Behind Acker’s trademark absurdity is the essential troubadour tale, where the confused dreamer collides with the banalities of life and comes to feel cursed for his failings.” But what’s remarkable is, despite the self-deprecation and wry humour, there’s some strange beauty here too, a heartwarming sense of camaraderie with everyone who finds themselves “in the red but still trying to tread.” You certainly won’t hear a more affecting account of having to make do with single ply toilet paper this year.

Jacob Brodovsky – Beneath It All

The songs of Jacob Brodovsky have never been afraid to delve into the personal, with new album Tell The Kids We Tried meditating, as we put it, “on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” but latest single ‘Beneath It All’ pushes further than most. Brodovsky had been the proud director of a Jewish summer camp, a place where he had spent over two decades of his life, only to recently face backlash from some members of the wider community for liking a social media post about a benefit show Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. An ugly situation developed, with the pressure tipping over into full-blown harassment, leaving him little choice but to resign and leave the place which had come to feel like a second home. “I wrote ‘Beneath It All’ about trying to hold onto the community that raised me while it shrinks into itself,” Brodovsky explains. “A community of good people, many of whom blinded by trauma, grief, and a refusal to acknowledge harm.” The album track featured the fantastic Charlotte Cornfield, while a new alternate live version sees Keiran Placatka, Dominique Adams and Leith Ross join instead:

Tell The Kids We Tried is out now via Make My Day Records and available from Bandcamp.

Jonathan Something – Country Rose

Recording under the moniker Jonathan Something, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Searles won acclaim through the late 2010s and early 2020s, writing prolifically across rock, folk and pop styles, though emerged from the period disillusioned with the industry and music more generally. “I was finding it hard to identify with being an artist anymore,” he explains. “It didn’t bring me the same joy or comfort it used to, and I found that the only way for me to really enjoy music again was to stop making it.” Cue several years away from songwriting, a spell only broken when ill health pushed him back towards music, even if at first merely sitting at a piano now caused him anxiety. “Eventually, I realized that I needed to turn it into something useful,” Searles continues. “I needed to use it as a catalyst to start thinking more seriously about spirituality and growth and the changes I needed to make in my life. And that journey became [new album] One More Lonesome Cowboy Song.” The record will be released this autumn via High Shelter, but for now you can listen to single ‘Country Rose’ for a taste of existential, transformative tone which marks the songs. Watch a live performance of the track recorded by Dogstar Films below:

One More Lonesome Cowboy Song will be released on the 16th October via High Shelter.

LAPÊCHE – Phantom Of Cinder

Brooklyn’s LAPÊCHE began life back in 2016 as the solo project of Krista Holly Diem, but has since grown into a full-blown band. Drawing on shoegaze and post-punk, they make indie rock songs that are both shadowy and catchy, centering on a sense of considered patience that the band says is born from “a shared language of healing, honesty and presence.” Back in February, they released a new record Autotelic via Tiny Engines, a collection of emotionally intricate but very much listenable rock songs. One standout was album closer ‘Phantom of Cinder’, a typically restrained track about how we hold on to shards of the past like splinters in our skin. “This song came from feeling haunted by old versions of myself,” Diem describes. “It is about the things we carry, the memories that refuse to disappear, and the moments that shape us long after they have passed. Sometimes healing is not about letting go. Sometimes it is about learning to live with what remains.” Watch the Jacob Halpren-directed video for ‘Phantom of Cinder’ below:

Autotelic is out now via Tiny Engines and available from the LAPÊCHE Bandcamp page.

Mama’s Broke – Build It Up

The recording project of Canadian pair Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria, Mama’s Broke has made a name over the last decade or so with a rootless, ever-searching style of folk music which played like the songs of old. Stories to be shared around campfires and small town bars before packing up and hitting the road once more. Latest album Reunion, coming later this summer via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, continues this style, possessing a timeless quality that suggests these aren’t so much new songs as memories passed down through the ages. As single ‘Build It Up’ attests, the result is at once intimate and urgent, delivered with the earnest conviction of those unwilling to let go of this world we’re slowly destroying. “If you don’t build it up,” as the telling refrain states, “somebody else will tear it down.”

Nick Bellerose – maybe i think

Montreal’s Nick Bellerose spent nearly two decades living a double life. His career as an international diplomat saw him travel the globe, “handling global crises in the foreign service.” But, privately, his true calling was music, something he used as an anchor to himself when thousands of miles from home. A couple of years ago, things changed. A series of tragedies, spearheaded by the death of his mother, led him to pick up a guitar and start to sing, making the decision to swap “the world stage of diplomacy for the visceral truth of the microphone.” Bellerose cites the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen as influences, something plainly clear in latest single ‘maybe i think’. Characteristically bittersweet, the track explores heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming.

Perennial – Modernism

Formed in Connecticut over a decade ago, Perennial are a self-styled “modernist punk” band who have blown away sweaty basement shows across the globe with their punk rock patchwork style that knits together just about every left-field and out-there style you can think of. The press release describes their forthcoming new record (aptly titled Modernism) as “Op art to dance to”, but the better metaphor is the tagline of a “1,200 second action painting”, as Perennial streak and splatter disparate elements of their seemingly endless record collection into hectic patterns that feel at once reverential and totally new. The real triumph is how Perennial keep these eccentric experiments so catchy and immediate (two words you may now immediately associate with sub-2-minute melange of free jazz, ambient electronica, big beat, dub and Musique concrète), as the opener and title track attests. Check it out below:

Sharp Pins – Saturday Sun

The project of Chicago’s Kai Slater (who you may also know from Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe), Sharp Pins is an outlet for lo-fi garage pop that could have come swaggering straight out of the swinging sixties. Not content with putting out two records last year (which clocked in with a combined total of 35 tracks), Slater is already back at it, announcing plans to re-release the album MOD MAYDAY 23, first released on tape a couple of years ago when he was still a teenager, via K Records and perennial. “[MOD MAYDAY 23 is] The soundtrack to my 18th summer riding a Chinese Taotao 50cc scooter around Taqueria Moran and four tracking my Sta-Prest-Dreams,” Slater describes. “I thought it would be cool to record a bunch of songs that never really got recorded in a semi-more-thought-out-way.” And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a brand new Sharp Pins single too. Titled ‘Saturday Sun’, it’s another slice of throwback pop music that’s sure to soundtrack the rest of the summer.

‘Saturday Sun’ is out now via the Sharp Pins Bandcamp page. MOD MAYDAY 23 will be released on 4^th September via K Records and perennial.

Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker – Sigils of Decay (for João da Cruz e Sousa)

Next month, American Dreams will release the third edition of Songs for Sad Poets, a collaborative project between Tehran-based composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn writer/philosopher Eugene Thacker, inspired by the tradition of poètes maudits or ‘cursed poets’. As Thacker describes, “[the term] referred to obscure or unknown poets who had endured some form of suffering and who felt compelled to write about it.” In the duo’s hands, this inspiration becomes something haunting, soundscapes that mould ideas from poetry, philosophy and music into new forms.  The first two volumes were entirely instrumental, but this new one is a little different. Amini fed Thacker’s poems into voice synthesis software and then processed and layered the output until any notion of “voice” is dissolved in noise. Lead single introduces how this sounds, a tribute to late nineteenth-century Brazilian symbolist poet João da Cruz e Sousa.

Wishy – All The Rage

“An unapologetically romantic track which creates the slightly intoxicated state of the title in all of its headspinning glory, refusing to dial down the lyrics in order to fully embrace the headspace. As though to be in love is to experience everything saturated and bright.” So we wrote of ‘Lovesick’, the lead single from Wishy‘s new full-length Nature’s Pill back in June, the Indianapolis outfit’s first full-length since the celebrated Triple 7 back in 2024. With the album slated for release via Winspear this autumn, Wishy have put out ‘All the Rage’ to keep the anticipation high. Thematically, the track is diametrically opposed to its predecessor, existing in the aftermath of a break-up and seeking solace amid the gloom. However, take a casual listen and you’d never know it. Because, for all of the bummed out frustration and wistful longing of the lyrics, the sound itself is buoyant and bright, a twee spirit which leans into the rhythm of the sound as though to cleanse itself via momentum alone.

Nature’s Pill will be released on the 2nd October via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the Wishy Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Previous singles were no less striking. Take ‘Montenegro on Ice‘, a song we wrote, “lack[ing] none of the mood or bite of the Motherhood sound, Stevens matching head-banging heft with an abstract, poetic lyricism which plays like a personal journey into the strange currents and slacks of this thing we call life.” Or ‘Pool Party‘ with its mischevious combination of playfulness and sharp edges, a surf rock number which, as we put it, “tell[s] the delightfully dark story of a girl gang hell bent on revenge against the men who have wronged them.”

With the album out now via  Forward Music, Penny & the Pits have returned with a video for single ‘Thick Black Gloves’ to further the album’s reach and thematic resonance. Again born of fury and the desire for retribution, the song conjures a nocturnal, off-kilter style loaded with latent threat, not only tapping into a seam of fear which will be familiar to any non-male, but also the ever-present frustration baked into such injustice. “It pisses me off so much that I can’t just walk down my own damn street without constantly scanning the shadows!” as Stevens explains. “The song is a bit of a revenge fantasy for me, but it doesn’t necessarily translate directly through the lyrics. So I really wanted to make a music video that could help augment those themes.”

Directed and edited by Nicole Cecile Holland, the video brings this to life by flipping the balance of power and centring the potential for agency and authority within the feminine experience. “I have this ridiculous leather trench coat that I wear all the time, and men often comment that I look like I’m about to commit a murder,” Stevens continues:

So the trench coat inspired the video, really. I wanted to create an atmosphere that wasn’t explicitly violent, but focused more on confidence and dominance. With this album as my first solo work, I’ve never taken the space to appreciate and utilize my own body in storytelling. I’m not exactly a red leather heel type of person, so it was really fun to step into that world and play around with a sort of weaponized femininity. Watching it back, it’s nice to see myself as sexy and scary and totally in control.

Liquid Compactor is out now via Forward Music Group and you get it from the Penny & the Pits Bandcamp page.

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Comprising of  Olivia Eguia (vocals), Charlie Eguia (guitar), Jaden Gabriel (writing, production), Khadija Aslam (bass) and Liz Musinsky (drums), April Fools is a new Brooklyn-based outfit who introduced themselves last year with debut EP Knock Knock, though they have wasted no time in following up the release. Out via Happen Twice in the next few weeks, the second April Fools project Who’s There? finds the band freshly confident and ready to hone their sound, further developing their indie folk style to capture a wide range of emotions. Equal parts playful, heartfelt, infectious and melancholic, single ‘Say Nothing’ typfies the tone of the release, presenting a warm glimmer over nostalgic longing as it processes the experience on moving on from someone once cared about.

Banti Buli – When Birds Write Poems

Stroll Down Pearl, The Night is Young, the upcoming new full-length from Boston-based project Banti Buli, is dedicated to the musical communities of lead Banti Gheneti. So it is fitting that album closer and latest single ‘When Birds Write Poems’ serves as a love letter to all those people who go about creating and maintaining artistic spaces. “I think about all birds that grace the streets of Cambridgeport and greater Boston,” Gheneti explains, “building nests, putting on shows, making meaning out of life. Without community, there is no artist, and it means nothing.” A fittingly collaborative endeavour, the song sees Rachel Eber from Ragu joining on vocals and was recorded with help from June Isenhart from Miss Bones. The result possesses all the fondness and heart its mission statement suggests, with a number of Easter eggs scattered through the lyrics that fans of the local scene will appreciate.

Watch the video animated by Luca Depardon below:

Stroll Down Pearl, The Night is Young will be released on the 7th November and you can pre-order it now.

bugcatcher – Hurry

Back in 2023 we wrote about Bugcatcher, the recording project of Rochester‘s Jake Denning and a rotating cast of collaborators and friends, describing how album Go! offered “a combination of sincerity and whimsy delivered with an understated tone yet marked by a pervading sense of mystery, as though below the mundane surface of things exists an untold manner of possibility, a source of both wonder and unease.” Now Denning and co. are back with new single ‘Hurry’ ahead of a forthcoming full-length on Raincoated Records. The track concerns the white lies and wistful longing inherent within major change and suggests the new material has built upon the foundations of previous releases to achieve a sound more earnest and emotive than ever.

Devin Shaffer – I Guess I’m Crawling

“Interrogates just what it requires to achieve lasting peace. That is, to reject the idea of a neat arc entirely, resist the temptation to believe one achievement or epiphany will solve your life for good.” So we wrote of Devin Shaffer‘s new album Patience, forthcoming next month on American Dreams, with lead single ‘All My Dreams Are Coming True’ displaying the clarity and nuance of the release. Now Shaffer has returned with ‘I Guess I’m Crawling’, the record’s penultimate track and perhaps its most illustrative one, its gentle pace and soft tone confronting all of life’s doubts and injustices with a steady patience. “In a way “I Guess I’m Crawling” is the ethos of the record,” Shaffer explains. “It is a surrender to the pace at which things move, a surrender to all the setbacks and limitations and diversions that have led me to where I am now.”

Watch the video shot by Jordan Reyes below:

Patience will be released via American Dreams on 7th November. Pre-order it now from the Devin Shaffer Bandcamp page.

The Hello Crows – Let ‘Em Go Home

Consisting of Dylan Ward, Judie Acquin, Emilio Quinn Bonnell and Mattie Comeau—four Indigenous songwriters all hailing from different areas of Wabanaki territory in Canada—The Hello Crows is an indie rock project born of the traditional practice of storytelling and driven to explore the themes and problems facing their home within the present moment. Their self-titled debut album, out via Forward Music Group, touches on everything from personal love and loss to wider traumas like the violent legacy of the Canadian residential school system, and provides all the heart and painful catharsis you might expect. Latest single ‘Let ‘Em Go Home’ is an ideal entry point, the band’s tribute to the survivors of cultural genocide which is at once warmly compassionate and loaded with stark weight.

Lazy Trail – Post Tour

The second Happen Twice act to make this week’s list, Lazy Trail is the recording project of songwriter Emma Willer, who you might know from her time with bands like Slumbers and Boyscott. Under the Lazy Trail moniker, Willer makes music fitting for the name. Songs often short and usually sweet which play like small adventures or little daydreams, taking the listener to another place for just a moment. New album The Sound is a great place to dive in, with singles like ‘Post Tour’ possessing all of the brightness and yearning ever-present across the release. A song which owes as much to the natural world as anything else, playing like a brief hike down a particular path of Willer’s memories, stopping to catch glimpses of all the things which used to mean so much along the way.

Lydia Luce x Luke Sital-Singh – Ephemeral

Back in August we introduced Mammoth, the upcoming new album from Lydia Luce which leads “out of suffering,” as we put it, “charting the path of recovery from chronic pain and the hard-won bonds which came with it.” After single ‘Quiet’, “a song all about the slow process of learning to not only tolerate silence but embrace its power within a noisy world,” Luce has now returned with ‘Ephemeral’, inviting British singer-songwriter Luke Sital-Singh into the fold for a moving duet. With another careful, evocative arrangement featuring strings, winds, piano, viola and cello, the song deepens with a sense of grace, the chemistry between the vocals seeming to lift the instrumentation and culminating in almost classical peaks.

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

The Noisy – Nightshade

“Draws on literary and cinematic influences (especially Spaghetti Westerns and Body Horror) and ideas from the drag and queer community to create its vivid, larger-than-life sound.” That’s how we described The Secret Ingredient Is Even More Meat, a deluxe edition of The Noisy‘s debut album The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, coming soon via Audio Antihero. After singles ‘Twos‘ and ‘Grenadine‘, Sara Mae and co. are back with new unreleased song ‘Nightshade’ to further expand the record’s universe. A kind of sister track to ‘Twos’ which again explores the aftermath of difficult relationships but flips its attention from the other to the self. An examination of the attempt, and possible failure, of trying to build intimate, trusting connections with others without twisting the ideas of these bonds in your head.

Pansy – Mercy, Kill Me

You might know Vivian McCall as part of Chicago rock outfit Jungle Green, but upon starting the transitioning process several years ago, the singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist realised she needed a new project to chart the emotion and complexity of the experience properly. Pansy is that very project, an outlet which sees McCall plunder the gamut of indie rock in an attempt to capture the wild range of emotions of the transitioning process. Described by label Earth Libraries as “a noisy power pop anthem about a catastrophic breakup that demanded reinvention,” new single ‘Mercy, Kill Me’ is on the jangly and hooky end of the spectrum, documenting a difficult, life-changing breakup with a breezy energy.

runo plum – Halfway Up The Lawn

We’ve featured a couple of singles from runo plum in recent weeks, with new album patching coming soon via Winspear. After the “inherently bittersweet” ‘Lemon Garland‘, ‘Sickness‘ showed the newly powerful sound of the record. “Plum has lost none of the tenderness which so marked earlier releases,” as we put it, “but is now even better equipped to elucidate the highs and lows of life.” Latest track ‘Halfway Up The Lawn’ is no less striking, pairing a rich arrangement and heartfelt vocals and charging everything with an insistent energy to evoke the desperation of an unravelling relationship. A track existing at the intersection of yearning and frustration, a state of mind which so often comprises the end of things. “Will you turn the lamp back on / or leave it to your mom,” as plum sings, “to be the one to reach out to me / I don’t wanna make a scene.”

Watch the video directed by David Milan Kelly below:

patching will be released on the 14th November via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the runo plum Bandcamp page.

Young Elk – Silver Bullet

“You started lying when you learned to speak / Your mother gave you the throne / Gave you a silver bullet enemy / Sang you a sorrowful song.” So sings Ezekiel J. Rudick on ‘Silver Bullet’, the latest single from Young Elk. Released ahead of a new full-length coming soon via Rue Defense, the track is the epitome of the Young Elk sound. One loaded with both foreboding atmosphere and pressing weight, Rudick’s charged vocals falling somewhere between empathy and accusation. A mood fitting for a song which looks to mine the mother/son relationship for all of its complexity, emerging with a picture undeniably dark yet never without sympathy, as though one’s ability to cause pain is not derived from simple cruelty but rather a tangled web of suffering and the hope for reprieve.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2025 #5 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With the album set for release at the end of the month, Penny & the Pits are back with brand new single, ‘Headcrusher’. The label describe the record as an “adventurous punk-rock album that processes feminist joy, rage and revenge,” and ‘Headcrusher’ certainly lives up to the description. A short, sharp track full of bite and momentum, letting up only for the brief lulls which punctuate intermittently, as though Stevens is taking a breath before diving back in. What results is something unapologetically in your face, a style fitting for the themes which underpin it. “This song is about trying to blame yourself for someone else’s bad behaviour,” Stevens explains. “But then it’s also about refusing to do that anymore and just sending them out to die at sea.”

The post Penny & the Pits – Headcrusher appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in March we wrote about ‘Hold On’, a single from LA’s Bouquet which teased the duo’s first full-length album in a decade, Spellbreaker. The song was a slice of dream pop “rich and romantic [in] style,” as we put it, that “championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses.” Now Bouquet are back with new track ‘Moon Was Made’, offering a further glimpse at the record. A vintage Linn Drum machine is paired with the hi-hats of an old Roland rhythm box to weave a sound almost ethereal in its analog charm, all supporting lyrics which push and probe for answers amid an enveloping sense of uncertainty.

Watch the video shot and directed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs below:

‘Moon Was Made’ is out now and available from the Bouquet Bandcamp page.

Bug Crush – Mikey Told Me

With a new four-song EP Somehow I go in circles all the time set for release next month, Brooklyn-based songwriter Carolyn Fahrner, AKA Bug Crush, has unveiled new single, ‘Mikey Told Me’. Written after first moving to the city and living in less than perfect housing conditions, the track finds Fahrner tapping into the universal, slightly surreal experience of discomfort in a new place, where everything feels a little hazy and out of sync. “I wasn’t sleeping well because my bedroom floors were three inches uneven. In my groggy waking hours, I wandered around Brooklyn and frequently passed by a store called Mikey’s Hook Up. I thought it was a funny name and it stuck in my head. I wanted to write a song that wasn’t really about me, or anyone I knew, but I think it inevitably ended up being a reflection of my experiences in the world.”

‘Mikey Told Me’ is out now and available from the usual places, Somehow I go in circles all the time will be released on the 16th May.

JLJR – Thumbtack

“Adopts a tone both reflective and defiant to chart the end of a distinctive kind of relationship. One troubled and difficult to live through, yet equally one whose closure takes something from you too.” That’s how we described ‘Arms For Eyes’, the lead single from JLJR new EP The Rest of Your Life, coming soon on Paper Moon Records. Latest single ‘Thumbtack’ is no less reflective in style. A mosaic of iPhone takes and tape loops which weaves a lo-fi representation of memory itself, while the disarmingly sincere vocals meditate on grief to give the ostensibly inviting sound a real emotional edge.

The Rest of Your Life is out via Paper Moon Records.

Myriads – Call It Quits

Described as “a study of love, happiness, depression, and the search for meaning in these universal human experiences,” Find Ourselves Again is the new EP from Portland, OR-based outfit, Myriads. The work of frontperson Maria DeHart has morphed over the years, evolving from a solo endeavour built upon acoustic and later loop pedal foundations into the full band which would become Myriads, though has maintained a sincere, confronting tone throughout the arc. The new EP represents the next step in this process, blending elements of bedroom and dream pop with the heft and energy of indie rock to communicate in a typically unguarded, empathetic manner. Single ‘Call It Quits’ embodies the style, its wistful fondness counterbalanced with fuzzy weight, capturing the experience of a break-up in all of its conflict and longing.

Old Man of the Woods – Anticipating

“Tendrils is a collection of devotionals, written at a yearning distance from their beloveds. It’s the recognition of the vines that bind us to all we adore, at times only felt once they become taut, begin to quiver, reverberate, fray, snap, curl.” So describes Miranda Elliott of the new album from Old Man of the Woods, set for release this June. Recorded during a residency at the Culterim Gallery in an abandoned German sanatorium, the album explores the close relationship of preservation and decomposition, evolving the goth pop of previous releases like Votives and Triptych I to increasingly evocative results. Lead single ‘Anticipating’ provides a hint of the haunted vibe therein, playing like a private party for one held in memory of all that came before which nevertheless, as per its title, holds hope in the possibility that that which has been lost might be accessible some way down the line.

Tendrils will be released this June.

Penny & the Pits – Pool Party

“Lacks none of the mood or bite of the Motherhood sound, [Penelope] Stevens matching head-banging heft with an abstract, poetic lyricism which plays like a personal journey into the strange currents and slacks of this thing we call life.” So we wrote of ‘Montenegro on Ice’, the first single from Penny & the Pits‘ debut album Liquid Compactor, forthcoming this summer via Forward Music Group. Described as “a gritty, adventurous punk-rock album that processes feminist joy, rage and revenge,” the record harnesses this energy for both fun and fury, something exemplified by latest single, ‘Pool Party’. A surf punk number full of playfulness and bite which again highlights the imagination of the project, telling the delightfully dark story of a girl gang hell bent on revenge against the men who have wronged them.

Watch the video by director of photography Amelia Bailey below, with art direction by Audrey Kirk and Penelope Stevens and editing/colouring by Nicole Cecile Holland:

Liquid Compactor is out on the 27th June via Forward Music Group and you can pre-order it now.

Rose Haven Motor Hotel – Trasig

If any one feature marked Things Don’t Stay, the 2024 EP by Jackson-based project Rose Haven Motor Hotel, it was a sense of perpetual change, the style switching from traditional folk to alt-country swagger and back again on a whim. The release was “appropriately titled,” as we put it, “not only evoking the overarching wistfulness which marks the release, but also speaking to the stylistic fluidity which occurs across the five songs.” Released in preview of a forthcoming EP, latest single ‘Trasig’ sees Ben Atkinson continues to push the project towards new styles and influences. An instrumental guitar track he describes as “George Harrison meets Delicate Steve meets a biker gang.” A song of retro richness and a notable mean streak which refuses to outstay its welcome and maintains an air of mysterious cool as a result.

Slake – Votive

Back in March we introduced Slake, the recording project of self-described ‘lesbian doom folk’ songwriter Mary Claire, with single ‘Bonecollector’. Serving as “both a window into the singular vision of the Californian artist and an embodiment of the collaborative spirit which brings their work to life” as we put it, the track was the first glimpse of Slake’s new album Let’s Get Married, coming this June with Cherub Dream Records. New single ‘Votive’ further grounds this style and suggests all of the album is delivered with the same shadowy atmosphere and intimacy that made its predecessor so striking. Against the backdrop of a subtle yet poignant arrangement, it is Claire’s vocals which represent the heart of the track. A voice that plays as both a plea and a prayer, looking for a way to move beyond present suffering or else come to understand the purpose of the pain in order to better withstand it.

Soot Sprite – Vicious Cycles

With the release of new album Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon fast approaching on Specialist Subject Records, Soot Sprite have shared final single ‘Vicious Cycles’ to further whet appetites. We’ve previously described the album as “a call to arms to fight against the forces that make contemporary life so difficult, and a reminder of the radical potential within empathy and community,” and the new single zooms in on the most personal experiences to explore how such a mission might look on an individual level. “‘Vicious Cycles’ is about addressing your patterns of behaviour and the damage done in previous relationships,” as lead Elise Cook explains. “The fear of retribution for the smallest of hiccups that sticks with you long after the impacting relationship is done. The thought that you’ll never fully shake it off.”

I can’t wash off the oil from your spill
Part of me is always blackened by your will
Try to leave it in the years
But I still shake with fear
The eggshells stab like little spears

Sucker Crush – Stranger

Echoqualia is the latest EP from Sucker Crush, the recording project of Oakland-based songwriter Marissa Deitz. Built from a myriad of home recordings made between 2016 and 2021 and elevated beyond the sum of its parts with extra work in the subsequent years, the release has been long in the making, and this extended gestation period only served to add to its richness and weight. “A lot has happened in that time (personally, politically, pandemically…),” as Deitz says, “and it’s a strange and beautiful thing to hold these songs as they are now.” Lead single ‘Stranger’ highlights the signature blend of chamber pop and electronic sensibilities of the EP, its gentle, airy style belying the orchestral depth of the sound, and Deitz’s vocals equally notable for their simultaneously hushed and powerful tone.

Yoshika Colwell – There’s Got To Be A Loser Babe

“Pushing the folk sound into ethereal, almost cosmic territory, the song again embraces the satisfying weirdness of dreams, where logic might not adhere to the ordinary laws of such things, yet feels like logic all the same.” So we wrote of Yoshika Colwell‘s ‘Last Night’ back in February, but despite the single’s dreamy aesthetic, its heart was firmly rooted in the physical world. The track features on Colwell’s debut full-length On The Wing, an album coming this summer on Blue Flowers which further mines the more ethereal territories of folk to explore real life experiences. “This album is a bit of a shrine I suppose to all of the pivotal experiences that shaped me during my twenties and it’s also, I feel, a tentative lean towards hopefulness for the future,” Colwell explains. “It is, at its core, an album about acceptance and release, and freedom from old binds […] The process felt quite ritualistic, akin to writing down the things you know you need to let go of on a piece of paper and burning it.” Watch the video for latest single ‘There’s Got To Be A Loser Babe’ by Tilly Wace below:

On The Wing is out on the 25th July via Blue Flowers and you can pre-order it now.

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

Last May, Toronto songwriter  and multi-instrumentalist Abigail Lapell released Anniversary, an album of love songs that explored the L-word in a variety of its many guises. Now, almost a year on, Lapell has announced More Songs About Love, an extended version of the record that adds eight extra tracks, including acoustic versions and French translations of some of Anniversary‘s standouts. Lapell made the album with the help of Tony Dekker (of Great Lake Swimmers), and he lends his vocals to the lead single, an acoustic duet version of ‘Wait Up’. “I feel like it brings out such a different, more intimate side of the song,” Lapell describes, “and was super fun to play and sing live together.”

Amiture Music – Mountain

Jack Whitescarver’s Amiture might be a thing of the past, but a new project has risen from the ashes. Amiture Music sees Whitescarver enlist drummer Justin Fossella, bassist Max Berine Shafer and multi-instrumentalist and percussionist Allie Wrubel to push into a style of experimental rock unreachable to a solo artist. “As musicians, the four of us are able to access an unspoken knowing, a shared voice,” Whitescarver says, “and this intimate understanding has allowed us to blend and mold our distinct approaches and styles into a unified, total sound.” The first taste of this new beginning, single ‘Mountain’ embodies the deep sincerity which underpins Amiture Music, forgoing any conceits or flashy gimmicks in favour of open collaboration and good old fashioned craft.

Domino Lewis – Do It All

Described as a songwriter “born in France but raised on Gordon Lightfoot and Joan Baez,” Domino Lewis crafts a timeless style of folk which owes equal debts to the classics and contemporaries of the genre. Ahead of a new EP scheduled for release sometime later this year, Lewis has shared brand new single, ‘Do It All’. A song which draws on a quote by Sylvia Plath—”I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations possible in my life. And I am horribly limited”—to form a sound at once affirming and shot through by melancholy. An apparent contradiction embraced throughout the track, as though to fully inhabit one’s life is to grasp both sides of the coin with identical curiousity. “I wanna see a morning /and moonlight just the same,” as the opening lines assert. “I wanna burn the sunshine / wanna drown the rain.”

Lewis joined up with Western AF on their European tour to record a version of the track. Watch the video recorded and mixed by Will Ross and edited by Manuel Deakins below:

‘Do It All’ is out now and available from the Domino Lewis Bandcamp page.

Foxtails Brigade – Forevermore

Described as “a lonely, bedroom anthem for the lost and forgotten,” ‘Forevermore’ is the latest single from San Francisco‘s Foxtails Brigade, and the first taste of their upcoming new full-length Red Album. Led by Laura Weinbach, the project has long made what we’ve called previously “a peculiar brand of Gothic folk-pop which embraces the weirder side of life,” and the new single is no exception. A poignant ode to those who exist at some kind of angle to the conventional modes of living, too often shunned by the cultural and political gatekeepers of their time.

‘Forevermore’ is out now. You can sign up for early access of Red Album on the Foxtails Brigade website.

Hectorine – Is Love An Illusion?

Bay Area-based songwriter Sarah Gagnon, AKA Hectorine, is preparing to release thrid album Arrow of Love later this spring with Take a Turn Records, an album which invoked the Sumerian goddess Inanna in its conception. Mesopotamian myth tells of Inanna descending into the underworld, giving up clothing and possessions at each of the gates of hell to finally arrive naked, and Gagnon followed the analogy to trace a path through a period of intense change during the pandemic, stripping away all protections to confront demons unguarded. Single and opener ‘Is Love An Illusion’ signals the start of this journey, with flitting marimba and dramatic vocals drawing the listener into dark, alluring netherworld.

Arrow of Love is out on the 23rd May on Take a Turn Records and you can pre-order it now.

IE – Simplify

Later this spring, Minneapolis quintet IE are releasing their latest album Reverse Earth on Quindi Records. The release draws upon kosmische, lounge pop and psychedelica in its sound, though with an intentional style which prioritises intuitive flow. There’s sizeable variation across the five songs, but lead single and centrepiece ‘Simplfy’ shows off the evocative patience of the outfit. A song which seems to raise itself from minimal beginnings, stirring with an almost organic logic, like the mysterious mechanical movements of subcellular particules, or else the heavenly bodies burning bright through outer space.

Mae Powell – Rope You In

Having signed with Karma Chief and Colemine Records, self-described “songstress and rainbow entity” Mae Powell is preparing to release a second album this summer, and latest single ‘Rope You In’ introduces the audience to the ethereal atmosphere and emotional clarity of the Bay Area artist’s work. The song was essentially the origin point of the record, the first steps of a challenging journey through a myriad of emotions, though step into the lush sound and crooned vocals and you’ll soon discover the experience to be one which places comfort front and centre. “I feel grateful for the way writing songs helps me make sense of and process emotions while I’m in the thick of them,” as Powell explains, and now the songs exist as something which might help listeners too.

Mourning [A] BLKstar – Stop Lion 2

Following on from 2024’s stellar Ancient//Future, Mourning [A] BLKstar are already on their way back with Flowers of the Living, a brand new full-length to be released by Don Giovanni Records to coincide with the Afrofuturist collective’s ten-year anniversary. And, if lead single ‘Stop Lion 2’ is indicative of the album in its entirety, MAB draw on the full breadth of creativity and expertise gained across this decade, bringing to life a sound packed with detail yet unafraid to spread its wings and take its time. Indeed, this is a song where space is given equal footing next to any instrument or vocal. “Not only does space represent stillness, contentment, and mindfulness, it’s also the fulcrum of collectivism and free expression, and a key tenet of the Black ecstatic lineage,” as the press release puts it. “Space has always been politicized, and to view it from a place of abundance rather than scarcity, even in a conceptual sense, is a rebuke of fascist oppressors and an affirmation of love and self-belief.” The result is every bit as defiant, moody and assured as this suggests, and primes the canvas ready for a blockbuster album. Watch the video below:

Flowers of the Living is coming soon via Don Giovanni Records and you can pre-order it now.

nina gala – honey

Back in 2022 we wrote about swan heart by Baltimore-based songwriter nina gala, an album we described as “reflecting on what was and what might have been with an almost reverent tone. One which explores feelings of longing, anger and despair yet descends fully into none, instead suspended in the strange wonder that things such as love could ever happen at all.” Now nina gala is back with ‘honey’, a brand new single which further descends into a shimmering world of romance and fear. “do you still wanna taste my honey? / do you miss my touch? / do you love my body?” as the opening lines ask, gala’s vocals soaring over a sparse arrangement like concerned thoughts filling an empty room at the dead of night.

Penny & the Pits – Montenegro on Ice

Penelope Stevens is perhaps best known as part of New Brunswick alt-rock outfit Motherhood, but is now ready to introduce a new project to the world—Penny & the Pits. Out via Forward Music Group, first single ‘Montenegro on Ice’ lacks none of the mood or bite of the Motherhood sound, Stevens matching head-banging heft with an abstract, poetic lyricism which plays like a personal journey into the strange currents and slacks of this thing we call life. A song “about letting your memories overwhelm your life,” as Stevens explains, “and about using any ol’ thing to avoid confronting your trauma.”

Laps like milk, with my mind like silt,
I underwent the kind of thing you can’t forget,
Unbroken, but not unbent
full eclipse
I was held up, transfixed
I was looking for some kind of sign I can’t ignore
But I found no sign I can’t ignore.

‘Montenegro on Ice’ is out now via Forward Music Group.

Slake – Bonecollector

Written to christen their new project, Mary Claire has just released the single ‘Bonecollector’ under the moniker Slake via Cherub Dream Records. Produced by Ryan Albert (Babehoven) and mixed by Melina Duterte (Jay Som), the song is both a window into the singular vision of the Californian artist and an embodiment of the collaborative spirit which brings their work to life. Bridge Gamble (bass), Ryan Albert (additional guitar), Lil Spakoski (synth/theremin), Oona Albertson (drums) and Maya Bon (additional vocals) all lend their talents, as too do a whole crew of directors, editors, camera crew and performers for the track’s accompanying, suitably commited, video filmed at the Padma Yoga Studio and Kilowatt Bar. Watch below:

‘Bonecollector’ is out now via Cherub Dream Records.

The post Weekly Listening: March 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“I’ve got too much on my plate / I’ve got too much in my brain,” sings Brighton‘s alx frncs on new single ‘i can’t do anything right’. The track is an attempt to process an extremely difficult period via an intimate, gentle sound. “I wrote ‘i can’t do anything right’ after coming out of a deep depression,” frncs describes. “Personal situations were beginning to change and it finally felt like I could process what had happened to me both physically and mentally during the second half of the pandemic.” What results is confessional in tone yet empathetic in nature, serving as both an expression of gratitude to those who helped keep frncs afloat during those intensely difficult months, as well as a comforting hand extended backwards through time as a gesture of self-love and understanding.

you may think i’m lazy
when i fail to wash up dishes daily
hardly got a grasp on life
when death is constant on my mind

Anna Erhard – Botanical Garden

“I read this Google review from a guy who complained about the bad parking situation in the middle of the Atlantic,” explains Swiss indie pop artist Anna Erhard of the inspiration behind her latest single ‘Botanical Garden’. “Eventually this person who is incredibly judgmental and won’t be pleased by anything, not even by the flowers in the Botanical Garden, came to life.” The result is as sardonic as you’d imagine, skewering a specific brand of impossible-to-please (most often) man that seems so prevalent. But it’s full of a strange joy too. Erhard’s deadpan delivery only heightens the song’s humour, and the chorus is as catchy as anything you will hear all year.

they would not allow us
to pick our favorite flowers
kids were singing happy birthday
too close to the highway

Brenna Bruce – Kite and the Line

Taken from her forthcoming debut EP Honest Bloom on Ghost Mountain Records, ‘Kite and The Line’ is the new single from Brenna Bruce. With help from Taylor Heath (piano), Keith Lowe (bass), Trevor Church (drums), Lane King (pedal steel), Chris Coleman (synth) and Abby Gunderson (strings), Bruce brings to life a serene sound shadowed by a certain mournfulness, evoking the way even the most tranquil environment is in some way made poignant by the latent promise of its own end. Such ideas are central to Honest Bloom, where every emotional state is but part of a larger cycle, and beauty can be found in the acceptance of life’s ephemeral nature.

Jon Campbell – Arrow

“Depression dog / lead me to where / I can thrive.” So sings Jon Campbell on ‘Arrow’, the latest single from forthcoming album Still Life With Motion Sickness. Set against a backdrop of sparse piano and ambience, the words sound like a gentle plea as voiced to an empty room. The US-born, Berlin-based artist’s croon murmured as though not to puncture the stillness of the moment. But as the track develops, the vocals grow in desperation or conviction and the sound follows suit. A gradual blossom around Campbell’s increasingly impassioned voice as he airs frustrations, summoning strength from some inner well so as to draw the fortitude to face down one’s demons.

depression, dog!
try seein’ things from my eyes
you wouldn’t dare to try
you wouldn’t have the balls

Still Life With Motion Sickness is out on the 22nd March and you can pre-order it now.

Laurel Bluffs – Block 4

Back in November we introduced  Phoenix, Arizona-based project Laurel Bluffs with single ‘Richmond’. The story of a hungover drive to the titular location where a “folk rock sound and unadorned delivery [lent] an intimacy to the track, where fondness and longing are present without spilling into sugary sentiment.” Latest single ‘Block 4’ follows the same formula, another narrative-based track which blurs the line between fondness and regret in its recollections, told with unerring detail yet never anything other than earnest in tone. Echoes of Andy Hull’s Right Away, Great Captain! are present in the tales of love and violence, and the manner these stories of vengeance and punishment are told with the ache of remove.

‘Block 4’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Nico Paulo – Learning My Ways

This time last year, Portuguese-Canadian songwriter Nico Paulo released her self-titled album on Forward Music Group, a release we described as “marked in its ability to broach weighty topics with a sense of lightness and grace, all tied together by a vocal style at once compassionate and unerring in its focus.” To celebrate the record’s first birthday, Paulo has returned with a brand new video for the single ‘Learning My Ways’, a sweet and impassioned love song that isn’t afraid to explore the less idyllic side to relationships. Featuring tour footage shot and edited by Sarah Kierstead, the film is the ideal commemoration of everything which goes into making an album a success, as well as the singular joy of taking that music to different people every evening.

Nico Paulo is out now via Forward Music Group and you can get it from Bandcamp page.

SUB*T – Unearthly

This June will see the release of Spring Skin, the fittingly titled new EP from Brooklyn alt-rockers SUB*T which sees duo Jade Alcantara and Grace Bennett step firmly into the next stage of their growth. Lead single ‘Unearthly’ hints at what this might sound like, taking the nineties-inspired fuzzy rock energy of debut So Green and adding a darker edge to create something full of brooding swagger. “‘Unearthly’ is a song that’s been in our arsenal for a while,” the band explain. “We chose this as the first single off the EP because the taste of it is a little moodier than the other music we’ve put out […] It feels like a dark fairytale journey, and intentionally leaning into an image like that was new for us when writing this song.” Check out the video directed by Alcantara and Bennett themselves below:

Spring Skin is out in June via If This Then Records and you can pre-order it now.

Tara Kannangara – Apartment

Last week saw the release of Extraordinary People, the new EP from Sri Lankan-Canadian songwriter and musician Tara Kannangara. The Juno Award-nominated artist has long won acclaim for her inventive combinations of genres, drawing on classical training and jazz sensibilities to push synth pop to new heights. Extraordinary People is no less ambitious in its sound, as lead single and opening track ‘Apartment’ attests. A song which embraces the thrill of an early relationship where everything is undecided and the possibilities are endless, packed full of tender details yet blown up to epic proportions in a manner sure to win over fans of early Mitski. But as the track progresses and its full cathartic heft reveals itself, such comparisons are rendered insufficient, failing to suggest the scope of styles which knit into the finished whole.

youbet – Nurture

Walking a tightrope between self-love and self-loathing, ‘Nurture’ is a new single from Way To Be, the upcoming album by Brooklyn’s youbet on Hardly Art. The track’s bittersweet mood is a fitting introduction to a record crafted in the aftermath of a period doubt and disillusionment, a spell broken by a chance encounter at Penn Station with Patti Smith. “She wished me luck,” Nick Llobet explains, “and said, ‘Practice hard, Nick.'” Heeding the advice, Llobet pushed ahead with the new record with a newfound energy, meeting any doubts with curiosity and playfulness instead of succumbing to them. So while tracks like ‘Nurture’ might sound bummed out on the surface, their very existence is a testament to the value of keeping on in spite of things.

Watch the video below animated by Sabrina Nichols:

Way To Be is out on the 10th May via Hardly Art and you can pre-order it now.

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Latest single ‘The Master’ continues this trend, a song of languid warmth punctuated with peaks of searching intensity as Nico Paulo looks to others for ways to cope and thrive in a world so full of turmoil. “‘The Master’ is largely about control and mastery over one’s own feelings,” as she explains. “It’s an inquisitive song more than anything else as it looks to understand how people around you live and feel.” What emerges plays out with a nuanced tone, the vocals possessing both wonder and frustration at the apparent ability of others to hold themselves together amid upheaval, but ultimately serving as a vow to work towards such a state of being. “This song doesn’t tell us which way is better,” as Paulo concludes, “it simply looks to encourage belief and change in ourselves, curiosity and intrigue in what’s to come, and the power of being honest.”

And how come you never get mad?
Put your feelings outside
How come you never get angry?
How come you never get sad?
Oh I believe I can master that
Oh I believe I can

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