The style offers the listener a more active role than most records, Bessel not so much showing the soundscape he created as inviting us to chart our own path through it. “An effort to conjure a sense of place which goes beyond traditional world-building,” as we continued, “working to not merely create something new but evoke the sense of revealing something which has always been present, waiting for someone with the patience and attention to bring them to light.” What results is an album crafted in the lineage of William Basinski and The Caretaker, where the borders between landscape, memory and fiction blur into an encompassing whole.

The album is now a month away from release via Lore City Music, and Eric Angelo Bessel has shared brand new single ‘Book of Astrology’. With the cryptic connotations of its esoteric title held aloft, the song is a perfect example of duality’s at the heart of the project. A sound brought to life with ambient textures that might be primal or futuristic, and one which utilises the tension between the withheld and the apparent to keep the audience engaged. Illusion of an Inland Ocean is a record that’s as capable of enveloping a listener as it is demanding their attention, and promises to be the most mysterious and thrilling release of Bessel’s career to date.

Illusion of an Inland Ocean will be released on the 30th October via Lore City Music and you can pre-order it now.

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A clerestory being a high wall set with windows, often in a church, which serves to imbue a space with light and fresh air. This image which embodies the sound of the release, as though the path Reidy established on Ghost/Spirit has merely continued onto a new canvas, angling upwards towards the light. Of course, with light comes shadow, and no-one familiar with Reidy’s work would expect anything other than a sound full of the weight of contradiction. But the overarching sense is a record on the edge of transcendence, one foot on earth, the other stepping towards something altogether more spiritual.

After sharing a single edit of ‘Shadow Symmetric’, a composition recorded with the renowned JACK Quartet, Jules Reidy has now returned with ‘Clerestory Windows V’. A solo work on hex electric guitar that’s described as a “refraction” of a segment of the larger work, the cut is crafted from Euclidean sequencing and pitch-shifted guitar tones to again create a sound full of dualism—be that between shadow and light or detail and space. As if to highlight this feature, ‘Clerestory Windows V’ “ends with the simplest and most reduced iteration of the piece,” as Reidy explains, “and trails off into two oscillating sine tones: the piece’s fundamental and its shadow.” Take a listen below:

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Back in 2022, Texas-based songwriter and DIY stalwart Brody Price released Win A Trip To Palm Springs, what we described as “an authentic engagement with the difficult side of life” which nevertheless “refus[ed] to succumb to maudlin yearning or fatalistic cynicism, instead working with enough patience and curiosity to allow the full spectrum of emotions to coexist.” Now Price is set to return with brand new record Leaf Miner’s Daughter, to be released via Gar Hole Records this autumn, and single and album opener ‘Breathing Again’ suggests he is once more prepared to wrestle with hope and despair in his distinctive alt-country style. The subject matter could hardly be darker, dealing with the real-life instance when Price and his wife tried to help two victims of a shooting outside their home in Fort Worth (one of which died while they administered CPR), and again the song’s mission seems to be an attempt to fight off complete doom despite its constant assault. How does one go on living in a country (or indeed entire world) which seems to be collapsing? What hope can be scavenged within the ruins of this disaster? Brody Price might not have the answers, but he’s out there trying to help all the same.

Leaf Miner’s Daughter will be released on the 9th October via Gar Hole Records and you can pre-order it now.

Charlotte Greve – Own Lap

“Considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings [with a] bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, [which] flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last.” So we wrote of ‘Membranes’, the lead track from Charlotte Greve‘s new album WATERBODIES, forthcoming via New Amsterdam. The German-born, Brooklyn-based composer, singer and saxophonist has now shared latest track ‘Own Lap’, the clearest indication yet of both the record’s playful invention and the scale of the intentions which underpin it. Dedicated to her late grandmother and two friends who have moved through adversity, “strong people,” as Greve describes, “who had the ability and strength to keep their head up and keep going,” the song is an eleven-minute epic brought to life with full orchestral grandeur which nevertheless never loses sight of the personal amid the sweeping majesty. Or rather, it is a song which locates the majesty within the personal experience of the everyday.

Jason Calhoun – Enjoy Losing

Last month we introduced revelations of divine love, the new full-length album from Jason Calhoun coming soon via Dear Life Records. It’s the latest offering from “an artist on a mission, or else just asking questions,” as we put it, “someone in perpetual search for something elusive, be it mere solace or transcendence”. The release could be seen as a kind of metacommentary on this quest, coming to understand how the revelations of its title will not arrive as a grand epiphany but in the accumulated experience gleaned from day to day. Latest single ‘Enjoy Losing’ is an embodiment of this spirit, delving into the piecemeal nature of anything artistic or spiritual, as well as the patience required as a result. “[The] title comes from playing chess.com on my phone,” as Calhoun explains:

Going in I decided I wouldn’t learn how to win through theory, but instead through trial and error. I really had to learn to enjoy the game even when I was losing. You can call it poetics if you’re so inclined but that losing process feels tied to my musical and spiritual practice. I’ve learned to be patient with the way my music takes form just as I have tried to learn to welcome difficulty with open arms. The textural piece finds me with a contact mic and a rosary in hand, a representation of my ever-present search for divine love.”

Kate Prascher – They Will Fall Down

After singles ‘Jubilee‘ and ‘Thousand a Million‘, Tennessee-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter Kate Prascher continues to prepare for the release her new album Sunday Afternoon with latest single ‘They Will Fall Down’. A “collision of the vintage and contemporary is typical of [her] work,” we wrote of her music previously, “Prascher finding fertile ground in the ambiguous space between things, be it mystery and clarity or the old and the new,” and the new song is no exception. A lush and wistful reflection on the end of the world, the track plays as something of a homespun waltz, managing to evoke both the gravity of impending conclusions while retaining a sense of sincerity and fondness too.

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – What’s Going On?

From ballads about Norm MacDonald to satirical covers of viral conservative country hits, the work of Ithaca, New York-based songwriter Matthew Squires is as surprising as it is inventive. His new project with Zach Totta of Sunk Coast is by no means an exception. Our first taste of new EP Easy Answers To Harder Questions, single ‘Wing Song’ showed how quirk is not mutually exclusive to emotion (“with vocals that rival Daniel Johnston in their ability to echo Kermit the Frog,” we wrote, “the song is classic Matthew Squires, proving that genuinely compassionate music need not leave playfulness or strangeness at the door”), something which latest number ‘What’s Going On?’ really hammers home. With a zany yet caustic personality which would make Thomas Pynchon proud, the song paints a picture of the contemporary US in all of its bizarre idiosyncrasies. But for all of its cartoonish colour and wit, the tone remains locked in a kind of reflective melancholy, as though beneath the dazzling surfaces lies a fundamental emptiness which the modern day has no way to fill.

Max Bien Kahn – Neighbours

San Francisco-born, New Orleans-based songwriter Max Bien Kahn is preparing to release his fifth solo album Baby Green this autumn, a record which looks to capture the full spectrum of life in all its bittersweet nuance. The large and the small sit side by side, bereavement next to dancing in bars, favourite shirts alongside fatherhood, as MBK collapses the line between the significant and insignificant to evoke the very fabric of existence and all its messy threads. The result is tender, often joyous and occasionally heartbreaking, songs which treat life as a privilege no matter what any one day might throw at you. Take latest single ‘Neighbours’, which manages to mine the ostensibly mundane experience of nodding hello to a familiar face in the neighbourhood for all of its uplifting delight, and all without a trace of irony, even if the repeated assertion “I’m not afraid of strangers” suggests something telling about the contemporary moment.

You see that guy down the street
He lives right around the corner
He’s such a friendly neighbor
We’re gonna say hello

He’s taking out the trash now
Rolling the cans to the curb
I’m not afraid to stop and say hello
To all my neighbors

Baby Green will be released on the 23rd October and you can pre-order it now.

Old Man of the Woods – Venus in Virgo

Earlier this year, Miranda Elliott’s Old Man of the Woods released album Cape Perpetua, an album of songs which “employ a certain minimalism, especially in their beginnings, though as a means rather than an end,” as we wrote in our review, “As though by stripping down the present into an ascetic simplicity, Old Man of the Woods is able to push through into another world entirely.” Now Elliott has returned with new single ‘Venus in Virgo’, what the Seattle-based artist describes as “a spell for self preservation” which bends towards post-punk with taut, angular tones and punchy rhythms. But above this newly propulsive groundwork remain the ethereal tones of the project, Elliott’s vocals swirling and slurring with what could be sensual suggestion or sardonic bite.

Protomartyr – Sounds We Cannot Hear

“Another eighty-one dead since dawn / Spiders crawling ‘cross the ceiling / Next door there’s voices moaning / Can’t tell if they’re coming or going.” So sings Joe Casey in the opening lines of Protomartyr’s new single ‘Sounds We Cannot Hear’, the first taste of the Detroit outfit’s seventh studio album, Hotel Usona. Charged with horror and laced with sly humour, the song introduces an album which promises to confront the contemporary American moment in all its pathetic neuroses and heinous excesses, Protomartyr evolving their sound with the addition of horns, tubular bells, xylophone and more, yet retaining the intensity which has long marked them as the real deal amid a crowd of post-punk pretenders. Just consider the needling dread of the opening segment, or indeed Casey’s repeated refrain at the close, a chorus which starts like something of a defeated elegy and rises in sheer desperation. Is there any agency left in a society which engineers gross inequality at home and mass slaughter abroad? If this track is anything to go by, we’re left with two meagre options. We can bury our heads in technological distraction and try to pretend it isn’t happening, or, like poet Hart Crane who is referenced in the second verse, choose to dive headfirst from the ship into the oblivion below.  Watch the video directed by Danny Scharar and Harris Mayersohn, and starring comedian/actor Nate Varrone, below:

Hotel Usona will be released on the 25th September via Domino and you can pre-order it now.

Shredded Sun – Cruel Streak

“Their sound pulls ingredients from all corners of the indie rock pantry, resulting in something that feels both reassuringly familiar and freshly unpredictable.” That’s how we described Chicago‘s Shredded Sun back in June, as jangly-yet-gritty single ‘Skyscrapper’ introduced new full-length Never Odd or Even, coming soon via Repeating Cloud. With the release of the album now just over a week away, Shredded Sun have returned with brand new track, ‘Cruel Streak’. As the title might suggest, this number shows a more raucous dimension to the Shredded Sun sound, though again the swagger and attitude are cut with a certain nostalgic tone too, as though within the boisterous momentum lies a wistful longing for something more.

waltzerr – ciggy b

Later this month, Seattle-based indie rock outfit waltzerr will release new full-length Tomorrow Will Be Better via nonprofit label Share It Music. Originating as the solo project of vocalist and songwriter Emily Waltzer, waltzerr has now grown into a trio with the addition of Anthony Coraggio (bass) and Schuyler Jensen (guitar), and has made a mark in the local music scene with a mix of high energy and unguarded emotion. This combination forms the heart of the new album, Waltzer and co. finding room for both confessional quiet and full-blown catharsis, as demonstrated by vivid lead single, ‘ciggy b’. For while the track might be reflective in tone, looking back on a past relationship and what might have been, the sound itself has its eyes firmly on the horizon, galloping forward with considerable momentum and heft. Who says nostalgia can’t pack a real punch?

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Make no mistake, WATERBODIES is far from a solo endeavour. Charlotte Greve enlisted Shahzad Ismaily to produce the record, as well as a vast ensemble of collaborators (including KHORIKOS and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra) to bring the sound to life. This diversity matches the record’s spirit as outlined above, allowing Greve the space and plasticity to eschew the usual expectations around stylistic consistency in order to accomplish her vision. “With WATERBODIES, I hope to invite the audience to experience the music as if walking through a film,” says Charlotte Greve. “Contrasting scenes unfold one after another, yet remain connected by a common thread.”

With the release set for early this autumn, Greve has shared new single ‘Membranes’. The song considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings. The bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last. “‘Membranes’ is a song about the challenge of carrying several hearts in one breast and wanting to feed them all,” as she continues. “As a kid, I lived like a chameleon, changing my clothing, language and behavior, depending on who I was spending time with and where. The older I grew, the bigger the wish to combine all the different shapes and forms, both in my character as well as in my music. Let them all live alongside each other—the picture of the semi permeable membrane captured this desirable way of living for me.”

Photo by Annika Nagel

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“Recorded in his own home on a 1920s Martin guitar using a Nagra tape recorder, the song evokes Jimmie Rodgers or the earliest Dylan. Ostensibly little more than a minimalist instrumental sketch, the song nevertheless carries its own narrative weight, proceeding with the reflective, slightly mournful tone of a humble life lived by routine.” So we wrote of Cameron Knowler‘s ‘Placer Camp Blues (Nagra Demo)’ back in May, a track which built upon previous album CRK with real lo-fi charm. Continuing this series of demos, Knowler has now shared ‘El Centro’, another song recorded to Tascam which swaps his familiar acoustic sound for an electric guitar, painting a sparse yet evocative picture of Californian desert life in all its rugged, sun-bleached and almost esoteric personality.

‘El Centro (Cassette Demo) is out now via Castle Dome Records and available from Bandcamp.

JP Harris – Say Darling Say

JP Harris might have been embedded within country music for a decade and a half, releasing records and touring across the states and beyond, but he still feels he sits a slight angle compared to the rest of the scene. An outsider artist in the classic sense, pursuing his own singular, idiosyncratic sound which draws upon everything from old school blue collar musicians to punk rock attitude and the daring of the avant garde. New album Shaving a Dead Man, forthcoming this autumn via Bloodshot Records, collects a series of traditional songs shone through this prism, resting on the classic cornerstones of banjo and fiddle yet emerging sounding fresh and new. Listen to opener and lead single ‘Say Darling Say’ now:

Shaving A Dead Man will be released on the 23rd October via Bloodshot Records and you can pre-order it now.

Kate Prascher – Thousand A Million

“Embodies both the atmosphere and emotional clarity of the release,” we wrote of ‘Jubilee’, the lead single from Kate Prascher‘s upcoming full-length Sunday Afternoon, back in June. “The sound with one foot in the past but always looking forward, allowing memories and hopes for the future to sit side by side.” This collision of the vintage and contemporary is typical of the Memphis-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter’s work, Prascher finding fertile ground in the ambiguous space between things, be it mystery and clarity or the old and the new. Something again evident on new track ‘Thousand A Million’. A richly warm number rooted in the landscape of the present, the song nevertheless casts an eye back towards those who lived and worked in that very same space back through the generations. “I wrote it with my ancestors in mind and with a feeling of wide, open plains,” as Prascher explains to Glide Magazine.

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

Leilani Patao – what

If you’ve been following the work of Hawaiian-American musician and songwriter Leilani Patao in recent months, you’ll know their music can pack an emotional punch, though often chooses to eschew the usual bombast or melodrama for something more joyful. Released in anticipation of a new deluxe edition of their EP daisy, recent single ‘kiddy scissors‘ typified the style with its celebration of queer love, and though latest track ‘what’ concerns very different subject matter, that sense of heart and control again shines through. “I wrote this song a few years ago when I felt my most frozen,” Patao explains of a track about the helplessness so many of us feel in the face of the contemporary political moment. “I felt really powerless and I felt terrified of what could happen if I started putting these stances into my songs.” But, in true Patao fashion, courage eventually wins out, not least because it becomes clear selfish concern can no longer be enough. “I can’t just protect what I’ve got anymore because it’s being taken away from me anyways. I can’t lay low; I can’t be quiet.”

lonalih – Have You Heard

Selected Short Stories, the new EP from Hamburg folk artist lonalih on new basement, is a release which lives up to its name. Built upon a bed of guitar, piano and strings, and resting on Lina Lohmann’s light yet emotive vocal style, each of the five tracks present their own narrative snapshot of a specific moment. The pieces favour texture and sensation over explicit detail, yet transport the listener all the same. “The songs remind of clear early morning light or an after-hour private choir practice,” as the label puts it. “Words inspired by human bond, girlhood and the motif of true name.” The result is five vignettes painted in the same soft tones as the album’s artwork. Airy, evocative and bright.

Melissa Weikart – Crash

Existing beween the poles of experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop, the work of French-American songwriter Melissa Weikart has long known how to enchant an audience. A sound that welcomes the listener in with an expert sense of control, yet nevertheless constantly surprises, finding a line between craft and spontaneity which proves a fitting vehicle for exploring emotions in all their strange peculiarities and universal pull. Latest single ‘Crash’ is the ideal starting point for the uninitiated, what Weikart herself has described on social media as “a love song to friends near and far, the people with whom we traverse the mundane, the extraordinary, and all the messiness in between.” Lush, immersive and slightly warped at the edges, a world to step inside which always seems ready to shift beneath your feet. Watch the video directed by Pierre Petit, with the help of Filip Rzedzicki, below:

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

Scout Gillett – Gonna Change

Scout Gillett was born in Missouri, cut her teeth in Brooklyn and now finds herself in LA, a fact which seems to inform her second full-length Tough Touch. Released back in March via Slouch Records, the album presents a sense of unfolding momentum, pitching the listener into the ongoing journey of its creator and the heady of mix of experiences which result, making for a sound that’s not afraid to show uncertainy or fragility but always holds an assured confidence too. As though in keeping in motion, Gillett intentionally confronts difficulty and thus enables a sense of constant growth. The fittingly titled single ‘Gonna Change’ is a good place to start, possessing both the vulnerability and soulful swagger that is present across the record, as well as a hard won wisdom that quits fighting against the current of change and instead goes with the flow.

Its always gonna change
Nothing stays the same

Tough Touch is out now via Slouch Records and available from Bandcamp.

Sweetbreads – Ben

Following on from January single ‘Punisher of Love’, which we described as “an exploration of [the] contemporary rat race, delving into the weight of expectations and self-sabotage which results,” Melody Stolpp’s Sweetbreads is back with a brand new track ‘Ben’. Displaying both the storytelling and sincerity which has become a staple of the project, the song is decidedly bittersweet, yearning for the titular character with equal parts bright fondness and melancholic longing. “It’s my one and only unrequited love song,” as Stolpp explains. “Looking back, it feels like a sweet little time capsule for a very rough year. Now I see it as a tribute to my younger self and to all the naive hearts who find themselves in complicated situationships.”

Ben / Satisfy is out now and available from the usual places.

wAHb – Still

wAHb is the self-described “Post Americana” project of Laramie, Wyoming-based songwriter and musician Caleb Bristol and various collaborators. Originally intended as a vehicle for an exploratory, noise-based style of music which drew on sounds from everyday life, wAHb has gradually evolved towards a more considered brand of folk, though the spirit of the earlier era remains in the atmospheric layering of samples fleshing out the arrangements. As latest album Whiteman shows, the result might be born in the country western tradition, but is quick to separate itself from its forebears, losing all the nostalgia and kitsch romance of the genre in favour of something altogether more raw. Take opener ‘Still’, playing as if it has been dug up from someplace deep out on the Wyoming plateau, or else picked up on a lonely radio, its wavelength unknown. A transmission of which Molina himself would be proud, restrained in tone yet weighed by the ache of a lifetime of small heartbreaks.

Whitmer Thomas – Candy Corn

If you’ve spent some time in front of a screen large or small in recent years, chances are you’ve come across Whitmer Thomas, be it in hit films such as Weapons and Friendship, shows like Big Mouth or his own HBO comedy special. But aside from being an actor and comedian, Thomas is also a musician. He has put out a couple of joyously tongue-in-cheek releases which possesses his comic spirit while preserving a sense of earnestness, never descending into parody. Nowhere is this clearer than on ‘Candy Corn’, Thomas’s brand new single and first with the good folks at Fire Talk. A playful but sincere depiction of youth in all its chaos and vulnerability, wrapped in the latent wistfulness present within any act of retrospection. The song comes complete with a suitably zany video, including guest appearances from Joe Pera and Cameron Christopher:

‘Candy Corn’ is out now via Fire Talk and available from Bandcamp.

Winter – hollow (mixtape version)

We last wrote about Brazil-born, New York-based songwriter Samira Winter, AKA Winter, last summer with the release of full-length Adult Romantix via Winspear. “A record concerned with all the pain and potential within a major move in life,” as we described, “evolving the shoegaze/dream pop styles introduced on 2022 debut Some Kind Of Blue with everything from Elliott Smith-esque acoustic emotion to the concision and texture of Rather Ripped-era Sonic Youth.” With a new project on the horizon, Winter has returned with ‘hollow (mixtape version)’, a reimagining of the closing track from Adult Romantix which hints at the future direction of the outfit. Because while the original offered a cloudy, ethereal four minutes, enveloping the listener in its hazy shimmer, the mixtape version is charged with an entirely different energy. A song succinct and bound by forward motion, clocking in at almost half the length of its twin sister yet no less atmospheric for it.

Watch the video directed by Sophie Hur below:

‘hollow (mixtape version)’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

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Seattle‘s Corespondents have been together for over two decades now, honing and evolving an idiosyncratic, endlessly inventive sound that blends post-rock, psych and surf sensibilities. With little interest in playing the game demanded by the music industry (the in-joke that is the apparently misspelled band name is just the start of it), the outfit have intsead ploughed their own furrow, embracing a playful humour and uncategorisable style even if it condemns them to something of a cult, underground act. New album Exploding House, coming soon via Antiquated Future Records, does not betray any of these ideals, though might nevertheless just break Corespondents into the wider consciousness. Because, as single ‘Queen Nut’ shows, this is a release from a band at the height of their powers. An album clearly full of craft, vision and daring, but one which wears its ambition lightly. Corespondents are not here to bamboozle the listener into appreciation, but beckon with a laidback, oddball charm.

Erik Hall – Strumming Music (Charlemagne Palestine)

We’ve shared a couple of tracks from Erik Hall‘s Solo Three in recent months, the third and final part of a sequence of albums on which the Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist reimagines contemporary classical pieces within his own minimalist vision. After ‘Music for a Large Ensemble‘ by Steve Reich and ‘A Folk Study‘ by Laura Spiegel, Hall has now shared a final single to celebrate the album’s release via Western Vinyl. ‘Strumming Music’ softens the idiosyncratic intensity of Charlemagne Palestine’s original without losing its spirit, blurring the edges into something meditative and enveloping.

Jackie West – Course of Action

Silent Century, the new album from Jackie West coming this February on Ruination Records, plays as something of a covnversation. A dialogue most personal, held between the West the artist and West herself, but also something wider. A polyphony featuring an untold number of perspectives which exists in defiance of years of gendered silencing, elevating the voices of those too often unheard to emerge as a kind of portrait of the feminine experience. Latest single ‘Course of Action’ embodies both the curiosity and ferocity which makes such a project possible. West not only fills the enforced gaps within the collective voice, but points to its enduring power. A warm tangle of guitars form the track’s texture, though it is driven forward by a kraut-adjacent beat, and together with the reharmonised chord which emerges in the back half, the sound gives the impression of something perpetual. As though Jackie West has not created a discrete song but tapped into something ever-present and without end.

June Swoon – Denver

“June Swoon is a true outlaw” explains the bio of the cult LA-based songwriter, an apt description for someone who fled the confines of a fundamentalist sect as a teen, escaping into the Southwestern desert and moonlighting as a touring musician while steadily building her own catalogue of work. After two self-produced albums, new EP Big Truck offers the new chapter of this burgeoning career, embracing the circumstances of its creation and channelling the sensation of being on the run, fighting the desire to look over your shoulder at everything you’ve left behind. Opening track ‘Denver’ is the ideal introduction to the spirit of the release, a track of equal parts wistful emotion and windows-down attitude which embraces it classic country roots unapologetically while also carving out a space for itself within the contemporary alt-country movement too.

Sluice – Beadie

Formed by lead Justin Morris after becoming discouraged pursuing indie rock in New York, North Carolina‘s Sluice have made a name with a pair of celebrated albums, most recently 2023’s Radial Gate which we described as “follow[ing] the project name and doubles down on the imagery of water.” As we continued: “whether Morris is skimming along the surface or submerging himself in plunge pools, the lasting sense is that of control. For if life is a flowing river, Radial Gate represents an attempt to apply structures along its course so that we might more fully engage with the power and potential to be found therein.” Now Sluice are back with new album Companion on Mtn Laurel Recording Co., solidifying into a four piece with with Morris joined by Oliver Child-Lanning (bass, various other instruments), Avery Sullivan (drums) and Libby Rodenbough (fiddle). Lead single and album opener ‘Beadie’ sets the tone, a song about love and self-care which treats such subjects with an almost spiritual air, while still possessing an earnest, unguarded personability.

Watch the video filmed by Avery Sullivan & Charlie Boss and edited by Sullivan & Libby Rodenbough below:

Companion will be released on the 27th March via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Taroug – 1995

The solo project of German–Tunisian drummer and electronic music producer Tarek Zarroug, Taroug blends digital and organic sounds to create conceptual soundscapes able to evoke the full richness of personal history. Named after the Chott El Djerid, a vast salt lake in southern Tunisia, latest album Chott is the perfect example of the style, blending a nostalgic, melancholic minimalism with moments of bright intensity. As single ‘1995’ highlights, Zarroug weaves personal features into these arrangements to further ground the themes of identity and memory. A song which reflects on his early childhood in Tunisia that is able to capture both the intimacy of fond experience and the expansive landscape within which it took place.

Van Chamberlain – Running Through the World

We’ve featured two singles from Van Chamberlain‘s new full-length As Far As the Eye Can See in recent months, the New York outfit scheduling the album as a waterfall release with a new song unveiled each month. First came ‘Miracle Drug‘, a track we called “decidedly bittersweet in nature, a nascent crush brought to life in all of its longing and shimmering potential. Where the line between melancholy and possibility is porous and the world itself feels new.” Then the more ruminative ‘Solutions‘, what we described as “a song delivered from the mire of the present, dreaming of a fresh start that’s not yet quite in reach and all the more alluring for it.” Now Van Chamberlain have returned with ‘Running Through the World’, and again the sense of possibility imbued with the sound is tangible. What the band call “an anthem of nonconformity” which chooses to pursue love and optimism regardless of how intent the world seems to be on erasing such things.

Where’s Beth – White Ants

Back in December we featured ‘Overtime Waltz‘, a single from Sarabeth Weszely’s Where’s Beth we described as “a festive offering that uses the pressures of the period to highlight chronic struggles and loneliness.” It turns out the single was the first from forthcoming new Where’s Beth album Ache Is A Cricket In The Night, and now Weszely has returned with opening track ‘White Ants’ to further introduce the release. Released in 2024, predecessor Bone Bone offered “a picture of domesticity in the weeks and days around marriage,” we wrote in our review, a sincere album which nevertheless still found “room for the peculiar and idiosyncratic details too.” The new album builds upon this style and expands its focus, drawing on apparently mundane moments from every day life to chart the universal experiences of love, grief and longing.

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Hot on the heels of acclaimed full-length Animal Poem, a record which earned its place among our favourites of 2025, Portland, Oregon-based songwriter Anna Tivel is returning with collection of b-sides from the same recording period to further expand the world and themes of the album. “The EP will not be released until next spring, though lead single ‘Swan Song’ shows the new tracks are just as evocative and finely crafted as their sisters on the main album,” we wrote in our preview. A song which “pairs a relaxed rhythm and poignant tone with something urgent beneath the surface, a loneliness hurried by the violent pressing of time.” Ahead of its release, Tivel has now ‘Memphis’, another track loaded with equal parts tender emotion and shining intensity, its characteristically nuanced narrative painting life as something so bright it hurts. “I started writing ‘Memphis’ on an airplane after meeting an electric-eyed ex-convict heading to an evangelical gathering in Tennessee,” Tivel explains. “He was magnetic, ecstatic, possibly manic, and so in love with life. He got me thinking about the things we reach for when reality is too painful to accept.”

This Lonesome Paradise – Changelings

“A meditation on the American Dream with all its brutality, broken promises and betrayals.” That’s how we described This Lonesome Paradise‘s 2024 album Luna Nocturna, an almost McCarthy-esque picture of the West in all of its stark and haunted weight. Now E. Ray Béchard and co. are back with Death Motels, a brand new record on Bad Vibes Good Friends which looks to further this aesthetic, positioning the project as one working slightly outside of time with a sound that conjures a mythic past while always facing forwards. Take single ‘Changelings’ and its accompanying video, a brooding, Lynchian number as dark as the night itself, playing like some black mass out in the desert, looking to communicate with some other place or time.

Death Motels will be released on the 12th March via Bad Vibes Good Friends and you can pre-order it now.

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys – Damp

With the release of new album Pale Bloom fast approaching via Unique Records, Berlin-based outfit Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys have unveiled latest single ‘Damp’. “Like most of what I write, it’s about a desire for depth and connection,” Kruger writes of the track. “A kind of quiet mocking of the mundane and domestic. The first verse reflects that polite culture of not saying what you mean, of being too afraid to ask for what you need in case you seem too much, or expose the mess of falling apart. There’s a wanting, though—to give in, give up, or simply to give.” This sense of wanting is made palpable across the song, both in terms of the simmering, taut urgency of the sound and the longing loaded into Kruger’s vocals, and the result is equal parts uneasy and mournful. The sad discomfort of revealing a deep part of oneself without knowing if anyone is even looking.

Watch the video below, created by long-time collaborators DTAN (Berlin) and Gaussian Studios (Amsterdam):

Pale Bloom will be released on the 13th February via Unique Records and you can pre-order it now.

MacGregor Burns – The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Released to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the original, MacGregor Burns has unveiled his own reverent version of Gordon Lightfoot’s classic ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’. An impromptu endeavour recorded in a single take, the song sees Burns stick close to Lightfoot’s process, eschewing embellishment or ostentation to keep the focus on the voice. Not an exercise of reinterpretation but devotion. An attempt to channel the spirit of the original and bring it forward fifty years, something which extends right down to the artwork itself.

‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Otracami – Please

We last featured Otracami back in 2023 with the release of touching the stove coil, an album which saw Camila Ortiz confront the past in all of its minutiae with equal parts foreboding and longing. “A strange mixture of pain and pleasure,” marked the record, as we described. “Approaching something which will almost certainly hurt, yet glows alluringly all the same.” Such tension between conflicting states continues on Otracami’s new full-length Runoff , set for via Figure & Ground this spring, as highlighted by lead single ‘Please’. The track uses samples and field recordings to add layers of depth to a full band arrangement, a style which speaks to the album’s concerns with the dynamic between restraint and release. “I was trying out leaving for the first time—people and jobs and situations with family,” Ortiz describes of the period in which the album was written. “It was real trial and error—sometimes that really worked and felt liberating and other times I had to turn around and go back. It was a period of big experimentation.”

The Pretty Flowers – Came Back Kicking

This spring will see the release of Never Felt Bitter, a brand new full-length from The Pretty Flowers, and the LA indie rockers have never sounded so urgent. Written within a city (and wider country) shaken by turmoil, be it the unprecedented wildfires or equally tinderbox political moment, the quartet found themselves driven by the surrounding atmosphere, the anxiety and chaos of their surroundings seeping into the tracks themselves. “There’s a sense of urgency, fear, and confusion in these songs,” explains drummer Sean Johnson. “Like each one might be the last song we write, or this might be the last album. If anything, it’s the most present we’ve ever been.” Lead single ‘Came Back Kicking’ introduces the style, embracing an almost Japandroids-esque momentum to not only burn through the upheaval but offer enough affirming energy to suggest we might be able to stand up to the things which want to drag us down.

We went walking under black skies
We wore out the terrain
It may have taken billions of years
But it had to happen sometime

And you can take it apart or you can blow it up
Either way don’t let it eat you up
Sucked you in to get a better look
And you came back kicking

Richard Walters – Rafts

Created as part of an artist residency for the Solent Seascape Project and the Blue Marine Foundation, Songs From the Solent is a new album from songwriter Richard Walters. The eight-song release incorporates field recordings from the local area, voices from Solent communities (sea swimmers, artists, visitors and more) and contributions from a stellar list of collaborators including Isle of Wight native Jeremy Irons to flesh out its folk sound. The result is something fundamentally rooted in place. Indeed linocut artist Angela Harding has made a bespoke illustrated map of the Solent, highlighting the locations which inspired each track, which will appear on the Solent Seascape Project website. Exploring the decline of migratory birds and featuring samples from Hayling Island nature reserve, lead single ‘Rafts’ shows just how evocative and uplifting this style proves to be.

Watch the video filmed and edited by Matt Jarvis below:

Songs From the Solent is out now and available from the Richard Walters Bandcamp page.

Robber Robber – The Sound It Made

Back in November, we wrote about ‘Talkback’, the fist single from Robber Robber since they signed with Fire Talk. “A song which doubles down on the spontaneous, impulsive style of the previous record,” as we put it, “[Nina] Cates’s vocals spiralling over the wiry rhythm like the contents of a racing mind blown up and projected onto a wall.” Now the Burlington, Vermont outfit has unveiled new album Two Wheels Move the Soul, and have shared opener ‘The Sound It Made’ to further introduce the sound. The record has roots in turmoil, born in a period after a landlord called for the longtime home of Cates and drummer Zack James to be demolished, and sets out to map the experience of living in a world beholden to the whims of the cruel and greedy. As you might expect, the result is chaotic, foreboding and often abrasive, and ‘The Sound It Made’ throws the listener right in from the off. “All systems go again / Will it ever stop?” Cates asks at one point, her delivery carrying the deadpan cool of someone who knows the ways of the world all too well. “Don’t know / Don’t think so / Don’t know what we’ll do if not.”

Watch the video below, by director Wes Sterrs, producer Emilie Silvestri and director of photography Jeff Griecci:

Two Wheels Move the Soul will be released on the 3rd April via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

Sister Wanzala – Don’t Be Good To Me

Following on from ‘Now You’re Mine‘ and ‘Winter Dominos‘, ‘Don’t Be Good to Me’ is the third and final part of a loose trilogy of singles from London’s Sister Wanzala. And it might just be the most surprising track from the project to date, the outfit having made a name with a wry, tongue-in-cheek humour now turning their attention to that most terrifying of things: earnestness. Which isn’t to say the self-deprecation of previous releases has evaporated. The song explores the mystifying sensation of another person extending their kindness towards you, despite all the evidence you have collected to prove you could never deserve such a thing. Yet despite the subject matter, the song proceeds with a sensual swagger, proving that no matter how many times love might make a fool of you, there’s no harm in trying to look cool.

Snake Orange Cake – Vision

Snake Orange Cake, the new project of Åland-born, Berlin-based artist Julia Carlsson builds upon the electronics of previous project leoblu with spoken-word poetry and a newfound narrative focus. After singles ‘Hair‘ and ‘Animals‘ (a track “embedded within a nocturnal, slightly unreal space,” we wrote of the latter, “[dissolving] any distinction between the organic and the digital, as well as the line between waking reality and dreams”), Carlsson has returned with new single ‘Vision’. A self-described “hypnotic ritual in sound” which functions something like an incantation or mantra, the vocals repeating a series of mystical images as though hoping to conjure some mystical effect. The pulsing beat only furthers the mesmeric vibe, leading the listener into a space somehow adjacent from every day reality.

Watch the video by Maren Frey below:

‘Vision’ is out now via the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.

Special Friend – Breakfast

Consisting of Erica Ashleson (drums, vocals) and Guillaume Siracusa (guitar, vocals), Franco-American duo Special Friend, have been making minimalist, lo-fi indie pop since their formation in 2018, releasing an EP and two albums in the process. Now the Paris-based outfit is back with Clipping, a brand new full-length with Howlin’ Banana which finds the Special Friend sound as rich as it has ever been. Drawing on folk, slowcore and krautrock influences, it opts for a newfound layer of attention and polish to the mixing. Single ‘Breakfast’ gives a taste of what is to come, an infectious track on our eroding attention spans which stays true to the band’s lo-fi origins with a delightful camcorder video.

Clipping will be released via Howlin Banana Records on the 20th March and you can pre-order it now.

Sweetbreads – Punisher of Love

“The perfect antidote to the breakneck bluster of the world we call home,” was how we described Out of Range by Sweetbreads back in 2022, an EP which followed its protagonist on her “quest to resist the thankless treadmill of modern living, opting for an unproductive and entirely more positive way of life.” The latest Sweetbreads release sees lead Melody Stolpp continue their exploration of this contemporary rat race, delving into the weight of expectations and self-sabotage which results. Pushing these ideas of further, comedian Clare O’Kane directed a video to accompany the track, casting fellow comedian Nick Naney as a humanoid rat pursuing Stolpp and her partner through the streets of New York. “We wanted to externalize that feeling of being chased by your own worst impulses,” as Stolpp explains. “What better way to do that than with a literal rat man running through Brooklyn?” Watch below:

‘Punisher of Love’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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Fast forward a couple of years and Mary Ocher is set to return with Weimar, a brand new full-length that promises to be every bit as ambitious and politically resonant as its predecessor. As the title suggests, the album has roots in the early twentieth century, both in terms of the minimalist sensibilities and the overarching themes, but it is impossible to think of the intra-war period of the 1900s without hearing ominous echoes of the present day. Opener and lead single ‘The Dance’ introduces the spare, poignant chamber pop aesthetic which marks the record, as well as the combination of melancholy and anxiety which emerges as a result. The sense of things teetering on the edge of darkness, where encroaching violence carries with it not only fear and dread but a kind of anticipatory loss. A mournful dirge for that which is slipping through our fingers.

Watch the video below, filmed by Tanno Pippi and Francisco Quezada at Medienwerkstatt Kulturwerk Bethanien, Berlin, edited by Francisco Quezada and directed by Mary Ocher herself:

Weimar will be released on the 13th March via Underground Institute and you can pre-order it from the Mary Ocher Bandcamp page.

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Now Carlsson has returned with ‘Animals’, a new single to pull us further into the world of Snake Orange Cake. Embedded within a nocturnal, slightly unreal space, the track possesses an almost Suicide-esque atmosphere. One conjured through shimmering synths and layers of gauzy texture and featuring both spoken vocals and breathy yelps. The results dissolves any distinction between the organic and the digital, as well as the line between waking reality and dreams.

Because for all of the otherworldly strangeness of the soundscape and the transcendent mood it carries, you sense the effect is achieved not through pushing away from physical existence but rather towards it. Subverting the mundane experience of being alive by embracing the inherent strangeness within the natural world which surrounds us. A fitting impression to leave for a song inspired, as Carlsson reveals, by a “mystical connection with a wild iguana on a Costa Rican beach.”

Watch the video shot by Manuel Jesus in Berlin below:

‘Animals’ is out now and available from the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.

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After single ‘good morning, harrison, it’s time to go‘ introduced the transportive nature of this style, Okkyung Lee has returned with brand new track, ‘let’s walk down to the swamp together’. A song “inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories I was obsessed with in elementary school,” as Lee explains. Or, more specifically, her own unique experience of those stories as created via the conditions in which she encountered and interpreted them. “I read them in Korean translation, where the word 늪 (swamp) was used for “marshes”—though 습지 (wetland) would’ve been more accurate, she continues:

The only swamps I knew back then were the tropical ones with alligators, which didn’t seem to match the eerie English landscapes described in the stories. That slight mistranslation gave the setting a more exotic atmosphere. Since there were no swamps in Korea—and no internet, duh—I remember trying so hard to imagine what this specific “swamp” might actually look and feel like. In the end, I decided it must be a place hauntingly beautiful, mysterious, and tinged with danger. So, the title became an invitation: to walk together into the unknown—and into my childhood memories at the same time.

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