With the album’s release fast approaching, Hit Bargain have returned with new single and album opener, ‘Immaculate Vaxxer’. Another frenetic and foreboding track which barrels headlong towards the paranoid core of contemporary society. “A skittish, escitalopram-fueled snapshot of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” is how the label describes the record, and the single welcomes the listener into this mindset. Where the perpetual grind of physical suffering meets a kind of fervid spirituality. As though faced with such a surplus of feeling and pain, the mind has no choice but to rail against the confines of the body in search of a way out.

The song also comes complete with a video designed and animated by Chris Mulligan:

A DOG A DEER A SEAL is out on the 10th November via Get Better Records and you can pre-order it from the Hit Bargain Bandcamp page.

Photo by Matt Allen

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Having made a name as the lead of indie rock icons Cymbals Eat Guitars, D’Agostino turned to Empty Country as something of a new beginning. Joined by Rachel Browne (Field Mouse), CEG drummer Charlotte Anne Dole and her twin brother Pat, the project is far from a strictly a solo endeavour, and retains the sense of experimentation and inventiveness that has long marked D’Agostino’s work. Following on from the cassette/book Basilisk, which came out earlier this year, November sees the release of the latest Empty Country full-length album. Titled, succinctly, Empty Country II.

A joint release between Get Better Records and Tough Love Records, the album feels like the culmination of D’Agostino’s work across both projects. The autobiographical immediacy of Cymbals Eat Guitars meets the fictional style of Empty Country, each track a short story aiming to evoke the strange, idiosyncratic milieu of contemporary America with both honesty and empathy. There’s a character who sends “letters and Violent Femmes” to John Hinckley, a Calvinist bogeyman, a whole host of strange visions and uninhabitable landscapes and the oddballs who wander across them. If not the actual US, then the apocalyptic fever dream of its addled mind.

If ‘David’ sees D’Agostino himself step into this semi-fictional world, then the mailer-daemon comes to take on a different shape. A literal malevolent being, just another hellion working to make life a misery within this fallen world. The single is essentially the next rung down in the hierarchy of communication. Face-to-face is no longer possible, the illusion of cyberspace now removed. So all that remains is art, be it as a plea or a tribute, or indeed an old-fashioned lament, as D’Agostino cites “Elegy,” the short poem by W.S. Merwin, as a key influence:

Elegy

Who would I show it to

I finally wrote this song for you
But I don’t know who I’d show it to
I’m scared to die
I’m not scared of death
Put on your records
It feels like forever
Self-portrait at 33

Check out the video by Andrew Futral below:

Empty Country II is out on the 3rd November via Get Better Records (US) / Tough Love Records (UK) and you can pre-order it now, including a version bundled with the recent Basilisk release.

Photography and layout by Rachel Browne

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Seattle’s 129,600, the recording project of Jade Tcimpidis, is preparing to release their debut album Granular Convection with Ghost Mountain Records. Described as exploring the “limits of tradition in the consumer era,” the album sees Kalen Walther (bass), Kirsten Ourada (drums) and Neil Welch (baritone saxophone) join Tcimpidis to conjure a sound which straddles dustbowl folk and art pop invention, all while reaching towards psych and jazz. Lead single ‘Techi’ highlights this singular style, where all manner of details spin from a taut rhythm, making for a twitchy, volatile mood. Tcimpidis’s vocals are equally frantic, and coupled with the sax evokes the paranoid vibe of Coppola’s The Conversation, with all its schemes and surveillance.

‘Techi’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Casters – Memory

Casters is the recording project of Andrew Strader and a rotating cast of supporting musicians, based in Brooklyn via Nashville and Knoxville. With EP Walk on Home coming soon via Like You Mean It Records, Strader has shared single ‘Memory’ to give an indication of what to expect from the release. This time featuring Neil MacLean (Home Visions, Griffin Moyer) on keys/synths and Connor James (Pat & The Pissers) on drums, the track draws on Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again to explore the impossibility of returning to a place you’ve left behind. All cast in a dreamy drift that marbles fondness and regret into sound so rich you could suspend yourself within it.

Chris Chism – On The Run

Focusing on the working class experience and following a lineage through Dylan and van Zandt, Richmond, Indiana’s Chris Chism delves into the personal to emerge with a more universal picture of life’s joys and struggles. New EP Things Has Changed develops this style, and single ‘On The Run’ is the perfect place to jump in. A semi-autobiographical portrait of a young person beaten down by life—loosing those close to them, experiencing brushes with the law, and generally searching for reasons to continue on amid a slew of misfortune—though one captured with the patience and empathy only hindsight can bring.

 Hit Bargain – Degree Decree

Featuring members who are/have been parts of acts like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Beach Fossils and Cold Beat, Hit Bargain is a LA-based project led by Nora Singh which aims to stare the worst excesses of our society square in the eye. It is of no surprise then that new album A DOG A DEER A SEAL is charged by equal parts manic fervour and anxious frenzy, playing like the fevered delirium of a country’s dying mind. Single ‘Degree Decree’ might clock in at barely two minutes but portrays this mood in all of its maniacal panic, where the technological hubris of consumerism encroaches on our world as a synthetic blight.

Check out the video directed by Katharine Antoun below (though those with photosensitive epilepsy should note there are flashing images):

A DOG A DEER A SEAL is out on the 10th November via Get Better Records and you can pre-order it now.

June Rosewell – a solid state

Nashville songwriter June Rosewell recently released a new EP, the dog bit at such an angle. It’s a collection of songs in which frustration and tenderness coexist and hope refuses to ever quite evaporate. Take single ‘a solid state’, a track about moving home which sees Rosewell’s intimate croon relays scenes with an everyday poetry. “In the morning we were packing up our boxes,” the opening lines play, “and our friends / Brushed our backbones with their warm thumbs while they sent us off again.” Later the song reveals the significance of the EP’s title (“The dog bit at such an angle where I thought I’d need a stitch”), and endeavours to show the invisible bonds that persist even as all that is familiar is upended.

Sitting quietly in a pair in the back seat of mother’s car
While she hummed along to songs she chose to deaden worry’s roar
We’re moving states, we’re moving states
A solid state, a solid state

the dog bit at such an angle is out now and available from the usual places.

Kendl Winter – Humming Mantra

Beginning as a way to both explore the clawhammer banjo and share this process with fans and peers, Kendl Winter’s forthcoming album Banjo Mantras originated in a daily practice of improvisation. “The banjo mantras started off as morning writings, like morning pages but in musical form,” she explains. “Daily pen to paper, fingers to strings, listening, feeling, sliding and thumbing my way around my open back banjo.” But the more Winter committed to the concept, the more she became attached to the ideas which emerged, and eventually decided to expand the resulting mantras into fleshed out soundscapes. First single ‘Humming Mantra’ channels the Pacific Northwest’s verdant summertime, full of small details and a sense of invigorating clarity.

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

leoblu – dirty windows

“It’s unclear if the events [portrayed] are autobiographical or fiction,” we wrote of leoblu‘s ‘cake‘ back in January, “but the emotions are so keenly felt that whether these things actually happened seems almost besides the point.” The project of Åland-based songwriter Julia Carlsson, leoblu complicates the divide between truth and fiction in order to locate a deeper emotional honesty, weaving a layered and controlled sound that has been described as ‘dark pop’. Latest single ‘dirty windows’ pushes further into this style, taking the titular image to explore the cycles of stasis and rejuvenation that come with depression. Again the sound is beguilingly understated, growing subtly across its length as though slowly thawing from a deep freeze.

Watch the video shot and edited by Jonathan Carlsson below:

‘dirty windows’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Mali Velasquez – Shove

Next month Mali Velasquez is releasing full-length I’m Green on Acrophase Records. An album, as we described in a preview of single ‘Bobby‘, which explores “how our relationships with ourselves can be so conflicted and uneasy, and the way in which this is governed by our experiences with those around us.” Homing in on a specific relationship with a sound somewhere between vulnerable and visceral, latest single ‘Shove’ delves into the way our actions can be detrimental within such experiences no matter how pure the motivation. “I wrote this song in an attempt to explain the feeling of seeing myself doing the wrong things in the perfect moment,” as Velasquez puts it.

I’m Green is out on the 13th October via Acrophase Records.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Conductors

Next month sees the return of Canadian indie stalwarts The Rural Alberta Advantage with their brand new full-length The Rise & The Fall on Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek. Though, despite their experience, latest single ‘Conductors’ explores how the process of writing songs gets no easier no matter how many records you have under your belt. “There is so much I love about being in a band. But one of its most fundamental aspects causes me more mental anguish than anything else, and that’s actually writing songs,” as Nils Edenloff explains. “When I’m able to tune out the doubting voice in my head and get it done, there’s no greater feeling. But often the devil wins and it’s easier to just run away.” This time it took drummer Paul Banwatt’s threat to use AI generated lyrics for Edenloff to shake off the doubt, and the video by Good Job Hi Five channels Adam Curtis to foreground the sense of human creativity struggled against the encroachment of systems and machines.

Why, why do I run?
From the work and the words before it’s done
Sometimes I’m always waiting on what will never come
Before it’s done, now every thought weighs a ton
Taking it on the chin for a while
Taking it like a champ for a while

The Rise & The Fall is out on the 6th October via Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek and you can pre-order it now.

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Arena Rock Appetizer, the new EP from LA‘s Bridey (coming this summer on Anxiety Blanket Records), is a release which explores the sensation of “coming out of a fog.” “Sometimes it’s tough for me to see the light from whatever tunnel I’m in at the time,” she explains. But the EP fuses heartfelt emotion and upbeat energy, not only acting as a reminder of the promising glow somewhere down the line, but moreover having fun while doing so. Lead single ‘Her’ channels such a spirit, written after travelling to stay with her sister and newborn niece after a downer spell, finding some healing magic within the act of caring for other people. “It was intense and tiring and so cool,” Bridey explains. “I even bought a book about becoming a doula, but I never finished it. Maybe one day.”

dani mack – Nothing Better

We first wrote about Texas-born songwriter dani mack back in 2022 with the release of ‘someday‘, a track we described as displaying “a careful balance between strength and vulnerability,” where the “bright and disarmingly straightforward sound star[ed] the past straight in the eye and refus[ed] to blink.” Mack is now preparing to release her debut EP on Future Gods, and latest track ‘Nothing Better’ offers another assured and introspective glimpse into the personal. Though this time the slow-burning build carries with it a certain wry humour too, facing up to the chronic habit of overthinking. “What a lovely idea / letting go of things / that we have absolutely no control of,” she sings with a calm remove, “but I think I’m going to pass / and just drive myself mad / completely fucking mad.”

‘Nothing Better’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Juan Wauters – Modus Operandi

This summer, Uruguayan songwriter Juan Wauters is releasing his new album Wandering Rebel on Captured Tracks. Whether he be in Latin America, travelling north to collaborate with the likes of Mac DeMarco and Homeshake, or on the endless road of the tour, Wauters leads a nomadic existence—the titular wandering rebel manifest. Latest single ‘Modus Operandi’ captures some of the restless energy that marks his career. Wauters invites Frankie Cosmos into the fray for an earnest back-and-forth on place and movement, and reasons why people might leave and stay put in any one location.

See, it might be just my opinion
But it’s happened time and time again
That when it gets rough out here
People that have options go back to their suburbs
To them it was just like some kind of Disney World
Some kind of commodity
Dust them off a little bit
And see their real M.O.
Their modus operandi
Modus operandi

Watch Fatos Marishta’s video below as Wauters and Cosmos try to locate one another between NYC and Montevideo:

Wandering Rebel is out on the 2nd June via Captured Tracks and you can pre-order it now.

paper bee – I Don’t Talk To You

paper bee, the indie rock project led by Nick Berger, haven’t released a proper record since their 2015 debut Now I Know You and See How Wide You Are to the World, a split release with Loone. When the pandemic hit, Berger and a new lineup of bandmembers (including Maryn Jones of All Dogs/Yowler and Radiator Hospital‘s Sam Cook-Parrott) quarantined together in a cabin in rural Pennsylvania and recorded a brand new album, Thaw, Freeze, Thaw, which will be released by Get Better Records later this spring. Berger, who took his first shot of testosterone two days after wrapping up recording, describes the record as ” the last documentation of my old singing voice which I loved a lot […] a story about love and harm between traumatized trans people.”

Ryan Bourne – 100 Years

With new LP Plant City coming later this spring, Calgary‘s Ryan Bourne has unveiled latest single ‘100 Years’ to introduce another dimension of the album’s diverse sound. Because though the record spans glam rock, garage pop and baroque styles, the single highlights the psych folk spirit central to its sound. An idiosyncratic mood achieved via a woozy amalgamation of synths as well as samples of warped bird calls and the crackle of dried plants, resulting in a sound submerged in reflection. “The lyric came from a golden hour walk overlooking a neighborhood I’d lived and loved (and lost) in,” Bourne explains, “the kind of birds eye view of the landscape lending a beautiful sense of futility to the memory as it rose.” Watch the video by Rebecca Reid and Bourne himself below:

Plant City is out on the 5th May and you can pre-order it now.

Selah Broderick – I Am

Having been born into a strict Catholic family only to be freed by the countercultural turn of the sixties and seventies, Selah Broderick followed a love of music and art around the country, though ultimately put her own aspirations on hold when falling pregnant with her children. Fast forward a number of decades and Pegdoll Records are releasing Moon In The Monastery, a collection of songs by Selah Broderick ranging from the late seventies to the contemporary moment, as collected by her son Peter Broderick and featuring music from him and his sister Heather Woods Broderick. Single ‘I Am’ hints at the richness and depth of the work, with Peter’s neo-classical backdrop supporting Selah’s poetic spoken word inspired by her deep interest in non-Western spirituality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6AdLPVJAYc&ab_channel=PegdollRecords

Moon In The Monastery is out on the 9th June via Pegdoll and you can pre-order it now.

Speedy Ortiz – Scabs

Their first new music in five years, ‘Scabs’ is the latest single from indie rock cult heroes Speedy Ortiz, released via Wax Nine, the Carpark Records imprint record label and poetry journal run by lead Sadie Dupuis. What Dupuis describes as a song “about self-designated ethicists who don’t quibble about crossing a picket line for individual benefit,” ‘Scabs’ is a both wryly humorous and downright furious attack on those whose activism starts and ends with empty words and public gestures. “Born-to-scab solipsists are boogying for big commission,” as the opening goes. “Yes in your backyard you take handshake squeezes to extremes. Nihilistic greeting to a flytrap hungry for a fist. Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk.”

‘Scabs’ is out now via Wax Nine Records and is available from the Speedy Ortiz Bandcamp page.

Sun Kin x Guppy – I’m in the Band

Described as a “cross-collaboration” between Kabir Kumar’s LA post-pop project Sun Kin and punk band GUPPY (with whom Kumar plays lead guitar), ‘I’m in the Band’ is something of a meta-single. A song about writing songs, and all the ickiness which comes with such a revealing experience. The music was written in collaboration with Miguel Gallego (aka Miserable chillers) and Guppy frontperson J Lebow helped with the lyrics, which they says are about “how expressing yourself through music can be a vulnerable and embarrassing affair, but worth it for the self-esteem it can give, and the relief of pressure it provides for the people who love us.”

Your Heart Breaks – Snow Dusted Ponies

Led by musician, artist and filmmaker Clyde Petersen, Your Heart Breaks is a project based in a Bellingham “townie dream house” which gave artists the space to experiment outside of pressures and expectations. Released via Kill Rock Stars, new album The Wrack Line feels like the culmination of years of friendships and memories, as typified by the line-up which brought it to life. With a band consisting of Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson (of LAKE) and Katherine Paul (Black Belt Eagle Scout), as well as a stellar line-up of guest stars including the likes of Kimya Dawson, Christine Fellows, John K. Samson, R.Ring and Nana Grizol‘s Theo Hilton, the album is a sonic manifestation of something larger. Single ‘Snow Dusted Ponies’ gives an indication of the tone, with Fellows and Samson backing Petersen’s vocals in their affirming sincerity.

The Wrack Line is out via Kill Rock Stars on the 7th July and you can pre-order it now.

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Fresh are back with brand new single on Specialist Subject, though this time the inspiration comes from a far more contemporary source. Because ‘Morgan & Joanne’ is based on a viral story of a blind date gone right. “I wrote ‘Morgan & Joanne’ because I was so struck by the charm of Morgan and Joanne and how they turned what had the potential to be a really typical first date into an adventure,” explains lead Kathryn Woods. “The song is about the magic of meeting someone who you really fancy for the first time and kind of escaping into a different realm with them.”

With a rattling rhythm and Woods’s impassioned delivery, the song’s intensity is very much familiar, though the tone and subject matter shows a different side to Fresh. One concentrated more fully on the positive side of things. But this sense of fun carries its own weight too, subverting traditional narratives to develop a truer picture of the queer experience. “I think popular media and historical narratives tend to make queer relationships tragic instead of focusing on all the joy and possibilities that they hold,” Woods continues, “so I wanted to put a song out there that’s sweet and funny and empowering to counter that a little bit.”

Things didn’t go quite as planned
Morgan & Joanne
If I believed that love existed
I think I’d see it in your faces

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MUNYA – Benjamin

“I don’t really understand how I make music,” says Josie Boivin, who records under the moniker MUNYA. “I feel like it’s coming from another world.” The sentiment feels apt for the Montreal-based songwriter, her vivid and crystalline style drawing from synth pop and psychedelica to form a languid, dream-laden sound. After three EPs in 2018, Boivin is back with the debut self-titled MUNYA full-length, and single ‘Benjamin’ sets the tone for the release.

With a natural elegance and bilingual lyrics, the track explores how prior experiences can get in the way of present events with an intuitive feel, past heartbreak undermining the possibility of new love. However, MUNYA takes this with a light spirit, acknowledging the ubiquity of such vulnerabilities and in doing so relinquishing the neuroses that can develop around them, clearing the way for new relationships.

Control Top – Chain Reaction

Philadelphia-based trio Control Top are set to release their record, Covert Contracts, next month on Get Better Records. “With a covert contract, the trick is that the agreement is only known by the person who makes it,” explains vocalist and bassist Ali Carter of the record’s title. “The other person is oblivious. Consent is impossible. A void of communication opens up a world of misunderstanding.” Hence Control Top’s scathing style of post-punk that looks to shine a light on the insidious systems that have a hold on society, all in the hope of rekindling some sense of autonomy with patriarchal capitalism, as made clear by single ‘Chain Reaction’.

Ricochet downward spiral
One more word and it goes viral
Light the wick, pull the trigger
What started small is getting bigger

I’m looking for an open door
But all I see is a broken mirror

la loye – to live underwater

Based in the Netherlands, la loye is an indie folk outfit built around the songwriting of Lieke Heusinkveld. With a hushed tone and restrained style, the sound belies the fact that there are six members in the band, though close listening reveals the depth and detail that constitutes their delicate soundscapes, as gauzy and intimate as a spider’s web and catching Heusinkveld’s warm, whispered vocals for all to see. Latest single ‘to live underwater’ is the perfect example, formed with craft and care, the subtle emotion emerging slowly but with great conviction.

Spectator – Waves

The recording project of Megan Rooney and Jeffrey Albert from St. Louis, Spectator is a collaboration in the most fundamental sense. Both were writing songs before they met, though once together these ideas interacted and merged, leading to hybrid songs that were neither Rooney’s nor Albert’s—they were Spectator’s. Ahead of a new album Charlie, Baby on Nordic Records, Spectator have put out a brand new single, ‘Waves’. The song gives an insight into the evocative and richly emotional style of the duo, Albert’s vocals bringing to mind the compassionate grandeur of Frederick Squire and bringing to life a song that finds hope in even the darkest of places.

Charlie, Baby will be released on Nordic Records and you can pre-order it now.

The Exbats – 2027

A father/daughter duo from Bisbee, Arizona, The Exbats make a brand of frenetic punk that they describe as “more troublegum than bubblegum.” Earlier this year, they put out an album, E is 4 Exbats, on Burger Records which collected their favourites songs from previous tapes in a full-length release. Single ‘2027’ gives a good idea as to what to expect from the band, racing into life with feverish drums before Inez McLain’s vocals enter with a tangible attitude, confident and fierce and taking no shit from no one.

minihorse – Drink You Dry

After lending his talents to a variety of Michigan bands over the past few years, Ypsilanti’s Ben Collins started his own band, minihorse, with a debut EP released in 2016. Their forthcoming record, Living Room Art, will be the band’s debut full length, and guest stars a number of familiar faces including Fred Thomas, Kelly Moran and Anna Burch.

The latter appears on lead single, ‘Drink You Dry’, a thundering introduction to the minihorse sound that tempers into gentle lulls periodically. Collins’ vocals lend the whole thing a soaring quality, the heavy cloud of guitars not blotting out the lyrics but holding them aloft.

Tyler Burkhart – Waiting For You

Tyler Burkhart is a DIY artist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who operates in the classic bedroom pop territory of melancholic nostalgia. After releasing a full-length album back in 2018, Burkhart is back with a brand new single with Berlin label, Feel Flows Records. ‘Waiting For You’ is trademark Tyler Burkhart, with a intimate, almost vulnerable sound, his words emerging with such earnestness that they sound like secrets told in confidence.

‘Waiting For You’ is out now on Feel Flows Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Sharkmuffin – Serpentina

Consisting of Tarra Thiessen (guitar/vocals), Natalie Kirch (bass/vocals) and Jordyn Blakely (drums/vocals), Sharkmuffin makes a raucous brand of indie rock that straddles both the artistic and anthemic poles of the genre. After the success of the previous album, the trio are back with a brand new EP, Gamma Gardening, out via Exploding in Sound Records.

The release is a concept album centred on “a space dominatrix named Serpentina that takes a job as receptionist [and] has an affair with a genetic engineer scientist who she codes a designer baby with that can withstand crazy atmospheric pressure, breathe underwater and never age.” As ever which such schemes, things don’t go to plan, with “The Atomic Gardening Society” getting wind of the situation and stealing the baby, causing Serpentina to hang herself with a belt. So… just your average dystopian EP with a narrative arc that would be at home in Ancient Greece.

Trevor Stott – Halfway in the Night

Trevor Stott is a songwriter from St. George, Utah, who makes a stirring brand of country rock that blends existential concerns with cathartic energy. The title track of his debut album, ‘Halfway in the Night’ is a great place to start for those wishing to grow acquainted with Stott’s music, his gravelly vocals offering an organic emotion as the instrumentation pushes an insistent sense of motion. Stott’s voice is prone to stretching and almost breaking, the feeling so keen as to appear almost desperate, and the result is a sound that sweeps you up within its earnest course.

Walking Bicycles – Fat Cat

Chicago post-punk outfit Walking Bicycles have been on hiatus ever since releasing To Him That Wills The Way back in 2014, an album which told the story of guitarist Julius Moriarty’s three-year spell in prison. This year is going to change that, with the band’s fifth record, Chooch, coming this spring via Highwheel Records. If lead single ‘Fat Cat’ is anything to go by, the time away has done nothing to quell Walking Bicycles’ cynical and boisterous attitude, the break only providing more time to stew in the mess of inequality and greed that marks our time. Hence this song, a cutting and caustic middle finger to the men pulling the strings.

Downhaul – Wires / Enough

Richmond’s Downhaul craft a lyrical brand of emo that balances intelligent songwriting with the sincere, pensive style of the genre in a way that fans of The Hotelier no doubt appreciate. Their album Before You Fall Asleep is set for release on Refresh Records at the end of the month, and lead single ‘Wires / Enough’ does more than enough to whet the appetite. Taking the alienating process of growing up with an honest vulnerability, the song probes the psychic cost of becoming yourself in a society fraught with expectations and preconceptions.

Gold Connections – Like a Shadow

Gold Connections is the recording project of Will Marsh of Charlottesville, Virginia. Marsh was a school friend of Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo, and the latter helped record and produce the self-titled debut Gold Connections EP which came out last year on Fat Possum Records. This was followed by the full-length album Popular Fiction on EggHunt Records, and this year sees Marsh unveil Like a Shadow, another EP on EggHunt that continues his guitar-driven, brooding sound that is very much of our time. “Like A Shadow,” Marsh explains, “and especially its single of the same name, is about the struggle to move forward into a world that seems both infinitely precarious and abundant.”

Well you know I see them waves rising
Don’t say I never said nothing
Just I’d rather be a dead man
Than love like a shadow

Like a Shadow is out via EggHunt Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Witching Waves – Eye 2 Eye

London’s Witching Waves have a reputation for ferocious energy and an uncompromising post-punk aesthetic, as displayed on 2016’s Crystal Cafe. The band are now back with a new record, Persistence, on Specialist Subject Records, and as the title suggests the album is committed to “continuing in spite of difficulty,” as displayed by its urgent and assertive sound.

Lead single ‘Eye 2 Eye’ shows off Witching Wave’s distinctively frenetic style, drummer Emma Wigham providing the lead vocals with backing from guitarist Mark Jasper, leading to a shout-a-long chorus that rises above the angular instrumentation. The album was recorded directly to tape without over-dubs, and the unprocessed energy is the band’s greatest strength—possessing a bite that cannot be reproduced by any amount of technical wizardry.

Black Belt Eagle Scout – Indians Never Die

We have been big fans Black Belt Eagle Scout, the project of Portland’s Katherine Paul, since we first heard their latest album, Mother of My Children, back in 2017. Since then, The Black Belt Eagle Scout stock has risen immeasurably, re-releasing the album on Saddle Creek last year. They recently released a video for ‘Indians Never Die’, a song we previously described as “about the strength and persistence of indigenous peoples, their power and will in the face of oppression and attempted annihilation, not just of themselves but of the entire planet.” Directed by queer Diné filmmaker Evan James Atwood, the video was shot on the ancestral lands of the Chinook, Chinnuk Wawa, and Tillamook tribes and provides a beautiful backdrop to a powerful song.

Mother of My Children is out now and you can get it from the Black Belt Eagle Scout Bandcamp page.

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