Featuring Dora Noonan, Nat Cimino, Zara Roy and Noah Kelley, Queens-based indie rock outfit blankette combine the irreverence and mischief of twee music with something altogether more cathartic and raw. The result is an unapologetically singular sound able to communicate the full spectrum of emotions. New album doll puts this to good use, exploring knotty ideas of identity, depression and self-actualisation with a decidedly unguarded air, displaying courage in its vulnerability and embracing the communal power of a band. Single ‘after’ shows the kind of mood to expect, a song all about the misplaced suspicion that a simple change might fix your life. It starts out with something like hesitant hope and culminates in a something of an exorcism.

after i stop drinking i’ll feel better
after i stop overthinking i’ll feel better
after i start running i’ll feel better
after i make more money i’ll feel better
after i feel better i’ll feel better

Brimheim – My Collection

“Writing new music had felt like swimming in molasses for months until ‘My Collection’ arrived,” explains Danish songwriter Brimheim of her latest single, a track she considers something of a paradigm shift. “The jazzy direction was surprising to both me and Søren [Buhl Lassen]. It’s a musical tradition I haven’t explored before. Yet somehow, it immediately revealed itself as the most enchanting path we could take. It felt like receiving a gift from the universe.” Where her previous album RATKING sought clarity within the fraught, confusing experience of personal identity, ‘My Collection’ moves in a more ambiguous direction, swapping out the brightness and rhythm in favour of something more fictional and oblique. The story of a perhaps eccentric woman who collects objects discarded by others, valuing the hidden beauty within that which has been rejected, and guarding her prized possessions with an almost maternal instinct.

Watch the video directed by Stine Emil and produced by Monster Crotch below:

‘My Collection’ is out now via Tambourhinoceros and available from Bandcamp.

Caoilfhionn Rose – Horizon

“Some of the lyrics talk about becoming ‘lost inside your own imagination’ and how ‘dreams can seem so real’,” explains Manchester songwriter Caoilfhionn Rose of her fourth full-length, Draw Out Your World, coming early next year on Lost Map Records. “To me, this album is about building a life for yourself, stepping out of daydreams and carving out a path towards a happier future.” Made with husband and collaborator Rich Williams in the years of pregnancy and early parenthood, Draw Out Your World finds Rose working through a tumultuous period with both resilience and curiosity, resulting in a sound that is marked with compassion and always reaching for some brighter, calmer territory. Lead single ‘Horizon’ gives a flavour of what to expect, not least the impact of Danish duo Svaneborg Kardyb (Nikolaj Svaneborg and Jonas Kardyb) who lend their talents to the release and leaven the sound with their ethereal electronics. 

Hank Tree x Peter Broderick – You Can Thrive

Led by Fergus MacDonald (formerly of State Broadcasters), Glasgow‘s Hank Tree first caught our ears back in 2023 with album The Big North. “Hank Tree take folk sensibilities and elevate them into something truly atmospheric with a mixture of field recordings and distortion,” as we wrote, “but amid their invention and subversion of genre, Hank Tree hark back to folk’s best roots, positioning themselves in the long lineage of artists using the form to write about social history and labour movements.” Latest album Care 1 is every bit as thematically challenging and emotionally urgent, a record crafted around MacDonald’s experience working with people with profound learning difficulties and mental health problems. It delves into what it means to care and be cared for within a society which too often seems willing to disregard any semblance of responsibility. This time MacDonald is joined by Clarissa Cheong and Peter Broderick and together the trio conjure a sound that intimate, compassionate and subtly unflinching, as single ‘You Can Thrive’ suggests.

Karen y los Remedios – Mayahuel

Fronted by Mexico City-born, Guanajuato-raised artist and researcher Ana Karen G. Barajas and featuring Z.A.M.P.A. (Guillermo Berbeyer) on guitars and Mexico City producer Jiony (Jonathan Muriel), Karen y los Remedios is a shapeshifting project rooted in cumbia yet fluid and mysterious enough to bring its own mythologies to life. Latest album Bestiaria fulls like the most pure embodiment of the act to date, evoking a series of legendary women from across the world to celebrate femininity in all its desire, sorrow and power. Single ‘Mayahuel’ is a perfect example, “a hypnotic, low-tempo cumbia rebajada that dives into Mexica mythology,” as Barajas explains. “I was deeply moved by her story in the ancient codices—her escape to be with Quetzalcoatl, turning into maguey plants, and the sacred legend of the Four Hundred Rabbits.”

Watch the video directed by Barajas herself below:

Bestiaria is out now via ZZK Records and available from Bandcamp.

LAPêCHE – Parallel Park

“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’.” So we wrote of Brooklyn‘s LAPêCHE back in July, with single ‘Phantom of Cinder’ introducing the tone of their new album Autotelic on Tiny Engines. With singer and guitarist Krista Diem supported by with Dave Diem (bass), Drew DeMaio (guitar) and Colin Brooks (drums), the entire album channels a nineties sensibility without ever descending to cheap nostalgia, not least thanks to the committed, complex style in which they work. Take ‘Parallel Park’, a song about the end of a relationship which favours emotional honesty over poetic gesture, and thus recognising how any project, be it personal or artistic, relies on a kind of tenacious imperfection in order to move forwards.

Party Dozen – Full Powers

Australian duo Kirsty Tickle (saxophone, vocals) and Jonathan Boulet (drums, loops, production) have recorded under the Party Dozen moniker for near on a decade now, pushing an inventive style of psych rock which leans on improvision. But new Party Dozen album 21 Bum Salute, coming next month via City Slang, finds the band in their purest form, Tickle and Boulet dropping whatever pretenses which might have persisted in their work in order to fully embrace their idiosyncratic vision. Latest single ‘Full Powers’ indicates the raucous abandon of the result, not to mention the ambiguity of record which swings between swaggering confidence and something more volatile, almost dangerous. “There’s ‘Full Powers’ good and there’s ‘Full Powers’ bad,” they explain. “The good is when you’re personally becoming too powerful, an angel pisses on you, everything is going very well and suddenly you’re gliding down the street like King Swinging Dick. The bad is when one side has all the power and more is not enough. Powerlust, greedmongering, gluttonous fiends. This track switches between the two.”

Watch the video below, made with help from John-Henry Pajak and Jos Eastwood:

21 Bum Salute will be released via City Slang on the 6th November and you can pre-order it now.

Samjo – Franconia

Brooklyn born, Lille-based songwriter Sam Rueckert, AKA Samjo, works between folk, indie rock and punk to create songs at once emotive and energetic, as highlighted by 2025 album Barely Even Something. With a new extended edition of the album recently released, Samjo have returned with a video for single ‘Franconia’ to further the life of the record, and the track is the ideal introduction for those who missed the album the first time around. With a slow building and detailed style, the track is a lesson in slow burn, its determined indie rock chug slowly blooming outwards as cinematic strings widen the frame of the arrangement. The style is keyed into the thematic concerns too, the song moving from the doldrums of a particularly bad day towards some appreciation of the universality of misfortune, and in doing so emerging with compassion and solace.

Barely Even Something (Extended) is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Tough Old Bird – Tall Summer Clouds

Tough Old Bird continue their steady stream of new singles with ‘Tall Summer Clouds’. Following on from predecessor ‘Come Back, Come Back‘, a track we described as a poetic narrative that’s at once brooding and compassionate and little world weary too,” the new song again delves into a bittersweet headspace, specifically the strange blend of joy and sorrow which accompanies the passing of time. Written in the weeks before lead Nick Corrigan welcomed his first child into the world, there’s a tension between new beginnings and the inevitable loss which will follow, Tough Old Bird confronting mortality and deciding that life lies not in grand gestures but small moments. Perhaps the humbles snatches of calm are the best life can get.

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

In January, Chayse Porter will release his third album Endless / Boundless, what label Earth Libraries describe as “nine new musical excavations and epiphanies the Birmingham-based songwriter dug up from life’s bedrock and polished to a shine in his basement lair.” ‘Flowers in Chains’ is the final single before the record’s release and is the perfect introduction. On the surface it’s sweet and jangly, all warm breeze and syrupy sunlight, but this is a song of contrast and juxtaposition. Porter describes the lyrics as “jutting barbs left for someone clueless to their own cruelty,” and close inspection sees the sweetness sour and the breeze leave goosebumps on your skin.

Do you ever get the feeling
That you’re not so kind of a person
Do you ever stop to think
That your words, they hurt
You’re so sweet, sweet like dirt

Hank Tree – Sweet Saltpeter

With Fergus MacDonald (formerly of State Broadcasters) joined by Roy Shearer (Ultras, Inspector Tapehead) and Bart Owl (Eagleowl, Broken Chanter), Glasgow‘s Hank Tree take folk sensibilities and elevate them into something truly atmospheric with a mixture of field recordings and distortion. But amid their invention and subversion of genre, Hank Tree hark back to folk’s best roots, positioning themselves in the long lineage of artists using the form to write about social history and labour movements. Album The Big North is out now, and latest single ‘Sweet Saltpeter’ is the perfect entry point, capturing the individual experience within an industrial setting, where a worker is as replaceable as any other part of the machine. The track comes with a video by filmmaker Felipe Bustos Sierra, who saw clear links between the record and his documentary Nae Pasaran, and the result is a both moving and visually striking development of the presiding themes.

The Big North is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Islands – Headlines

Earlier this year, Montreal indie rock/pop stalwarts Islands released And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs, their latest full-length which further developed their idiosyncratic vision and infectious energy. They’ve now released a new video for the single ‘Headlines’ directed by Vali Chandrasekaran, who is perhaps better known as a TV comedy writer for the likes of 30 Rock and Modern Family. A short film which centres on an artist trying to achieve the apotheosis desired by all musicians—the transformation from fallible flesh and blood to mythical rock star deity.

And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Lizzie No – Annie Oakley

Next January, New York‘s Lizzie No is releasing their latest full-length album, Halfsies, via Thirty Tigers / Miss Freedomland. The record follows on from the likes of Hard Won, as No braids the personal and the political into something unique. Latest single ‘Annie Oakley’ is a perfect example. A road song which embraces the affirming experience of moving through a landscape while refusing to succumb to the romantic side of the genre. ““Most of the great songwriters in the Americana genre have darkly determined road songs featuring dirty motels, gas station coffee, the exhilaration of seeing America’s plains rushing toward them from behind a car windshield as if on a roller coaster designed by Willa Cather,” No explains. “Behind the scenery are some difficult questions, like ‘why have I chosen to do this with my life?’ and ‘will I ever be one of the greats?’”

Watch the video directed by Cole Nielsen and Mary Glen Fredrick below:

Halfsies will be released on 19th January. Order it now from the Lizzie No Bandcamp page.

Meiwei – Stare at the Sun

The project of singer-songwriter Michelle Mouw, Meiwei specialises in fingerpicked guitar, stirring arrangements and emotive lyrics. Mouw was born and raised in Beijing, moving to the US aged eighteen, and her music is an effort to explore the disparate parts of her life, identity and the wider world. It contrasts the USA and China, the past and the present, and the bustle of the city and the calm of nature. The new Meiwei record, On This Trail Till I’m Home, is the culmination of all this exploration, full of themes both deeply personal and welcomingly universal. Single ‘Stare at the Sun’ is a case in point, what Mouw calls an “indie-folk queer anthem” which builds from earnest guitar strums into a rich arrangement that marbles wistfulness and hope, strength and vulnerability.

Other Vessels – Empty Afternoon

Other Vessels is an Austin indie folk outfit led by singer-songwriter Miranda Haney. Back in the Spring, the band got together to record the debut Other Vessels EP, Empty Afternoon, a collection of songs Haney describes as “intimate portraits of the partnerships – romantic, platonic, and familial – that shape (and save) our lives.” The title track is our first glimpse of how this might sound, a warm and serene folk pop song that Haney says is about “letting someone love you even though you feel like absolute dog shit.” “You’re coming over in 25 minutes, don’t trust my judgment when I’m so deep in it,” she sings, “Pulling a razor over my knees shaving my armpits to prove that I’m happy and clean.”

Pari Eskandari – Chador

‘Chador’ is a new single from Iranian-German artist Pari Eskandari, offered in memory of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian killed in custody in Tehran in 2022. It is a statement of defiance sent to those who would use violence in the name of so-called morality. Released via Tricky’s False Idols label, the song is dark and dramatic and full of ominous power. It comes complete with a video directed by Nikolas Meyberg which depicts a female ritual designed, as Eskandari explains, “to elevate the women from the ordinary to the sublime.” An expression of solidarity conducted through music and dance “for the women in Iran who risk their lives every day.”

‘Chador’ is out now via False Idols and available from Bandcamp.

Shady Baby – All Too Late

Life has been a bit of a rollercoaster for Brighton‘s Shady Baby since we last featured them. Bursting onto the scene after a single gig, they signed with tastemaker label Nice Swan Records and were played on BBC Radio 1. But a series of interruptions, including the departure of their lead guitarist and the cost of living crisis, slowed this momentum and things have been quiet since. That is, until now, as Shady Baby are back with a brand new single, ‘All Too Late’, a fittingly rousing and cathartic ode to fresh starts. “‘All Too Late’ is a song about looking to the future and wanting to feel in control of your own life,” describes lead Sam Leaver. “It was written as a piece of advice to myself to not be stuck in the past, to take charge of my own life and to know I have the power to change it.”

‘All Too Late’ is out now via streaming services.

Symbol Soup – Husky Dawgs

Sad Club Records label-mates Symbol Soup and Kitty Fitz have teamed up to write a Christmas song, ‘Husky Dawgs’. A warm and cosy slice of charming indie pop, it’s a song about seeing old friends when returning home for Christmas, complete with two fictional huskies named after Duster and Shuggie Otis. It’s jingly, jangly and perfect for a warm room on a cold festive evening. And you never know, could catapult the band to Christmas royalties stardom. As Symbol Soup’s Michael Rae puts it: “every family friend or person you meet at a wedding will tell you that the way to make money is to have one Christmas hit.”

‘Husky Dawgs’ is streaming everywhere now.

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