Recording under the moniker Bernardo, vocalist, guitarist and producer Sonia Bernardo combines elements of jazz, indie rock and alt-soul to create songs which owe equal debts to her Portuguese and British heritage. Last week saw the release of Secrets Of Six-Figure Women, Bernardo’s debut full-length album which builds upon the promise of early releases to realise this sound fully—a record packed with confidence and sophistication which meditates on what it means to strive and desire within contemporary society. Single ‘Bobby’s Song’ serves as an ideal entry for the uninitiated, highlighting the sleek mood, intricate detail and assured attitude of the release as a whole.

EERA – Honey, do you see me

The recording project of Berlin-based Norwegian artist Anna Lena Kirsten Bruland, EERA has made a mark in recent years with a moody brand of dream pop. New full-length I’ll stop when I’m done, coming soon via Test Card Recordings, has picked a suitably evocative subject to further the style. Taking its title from a quote by Marilyn Monroe, the album explores the lives of the iconic starlets of Hollywood’s Golden Era, as well as those of the characters they brought to life on the silver screen. Ahead of the album’s release, EERA has shared new single ‘Honey, do you see me’, a track inspired by Billy Wilder’s sixties classic The Apartment. “I was fascinated by the fact that the main character (an intelligent and beautiful woman) is madly in love with a man who has a wife and the boss of a big company,” Bruland explains. “It affected her self-confidence with this man playing with her feelings, promising her the ‘world’ etc. I wanted to write a song from her side of the story but also exaggerate these types of feelings in the song, where you almost feel a bit mad. The desperation of trying to be loved by someone who really doesn’t want to be with you takes over your self-worth. You forget about yourself, and all the focus is on him.”

I’ll Stop When I’m Done will be released on the 26th September via Test Card Recordings.

ear – Ceremony

The project of Yaelle Avtan and Jonah Paz, ear make glitchy collages of indie pop and electronic music that draw on the duo’s background in “experimental electronic hardcore” and twee folk. Following some near-viral success on streaming services with early singles, ear recently released their debut album The Most Dear and the Future, which presents their unique and oddly compelling style to the world proper. Each of the eight songs are short and sweet, slipping effortlessly from gentle, near-whispered pop to headphone-shaking electronica in the blink of an eye. It all feels very now. Like indie pop for the age of short form video, kind of wild and hyperactive but also sad and lonely in a way that’s not easy to describe, nostalgic for something that has never existed. It would fit on the soundtrack to the next Jane Schoenbrun film for sure. You could really start anywhere, but ‘Ceremony’s is my current favourite, so check it out below.

His His – Hardcore Band

We last wrote about His His, AKA Toronto-based songwriter Aidan Belo, back in October 2024 with the release of EP Good Gold, with songs like ‘My Friend Wants to be a Freemason‘ offering “a gentle and folk-inflected [sound] that wears an air of weary wistfulness like the grain in an old film photograph.” Now Belo is returning with brand new EP ’25 via Victory Pool, and single ‘Hardcore Band’ indicates the direction of the release. Recorded entirely to a Tascam cassette deck, the track finds His His at its most fuzzy and intimate, maintaining the earnest tone which has long marked the project and dialling up the closeness through a gauze of DIY texture. Lyrically, the song takes on the age old problem of any folk songwriter. Namely, all of your friends wishing you were in something cooler like a hardcore band instead.

Jamie Lidell & Luke Schneider – The Passing

Fans of experimental music will no doubt be familiar with Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider, the former one of the UK’s premier practitioners of neo-soul, the latter a renowned pedal steel player pioneering within the genre of ambient country. But their new collaborative album is something different. One designed to aid in the inner explorations brought about by Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy, and awake to the true depths of art’s potential. “A mind is often found more exposed during psychedelic experiences,” Lidell explains. “Specifically in a therapeutic setting, where trust is key to approach issues and work through events in the way of growth. This is music to support and guide the listening with or without psychedelic sensory heightening.” Single ‘The Passing’ is a suitably immersive introduction, regardless of whether you go in sober or substance-assisted.

Jonny Tex – Heifer

Hailing from Boston, MA, Jonny Tex is a youth pastor turned songwriter who makes what has been described as “post-faith slacker rock.” Out via Happene Twice, debut single Heifer / Cherubhead welcomes listeners into this distinctive style, with the lead track pairing playfulness, peculiarity and something more grievous. A song inspired by “Texas floods and Southern dread” which twists the easygoing rhythms and droll swagger of the slacker genre into strange shapes, a sense of desperation needling beneath the surface as the clatter of percussion veers between roguish and unnerving. “I don’t wanna be / Cattle in a flash flood where I’m / Tangled in the trees,” as Tex sings in one verse. “Sucking on salinity for all eternity / Buried by the water that just washes over me / Everything i had / I’d give it all away.”

Mia Wilson – Face To Face

Southern California singer-songwriter Mia Wilson is preparing to release her self-titled debut full-length via Royal Oakie Records this November. The album continues the lineage of LA records from the sixties and seventies, taking inspiration from released like Tapestry by Carole King, Heart Food by Judee Sill and Jackson Browne’s Late For the Sky. Latest single ‘Face To Face’ embodies the lush, honeyed light of this sound, not to mention Wilson’s warm and wistful croon. What results is something rich and welcoming and charged with longing, Wilson’s piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes accentuated by further instrumentation from Skyler Lusteg (bass buitar, acoustic guitar) and Tim Ramsey (acoustic and electric guitars, organ, percussion, bass VI, Mellotron, pedal steel, bass harmonica, string).

Watch the video filmed by Julia Schwebel and edited by Skyler Lusteg below:

Mia Wilson will be released on the 14th November via Royal Oakie and you can pre-order it now.

Petey USA – Anything In Between

Earlier in the year, Petey USA released The Yips, a concept album set within the fictional dive bar The Yips Tavern, imagining a series of interactions between the diverse clientele who all, in one way or another, struggle through life and experience the dreaded titular phenomenon. Ahead of a fall headline tour, Petey is releasing A Case of The Yips, a new extended version of the record complete with three bonus tracks, one of which is being released now as a single. Described by the artist as “a song about being scared about any possible outcome,” ‘Anything In Between’ was written as a b-side to album favourite ‘Ask Someone Else’ though is far more than a handmaid. Better to think of it as the small devil on the shoulder versus the angel of ‘Ask Someone Else’, corrupting the encouragement of the previous track with a creeping sense of doubt. But, true to the Petey USA sound, the result burns through its anxious concern with equal parts unguarded sincerity and cathartic momentum, making for a worthy addition to barstools at The Yips.

A Case Of Yips will be released later this year.

Weirs – Everlasting

“To ponder whether Weirs exist in defiance or deference of their forebears is to miss the point completely. This is not an attempt to raze conventions, nor reproduce them. But rather imagine how folk could and should sound today.” So we wrote of the North Carolina outfit’s new album Diamond Grove, coming next month via Dear Life Records. Lead single ‘‘I Want to Die Easy’ introduced the style. “A hymn” as we continued, “delivered not from the still air and stone of a cathedral but God’s own Earth,” and now Weirs have returned with new track ‘Everlasting’ to further ground the album’s terrestrial textures. It’s an instrumental recorded during a late night improvisation session and furthered with layers of field recordings. These additional sounds range from drain grates at wastewater plants and street preachers in bus terminals to a walk the old “cow cemetery” in the woods at Diamond Grove farm and scooping cheese curd from the vat in Cedar Grove. The result feels like an accumulation of the area’s history, years superimposed to create something able to transcend the ordinary flow of time.

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A song that she says “comes from acknowledging the type of magic that exists all around us and yearning to get a taste of it,” ‘rosemary’ is the new single from addy (the project led by Philadelphia’s Addy Watkins). Her first new music since last year’s temperance, the song takes indie pop and stripped-back folk and refracts them into a new shape entirely, something warm and fond and all-enveloping.  “I was in love with a witch once,” Watkins describes of the song’s inspiration, “who taught me rosemary hung over my bed would help with my crippling nightmares. which it did and still does whenever I remember to hang it.”

Alice Hebborn – Saisons – Movement 2

December sees the release of Saisons, the debut album from Belgian composer Alice Hebborn on Western Vinyl. Created following a move to the countryside, the record draws inspiration from theories of ecofeminism and environmental harmony and presents a world cast volatile and disordered in the wake of human impacts. Across seven movements, built of piano and electronics, Hebborn imagines a different future. One in which humans cease to throw the natural balance and instead become a key link in a harmonious web of reciprocal relationships. Lead single ‘Movement 2’ is “the starting point of Saisons,” Hebborn describes. “It was written in the spring and draws its inspiration from the captivating images of this season: the awakening of nature and our senses, the great activity of all living things.”

Banti Buli – Hennessy Song

“Refusing to commit fully to irony or sincerity […] as though a song about relationships couldn’t really function without equal doses of heartfelt emotion and tongue-in-cheek humour.” So we wrote of Banti Buli‘s ‘Something Like a Honda Odyssey’ last year, a song which mixed languid rhythms with a distinctively verbose lyricism. Ahead of an album due next spring, Banti Gheneti is now back with ‘Hennessy Song’, a track which see the US-based Dutch-Oromo artist take samples from his surroundings to build an earnest soundscape exploring the transience of even the most steadfast habits. “The closest thing to a home (the Ethiopian corner store) becomes a hole in the ground and your lover leaves you,” as Gheneti says. “Even routines and promises are ephemeral.”

figure eight – 1999 (cherry)

A mainstay of the Bay Area scene, figure eight originated as the experimental noise project of duo Nash Rood and Abby Goeser, starting out with nothing but a distorted synthesizer and acoustic drum kit. However, on welcoming a number of additional members in recent years (including Nicholas Coleman on bass and Nicky Esparza on drums), the band has now evolved into something altogether more full-bodied. Take new single ‘1999 (cherry)’, a song with finds the outfit at their most boisterous and reserved within the same three minutes. The searing opening is indebted to hardcore, though the crushing momentum soon breaks into something almost delicate. These twin threads of lightness and weight weave across the track into what appears to be the spirit of this new version of figure eight—a band aware of the transcendent power available at both ends of the spectrum.

His His – My Friend Wants to be a Freemason

We last featured Aidan Belo’s His His project almost exactly a year ago when we covered the single ‘Ford Econoline’, a song about life in a tour van that we said felt “like the sensation of returning home in your mind as you cruise down an unfamiliar stretch of highway in some faraway city.” The Toronto-based artist returns with a new EP, Good Gold, coming out next month, and has just released the final single ahead of the release. Informatively titled ‘My Friend Wants to be a Freemason’, it’s a track about a childhood friend who became obsessed with joining a masonic lodge. “The idea of joining this secret society consumed my friend, and for a couple of months it was all that he’d talk about,” as Belo describes. Musically the song follows a familiar His His formula, a gentle and folk-inflected indie pop song that wears an air of weary wistfulness like the grain in an old film photograph.

Good Gold is due to be released on 15th November via Victory Pool Records. You can pre-save it now on streaming services.

Kassie Krut – Reckless

Kassie Krut are wasting no time introducing themselves. “K / A / S / S / I / E / K / R / U / T / T / T / T,” goes the opening line of new single ‘Reckless’, a de facto theme song for the new project of Kasra Kurt, Eve Alpert (formerly of Palm) and Matt Anderegg (Mothers, Body Meat). The band have just signed to Fire Talk Records, and new single offers a glimpse at the core of the project. Something undoubtedly contemporary yet possessing a rawer dimension too, as though through the idiosyncratic art pop style comes an altogether more atavistic, primal energy. Directed by Guy Kozak, the video for the song was filmed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and offers a visual representation of the sound’s frantic playfulness.

‘Reckless’ is out now and available via the Kassie Krut Bandcamp page.

Mark Trecka – Witch’s Hat (ft. Midwife & An Heap)

The work of Mark Trecka never sits still, the Chicago-born artist and activist utilising sound to explore a diverse set of styles and themes in a practice as inventive as it is ambitious. More recent work has turned towards post-punk as an avenue of exploration, and latest single ‘Witch’s Hat’ continues to plough that same furrow. Recorded between Paris and Colorado, the track is described as Trecka’s “Halloween song,” existing with the common ground between that which is haunting and beautiful. Midwife joins on backing vocals and An Heap on synths to further elevate the dynamic, the song moving from apparent minimalism into a gauzy atmosphere as though pushing through the layers of time itself.

Michael Younker – Bad News

Michael Younker is a Detroit-born, Brooklyn-based production designer who also makes rock & roll music that he says “melds lighthearted cynicism with unashamed big rock motifs.” He has just released his debut EP, Sweet Things, a four-song record that’s brash and chaotic and amped up with bratty energy. “Sonically & lyrically, Sweet Things feels like the kid who ate too much sugar, bounced off walls, and passed out on the floor,” Younker describes. “Music of obsession, excess, indulgence, and…consequences?” ‘Bad News’ is perhaps the best place to start, capturing the EP’s manic motion and carefree bravado. “I can’t make you love me,” Younker sings, before snottily trying his best anyway in the following line – “C’mon, give it a go!”

Old Man of the Woods – Ghost

“A visceral exploration of a villain’s arc, tracing her devolution from possession to obsession to dissolution.” So reads the album notes for Triptych I: Devolve, the latest release from Seattle-based project Old Man of the Woods. The first in a series of EPs, the three-song collection offers a self-described “goth ethereal mycelial” sound to chart a fall from grace in all of its tragedy, majesty and strange avenues of agency. Such as with single ‘Ghost’, where the central character moves from resentment to something closer to power with the realisation that the ability to haunt can represent its own form of control.

Orchid Mantis – Dead Malls (feat. Cathedral Bells)

Following a collaboration with Sign Crushes Motorist earlier this year, not to mention several more singles in the meantime, Orchid Mantis (the recording project of Atlanta‘s Thomas Howard) has returned with a new single ‘Dead Malls’. This time featuring Orlando, Florida shoegazey bedroom pop act Cathedral Bells, the track uses imagery of an abandoned shopping mall to explore emotions altogether more personal. Where past hopes, once bright and shiny and full of promise, have withered on the vine, now little more than empty husks. But the atmosphere is not downbeat, rather wistful and hazy, looking back on old memories as though flickering warm and grainy from an old film projector.

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The track this time focuses on Belo’s experience as a musician, a diary-like account of his time on tour in the eponymous van. “I wrote this song after being on tour with my band for nearly a month in my Ford Econoline,” he describes. “The lyrics were inspired from journal entries that I wrote in the backseat of the van. About missing loved ones and feeling the effects of being on the road, sleeping on couches and run-down motels, and being in a different, strange city every day.”

The signature guitar work is once again present, supported with gently ramshackle percussion and a warm, wistful tape-recorded ambience. It captures the feeling of quiet yearning perfectly, like the sensation of returning home in your mind as you cruise down an unfamiliar stretch of highway in some faraway city.

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First making a name as part of indie pop outfit Au Revoir Simone, Annie Hart‘s solo work has branched out in a number of directions, most recently Eno-inspired ambient as seen on Everything Pale Blue released via Orindal Records in 2021. With new album The Weight of a Wave coming later this summer on Uninhabitable Mansions, Hart is back with brand new single ‘What Makes Me Me’, and the song suggests some degree of return towards ARS-esque pop. A song which attempts to work through sadness by choosing to smile, as though by calling attention to your own dark moods allows for a certain irony, and with it a sense of distance. “I felt like the only thing I was good at was feeling gratitude—but, paradoxically, I was so melancholy about it,” Hart explains. “I pulled a trick from Belle and Sebastian’s hat and made a song about it as cute, sing-alongable, and folky as I could. If I was going to feel bad about myself, why not have fun with it?” Check out the video shot and edited by Emily James with art direction from Jenna Gribbon:

The Weight of A Wave comes out August 4th on Uninhabitable Mansions. Order a copy now from the Annie Hart Bandcamp page.

Austin Cash – Franklin, King of the Beers

Written over the course of a year but recorded in a single night, Hello, Franklin is the latest release of Fayetteville, Arkansas songwriter Austin Cash. Coming next month via Gar Hole Records, the EP mines a deep history of American Primitive and minimalist styles to paint late-pandemic life in all of its strangeness. A collision of dissonance and harmony which looks to conjure not only the needling dread of the contemporary moment but its small joys too. Single ‘Franklin, King of the Beers’ is the perfect introduction to the record’s tensions, a song which nods to the wide-open landscapes so often painted by the genre while evoking the insular claustrophobia of pandemic living, looping on itself like the anxious motion of a restless mind.

Christopher Tignor – Ritual of a Thousand Limbs

Brooklyn-based composer and violinist Christopher Tignor has won acclaim across classical and experimental music scenes with his evocative electroacoustic arrangements. Latest album The Art of Surrender, coming this September on Western Vinyl, sees Tignor explore instinctive territory, pushing the violin towards an almost atavistic sound which foregoes too much planning or intention to instead embrace raw movement. Single ‘Ritual of a Thousand Limbs’ encapsulates this style, tapping into primal urges to which are brought to life in a video directed by Jason Akira Somma and starring Rachelle Nidra Somma:

The Art of Surrender will be release on the 29th September via Western Vinyl.

Eat My Butterfly – Dolé

With EP Esperar El Sol coming in a few weeks via FPE Records, producer Eat My Butterfly has unveiled new single ‘Dolé’. The EP is described as “a celebration of La Réunion’s folklore,” and the song serves as an encapsulation of this style. A mix of traditional instruments and synthesizers, united by Dilo’s passion for percussion and rhythm which conjures an organic soundscape. Vocals from Romane Mana (of Romane & Gaël) lift the track further, aligning it within the catchy indie pop bracket alongside the likes of Sylvan Esso and more importantly drawing the listening into a living, breathing world of its own.

‘Dolé’ is out now & available on streaming services.

Generifus – Didn’t Even Look at the Mountain

The recording project of Olympia‘s Spencer Sult and assorted friends, Generifus has carved out a space within the independent scene with a steady stream of albums dating back over a decade. A joint release between Anything Bagel and Bud Tapes, latest record Rearrangel sees Generifus back after a hiatus and looking to capture the duality of any journey, where banal details and deep, almost spiritual meaning intermingle along a single road. With live band members Wilson Caicedo, Andrew Dorsett and Henry Wilson joined by the likes of Lee Baggett, the result is brought to life with a rich and often wistful mood, as typified by single ‘Didn’t Even Look at the Mountain’, where regret meets an unfailing fondness.

His His – Underdogs

We’ve written about Toronto‘s His His several times in recent years, most recently back in February with ‘People, Places, Changes’, a “bittersweet” song “both pining for what has now gone and determined to capture the fondness which persists all the same.” Latest single ‘Underdogs’ is similarly concerned with change and the passing of time, though this time the focus is on the gentrification of familiar places. A picture of incremental loss which worsens on every visit, the past slowly changed by multi-millionaires, tree by tree, brick by brick.

Steven van Betten – Yosemite

Though fronting Fell Runner and co-founding School of Song, where he teaches alongside the likes of Phil Elverum, Miya Folick, Luke Temple, Lomelda and Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, it is only now Nevada-born, LA-based songwriter Steven van Betten is releasing his debut EP. Family & Friends sits at the intersection of traditional and contemporary styles, with new single ‘Yosemite’ highlighting van Betten’s ability to evoke both the timeless folk narratives of Townes van Zandt and the ethereality of Sufjan Stevens. The song was written after a close friend lost a parent at the national park, which in turn made van Betten reflect on his own childhood memories of a space where human life gets as close as it might to a sense of something larger. Watch the video shot and directed by Marcus Högsta below:

Hike with your wife
to the top of the falls
and sit in the shade of the afternoon
Your favourite places in the United States
tangible proof that there is a God

Friends & Family will be released on the 27th October via Future Gods.

Tremolo Fields – Stumble On Out

The recording project of Iowa-raised, Portland-based artist David T. Rogers, Tremolo Fields combines folk sensibilities with rock and electronic styles to weave its evocative sounds. With debut album still as can be out now, latest single ‘Stumble On Out’ serves as the perfect introduction to the project. A song where heartfelt romance meets brooding drama, strung on a drum machine rhythm though prone to drifts upward, capturing a balance between physical and ethereal sensations. The rhythm builds as the track develops, eventually descending into an overwhelming crescendo which carries both passion and desperation—love as a kind of longing, even in the present moment.

I once heard the drum
deep in your chest
pulsating blood below
our hands pressed
and we held each other so close
counting down til the sun rose
six, five, four, three, two, one
I’ll always feel
the beating of your drum

still as can be is out now and available via the Tremolo Fields Bandcamp page.

Zeus – Air I Walk

Almost a decade since their last record (2014’s Classic Zeus), Toronto indie rock band Zeus return this September with their fourth album, Credo, via Arts & Crafts. Inspired by equal parts classic rock and 80s synth pop, the record promises to see a continuation of the Zeus M.O., indie rock at once fresh and timeless and full of hooks and harmonies. Lead single ‘Air I Walk’ is our first taste of the new material, a song that’s been a fixture of live sets for a while and serves as a stepping stone from past to present Zeus. What lead Neil Quinn calls “lovesick cowboy music,” there’s a slight dusty folk influence amidst the guitars and electronics, a niggling ache beneath the catchy chorus. Watch the video, directed by 1TruR, below:

Credo releases 8th September via Arts & Crafts. Pre-order a copy now via Bandcamp.

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With new EP Learning To Love Again on the horizon via Nettwerk, Aisha Badru has unveiled new track ‘Lazy River’. A meditation on the process of healing and the various twists and bends which accompany it, and moreover learning to be kind to oneself while adrift on slack currents. The track’s essence is brought to life by hushed, almost whispered vocals, moving away from the style in which Badru has made her name to explore new sounds and moods. “It’s this freeing of myself and allowing myself to try things that people would not expect of me,” as Badru reveals. “I feel more comfortable not meeting those expectations.”

Time moves like a river, winding and slow
Holding on to you is helping me float
I drift in the breeze as your memory washes over me
I will let you go, eventually

Getting over you is like a lazy river ride
I’ve been taking my time

Watch the video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick below:

Learning To Love Again is out on the 2nd June via Nettwerk.

Color TV – Planchette

Based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Color TV is a project led Mark Teachout. Having been self-releasing music since 1993, Teachout teamed up with Animal Tapes for Witching a Well, a full-length released late last year. Opener and single ‘Planchette’ serves as the perfect introduction to the experimental, lo-fi sound. It slowly coalesces into life with a palpable assurance, channelling the likes of Guided By Voices, Sebadoh and Califone in its reflective and enveloping textures.

His His – People, Places, Changes

“A small daydream where one’s wishes are allowed to drift to the surface, and longing is permitted to express its true form.” That’s how we described ‘West Coast‘, the previous track from Toronto’s His His. New single ‘People, Places, Changes’ is an altogether more morose affair, confronting grief in all of its lingering influence. Written after the loss of a loved one, the song plays with a bittersweet warmth, both pining for what has now gone and determined to capture the fondness which persists all the same.

‘People, Places, Changes’ is out now.

Kalila Badali – Panacea

Based in Toronto, Kalila Badali is a singer-songwriter whose musical style combines witchy folk and moody art pop and helps her make sense of the world and its mysteries as a neurodivergent person. She is also a psychotherapist, running a private practice that works with neurodivergent people, LGBTQ2SIA+ people, and arts workers. This other avenue of her life informs her music, something that is sure to be apparent on her forthcoming EP, Panacea. The latest single and title track is a wonderful introduction to the record, an ethereal and melodic folk song that Badali wrote when helping a friend through mental illness. It’s a rare example of a song that explores such struggles from the perspective of a therapist, expressing a deep desire to help a loved one whilst trying (seemingly in vain) the dangers of growing too close in the process.

Unconsciously, I’ve attached myself to you.
Rhizomal, with roots instead of a body.

Noele Flowers – Wait for Me

Describing herself as “a relentlessly optimistic, anxiety-ridden, and friendship-obsessed songwriter,” Massachusetts-raised, Brooklyn-based Noele Flowers is preparing to release a new EP titled Wait For Me. Perhaps the most folk-adjacent song on the record, the latest single and title track is a ballad that pairs acoustic guitar with three-part vocal harmonies and includes piano from Aviv Gilad and strong quartet arrangement played by Tiger Darrow and Chase Potter. It’s a song about falling in love while still recovering from the end of a previous relationship. As Flowers explains: “This song is about the anxiety that comes with feeling like your healing process is going to get in the way of something good—asking someone to wait for you.” But it’s deeper than that too, its message of patience applicable to pretty much all aspects of life.

Pacing – Aliens

“Things are getting kinda weird over here.” So sings Katie McTigue on the new Pacing single, ‘Aliens’. Part of WAVE, a forthcoming compilation by Very Jazzed, the song sees McTigue push further than the playful self-deprecation of recent album hatemail into an altogether darker space. A slow burning folk number which starts out placid but gradually escalates into something disorderly, a lonely nighttime drive suddenly interrupted by something bright and loud. Whether this sudden company is extraterrestrial or something more metaphorical is up to you, but either way, the force imposes itself on the sound and abducts McTigue, forcing her to view the world from above regardless of her opinions of such a vantage.

‘Aliens’ is out now and available on streaming services.

Tinge – Armed to the Teeth

Led by Veronica Blackhawk, an Anishinaabe multi-hyphenate from Lake of the Woods, Ontario and now based in Winnipeg, Tinge follows the likes of Camp Cope in heartfelt yet fierce music unafraid to dig through the most personal depths. Having recently signed with House of Wonders Records, the outfit are preparing the release their debut EP Big Deep Sigh next month and have unveiled single ‘Armed to the Teeth’ by way of introduction. A slow burning confessional which finds cathartic release in its forthright style. “This EP means I am finally ready to take up space and open it up for others going through similar phases in their growth,” Blackhawk explains of the release. “To finally exhale those deep breaths I’ve been drawing in over the past few years.”

TV Room – Stacey

Following on from previous single pretend, which we described as “A song about being close to someone, almost too close to say what needs to be said,” TV Room has returned with Sad Club Records with new track, ‘Stacey’. Another example of Lucy Rushton’s ability to write songs at once understated and charged with feeling, the song confronts the decidedly disheartening prospect of negotiating a friend who might not be that much of a friend after all. “It’s about being around people who have main character syndrome and romanticise all the damage they are causing around them instead of taking responsibility for it,” as Rushton explains. “About giving up hope on trying to understand someone and keep up a connection with a person who is trying to hurt and compete with you instead of appreciating the relationship you have and in turn destroying it.” TV Club might describe bad experiences in relationships, but they find room to say what needs to be said.

‘Stacey’ is out now and available from Sad Club Records.

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His His has now returned with a brand new single, ‘West Coast’, a track no less tender and considered, and no less focused on what might lie ahead. Written while stuck on the east coast and pining for the west, the track adopts a quietly ethereal tone. A small daydream where one’s wishes are allowed to drift to the surface, and longing is permitted to express its true form. “I want to be somebody living there on the West Coast,” Belo sings, the details of the fantasy receding in favour of their general sentiment. “I’ll get a house down by the beach somewhere, in some town, I don’t care.” There might be melancholy in distance or the difficulty of achieving such a thing, but there is comfort at least in allowing the wish into the world, hope manifest as a tangible thing.

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Belo has released several singles in the past few months, each developing this aesthetic. The warm and reflective ‘Matador’ introduced the wistful tones, ‘Winter Journal’ offered a more morose edge, while ‘Sweet Company’ blended this melancholy and nostalgia into something searching and fond. Songs exploring both the past and the future, and how our idea of one shapes the other.

Today we’re delighted to share ‘Home Home’, a brand new single directly inspired by Belo’s return to the farm where he grew up. The track was recorded with a simple setup in an old barn, the ideal location to capture the His His sound, and the result is the warmest and most intimate song to date. Lush vocals swirl with tumbling guitar in unhurried rhythms as Belo sings of uncomplicated days. Again the track holds up the present as a kind of intersection between the past and future, Belo’s prior experiences informing the dreams of what might come next.

I want to live, live live
live right here
I want to feel, feel, feel,
feel the air

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