The album was written in Mirzadegan’s childhood bedroom in the wake of a break-up, a collection of finger-picked folk songs which paints a series of memories, longings and confessions in the palette of the titular hue. But though the present loss hangs heavy, Mirzadegan also digs towards a deeper seam of sadness. One ingrained at her centre, accumulated not only across one life but an entire family history. Here, old wounds are not so much sources of pain as shafts leading towards something older and more fundamental, and Ava Mirzadegan follows these passageways as deep as they might allow her in the hope that allowing light into these dark spaces is to begin to process and heal.

But before Dark Dark Blue was another album. One which Mirzadegan could never quite finish to her satisfaction, and thus never saw the light of day. That is, until now. Because driven by the dehumanising experience of watching the country of your heritage being invaded illegally, as well as desire to do something tangible for the people suffering on the ground in Iran, she has decided to release that album, For the Light, via new imprint Vital Records, with all proceeds going to the Red Crescent.

“I want it to be known that For the Light is an unfinished record,” Mirzadegan says, though the fact it is being released speaks to the urgency of the moment and depth of feeling which accompanies it. The album is something of a time capsule of a specific period, one in which a personal bereavement came to reconfigure an entire understanding of death. Grief hurts beyond all expectation, and it hurts this way for everyone. If Dark Dark Blue was a passage towards healing, For the Light is the standstill before such a process might start. Those weeks and months where loss is nothing more than pain, and every link to the past seems to shine with a precious ephemerality.

Released into a present context, this effect is further magnified, and For the Light takes on an even more striking resonance. In a world where entire civilisations can be threatened and genocide is enacted freely, the album plays as an attempt to preserve the human in the face of almost unimaginable horror. Or at least remind some small section of the world that Iranians exist and feel and suffer like anyone else. “I uploaded a song about losing my mother while fearing the loss of the country in which my mother, and her mother before her, were born,” she continues. “It felt like the only thing I could do to keep from drowning in hopelessness and to remind myself that no matter whatever darkness came at nightfall, I will always carry their life light within me.”

That song, opener and lead single ‘Pavement’, is the first available ahead of the release on 10th May, Mother’s Day. “In this empty room / I can feel you,” Mirzadegan sings in the opening lines, before the track moves to its plaintive refrain: “She is gone.” But within the sorrow lies something else. A fondness, yes, but more than that. A strange kind of defiance. Which is all any bereaved person truly has left in the wake of their loss. The promise to remember, persevere, endure. As Walter Benjamin famously wrote: “The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.” We must take every available shot at this enemy, no matter how hopeless the action might feel.

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Picture this: there’s a big house at the end of the street. When you walk past it, you can’t tell if it’s full or empty. Its two caretakers—who, to add to the uncanniness, wear crimson suits—clean the house, inspect it, and carry out headcounts. Sometimes they only count themselves. Sometimes they count hundreds of people. They don’t know why this is the case, why the house has so many rooms and stories: it’s not their job to know. One day, as you walk past, a void enters and the house explodes. What happens to what’s inside? What impact does it have on your memory?

With Horror Vacui, 9T Antiope paints such a world in all of its strange wonder and dread, evoking the titular fear of empty spaces while simultaneously interrogating exactly why nature abhors a vacuum. The result could be said to teeter on the edge of something—the line between memory and amnesia, growth and decay or order and chaos—but equally there’s a sense of remove. As though the record were a liminal space captured and preserved, a place outside of the ordinary delineations, free to shift as it sees fit. Latest single ‘Mount 22’ presents the style in all of its mysterious weight, where the surface’s fine detail is disturbed by a simmering weight stirring below.

Horror Vacui will be released on 12th April via American Dreams and is available to pre-order from the 9T Antiope Bandcamp page.

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Hailing from Iran and now based in Paris, 9T Antiope has served as a vehicle for duo Nima Aghiani and Sara Bigdeli Shamloo to explore the unique difficulties of the expatriate experience. New album Horror Vacui lives up to its title to go further still. To live between two cultures is to never quite belong to either, to perpetually seek firmer roots in the present while fighting the fear of forgetting where you have come from, or even that place forgetting you. 9T Antiope address such dualities with a concept album almost cinematic in scope, and single ‘Shapeshift’ offers a compelling mix of haunting and alluring tones to welcome the listener through its doors.

Beti Masenqo – better than before

Following last summer’s debut single ‘much of anything’, which we described as a “delicate [and] often reflective folk [song] which ties together melancholy and joy with a wistful thread,” California songwriter Beti Masenqo is back with a new song, ‘better than before’. What she describes as “a nostalgic tune about loving someone who is plagued with uncertainty,” the track pairs an upbeat rhythm with another reflective tone, capturing a bittersweet mood which looks to shake free of doubt and look towards something brighter.

‘better than before’ is out now via streaming services.

Blitzen Trapper – Cosmic Backseat Education

Portland, Oregon‘s Blizten Trapper have been a significant force in indie rock for over twenty years now, and new album 100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions, coming this spring on Yep Roc Records, returns to the ideals which first fired the project into being to explore ideas of freedom and rebirth. With guests including Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats/Bonny Light Horseman) and Anna Tivel, the album melds earnest folk/psych rock with something more metaphysical. Lead single ‘Cosmic Backseat Education’ returns to the childhood experience of listening to the radio in the car, when music was nothing more than a source of joy. The video, directed by Mychal Sargent, offers a playful dimension, riffing off Mr Rogers and ultimately questioning just who is in control of the puppet/puppeteer relationship.

100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions is out on the 17th May via Yep Roc Records.

Crow Baby – Pity Party

Having both been raised in Johannesburg multi-instrumentalists Cherilyn MacNeil and Jean-Louise Parker formed Crow Baby upon being reunited in Berlin. Debut album Get Yourself Together will be released this spring, and if single ‘Pity Party’ is anything to go by, it’s going to be quite the ride. An ever-shifting track which never quite settles in any one shape, creating and undermining a number of moods and meanings, and ultimately leaving the listener to question the very ground beneath their feet. The result is something as clever as it is infectious, and as the triumphant chorus comes around, the self-pity is proven to be anything but.

Get Yourself Together will be released this spring via Duchess Box Records.

Grocer – Packrat

We’ve covered Philadelphia‘s Grocer several times in recent years, always appreciating the unapologetic chaos of their sound. Recent EP Scatter Plot felt like a band exploring the possible new directions such a style might take, and this spring sees Grocer return with their second full-length on Grind Select to capitalise on these gains. Evoking the sensation of “feeling stricken with the inability to make decisions and the procrastination paralysis of anxiety,” single ‘Packrat’ finds Grocer at their most collaborative, trusting in the bonds which have now developed between the members to make something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Hot Wheels – August

What do you get if you mix equal parts Brian Eno, Julee Cruise and Link Wray? LA-based painter and musician Dan Bruinooge, AKA Hot Wheels, has the answer with ‘August’, a new single on Earth Libraries. The song looks to add sixties surf and ambient sensibilities to nostalgic dream pop in order to bring to life a sonic representation of the culture and climate of California. But far from being a blissed-out image of Western sun and sea, ‘August’ sees Hot Wheels mine the landscape for all of its complexities and contradictions, where every instance of natural beauty is countered by gridlocked traffic, and apparently carefree summers are stalked by worsening wild fires.

‘August’ is out now via Earth Libraries.

Little Wings – Bubbles Go Pop

Kyle Field has recorded under the moniker Little Wings since the late nineties, pushing and pulling his folk rock sound into every shape imaginable while leaning into the joy of the ephemeral moment. A few years ago Antiquated Future tried to capture this ever-shifting style in one album with Sing Wide (Selected Songs 2002​-​2019), though true to the spirit of the project, Field has since taken the Little Wings sound onwards. New full-length High On The Glade will be released this spring on Perpetual Doom, and single ‘Bubbles Go Pop’ is every bit as idiosyncratic and inventive as you’d hope. With its ramshackle percussion and sing-song melody, it tells the story of a wild party in a zany vaudevillian procession befitting of a Pynchon novel. “The bubbles go pop,” as Field sings, “the laughter doesn’t stop / Effervescence grows into a roar.”

Night Hawk – Bedroom Waltz

Back in February we featured Night Hawk, the Brunswick, Maine-based project led by Colter Adams and Peyton Semjen. As we wrote previously, the pair work alongside “a rotating cast of band members […] to create a sound which evokes the Edward Hopper painting after which they are named.” After a slew of singles, the band are readying their debut EP, Everything Good Ends, and have just unveiled lead single ‘Bedroom Waltz’ as a taster of what to expect. It’s a picture of a relationship curdled by overdependence, depicted with both raw feeling and poetic grace. Cello and guitar weave across each other in somber patterns, while the percussion drives things forward towards the eventual cathartic climax.

In love with an addict
He works fighting fires
He gets paid in forgiveness
And he never gets tired

Trailer Dust – Sunday Morning (feat. Kelley Swindall) (The Velvet Underground Cover)

Taking inspiration from the likes of Sparklehorse and Sonic Youth and adding a country inflection, Trailer Dust is the new project of songwriter/producer, Greg Griffith. As if to highlight the success of such a marriage, Griffith has enlisted Kelley Swindall for a take on The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’. A version which swaps the dreamy drift of the original for something with more dirt on its boots. Griffith and Swindall’s chemistry is clear in the playful, carefree atmosphere, the song lifting towards its affirming conclusion as though gambolling in childlike wonder.

‘Sunday Morning’ is out now via streaming services.

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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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On Sun Songs, Rahill covers four songs from the seventies that capture this sense of wonder. There are takes on Shuggie Otis’ ‘Aht Uh Mi Hed,’ updating the soulful funk into a rich and spacious electronic pop song, ‘Growing Pains’ by Yoko Ono, which injects a breezy confidence into Ono’s sedate original, and Arthur Lee’s ‘I Do Wonder’. But it’s single ‘Haenim’ that captures the EP’s ethos most beautifully. A cover of a 1973 song by South Korean artist Kim Jung Mi, Rahill translates the lyrics into Farsi but maintains the sense of glowing positivity and childlike wonder, something best illustrated by the “la la la” chorus that closes it out. It’s the sonic equivalent of closing your eyes and holding your face to the warm sun and letting worries and anxieties melt away.

“The artists of these songs are pioneers in creating worlds of their own music, worlds where people like myself have the pleasure of stepping into when listening to their records,” Rahill describes. “In recreating something that touches me so personally, I seek to inspire that same inner joy and connection by tapping into a place of vulnerability and honesty. Songs have the ability to free us from what troubles occupy our minds, I want the listener to undress those troubles through listening to these songs.”

Sun Songs is out now via Big Dada. Get it via the Rahill Bandcamp page.

Photo by Travis Trautt

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