The fact latest single ‘The End’ continues this vibe is all the more impressive considering its subject matter. The album’s closer, the track takes its role as a conclusion literally, assessing the view from the precise moment it becomes clear these lives of ours will not last for ever. “We’ve reached the last stop on the station, and it’s time to disembark into the void,” as lead Nick Thorburn explains:

With this song, I wanted to look back on the hinge point in our lives when we begin to realize that our existence will not be forever. And when we reach the end, how will we reflect on the life we led? Are we satisfied with the choices we made? Did we have a positive impact on the world or did we do more harm than good?

But true to form, Islands leaven such contemplations with the wry humour and inventiveness that has marked Thorburn’s output since his days as part of The Unicorns. Heartbreak and whimsy might not be the most obvious of bedfellows, but here they feel like two sides of the same coin, right down to the video directed By Justin Hantz.

What Occurs comes out on 21st June and is available to pre-order from the Islands Bandcamp page.

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When we spoke with Ben Seretan about his album Youth Pastoral back in 2020, he brought up the impact friend and collaborator Devra Freelander had on the record. “Dev understood how special it was to get together,” Seretan explained. “She was always, always happy to see other people, and really went out of her way to make you feel like you were having the best day of your life.” Made in Italy with Nico Hedley (bass) and Dan Knishkowy (drums) mere weeks after Freelander untimely death in 2019, Seretan’s latest album Allora in many ways represents an attempt to harness such sentiments, however conscious this might have been. There’s so much more to say about the record, which will be released via Tiny Engines later this summer, but for now we’ll leave you with opener and lead single ‘New Air’—a song as thunderous, chaotic and big-hearted as anything Seretan has released to date.

Islands – Drown A Fish

Eighteen years since debut Return to the Sea, Islands return early this summer with What Occurs, the tenth album in their storied and always idiosyncratic history. Replacing the band’s signature style of meticulously layered indie pop with something more raw and natural, the record promises to emphasise the spontaneous energy of a band still finding fresh and quirky angles from which to explore pop music. This new approach is apparent on lead single ‘Drown A Fish’. Recorded live in a single take in a studio on Vancouver Island, it’s a power pop jam with an unconventional narrator. “I was looking to throw my hat in the ring of Pop Songs About Lovelorn Losers Who Couldn’t Buy a Clue to Save Their Life,” lead Nick Thorburn says of the track. “I set out to write a song that laid bare a series of ‘ironic situations narrated by a delusional idiot’, because I think that’s more interesting than listening to an uplifting anthem about a flawless, self-empowered smartypants.”

What Occurs comes out on 21st June and is available to pre-order from the Islands Bandcamp page.

Jahnah Camille – flesh

Based in Birmingham, Alabama, songwriter and musician Jahnah Camille is set to release her debut EP i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl next month via Winspear. The songs offer a picture of late adolescence in all of its bittersweet nuance, its introspective contemplation matched only by its bold confessional attitude. Single ‘flesh’ offers a glimpse of the style, channelling a 90s alt rock aesthetic to evoke a mood at once tender and simmering with bite. “Limit my flesh / And tell me my place,” Camille sings, tone set somewhere between desire and wistful regret. “We shared so many kisses / But we weren’t awake.”

Check out the video directed by Sapir Blain with text by Disney Bagwell below:

i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl is out in the 21st June via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

Kramies – Social Light

“A combination of folk, rock and dream pop which conjures its own fantastical worlds. Places both haunting and romantic, separate from reality but on some level echoing its deeper truths.” That’s how we described the self-titled album by Kramies back in 2022. With a new EP coming this autumn on VanGerrett Records, the Dutch-American songwriter has returned with new single ‘Social Light’. With contributions from members of Band of Horses, The Black Keys and Grandaddy, not to mention backing vocals from Allison Lorenzen, the song represents another dreamy, melancholic fairy tale which blurs the line between eeriness and empathy to form something ultimately affirming.

Las Nubes – Would Be

Las Nubes, that’s Miami duo Ale Campos and Emile Milgrim, have made their name with a raucous blend of punk rock and dream pop, earning them shows with the likes of  Shannon and the Clams and The Coathangers, not to mention backing Iggy Pop as the first all-female version of The Stooges in 2020. Following on from 2019 debut SMVT, Las Nubes return this summer with a brand new album to build upon these successes. Titled Tormentas Malsanas (which translates to ‘unhealthy storms’), the album channels the unpredictability and fury of its meteorological title to produce an electrically charged sound, as introduced by single ‘Would Be’. Because while the track opens with a reflective haze as Campos and Milgrim consider life’s inhospitable nature and the too quick passing of time, they soon burn away any negativity with sheer force.

M. Vaughan – Tire Swing

New York-born, Lisbon-based artist M. Vaughan cut his teeth in the indie rock scene before devoting his creative energies to electronic music, putting out releases on labels like Freerange and Monologues as well as his own Super Tuff imprint. New EP Keep In Touch feels like that of musician looking to embrace all the disparate influences which came to shape his sound, be it the genres he has moved between or the places in which he has worked on them. “This record is about these past few years of transition,” Vaughan explains, “trying to reckon with my own musical roots while making sense of life abroad, and eventually landing in a new place and making it home.” Single ‘Tire Swing’ presents the result of such a motivation, breaking the mould to offer something looking towards rock while keeping one foot firmly inside the club.

Russian Baths – Bind

In June, New York indie rock band Russian Baths will release their sophomore album Mirror, via Good Eye Records. The album’s second single, ‘Bind’ is a dark and ominous track that fuses goth rock, post-punk and a shimmer of shoegaze into something at once propulsive and eerie. Lyrically stark with a sense of gloomy poetry, it’s a song the band say explores past injustices “all connected by misguided vengeance desperate to escape the past but doomed to repeat it.” The result lands somewhere between a sweaty basement club and the desolate landscape from a folk horror tale. Nervous clockwork percussion chugs beneath stabs of sharp and surreal guitar that gives the whole thing a sense of sickly madness and doom. As the press release puts it, “it’s all a sinking ship that keeps pressing onward.”

 Sleeepy Anderson – Gamblin’ Shoes

Louisville-based musician, songwriter and visual artist Scott T. “Sleeepy” Anderson, AKA Sleeepy Anderson, is releasing his debut album Truck Songs later this year. New single ‘Gamblin’ Shoes’ offers a view into a record which promises to hark back to the heavyweights of classic country. It was formed while Andersen was travelling the breadth of the US in an old red pick-up truck, tapping into the freedom and lonesome heartache of the transient life to offer a contemporary vision of which Hank Williams and Townes van Zandt would be proud. Anderson’s vocals sit above plucked guitar, unadorned and raw, at the crossroads between forlorn and easygoing. Watch the video shot by Cullen Monasterio and Nick Netherton below:

Truck Songs will be released later this year. You can download ‘Gamblin’ Shoes’ from the Sleeepy Anderson Bandcamp page.

Yoshika Colwell – Adelaide

Following the release of her debut single ‘It’s Getting Late’ last month, Kent-based singer-songwriter Yoshika Colwell has announced her debut EP, There’s a Time. It comprises of five tracks of timeless and emotionally wrought folk music, recorded live with a band that bring a rich and easy grace to Colwell’s explorations of time, relationships and the notion of selfhood. To further whet appetites for the EP, Yoshika Colwell has unveiled a second single, ‘Adelaide’, an intense song which reaches for all of these themes in its three and a half minute runtime. “Adelaide is a song about tension and release,” Colwell describes. “About repetition of unhealthy patterns, hurting yourself and others because of a fear of being radically honest.” But it’s not all turbulence and gloom, there’s a freedom too, that sense of relief experienced when letting go to those unhealthy patterns. As Colwell puts it: “It also is a song about catharsis and the phenomenal lightness that comes when you listen to your intuition.”

There’s a Time is out on the 26th May and you can pre-order it now.

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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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