With the release of Behind the Shadow Glass fast approaching, Will Orchard has now returned with new single and album opener, ‘In The Shadow of Their Dark’. A rich and fond slice of folk rock which blooms like a slow-dawning epiphany, Orchard’s vocals building in conviction along with the rhythm, as though emerging through long years-worth of accumulated doubts to embrace a preferred state of being. “I wrote ‘In The Shadow of Their Dark’ while feeling deeply anonymous in a new city,” he explains. “When you don’t feel intertwined with a place, you feel like a stranger. This song embraces that feeling of invisibility and loneliness. It made it all the more freeing to leave that place, and helped me to remember that life is impermanent and nothing is certain. There’s a certain magic in that reminder, when it encourages you to be your truest self.”

The post Will Orchard – In The Shadow of Their Dark appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in May we introduced Part Of The Problem, Baby, the new full-length from Fortitude Valley coming this August on Specialist Subject Records, with single ‘Sunshine State‘. “A track which finds [lead Laura] Kovac addressing her younger self,” we described, “delving into the person she was before and during her move from Brisbane to the UK, and how the competing desires for home and escape never really go away.” With the album’s release edging closer, Fortitude Valley are back with new track ‘Video (Right There With You)’. “The song is about trying to get inside the head of someone you love, and how hard it can be surviving together in what feels like an increasingly hostile and scary world,” Kovic explains. “It also plays into the central theme of the album, which is about feeling distant from people you care about, both literally and figuratively.”

Watch the video directed by Stuart Laws below, shot as the band performed at the Machynlleth Comedy Fest and starring comedian Celya AB.

Part Of The Problem, Baby is out 1st August on Specialist Subject Records and you can pre-order it now from the Fortitude Valley Bandcamp page.

 French for Rabbits – Gold and Blue

Ahead of the Matariki holiday and an upcoming winter tour around Aotearoa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based outfit French for Rabbits have returned with brand new standalone single, ‘Gold and Blue’. Written by lead Brooke Singer in a prolific period before the birth of her son, the track meditates on the future and the mysterious ways in which it realises itself, be it through chance, fate or an intuitive reaching forward. The song comes complete with a video by director Martin Sagadin and cinematographer Bill Bycroft. “For the video, we wanted to throw the listener through time and space,” Singer explains, “feel a gasp for breath as they tumble them through the present and past to moments of change, connection, and fluctuation.”

‘Gold and Blue’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Glenn Echo – Give + Take

The project of Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Matt Gaydar, Glenn Echo is an outlet for patient and introspective folk music. Gaydar has just released a new Glenn Echo EP, No Believer, a collection of five songs recorded with help from Will Stratton that showcase this style perfectly. Second track ‘Give + Take is perhaps the standout, opening with the warm country croon of guitar before settling into a slow, contemplative momentum. “Been driving away, over the county line,” Gaydar sings in the opening line which immediately captures the song’s sense of night-time hush, “past the firehouse, all through the night, blind driving, silent.”

Jess Kerber – Tropical Storm

We’ve written about a number of singles from Jess Kerber‘s debut album From Way Down Here in recent months, describing how the Nashville-based songwriter melds traditional folk and contemporary electronic sensibilities to bring her emotive style to life. ‘Next to You’ rose from a dreamy haze to clarity, while ‘Never Again’ introduced the themes of loss and belonging so central to the record. With the album now out via Felte Records, Kerber has released latest single ‘Tropical Storm’. Another poignant, wistful slice of nostalgic longing, rooted in the specific imagery of memories as imprinted on the young mind. Watch the video edited by Kerber herself below:

From Way Down Here is out now via Felte Records and available from the Jess Kerber Bandcamp page.

Jeffrey Martin – Edge of Lost

With albums like One Go Around and Thank God We Left The Garden, Portland, Oregon songwriter Jeffrey Martin has developed an evocative brand of folk concerned with both the personal and the societal, centring the classic Americana style within the unique circumstances of the present (“The climate is collapsing, diseases rising, robots striving to take over the globe, and still there’s not enough money for the people who actually need it,” as we wrote of the latter album, “still the future holds a distant promise, the past haunts with its glory and regret”). Out via Fluff and Gravy Records, new single ‘Edge of Lost’ is every bit as heartfelt and urgent. Inspired by Davey Schaupp’s No Place to Grow Old, a documentary interviewing people experiencing homelessness or the threat of it across Portland, the song explores the strange contradictions of such a life. Where existence is at once heavier than it should be yet also translucently thin, the eyes of society sliding past as you though barely exist at all. “I tried to capture the chasm between the housed and unhoused,” Martin explains, “and how the psychological burden of that divide is a very difficult thing to hold as people try to navigate their way out of homelessness.”

Jillian Lake – Tactile

“There’s a city in my head,” sings Jillian Lake on latest single ‘Tactile’, a line repeated across the track in what might be warning or explanation. Based in Vancouver, the singer-songwriter has made a name with intimate, personal folk songs, though has increasingly pushed her sound into richer, more urgent territory without sacrificing any of the heartfelt charm. The new single is a lesson in how effective such a combination can be. Indeed, the refrain can be held as a key to the song’s spirit, presenting an exploration of grief in all of its complexity, an emotional landscape as bustling, nuanced and contradictory as any urban space. ‘Tactile’ is about how grief is this invisible and intangible thing that is so hard to navigate,” Lake explains. “A scraped knee, a black eye, a broken arm—is so much easier to make sense of than something you can’t pinpoint. Something you can’t bandage or brace.”

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

Jouska – Flower Moon

Jouska is the recording project of  Norwegian songwriter and producer Marit Othilie Thorvik. Originally a duo, the project started out making pop-orientated electronic music, but now that it’s Thorvik alone, the atmosphere has evolved into something more intimate and introspective. New single ‘Flower Moon’, Jouska’s first since 2023 record Suddenly My Mind Is Blank, leans into dream pop dimension of the project to invoke a sense of detachment, the vocals drifting through a wash of ethereal tones as though untethered yet longing for solid ground. “I was anxious,” as Thorvik explains, “distracted by things at home. Physically in one place, emotionally somewhere else, missing out on both.”

múm – Mild At Heart

Icelandic experimental royalty múm have established themselves as one of the most interesting and atmospheric projects since their inception in the nineties, each of the six previous albums building upon the last while always exploring new territory. Their first full-length in over ten years, History of Silence finds the band as ambitious as ever. An album “recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years,” the release blends electronic and analogue sounds to explore ideas of distance in our fast-changing world, the songs rejecting linear progress to instead embrace tangents and digressions. Take the way lead single ‘Mild at Heart’ shifts and drifts across its length, a controlled, ever-curious track that shows the power of understatement while also reaching towards new ground.

Watch the video filmed & edited by Sigurlaug Gísladóttir below:

History of Silence will be released via Morr Music on 15th September. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

The Noisy – Twos

Back in 2024 Philly dream pop outfit The Noisy released The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, an album written for and funded by the queer community which served as a celebration of their kinship, performance, joyous excesses and plurity. Now The Noisy are preparing to release a deluxe version of the record via Audio Antihero, appropriately titled The Secret Ingredient is Even More Meat, offering reimagined versions of the songs. Single ‘Twos’ and its gloriously cinematic video by Sam Cush indicates the new direction they take. “I wrote this song like a pop song but wanted the production to bend towards Mannequin Pussy with sludgy guitars and twinkly keys,” frontperson Sara Mae Henke explains. “The music video literalizes the too much-ness of the story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Grey Gardens meets two dates to the prom.”

‘Twos’ is out now via Audio Antihero and available from Bandcamp.

Tyler Bradley Walker – Because of the Many

We introduced The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me, the debut solo album from Tyler Bradley Walker, back in May, describing how the artist best known as one half of electronic rock duo Gone to Color was every bit as ambitious and adventurous in his solo work. ” Single ‘Moon Broke Quiet’ offered “a spacious, evocative soundscape which seems to sit at an angle to reality,” we wrote, “everything a little stark and surreal and strange […] occup[ying] that nocturnal liminal space between waking life and dreams.” With the album now out, TBW has shared opening track ‘Because of the Many’ as a new single, an experimental pop protest song that takes aim at modern day USA. The track’s idiosyncrasy and slow-burn intensity is intensified with a video every bit as odd.

Out gunned, not done
The fucking light is green
No one eats their eggs that way
Wise man funny man
Write your own story
Very large worlds untouched untouched

Watch the video directed by Andrew Petersson and produced By Carson Cox (Mod Visual) below:

The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me is out now and available to purchase from the Tyler Bradley Walker Bandcamp page.

Will Orchard – Something’s Gotta Go

If you’ve been reading VSF over the last few months, you may know that Nashville-via-New England songwriter Will Orchard has a new record, Behind the Shadow Glass, coming out later this year. The initial two singles ‘Down’ and ‘Nothing Fog’ gave a pretty good idea of what to expect, and now we have a third cut to further whet appetites. Titled ‘Something’s Gotta Go’, the song finds Orchard with his sleeves rolled up as he digs through the dirt. Crunchy Americana meets Neil Young folk rock which sees him picks through internal knots and tangles that have been tripping him up over the years. “[The song] is a cathartic release, and an acknowledgement of self-inflicted pain.” Orchard describes. “It’s about getting into the pattern of never being satisfied with yourself. Calling the song finished was somewhat of a challenge because of how raw and in some ways, non-poetic it felt. But that’s the spirit of the song, just putting it all out there and letting go of your will to try so hard.”

Wombo – Neon Bog

“Feeling every inch the product of a band nearing ten years together, [Danger in Fives] finds the Wombo sound realised in its purest form,” we wrote of the Louisville trio’s new album coming later this summer on Fire Talk Records, “combining the experimentation and risk-taking which marked their earlier releases with the growing confidence so evident on Fairy Rust. That is, the sound of project which has come to understand its spirit and ambitions and is now committing to them with total conviction.” Latest single ‘Neon Bog’ shows just how deep such conviction runs, the band embracing happenstance and happy accidents during the recording process to create something as atmospheric as it is idiosyncratic.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Cameron Lowe along with assistant director Scotty “Sleepy” Anderson. The film leans further into the haunting tones of the song, using practical effects a la Michel Gondry. “I’ve been watching a lot of the TV show Ghost Adventures and have been somewhat haunted by the implications of the paranormal,” as Lowe explains. “I thought the video was a good outlet for expressing that in an abstract way.”

Danger in Fives is out on the 8th August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now from the Wombo Bandcamp page.

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Last week, Keeled Scales announced they will be releasing These Days, the excellent debut album from Nashville-based songwriter Emily Hines, later this summer—a record we have previously described “as warm and soft as a blanket to wrap around yourself in the cold winter months, but with a sharp pang of something else too, a bittersweet bite more potent than the frost at the window.” To coincide with the news, Hines has unveiled opening track ‘My Own Way’, a hushed but nonetheless defiant folk song about walking one’s own path. “This is the last song I wrote for the record,” Hines describes, “I wrote it on my porch in Nashville. I felt stuck in place and needed to sing myself out of it.” It’s the perfect introduction to a collection of songs that unfold with grace and ring with real emotion, recorded mostly live to cassette for that warm and intimate texture.

Jacquelyn Roy – Shoot Your Arrow

On May Day, Ipswich, Massachusetts artist Jacquelyn Roy released Museum of Time, an album of wonderfully restrained and finely-wrought folk songs. Built on softly tumbling acoustic guitar, unembellished vocals and opaque imagery, these are folk songs in the gothic tradition, equal parts beautiful and darkly spectral. Perhaps the best introduction is ‘Shoot Your Arrow’, the record’s midpoint and an encapsulation of everything Jacquelyn Roy does so well. Roy describes it as a song “about love and loss,” and this is true in a very direct sense. It opens in the springtime, fluttering with the sense of contentment and new beginnings, but eventually slows into doleful resignation as Roy sings “So I’m setting you free / so you can shoot your arrow away from me.”

Jess Kerber – Never Again

“Beginning as a reflective croon and slowly ramping up in emotional intensity, as though ascending through the slightly ethereal haze of the opening towards a newfound clarity.” So we wrote of Jess Kerber‘s ‘Next to You’ last month, praising the combination of traditional Americana and contemporary electronics. With full-length From Way Down Here coming this June on Felte Records, Kerber is back with ‘Never Again’, the album’s opening track which not only further introduces this style but digs into the themes of loss and belonging which it brings to life. “I miss it sometimes / But never for long,” as she sings in the chorus. “I’ll Know it forever / But never again.”

Watch the video edited by Kerber herself below:

From Way Down Here will be released on the 20th June via Felte Records and you can pre-order it now.

Johnny Falloon – Circumcision

“Takes its seriousness unseriously and its unseriousness with reverence.” So reads the bio of self-described absurdist no-wave rock and rollers Johnny Falloon, with forthcoming full-length Tell Hell I’m Not Coming seeing the Athens, Georgia outfit take on the information overload that is the twenty-first century with a suitably raw and chaotic style. Latest single ‘Circumcision’ indicates the kind of intensity you should expect from the record, racing forwards with an almost dangerous momentum, as though at any minute threatening to go veering of the tracks and end in a fiery wreck. John Edmondson’s fervid vocals only escalates the manic energy, the wry humour which often shadows the lyrics doing nothing to dispel their deliver’s rabid preacher tone. The result is furious, searing, sometimes funny, and undeniably odd, the perfect cocktail of moods to describe our current moment.

linoleumville – to see you and talk

What they describe as “a conceptual project comprising a concept album & a literary zine,” linoleumville is the new venture of Alex Blake and Ben Dodd which brings together folk songwriting with electronic compositions. What the band call a song “about the first and final days of a relationship,” lead single ‘to see you and talk’ introduces the album’s melancholy atmosphere, combining sparse electronics and gentle vocals with minimal samples and shadowy negative space. Sheffield dream pop act Prima Hera joins to provide guest vocals, and these harmonies work to smooth the edges of the otherwise downbeat atmosphere.

pearly drops – Mermaid (ft. Cub Sport)

Recording under the moniker pearly drops, Finnish duo of Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin make a brand of pop that occupies the full spectrum of the word otherworldly. Lush and ethereal but also strangely alien, originating somewhere other than this world, be it dreams or outer space. New single ‘Mermaid’ invites Aussie rock outfit Cub Sport to lift the song further, bringing to life a track full of shimmer and melancholy which exudes a kind of fallen splendour. “In this song, among other things, the glamorous Hollywood scenarios have already been turned upside down,” the duo explain. “The decline has begun and, for example, a persona as a mermaid in the sewers of Sunset Boulevard seems like a more attractive sidequest.”

‘Mermaid’ is out now via Music Website and available from Bandcamp.

Sid Hillman – Even Things

For going on thirty years, songwriter Sid Hillman has been releasing evocative, often melancholic Western music, both solo and as part of the Sid Hillman Quartet, and latest album Oxygen feels every inch the product of this hard won experience and expertise. Take single ‘Even Things’, a slow, almost minimalist folk rock song as wise as it is poignant, rising above the rush of the everyday to share its meditative message. “This is a song about letting go,” as Hillman explains, “not trying so hard to control things, manage things, and seeing that there’s a beauty in taking a step back to allow things to move of their own accord.” Fans of the likes of Low and Red House Painters are sure to find much to appreciate within Hillman’s work, but comparisons are not always helpful with songs like this, as you leave the track with the sense of having experienced something far more personal.

Oxygen is out now via Rare Bird Recordings and you can find more on his website.

Special World – Big Apple, 3am

Back in 2024 we introduced Special World, the personal project of Philadelphia-based songwriter and musician Andy Molholt, with a self-titled release crafting “a place often strange and always colourful,” as we put it, “where the light bends in odd shapes and everything takes on the loaded, abstract logic of dreams.” With a June US tour on the horizon, Molholt has returned with a brand new single ‘Big Apple, 3am’, available as a specialty lathe cut 7″ via PIAPTK Records, which in reality isn’t a new song at all. Rather, the track is built from a demo Molholt wrote all the way back in 2009, with Izzy True (bass guitar) and Eric Slick (drums) joining to bring it to life. The result lives up to the above description in its woozy, cryptic tones, offering all the nocturnal colour suggested by its title and possessing that off-kilter glide unique to the forbidden hours of the night.

Watch the video by Grant Bouvier below:

‘Big Apple, 3am’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. The 7″ is available from PIAPTK.

Teethe – Magic Of The Sale

Texas outfit Teethe have had plenty on their plates since the release of their celebrated self-titled debut album back in 2020, putting out a number of well-received singles and support slots alongside the likes of American Football, Ethel Cain and Horse Jumper of Love. But it is only now they are turning their attention to a new full-length. Coming via Winspear this August, Magic Of The Sale continues to develop what the band call ‘Southern slowcore’, the addition of strings and and slide guitar allowing for a newfound cinematic depth. The lead single and title track embodies the layered style, where a melancholic weight is shot through with something brighter, and small beams of hope manage to penetrate the dark.

Watch the video by Ben Turok below:

Magic Of The Sale is out on the 8th August via Winspear and you can get it via Bandcamp.

Walker Rider – Free

“You took me to the RV show, listed off every engine you thought I’d know,” sings Minneapolis songwriter Walker Rider on ‘Free’. The everyman, perhaps unlikely, setting for a love song captures something of the atmosphere of Fair, Rider’s new record of rough ‘n ready heartbroken lo-fi country. The track is quiet and unpretentious and devastatingly intimate, Rider’s vocals (plus subtle accompaniment from Advance Base‘s Owen Ashworth) bleary-eyed and earnest as a 3am soul-bearing voicemail. A song tender in every sense of the word, aching with fondness yet sore to the touch, and unsure quite what to do with a love which hurts as much as it helps. “I am fine most of the time,” he sings in the refrain. “The other half, you were on my mind.”

The post Weekly Listening: May 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now Jess Kerber has returned with ‘Next To You’, a track which further develops her burgeoning style. Classic fingerpicked guitar is matched with subtle electronics, breathing a contemporary air into the traditional Americana sensibilities. The track builds with an assured patience as drums eventually kick in. Kerber’s delivery matches this rising energy, beginning as a reflective croon and slowly ramping up in emotional intensity, as though ascending through the slightly ethereal haze of the opening towards a newfound clarity. “‘Next To You’ is about the ways your dreams tell you what you don’t yet know about yourself,” as Kerber explains. “I wrote this song in my childhood bedroom, where hazy memories seem to always come back up to the surface.”

I’ve dreamt the strangest things
Every night or so
For the last 3 weeks

I hope they’re not signaling
Some kind of future
Where I’m flying off the highest swing

‘Next To You’ is out now via Felte Records and available on streaming services.

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Having orbited around one another in the LA music scene for a short while, Derek Ted and Braden Lawrence gradually began to collaborate, helping one another with solo work, producing other artists, then eventually writing original material as a duo. The product of the relationship is beaming, a brand new project which will release its debut self-titled EP this June via Rose Garden, and lead single ‘slow sinkin’ gives a flavour of what to expect from the outfit. With Field Medic adding guest vocals, the track possesses all of the earnestness fans of Ted and Lawrence’s solo work will know well, the bright rhythm and heartfelt tone the sonic equivalent of shaking clarity into a clouded mind. “Lyrically, it’s about looking back on the past and how easy it is to get caught up in your own BS,” the band explain. “It’s our most acoustic track on the EP, and we wanted it to feel more natural and organic.”

Watch the video directed by Olivia Alonso Gough with cinematography and colour by Michael Greenwood below:

Beaming EP is out on the 13th June via Rose Garden and you can pre-save it now.

Bouquet – Hold On

Almost a decade since their previous album was released, LA-based dream pop duo Bouquet are preparing to unveil a brand new full-length. Consisting of interdisciplinary artist, writer and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and songwriter and producer Max Foreman, the project made a name with a rich and romantic style that championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses, and new single ‘Hold On’ represents a continuation of the style. With Pennypacker Riggs providing vocals and guitar and Foreman vocals, synthesizer and drum machine, the song is a lesson in precision, not drowning the audience in reverb and haze but instead beckoning them into its ethereal, wistful world.

Course – Hue Mirror

Led by Jess Robbins, Chicago synth pop outfit Course formed in the months before the pandemic, so adapting to challenging conditions has always been part of the project’s DNA. Their third album Hue Mirror is no exception. After suffering with chronic pain for years, Robbins was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition ankylosing spondylitis, and wrote the record within the vertiginous early days of processing the news. The lead single and title track introduces the tone of the record, one delivered with equal doses of tenderness and fear. “I wrote this song during the confusion and uncertainty of my future,” Robbins explains. “The song touches on the idea of how a medicine for this disease comes at a price, the pain I had been having for so long, and the sneakiness of not knowing when the next flare will come.”

You find me again
And again
Driving fear
Comes over me
In the light of pain

Hue Mirror is out on the 25th April and you can pre-order it via the Spondylitis Association of America, with all proceeds being donated to research.

Jess Kerber – I Wonder If I’ll Forget This

Born to musician parents, and a guitarist herself since the age of twelve, Nashville’s Jess Kerber makes warm and timeless songs that feel like worthy entries to the American folk tradition. New single ‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is a case in point, a wonderfully understated track that aches with real emotion. Kerber’s vocals are flanked by acoustic guitar and the barely-there texture of organ drone, an arrangement that allows the songwriting to shine through. It’s impressively mature, particularly in the way it combines genuine vulnerability with a sense of steadfast tenacity, a sensation Kerber likens to “the feeling of being little and learning to swim, grabbing the edge of the pool.”

‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is out now via Felte Records and is available on streaming services.

JLJR – Arms For Eyes

With new EP The Rest of Your Life coming soon via Paper Moon Records, JLJR has shared new single ‘Arms For Eyes’. Building upon the mix of emotion and narrative which marked the JLJR debut, the track adopts a tone both reflective and defiant to chart the end of a distinctive kind of relationship. One troubled and difficult to live through, yet equally one whose closure takes something from you too. “It’s a reflection on the disintegration of a bad friendship,” as JLJR puts it, “and the struggle to be yourself after someone robs you of part of your identity.”

‘Arms For Eyes’ is out now via Paper Moon Records.

Luah – Wanting You

“Something like a memory, or rather several memories superimposed. A way in which to not so much return to the past as view it more vividly, somehow striking in both its intimacy and remove. That place we long for but can never return to.” So we wrote of ‘Ocean O. (home 4 the holidays)’ by Brendan Paul Sullivan’s Luah back in January. It was a song which embodied the sincerity and heart of the project, not to mention the gentle patience with with emotion is brought to life. With album Some Blue Heaven coming next month, latest new single ‘Wanting You’ takes this sense of patience even further. A layered, slow burning psych folk song that taps into the rhythms of the diurnal cycle, moving from day to night as it progresses and gradually coalescing into something almost cosmic.

Molly Ganley – Comparisons

Last week saw the release of Eldest Daughter, the debut album from NYC indie folk artist Molly Ganley. Described as “a nostalgic and honest account of finding your way,” it’s a very human record about growth and change and navigating life’s strange turns with as much grace as is possible. One standout is ‘Comparisons’, a track that sits at the centre of the album and proves the perfect introduction to what Ganley does so well. Backed by pedal steel, piano and backing vocals from country folk duo Raising Daughters, the song confronts the futile and needless woes that result from comparing oneself to others.

Monnone Alone – Dry Doubt

Eighteen months ago, Melbourne‘s Monnone Alone released single ‘Loose Terrain’, a stellar slice of jangle pop where bright playfulness was shadowed by the slightest mark of wistful longing. With three albums already under their belt, the track seemed to be a culmination of their talents and experience, only for the project to settle into a prolonged period of radio silence. Such quiet can go one of two ways in the music industry—positive or negative—but luckily for us, in Monnone Alone’s case, the answer is the former. Because while they might have have appeared inactive from the outside, the truth was they were hard at work on brand new full-length, Here Comes the Afternoon. Pencilled for early May, the release is a joint endeavour, with Lost And Lonesome (Aus), Meritorio (EU), Safe Suburban Home (UK) and Repeating Cloud (US) teaming up to spread the record far and wide. Album opener and new single ‘Dry Doubt’ suggests ‘Loose Terrain’ was anything but a flash in the pan, so the date can’t arrive soon enough.

Orchid Mantis – Spirit Circle

Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the Orchid Mantis project as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles, each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux. Coming this spring on Daydream Records and Start-Track, the latest Orchid Mantis full-length Possession Pact pivots towards a nineties slowcore style, channeling forebears like Low, Bedhead and Codeine to offer a new dimension to the project. Opener and lead single ‘Spirit Circle’ typifies the understated brooding atmosphere. A song bathed in shadowy textures and melancholic quiet, always threatening to rise into something more intense but for the most part maintaining its muted darkness.

Steven van Betten & Andrew Rowan – Cloud Behind the Sun

Back in 2023 we wrote about Friends and Family, the debut solo full-length by Steven van Betten on Future Gods which highlighted the LA songwriter’s distinctively compassionate, humane style. Now van Betten has returned with brand new EP Cloud Behind the Sun, though has parked the solo venture in favour of continuing a collaboration with composer Andrew Rowan which stretches back more than a decade. The lead single title track shows the three-song release to be every bit as thoughtful and heartfelt as its predecessor, taking the ostensibly ordinary experience of passing an ex on the street and mining the moment for all of its depth and weight. Something made possible not least thanks to Rowan’s almost cinematic arrangement, its intricacy revealing itself as slowly yet decisively as spring through a thawing winter ground.

Wryn – Only Thing

We’ve covered a couple of singles by Californian songwriter Wryn in recent weeks, with both ‘Snake‘ and ‘Slow Down‘ introducing the themes of change and self-actualisation which run through their upcoming full-length, Shapes. The record’s release is fast approaching on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and Wryn has returned with new single ‘Only Thing’ to further expand upon these ideas. The song opens with a spare, almost hesitant tone, but gradually builds in momentum, as though deciding to embrace life’s inevitable forward motion. “Life is always shifting and evolving,” as Wryn puts it, “and that’s a good thing. Change is the only constant.”

Watch the suitably literal video directed by DanTroon-Sazani below:

Shapes will be released on the 28th March via Righteous Babe Records and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – I don’t love you

Writing of release Spring Songs in April of last year, we described how Lahore-born, Orlando-based songwriter Zoya Zafar utilised a controlled, unadorned style to communicate a considerable depth of feeling. “Zafar uses minimalism not as an austere stylistic choice but as a tool to hone her music’s emotional weight,” as we put it, “suffusing it with warmth despite its direct and unfussy arrangement.” New single ‘i don’t love you’ is no less charged in its mood, beginning life with no accompaniment other than acoustic guitar before Max Helgemo helped evolve it into something richer without sacrificing the poignant spareness.

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