Back in March we introduced the self-titled debut EP from beaming, the new project of Derek Ted and Braden Lawrence, sharing single ‘slow sinkin’. “With Field Medic adding guest vocals, the track possesses all of the earnestness fans of Ted and Lawrence’s solo work will know well,” we wrote, “the bright rhythm and heartfelt tone the sonic equivalent of shaking clarity into a clouded mind.” With the EP out now via Rose Garden, beaming have unveiled new single ‘4U’. “This song is about falling in love and needing to confess how you feel,” Ted explains. “We wanted it to live in a space between glitchy digital sounds and acoustic moments. The chorus is meant to feel like an avalanche of relief—like everything just opens up once you finally say what’s been on your mind.” Watch the video directed by Olivia Alonso Gough and edited along with Braden Lawrence below:

Beaming EP is out now via Rose Garden and you can buy it now.

Don’t Worry – This Time

We’ve been building up to the release of Don’t Worry‘s new album Idealism in recent months, sharing a number of singles which suggest the record will find the Essex punks exploring new sonic ground while furthering their signature blend of sincerity and playfulness. Taking inspiration of the 90s/00s alt golden age, latest single ‘This Time’ sees the outfit reach towards the likes of Smashing Pumpkins in its sense of scale and weight. The result is as cathartic as anything in the Don’t Worry catalogue to date. “‘This Time’ is a song about learning from bad experiences and making sure you don’t make the same mistakes again,” explains songwriter Ronan Van Kehoe. “It’s about growing as a person and coming out of a rough period into a better time.”

DUG – Livelong Day

Having signed to legendary Irish label Claddagh Records, folk duo DUG have shared a new single ‘Livelong Day’ in preparation for their much anticipated debut full-length. Comprised of Jonny Pickett and Lorkin O’Reilly, the project has quickly risen to prominence in the contemporary folk scene, seeing them earn two Grammy nominations and support slots for the likes of Willie Carlisle and Iron & Wine. Though the new track offers a glimpse at a so far unseen darker dimension of DUG, it is easy to see why they have earned such acclaim. A reimagining of the old folk tale ‘The Legend of Knockgrafton’, the song finds its protagonist sobering up amid a drunken dance in a faerie ring. And while the tone might be slightly heavier than previous tracks, it is one nevertheless leavened by its playful spirit.

‘Livelong Day’ is out now via Claddagh Records.

Kaycie Satterfield – ford falcon

Following on from 2024 album Rosie, a release with Earth Libraries we described as “a record which sets out to explore large themes through a personal lens,” Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Kaycie Satterfield is back with brand new single, ‘ford falcon’. A song full of attitude and honest truths which faces down the expectations placed upon women with a mix of sardonic humour and steely defiance. “I’m not your fucking mother,” as Satterfield says in the opening lines. “I can’t come tuck you in.” She’s not your daughter either, nor your lover, just a woman in the same room. And she’s here to make sure you realise the fact, even if it is the last thing you do.

kissing other ppl – Ashes of American Flags

Last month we introduced the self-titled covers record from kissing other ppl, the new project that brings together folk duo Viv & Riley and singer songwriter Rachel Baiman. The lead single was a take on Dr Dog’s ‘Where’d all The Time Go’, adding a timeless folk style to the original, and now the trio are back with their version of Wilco classic ‘Ashes of American Flags’. It’s illustrative of the outfit’s experimental sense of collaboration, as Viv jumps behind the drum kit to play a “no holds barred snare smash,” while Riley adds distorted fiddle and Baiman gives her all with the vocals. Altogether, it’s a worthy homage to the original, which is no mean feat. “Growing up in Chicago, Wilco were royalty,” Baiman describes of the source material. “The line at the end about fallen leaves in shopping bags brings up such strong childhood imagery for me.”

kissing other ppl is available now from Bandcamp.

Old Man of the Woods – Meditation

“With a languorous, enveloping sound, again the mood is undeniably ghostly, though its eeriness carries not so much fright or unease as a sense of possibility,” we wrote of ‘Amber‘ from the new Old Man of the Woods full-length Tendrils last month. “As though in connecting the long-dawned past with a gesture towards the future, [Miranda] Elliott invites us to consider just how interconnected the stages of so-called linear time might be.” With the album now out, Elliott has shared latest single ‘Meditation’, a self-described  “breathy, minimal ritual” which performs its own form of transubstantiation, taking a desire which might otherwise appear absurd and changing it into something charged and devotional. Built on strangely hypnotic percussion that wobbles and clatters throughout, it’s almost a dance track, but Elliott’s vocals remain ethereal as ever, drifting in and out like curtains of mist.

Rebecca Schiffman – Bubble of Love

“The record sees the LA-based songwriter grapple with what it means to live a moral life within a society that can appear hellbent on compromising our personal values.” So we wrote of Before the Future, the new album from Rebecca Schiffman coming later this summer with Lost Sound Tapes. No stone is left unturned across the songs, with everything from motherhood, grief, family vacations and the ethics of the pet-owner relationship explored. Latest single ‘Bubble of Love’ employs a peppy rhythm and sweet vocals to turn its attention to the familiar arc of romantic love. The song “traces a relationship from the honeymoon phase when you could spend all your time with someone and anything is possible,” as Schiffman explains, “to a time when it feels claustrophobic and you want to pop the bubble.”

Watch the video by Renata Zeiguer below:

Before the Future will be released on the 25th July, including a cassette via Lost Sound Tapes, and you can pre-order it now.

Snake Orange Cake – Stitch

When covering the work of Berlin-based artist Julia Carlsson in the past, it has been for leoblu, a project we’ve described as making “ambiguous and atmospheric music which situates intimate emotion against the more mysterious forces at work around us.” But now Carlsson has branched out towards a new sound, and has thus adopted a brand new moniker. Snake Orange Cake sees Carlsson elevate her experimental electronic style with spoken-word poetry and extra narrative thrust. The first tase of a forthcoming EP, new single ‘Stitch’ offers a glimpse of the invention and playfulness which underpins the new project, weaving a detailed, rhythmic sound over which Carlsson’s spoken vocals play with disarming closeness.

Star Moles – Fate

“The oeuvre is a lesson in the potential of bedroom pop, refusing to settle for genre conventions to push the style in new directions.” So we wrote of the work of Emily Moales’s Star Moles back in May, describing how single ‘Key Change’ embodied Moales’s “growing boredom with idealised romance of polished pop, choosing to instead get its hands dirty and dig into the messy guts of what love really means.” Now Star Moles has announced full-length album Snack Monster, coming later this summer on Earth Libraries, and opener and latest single ‘Fate’ serves as a mission statement for the release. A song which looks to address contemporary neuroses via traditional styles, looking to break free from the strictures of established narratives and reclaim agency from the impression of predetermination.

Xol Meissner – Hunt [97]

The recording alias of Swiss-born, NYC-based composer Mauro Hertig, Xol Meissner pairs baritone vocals with a singular hammered lap-steel style to create soundscapes as evocative as they are otherworldly. New album Excess of Loss might be Hertig’s debut under this moniker but arrives fully formed, each track functioning with the eerie, unnerving logic of a dream. Take single ‘Hunt [97]’, a song sedate in rhythm, drifting within its own textured arrangement, yet shot through with imagery both violent and strange. “Open field vision / we access the graveyards / ancestors aim / at the holes in our hearts,” he sings in one such typically striking verse. Or elsewhere: “The bodies pile up / to a sculpture of justice / fathers are holding / the hands of their sons.” The result is mythic. Oddly timeless yet sonically unique. Weighted with a meaning slightly beyond our understanding. Something which lingers at the edges of our reality. Alluring, terrifying and sublime.

Watch the video by Camille Henrot (director), Ben Scofield (director of photography and colourist), Mauro Hertig, Camille Henrot (editors), Marie-Christine Statz and Gauchère (costume) below:

Excess of Loss is out now and available from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

His latest project, a song series titled Made in China, homes in on a more specific point in terms of geography, but is as ambitious and far-reaching as anything Jonny Pickett has done to date. Consisting of a series of compositions released over the past year, the project explores the last hundred years in Chinese history by focusing on figures who shaped it. Releases on the politician and revolutionary Chiang Kai​-​shek, his nationalist wife and First Lady Soong Mei-ling, and her communist sister Soong Ching-ling highlight Pickett’s ability to locate the personal within the historical, a drama both familial and national.

The latest single turns its attention to Wang Nan and his role in the Tiananmen Square protest. “I understand upon releasing this song, I will most likely not be able to return to China,” Pickett says. “When I was in Tiananmen Square last year I was crushed by a profound pain and cried for Wang Nan and the others whose names we’ll never know. There was no plaque, no remembrance for what happened in that space. This is my own way of remembering Wang Nan and the others who disappeared in this time.”

Further highlighting the international spirit of the music, the track sees contributions from around the world, with Irish composer Gareth Quinn Redmond lending violin, Salvadorian composer Daníel Domínguez the viola, and a Chinese musician listed here as Francis N (for the sake of anonymity) playing the erhu. These players come together to create something that sounds as grand as it does mysterious, the mournful quivering of the erhu evoking a uniquely Chinese grief.

Artwork by Oscar Pearson

The post Jonny Pickett – Wang Nan and His Camera appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘Aïre & Annemasse’ is firmly in the neo-classical bracket, its subtle emotion rising into insistent peaks and poignant lulls. This piano-based style feels like the backbone of Time & Place, the structure around which Jonny Pickett experiments and explores, circling back to the piano from his various travails in other fields. Follow-up ‘Woman of Gold’ is one such venture, something of an electronic dream pop song, channelling the likes of Aero Flynn and even Sufjan Stevens in its sincere, plainspoken delivery.

Forming something of a pattern, the piano-driven ‘Lluc’ returns to the purely classical sound, though one far more reflective than the previous example. The track unfurls slowly and with patience, becoming more playful for a short while before quietening into its rhythm once more. With old film footage of the American landscape, the accompanying video lends a nostalgic edge, the song becoming a plaintive ode to the simpler past we hold in memories, where all rough edges are softened by the camera’s focus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqe_8nLjEtk

Leaning further toward the folk end of the spectrum, ‘Adam’ utilises banjo and clarinet to produce a sound both earthy and warm, rich in history and bound to the land. The closing section of the track rises into a more poignant, classical-based style, from which closer ‘An Ending’ emerges, its sparse beginning coalescing into gentle piano rhythms. The two tracks serve as a neat summation of Pickett’s sound—organic and flowing, yet ambitious enough to channel this course in various and surprising directions.

Time & Place is out now and you can get it from the Jonny Pickett Bandcamp page.

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