“An album born of travel and distance, pieced together from segments of other places, but ending up very much unique.” That’s how we described Bato Mato by Carmarthen’s Adwaith released by Libertino Records back in 2022. The record was an ambitious one, drawing upon “any number of psych, grunge and dream pop influences to realise its sound,” as we wrote, but follow-up Solas goes even further. A twenty-three track double album which serves as the closing part of a coming-of-age trilogy, tracing the arc of the band’s progression which sees them drawn back to their West Walian roots at the height of their powers. “I feel like we’re confident in ourselves as musicians, and our sound, and the world that we want to create,” as Hollie Singer explains. “We feel fully realised.”

Watch the video shot and edited by Rhys Grail below:

Solas will be released on the 7th February via Libertino Records.

Anna Arboles – By Any Means Necessary

LA-based songwriter Anna Arboles is gearing up to release Pure Fanfiction, a brand new album on Anxiety Blanket Records which fictionalises the personal in order to edge closer to the truth. “These songs are about passing into adulthood and clarifying who I wanted to be,” Arboles explains, “but are not necessarily about my life. I wrote these songs as soundtracks to movies, TV shows, books, or photographs that catalyzed introspection. They’re like fanfiction for my life.” Taking inspiration from seminal queer film By Hook or By Crook by Harry Dodge and Silas Howard, first single ‘By Any Means Necessary’ serves as an ode to friendship and its supportive power. Hence how the doubt of the repeated refrain—”I don’t know if I can do it”—is slowly conquered, the uneasy movement towards self-actualisation made easier by those there along the way.

Pure Fanfiction will be released on the 14th February via Anxiety Blanket Records

Dead Gowns – In the Haze

Early next year, Dead Gowns (that’s the project of Portland, Maine’s Genevieve Beaudoin) will release their debut album, It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow on New York label Mtn Laurel Recording Co. Second single ‘In the Haze’ is a beautiful introduction, a patient and spacious country-tinged indie rock song that put’s Beaudoin’s incredible vocals front and centre, shifting from a quiet hush to a quivering wail as she explores the complex emotions of dealing with a then-undiagnosed illness. It’s indicative of a record that takes real-life experiences and then stretches their edges, probing at possibilities and straying from fact into fiction. “There’s a sense of freedom by starting in an autobiographical place and then expanding into fiction,” Beaudoin describes. “I learn so much about what has happened by exploring what could have been.”

It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow will be released via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. on 14^th February. Pre-order it now from the Dead Gowns Bandcamp page.

georgie – 2d

Serving as a celebration to a specific corner of the DIY scene in Rochester, New York, spit takes and split tapes is a four-band split release by raincoated records. Featured artists include Bugcatcher (whose album Go! we covered last year), Home Videos and Kitchen (who we first mentioned way back in 2016), as well as georgie, the project led by Claire G. McClusky who “combin[ed] ecological, personal and political sensibilities” for the excellent album Intimacy Hangover in 2023. One of the latter’s contributions to the split release, ‘2d’ sees McClusky and co. push the georgie sound through its usual airy folk style until it disintegrates into a noisy crescendo.

Meagre Martin – Frankie

After a fantastic 12 months which has included appearance at the Reeperbahn Festival, Pop Montreal and Pitchfork London, as well as successful singles ‘Never Thought‘ and ‘Malcolm‘, Berlin-based indie rockers Meagre Martin are closing out the year with one final, celebratory single, ‘Frankie’, which also serves as the first preview of EP Up To Snuff coming next February on Mansions and Millions. Pairing gauzy shoegaze textures with a persistent rhythm, the track embraces a bright spirit of playfulness and curiosity. “I can’t help / But smile / I look at you like a child,” as the opening lines go, submitting to the thrilling sensation of falling for someone and letting the current move in whatever direction it sees fit.

Watch the video directed by Federico Corazzini and Meagre Martin below:

‘Frankie’ is out now via Mansions and Millions and available from Bandcamp.

Nona Invie – Forget My Name

Created as an antidote to ubiquitous feelings of anxiety and fear, Nona Invie‘s appropriately titled new album Self-soothing sees the Minneapolis songwriter aim to provide a safe haven of calm within an often terrible contemporary world. “These songs are a weighted blanket that comforted and supported me in a lonely time,” as Invie explains. “I hope that they can be supportive, comforting to others.” Opener and lead single ‘Forget My Name’ offers a glimpse of the meditative sound which brings this mission to life. A lesson in the necessity of loosening our grip and letting go those things which do us no good in order to more fully inhabit a healthy sense of self.

Watch the video by Ingrid Weise below:

Self-soothing will be released on the 28th February via Boiled Records and you can pre-order it now.

Raybody – Puddle

Then recording under her own name, Katy Rea released full-length The Urge That Saves You back in 2022, an album which, as we put it, “explor[ed] her life not directly but through imagined characters and metaphorical stories that feel something like modern fables.” Now having adopted the moniker Raybody, Rea has returned with ‘Puddle’, the first taste of a new era for an artist currently at work on her second album. “[The new name] allows me to step into a braver and more honest part of myself,” Rea explains. “I’m after a truth that requires me to unattach from my given name—which has always felt sweet, well mannered, and more feminine than I am.” The new single introduces this new spirit, combining classic singer-songwriter sensibilities with something more singular and strange, resulting in a sound able to paint an intimate picture of a blossoming relationship and the self-reflection inherent within the process of learning to love another person.

Watch the video shot by Sawyer Gaunt and directed by Nicole Townsend and Rea herself below:

‘Puddle’ is out now and available from the Raybody Bandcamp page.

Robert Ascroft – Where Did You Go feat. Britta Phillips (Luna, Dean & Britta)

With album Echo Still Remains coming in January via Hand Drawn Dracula, producer and artist Robert Ascroft has been releasing a series of collaborative singles in recent months, including ‘Faded Photographs’ with Ruth Radelet and ‘Empty Pages’ with Zumi Rosow of The Black Lips. The latter offered “a beguilingly ambiguous interplay between rhythm and fuzz” as we put it, complete with a cinematic video, and now Ascroft has enlisted vocalist and actress Britta Phillips (who you might know as part of Luna and Dean & Britta) for another dark and filmic track. With rhythmic percussion, sensual vocals and an enveloping night-time mood, ‘Where Did You Go’ channels a sultry Lynchian aesthetic full of nocturnal weight. The full record promises to feature the likes of Ora Cogan and Christopher Owens too, so is certainly one to watch out for in 2025.

Watch the video starring Phillips and directed by Ascroft himself below:

Echo Still Remains is out January 31st via Hand Drawn Dracula and you can pre-order it now.

Sun June – 41 Dollars

Described as a song about “listening to men talk,” Sun June‘s new single ’41 Dollars’ is the Austin band’s first proper release since last year’s Bad Dream Jaguar—a record we described as “painting impressionistic pictures of love and longing in quiet dusk-hued pastels, as though in effort to preserve that which might otherwise fade out into nothing. The single is every bit as emotive and assured as we’ve come to expect from the outfit, the sound holding reflection and longing within the same moment, and what results is a sound placid on the surface yet roiling with a myriad of unseen currents and pressures below. Released via Run For Cover Records, the single comes complete with a demo version of ’16 Riders’ as well as a remix of ‘Easy Violence’ by Porches.

Wasn’t it all in my head?
Wanted you
Fighting off all that I can
Watching the horizon waul
Trying my best in the cool water
Watching it rise and fall
Listening to you talk

Watch the video below:

’41 Dollars’ is out now via Run For Cover Records and available from Bandcamp.

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During this period, Rea had one solace—songwriting. She would come home to her guitar late at night and play along to the New York’s nocturnal rhythms, writing songs to the ruckus of wailing sirens and the night-time sounds of strangers on the street. Eventually these tracks became Katy Rea’s debut album, The Urge That Saves You, a collection of songs that explores her life not directly but through imagined characters and metaphorical stories that feel something like modern fables.

Nowhere is this clearer than on ‘Floods in Houston’, a taut, tense song which sees Rea draw on her mother’s teenage years in Texas. It centres on Jessica, a livewire female figure in a world of difficult men (Daddy and his temper, Brother haunted by war in Vietnam). The climax sees Jessica break a bottle and run at a group of “mean cowboys” who are beating up a boy in pink clothes, almost hoping for a chance to use it. Jessica is not Katy, nor Katy Jessica, but the song expresses deeply personal feelings regardless. A song about female rage, the ever-present tension that sits below the surface, waiting to spike into action or violence. A feeling that women face everywhere, but that Rea associates most particularly with Texas. “When it rains, it pours,” she describes. “The creeping feeling of humidity in Houston lends to this feeling which I carry in myself.”

Two weeks before heading into the recording studio, Rea’s friend Joshua Jaeger (who plays drums on the album) challenged her with the idea that to find contentment, she would need to kick her habits. Knowing this to be true, she decided to quit drinking, a decision which gives the album an almost painful clarity. It’s as if a fog has lifted and Rea is able to reflect on the past, the present and the future with newfound intensity. This journey towards lucidity and the difficult decisions it can bring is captured in the rich slow burner ‘Say Goodbye (One More Time)’, a song Rea says is about “finding the strength to leave something that feels wonderful,” which grows from barely-there picked guitar into a velvety, full-bodied folk rock song complete with a cathartic climax.

Katy Rea describes her sound as “empath rock”, the perfect illustration of her attentive, introspective style. She is the album’s passionate, mercurial centre point, moving from quiet murmurs to dramatic wails. Shades of folk sit side by side with crashing percussion and moody psychedelia, creating something that sounds both cinematic and intensely personal. The title track pairs sparse piano with answerphone-style vocals, while ‘Lord Try’ shifts tempo with languid ease and ‘We Don’t Believe’ comes thudding in with real weight, Rea displaying her full vocal range as her voice goes from trembling lulls to and howling peaks.

Lots of tracks hold a sense of self-reflection and inspiration to change, to become something else. Rich and syrupy and built on beguiling, ephemeral melodies, ‘Happiness’ is a song about taking back control “When I was writing ‘Happiness’ I was looking for a kind home within myself,” Rea tells Under the Radar. “I was one of these people who gave tender guidance to friends but couldn’t follow my own advice. This song is about taking responsibility. And in a way it was a kind of premonition, the message came before I knew what I needed to be happy but now it is very clear.”

The album’s final track, lead single ‘We Come Back’, captures these themes in their most distilled form. Feeling like both a declaration of acceptance and something of an exorcism, it sees Rea come to terms with her past selves and resolve to let them go, to become someone new, someone better. “I learned that it isn’t boring to be kind to yourself,” she describes of the song, and really, of the album as a whole. “It opens your world. It takes a lot of forgiveness to gain self-respect.” It’s a powerful message, and a testament to the power of art and creativity in providing purpose and direction. In providing the urge that saves you.

The Urge That Saves You is out now and available via the Katy Rea Bandcamp page.

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