Unveiling an upcoming EP of the same name on Future Gods, Anni Rossi‘s ‘Wild West‘ established the artistic vision of the Brooklyn-based songwriter, performer and multi-instrumentalist. The EP, collaboration with cinematographer Sarah Tricker, sits “at the intersection of various modes of expression,” we wrote, “ideally placed to draw from [audio-visual] fields to create singular and inventive pieces of work.” New single ‘Chasing the Tiger’ follows with another evocative sound, the piano helping find a delicate balance between the ethereal and the human and emerging with something both sensual and reflective.

Wild West is out now via Future Gods.

Apollo Ghosts – Spilling Yr Guts

Vancouver‘s Apollo Ghosts made a splash in 2010 with their Polaris-nominated record, Mount Benson, though seemingly disbanded in 2013 as lead Adrian Teacher moved on to found COOL TV and other projects. But stories of their demise turned out to be exaggerated as Apollo Ghosts returned in 2019 with Living Memory, and the comeback appears to be a lasting one as this month saw the release of brand new album Pink Tiger on You’ve Changed Records. Single ‘Spilling Yr Guts’ is just one of twenty-two bright and inventive tracks, but its fresh, buoyant rhythm serves as the perfect point of entry for those looking to be swept away.

Spilling your guts on the sidelines
Spilling your guts on the stage
When you’ve got fuck all inside you
You’ll finally have something to say

A Starving Viking – Leaves

The moniker of Connecticut-based songwriter Matt Jarrett, A Starving Viking is a folk project which primarily relies on an intimately simple balance of guitar and vocals. His debut record Semblance was released in 2019 via Resonating Wood Recordings, though in anticipation of a new EP the label has released an amended version, now titled reSemblance. Single ‘Leaves’ is a great introduction to A Starving Viking‘s patient and kind-hearted sound, the melancholy of its murmured style counterbalanced by an ever-present compassion.

Fake Fruit – No Mutuas

Just over a year ago, Oakland, California indie rock band Fake Fruit released a self-titled album on Rocks In Your Head Records. Lead by guitarist/vocalist Hannah D’Amato, the band draw on classic post-punk to create something fresh and often acerbic, drawing on the frustration and general weirdness of 21st century living. A standout was single ‘No Mutuals’, a song that rallies against empty, point-scoring social interactions (what they call “Cool Guy Syndrome”) and now Fake Fruit have returned with a reworking of the track that adds an extra layer of attitude and translates the lyrics into Spanish. “This recording feels true to the original, but it’s sporting new haircut energy, an extra spring in its step and feels more aligned with how it sounds when played live,” D’Amato explains. “Plus it just feels good to scream in Spanish.” Check it out below:

Greet Death – Panic Song

Following on from 2019’s majestic New Hell, Flint’s Greet Death have spent the past few months unveiling a series of new singles. The subdued ‘I Hate Everything’ drew the listener into reserved yet resentful frame of mind, the familiar Greet Death weight hovering just out of view. ‘You Love is Alcohol’ introduced a woozy country vibe, ‘Punishment Existence’ simmered with latent intensity too. So the manner in which ‘Panic Song’ bathes the listener in its gauzy textures and insistent energy feels something like the deferred release promised on the previous tracks. Even if the release is excessive and all-consuming with its adrenaline-filled shakes.

Got onto something new
To repossess your blues
Another panic song
And sirens all night long

Jack Keyes – Gray Balloons

Last year we wrote about Kentucky artist Jack Keyes and his upcoming record, Dissolving in Dusk. Single ‘Nowhere’ introduced a sound “wrapped in an easy-going sincerity that holds both melancholy and fondness,” and latest track ‘Gray Balloons’ is similarly conflicted. Again based around the simplicity of acoustic guitar, the single confronts a difficult situation with tender charm. “This song was written after my girlfriend had her visa revoked,” Keyes explains. “She had to very suddenly leave our town in Kentucky to go back to her family nearly 10,000 miles away. In our last days together, I wanted to be happy and celebrate the good times, while also mourning a future loss.”

Dissolving in Dusk will be released later this year.

Kelly Hoppenjans – Stain

We’ve previously described the work of Nashville singer-songwriter Kelly Hoppenjans as “Channeling the spirit of riot grrrl while maintaining a folk sensibility,” with debut OK, I Feel Better representing “music of empowerment, facing up to expectations and staring them down.” Taken from new EP, Can’t Get the Dark Out, latest single ‘Stain’ is a direct follow-up to a single from that record, a kind of antidote to the toxic headspace ‘Band-Aid Girl’ asked Hoppenjans to re-enter every time she played it. As she puts it: “I decided to write a song, inspired by the same relationship, that I could perform after ‘Band-Aid Girl’ to lift me out of that funk.”

But I didn’t think to say that to you in the moment
I guess I only come up with the good stuff once you walk away
My mistake

I think it’s your fault

Check out the video directed by Crystal Bowersox below:

Can’t Get the Dark Out will be released on the 22nd May and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Kraków Loves Adana – Open The Door

Last year Hamburg‘s dream pop duo Kraków Loves Adana released Follow the Voice, a record which “in which the boundaries between physical reality, virtual reality and dreams began to merge and blur.” However the sometimes there is more to a song than the single take which makes it to the record, and new EP Swim in the Blue reimagines three tracks to allow them to exist in a different form. “I wanted to revisit these three pieces from a different perspective,” Deniz Çiçek explains, “never imagining that the songs would develop a whole new life of their own as a result.” A reworking of ‘Dream House’, ‘Open The Door’ is a perfect example of how these different spins manifest, with the sparkling synths toned down in favour of a fuller bodied sound.

Swim in the Blue is out now and you can get it from the Kraków Loves Adana Bandcamp page.

Laura Loriga – Passes the Flame

Born in Bologna and now based in Brooklyn, songwriter and pianist Laura Loriga has spent the last ten years honing her craft between Italy and the US, a geographic diversity which mimics the layered and shifting style of her work. Recording as both Mimes of Wine and now under her own name, Loriga has slowly veered away from an abstract classical sound toward something more immediate and intuitive, a move facilitated by a switch from acoustic piano to organ. Latest album Vever, out via ears&eyes Records, utilises this along with a variety of acoustic and electric elements, with single ‘Passes the Flame’ highlighting the shadowy, nuanced sound.

Max García Conover – Mud

Back in 2018, Max García Conover released Among Horses III, a superb collaboration with Haley Heynderickx on Barcelona label Son Canciones. Following on from a series of singles, this spring sees return Conover return with Deer, a brand new album on the same label which again leans into collaborative work. Take lead single ‘Mud’, written and recorded with Massachusetts folk trio The Ballroom Thieves. A song every bit as sincere and searching as anything in Conover catalogue, looking for substance in a strange world. “I don’t need to find the centre, I just need another song,” he sings. “So what if I write it wrong?”

Proper. – The Great American Novel

“This record is a concept album that’s meant to read like a book,” explains Proper. vocalist Erik Garlington of new record The Great American Novel. “Every song is a chapter following the protagonist through their 20s. Imagine a queer, Black Holden Caufield-type coming up in the 2010s.” Produced by Bartees Strange and released via Father/Daughter (US) and Big Scary Monsters (UK), the record is a searing critique of a society dedicated to and built upon denying Black genius. One which refuses to extend a hand to those who uphold this system of violence, deciding that for once it must be them who do the work to meet the album on its own terms.

The Great American Novel is out now via Father/Daughter (US) and Big Scary Monsters (UK).

Slow Down Molasses – Street Haunting (Vator Sessions)

Back in 2021 Saskatoon‘s Slow Down Molasses released their latest record, Minor Deaths. What we called ” a committed decision to embrace the energies of the contemporary moment in all of their frustrations, aggressions, vulnerabilities and dread.” Ahead of a UK tour this May, the band have unveiled a live version of single ‘Street Haunting‘ recorded with Vator Sessions. A take which encapsulates the bristling intensity of a SDM live show.

Minor Deaths is available from the Slow Down Molasses Bandcamp page, and you can find the full performance on the Vator Sessions Youtube page. Details of the tour are available here.

Uma Bloo – Strange Actress

The recording project of Molly Madden, Uma Bloo came into being when Madden left behind a strict conservative background and headed to Chicago. Among other artforms, songwriting soon became a way to express the dimensions of her personality that had otherwise been repressed. “Once I accepted the fact that I wanted to create my own music, these songs started pouring out of me in an effort to unpack the life I had and what I thought I wanted to build,” Madden explains. “In a lot of ways this album has been in process since I was eight years old without me fully knowing it.” Latest single ‘Strange Actress’ carries all the ferocity and feeling you might expect from such a process, holding desire, desperation and defiance in its hands and refusing to apologise for any contradiction.

You think I’m very strange
But the way I live makes sense to me
I think I’ll stay the same

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Husbands – Mexico

Husbands are a duo separated by geography, Danny Davis living in Seattle and Wil Norton in Oklahoma City. If the circumstances go some way to explaining their forthcoming album’s lengthy gestation (After the Gold Rush Party had been planned for 2016) then they are not apparent on the songs themselves. There’s something of the late 00s buzz band aesthetic at work, sun-bleached rock unafraid to dip its toe into the dreamy, tropical ends of the genre. However, as single ‘Mexico’ shows, the tracks come complete with undercurrents of something more morose—like shadows and sudden breezes, or the sunset sorrow of summer evenings.

“I spent last summer housesitting with my wife in Costa Rica,” Davis explains. “I spent the summer surfing, writing music and playing poker with the locals. It was the best time of our lives, but it also wrecked us.” Because the trip was something of an eye-opener, not so much in terms of what was in Costa Rica, but rather what was waiting back home. “We came back to Seattle, disillusioned about our days spent looking at code, working in cubes working 9-5s with no end in sight.” ‘Mexico’ is the response, a single based around the type of pipe dream fantasy that we know will never happen, yet lean on nonetheless.

Kelly Hoppenjans – If I Had You

Channeling the spirit of riot grrrl while maintaining a folk sensibility, Nashville’s Kelly Hoppenjans makes music of empowerment, facing up to expectations and staring them down. Her debut full-length, OK, I Feel Better Now, is an album about breaking moulds and realising your true self, encouraging people to fill their own space in the world without apology or embarrassment.

Single ‘If I Had You (Love Letter From A Padded Cell)’ is a case in point. Exaggerating and subverting the bunny boiler ex trope, the song confronts the glorification of obsession and fixation in relationships, asking why creepy and/or violent situations are held up as romantic or honorable. “I’d do anything to keep you, if I had you,” Hoppenjans sings amid the buoyant sound, the unhinged heart of the track dressed in brightness. “The album, as a whole, deals with the experience of being a woman in the world and accessing our power as women,” she explains. “I feel there is so much power in taking control of the narrative around the so-called ‘crazy ex-girlfriend,’ and saying, ‘You think that’s crazy? Oh no, this is crazy’.”

OK, I Feel Better Now is out on the 18th October.

Leah Dunn – Oakland

Based in the Bay Area in California, Leah Dunn is a songwriter with diverse influences, from the folk majesty of Joni Mitchell to the atmosphere and noise of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Released earlier this summer, her first EP Oakland displays how perfect such a marriage is, combining tenderness with a brooding atmosphere to create authentic and emotional songs driven by Dunn’s insistent vocals.

The title track is a perfect introduction for new listeners. Rising to life from a wistful wash of field recordings and reflective guitar, Dunn’s delivery emerges with the gentle croon of a lullaby. The lyrics themselves are concerned with something lost, an unease that works in juxtaposition to the sound, though soon a defiant refrain is found, repeating itself like mantra and growing in impact with every cycle.

I gave my soul to a lonesome mystery

Gutter Sparrow – Sheridan

Gutter Sparrow is the recording project of John Mosloskie. After previously writing and singing for Holler Wild Rose, Mosloskie set out solo, releasing his debut, The Fear of Forgotteness in 2017. The record was a lesson in patient, melancholic folk music, songs carved out of the intricacies of history and relationships and shaped into sad and striking sounds.

With the follow-up album, The Waker Dreams, set for release this autumn, Gutter Sparrow has unveiled a brand new single that continues such a style. The intimacy and warmth of ‘Sheridan’ is indicative of Moslokie’s sound, warm and fond and possessing the Kozelekian knack for sounding conversational and poetic in the same breath.

The Waker Dreams is out on the 25th October on Meadowlands Records and you can find more on the Gutter Sparrow website.

Soot Sprite – Bleed

Exeter trio Soot Sprite operate at the intersection of shoegaze and bedroom pop, crafting songs polished with an alternative sheen that lends a real intensity to the emotion. Set for release next month via Specialist Subject Records, their latest EP, Sharp Tongue, develops this aesthetic into something moody and dark but human too, balancing a simmering anger against vulnerability, a willingness to open up.

Lead single ‘Bleed’ is our first taste of the release, a track which finds an insistent rhythm yet is willing to change when needs be, breaking down into a heavy reverberation at the midpoint. Thematically, the song charts the insidious harm of friendship turned sour. ‘Bleed’ is about “toxic friendships and recognising them in your life and in others,” explains lead Elise Cook. “It’s all the niggling signs of someone acting like your friend and confidant whilst casually putting you down and chipping away at your self esteem, and the damage that leaves.”

Fime – Solo/Together

Based in Los Angeles, Beto Brakmo, Chase Cook and Maxine Garcia combine to form Fime, an alt rock band indebted to the genre’s 90s heyday. Recorded and produced by Melina Duterte (AKA Jay Som), Fime’s latest EP is set for release on the 11th October and you can hear the first single now.

‘Solo/Together’ utilises a quiet/loud dynamic to huge effect, crafting a sound that is smoky and sultry one minute then soaring the next. “How do you see without (Absolutely knowing)?” they demand in the cathartic refrain. “How do you feel without (Absolutely knowing)?” The song comes complete with an excellent video directed by Hailey Ruffner, so be sure to check that out below.

Sprawl is set for release on the 11th October and you can find Fime on Bandcamp.

Kate Teague – Sweetheart

“I’m just trying to be as real as possible,” says Oxford, Mississippi songwriter Kate Teague. “My songs are like journal entries. And I rarely filter myself.” Her self-titled debut EP is a product of such an artistic style, a rich tapestry of emotions that nevertheless maintains a near conversational tone. The balance is an interesting one, allowing Teague to delve into a kind of natural poetry, the incidental poetry of daydreams where the various strands of any given moment stitch into a beautiful whole.

The final single from the EP, ‘Sweatheart’ shows all this and more, playing subtlety and directness off against one another, both in terms of the sound and lyrical style. Because, for all of the delicate melodies and rich arrangements, there is a steely centre to the song that refuses to concede an inch to expectations. “Don’t call me sweetheart, I can frown if I want to,” Teague declares, breaking the romantic tropes of the folk genre to reclaim respect and autonomy. “Is the smile on my face that makes you feel you can put me to shame?”

Kate Teague is out on the 20th September and you can pre-order it now.

Sea Caves – Dart

Led by singer Sydney Rohrs and writer Shiloh Halsey, Sea Caves are a band interested in the rhythms of life—how circumstances, feelings and emotions can often be found to exist in recognisable patterns. These shapes might be hidden in the ground-level experience of every day living, but a slight change of vantage or remove from the usual conditions reveals them all the same. Sea Caves operate on such a level, creating music to be experienced rather than analysed, though closer looks will find a considered engagement with (or subversion of) forms and patterns.

As new single ‘Dart’ attests, the ability to recognise such patterns can be a source of optimism, allowing one to move beyond and start afresh. “You get into these rhythms,” Halsey explains, “but when those rhythms start to dissolve, you look to find them and they’re just not there. So you learn to recognize and explore new ones.” Change, however painful and uncertain, can be a force for good.

Beautiful Dudes – Shape I’m In

Led by Tom Bevitori, Nevada City’s Beautiful Dudes make what they describe as “rocking real dude music.” Set for release with the ever-reliable Mama Bird Recording Co., their self-titled debut out this autumn promises to be a return to classic punk rock, foregoing any experimentation or frivolity in favour of a high-energy commitment to the cause.

The album’s first single, ‘Shape I’m In’ explores the reality that lurks behind even our best days. A ‘pink cloud’ is the transient feeling of contentment and joy that come with early sobriety, and the song is positioned in the aftermath of such an experience, where the positivity has fallen away. “It felt so empowering to believe in the concept of freedom,” Bevitori explains, “and to be such a positive force with a mindset for change. But when the cloud went away, I was left with the weight of life, wavering health, and the emotional burdens of society. In the end, all the realness of life is still there, and when the cloud opens up, we are left living with life on life’s terms.”

Radio is to be released via Mama Bird Recording Co on the 28th October and you can pre-order it now.

That’s all for Vol. 28 of Bright Sparks, but be sure to stick around the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing.

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