Recorded in an old church near the birthplace of lead Daniel Hedin and taking years to bring to fruition, ‘Hideous Form’ is the new single from Det Hemliga Folket, a collaboration between Hedin and Budapest‘s Marton Fogl. The sound feels intrinsically tied to the origins of the track, offering an austere space full of shadow and cryptic weight, Hedin reaching beyond his surroundings and the present mood to re-engage with something more elemental. A song fitting for a project built around Hedin’s desire to connect with heritage, be that the ancestors who walked the land before him or the very earth of Sweden itself. Det Hemliga Folket is “a re-connection with the wild north inside me and the ancestral blues that whispers within the sound of the earth, the whispers in my head of the very fabric of the land,” he explains. “I hear the ocean and the silence of the forests that raised me like mothers and fathers. The darkness that’s been a part of me is an engine that never can die. It’s not just me, it is the earth where I am from, the deep beneath the soil of the north that is always calling me home.”

Dylan Henner – I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with her Beauty

A collection “which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past.” That’s how we described Star Dream FM, the new album from Dylan Henner out via Phantom Limb, with previous singles ‘We Ditched School and Climbed Over the Neighbour’s Fence to Swim in their Pool All Day‘ and ‘We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked‘ “embracing not just a sentimental fondness for the specific moment but one wider in scope,” as we put it, “longing for the kind of curiosity and carefree spirit which marks youth.” With the album now out, Henner has shared another single and the title of the track says it all. ‘I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with Her Beauty’ is “about the frenzy and passion of love in adolescence,” as Henner explains. “About how your crush can change the whole universe with their presence, make everything feel bigger than you could possibly handle sometimes or so delicate you could lose it in an instance at others. The harp was supposed to represent the sort of angelic ascension of renaissance or classical beauty, which is the only lens you can ever see your crush with when you’re seventeen.”

ERIKA DOHI – Myth of Tomorrow

Later this week, Osaka-born, New York-based composer and pianist Erika Dohi will release Myth of Tomorrow, a brand new full-length via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records. Described as “a sonic meditation on catastrophe, resilience, and rebirth,” the album builds upon the eclectic style of predecessor I, Castorpollux to push Dohi’s sound in new directions, utilising a variety of sensibilities from dance, jazz, ambient and classical modes to create soundscapes as singular as they are striking. The record draws its title from the Taro Okamoto’s mural of the same name, and the title track draws the clearest line between the two artworks. A song concerned with the endless cycles of existence, not only asking what they demand of us but also how we might find peace and healing within the recurring patterns of life. “For me, the song reflects on resilience and regeneration in the face of life’s relentless cycles,” Dohi explains. “Through its lyrics, I explore the contradictions of modern existence—the struggle to find happiness in repetition, the unspoken burdens we carry, and the illusions we chase in pursuit of fulfillment. Yet, amidst all of this, the song also asks us to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the beauty in the everyday: the sun rising without fail, the moon’s quiet waning, the resilience of a dandelion growing through cracks in asphalt. It’s a song of introspection that invites us to confront our disconnection and rediscover what moves us to live and hope for tomorrow.”

Myth of Tomorrow will be released on the 24th October via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records and you can pre-order it now.

Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Fluorescent Light

Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover are no strangers to collaboration, the pair releasing Among Horses III back in 2018 on Son Canciones and the anniversary single ‘How Does the Horse Go Home?‘ five years later. “The genius of both Heynderickx and Conover is their ability to draw a relatable emotion from their subject matter,” we wrote, “tapping into a universal sense of nostalgia and longing and presenting it back to us, shaping and polished into its most gleaming form.” Based on the life and work of Woodie Guthrie and this time to be released via Fat Possum, What of Our Nature is a brand new full-length by the pair which builds upon the chemistry they’ve crafted over the years to offer songs as inventive and heartfelt as anything they’ve released to date. After the verbose and sometimes frantic ‘Boar’, latest single ‘Fluorescent Light’ highlights a more delicate, restrained dimension to the record, though true to Guthrie’s spirit, there’s a seam of social commentary running through it too. A tone at once playful, melancholic and cutting, able to take aim at the banalities and cruelties of contemporary life without losing its airy brightness.

Kramies – Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour

Back in August we introduced Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, the new album from Kramies on Hidden Shoal, with single ‘Hollywood Signs’. The track showed the album’s nuanced nature, the sound following “a newly nostalgic direction, full of dreamlike longing and evening colours,” as we put it, yet one which possesses “something strange and quietly unsettling, full of the mysterious allure which Kramies has always offered.” With the record out now, the title track has been unveiled as a new single, the cornerstone of the record which embodies all of its richness and duality. Blending autobiography with fiction, ‘Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour’ rises from relative restraint into something enveloping, Kramies moving from a spacious, drifting sound into something rich and triumphant, playing like a metamorphosis witnessed in real time.

Langkamer – Crows

Following on from 2024 album Langzamer, as well as lead Josh Jarman’s solo release under the moniker Classic Trucks earlier this year, Bristol‘s Langkamer are preparing to release their fourth album in as many years. Coming early next January via Breakfast Records, No was recorded in the Spanish hills at Zarzalico and carries some of the Mediterranean clarity in its sound, creating enough space to examine the full scale of our frenetic contemporary life. Lead single ‘Crows’ gives a taste of what to expect, a track fired by nervous energy and unanswered questions, barrelling forwards despite its clear desire to stop and change. “’Crows’ is a song about the crazy shapes we contort ourselves into trying to create art in the era of late-stage capitalism,” the band explain. “Working a thousand jobs. Writing songs with the left hand while writing emails with the right hand. Your day is already doomed the moment you open your eyes. Everything’s a bad omen.”

Orchid Mantis – Strange Heaven

Change and evolution are key features in the career of any artist, especially one as prolific as Orchid Mantis. “Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the [project] as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles,” we wrote back in March, “each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux.” In Airports, the second Orchid Mantis full-length to be released this year, not only continues this process but meditates on the very meaning of such an endeavour. What does it mean to commit to a life making music? And how might it help chart all that is lost and preserved over the years? The result feels like the culmination of everything Orchid Mantis has done to date, returning to old styles and techniques as readily is it breaks new ground, and thus becomes something of a mission statement for the project. A declaration of intent to give the past and future equal billing, full of the spirit which has been pieced together over the years yet open to possibility. New single and closer ‘Strange Heaven’ expresses the sentiment most succinctly:

as it fades away
we could keep drifting
we could form a star
we could be lifted

The Planes – Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)

We last wrote about New York indie rock outfit The Planes back in 2023, describing ‘First Breath After Mask’, a single from EP Dark Matter Recycling Co., as “a song at once depressed and affirming. As though from with its own inertia stirs some last attempt at catharsis.” Now the band are back with Motel For Lightning Bug, a brand new release which sees them continue their own idiosyncratic mix of rock and pop influences, harnessing some of the energy of their livewire shows without losing a sense of emotion or reflection. It is fitting that opener and single ‘Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)’ is a reworking of a fan favourite from live shows, what the band call label as “slacker indie rock bubblegum” which deals with loss with equal parts wistfulness and wry humour, not to mention an infectious sense of momentum which only builds across the length of the track.

Sister Wanzala – Now You’re Mine

Back in 2022 we heralded the apparently triumphant return of London sibling trio Sister Wanzala, singles ‘Perfume‘ and ‘Top Drawer‘ appearing after a three-year hiatus which started soon after the release of 2019 EP The Circus and signalling an almost reluctant determination to pursue making music in an age which can often appear to be designed to convince you otherwise. Fittingly, both tracks featured dreams as a central motif, though rather than some inspirational battle cry to all those who which to pursue their passions, they either described these dreams as full of disaster (‘Top Drawer’) or declared a desire to have them removed entirely (‘Perfume’). You can already guess what happened next. The return was a false dawn, Sister Wanzala retreated into their shells again, only… what’s that? A new track, two years later? Another self-deprecating press release declaring their career a failure and promising more of the same? You’ll understand if we don’t call ‘Now You’re Mine’ anything more than another small blip in might otherwise be a pristine half-decade of silence, but as soon as the jazzy opening unfurls with all its nineties daytime TV swagger and the cold groove settles with effortless cool, you’ll be glad you got anything from the project, no matter how alluring and brief.

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The release won Kramies acclaim from a variety of places, not least Billboard who christened him ‘The Dreampop Troubadour’, but now he’s about to return with a brand new full-length and is already stepping away from the persona. The aptly titled Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour sees Kramies push his work in a new direction. Made in collaboration with Grammy-winning producer Mario McNulty (David Bowie), the new album takes the mythic beauty of its predecessor and pushes it in a newly nostalgic direction, full of dreamlike longing and evening colours. But as lead single ‘Hollywood Signs’ demonstrates, this hushed, soothing style possesses an underside. Something strange and quietly unsettling, full of the mysterious allure which Kramies has always offered. The lyrics might tell a realist (if melodramatic) tale of two people, lovers or former lovers, but that’s only half of the story. In the world of Kramies, nothing is ever quite as it seems.

‘Hollywood Signs’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour will be released in October via Hidden Shoal.

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Retracing the footsteps of beloved Scottish nature writer Nan Shepherd, Alice Boyd and eight other women set out into the Cairngorm mountains in 2023, spending four days immersed in nature with Shepherd’s writing and spirit as a guide. Boyd’s new EP Cloud Walking is a journal of this experience, combing folk harmonies and chamber pop instrumentation with field recordings gathered in situ to reflect upon the challenges and joys of facing the elements. A response to the song ‘Heart’ by Jacob Norris’, who Boyd collaborated with for previous release The Favourite, single ‘Heart ii’ embodies the the EP’s philosophy—championing the benefits of slowing down and connecting to your surroundings amid a busy, panicked world.

Stay calm in the torrent
Stay slow in the chase
And hasten to help out
And hurry to make

Brent Amaker and the Rodeo – You’re No Good

“A Southerner in Seattle who channels the classic country spirit while at the same time subverting its tropes, owing as much to the persona-led art rock of Bowie and co. as the macho (so-called) authenticity of the genre’s heavy hitters.” That’s how we described Brent Amaker and the Rodeo earlier this year, won over both by their single ‘Take Me By The Horns‘ and cover of Devo’s ‘Gut Punch‘. Having travelled to Mexico City with Mariachis, Amaker is now teasing new album Vaquero, pencilled for release sometime in 2025, and single ‘You’re No Good’ introduces what to expect from the record. The buoyant spirit of the Salón Tenampa at Plaza Garibaldi committed to song, with Amaker’s distinctive, almost Cash-esque cowboy vocals hinting at the dark underside of such a good time. Watch the video directed and edited by Jasmina Hirschl below:

‘You’re No Good’ is out now. Vaquero will be released some time in 2025.

Celeste Madden – Fever Dream

“A lesson in unguarded feelings which isn’t afraid to risk overstatement in trying to explain the sensation of the moment.” So we wrote back in the summer of Celeste Madden‘s ‘Joan of Arc’, a single released via Sad Club Records which represented the first release from the UK songwriter in two years. This sincere style continues through into latest track ‘Fever Dream’ too. Pairing acute longing with an ethereal air, the song charts those heady days of romance where pleasure and frustration accentuate one another and everything feels so close yet so far away. A state almost unreal in its experience. “Life with someone becomes a distorted daydream,” as Madden explains. “Thrilling but unnatural.”

‘Fever Dream’ is out now on streaming services.

Denison Witmer – Focus Ring (feat. Sufjan Stevens)

Next February, Philadelphia singer-songwriter Denison Witmer will release new full-length, Anything At All, an album made in collaboration with Sufjan Stevens, who produced, recorded and performed on the songs. With a balance found between Witmer’s characteristically straightforward, earnest folk and Stevens’s ornate arrangements, the album probes into great existential themes with a careful hand, delving into ordinary domestic scenes to locate the joy to be found there. “Anything At All is about doubling down on family life and doing everything I can to slow the pace of my life as things around me feel busier than ever before,” Witmer explains. “It’s about putting systems in place and committing to the changes needed to make it work.” New single and opener ‘Focus Ring’ introduces the style perfectly, its warm sound full of heart and fondness. Watch the video directed and animated by Stephen Halker below:

Anything At All is out on the 14th February via Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Frog – Did Santa Come

Having returned from hiatus in 2023 with the excellent full-length Grog, New York cult heroes Frog are already preparing to drop another album on us. And though we have to wait until March for the intriguingly titled 1000 Variations on the Same Song, the duo have been kind enough to share an appropriately seasonal taster to tide us over into the new year. ‘Did Santa Come’ “is about my son when he was two years old at Christmas time,” Daniel Bateman explains. “Every morning for 2-3 weeks after, he would wake up and ask, “Did Santa Come?” Seeing the world through the eyes of your children makes it all very beautiful.” In true Frog style, this is delivered with full sincerity yet with no trace of the Hallmark sweetness the description might suggest, committing instead to the idiosyncratic energy which has won the project so many fans.

‘Did Santa Come’ is available now from the Frog Bandcamp page. 1000 Variations on the Same Song will be released in March.

Golden Tiles – Doesn’t Take Long to Find

Last month Portland, Oregon outfit Golden Tiles released The First EP, their appropriately titled debut via Antiquated Future Records. Consisting of Oliver Stafford (vocals, guitar), Justin Hocking (drums) and Joshua James Amberson (bass), the band create a bright, laidback brand of basement rock which combines playful melodies, fuzzy textures and reflective vocals. Fans of Guided By Voices will find much to admire in tracks like ‘Tale We Told’ and ‘100%’ , while latest single ‘Doesn’t Take Long to Find’ edges towards Yo La Tengo territory with its assured, nostalgic tones. A trio to watch for sure.

Kramies – That’s A Midwest Christmas

Following on from single ‘Social Light‘, which enlisted the help of Allison Lorenzen to bring to life “another dreamy, melancholic fairy tale which blurs the line between eeriness and empathy to form something ultimately affirming,” songwriter Kramies is capping off 2024 with a Christmas song of his own. ‘That’s A Midwest Christmas’ is everything you’d expect from a festive tune. Warm fondness and nostalgic reflection edged with something more melancholic, the acoustic arrangement creating an intimate, authentic sound able to chart the bittersweet quality of the season. Another year has past, the weight of days gone grows heavier, but everyone is home once again.

‘That’s A Midwest Christmas’ is out now.

The Men – Pony

With their fifteenth album Buyer Beware coming next February via Fuzz Club, prolific New York punks The Men have unveiled new single ‘Pony’ to defiantly evidence their refusal to slow down. In someone else’s hands, a song which asks “when you gonna stop running?” in the opening line might opt for a slower, more reflective sound, but The Men answer the questioning with a blistering momentum, teeing up another record which examines the turbulent present with all the snarl and bite it deserves. Recording engineer Travis Harrison (Guided by Voices, Built to Spill) helps the band achieve their live performance on tape, and the raw immediacy is apparent from the first second to the last.

The world is ending
grab a seat
enjoy the ride

Watch the video by Preston Spurlock below:

Buyer Beware will be released on the 28th February 28th via Fuzz Club.

Will Stratton – I Found You

“When the forest burns, what ghosts rise as steam from the boiling soil?” So asks Points of Origin, the new full-length from Will Stratton, forthcoming via Bella Union and Ruination Record Co. next March. Described as a novelistic album “as dense as a Pynchon picaresque,” by Ben Seretan in the album notes, the collection sees Stratton grapple with the grim realities of the Anthropocene across an almost geologic span of time, centring on California as a kind of a ground zero for both the causes and effects of humanity’s connection to nature. Lead single and opener ‘I Found You’ pitches the listener straight in with a rich, character-led narrative, Stratton’s vocals prominent within the careful, tender arrangement. “I met a mechanic up near the state line / he knew I knew motors and paid me just fine,” as one verse sets out. “I couriered engines all over the state / and settles by Shasta surrounded by lakes / the beds have gone dry but I do what I can / to keep away fire from my plot of land.”

it rips through the Coulter and Tamarack pines
and it thickens the air ’til you’d think you’d gone blind
saying, oh where are you, oh where are you, when it has reddened the sky
oh where are you, oh where are you, when heaven abandoned the sky

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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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The Cherries are Speaking, last year’s album by Dan Knishkowy’s Adeline Hotel, represented “another step in Knishkowy’s exploratory path,” as we described. “One with no set end or direction, but one pressing on with larger goals in mind. A part of a greater body of work which comes into view one record at a time, edging closer to whatever the full picture might be.” This October will provide the next stage of this journey as Adeline Hotel is releasing new full-length, Hot Fruit, again via Ruination Record Co. A record, as per Andy Cush’s album notes, “characterized by that push-pull interplay between composition and improvisation,” with Winston Cook-Wilson and Scree’s Ryan El-Solh, Carmen Rothwell and Jason Burger all lending their talents. The title track captures the blend of craft and spontaneity perfectly.

Beti Masenqo – much of anything

Beti Masenqo is a songwriter out of California who has recently unveiled debut single, ‘much of anything’. A track which introduces her style of delicate, often reflective folk which ties together melancholy and joy with a wistful thread. Here specifically on the subject of love, where tenderness doubles as a kind of tenuousness. A spell to submit to or break. “Fell asleep in Mexico, fever in the night / I know this must be obvious but your were on my mind,” Masenqo sings in the opening lines. “Felt compelled to tell you that, just to prove I tried / your fingerprints were on my chest, my soul was left behind. I know you will be gone / can’t think this will be much of anything.”

Cereus Bright – Chasing the Feeling

Cereus Bright, the recording project of Knoxville freak-folk songwriter Tyler Anthony, has been operating for the best part of a decade, though the sound has undergone a constant evolution in the interim. Having recently signed with Nettwerk, Anthony has been sharing a run of singles to show off the latest face of Cereus Bright. A style which follows the reflective tone of 2021’s Give Me Time with a newfound focus on the future, looking forwards and confronting all the mystery, uncertainty and potential therein. Latest track ‘Chasing the Feeling’ errs towards the optimistic side of things, or at least finds itself unable to shake the lingering possibility there might exist a better way to live. “’Chasing the Feeling’ charts the kinds of longings we all have,” as Anthony explains. “It’s nostalgic… it felt important to make it more subtle and melancholy. For me, that’s what the core of this feeling really is—a quiet desire to return to something better than today.” Watch the video shot by Ross Bustin and edited by Corey Campbell below:

‘Chasing the Feeling’ is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

KMRU – Along A Wall

The first release from KMRU‘s own label OFNOT, new album Dissolution Grip emerged from a period of study at Berlin’s Universität der Künste, where, under the tutelage of Jasmine Guffond, he used field recordings in a novel manner. Rather than including these recordings directly, he used their waveforms as a guide for his own compositions, essentially tracing over the real-world sounds and recreating them as digital soundscapes. Take single ‘Along A Wall’, a bonus track on the digital release, where the wind of Nairobi is recreated in all of its fickle movement with nothing but electronic tones.

Kramies – Days Of (acoustic version)

Back in 2022 we wrote about the self-titled album by Kramies, describing it as “what feels like the culmination of a career to date. Where everything is consolidated and offered in its most fully realised form. Life in all its surreal wonder and visceral reality. Kramies, told as truthfully as possible, whatever form that truth takes.” Having teamed up with VanGerrett Records and with a new album coming next year, Kramies has unveiled the functionally titled EP, The Original Undecorated Takes from the Kramies LP. Four songs from the album as they appeared when acoustic demos. Lead single and opener ‘Days Of’ highlights the difference from the original, the stark depth swapped for a more intimate sound, though one retaining all of the emotional power.

Pretty Bitter – What I Want!

Self-described “psychedelic synth pop gumball machine” Pretty Bitter is Emelia Bleker and Miri Tyler, along with multi-instrumentalist Zack Be, drummer Jason Hayes and guitarist Chris Smit. Together the outfit craft a sound which lives up to their label, where inventive pop sensibilities are blended with driving indie rock energy and some of the sardonic lyricism and delivery familiar to riot grrrl and post-punk. Latest single ‘What I Want!’ utilises this sound to take on eating disorders and the process of recovery. A combination of gallows humour and rising catharsis which eviscerates those responsible for the outside pressures behind such an experience.

If you’re lonely
Try being someone else

If you’re shrinking
At least they love you while you hate yourself

Could you tell I was not well?

Sinai Vessel – Tangled

Aside from some outtakes and demos, ‘Tangled’ is the first release from Caleb Cordes’s Sinai Vessel since 2020’s stellar full-length Ground Aswim, and introduces the next step in the project’s evolution. The Asheville-based songwriter has long won acclaim for his distinctively emotive and searching style, though Cordes truly stands out for the way in which he layers in other emotions too. This is on full display on ‘Tangled’, where a gentle warmth belies the thread of paranoia running beneath the surface. “We are at the mercy of a tangled web of wires / Snaring one another / strung up by our words,” Cordes sings, voice barely breaking a murmur. “Intent is one among a set of signs / if misaligned, you’ll misinterpret.” Once this dimension of the track clicks, you’ll never quite hear it in the same manner, the hushed style no longer sounding intimate so much as lonely, walled off from others and no longer trusting words as a reliable means to bridge the divide.

There’s no poison like
Believing an enemy’s in sight
When there’s no threat at all

Soft Covers – The Real Housewives of Porpoise Spit

In October, Naarm/Melbourne-based indie pop band Soft Covers will release their debut album Soft Serve on Little Lunch Records and Hidden Bay Records. Previous EP Permanent Part Time set out a jangly DIY aesthetic, and the new record sees the trio go bigger in every regard—instrumentally, thematically, and in terms of ambition—without sacrificing the authenticity that made the original songs so great. Lead single ‘The Real Housewives of Porpoise Spit’ is a great introduction for those unfamiliar, taking the nostalgic fondness of retro jangle pop and injecting a certain momentum, not to mention a playful lyricism that blurs the line between wistful and witty.

Tamra – Omens, Silos

Based between Boise and Los Angeles, Tamra is a band, as per the press release, “animated by the idea that, though there’s nothing to do, there’s still something to say.” Their debut EP Light Reading emerges from the dead expanses of the American landscape and lead single ‘Omens, Silos’ introduces this aesthetic with a staccato, opaque poetry. It melds early 00s college favourites with Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison and a turbulent undercurrent of Midwest emo. The result, with its distorted guitar and vocals that rise and fall on sonic updrafts, is oddly captivating, both gloomy and not, full of inelegant beauty like a deserted stripmall under a bruised and stormy sky.

Light Reading will be released later this year.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2023 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

I have come to the conclusion that all fairy tales endeavour to describe one and the same psychic fact, but a fact so complex and far-reaching and so difficult for us to realize in all its different aspects that hundreds of tales and thousands of repetitions with a musician’s variation are needed until this unknown fact is delivered into consciousness; and even then the theme is not exhausted. This unknown fact is what Jung calls the Self, which is the psychic reality of the collective unconscious […] Every archetype is in its essence only one aspect of the collective unconscious as well as always representing also the whole collective unconscious.

Kramies has long been dialled into such ideas. Across a range of releases, the Dutch-American songwriter has nurtured a distinctive style of folkloric music. 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. And if, as per von Franz, these truths are complex and difficult and far-reaching, then it stands to reason Kramies will continue to build these worlds, each time circling a little closer to that unknown fact—the Self.

Released by Hidden Shoal, the new self-titled album represents the closest Kramies has come to communicating this Self. A record as committed to world-building and atmosphere as ever, but also loaded with personal details too. What feels like the culmination of a career to date. Where everything is consolidated and offered in its most fully realised form. Life in all its surreal wonder and visceral reality. Kramies, told as truthfully as possible, whatever form that truth takes.

Kramies was kind enough to answer some questions about the record, so read on for a deeper dive into into its themes and inspirations, the balance between myth and reality, and how its existence was predicted in a palm reading he received many years ago.

I think the title of the record is a good place to start. You’ve put out plenty of music in the past, so what is it about this collection that made you choose a self-titled release?

In the past I’ve written these type of dark & dreamy folklore EPs and whimsical songs. Stories that came to me as the seasons changed. Over the years those releases gained me a lot of press and recognition, but I felt like I was slowly growing through those songs and stories. I’ve been doing this for a long time and trying to really understand my craft and where it comes from. It seems I have re-created or brought back a genre of my own around this type of dark storytelling and I’ve become very comfortable sitting with that and creating. Yet, for the first time I found I was writing more personal and drawing into my own dark stories. There was a magical collision between this folklore that I’ve been creating and my own history. It was also the first time I wasn’t concerned with the outcome; I just wrote and was sort of pushed into taking time. It felt like there was no appropriate title for this constellation of songs… Also – true story, a long time ago an old lady who practiced witchcraft was reading my palm and told me that I would have a body of work titled by my first name only.

There was a decidedly otherworldly tone to many of your previous releases. Something mythic which challenged the line between real and fantasy. Would you say Kramies continues in this vein? Where does the needle fall on the real-fantasy spectrum, if any significant distinction should be made?

Well, Kramies definitely does fall into that vein, but it has more truth and clarity. I can never get too far away from the otherworldly and mystical sound. That’s what flows to me organically and out of nowhere like wind through the woods. It’s just on this album I was doing exactly what came to me and not trying to overly create something. I’ve become very comfortable being my strange artistic self, I’ve come to terms that I’m a sort of Willy Wonka meets Madhatter creative being with a crazy laugh and a unique life story that’s all my own. I think that finally started leaking through into this album. Plus, I do think having multiple producers really help make this a kaleidoscope of sorts. I think this time it’s a 74% mythic and 37% real life which much more than before (that equals 111% and I don’t know how I came up with those numbers, but I like it).

Playing into this are themes of ghosts and memory too. You’ve described how ‘Hotel in LA’ mirrors a period of your life where “there was a beautiful blur between the lines of what was real and what was nostalgia in the making.” Could you expand a little on this relationship between the past and present, and the importance of memory more generally across the album?

In my past I was a drug addict and many times close to death. For many years I stumbled in constant circles, exhausting cycles, and hid from realties. Yet life always gifted me with amazing adventures and special moments which has created a sort of beauty amongst the unpleasant for me. This tends to stir my witchy cauldron of creative nostalgia in a pretty more beautiful way. Yet because of the addiction my memories are a bit upside down until I find a moment written on paper, recollections in boxes, or an old friend comes to a show and reminds me of funny past tales.. I think I took all those past clues, life puzzles and current tapestries and melted it into this album. I just want to quickly say that you ask wonderful questions, I’ve done quite a few of these over the years and its rather lovely to swim deeper and try remembering things.

On a related subject, I’m interested in the sources of inspiration which directly seed your songs. I’ve read ‘Hotel in LA’ was inspired by an old letter? How did such an object compliment your exploration of the memory?

What’s crazy is since the days of my sobriety, I’ve moved to fourteen apartments in seventeen years. I’ve kept a lot of boxes filled with music clippings, memories, photos, letters etc. I’ve moved those boxes 100 times and never opened them; I just keep adding to it all. Well just over recent times I decided to open some of the older boxes to find many beautiful and personal time capsules. I believe it was all just proper timing, I could have opened these boxes anytime over the last seventeen years, but it was something magical that finally pushed me to look. There were so many letters from people I once loved or people who were inspired by my music and all sorts of things.

You know for a while there after my last EP in 2018 I was drained creatively. I live a very artistic life and I make a living off of it which can really take a toll on your energy. It took opening these boxes at the right moment and seeing positive memories that might have been created in the darkness of addiction and youth but now seems to light up and spark my memories to create this current album.

Can we talk about inspiration more generally? I definitely get a literary influence to your style? Who/what do you view as central to the shaping of your work, be it in terms of lyricism or sound?

The truth is I always wanted to be a writer. I’m more influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien or The Brothers Grimm then I am by much music. In fact, the first book I ever read as a kid was The Hobbit, it was the first time I remember being able to visualize imagery in my head from the words I was reading. My attention span was always to short to be a writer so song lyrics became my craft. The best part though is last year I wrote the soundtrack to a French book called Legend of the Willow. It was the first adult, fairy tale, pop-up book with a soundtrack. As you read it, you scroll your phone over the pages, and it plays the soundtrack… It’s been so fantastic to do stuff like that because it combines my love of books with what I do.

Quite an array of talent helped bring Kramies to life, from Jason Lytle and Tyler Ramsey to the excellent Allison Lorenzen. Could you talk a little on how the collaborations came about?

Oh well that really has been some sort of magic, I have been really lucky to experience so many brilliant artists come into my life and help me. Some I’ve known for years and some just appeared. It rarely happens for artists this way but for some special reason all these wonderful humans were a part of this. I think there’s seven well known artists on this LP and I have a lot of love and respect I have for each one of these people. I think its what also made this album so different and detailed. Each person who worked on this album has a unique story on how they came into my life, I’ll spare you the long stories but for them all to be on one album is truly magic, and if you don’t believe in magic then that’s your business and I don’t know what you call it but its real.

This might be like choosing a favourite child, but I’m always interested which specific songs are held most dearly by the artist themselves. Do you have a favourite on the record? And, if so, what’s special about that one?

This is going to sound absolutely mad but my favourite “child” on this album is the cover art that Lady Viktoria created. Each song has such a special moment captured in time for me that it would be so hard to pick one. Yet somehow though when all gathered under the painting of the cover it all makes sense for me.

Kramies is out now via Hidden Shoal and available from Bandcamp.

Artwork by Lady Viktoria, photography by Jerome Sevrette

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LA-born, Nashville-based songwriter Alicia Blue has just released her most recent EP Inner Child Work via Magnetic Moon, and opening track ‘DTMTS (Don’t Tell Me To Smile)’ serves as the perfect introduction to her work. A song which seizes upon the pressure to present yourself a certain way, even when the world is overwhelming and smiling is the last thing on your mind. “I’m a real thing,” Blue sings, “If you want to be with me / know that sometimes the sun’s not going to shine.”

Inner Child Work is out now via Magnetic Moon and available at the usual places.

Angel Saint Queen – Diablo Lake

The product of a months-long road trip, Angel Saint Queen’s ‘Diablo Lake’ takes in the range of the American landscape, be it wide-sky deserts of Utah to the rainy mountains of the Pacific Northwest. A track which highlights the duo’s bittersweet tone, capturing a sadness for leaving and excitement for what comes next. A little wistful, a little upbeat, ready to roll the windows down and ride on through to whatever place should pop up next.

‘Diablo Lake’ is out now and available via streaming services.

First Rodeo – Didn’t It Rain Last Night

There’s a certain old-time charm to Portland‘s First Rodeo. A collaborative project between Nathan Tucker and Tim Howe, their sound has more than one foot in classic country rock. But there’s a contemporary freshness to the sound too, meaning wherever their boots are planted, there’s no question they are facing out over fresh ground. Lead single ‘Didn’t It Rain Last Night’ is the perfect introduction, a song contemplative and sometimes melancholic, its Americana roots accentuated by Sam Wenc‘s bowed banjo, though infused with a confident rhythm which rubs off on everything.

Goon – Emily Says

Fresh from releasing album Paint By Numbers, Volume 1 back in February, LA’s Goon are already back with brand new record, Hour of Green Evening. Described as the band’s “most complete statement,” the album sees Goon combine everything which came before to realise their most polished and detailed sound yet. Single ‘Emily Says’ shows off just how evocative this can be. A love song dedicated to frontman Kenny Becker’s wife Emily Elkin which celebrates the transformational power of forming a bond while acknowledging it cannot alleviate all external ills.

it hinges here in the air
a garden in wait
blanket of sunshine
and i’m like “i wanna be there”
and emily says “hope still appears”
and though i know in my heart it’s right
feeling like hurting myself tonight
nobody’s candle is burning bright
the wind inside the blades of grass will unbind it

Hour of Green Evening is out now and you get it from the Goon Bandcamp page.

Indigo Sparke – Pressure in My Chest

This October sees Australian songwriter Indigo Sparke return with their second full-length album, Hysteria, on Sacred Bones. With focus on themes of love, loss, history and reconciliation, the record is a raw yet far-reaching collection of songs, pushing beyond the relative minimalism of debut echo yet retaining the intimacy at its core. Lead single ‘Pressure in My Chest’ pitches the listener straight into the deep and honest sound, building with the slow intensity suggested by the title until its cathartic conclusion.

Jack Keyes – The Moon is Too High

Louisville songwriter Jack Keyes released his second record Dissolving in Dusk this month, an album we’ve described previously as “wrapped in an easy-going sincerity that holds both melancholy and fondness.” After ‘Grey Balloons‘ offered a conflicted picture of a relationship slipping away, final single ‘The Moon is Too High’ searches for a way in which to appreciate the present moment, however difficult and fleeting it might seem, with an endearingly lo-fi and intimate sound.

Kramies – Hotel in LA

With a brand of folk-inflected dream pop willing to combine history with folklore and myth, Kramies has made a name across several acclaimed EPs, but this September sees the release of a self-titled debut full-length on Hidden Shoal. Featuring Todd Tobias (Guided By Voices), Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) and Tyler Ramsey (Band of Horses), the record offers a layered, ethereal sound which challenges the distinction between real and dreams when contemplating the past. Which is something single ‘Hotel in LA’ captures perfectly. “It kind of follows that timeline of my life where there was a beautiful blur between the lines of what was real and what was nostalgia in the making,” he explains. A space in which experiences are processed into memories, and all the emotional significance attached. Check out the video by Derek Lee LaJoie below:

Kramies is out on the 9th September via Hidden Shoal.

Lee Baggett – Fruit Dog

Born in the Philippines, Lee Baggett moved to Sanger, California as a kid, going on to form a band in high school and becoming part of the San Luis Obispo music scene through the eighties and nineties in bands like Unknown Origin and Fever Tree. Work with Kyle Field’s Little Wings and the Be Gulls followed, as well as a solo career which stretches right through to the present with Anyway, a new record coming soon on Perpetual Doom. Single ‘Fruit Dog’ taps into this history, like a long-lost seventies summer jam complete with a surreal slacker spirit which captures that easy-going West Coast swagger.

 Nwando Ebizie – Myrrha

Nwando Ebizie is a multidisciplinary Afrofuturist artist gearing up to release debut album The Swan this month on Accidental Records. A lesson in speculative world building, the release conjures an fictional matriarchal society which feels both timeless and utopian, Ebizie’s use of found sound and footage bending the lines between the historical past and imagined futures. An enthography of what was and what could be. Described as “a lament,” single ‘Myrrha’ confronts the intricate relationship between pain and change, finding space to mourn and celebrate those who have suffered through a process of transformation.

The Pleasure Majenta – Gardens

Hailing from New Zealand and now based in Berlin, The Pleasure Majenta craft a deliciously dark sound which draws upon goth and noise influences with a cowboy twang too. Their latest record Looming, the Spindle came out recently on Dedstrange, and final single ‘Gardens’ serves as a great introduction for the uninitiated. Opening with a palpable foreboding, the track coalesces around itself with shadowy grace, the mood decidedly Lynchian as it unfurls, beckoning the listener further into its slowly sashaying heart. Check out the video filmed, directed and edited by Anna Winslow below:

Looming, the Spindle is out now via Dedstrange and you can grab it from The Pleasure Majenta Bandcamp page.

Sun Kin – I Wanna Believe

Following on from ambient EP Painting Whales, Part 1 earlier this year, Kabir Kumar has turned Sun Kin back toward a more indie pop direction with new single, ‘I Wanna Believe’. A bright, smooth track packed with upbeat energy and heartfelt emotion, its tone never quite erring on the side of irony or sincerity but instead embracing a duality within its retro glitz. On the one hand there’s a playful side (“I wanna believe in love / I’m eating a chocolate bar named for loneliness”) but there’s a more earnest thread to the track too. What Kumar describes as about “gaining love by treating it as a spiritual foundation.”

vireo – Coyote

Following on from 2019’s leaf heap, an album we described as “slow and patient and peaceful as the late autumn dusk,” Pittsburgh‘s vireo are set to return with brand new record, Moss Longing. Lead single ‘Coyote’ introduces a collection of songs centring around “climate anxiety, folklore, wanderlust and children’s books,” its careful folk pop sound blossoming gradually into something bright and affirming, the vocals of lead Chris Beaulieu shaded by a sense of sadness but not beholden to it.

Moss Longing is due to be released on 18th August. Pre-save on Spotify, or keep on eye on the vireo Bandcamp page for pre-order info.

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