With her album Utopian Fantasy coming this spring via Nettwerk, LA/London-based songwriter Allie Crow Buckley has unveiled the final single, ‘Cowboy in London’. A perfect introduction to Buckley’s psych-inflected folk rock style, the song exists as something both ethereal and emotive, transporting the listener with its rich and languid sound. “The song is a reflection on my years as a teen and being on my own in London for the first time,” she explains. “It was wonderful and terrifying, and I was totally enthralled.” But running through this carefree spirit is a certain wry humour too, as though calling to attention the naivety which sits at the heart of such a mood.

I could be a cowboy in London
Think I could play the part
‘Cause I’m kinda cheap
And I’m pretty tall

The song comes complete with a video directed by Buckley herself which you can watch below:

Utopian Fantasy will be released on the 19th May via Nettwerk and you can pre-order it now.

Angel Abaya – The Bubble

Next month, LA-based songwriter Angel Abaya will release debut album The Bubble on Earth Libraries. It’s a record which uses the image of its title to explore the various siloes we put ourselves in—be it relationships, friendship groups, identities or physical locations—and how such things can be both comforting and suffocating. As you might expect from a record dealing with conflicted states, the sound varies from bright to dark across its ten songs, and the title track encapsulates the mood. An upbeat pop song carried by Abaya’s soulful and playful vocals, the tone walking the line between confident and confessional.

There are many queens walking circles round this gigantic planet
Not a lot get the credit in the bubble run by princes reciting
Hamlet
Woe is me to be or not to be is that the question
These ladies know what they want and they’ve got too much
time to teach you a lesson

Arthur Moon – 7 O’clock Clap

The moniker of Brooklyn‘s Lora-Faye Åshuvud, Arthur Moon is a project based around intuition and experimentation, as typfied by forthcoming album Chaos! Chaos! Chaos! Side B. Through a combo of pop and electronic styles, they weave sounds full of left-field surprises while always maintaining an overarching sense of control, playing at the boundary between intention and improvisation. “The idea I had was to make an album that was ‘coherently incoherent’,” as Åshuvud explains, capturing the logical diversity of an old-school mixtape. Single ‘7 O’clock Clap’ shows some of this spirit within its two-and-a-half minutes, its shifting moods and tempo evoking the ever-changing phenomenon of identity, and using those cast of ideas to shape what we might ultimately become.

Brother Language – Epley Maneuver

With an album pencilled for release sometime later this year, New York‘s Brother Language has unveiled the single ‘Epley Maneuver’ to give an indication as to what to expect from the record. A slow burning slice of indie rock inspired by a close family member’s diagnosis of vertigo, the song manages to evoke some of the condition’s dizzying force. Its hushed beginning eventually rising into a hefty crescendo, strummed acoustic guitar and a sense of negative space giving way to thumping drums and a scrawl of distorted guitar. Watch the video shot by Abigail Diess below:

‘Epley Maneuver’ is out now and available from the Brother Language Bandcamp page.

Corey Leiter – Lay It Down

After the shadowy tones of 2022 LP Fire Season, LA’s Corey Leiter has returned with brand new single ‘Lay It Down’ on Anxiety Blanket Records which turns to a more compassionate vibe. While living in Echo Park by the 101 Freeway, Leiter came to witness his neighbours living under the overpass, and the track looks to humanise those failed by the system and state while raising money for the Los Angeles Food Bank. Leiter says the song “seeks to feel like a warm hug from a friend,” offering a hand to those in need amid a country all too ready to pretend they do not exist.

Dorio – Lost These Days

Described as hanging “in the liminal space between upbeat orchestral pop and anonymous late-night lounge,” the music of Austin‘s Dorio (AKA Chad Doriocourt) offers a dreamy nocturnal sound indebted to Tokyo’s Shibuya-Kei movement. With new album Strawberry Dreams coming later this month on Earth Libraries, Doriocourt has unveiled new single, ‘Lost These Days’. Introducing the vocals of collaborator Rachel Rascoe, the song offers a typically vivid sound, with the easygoing retrofuturist vibe only accentuated by the clarity of Rascoe’s voice. “When the big night is here is late,” she sings with a tone somewhere between twee and sardonic, “Rest your heart rate, yeah the rush is great! / Legend in your own mind, if you write the lines.”

Hayden – Are We Good

“Are you worried about the past / coming back to you too fast,” asks Hayden Desser, AKA Hayden, on the title track of tenth album Are We Good. “Are you worried about the sea / and what’s going on underneath?” The final image is a pertinent one for an artist who has made a name blending melancholic emotion with a certain slacker rock charm. A sound which might appear untroubled on the surface yet is constantly roiling and drifting below. The new record, his first since 2015’s Hey Love, feels like the perfection of this style, landing in the centre of a Venn diagram consisting of Berman, Malkmus and Berninger. Watch the video for the single directed and edited by Desser himself below:

Are We Good is out now via Arts & Crafts and available from the Hayden Bandcamp page.

Lee Switzer-Woolf – Yucatán

Back in 2022 we wrote about ‘The Negative Twin’ from Lee Switzer-Woolf‘s Scientific Automatic Palmistry, a “sparse and haunting” track which carried “a stark urgency beneath its inky surface.” Switzer-Woolf has a new album Annihilation Signals coming next month and latest single ‘Yucatán’ gives an insight into what to expect. A song which again offers a shadowy atmosphere with a downward suck at its centre, drawing the listener down into a subterranean world this time overtly referenced in the lyrics.

Show me those underwater caves
I’m planning on swimming down
Until the light decays
To the crater that the asteroid made
I need to understand the violence
Of the clean break

Annihilation Signals is out on the 5th May and you can pre-order it now.

Life Coach – Monday Morning Revelations

Blending the sample and drum machine style of Casiotone For the Painfully Alone and Meursault with the cutting observational lyricism of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton, Life Coach is the project of Glasgow-based poet and musician Jamie Cameron. New release ‘Monday Morning Revelations’ was penned during the imposed slowdown of the early pandemic, when Cameron took stock of contemporary lifestyles from that moment of surreal remove and found little to appreciate. What emerged is a song which rails against a society built towards efficiency and productivity at the expense of almost everything, as well as our habit of falling for the system’s false promises and playing its game despite ourselves. “Our holy present shrouded in denial is of little worth,” as Cameron says, “if all we seek is ourselves.”

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After a hiatus from music, Yasi Lowy moved to San Francisco in 2018 and returned as Bad Tiger. Released in 2020, album The Goat and the Bad Tiger was the first product of this new period, but far from being the full realisation of Lowy’s goals, it merely opened the doors to new possibilities. With new ideas in hand, Bad Tiger worked with Mackenzie Bunch at Coyote Hearing Studio on a new EP, Sanctuary. ‘Clear Vision’ is our first taste of the release, a bedroom pop track stretched taut with strength of feeling. A track which holds paradoxes in its palm with a sense of curiosity. “I know what I want so long as it’s gone,” Lowy sings, “so long as it’s out of sight, I’ve got clear vision.”

Head to the Bad Tiger Bandcamp page for info on pre-ordering Sanctuary.

bedbug – songs about ghosts

When bedbug released their last full-length, life like moving pictures, back in 2020, it was something of a conclusion. The final part of a trilogy of albums that began with on 2016’s if i got smaller grew wings and flew away for good, it marked the end of a significant stage of the project’s life. It served “not only as a conclusion,” we wrote in a review, “but a summation of what bedbug has come to mean over the previous few years.” So the natural question was, what comes next?

After a little wait, the answer is now revealed. bedbug has evolved Pokémon-style into a full band and announced a self-titled EP, to be released in March on the inimitable Disposable America. To display this new direction, bedbug have unveiled the EP’s lead single, a reimagining of ‘songs about ghosts’, which initially featured on if i got smaller…. Check it out below:

Big Nothing – A Lot of Finding Out

Philly-based outfit Big Nothing are set to release their second record Dog Hours this coming February. Their first on Lame-O Records, the album captures the buoyant blend of compassion and confidence that makes Big Nothing so compelling. Equal parts intimate alt-country and bold power pop, as highlighted by lead single ‘A Lot of Finding Out’ with its acoustic guitars and elastic bounce.

Julia Blair – Waste Away

Making her name fronting Wisconsin country rock outfit Dusk, whose 2018 self-titled record on Don Giovanni Records won wide acclaim, Julia Blair has gone solo for brand new album Better Out Than In on Crutch of Memory. After the bright and fierce nineties-inflected pop rock of lead single ‘Relax’, new song ‘Waste Away’ shows off another side to Blair’s work. A considered meditation on the dissolution of a relationship wrapped within a rich arrangement of strings. The track comes complete with a video directed by Finn Bjornerud, with choreography by Monica Endres.

Better Out Than In is out via Crutch Of Memory and you can pre-order it from the Julia Blair Bandcamp page.

Bryde – Silver Suns

Hailing from Pembrokeshire and now based in London, Bryde has won acclaim with an emotive and cathartic brand of indie rock. Following on from 2020’s The Volume of Things, Bryde is opening 2022 with the first taste of a brand new record. With its tenderhearted piano foundations, ‘Silver Suns’ explores the diversity of love, pushing beyond the stereotypical images to delve into ideas of self-acceptance and non-judgemental affection.

Georgia Harmer – Austin

Following on from first single, ‘Headrush‘, Toronto‘s Georgia Harmer returns with new track, ‘Austin’, on Arts & Crafts. Building on the rich and nostalgic sound of the first song, ‘Austin’ tackles homesickness and familial love with a special focus on Harmer’s father and his experiences as a touring musician. Indeed, Harmer Snr. plays lead guitar on the track, recorded in the family living room. A tangible link to the connection which sparked the song in the first place. “Went to Austin Texas for a day / To everyone I saw I said your name,” she sings in the opening line. “The setting sun the hot wind on my face / Felt like home an unfamiliar place.”

We were cowboys in another life
But I am you your other life is mine
Often when I speak to you I cry
Never can explain the reason why
Never understood the reason

KASHKA – isolation

Last winter saw the return of Toronto-based dream pop project KASHKA with latest release, soft. Part of Kat Burns‘s ever-evolving style, the record lived up to its title with its gentle and welcoming sound, providing a nook in which the listener can sit and contemplate the current moment. Single ‘isolation’ captures this mood through the muted beauty of a snow day, looking for common humanity within the experience of being cut off from the world.

soft is out in February and you can find it on the KASHKA Bandcamp page.

Lofi Legs – My Silence

Combining garage rock and bedroom pop with psych and surf sensibilities, San Francisco‘s Lofi Legs are out to capture the highs and lows of life. Ahead of their album Leg Day on Italian-American label We Were Never Being Boring Collective, they have unveiled lead single ‘my silence’ to welcome us into this style. A song smack back in the middle of a Venn diagram between poignant and playful. “‘My Silence’ started as a conversation on shrooms about how I had gotten quieter,” explains Paris Cox-Farr, “and in the song I am picking apart my silent vulnerability to see if there’s something happening inside.”

Night Shop – Let Me Let It Go

Next month sees the release of Forever Night, the full-length album from LA‘s Night Shop on Dangerbird Records. To add to the anticipation for what we’ve described previously as a “triumphant meditation on nocturnal life,” Justin Sullivan has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Le Me Let It Go’. With a band featuring Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Will Ivy (Flatworms) and Anna St. Louis, as well as engineering from Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), the song finds a bona fide supergroup at the height of their chemistry. Check out the video by Jeff Davenport and Cooper Kenward below:

I was halfway through my time on this earth. When I had a strange feeling like I had at my birth. Surrounded by strangers, crying in some room. I felt myself at such a remove. And I loved them all but I couldn’t say how, I just screamed a lot and then I shut my mouth.

Forever Night is out via Dangerbird Records on the 11th February and you can pre-order it from the Night Shop Bandcamp page.

Quiet Hollers – Garden of Love

Louisville outfit Quiet Hollers returned this January with Forever Chemicals, what they describe as their “joyfully nihilistic” fourth record. True to their genre-bending spirit, the album draws from all facets of the rock style to create a sound at once mischievous and sincere, leaning toward the darker end of the spectrum without sacrificing the steely will beneath the gloom. Single ‘Garden of Love’ is and example of the record’s earnest side, a yearning track fired by propulsive drums and lifted by the evocative delivery of lead Shadwick Wilde.

Rascal Miles – Locusts

We’ve previously described Rascal Miles‘s Tailor-Made as an examination of “both the violence and banal practicalities of becoming the person you are meant to be,” and latest single ‘Locusts’ is no different. Taking inspiration from Ennio Morricone and the world of Spaghetti Westerns, the track confronts post gender transition dysphoria and the hostility of the world with a sense of defiance. “I am who I am, and sometimes it seems like the whole world is out to get me, but even if we’re marching into an outnumbered battle in our fight for acceptance, we’re stepping out of the shadows and into the light,” Miles explains. “No more hiding. No backing down. Bring on the locusts.”

You can grab a copy of Tailor-Made from the Rascal Miles Bandcamp page.

Lee Switzer-Woolf – The Negative Twin

Having been a part of bands like Launch Control and The Seasons in Shorthand, 2022 sees Reading-based artist Lee Switzer-Woolf step out on his own with debut single, ‘The Negative Twin’. Taken from full-length Scientific Automatic Palmistry, out by All Will Be Well Records this February, the song introduces the darkly ruminative tone of Switzer-Woolf’s sound. A sparse and haunting track which nevertheless carries a stark urgency beneath its inky surface. Like an undercurrent pulling toward some unfortunate conclusion.

Erisy Watt – New Same

This spring sees the release of Eyes like the Ocean, a new record from Portland’s Erisy Watt on American Standard Time Records. Lead single ‘New Same’ welcomes us into the world of the record, one as indebted to contemporaries like Haley Heynderickx as the sixties stars of the genre. “I was reflecting on habits, trying to break the old and shape the new, and I was feeling stuck,” Watt explains. “We all want to blossom into the best versions of ourselves and often forget that it takes time, that it’s never a linear path. Old voices linger. Old behaviours crop up.” ‘New Same’ is a recognition of this fact, learning to adapt one’s outlook as the landscape shifts below.

Anna Westin – Bright Burning Mess

‘Bright Burning Mess’ finds Canadian poet and songwriter Anna Westin working at the intersection of her various artistic outlets. With both spoken word and sung lyrics populating the lushly ethereal folk arrangement, the track slots in alongside those contemporaries like Cassandra Jenkins. Songs looking to push the possibilities of language within the indie folk movement, and elevate the emotions found within.

‘Bright Burning Mess’ is out now more about Anna Westin’s work on her website.

Kimberly Morgan York – Real Thing

Though it was recorded way back in 2006, only to be released in 2022, Kimberly Morgan York’s debut LP Found Yourself a Lady transports you far further back than that. Recorded with The Everlovin’ Band and featuring Brad Morgan of the Drive-By Truckers, Found Yourself a Lady is a country record in the classic sense. A collection of songs occupying a timeless space of love and loss, as demonstrated by single ‘Real Thing’. A romance so fierce it could never burn for long, but oh how warm it is in the moment.

Call your momma we ain’t coming tonight
I need some lovin by the pale moon light
She’ll forgive you and I won’t wait
Tomorrow I’ll call in late

Found Yourself a Lady is out now and you can find more about Kimberly Morgan York’s work on her website.

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