Now Carlsson has returned with ‘Animals’, a new single to pull us further into the world of Snake Orange Cake. Embedded within a nocturnal, slightly unreal space, the track possesses an almost Suicide-esque atmosphere. One conjured through shimmering synths and layers of gauzy texture and featuring both spoken vocals and breathy yelps. The results dissolves any distinction between the organic and the digital, as well as the line between waking reality and dreams.

Because for all of the otherworldly strangeness of the soundscape and the transcendent mood it carries, you sense the effect is achieved not through pushing away from physical existence but rather towards it. Subverting the mundane experience of being alive by embracing the inherent strangeness within the natural world which surrounds us. A fitting impression to leave for a song inspired, as Carlsson reveals, by a “mystical connection with a wild iguana on a Costa Rican beach.”

Watch the video shot by Manuel Jesus in Berlin below:

‘Animals’ is out now and available from the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.

The post Snake Orange Cake – Animals appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After first single ‘Stitch’, a song which “offers a glimpse of the invention and playfulness which underpins the new project,” as we put it in a preview, “weaving a detailed, rhythmic sound over which Carlsson’s spoken vocals play with disarming closeness,” Snake Orange Cake has returned with new track, ‘Hair’. A song about the small joys of life which is suitably subtle in style, its layers of percussion and electronics forming a warm bed over which Carlsson’s vocals play.

The sound might not fully lose the ambiguity which marked leoblu, but here feels not so much ominous and nocturnal as organic, as though the arrangement is its own small biome teeming with mysterious life. A tangle which Snake Orange Cake nurtures and embraces, the vocals stitching into the sound itself to embrace themes of growth and acceptance.

Watch the video, shot at Berlin’s only waterfall, by photographer Pablo Hassmann below:

‘Hair’ is out now and available to stream and download from the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.

Portrait photo by joel ivan thomas

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“Highlights how grand need not equate to ostentatious.” So we wrote of ‘Cartwheels For Coins‘, a recent single from Way Through by Cici Arthur, the new collaboration between Toronto artists Joseph Shabason, Chris A. Cummings and Thom Gill. “Because for all of the richness of the [project’s] sound, there’s a grounded quality to it too. A kind of attention to detail which allows each track to become its own little slice of life.” With the album out now via Western Vinyl, Cici Arthur are back with the opener and title track as a final single. The perfect encapsulation of the record’s ability to exist as something both cinematic Technicolor and drably human. “What good are dead ends when I’m looking for a way through?” as Cummings sings. ““When the miracle you’d hoped for never comes it’s hard to take, but it’s your fault for hoping.”

Way Through is out now via Western Vinyl and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Dusty Lucite – Old Feelings (feat. D. Crane)

Led by H.L Stratton-Kuhta, Portland, Oregon-based indie outfit Dusty Lucite reach across a whole myriad of genres to bring to life a sound as colourful and idiosyncratic as it is fun. Latest album Normal Harder serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, pitching the listener into a singular world carved from psych-inflected pop and folk. The album is something of a grab bag, mixing raucous garage rock numbers with sedate, dreamy croons, and thus no one single can quite capture the experience, but standout ‘Old Feelings’ is perhaps the best place to dive in. It’s a song which embodies both the playful spirit and emotional depth of the Dusty Lucite sound, enlisting D. Crane (of BOAT, Unlikely Friends) to add to the swirl of melancholic contemplation.

Normal Harder is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dwi Riana x Julie Meunier – Elsewhere

Back in 2023, songwriters Dwi Riana and Julie Meunier teamed up for single ‘World War X‘. “An exchange between lovers which begins as a seemingly innocuous conversation but ratchets up with every sentence,” as we wrote, “soon precipitating into an argument which draws the relationship’s tensions out into the open.” Now the pair have reunited for brand new track ‘Elsewhere’. What they describe as “a love song for winter,” the single celebrates those cold days that send you into cosy refuge, as well as the self-reflective peace which descends along with the snow. “When it snows here in Toronto, I can’t help but think of where I come from,” Dwi Riana explains. “As each snowflake chaotically float along in the air, I think about all the little choices I’ve made in life to end up here.”

‘Elsewhere’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Eli Carvajal – Fear of Love

Across a number of albums, London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal has made a name with a markedly unguarded, earnest style, combining folk and pop sensibilities into something at once playful, curious and heartfelt. Following on from 2024 release Eat Shiitake Now, Carvajal is kicking off 2025 with a new single ‘Fear of Love’. It’s a song of two halves which emerged from a period of transition which in turn suggests his next direction. “The first [half] came in March 2022, isolated at home in Watford, aching to start a new life in Japan,” as Carvajal explains. “The second came a year later in Higashikitazawa, Tokyo, surfacing for air after a year afraid. This is a bridge between my last life and this one, my last album and the next. Hydrangeas were harmed.”

Fime – Better Half of a Dollar

Having made waves with 2019 EP Sprawl, the rise of Fime was in many ways derailed just as it was beginning, the LA outfit suffering the consequences of 2020 and everything that time brought with it. A period of mourning and self-reflection followed, before they teamed up with Melina Duterte (Jay Som) to record full-length Sweeter Memory, an album which grappled with nostalgia as the bittersweet, counterproductive force it can so often be. With this context in mind, new single ‘Better Half of a Dollar’ feels like the dawning of a new era. One which has decided to lift itself from beneath the past and all of its unrealised dreams to contend with the present on its own terms. A song as searing and intense as anything Fime have written to date, with lead Beto Brakmo declining the temptation to retreat into nostalgia, instead staring the precarious, volatile present dead in the eye and refusing to blink.

Watch the video directed by Hailey Ruffner below:

‘Better Half of a Dollar’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Leoblu – livingroomfloor

“An indie pop song filtered through a digital prism, it combines synths, beats and Carlsson’s signature vocals to create something at once emotional and oddly mesmerising.” So we wrote of ‘PEACHES’ by Åland-born, Berlin-based producer Leoblu last year, the song continuing the artist’s willingness to test genre expectations to reach new ground. Latest single ‘livingroomfloor’ is no different, evoking the intimate space of its title to explore the immediate experience of love, Leoblu creating a beguiling pop soundscape which is at once grounded and ethereal, alluring and strange. “Love is full of contradictions,” as Leoblu puts it. “It can be overwhelming yet fragile, euphoric yet filled with doubt. ‘livingroomfloor’ is about letting yourself feel it all, and trying to stay present in these feelings.”

‘livingroomfloor’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Mumble Tide – Pea Soup

“Grounds both the style and theme of the album, offering a sound undeniably sad yet reaching towards something more uplifting.” That’s how we described ‘Mawpao’ from Mumble Tide‘s forthcoming full-length Might As Well Play Another One on Breakfast Records. The song typified a release written as duo Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers moved through a break-up to genuine friendship. Latest single ‘Pea Soup’ embraces this space in all of its contradictions, juxtaposing bright power pop tones with morose bedroom pop reflection to emerge with a picture of a moment with all the dark, light and undecided future left intact. “‘Pea Soup’ is one big lumpy splurge, Leonard explains, “scribbled down on a hot day hiding away in my bedroom. It’s a bit of throwback to OG Mumble Tide with a chorus too big to slurp in one go.”

Watch the video by Mumble Tide, with colour and title card by Steph Dutton, below:

Might As Well Play Another One will be released via Breakfast Records on the 1st May and you can pre-order it now from the Mumble Tide Bandcamp page.

naya mö – reverb boy

We’ve featured a number of singles from naya mö‘s forthcoming debut EP Dealing With Ghosts in recent months, with ‘wanderlust‘ “draw[ing] on the grunge and alt-pop of the nineties and the soaring indie rock of the mid 00s [to create] something that sparkles with possibility despite being coated in gritty fuzz and shadowy reverb” and ‘outsider‘ “tap[ping] into a gauzy shoegaze style to create an enveloping sense of loneliness, though [one] charged with enough energy to face this darkness with a steely defiance.” Latest track ‘reverb boy’ continues the dreamy aesthetic to offer a picture of the titular character—a figure adrift from everything yet able to make his voice heard around the world. “The EP is about the ghosts that haunt my mind and body—good and bad, dark and light, love and fear,” Mö explains. “Shadows of memories, ideas, regret, and people linger in my head. I wrote songs about them and drenched them in distortion, reverb, and fuzz.”

‘reverb boy’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Palmyra – Arizona

Emerging from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Palmyra is a folk rock outfit consisting of trio Teddy Chipouras, Mānoa Bell and Sasha Landon. Next month sees the release of new full-length album Restless on Hey Boy Records, and the band have shared new single ‘Arizona’. Described as “a little dose of summer in the dead of winter,” the song evokes the affirming joy of a road trip with a fresh, vivid Americana style, where everyday worries seem to evaporate within the languid rhythms of easy forward motion. “I was in a haze in Arizona come back won’t it come back,” as the opening lines detail:

Hours felt like days and I was happy for the first time in a while
I was at a payphone in Sedona calling someone falling
Up over my head and back to Boston leave me in the desert please

Leave me open
Arizona

Restless is out on the 28th March via Hey Boy Records and you can pre-order it now.

Triathalon – RIP

It is not every day you come across an album built around the maxim ‘play this at my funeral,’ but Triathalon’s forthcoming full-length Funeral Music is exactly that. The New York trio (Adam Intrator, Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne) thought long and hard about what might soundtrack their respective requiems when writing their fifth record, and the result is perhaps their darkest and most unguarded collection of songs to date. Ahead of its release in May on Lex Records, Triathlon have shared single ‘RIP’ to give an indication of the mood. A song so shadowy and dramatic is sounds almost sublime. “The aim for ‘RIP’ was to kick start feelings on what it felt like to listen to a late 90s rock song for the first time as a kid in your parents car in the backseat and asking to hear it louder,” as Intrator explains. “‘RIP’ has a double meaning; it’s about both dying and being reborn.”

Wishy – Fly

Back in January we featured ‘Planet Popstar’, a single by Wishy from the Triple Seven sessions which saw Kevin Krauter’s vocals “[land] somewhere between impassioned and laconic, while supporting harmonies from Nina Pitchkites work to leaven the heavy thicket of guitar to create something almost ethereal,” as we wrote. “And this otherworldly tone is a fitting match for the track’s themes, something of a message beamed into space into the hope it might be received, no matter how far away from earth the recipient might be.” The Indianapolis outfit have now announced the Planet Popstar EP, coming this spring on Winspear, and latest single ‘Fly’ is everything fans of the band have come to love. This time Pitchkites takes lead vocals for a song that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.

Someday, babe, I don’t wanna feel the way
I don’t need to know the taste
Of not being with you

Watch the video below, filmed by Wishy themselves with editing, color grading and title card by Bobby Sheppard:

Planet Popstar is out on the 25th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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Montreal artist Cassandra Angheluta uses the moniker APACALDA to create an atmospheric blend of shadowy indie pop and emotive indie rock. Early next summer, she will release There’s a Shadow In My Room and It Isn’t Mine, a much-anticipated album that explores a person’s journey from unblemished purity to marked and bruised with life’s burdens. Displaying this dark mood in full effect, latest single ‘Dead Weight’ is a song about watching helplessly as a loved one spirals into addiction. “True love, whether romantic or platonic, can be imprisoning,” APACALDA explains of the song. “There are journeys—like addiction—that people ultimately have to face within themselves to find healing. Watching them go through this is incredibly hard because you’re constantly battling the fear of losing them.”

There’s a Shadow In My Room and It Isn’t Mine is due to be released in June next year.

Blood Lemon – Perfect Too

Uniting over a shared love of Kim Deal and 90s Riot Grrrl music, Boise three-piece Blood Lemon burst onto the scene in 2021 with their self-titled debut, combining musical expertise with political urgency to create a searing sound. Now the trio—Lisa Simpson (Finn Riggins, Treefort Music Fest), Melanie Radford (Built to Spill, Marshall Poole) and percussionist Lindsey Lloyd (Tambalka)—are preparing to release new EP Petite Deaths on Moon Ruins, and lead single ‘Perfect Too’ sees an escalation of this style. A seven-minute behemoth which sets its furious sights on the dead end of greed and endless treadmill in search of perfection.

Watch the video directed and edited by Grant Osman with animation by James W.A.R. Lloyd below:

Petite Deaths is out in the 17th January via Moon Ruins and you can pre-order it now.

Daneshevskaya – Scrooge

Daneshevskaya‘s Long Is The Tunnel was one of 2023’s most inventive and ambitious releases, using rich arrangements and distinctive vocals to present the individual experience as a patchwork of histories and hopes for the future. Again out via Winspear, new single ‘Scrooge’ is no less layered and finely crafted. Drawing loosely on the titular figure, the track brings to life a sense of growing alienation within a relationship, as though the significant other is slowing deforming into a stranger in real time. “Ebenezer, I wish you wouldn’t stay,” admits the opening line, and the rest of the track is equally frank. “When you talk like that I don’t recognize you,” as the chorus goes. “When you move like that I don’t recognize you / I don’t even think you notice.” Watch the video below, directed by Madeline Leshner and Zach Stone with cinematography by Stone and Isaac Berner:

‘Scrooge’ is out now via Winspear and available from the Daneshevskaya Bandcamp page.

David Allred – Oh Lauren

“Death, grief and loss are understandably key moods, but perhaps the most striking emotion is that of longing,” we wrote of David Allred‘s forthcoming album The Beautiful World on Erased Tapes. “Not only a desire to return to the past and that which is lost, but also for something better in the future.” After the title track weaved seemingly mundane details into a picture of a fulfilling life, new single ‘Oh Lauren’ continues this spirit with an even more direct focus. Dedicated to a childhood friend who took her own life at a young age, the song collects the tangle of competing emotions surrounding the event and aims to communicate them as honestly as possible. Mourning and confusion, a desire to understand, as well as the enduring sense of gratitude for having known her at all.

Don’t Worry – Ever So Clear

Released to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of the band and in preview of a third full-length album scheduled for sometime in 2025, ‘Ever So Clear’ sees Harlow, Essex indie rockers Don’t Worry continue the sense of heartfelt emotion and playful humour which made 2022 album Remorseless Swing so special. “All night I’m thinking for England / I can’t be with you at all,” sings songwriter Samuel Watson, casting an unflinching eye on a personal situation and reporting back every uncomfortable detail. The result might not be the most romantic of pictures, but the earnest delivery lends an affirming edge, and positions the singalong refrain as something between a promise and a plea.

I just need a little time
Stay with me
I just need a little time

 Free Lunch – rosebud

The recording project of Bournemouth brothers Henry and Ted Scanlan, Free Lunch rose from the ashes of two solo outfits—Sprog and Wilder respectively—and has come to welcome an array of friends and collaborators such as Michael Rea (Symbol Soup) and Dave ‘The Attic’ Mountain. New single ‘rosebud’ highlights the atmosphere and versatility of the resulting sound, building from warm, relaxed beginnings into something altogether deeper. A middle lull shimmers to near-silence as though to herald what is coming, and the closing third of the track makes good on the promise with a climax full of weight and soaring release.

Leif Vollebekk – Peace of Mind (Morning)

Leif Vollebekk‘s new album Revelation, out now on Secret City Records, is one keyed into mystery and ambiguity, drawing on Jung’s Dreams, Memories, Reflections to explore themes such as alchemy and the unknowable divine. The sort of release which appears to be inching closer to some truth with every listen. It is fitting then that Vollebekk has returned to some of the tracks again, recording different versions as though in search of that elusive perfection. ‘Peace of Mind (Morning)’ offers an acoustic take which looks to carve out its own space away from the album. A small pocket of calm to be maintained and returned to. Watch the visualiser by director, cinematographer and editor Andy Mann and colourist Beatrice Tremblay below:

Revelation is out now via Secret City Records.

leoblu – PEACHES

Following this summer’s EP Blu Lucid Nightmare and a recent collaboration with World Wide Web, leoblu (that’s Åland-born, Berlin-based producer and artist Julia Carlsson) returns with new single ‘PEACHES’. Making what we described previously as “ambiguous and atmospheric music which situates intimate emotion against the more mysterious forces at work around us,” leoblu specialises in the dark and haunting, and ‘PEACHES’ is no exception. An indie pop song filtered through a digital prism, it combines synths, beats and Carlsson’s signature vocals to create something at once emotional and oddly mesmerising.

‘PEACHES’ is out now via streaming services.

MacGregor Burns – Can’t Go Back

“Stretch[es] the gamut between despondent, desperate and something like tenuous hope as they strive towards a truer version of self, whatever that might look like.” So we wrote of MacGregor Burns‘s ‘Silent Answers’ back in September, introducing the artist’s idiosyncratic personality. Combining nostalgic nods to the likes of David Byrne while forging a new path forwards, latest single ‘Can’t Go Back’ looks for further clues in the fertile space between the familiar and the new. Going back might not be possible, but there’s no harm in looking to those who have walked before us for indications of what direction we might take next.

Pleasure Systems – Merry Christmas

Described by label Primordial Void as “not quite Christmas music,” ‘Merry Christmas’ is the new single from Clarke Sondermann’s Pleasure Systems. It’s our first glimpse of his new working relationship with producer Ivan Berko, and channels the signature Pleasure Systems ruminative indie pop towards the layers of bittersweet memory that the festive season can often break open and reveal to us. Grant Chapman provides drums and May Rio sings along as Sondermann reflects on Christmases past, pairing a warm nostalgic fondness and moments of small beauty with a sharp pang of loss. The 7″ single and digital download comes complete with a b-side ‘Signing in My Sleep (Demo)’, so be sure not to miss out on that too.

The storm took down the power lines
it ripped the needles off the pines
but I see you at the door
and I couldn’t ask for more
Merry Christmas

winded – wish on the mezzanine

Based in Miami, winded was originally the solo project of lead Thrin Vianale, but has since expanded into a four-piece featuring Nick Cody (guitar) James Sturges (bass) and Gunther Schenk (drums). Their latest release, a double single featuring the tracks ‘wish on the mezzanine’ and ‘mercy 27’ is therefore something of a reintroduction. The ramshackle lo-fi pop of 2022’s schwartz provides is levelled up into something with genuine mass, pairing thick noisy fuzz and shredding guitar with hooky melodies and bright harmonies. ‘wish on the mezzanine’ is the perfect introduction—power pop meets shoegaze meets crunchy lo-fi rock.

Yoshika Colwell & The Vernon Spring – This Weather

In early December, English songwriter Yoshika Colwell will release a collaborative EP with The Vernon Spring (London composer and producer Sam Beste). The record finds the pair’s creative spirits coming together in an effortless flow, The Vernon Spring taking Colwell’s classical folk songwriting and spinning it off into new, daring territory. The focus was very much on intuition and improvisation, from snippets of melodies that arrived as if from the ether, to the lyrics themselves. “I sang without letting my analytical mind get in the way,” Colwell explains. “The words came out like in a conversation or thought, complete with strangeness and non sequiturs and contradictions.” Take a listen to the title track for a taste of what this sounds like.

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Any new album from Advance Base is going to rank near the very top of our most anticipated of a given year, but the description of newly announced full-length Horrible Occurrences couldn’t be any more exciting. A record “all centered around a fictional town called Richmond and featuring an interlinked cast of characters,” as the press release explains. “You will hear stories of death and disappearance, climactic confrontations and unsolved mysteries.” Fans of the project will recognise songs like ‘Little Sable Point Lighthouse’ and ‘How You Got Your Picture on the Wall’, but new single ‘The Year I Lived in Richmond’ is what serves as an introduction to Owen Ashworth’s most conceptual release to date. A song which does more in three verses than the majority of published stories, and one which effortlessly displays Ashworth’s unrivalled ability to mine ostensibly ordinary lives for their brilliant slivers of heartbreak and strangeness.

Horrible Occurrences will be released on 6th December via Run For Cover and Orindal Records. Pre-order it now from the Advance Base Bandcamp page.

Anlaki – Escape ’til Dead

Based in Iruña-Pamplona, Spain, Anlaki is the bedroom music project of Julen Izkue which uses a classic DIY spirit to explore both the difficulties of adulthood and discomfort of modern life. Latest album Wind Call shows just how fun and inventive this lo-fi style can be, lovingly wrapping up a mix of slacker rock and power pop sensibilities in a warm blanket of fuzz. Single ‘Escape ’til Dead’ is the perfect example. The hazy tones are by no means a barrier to a sense of forward motion that propels things, the track embracing its title as a kind of motto to push itself onward with carefree brightness in spite of everything.

Constant Follower – All Is Well

Last month we introduced The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, the forthcoming album by Constant Follower via Last Night From Glasgow, with single ‘Whole Be’. A song about the contradiction inherent in the way we long for wholeness while acknowledging imperfection, the track not only introduced a newly ethereal sound for the outfit, but also furthered the visual element of their work through both cover art and video. Latest single ‘All Is Well’ is no different. Stephen McAll and co. mine the title for all of its complications, delving into the ways in which the contemporary reliance on comfort and convenience masks an ever-present dread below the surface of our society. It is notable that the band dedicate the song to Jake ‘Taurus Mortimer’, a young person killed in the care of NHS Forth Valley Psychiatric services back in 2023. Watch the video filmed and directed by Kris Boyle below:

The Smile You Send Out Returns To You will be released on the 28th February via Last Night From Glasgow.

The Convenience – Routiner

Duncan Troast and Nick Corson started The Convenience after meeting at Loyola University in New Orleans, using the project as a space in which to experiment within the wide genre of pop. Released in 2021 via Winspear, album Accelerator felt like the culmination of this practice, evolving the sound of their earlier releases towards its most vivid, far-reaching state. However, not satisfied to rest on their laurels, The Convenience are now pushing their boundaries again. New double single Routiner / Postcard sees the duo strike out towards a guitar-led art-rock which sits closer to the likes of Cate Le Bon and Parquet Courts. Take the first track, which is strung across a taut bassline but spins in various directions with a volatile twitching energy, capturing the push and pull of life, from deadening repetition to sharp alarm.

Routine / Postcard is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

Doctor Delia – What a Drag!!

“We literally had gendered uniforms,” explains Doctor Delia of growing up in suburban Tampa schools. “We were stuck in them like little toy soldiers. The whole time, or much of the whole time, I wanted to dress like a woman, or more feminine. Deep down I knew it felt good, and right for some reason, but there was so much shame around it.” New single ‘What a Drag!!’ serves as both a refutation of the strictures experienced during this time and a celebration of living as the person you truly are. “What a drag not to be yourself,” as the song goes, progressing with the kind of calm, assured rhythm that only comes with lessons learnt the hard way.

Holding Hour – Can I Leave Me Too?

‘Can I Leave Me Too?’, the latest track from Des Moines duo Holding Hour, is a lesson in juxtaposition. For while the song is set within the ostensibly celebratory, communal scene of a birthday party, the overriding mood is one of alienation and doubt. The sound itself follows a similarly contrasting style, its brooding undertones threatening to engulf the vocals as the percussion presses forward as though towards some imminent break or change. What results is a track full of conflict, between calmness and motion, darkness and light, not to mention that internal disquiet of a person coming to understand how they might be responsible for the less than perfect conditions of a relationship.

‘Can I Leave Me Too?’ is out now via streaming services.

Leoblu x World Wild Web – Utopia

Emerging from the heart of Berlin‘s underground music scene, ‘Utopia’ is a single which sees Leoblu and World Wild Web pair their styles into something at once ethereal and charged with vivid energy. We’ve written about the ambiguous and atmospheric sound of Julia Carlsson’s Leoblu several times in recent years, most recently with Blu Lucid Nightmare, and the addition of World Wide Web’s rhythms and beats pushes it into new territory—one still shadowed yet shot through with a kind of transcendent possibility. “’Utopia’ came from a deep place of questioning,” Carlsson explains, “both within myself and the world around us. It’s an emotional journey through grief, but also a declaration of hope, defiance and change.”

‘Utopia’ is out now via streaming services.

Melanie MacLaren – Laika

“The product of a period marked by experiences of grief, loss and illness, the new songs look to confront life in its truest state. To push beyond the myths we tell ourselves and look at mortality with a clear gaze.” So we wrote last month of the forthcoming release from  Nashville singer-songwriter Melanie MacLaren. New single ‘Laika’ is no less direct in its focus, using the tragic story of the titular Soviet space dog as a way into humanity’s propensity to exploit the vulnerable more generally, and how the powerful continue to disregard the rights and dignity of everyone else. The result is a lesson in restraint, though beneath the slow, soft folk style is a vast chasm of anger at everything we have done and continue to do.

‘Laika’ is out now and available from the usual places.

This Frontier Needs Heroes – Truck Driver

Writing back in July, we described Brad Lauretti of This Frontier Needs Heroes as “a folk artist in the traditional sense, wandering and entertaining audiences with equal parts playfulness, protest and heartbreak while always pining for places left in the rear view mirror.” Inspired by a period driving an RV across America for another artist’s tour, latest single ‘Truck Driver’ leans into this spirit more fully, injecting a sense of constant momentum to the folk rock style to equate the life of a touring musician with that of a long-haul driver. “I got to live the life of a truck driver for a few weeks,” as Lauretti says, “driving all night, sleeping in the cab, eating in gas stations, with all the crazy things that happened along the way.”

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Focusing on nature’s ephemerality, first single ‘full moon & snow boots’ saw Leoblu set “personal emotions against larger, almost mystical backdrops,” as we wrote in a preview, “as though the natural world was our own longing manifest,” while ‘it’s just a coffee’ homes in on a more specific yearning. An attempt to navigate the post-break up emotional terrain where the wish to return to what has been lost exists in tension with the desire to move on.

‘Backlash’ follows as a kind of answer to its predecessor, an attempt to break free of the liminal present painted in all of its visceral struggle, before closer ‘vem kan segla förutan vind?’ transcends the entire experience with a powerful (re)connection to history. The first Leoblu song to be recorded in Swedish, the track is a reimagining of a traditional folk song from Carlsson’s home of Åland. A means of reaching beyond the conflict of the present, back through Carlsson’s childhood and beyond, tapping into histories of place and landscape and emerging with a newfound comfort within the perpetual cycles of love and loss.

Blu Lucid Nightmare is out now and available from the usual places.

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Australian duo Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell, AKA Armlock, are releasing album Seashell Angel Lucky Charm later this summer on Run For Cover Records, and single ‘Ice Cold’ is the ideal point at which to dive in. The Armlock style beams electronic music through the prism of indie rock, conjuring sounds at once ethereal and eccentric, something the album opener encapsulates perfectly. A lesson in minimalism which rather than forgo detail, offers it with a sense of purpose and control. Be that in the simple beat and subtle textures, or the pared-back lyricism which lends the track its ambiguous charm.

Ice cold ankle deep
Head tilt, turn a cheek
I won’t be around for the rest of the week
Takes one to know one
We were born in the air sign
I’m gonna come back with the sword you left behind

Seashell Angel Lucky Charm is out on the 12th July via Run For Cover Records.

Cereus Bright – Ride

Following on from recent EP Boys, a release we described as “an ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” Knoxville’s Cereus Bright is back with ‘Ride’, a brand new single via Nettwerk. Boys preached the value of giving in to life’s unpredictable currents, and the new single follows in a similar vein. A brightly peppy track imbued with enough forward motion to propel even the most uncertain person to confront their fears and seize the bull by the horns. “Do you wanna ride?” as the chorus asks, and with the momentum of the drums and warm psych-inflected textures, it’s difficult to refuse the offer. Watch the video below with visuals by Peel:

‘Ride’ is out now via Nettwerk.

 César Alvarez – Normal, IL

“Would it be okay to wander off?” asks César Alvarez on ‘Normal, IL’, the opening track from new album egg. “I’ll take the shitty car, I’ll leave the credit cards / Drive to the Midwest, sleeping at rest stops / Play jazz on the sidewalks.” Delivered with a tone somewhere between wistful longing and boundless curiosity, the song introduces an artist navigating the competing wills to preserve the moment and escape for good. Where life’s tiny details represent the component parts of everything we hold dear. Things to drag around year after year, things to hold tight to your chest in the hope of better days. “A few years ago I was under-employed artist parent trying to figure out how to survive capitalism and still be a composer,” Alvarez explains. “I was genuinely trying to figure out if we could keep surviving in NY. This song is that feeling of being about to give up.”

Gold Dime – Denise

Recently, New York art rock/post punk outfit Gold Dime released album No More Blue Skies via No-Gold, an album which took avant garde sensibilities and elevated them into cinematic experiences. Led by Andrya Ambro (formerly of Talk Normal), the project has long reached for increasingly inventive and immersive sounds. The new record feels like the closest they have come to the zenith of such a style, what the liner notes describe as “a widescreen, fiercely intense, hair standing up on the back of your neck kind of art rock.” Take opener and single ‘Denise’, a song somehow at once opaque and charged with clarity, Ambro’s vocals cutting through the volatile sax and shifting percussion to blur the line between foreboding and transcendence.

Watch the video directed by Andrya Ambro and Joe Wakeman below:

No More Blue Skies is out now via No-Gold and available from the Gold Dime Bandcamp page.

Kathryn Mohr – Cut (Low Cover)

Originating from a conversation between The Flenser and Planning For Burial’s Thom Wasluck, Your Voice Is Not Enough is a compilation of covers celebrating the breadth and beauty of Low‘s musical oeuvre. A whole host of Flenser artists and friends are involved, with VSF favs Midwife and Allison Lorenzen joined by Drowse, Have A Nice Life, Cremation Lily and Holy Water among others. The latest single sees Kathryn Mohr take on ‘Cut’, maintaining the sparse simmer of the original while deepening its shadowy corners with an electrified edge. “It was the lyrics that immediately drew me into this song,” Mohr explains. “The intimacy of a hair cut. The loss of a version of someone you knew as they turn themselves inside out to survive. It’s one of the saddest things in the world to me, watching someone harden and loose themselves to their pain.”

Your Voice Is Not Enough is out on the 24th May via The Flenser.

LEOBLU – full moon & snow boots

Julia Carlsson’s LEOBLU has caught our ears on a number of occasions in recent times, be it the gloom pop of single ‘Cake‘ or more recently a collaboration with Sad Dad which probed into the strangeness of love. “The impression is not one of grand gesture and romantic inevitability,” we wrote of the later, “but rather the sense of being exposed to mysterious forces. The physics of things larger than yourself, moving life beyond your control.” With new EP Blu Lucid Nightmare coming later this year, LEOBLU has returned with single ‘full moon & snow boots’, and again the track sees Carlsson setting personal emotions against larger, almost mystical backdrops. As though the natural world was our own longing manifest. Watch the video, shot in California by Hannah Gonzalez, below:

Blu Lucid Nightmare will be released later this year.

My Best Unbeaten Brother – Time on Our Hands, Spider-Man

Back in January we told you about My Best Unbeaten Brother, the latest project from the Parker brothers of Nosferatu D2, The Superman Revenge Squad Band and Tempertwig. Back then we were writing about standalone single ‘Slayer on a Sunny Day’, but as promised the band are now readying their debut mini-album Pessimistic Pizza, which will be release via Audio Antihero. To whet appetites, they have released lead single ‘Time on Our Hands, Spider-Man’, a mid-to-late-00s style indie rock song electrified with desperate emotion. Ben Parker says the song is about, “being a father and being a son, passing on memories of years and years of processing stuff and turning it into landfill indie, how we all need a Spider-Man or a Superman and how this doesn’t change the older you get,” which goes some way to illustrating the mixture of sadness, sincerity and frustration that sit just below the up-tempo surface.

Wild Yaks – Desperado

With almost two decades and (roughly) five albums under their belts, Wild Yaks have made a name with an affirming and often riotous brand of rock music, filling the gap between hopes and realities with a carefree embrace of the present. Out next month via Ernst Jenning Record Co. latest album Monumental Deeds feels like both a continuation of this spirit and the culminative product of twenty years spent pining and singing and howling at the moon. Born on a drive back to Florida lead Rob Bryn took with his 79-year-old mother, single ‘Desperado’ is a fitting combination of desperation and defiance. When the ghosts of past selves and possible futures are strung out on the road before you, sometimes the only option is to roll the windows down, put the pedal to the metal and feel that wind in your hair.

Watch the video below filmed on VHS tape by Renée Muza and edited by Sameer Kapoor:

Monumental Deeds is out on the 21st June via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – Clumsy

“Time allowed Zafar opportunity to understand the tracks beyond the usual level, and thus gradually shape them towards their ideal, essential form.” So we wrote of Zoya Zafar‘s Some Songs, an album interrupted by real life difficulties which only came to realise itself more fully in the intervening years. Tracks like ‘Sweet Talk’ “condens[e] months of suffering into a single prayer released into an empty room,” as we put it in a preview, a testament to the value of patience and care brought to life with a tender folk pop style. Latest single ‘Clumsy’ invites the listener further into this space, a song produced by friend Gia Margaret which shares Margaret’s quiet, sometimes cryptic sincerity. “You were the light in the dark,” as Zafar sings, “giving away your sad, sad heart / living inside a house of cards.”

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The new track follows in this lineage. A love song which refuses the certainty so common to the genre to offer something more nuanced. So when Carlsson sings “I was the ocean and he was the moon / I tried to stay in place but he was gravity,” the impression is not one of grand gesture and romantic inevitability, but rather the sense of being exposed to mysterious forces. The physics of things larger than yourself, moving life beyond your control.

I was a cynical
He said he was one too
I called him silver
And I was blue

‘gravity’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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Seattle’s 129,600, the recording project of Jade Tcimpidis, is preparing to release their debut album Granular Convection with Ghost Mountain Records. Described as exploring the “limits of tradition in the consumer era,” the album sees Kalen Walther (bass), Kirsten Ourada (drums) and Neil Welch (baritone saxophone) join Tcimpidis to conjure a sound which straddles dustbowl folk and art pop invention, all while reaching towards psych and jazz. Lead single ‘Techi’ highlights this singular style, where all manner of details spin from a taut rhythm, making for a twitchy, volatile mood. Tcimpidis’s vocals are equally frantic, and coupled with the sax evokes the paranoid vibe of Coppola’s The Conversation, with all its schemes and surveillance.

‘Techi’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Casters – Memory

Casters is the recording project of Andrew Strader and a rotating cast of supporting musicians, based in Brooklyn via Nashville and Knoxville. With EP Walk on Home coming soon via Like You Mean It Records, Strader has shared single ‘Memory’ to give an indication of what to expect from the release. This time featuring Neil MacLean (Home Visions, Griffin Moyer) on keys/synths and Connor James (Pat & The Pissers) on drums, the track draws on Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again to explore the impossibility of returning to a place you’ve left behind. All cast in a dreamy drift that marbles fondness and regret into sound so rich you could suspend yourself within it.

Chris Chism – On The Run

Focusing on the working class experience and following a lineage through Dylan and van Zandt, Richmond, Indiana’s Chris Chism delves into the personal to emerge with a more universal picture of life’s joys and struggles. New EP Things Has Changed develops this style, and single ‘On The Run’ is the perfect place to jump in. A semi-autobiographical portrait of a young person beaten down by life—loosing those close to them, experiencing brushes with the law, and generally searching for reasons to continue on amid a slew of misfortune—though one captured with the patience and empathy only hindsight can bring.

 Hit Bargain – Degree Decree

Featuring members who are/have been parts of acts like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Beach Fossils and Cold Beat, Hit Bargain is a LA-based project led by Nora Singh which aims to stare the worst excesses of our society square in the eye. It is of no surprise then that new album A DOG A DEER A SEAL is charged by equal parts manic fervour and anxious frenzy, playing like the fevered delirium of a country’s dying mind. Single ‘Degree Decree’ might clock in at barely two minutes but portrays this mood in all of its maniacal panic, where the technological hubris of consumerism encroaches on our world as a synthetic blight.

Check out the video directed by Katharine Antoun below (though those with photosensitive epilepsy should note there are flashing images):

A DOG A DEER A SEAL is out on the 10th November via Get Better Records and you can pre-order it now.

June Rosewell – a solid state

Nashville songwriter June Rosewell recently released a new EP, the dog bit at such an angle. It’s a collection of songs in which frustration and tenderness coexist and hope refuses to ever quite evaporate. Take single ‘a solid state’, a track about moving home which sees Rosewell’s intimate croon relays scenes with an everyday poetry. “In the morning we were packing up our boxes,” the opening lines play, “and our friends / Brushed our backbones with their warm thumbs while they sent us off again.” Later the song reveals the significance of the EP’s title (“The dog bit at such an angle where I thought I’d need a stitch”), and endeavours to show the invisible bonds that persist even as all that is familiar is upended.

Sitting quietly in a pair in the back seat of mother’s car
While she hummed along to songs she chose to deaden worry’s roar
We’re moving states, we’re moving states
A solid state, a solid state

the dog bit at such an angle is out now and available from the usual places.

Kendl Winter – Humming Mantra

Beginning as a way to both explore the clawhammer banjo and share this process with fans and peers, Kendl Winter’s forthcoming album Banjo Mantras originated in a daily practice of improvisation. “The banjo mantras started off as morning writings, like morning pages but in musical form,” she explains. “Daily pen to paper, fingers to strings, listening, feeling, sliding and thumbing my way around my open back banjo.” But the more Winter committed to the concept, the more she became attached to the ideas which emerged, and eventually decided to expand the resulting mantras into fleshed out soundscapes. First single ‘Humming Mantra’ channels the Pacific Northwest’s verdant summertime, full of small details and a sense of invigorating clarity.

‘Humming Mantra’ is out now and available from the usual places.

leoblu – dirty windows

“It’s unclear if the events [portrayed] are autobiographical or fiction,” we wrote of leoblu‘s ‘cake‘ back in January, “but the emotions are so keenly felt that whether these things actually happened seems almost besides the point.” The project of Åland-based songwriter Julia Carlsson, leoblu complicates the divide between truth and fiction in order to locate a deeper emotional honesty, weaving a layered and controlled sound that has been described as ‘dark pop’. Latest single ‘dirty windows’ pushes further into this style, taking the titular image to explore the cycles of stasis and rejuvenation that come with depression. Again the sound is beguilingly understated, growing subtly across its length as though slowly thawing from a deep freeze.

Watch the video shot and edited by Jonathan Carlsson below:

‘dirty windows’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Mali Velasquez – Shove

Next month Mali Velasquez is releasing full-length I’m Green on Acrophase Records. An album, as we described in a preview of single ‘Bobby‘, which explores “how our relationships with ourselves can be so conflicted and uneasy, and the way in which this is governed by our experiences with those around us.” Homing in on a specific relationship with a sound somewhere between vulnerable and visceral, latest single ‘Shove’ delves into the way our actions can be detrimental within such experiences no matter how pure the motivation. “I wrote this song in an attempt to explain the feeling of seeing myself doing the wrong things in the perfect moment,” as Velasquez puts it.

I’m Green is out on the 13th October via Acrophase Records.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Conductors

Next month sees the return of Canadian indie stalwarts The Rural Alberta Advantage with their brand new full-length The Rise & The Fall on Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek. Though, despite their experience, latest single ‘Conductors’ explores how the process of writing songs gets no easier no matter how many records you have under your belt. “There is so much I love about being in a band. But one of its most fundamental aspects causes me more mental anguish than anything else, and that’s actually writing songs,” as Nils Edenloff explains. “When I’m able to tune out the doubting voice in my head and get it done, there’s no greater feeling. But often the devil wins and it’s easier to just run away.” This time it took drummer Paul Banwatt’s threat to use AI generated lyrics for Edenloff to shake off the doubt, and the video by Good Job Hi Five channels Adam Curtis to foreground the sense of human creativity struggled against the encroachment of systems and machines.

Why, why do I run?
From the work and the words before it’s done
Sometimes I’m always waiting on what will never come
Before it’s done, now every thought weighs a ton
Taking it on the chin for a while
Taking it like a champ for a while

The Rise & The Fall is out on the 6th October via Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek and you can pre-order it now.

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First gaining attention with the EP Eskapism back in 2021, and later when her song ‘Still Dancing’ featured on Turkish Netflix series The Protector, leoblu has garnered international attention, playing shows and festivals in Europe, Asia and both North and South America.

Her latest single ‘cake’, released right at the end of last year, is the perfect introduction for new listeners. A gloomy song that nevertheless maintains a glossy pop sensibility, it finds the narrator returning home for their brother’s funeral and dealing with the first stages of grief and a numb, existential pain. “There’s a hole in the ground that shouldn’t be there,” leoblu sings, “I don’t want to sit and eat cake.” It’s unclear if the events are autobiographical or fiction, but the emotions are so keenly felt that whether these things actually happened seems almost besides the point. This uneasy relationship between stories and reality is something of a signature and adds to the overall sense of volatility. As the press release puts it: “It’s all lies, it’s all truth. It’s leoblu.”

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