“A song which shows how the age-old themes of work, loss and responsibility are as much a facet of contemporary folk as any other era.” That’s how we described ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)‘ last summer, the first taste of David James Allen‘s forthcoming album Potpurri Jubilation. The Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist “writes classic country songs,” as we continued, “full of aching longing, wistful reflection and undying hope, as well as a small cosmic twist,” and latest single ‘By Your Side’ further cements these sensibilities ahead of the album’s release later this year via Littleknown Records. “There’s something in the way that she loves me / that keeps me warm through the coolin’ of the night,” Allen sings in the opening lines, immediately pulling the listener into the warmth and fondness of the track. An ode to the safe harbour of a significant other, where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove. Tune in and allow the pressures of work, money and self-doubt to dissolve, if only for a while.

Fugue State – We Are Lasting

The new collaborative project fronted by Northampton, MA-based composer, producer and engineer Dan Langa, Fugue State refuses the typical distinction between solo project and traditional ensemble. An outfit which treats collaboration as its own form of compositional methodology, Langa practising what the press release describes as “an obsessive cultivation of studio recordings with a rotating cast of musicians, transformed into spectral, unrecognizable forms.” Released to celebrate signing with Switch Hit Records, and featuring vocalist Maia Friedman (Dirty Projectors, Coco) and VSF fav Erika Dohi on piano, single ‘We Are Lasting’ provides our first glimpse into this new world. The style draws on Langa’s wealth of experience across music, film and multimedia, as well as the sensibilities of its collaborators, though also follows the direction the present moment suggested. “That improvisation became the foundation, and we slowly built everything on top of it,” as Langa describes. “This was the first track that really found its identity, and I often found comfort in it during the creative process—whether for inspiration or just a moment to breathe.”

Gia Margaret – Everyone Around Me Dancing

“A picture of solitude not as some lonely retreat but rather the path towards recognising the wider connection of things. That sweet dark warmth of the whole world.” That’s how we described Gia Margaret‘s 2023 album Romantic Piano, a collection of careful, considered compositions which held a kind of melancholic curiosity for its surroundings. Now Margaret is gearing up to release her much anticipated follow-up, an album titled Singing coming via Jagjaguwar this spring, and opening track and lead single ‘Everyone Around Me Dancing’ suggests a continuation of such themes. The record might be the first to properly feature vocals since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer (the consequence of illness, as we covered when reviewing Mia Gargaret), but it is far from a simple reversion to a previous mode of working. Rather, Margaret considers every lesson learnt through the difficult process, the resonance of every person she has ever been. The vocals might have returned, but Singing understands something greater. The voice is only part of who we are. There are deeper ways of communicating.

Watch the video directed by Catherine LoMedico below:

Singing will be released on the 24th April via Jagjaguwar and you can pre-order it now.

Little Lungs – The Heat

Little Lungs is a Baltimore folk rock project led by songwriter Leena Rhodes. With Brendan Russell (bass), Eli Simms (drums), Ricky Schwarzenberg (guitar) and an assembly of other friends and collaborators in support, Rhodes creates soundscapes inherently intimate yet often sweeping too. Songs personal, compassionate and often affirming, driven by equal parts warmth and energy. Next month, Little Lungs will put out the full-length album The Heat, and Rhodes and co. have shared the title track to establish the mood and themes of the record. A typically emotive track build around Rhodes’s vocals and the braid of tenderness and strength they are able to evoke. “Face down against the bed frame / You woke to the fire alarm,” she sings, in an opening snapshot that captures the vulnerability on display throughout.

Mary Ocher – The Narrative (First Movement)

“Has roots in the early twentieth century, both in terms of the minimalist sensibilities and the overarching themes, but it is impossible to think of the intra-war period of the 1900s without hearing ominous echoes of the present day.” So we wrote of Mary Ocher‘s forthcoming album Weimar back in January. The challenging, politically-charged album was introduced by lead single ‘The Dance’ (what we called “a mournful dirge for that which is slipping through our fingers”). And now Ocher has shared taut, plaintive new single ‘The Narrative (First Movement)’. Though it is perhaps the video which will earn the most attention. The expressionist piece is by Boris Eldagsen, one of the first ‘reputable’ artists to explore the possibilities of AI who nevertheless carries a strictly critical approach to the nascent medium (back in 2023 Eldagsen refused the Sony World Photography Award after winning for an AI-generated image). Whether this self-awareness might justify the use of such artistically disheartening technology is still very much in question, and personally we’d query whether the video achieves anything which might be unobtainable via more organic means, but if nothing else it fits into Ocher’s overall project in its willingness to push into uncomfortable places and ask the audience to examine exactly how they feel.

Weimar will be released on 13th March and is available to preorder via Bandcamp.

Miserable chillers – Bikeman

“I’ll be the bike, man / the basket and the bell / the breath before I fell / Open skin up to the air / my mouth to taste the day.” So sings Miguel Gallego in the opening lines of ‘Bikeman’, the delightfully smooth and strange introduction to Miserable chillers‘ latest album, Innocent victims, coming soon via Baby Blue. The New York-based composer and artist has covered plenty of ground with the Miserable chillers project over the years, moving from devotional to danceable and back again, or else occupying both moods simultaneously. But the uniting spirit across all releases has been one of curiosity, a mood delivered in sleek, eighties-adjacent pop that allows Gallego to push into surreal territory without losing an anchor to real life. With its anthropomorphic bicycle, ‘Bikeman’ might be the perfect encapuslation of the Miserable chillers aesthetic, and one which whets appetites for the full release.

Natalie Jane Hill – Colors

Natalie Jane Hill‘s forthcoming record Hopeful Woman is one of our most eagerly anticipated releases of the first half of this year. A collections of ten modest but supremely assured songs that explore love in its many facets. Hot on the heels of ‘Never Left Me’ and ‘I Thought Love Meant’, Hill has unveiled a third track, ‘Colors’ another richly imagined but still down to earth rumination on romance. “Simply put, ‘Colors’ is a love song- specifically about the beginning period of falling in love with someone,” Hill describes. “But it’s also about having a better understanding on personal boundaries and not losing yourself entirely in the potential of something new. It’s being able to enjoy the colorfulness of it, while leaving space for the mystery, too.” The song has a fittingly Spring-like feel, tender like new green shoots and ripe with a glorious sense of possibility.

Old Man of the Woods – Edges of Pleasure

Taken from the album Tendrils, Old Man of the Woods‘ most recent single ‘Meditation’ was “a self-described  ‘breathy, minimal ritual'” as we wrote in 2025, “[a song] which performs its own form of transubstantiation, taking a desire which might otherwise appear absurd and changing it into something charged and devotional.” Miranda Elliott appears to have taken such a style to heart, because new album Cape Perpetua sees the Seattle-based artist embrace aesthetics both religious and ecological to push their ambient avant-pop into an increasingly sacred terrain. Elliott intends to release a track every week, building up to the full release in March, and opener and single ‘Edges of Pleasure’ highlights the meditative style. A song of swirling layers which draws on the choral accumulation of Gregorian chants to conjure something that’s at once otherworldly and fundamentally present.

Turner Cody – Recognize a Friend

In a present milieu where country songs are as likely to be about Disneyland and Pepsi as heartbreak and whiskey, St. Louis-based songwriter Turner Cody shows that the traditional and alt forms of the style can coexist. Out via Capitane Records, latest full-length Out for Blood has all the thematic concerns of the giants of the field, mining the American psyche to explore ideas of freedom and fate, individualism, sin and salvation in a way which would make Van Zandt proud. Yet, as songs like single ‘Recognize a Friend’ show, there’s a playfulness within his style too. An idiosyncrasy which, by way of Prine, allows Cody to sit as comfortably next to his alt-country contemporaries as the old masters. The narrative of the track is a familiar one. Ordinary man Billy finds himself gradually growing despondent as he drifts from youthful optimism into the doldrums of normal living. The personification of an entire demographic which finds itself slipping out of its countercultural pep.

Watch the video below, directed and shot by Cam Kennedy, with editing by Ben Chace, co-direction by Ben Chace and color grading by Thomas de Hemptinne:

Out For Blood is out now via Capitane Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Yum Yum Tree – Shine

It has been nineteen years since Georgia-based indie rock outfit The Yum Yum Tree released their last album Paint By Numbers, a hiatus long enough to make even the most optimistic fans fear for the future of the project. After all, the band have other things to think about, not least lead Andy Gish who has spend over two decades as an ER nurse, as well as working in harm reduction. But good things come to those who wait, and this April will see The Yum Yum Tree return with brand new full-length Turn Down the Noise, an album which builds upon the foundations of its predecessor while proudly displaying the extra wisdom, self-awareness and emotional bravery which comes with near enough twenty years of living. Single ‘Shine’ embodies the spirit of the release, packing that nineties-flavoured indie rock punch while showing a newly unguarded, introspective personality. “Shine is about wanting something that doesn’t belong to you,” as Gish explains, “being able to sit with that and still wanting the best for them.” Watch the video directed by Katherine Lucas below:

Turn Down The Noise will be released on the 10th April and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: February 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.