Back in 2023 we wrote about Somethinghood by A Box of Stars, an album which saw “the Burlington outfit weave what is best described as a sense of complete attention,” as we put it, “a focus which elevates what might seem ordinary situations into something almost sublime.” Now Macaulay Lerman and co. are back with Walnut Street, a brand new record which doubles down on the style to capture both the beauty of life’s smallest details and the implicit sadness which stems from the knowledge that everything will one day fade away. Single ‘Remain’ is the ideal place to jump in, a typically lo-fi and authentic track which carries a flame of love despite the looming threat of loss around.

Alden Hellmuth – Microfictions

“Tether is a fitting name for the release,” we wrote of Alden Hellmuth‘s new album on LEITER back in May, “speaking to both the connection between Hellmuth and her supporting cast—bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet)—and how group, and indeed the audience, act something like a leash within the spontaneity of improvisation. The musicians might play themselves out into unexpected territory, but there’s always a line to bring them back into the heart of the group.” After single ‘Face the Wall’ kicked things off, Hellmuth has now shared latest track ‘Microfictions’. The opening number on the album, ‘Microfictions’ wastes no time in pitching the audience into the depths of her adventurous approach, drawing on Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music to create a style of improvisation centring on melody. Scurrying percussion adds a sense of urgency, while Hellmuth’s trademark sax skates over the surface with virtuosic personality.

Tether will be released on the 26th June via LEITER and you can pre-order it now.

Cheekface – I Don’t Work Here

LA trio Cheekface have made a name in recent years with mischievous brand of indie rock. Their music combines post punk angles and playful pop bounce with a droll talk-singing style of vocal delivery to create something sometimes caustic, often irreverent and always dialled into the ridiculous age we call the present. For anyone left uninitiated, latest single ‘I Don’t Work Here’ bundles up the Cheekface aesthetic into a tidy three minutes, railing against everything from the surveillance state to the steady creep of the corporate into civic life with equal parts swagger and seethe. A world where everyone is watched yet perpetually lonely, and unrealistic demands come from bosses and customers alike.

Dog Shaped – Please Hold

In part rising from the ashes of former band Sue Your Landlord, Dog Shaped is songwriter Emily Cabarle alongside Nicholas Djukic Cocks (lead guitar), Michael McCanna (lap steel), Matt Shuham (drums), Angelo Ross (keys, backing vocals) and Freddy Haug (bass). With an EP slated for release next month, Cabarle and co. have shared single ‘Please Hold’ to introduce their sound. A song described by the band as “a power ballad about wanting to be close and connect with friends/lovers but being scared of what happens when you’re vulnerable,” it confronts the needling doubt of fearing you are too much for those around you while pining for acceptance and connection. Watch the video produced and directed by Mars Alba below:

‘Please Hold’ is out now via streaming services.

Jacob Brodovsky – Kids

Back in April we introduced Tell The Kids We Tried, the forthcoming full-length from Winnipeg songwriter Jacob Brodovsky, describing how the album “meditate[s] on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” with a set of characters “attempting to build a life within a world where the future seems unwilling or unable to materialise.” Latest single ‘Kids’ addresses this style more directly than anything on the record, written while Brodovsky was wrestling with what it meant to have a young child and another on the way while the future of civilisation seems so bleak. “For me, having children has been a massive source of both optimism and dread,” he explains. “Being around children and watching them discover themselves is such an incredible gift to behold, while also terrifying to realize all the ways they could hurt themselves and the limits of my own abilities to protect them.”

Tell The Kids We Tried will be released on the 10th July via Make My Day Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Kate Prascher – Jubilee

Later this summer, Memphis-born, Hudson Valley-based songwriter Kate Prascher will release new full-length Sunday Afternoon. The follow-up to 2024’s Shake the Dust, the record sees Prascher build upon her distinctively honest, unguarded style of folk. Lead single ‘Jubilee’ embodies both the atmosphere and emotional clarity of the release, the sound with one foot in the past but always looking forward, allowing memories and hopes for the future to sit side by side. “I wrote it while walking on an old train trestle in Rosendale, New York, a town ringing with the eerie history of a stone quarry, carrying memories of my hometown across it,” Prascher explains. “By the time I climbed down from the track, the song was mostly written. It’s a lyrical exploration of the word ‘jubilee’ as both a signal of celebration and of forgiveness.”

Sunday Afternoon will be released on the 28th August via First City Artists.

MEGGO – just my luck

Following on from 2025 EP eavesdropper ;; death stories, Montreal-based songwriter MEGGO is returning this summer with the next chapter of a trilogy of releases, with lead single ‘jaws of life‘ giving a taste of what to expect earlier in the year. Now she is back with new track ‘just my luck’, a song which allows repressed anger to bubble the surface, not only as a form of simple catharsis but also to clear the ground in order for the process of healing to begin. “There’s a part of me that needs to yell and scream. I don’t call on her that often, but she’s in there!” MEGGO explains. “‘just my luck’ is what comes from that inevitable explosion. It’s about letting go of grudges and making room inside yourself for forgiveness. It acknowledges where there is pain, looks right at it, and lays it bare so that it no longer needs to be carried. What’s left is compassion and peace in its wake.”

Two Runner – Strawberry Rhinestone

Described by label Gar Hole Records as “a warm reassurance for anyone who’s gotten dressed up just to come home alone,” ‘Strawberry Rhinestone’ is the lead single from Two Runner’s upcoming new album Porchlight. The Northern Californian duo, songwriter Paige Anderson and fiddler Emilie Rose, have lived a life steeped in folk music, growing up in the mountains and playing from a young age, and the experience shines through in the Two Runner sound. The single is a slice of lively barroom bluegrass, equal parts wistful and reassuring as it delivers a message both wise and world weary. “”Love is in your favor if you can outlast the bad ones.”

Some lovers are like the mountains
Some lovers are like the ocean
Some of them stick like velcro
And some leave in mysterious ways

‘Strawberry Rhinestone’ is out now via streaming services.

W. Y. Huang – Born To Lose

We last wrote about Singapore-born, New York-based singer-songwriter W. Y. Huang back in 2024 with the release of the EP Knots. The release possessed “a fluidity and ease suggestive of an artist who has spent time exploring their tastes and honing their craft,” we wrote. “One ready to share something intimate.” Fast forward a couple of years and W. Y Huang is preparing to release his debut full-length On Stranger Hills, and lead single ‘Born To Lose’ suggests the album will be even more honest and personal. With a lo-fi sound which owes a debut to both Daniel Johnston and Adrienne Lenker and drawing on his own immigrant experience, Huang “explores the loneliness and anxiety of what it means to be invisible in a foreign land,” as the album notes explain, “tracing the edges of belonging, where memory and place begin to blur.”

‘Born to Lose’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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

Max Wood’s applied communications made a splash back in the noughties, with albums like africa baby, yeah yeah yeah and uhhh sort of winning attention with their singular personality and often chaotic arrangements, though subsequently turned away from music for the next two decades. Only, in a turn of events the 2005-era Wood couldn’t have ever imagined, a TikTok-user-cum-internet-archaeologist unearthed the old releases and revived interest, essentially resuscitating applied communications twenty years after its apparent death. After a pair of EPs in recent times, Wood is now preparing a full-length, and latest single ‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ gives a glimpse at this strange phoenix as it rises from the flames. A characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop that comes with all the playfulness and intensity of its predecessors. “I sometimes find myself trying to fit into groups or scenes that seem cool to me, even if (especially if??) I’m going to flail and be weird and feel rejected and get depressed,” Wood explains of the track. “I didn’t mean to write a song about that dynamic, but I think that’s what happened here. I also just wanted to try making a jangly guitar-centered indie rock song because I’ve never been able to pull that off before. I still didn’t pull it off, but I’m proud of the glitchy mess that resulted from the attempt.”

atmos bloom – Everything

London-based duo atmos bloom are set to return this summer with Everythingness, a brand new album on Spirit Goth Records which looks to build upon the dreamy, shoegaze-inflected bedroom pop aesthetic of their previous release Flora. There’s an inherently nostalgic sensibility to this style of music, but Tilda Gratton and Curtis Paterson craft something caught between reflection and forward motion, charting the sometimes difficult space between youth and adulthood, looking to push life in new directions while pining for the old days too. Lead single and not quite title track ‘Everything’ embodies this mood, capturing the sense of flux which marks the entire release. ‘Everything’ explores “the impossible task of trying to be everything all at once, balancing all that life throws at you whilst trying to find yourself and your place amidst it all,” the band explain. “The song explores young adulthood and figuring out the transition between adolescence and womanhood, working through a mountain of contradictory advice and solutions. ‘Everything’ feels like walking a tightrope, wanting to do one thing for one reason and something else for another, knowing each decision pulls you further in a different direction.”

Everythingness will be released on the 24th July via Spirit Goth Records and you can pre-order it now.

Atta Boy – Full Cloud

Back in May we introduced Silt, the forthcoming full-length from LA indie rock outfit Atta Boy with ‘Oh, Mama’, “a song,” as we put it, “which holds up the unique force that is motherly love as something as organic and ever-present as the natural world itself.” With the album’s release now less than a month away, Atta Boy have returned with ‘Full Cloud’ to further establish its mood and themes. With a characteristically upbeat pop-inflected rock style, the single navigates a difficult relationship and all its hidden currents. The tension between the slow suffocation of dependency and the fear of drifting apart (“Leave me alone / Don’t make me your lifeboat,” as one telling verse goes). There might not be a solution within the frame of the track, but it is cathartic to voice such frustrations all the same.

I live here with a full cloud
That never learned to let go of the rain
So it held onto every memory
I am not a cloud
So I will never understand
The very burden of the skies
And all your enemies

Silt will be released on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now.

Grace Cummings – My God

This summer celebrated Australian songwriter Grace Cummings will release Bloodhorse!, the much anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed third album Ramona. “A bloodhorse is a horse expected to be a winner,” Cummings explains of the title, “but they can often also be temperamental, fearful, fragile and easily broken. Sometimes I feel like I’m a trapped animal. And, when I go to sleep, sometimes it’s like I’m in the gate, twitching. And as soon as I open my eyes, I’m fucking running.” Such fight-or-flight energy drives the record, Cummings leaving no stone unturned in her exploration of her own dreams and dreads, no matter how hideous or provocative the result might be. Yet such honesty is less cheap provocation and more an attempt to regain agency within an otherwise restrictive existence, as though to describe the suffocating sensation of living in the plainest of terms is in some way lessen its hold. Listen to single ‘My God’ now, a song “about hatred, jealousy, rage,” as Cumming continues. “The God here is the dark forces that are wrapping around us, that we scroll through, the toxic energy that binds us together in this modern world, and the fear we feed it every day.”

Watch the video filmed and directed by Ben Ulitzka Portnoy below:

Bloodhorse! will be released on the 14th August on ATO Records and you can pre-order it now.

koleżanka – Lessons in Textiles

Aside from her work as part of Foyer Red, Kristina Moore also records solo under the moniker koleżanka, most recently with 2023 full-length Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes on Bar/None Records which emerged from the COVID era to offer “a delicate line between peace and unease,” as we described in our review. “A sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same,” we continued, “for life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves.” Now koleżanka is back with ‘Lessons in Textiles’, a new single which draws on Moore’s interest in knitting to weave a metaphor for the personal transformations which so often accompany grief. Namely the technique of unravelling (or ‘frogging’) a knit in order to rework the stitches, the song describing a person not only undone by loss but slowly fashioned into something new.

Leilani Patao – kiddy scissors

Last year Hawaiian-American songwriter, broadcaster and engineer Leilani Patao put out daisy, an EP on Audio Antihero which shunned social media and streaming services and thus came to possess, as we wrote in our review, “that emotional authenticity which marked the earlier generations of bedroom pop which relied on little beyond word of mouth” (making the list of our favourite releases of 2025 as a result). Capitalising on the success of the release, Patao is now sharing a brand new deluxe edition of the EP, with the original album tracks joined by three new songs as well as remixes from the likes of Benjamin Shaw and Magana. One of the new cuts, ‘kiddy scissors’, has been unveiled now to whip up excitement, and the song is every bit as tender and genuine as fans will have come to expect. A celebration of “queer joy and trans love,” the single is in many ways the embodiment of Leilani Patao more generally. A song able to evoke the grandest of emotions without resorting to melodrama or spectacle, instead opting to elevate the ordinary, intimate moments of the everyday.

Nathan El – Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me

Recording under the moniker Nathan El, Pittsburgh-based agriculturalist and musician Nathan Blake creates folk music which looks backwards while moving forward, taking the traditional forms of the genre and reshaping them to conjure something new. Latest release Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me demonstrates just how Nathan El achieves this, Blake adding ambient tones to deepen and distort classic arrangements, with Claire Sweeney adding supporting vocals as well as fiddle and harmonium. An American traditonal, ‘Jubilee’ opens as something slow and reflective, though kicks into a toe-tapping alt-country number before returning back to its spacious textures, evoking both the romance and melancholy of humble living as time ticks away. ‘Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me’ reimagines an old English song to similar effect, though this time favours a richer palette despite the aching longing at its heart. Both songs, much like the Nathan El project itself, aim to reconjure the past within the present, unable or unwilling to relinquish that which used to be, and in the process blur the distinction between love and loss.

Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Richard Tripps – Stone Eating Animals

“Channel[s] the lo-fi aesthetic of The Range of Light, The Velvet Underground, White Fence and early Oh Sees in order to better evoke the environment where the songs were conceived,” we wrote of Richard Tripps‘s 2024 release Between the Morning, Tripps recording a batch of material in his tent cabin in Big Sur and allowing the sense of place to bleed into the songs themselves. This July, Tripps will share a brand new EP which collects the last of the tracks from that period, and single ‘Stone Eating Animals’ shows the result is every bit as evocative and atmospheric as we’ve come to expect. A playful, swaggering slice of slacker rock from the coastal mountains of California, delivered with something between carefree buoyancy and a more ambigious sense of reflection.

‘Stone Eating Animals’ is out now and available from the usual places. The EP will be released on the 12th July.

Taifa Nia – Spellz

You might know Bay Area artist Taifa Nia as the frontman of Same Girls, guitar player in Ricky Lake, founder of Portion Club or collaborator with artists like Brontez Purnell, though he has now decided to record solo under his own name as a newly personal creative outlet. Debut EP Avaratia shows the kind of honesty which marks his dream pop-inflected style of indie rock. “Avaratia is the latin term for greed,” Nia explains. “I look back on this time of my life and I feel ashamed for the level of greed I had. I didn’t realize I had so much, I had creative people around me, I had effortless love that transmuted into effortless art, and everyday I was surrounded by a place that felt the same way. Yet for some reason I was always looking for more, a new home, a bigger stage, bigger achievements, more money than I needed.” The album follows this mindset towards its alienating end, finding Nia slowly being humbled by his surroundings, and coming to realise he’s moved away from himself in pursuit of material luxuries and acclaim. Listen to single ‘Spellz’ now:

Van Chamberlain – The Right Line

Van Chamberlain are continuing to release singles from their forthcoming full-length As Far As the Eye Can See, following tracks like ‘Miracle Drug‘, ‘‘Solutions‘ and ‘Running Through the World‘ with latest cut, ‘The Right Line’. The record has possessed a decidedly bittersweet tone to date and the new single is certainly no exception, showing that life’s big questions can be confronted with richness and groove. “There was a point where it seemed like everyone around me was going through it at the same time,” Van Chamberlain explains. “I didn’t have any of the answers, but I wanted to be a positive force. This is a song about wanting to give the people around you a reason to smile. It’s easy to write a song about what you’re going through. This time I wanted to write a song for everyone else.”

Wild Pink – Round Of Applause At The End Of The World

Following on from their critically acclaimed 2024 album Dulling the Horns, Wild Pink are returning this summer with brand new full-length Still Coming Down. Much water has passed beneath the bridge from when we first covered the band over a decade ago, with lead John Ross overcoming serious illness and later becoming a father, not to mention a changing musical style which has veered from raucous indie rock to more cinematic, electronic-based arrangements and back again. Yet throughout this time, there’s always been a consistent spirit to the Wild Pink project which is rooted in Ross’s distinctive lyricism. Still Coming Down retains this spirit while pushing the writing further than ever, capturing contemporary America in all of its chaos, confusion and mundanity. Like DeLillo, Ellroy and Mailer before him, lead single ‘Round Of Applause At The End Of The World’ sees Ross succumb to the masculine urge to write about JFK, Oswald and Jack Ruby, painting a swirling picture of conspiracy that undermines even the most trusted facets of society.

Still Coming Down will be released on the 21st August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

Wolfschmidt – whaler

“An epic alt rock number which faces up to feelings of stasis with a combination of hope and fatalism, looking to break free even while the same cycles seem to repeat.” So we wrote of Wolfschmidt‘s recent single ‘file’, the Gothenburg outfit utilising a propulsive quiet-loud dynamic to achieve cathartic heights. With album INSUFFICIENT FAILURE coming soon, the band have returned with follow-up ‘whaler’ to further introduce themselves. Again it’s the drama and energy which first grabs the attention, but, revolving around ideas of self-sacrifice for the greater good, there’s a meaty thematic side to the track too. A collision of chaos and ordered flow not unlike the marine environment suggested by the title, with the listener invited to take a deep breath and submerge themselves too.

Dive in
Meet me where I end
And you start
Whale fall
Dive in
I descend
Where you are

‘whaler’ is out now and available from the usual places. INSUFFICIENT FAILURE is coming soon.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

As lead single ‘Of Some Use’ attests, the result is every bit as compassionate and poignant as you might expect. The single embodies the tone of the album, presenting Bobby as a person thrust into a despairing situation yet still yearning to assert his own personality and worth. A challenge faced by many disabled people within a society so rigidly ableist, and one which persists despite (or sometimes even because of) the various attempts society makes to signal otherwise. “Writing books with their toes / Paint with brushes in their teeth / No arms still shoot arrows / Making pottery with their feet / Preening on TV shows / Racing wheelchairs down the street,” as one telling verse puts it. “All these heroes in the news / I just want to be of some use.”

Far more than an act of remembrance, Bobby’s Voice becomes a comment on the public attitude towards disabled people, as well as a highly personal attempt to right those wrongs in retrospect. To finally grant Bobby that which was denied him in life as one final gesture of love. “One of the key things that keeps me awake was how, with his disability, came invisibility: how a full grown, virile young man was deprived of his agency, his manhood, and most cruelly, his power of expression,” RP concludes. “So—maybe too little, too late—I decided to give Bobby his voice back.”

The post Sun Kin – Of Some Use appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Are you so bored, or just boring?” asks American Cream Band‘s Nathan Nelson on ‘Don’t Burn the House Down’, the latest single from their new full-length Twin, coming next month via Quindi Records. A repeated refrain dripping in sardonic wit and clearly pointed towards the malicious forces currently extending their tentacles across the US and beyond. Based in the Twin Cities, Nelson and co. have experienced the blunt end of contemporary fascism in recent months, something which charges the new record with an almost electric urgency, as ‘Don’t Burn the House Down’ attests. A rich, colourful and caustic track which stands its ground against those who would destroy the places we call home if given half a chance.

Aubrey Jane – Karmic

Next week, New Orleans-based songwriter Aubrey Jane will release Starshiner, a new full-length album which builds upon the foundations of previous release Calamity, using vulnerability and emotional honesty to move beyond difficult experiences and towards something new. Latest single ‘Karmic’ is the ideal entry point, demonstrating Jane’s mix of folk-inflected brand of indie rock and the confessional bedroom pop sensibilities which underpin it. Flowing between relative restraint and urgent peaks of intensity, the track confronts a dysfunctional relationship head on, probing at the parts at hurt with an almost masochistic compulsion. “And I’ll play the victim / Cause I’ve always been good at it,” as Janes sings:

Wait till you have the words to tell me
What I did
Maybe all this is karmic
Maybe it’s deserved
So I’ll be the bad guy if you be the damsel
Cause I like how it hurts

Watch the video filmed, produced, directed and edited by Quinn Young below:

‘Karmic’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Starshiner will be released on the 15th May.

Félicia Atkinson – Les Yeux II

Ghent’s VIERNULVIER runs a series called VIDEOROOM, where classic cult films are shown with new live soundtracks, with 2026’s programme featuring the likes of Mary Lattimore playing a score for Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Alabaster DePlume doing Peter Kass’s Time of the Heathen. Félicia Atkinson‘s new album SANS VISAGE stems from the project, taking the reimagined soundtrack for Georges Franju’s 1960 horror classic Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face) she performed live and condensing it into a continuous, non-linear composition. One which considers the “female and animal gaze” of the film, repositioning the focus towards the resistance displayed by the victims to open up a feminist counter-narrative, and ultimately working to show how old art might offer sites to imagine new ideas. Listen to first cut ‘Les Yeux II’ now:

J.W. Ricci – Through a Frame

Though Through a Frame / Pollen Drop is the debut solo guitar released from J.W. Ricci, the double single is far from the first time the North Carolina-based songwriter has attempted to put his music into the world. He spent the best part of the last decade playing in various bands to different levels of success, all while working a series of underpaid, exploitative (and sometimes downright dangerous) jobs, though ultimately emerged feeling discouraged and burnt out having been chewed up on either side by twin meat grinders of the music industry and life. But fast-forward to the present, armed with stable employment and some sense of perspective, Ricci has turned to writing instrumental guitar songs which speak to a new creative headspace. “I feel a sense of spaciousness, ease and openness in those pieces,” he explains, “in contrast to the white-knuckled, clenched, grasping that I hear in my older music.” There’s an clear sense of authenticity to Through a Frame / Pollen Drop as a result, each track recorded live with no overdubs and feeling like an artist not only reflecting on their journey to the present, but also coming to understand a healthier path they might follow from here on in.

Watch the video by Emma Geiger for ‘Through a Frame’ below:

Through a Frame / Pollen Drop is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Laura Lucas & Luke Sital-Singh – Same World

Described as the closest Winnipeg-based songwriter Laura Lucas has ever come to penning a love song, ‘Same World’ was a single on her 2025 debut There’s a Place I Go. A track which turned to the beauty of the organic world as an allegory for human connection, equating the symbiotic bonds of nature to the mutual benefits of a loving relationship. “The first verse of the song is one of my favourite things I’ve written,” she explains. “The line ‘I’ll use your light after you go’ is basically saying ‘I will photosynthesise off of you’, which I think is what falling in love is meant to feel like, like they are the sun and you are the leaf.” But Lucas was not quite finished with the song, and has now returned with an alternate version recorded with Luke Sital-Singh. The essence of the original is preserved, but the addition of an extra voice only accentuates the tenderness and romance.

And I think we live in the same world
And I’ll wait for a sign
Think my nature is something like yours
And yours something like mine, mine

Lemoncello – Tomorrow Nostalgia

In recent weeks we’ve shared a couple of singles from Perfect Place, a full-length from Dublin duo Lemoncello which sees Laura Quirke (guitar/vocals) and Claire Kinsella (cello/vocals) adopt a newfound clarity and emotional honesty within their work. First came ‘Meet Me Halfway’, a song featuring “a complicated relationship between intimacy and distance,” as we wrote, “a sense of push and pull,” then ‘Articulate Animal’, which was “something like a mantra,” as we put it, “a spell intended to cut to the quick of the self, hurdling over the rational part of the mind and sinking into the instinctive.” With the album now out with Claddagh Records, the pair have shared new single ‘Tomorrow Nostalgia’ to further convince audiences of their talents. With a combination of taut, almost brooding tones and altogether more ethereal textures, the song faces up to the dangers of our preoccupations with both the future and past, where the seductive urge to fill a life with dreams of either results in not much of a life at all. Watch the video directed by Eilís Doherty below:

Perfect Place is out now via Claddagh Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Max Knouse – Angel’s Share

“The title Goat Pupil could be aspirational, like a name for a student of greatness,” explains Max Knouse of his new record, coming next month via Ruination Record Co., though the LA-based artist offers a number of alternate reads too. “It could be something about seeing in widescreen—goats have amazing rectangular pupils. Or it could be a self-deterministic thing. Goats are pretty Satanic. I like the paradox of following someone who follows no one. There’s a lot of stuff in the songs about harnessing your own powers of evil or about perseverance while witnessing the evil around you.” Following hot on the heels of 2025’s Chimpmunk’d Away, Goat Pupil is itself a story of perseverance. An album created under considerable financial constraints (which, of course, equates considerable practical constraints), that, with help of producer Chris Schlarb, somehow manages to twist this fact to its benefit. How long does it take to capture lightning in a bottle? Judging by this, it takes exactly a day and half in a studio above an Arizona pizza shop. Listen to the lonesome, languorous lead single ‘Angel’s Share’ for an early preview:

Rowena Wise – Blood Ties

Naarm/Melbourne-based songwriter Rowena Wise won acclaim back in 2024 with Senseless Acts of Beauty, an album which drew as much from the classic folk of the sixties as it did contemporaries like Aldous Harding and Julia Jacklin to create a sound able to explore the difficult themes of loss, longing and alienation with an ever-burning compassion and warmth. New single ‘Blood Ties’ continues to develop this style, using a steely yet earnest tone to confront pain head on, and emerging with the possibility that suffering might be conquered if we could look at it honestly. “I wrote ‘Blood Ties’ after a close friend experienced a mental health crisis,” Wise explains. “In the aftermath, I watched his father struggle to respond, not because he didn’t love his son, but because he didn’t know how to meet him emotionally… In Australia, especially, emotional restraint has long been normalised… But that silence creates space for shame to grow, particularly within families where unspoken pain lingers beneath the surface.”

Watch the video directed by Didirri below:

‘Blood Ties’ is out now via Beloved Recordings and available from Bandcamp.

Trivial Shields – First Edition Paperbacks

Having cut his teeth with college band My Dear Disco, Christian Carpenter has gone on to play with the likes of Renata Zeiguer, Luke Winslow-King, Kent Odessa, Anna Ash and Cassandra Jenkins, though has also built up a considerable catalogue of his own work under the moniker Trivial Shields. Recorded analog to tape at the renowned Tiny Telephone studio in Oakland, latest single ‘First Edition Paperbacks’ is the ideal introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the project. The tale of two relationships which come to mirror one another (one with a bookseller, another with an experimental ‘plant musician’), both enthralling the narrator despite (or perhaps because of) proving somewhat unobtainable in the grand scheme of things.  “Living off of manic lust in excess / Eating from your supple hands,” Carpenter croons in typically passionate fashion. “When brilliant minds / antagonize / Is there fault to contest? / I don’t know but…” The result is lush, woozy and sensual, committed to romance even while understanding such things are doomed, and savouring the grandeur of feelings while they last.

Watch the video below, directed by Melanie Drew Chambers, filmed and coloured by Otium, featuring the puppets of The Bob Baker Marionette Theater:

‘First Edition Paperbacks’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

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

Having recently signed to Nils Frahm‘s LEITER imprint, New York-based saxophonist and composer Alden Hellmuth has announced new full-length Tether. The album builds upon 2024’s punk-inflected jazz record Good Intentions to explore the creative potential of an ensemble embracing the tension between composition and improvisation. Tether is a fitting name for the release, speaking to both the connection between Hellmuth and her supporting cast—bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet)—and how group, and indeed the audience, act something like a leash within the spontaneity of improvisation. The musicians might play themselves out into unexpected territory, but there’s always a line to bring them back into the heart of the group. Lead single ‘Face The Wall’ is available now, and shows just how raucous and visionary the Alden Hellmuth sound can be.

Alice Bradley – Seismic

Per her bio, Asheville-based songwriter Alice Bradley “sees songwriting a way to grow words past the point of logic into catharsis,” and latest EP Seismic certainly lives up to this intention. Take the title track, woven from a layered, almost meditative arrangement of fingerpicked guitar, though one always led forwards by the underlying groove. The style is matched by Bradley’s vocals, both in tone and substance, the rhythmic ease of her delivery belying the difficult grapple presented in the lyrics. “There’s a face looking back / and a face looking forward / the space between that / i gotta move toward,” as she sings. “And the waves want to crash / to talk with the shore / future and past / converse at the door.” But by the close, something of a slow epiphany seems to have occurred. The acknowledgement that perhaps words aren’t best suited to pick at such complicated knots, and instead it is best to lean into the flow.

maybe this is something i cannot talk through
maybe this is something i must dance to

Atta Boy – Oh, Mama

Since their inception back in 2012, LA-based indie pop outfit Atta Boy have amassed a following with a sound that’s bright, sometimes whimsical and always compassionate, driven by a sense of curiosity shared by core members Dashel Thompson (piano), Eden Brolin (vocals), Freddy Reish (guitar), and Lewis Pullman (drums). The band are preparing to release their new album Lilt this June, and new single ‘Oh, Mama’ embodies the spirit of their work. A song which holds up the unique force that is motherly love as something as organic and ever-present as the natural world itself. “When I was growing up (and still today) my mom was so amazing at inspiring a sense of wonder at our natural world,” Brolin explains. “She is intensely nurturing and there for me, no matter what. I could say a billion things about why I think my mom is the shit, but as far as the song goes, I just wanted to paint a picture of how grand I see her love and her motherhood. This idea can be applied to anyone whose support feels like relief and respite when life is sideways. I think it’s a testament to how meaningful and necessary human connection is.” Watch the video for the track directed by Michael Rees with cinematography by Sarah Penson:

Silt will be released on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now.

Brenna Bruce – Something Gold

Brenna Bruce “brings to life a serene sound shadowed by a certain mournfulness,” we wrote of the Seattle-based songwriter when covering her 2024 EP Honest Bloom, “evoking the way even the most tranquil environment is in some way made poignant by the latent promise of its own end.” The release, put out via Ghost Mountain Records, placed emotional states within the context of the larger cycles of the natural world, and came to find beauty within an embrace of transience. Now Bruce is preparing to release Light Catcher, a brand new EP no less ambitious or emotionally astute, and latest single ‘Something Gold’ hints at what to expect. The song asks whether mourning is a strange form of alchemy, charting how moving through the end of a relationship can so often elevate the mundane into something precious, at least in one’s memories. Although, whether this process is legitimately capable of creating treasured material is open to interpretation. Every alchemist is shadowed by the possibility of their folly, coming to see (or wish for) cherished things which cannot, and never will, exist.

Light Catcher will be released on the 12th June via Ghost Mountain Records and you can pre-order it now.

Darren Hayman – Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart (Iris DeMent cover)

Way back in 2008, Darren Hayman (Hefner / New Starts), Dan May (Owl & Mouse / Field Glass), David Watkins and David Tattersall (The Wave Pictures) released a self-titled bluegrass album under the name Hayman, Watkins, Trout And Lee, winning acclaim with a mixture of originals and rearrangements of songs from the likes of Townes Van Zandt and The Mountain Goats. Now Hayman is re-releasing the album and has provided two new covers in support, including a take on Iris DeMent‘s ‘Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart’. Leaning into the playful side of the original, the song not only offers solid evidence for diving back into Hayman, Watkins, Trout And Lee, it also hints at the depth of Hayman’s back catalogue, which has remained more or less missing despite his position as one of the most creative and distinctive voices in UK music.

Fox Run Sounds – Shake a Shoe

“But I don’t think you’re hearing me / I don’t think you’re hearing me / If I don’t feel you here with me.” So sings Fox Run Sounds on ‘Shake a Shoe’, a short verse indicative of the mood and tone of the new track. The project’s previous EP Yuh, O! probed at the tension between interior feelings and exterior appearances, utilising a bright sound to explore dark themes so that the form mirrored the duality of the content, and the new single is no less thoughtful in execution. More downbeat on the surface yet leavened by the hope that’s inherent within any sense of longing, the track ebbs and flows between hushed despondency and naked yearning, that latter marked by a lift in the instrumentation as though towards some promised epiphany. The enlightenment might never quite be granted, but the very act of continually reaching towards it seems to hold some wisdom of its own.

The Hobknobs – Easier Listening

“Helmets Off can be described as an honest attempt at honesty.” So describes the press release for the debut album of The Hobknobs, a new project featuring Arie van Vliet (Lewsberg) and Yaël Dekker (The Klittens), though anyone expecting something earnest and sentimental will quickly find they have misunderstood. Because the honesty of The Hobknobs is something purer than the usual meaning of the word. Purer and therefore stranger. Honesty as delivered by a pair of songwriters who aren’t overly convinced by the goodness of humanity or even the meaning of language. Lead single ‘Easier Listening’ might be the poppiest track on the album, and on the surface gestures towards a nostalgic sort of twee, but is in fact very much its own animal. “’Easier Listening’ is about people who consciously choose to be less intelligent, in order to be able to understand so much more” Dekker explains. People who are faithful yet have no faith, enlightened and underestimated, presented here without judgement. Should we surrender and join their ranks?

The Huntress and Holder of Hands – Doctrine

Rising from the ashes of folk duo Brown Bird after the death of creative partner and husband Dave Lamb, MorganEve Swain’s The Huntress and Holder of Hands is both a vehicle to explore grief in its full spectrum of emotions and a way to continue the spirit of its predecessor. The result is a sound that holds space for anger, confusion, sadness and compassion, as well as an inherent sense of hope that’s built into the very fact of its existence. Set for release next month, new album Babylon is the perfect example of this nuanced style, confronting the corrupt and violent present without forgetting ideas of redemption and sanctuary too. Single ‘Doctrine’ was written in 2017 but is more relevant than ever, a taut and haunting slice of country rock which simmers with fury even it is quietest moments. “Honestly I was hoping it would be obsolete by now,” Swain explains, “but instead these words now feel like an incantation we need more than ever.”

Babylon will be released on the 5th June and you can pre-order it now.

lots of hands – grapevine

Newcastle upon Tyne duo lots of hands (that’s Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden) last released new music at the beginning of 2025 with Fire Talk debut into a pretty room. Since then, the band have gone from strength to strength, finding lots of new fans and going on tour across the US in support of Lala Lala. Now they are back with a new single ‘grapevine’, a song which harks back to their nostalgia-laced lo-fi roots with a stark, stripped-back atmosphere. It’s dark and shadowy, squealing guitar and repetitive loops undulating over electronic percussion, Woodhouse and Dryden both contributing soft, understated vocals that deliver lyrics both opaque and suggestive. “Oh I feel it pulling me away, some sort of magnetic wave,” Woodhouse sings, “I’m finding myself upstate.”

Scott C Park – Marlene

Last year, Stornoway-based songwriter Scott C Park released his debut album Crossing The Line, establishing a rich and introspective brand of folk rock able to probe deep into the uncertainties of young adult life. Not one to rest on his laurels, Park is preparing another full-length for later this year, and has unveiled lead single ‘Marlene’ to whet appetites in the meantime. A track which again possesses the authenticity of its predecessor, pairing an almost twee level of sincerity with a rougher edge, resulting in something heartfelt but never cloying. This is achieved in no small part via the wry humour which runs through its heart, a feature which ultimately grants an affirming conclusion. “The song spends a whole lot of time where the protagonist is like, ‘Woe is me’… his world is kind of grey and drab,” Park explains. “And then in the last half he just rips the piss out of himself for being such a depressed guy.”

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

The post Weekly Listening: May 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

In recent months we’ve been following London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal as he prepares to release new full-length Eyen Forever in October via Safe Suburban Home Records. After singles like ‘Stretch Marks‘ (which “manag[es],” we wrote, “to evoke the ways in which love elevates the ordinary into something wonderful, and creates the possibilities of new myths and dreams before us”) and ‘Scar’ (“welcom[es] the audience into the mundane details of everyday existence in order to gesture towards themes more poignant and sweeping”), Carvajal has returned with the album opener, ‘Forever’. Another emotive, tender track, the song finds Carvajal at perhaps his most intimate, the arrangement stripped right back to its bare necessities and possessing the kind of wistful fondness only accessed when one finds themselves far away from home. As he explains: “‘Forever’ was inspired by my two years’ teaching English in Tokyo, Japan. In the song, I play with the language we use around romance, reframing love and loss with poignancy as well as humour.”

Fulton Lights – Hold That Thought

Recording under the moniker Fulton Lights, Andrew Spencer Goldman last put out new music in 2018, when album Moonwalking into the Future highlighted the ambition and invention of his work. New EP Well the Night Has Come shows the hiatus has done nothing to dampen his creative energies. Take single ‘Hold That Thought’, a song concerned with the very process of making art in a world of distraction. Along with guests TJ Lipple (Aloha) on drums, John Davis (ex-QandNotU/Georgie James/Title Tracks/Paint Branch) on backing vocals and Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu) on percussion, Goldman crafts a sound layered and languid, though the laid-back rhythm belies the urgency and depth of feeling present in the delivery. Because this is a track about “trying to remain open to those moments where creativity is born,” as Goldman explains. “Capturing and releasing them before they dissipate. It can be an act of resistance against all of the things conspiring to distract.”

Leilani Patao – Cut

Starting in 2021 at the tender age of seventeen, Brooklyn (via Los Angeles) based songwriter Leilani Patao put out a series of DIY self-releases, culminating in the acclaimed 2024 album But What If? which earned, among other things, a feature on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. But despite this success, Patao grew disallusioned with the biz, not an unfamiliar story within a contemporary music scene which demands not only on hard work in an artistic sense but an even greater degree of effort (and luck) be spent on self-promotion, algorithmic appeasement and any number of equally soul-destorying things. Many criticize this system but few take concrete action against it, which makes Patao’s new EP daisy, forthcoming this autumn via Audio Antihero, all the more notable. A release which promises to shun streaming services, playlists and social media in order to focus on what really matters, and thus an experiment to judge what exactly is possible within the conditions of the twenty-first century. “Is it possible to share my music properly, pay everyone who was involved, get paid myself, and not have to interact with the many systems in place that make me dread music?” Patao asks. Lead single ‘Cut’ is out now for an early glimpse at a release we’re rooting for in more ways that one.

Little Angry – Outerside

You might know Evan Hashi as part of acts like The Hive Dwellers, Mega Bog, Twig Palace and Flying Circles, but the Seattle-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has also long recorded under the moniker Little Angry, blending pop, punk and psych influences with an experimental, DIY spirit. Set for release next month via Antiquated Future Records, the fourth Little Angry album Screamin’ Inside Your Heart!!! is the first to see the project become a full band, and thus a slightly new name—Little Angry & The Sweets—though the spirit remains the same. With Jen Weisberg (bass guitar, vocals) and Joseph Kuta (guitar, vocals), Little Angry sound better than ever, Hashi using the album’s title (taken from COVID-era safety instructions provided to riders of roller coasters in Japan) to explore the idea of being a ‘good immigrant’ in the US, a notion reinforced through generations. Listen to opener and lead single ‘Outerside’ for an idea of the drama and playfulness of the record.

Screamin’ Inside Your Heart!!! will be released on the 2nd October via Antiquated Future Records and you can pre-order it now.

LUCKY – Olden Goldy

We’ve been following Bay Area supergroup LUCKY (that’s Half Stack‘s Peter Kegler and Andrew St James alongside Marika Christine and Zach Elsasser of Affectionately) in recent months as they gear up to release their self-titled album, with songs like ‘Friends‘ embodying the buoyant rhythm and wistful edge of the project. With the album out now via Royal Oakie Records, LUCKY have shared new single ‘Olden Goldy’ to win over anyone not yet on board. The album’s closer, the song encapsulates everything that makes the outfit so special. “Out in the big olive groves / where the warms wind blows / I’m a young man who’s getting old,” go the opening lines, though again the reflection of the lyrics and delivery is slightly at odds with the upbeat, swaggering style of the sound itself. As though understanding, for all of the slow realisations and dawning regrets, life will go on kicking yet.

Up in the lonely pines
the wind haunts my mind
I spent days just losing time.
The sky’s is getting long,
the night is looking cold
and I’m still a young man who’s getting old

But I can’t let go

Night Teacher – New Cage

Consisting of multi-media artist and singer-songwriter Lilly Bechtel and drummer, writer and producer Matt Wyatt, Night Teacher sits somewhere between indie rock, chamber pop and doom folk in its style, a sound tied together by Bechtel’s emotive, often haunting delivery. Ahead of new album Year of the Snake, coming this autumn via First City Artists, Night Teacher have shared new single ‘New Cage’. The song utilises the Charlottesville duo’s evocative and thoughtful style to meditate on pernicious influences of social media in contemporary culture, positioning such forces as a kind of imprisonment we enter on our own volition. “I was reading Naomi Klein’s brilliant book Doppelgänger, where she writes about the original surveillance system as the concept of God, which in many ways has been replaced by the concept of the idealized self,” Bechtel explains. “Social media may be doing a very old thing in a new way: getting people to run surveillance on themselves in order to become better commodities for the marketplace.”

Perish – God I’m Freaking Out

“A vivid slice of folk-inflected rock which sounds at once wistful and affirming, a combination which looks to be a signature of the Perish sound,” we wrote of single ‘Cool Guys‘ back in July when previewing Brooklyn outfit Perish‘s new self-titled album. “Because while [Katie] Callihan’s delivery is thoughtful, her lyrics probing beneath the surface of things, the sound retains an upbeat, exultant air. As though there’s some energy to be found in the act of being open and honest to the point of vulnerability.” With the record out now via Rue Defense, Perish have shared new single ‘God I’m Freaking Out’. The song started life as something of a slow ballad when Callihan was playing solo, but the new version is altogether different, the full band adding extra groove and charge to a track all about the push and pull of solitude in the face of stress.

Ribbon Skirt – LUCKY8

Principally consisting of Anishinaabe musician Tashiina Buswa and guitarist Billy Riley, Montreal’s Ribbon Skirt won acclaim earlier in the year with the release of their debut Bite Down on Mint Records, an album which explored ideas of memory and heritage with a raw, stark style of post-punk. Fast-forward a few months and Ribbon Skirt are back with PENSACOLA, a brand new EP intended as something of an epilogue to its predecessor. One which seems to exist in the wake of Bite Down, powered by the still-charged air and smouldering heat. Lead single ‘LUCKY8’ welcomes listeners into this space, a track of woozy layers and surreal, dreamlike imagery which nevertheless holds a pulsing urgency beneath the surface. Like a memory bathed in the feedback and distortion of time yet still possessing its serrated edge.

One day you’re gonna wake up crystalline and mountain-clear
Left her hanging on a word in Thunder Bay the 15th year
You lift your shirt up and then tell me you’re the chosen one
The family knew back then that god made you the lucky one
You make it easy to believe that you’re so strong like that
It’s not a promise and believe me
he could con like that

Watch the visualizer by Rory Stobart below:

PENSECOLA will be released on the 3rd October via Mint Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Starcharm – The Color Clear

The Fire Talk imprint Angel Tapes has been unearthing emergent artists for a number of years now, introducing the likes of Retail Drugs and Jawdropped to audiences, and their latest addition Starcharm is another act you will want to get to know. Featuring Elena Buenrostro (vocals, guitar), Jasmin Feliciano (bass) and Amaya Peña (drums), the Chicago trio has risen from the ashes of Buenrostro’s defunct project Soft and Dumb with all the confidence and energy of new beginnings. Debut single ‘The Color Clear’ displays both pop and noise sensibilities, pairing off-kilter post punk vibes with a rising intensity so that everything feels a little odd and unreal. The song “is inspired by a time when I lost all faith in love and felt like men were seeing me as a projection instead of a real person,” Buenrostro explains. “I was going through a bit of nihilistic mania during this time which I think you can definitely hear. An avoidant attachment anthem if you will.”

Watch the video directed and produced by Peña themselves below:

‘The Color Clear’ is out now via Angel Tapes and available from Bandcamp.

Tiberius – Moab

With the release of new album Troubadour edging nearer via Audio Antihero, Boston farm emo band Tiberius have shared latest single ‘Moab’. After ‘Sag‘ and ‘Felt‘ introduced the conflicted, searching and cathartic style of the record (“ebbs and flows across its runtime,” we wrote of the former, “pulled in all directions by competing emotions. Uncertainty, doubt, desperation, a recurrent yet skittish determination to embrace some inner truth”) the new song highlights a different dimension. A track more farm than emo, leaning closer to alt country in its warm twang and compassionate delivery, though one no less cathartic for its more relaxed approached. “’Moab’ was a song I wrote about trying to let go. At the time I was defining myself by expectations of a strained relationship. I was feeling pretty insane—like the kind of insane you feel back in 8th grade where you come home crying all of the time because you have absolutely no sense of self,” explains lead Brendan Wright. “Writing ‘Moab’ offered catharsis. Looking back, I feel a lot of embarrassment around those feelings, but it was how I felt at the time and that was the place I was in. I wish I had acted differently, and I strive to now.”

The post Weekly Listening: September 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The recording project of Teague Cullen and various friends, Foot Ox has made a name with an experimental style of folk, exploring age-old themes of love, loss and longing with rich arrangements and surreal storytelling. Written during extensive travels of the West, new album A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes (forthcoming via Ernest Jenning Record Co.) utilises a genre-spanning style to reckon with the past and present of the area, and ultimately how the mythology of the American West shifts and persists. Following previous single ‘Horseshoe‘, new track ‘Bed of Violets’ shows the nuanced, layered nature of the record, able to recognise the beauty of the landscape while confronting the malevolent forces which haunt it. “‘Bed of Violets’ is a pretty dark song for me, even if it doesn’t seem that way on the surface,” Cullen explains. “It’s about the struggle of facing a dark force in life and overcoming it. Even though the lyrics themselves might not be overtly hopeful, I feel like the orchestration and the strings bring a sense of something vast and beautiful.”

A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes out on the 11th August via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

General Absurdity & the Open Source – Limestone Ghost

A self-described “CommUNITY Psych-Folk Music Rebel, Performance ARTeest, Pre/Post Historic Bluez, Multi-dimensional BEeing,” General Absurdity & the Open Source is the new project/alter ego of  Lexington, Kentucky songwriter Derek Feldman. Long time readers might recognise Feldman as Doc Feldman, who we last wrote about back in 2021 with the release of A Healthy Dose of Anxiety, an album recorded with full band Doc Feldman & the Alt + Cntry + Delete. “Progressing with what might at first seem like pessimism, decrying magic spells and empty prayers, [single ‘‘Receiving (for Rollo May)’] repurposes such disillusionment into human solidarity,” we described. “Clasping hands not in plea to God but to pull another out of the shit. If we have control over anything, it is what happens here around us.” The mystical bent of General Absurdity & the Open Source might indicate a brand new stage for Feldman, yet this core message remains. Folk music which belongs alongside contemporaries like Will Johnson and strives for human connection within this lonely world.

People Mover – Cane Trash

Brisbane trio People Mover—that’s Lu Sergiacomi (vocals, guitar), Dan Sergiacomi (drums) and Billy McCulloch (bass)—are preparing to release their new album Cane Trash via Little Lunch Records next month, and have unveiled the title track as an introduction. It’s an inherently nostalgic track that draws on memories of the ash which filled the air of hometown Bundaberg during the burn-off of sugarcane before harvest, the bright, upbeat surface belying the melancholic weight at it heart. Which isn’t to say the juxtaposition of joy and sadness is in any way peculiar, for what else is fondness but the persistent presence of those very emotions? “‘Cane Trash’ gives into memories of where you came from and how you used to feel,” as Lu Sergiacomi explains. “It analyses where we go when we need to reset. Is it home, or can it be somewhere that reminds you of it? That memory is an analogy for the album—things are fragile, special and fleeting.”

Shrunken Elvis – K-House

Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson, and Michael Ruth (AKA Rich Ruth) are all renowned musicians in their own right, be that with their own work—Cullum releasing solo material via Full Time Hobby, Thompson forming bands like Gnarwhal and Promised Land Sound, and Rich Ruth putting out acclaimed albums with Third Man Records—or supporting a wide range of well-known artists in recording and touring. So bringing the three together was always going to be a recipe for success. Under the moniker Shrunken Elvis, they have united to explore their shared passion for experimental music, merging their talents in order to transcend genre and create something new. The project “represents a rare opportunity to create purely for the sake of collaboration and curiosity,” as the album notes put it, the trio drawing on everything from Michael Rother, Alice Coltrane, and Pat Metheny to Can, Ashra and KLF to inform their sound, not to mention inspiration beyond music, be that visual art or the films of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman. A self-titled album is on the way via Western Vinyl, and you can listen to single ‘K-House’ now. A track which takes something of the nocturnal urgency of eighties cop show theme tunes then expands its horizons with lush psych and cosmic tones.

Stella Donnelly – Baths

Three years after the release of her last full length, Flood, Naarm/Melbourne songwriter Stella Donnelly has returned with a new double A-side single, Baths / Standing Ovation. Both songs are stripped back relative to her previous work (at least until the back half of ‘Standing Ovation’), with a patience and stillness that gives them a sense of meditative clarity. ‘Baths’ in particular stands out, almost acapella as Donnelly’s vocals stand front and centre over barely-there keyboard notes. The music has the effect of incidental ambient noise and this is no accident, as the track was conceived as the sounds of the world seeped in. “I came up with this melody while I was swimming laps at the Brunswick Baths,” Donnelly explains. “The pool filter was making a humming sound on one note which allowed me to sing a melody over the top. “It then continued when I got home and had a shower with the bathroom fan on… I finally sat with a keyboard and held a note and it all just came together.”

Tim Carr – Alone Playing Piano

Though Tim Carr has made a name as part of other projects, be that Perfume Genius, Hand Habits or collaborating on records like Rebecca Schiffman‘s recent LP, Before the Future, he also has a rich solo career too. His debut release might have followed a folk tradition, but Carr’s sound is one in constant evolution, and new full-length Pleaure Drives leans into digital pop and electronic music. Recorded in the Crescenta Valley, the album draws on the LA golden hour in its romance and mystery, Carr intentionally working from a position of celebration rather than melancholy. “Pleasure drove this album to completion,” as he explains, “as it was made from a playful place as opposed to a melancholic state or being smothered by perfectionism.” Latest single ‘Alone Playing Piano’ encapsulates this spirit both in terms of lyrics (“Alone playing piano / getting into it / hitting wrong notes / trying to find the right ones / let it happen when the time comes”) and sound, the track not living up to the apparent austerity of its title but instead offering a shadowy Lynchian waltz.

villagerrr – Ride Or Die w/ Lydia

“Zeroing in on life’s small, ostensibly ordinary moments to find the meaning within.” So we wrote of villagerrr‘s Tear Your Heart Out in a list of our favourite albums of 2024, a record which saw songwriter Mark Scott embrace his Midwestern roots with a country-inflected brand of indie rock. “The result is a decidedly empathetic collection of songs able to zoom close to the smallest details of small town life,” we continued, “be it light through a sunroof, the smell of cut grass or pencil drawings made in an effort to preserve memories.” Having now signed with Winspear, villagerrr is releasing a new deluxe version of the album featuring a handful of previously unreleased bonus tracks, including new single ‘Ride Or Die w/ Lydia’. Featuring feeble little horse‘s Lydia Slocum, the track is characteristically fond and compassionate, sitting in that liminal space between summer and autumn, where the shadows grow long and the colours tend towards a sepia glow.

Watch the video edited by Trevor Hock below:

Tear Your Heart Out [Deluxe Edition] will be released via Winspear on the 10th October and you can pre-order it now.

Weakened Friends – NPC (feat. Buckethead)

Ever feel like life isn’t quite as real as many like to believe? That unfolding events are predestined, not so much by cosmic fate but something more computational? These are the ideas worrying Weakened Friends on new single ‘NPC’, a decidedly existential track featuring guitarist Buckethead inspired by the reality-bending simulation theory. But far from some exercise in idle sci-fi daydreaming, the song is urgent, defiant and cathartic. Fatalistic, but delivered with the kind of full-throated passion that can only exist in those still with the spirit to fight. This tone runs through Feels Like Hell, the Portland, Maine outfit’s new album coming soon on Don Giovanni Records, where every soul-destroying facet of our present moment is used as fuel on the fire. The hegemony of global capitalism, complete with its mass surveillance, environmental destruction and rampant inequality, is enough to drive anyone to despair, but Weakened Friends are determined to deny it that one last victory. Better to scream, yell, bring the whole thing crumbling down with us.

Maybe I’m just fucked in the head
Here daydreaming of annihilation
Maybe we should just hit reset
It’d be the best thing

Watch the video by SunBronx & Olise Forel below:

Feels Like Hell will be released on the 9th October via Don Giovanni and you can pre-order it now.

Wombo – S.T. Tilted

We’ve covered a number of singles from Wombo‘s new full-length Danger in Fives in recent months, noting how the release sees the Louisville outfit push the envelope rather than resting on their laurels. “I don’t want to be in a band that’s confined to one form of writing,” as vocalist and bassist Sydney Chadwick says. “Where’s the fun and the creativity and the exploration in that? You have to push yourself and try something new.” With the album out now via Fire Talk Records, Wombo have shared new single, ‘S.T. Tilted’ as if to prove this sentiment. “It’s the first song we wrote after the Slab EP that made it on Danger in Fives,” as guitarist Cameron Lowe explains. “We weren’t sure it was going to work, but all the contrasting parts ended up being cool. It’s rare for a Wombo song to be written on guitar first like this one, with some of the bass and drum parts jammed out in the basement afterwards. The wacky guitar part came last.”

Watch Lowe’s video below:

Danger in Fives is out now via Fire Talk and available from the Wombo Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Latest single ‘Flex It, Tagger’ takes this idea head on. A song which traces back to 2009, before the Mae Shi broke up, but which feels more relevant than ever. It not only rails against the pernicious rise of surveillance and the militarisation of the police, but suggests a potential mode of resistance in the too often forgotten power of the crowd. “At one level, this song is inspired by the Sparks-fueled crowds at their shows in the late 2000s, particularly at LA venues like the Smell and Pehrspace and the early FYF Fests,” the band explain. “Crowds so powerful and energetic that they could have overthrown the government. Relatedly, the song is also about overthrowing the government: Every rebellion looks foolhardy until it’s successful; this one looks very foolhardy.”

It all began
out on the balcony
an errant ember in the raw
call it disaster
or opportunity
we didn’t start it but we’re ending it right now

breathing’s hardly feeling
we need a reason, but not a plan
foolish, we shouldn’t do this
Ask and you’ll hear we’re well aware of what we’re going through

URUBURU is out on the 27th June via Team Shi and you can pre-order it from the HLLLYH Bandcamp page.

The post HLLLYH – Flex It, Tagger appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If this sound austere or morose, then let latest single ‘Dirt Nap’ dissuade you of the notion. Supported by Blake’s aforementioned sax, the song offers a smooth, assured slice of pop. Halfway serious, halfway not, loaded with detail yet languid in spirit. “‘Dirt Nap’ is a song that may be about something or possibly nothing, I don’t remember,” Chadwick explains in his typically wry way. “Like a lot of my songs it started with a random sequencer pattern, and then a lot of slop heaped on top, slowly whittled away into something resembling a song. Then mostly rerecorded a year later and then further whittled to even more closely resemble music.”

Illusion of Touch will be released on the 20th June via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Michael Robert Chadwick – Dirt Nap appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With the release of the EP fast approaching, Why Dogs Why are back with the title track as the latest single. What they call “a song about feeling pressure from those around you to behave a certain way—essentially about masking in everyday life,” this might be the band’s most personal track to date. One built upon almost hesitant beginnings, the sound simmering as Alex Johnson paints a picture of self-imposed isolation in the face of various fears, before deepening both in energy and detail to offer a sustained, immersive experience. What results is a song uniquely equipped to deal with the emotional weather of such an existence, ebbing and flowing between rising intensity and hushed, lonely quiet. “Dance monkey, dance away / When you feel afraid of making a big mistake,” Johnson sings in the refrain. “Dance monkey, dance away / When you feel ashamed and your head needs a break.”

I want to die, blue in the lips
My heart aside, I’ll play the hits

The post Why Dogs Why – Play The Hits appeared first on Various Small Flames.