The track was the first from patching, the debut runo plum record coming this autumn on Winspear. The album sees the Minneapolis songwriter introduce a new stage of her sound, building upon the affectionate folk foundations she’s developed over the last handful of years into something deeper, with Lutalo and Noa Francis joining to elevate the project into a full band.

Latest single ‘Sickness’ highlights the newfound emotional power of this style. plum has lost none of the tenderness which so marked earlier releases, but is now even better equipped to elucidate the highs and lows of life. Outlining the experience of psychosomatic illness and the constant self-awareness such a phenomenon demands, the track is notably unguarded in tone. One honest about the myriad of afflictions which visit the chronically worried body, yet, like ‘Lemon Garland’ before it, unable to lose a sense of hope in something better and more comfortable.

inevitably, i’ll fall under weather
and then baby blue, i’m gonna find that feather
on the flip side, it’ll be greener tonight
there’s always something new, right?

Watch the video by Marlowe Lee below:

patching will be released on the 14th November via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the runo plum Bandcamp page.

Photo by Alexa Viscius

The post runo plum – Sickness appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“A small piece of the colossal, communal whole demanded of us. The imperative to celebrate life and warn of its fragility. To remind everyone of just what we stand to lose should the malevolent forces of this world be allowed to grow.” That’s how we described Anna Tivel‘s new album Animal Poem last month when writing about the lead single and title track. A grand statement perhaps, but anyone familiar with the folk songs penned by Tivel will know she always aims high. With the album forthcoming via Fluff & Gravy Records, latest single ‘White Goose’ is a track described by the artist as ‘a song about the way the natural world shapes our understanding—of life, death, truth and meaning.” The song embodies the spirit of the collection. An attempt to reach beyond the surface of the moment, be it made of petty grievance, mortal dread or chronic suffering, in order to connect to something deeper, richer and more fulfilling.

Watch the accompanying short film, directed Ryland Bouchard and starring Anastasiia Duvallié, below:

Animal Poem will be released on the 29th August via Fluff and Gravy Records and you can pre-order it now from the Anna Tivel Bandcamp page.

Caged Animals – Alligator

“Think JJ Cale scoring a Flannery O’Connor reading,” is how the press release describes ‘Alligator’, the latest single from Vin Cacchione’s Caged Animals. There’s a strong Canadian influence to the release—recorded with Jon Mckie in the Canadian Maritimes with Steven Lambke as a guest and released with You’ve Changed Records—but the song’s Southern Gothic vibe is decidedly American in flavour. A surreal tale of an encounter between two, contrasting Americas that only reinforces disconnection between them, delivered with Cacchione’s playful tones. “Well he was parked there to watch Daytona melt /  He had a pistol hanging off his derriére weighing down The Bible Belt,” as one verse goes. “I told him, ‘love dear is a superpower’ / And he just said, ‘love here gets hungry every hour’.”

The Cindys – Eternal Pharmacy

After a number of years recording complicated, challenging music under the moniker Birth Fury, Bristol’s Jack Ogborne yearned to return to something simpler and more immediate. Enter The Cindys, a brand new band led by Ogborne featuring Naima Bock, Finlay Burrows and members of Belishas which helps scratch this itch, owing more to the retro indie sensibilities of C86 and Flying Nun. With a self-titled mini album coming later in the year via Breakfast Records (UK) and Ruination Record Co. (US), The Cindys have shared debut single ‘Eternal Pharmacy’, a song inspired by Ogborne’s experiences as a touring sound engineer. “‘Eternal Pharmacy was written about the first proper European tour I went on,” he explains. “Seeing places I never would have been able to see otherwise, being spoiled by promoters with 3 course meals and unlimited drink, seemingly living a life of excess while simultaneously being totally broke. The song was an attempt to get a firm grip on the rapid change happening around me.”

Watch the video by Ogborne and Burrows below:

‘Eternal Pharmacy’ is out now, and the debut album from The Cindys will be released later in the year via Breakfast Records (UK) and Ruination Record Co. (US).

Drench Fries – Camera

“The solo project of Brooklyn-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Levi Nattrass, Drench Fries has carved out a niche within a country-inflected indie pop,” we wrote back in 2024, his work “offering equal doses classic western longing and a more coastal sense of brightness and pep.” Now Drench Fries are back and sounding better than ever with ‘Camera’, a song written back in 2019 but not quite coming to life until a full band got their hands on it. Enter Jason Altshuer (pedal steel), Evan House (drums), Alex Heubel (synthesizer), Stephen Vincent Ibanez Jr. (guitar, bass) and Sam Peterson (guitar), all getting behind Nattrass to bring to life the most rock-oriented Drench Fries track to date.

Eydís Evensen – Dimmuborgir

Living up to its title is the mission of Oceanic Mirror, the third full-length from Icelandic pianist and post-classical composer Eydís Evensen, forthcoming this autumn on XXIM Records. An album which looks to reflect the true power of the sea—its power, its depth, its constant movement and mystery—in order to push past the trivialities of contemporary existence and reconnect with the sublime of the natural world. Featuring renowned fellow Icelander Ásgeir singing one of Evensen’s poems, latest single ‘Dimmuborgir’ hints at the scale and beauty of the record, evoking not just the epic expanse of the ocean but also the themes of mortality and renewal it represents. Watch the suitably evocative video filmed by Einar Egils below:

Oceanic Mirror is out on the 10th October via XXIM Records.

FONTINE – Good Buddy

Winnipeg-based songwriter FONTINE is preparing to release new full-length Good Buddy this autumn via Birthday Cake Records and has released the title track as an introduction. Titled after CB radio slang for ‘gay’, the album plays like a series of dispatches from the road, be it touring her own project or as a collaborator with artists Boy Golden, Kris Ulrich, Begonia and Georgie Harmer, and plays with the stereotypes of such imagery. It sits at the intersection of big rig bravado and unashamed sentimentality, using a blend of good time rock and bedroom pop sensibilities to explore ideas of love, friendship and self-actualisation. The title track embodies the style perfectly, and hints at the record’s cathartic promise

In The Pines – Flyin’ Nowhere

Cincinnati psych outfit In The Pines have a slightly different origin story to most bands. The group run the boutique vintage pro audio repair shop Foleytronics, one of the few places in the world able to restore vintage digital effects, tape machines and synthesizers. As you might imagine, such a job accumulates a plethora of musical equipment. In The Pines’ forthcoming album Sunbeam Dream was recorded entirely with such hardware, the instruments and devices once destined for landfill salvaged, lovingly restored, then put back to use. The result is DIY in the purest sense, the band literally building their own sound in real time and working around (or, more aptly, embracing) the inherent limitations. The result bears the fruit of such a degree of control, as typified by lead single ‘Flyin’ Nowhere’ and its heady combination of energy, texture and detail.

Watch the video directed and edited by Adriana Noritz and Michael Shular below:

Sunbeam Dream will be released on the 12th September and you can pre-order it now.

John Calvin Abney – Last Chance

In September, Oklahoma‘s John Calvin Abney will release new record Transparent Towns on his own Tin Canyon Records label, via Well Kept Secret / Secretly Distribution. The folk artist’s seventh studio album, it was conceived during what he calls “a period of introspection and convalescence,” after undergoing vocal cord surgery. Forced to exist in near total silence, Abney used the quiet to delve back into his past, dwelling on the accumulation of small moments of both growth and loss that mark the passage of time. Lead single ‘Last Chance’ illustrates this perfectly, looking back at Abney’s Oklahoma youth and the then-unknown moment when beloved things slipped away. “When you come back to a love, a land, friends, family, or even a bar or a cafe that you spent a brief passage in, you’re never quite sure of the exact moment that marks the end of your chapter there,” he explains. “I try not to be these days, but sometimes I am caught dwelling in the space between now and then, thinking about where I stand today and those final seconds before everything became different.”

LUCKY – Falling Through

“A song full of backward looking despite its forward motion, resulting in a mood at once wistful and affirming.” That’s how we described ‘Traveler‘, the debut single from Bay Area supergroup LUCKY back in April. Consisting of Half Stack‘s Peter Kegler, Andrew St James and Zach Elsasser (Affectionately), the project utilises the experience and ideas of its cohort to bring its folk rock sound to life. Again released by Royal Oakie Records, latest single ‘Falling Through’ builds upon the style, a lesson in the value of intra-band chemistry which imbues its country rock sound with equal parts laidback swagger and earnest emotion. A track earthy and immediate but not without a certain wry self-awareness, especially in the near-spoken sections of the verses.

Lutalo – Cracked Lip

“Described as a time capsule of lessons learnt in their first chapter of life, the album sees the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delve into their past and invite the audience along for the ride.” So we wrote of Lutalo’s full-length album The Academy back in 2024, songs like ‘The Bed‘ and ‘Broken Twin’ highlighting the variation across the release. But the album only scratched the surface of what Lutalo has to say, something indicated by the new deluxe edition of the record which comes complete with four brand new tracks. With the release coming soon via Winspear, Lutalo has unveiled new track ‘Cracked Lip’. A song warm in tone but ambiguous in meaning, highlighting the project’s ability to combine abstract poetry with emotional immediacy. “The walls surround me / I’d like to think that I’m different from you,” as one typically cryptic verse goes. “Oh now you found me / I like to slip that salt in my shoes / And just move.” Watch the video by Noah Lenker below:

The Academy is out on the 19th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.

Snake Lips – Happy II

In recent weeks we’ve shared a couple of singles from Cat Beach, the new album from Portland, Maine outfit Snake Lips on Repeating Cloud. Both the hectic garage rock number ‘Thumbs Up’ and surf inflected ‘East Coast’ presented a band at the height of their powers, Cody Mitchell and co. burning through a myriad of hang ups and frustrations with good old fashioned rock energy (“There might be no means of fixing this predicament, but the song can remedy one part of it,” as we wrote of ‘East Coast’). With the record now out, Snake Lips have shared the album’s closing track ‘Happy II’ as a new single, and it seems wrestling demons via unapologetically raw indie rock might have therapeutic value after all. Because while the verses are essentially a list of regrets and apologies, the song turns into an expression of gratitude for the small (often four-legged) consolations that help us learn to accept ourselves.

But I’m happy where I’m at
I got the sunset and the dog in the yard
And my two best friends my cats
And I’m finally cool with me
I got the one I love, the dog in the yard
And my friends are hanging out
On cat beach

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Gathering momentum after a string of appearances at some of the biggest festivals in the UK (Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds among them), songwriter cathy kio has released a brand new single ‘Last Goodbye’ to reinforce her burgeoning reputation. Crafted with a spare acoustic arrangement and kio’s signature heartfelt vocals, the song digs deep into the aftermath of a relationship in all of its tenderness and longing. A track poignant, aching and not entirely without fondness, looking to salvage all the good from the time now gone while recognising the need to walk away.

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

Clutter – Jesus

Consisting of Hilda Ander, Emma French, Ove Jerndal and Ville Scott, Clutter is a new project out of Stockholm who cut their teeth in the underground Swedish scene but now look set to make waves further afield. Their debut 7″ single, Jesus/Holy Brother, out via via PNKSLM Recordings, underscores exactly why the band have risen to prominence so quickly, offering a noughties-inflected shoegaze style that’s able to sound heavy and playful simultaneously. ‘Jesus’ is a great example of the aesthetic, pairing existential lyrics and grungy guitar with an infectious sense of forward motion, showing Clutter’s ability to pack a punch while still having fun.

Watch the video shot and edited by Majken Bergman with animations by Henry Ander below:

Jesus/Holy Brother is out now via PNKSLM Recordings and available from Bandcamp.

The Convenience – I Got Exactly What I Wanted

The Convenience‘s 2021 debut Accelerator introduced a colourful, endlessly inventive brand of funk-inflected pop, but while follow-up Like Cartoon Vampires continues the imaginative style, the sound is very different. Because, following their artistic intuition, songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast have pivoted towards new genres, the album reaching out towards post-punk, noise rock and drone in its search for something different. Single ‘I Got Exactly What I Wanted’ shows the wiry menace of this version of The Convenience, though beneath the shadowy mood lies something just as curiosity and playful in its craft as anything the duo have released to date.

Like Cartoon Vampires is out on the 18th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

country girl – field day

Back in September we wrote about country girl, describing how single ‘i like that’ tapped into a nostalgic vibe to paint a picture of real fondness. “The nineties aesthetic adds a fresh, wide-eyed quality to the sound,” we wrote, “creating an ode to a significant other as voiced from the heady early days.” With debut EP out now via FADER Label, country girl is back with the equally warm and affectionate ‘field day’. Another song which finds itself reflecting on the joys of a rose-tinted past, looking to preserve that sense of possibility and fun in the face of life’s inevitable progression. Watch the video directed and edited by Emma Callahan below:

meet me at the fountain is out now via FADER Label.

Gum Parker – Two Subarus

Gum Parker is a new project out of Portland, Maine who are preparing to release their debut album The Brakes this spring on Repeating Cloud. Playing what they describe as “jangly songs” about “small disappointments and occasional wins,” the outfit draw on the considerable DIY history of its members to create good old-fashioned indie rock. Lead single ‘Two Subarus’ embodies this spirit both in style and theme, combining unapologetic nostalgic with a sense of momentous immediacy. “This one is thinking back on my first serious band, which would have been in the early 2000s,” songwriter Galen Richmond explains. “Everything was always just teetering on the edge of falling completely apart and it was the most exciting thing ever. It’s easy to be sorta rose-colored thinking back on that time so I’m making fun of myself for it while I totally indulge it.”

Lutalo – I Figured

We featured Lutalo‘s album The Academy several times last year, admiring how the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delved into their past with such intention and fearlessness. Released via Winspear ahead of a headline tour, new single ‘I Figured’ might not have quite made the cut to be included on the record, but it again shows how evocative Lutalo’s blend of rock and folk aesthetics can be. “Heard your train just holler / I just cussed your collar,” goes one of the verses, typifying the smouldering mix of drama and romance across the track. “You say I should come through / I know I shouldn’t want to / I know I shouldn’t but I want // You.”

Watch the video by Noah Lenker below:

‘I Figured’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

Molly Ganley – Who Are You

With debut album Eldest Daughter coming this March, songwriter Molly Ganley has unveiled brand new single, ‘Who Are You’. Another example of her warm, heartfelt brand of folk which celebrates the work previous generations have done to create and preserve a more hospitable world. “It asks the fundamental question: ‘Who are you to say?'”—who gets to make the call that women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and climate action are unimportant, and that millions will suffer due to lack of legislative protection?” Ganley explains. The result is born of both love and defiance, promising to take up the mantle of our forebears to fight for the future we deserve.

naya mö – outsider

“Draws on the grunge and alt-pop of the nineties and the soaring indie rock of the mid 00s, resulting in something that sparkles with possibility despite being coated in gritty fuzz and shadowy reverb.” That’s what we wrote of naya mö‘s previous single, ‘wanderlust’, back in November, and the latest track from the French artist is no less atmospheric. The second single from a forthcoming EP, ‘outsider’ again taps into a gauzy shoegaze style to create an enveloping sense of loneliness, though is charged with enough energy to face this darkness with a steely defiance. “The EP is about the ghosts that haunt my mind and body. Good and bad, dark and light, love and fear,” naya mö explains of this duality. “Shadows of memories, ideas, regret, people linger in my head. I wrote songs about them and drench them in distortion, reverb and fuzz.”

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

OHYUNG – no good

You might know Lia Ouyang Rusli as the composer behind soundtracks such at that of Julio Torres’s Problemista (A24), but they also produce what is described as “experimental and political” under the moniker OHYUNG. Taken from the upcoming OHYUNG album You Are Always On My Mind, latest single ‘no good’ is every bit as cinematic as any of LOR’s scores, enlisting director and designer Day to create a video capable of furthering the song’s portrayal of a quest of self-actualisation. The album itself uses a vivid, trip-hop-inspired sound to chart the process of gender transition, and ‘no good’ explores the strange dualities which accompany such a process, where the desire to become the person you are supposed to be is matched by no small sense of fear. How do we feel when we achieve the very thing we want the most?

You Are Always On My Mind is out on the 28th March via NNA Tapes and Phantom Limb and you can pre-order it now.

Pit Pony – Vacancy

With new LP Dead Stars due for release next month via Clue Records and EMI North, Newcastle‘s Pit Pony have returned with ‘Vacancy’, a track full of wry humour and cutting energy which sets its sights on the cultivated perfection of social media. “My news feed is full of suggested videos of people telling me my life will be better if I buy some leggings or get the ‘off menu’ Starbucks drink. I love an iced coffee as much as the next person but there’s a whole culture of people driving in nice cars drinking coffee and sitting making videos in carparks that I can’t get my head around,” explains lead Jackie Purver. “I feel like it’s opening a black hole somewhere that we’re all going to be swallowed into—a vacancy—like a Dorian Gray painting on a mass scale. I want to derail it, to take things in a different direction, to make it messy.” The song makes good on this wish with a building momentum, resulting in a chaotic crescendo that punctures the fictitious illusion through sheer disordered passion.

Dead Stars is out on the 7th February via Clue Records and EMI North and you can pre-order it now.

since torino – transatlantic flight song

Sheffield‘s since torino are preparing to release their debut EP in the coming months, and brand new single ‘transatlantic flight song’ serves as the ideal introduction to the band for anyone unfamiliar with their work. Opening with a restrained hush, the song sets out a quiet, reflective mood, combining organ and murmured vocals to create an easy meandering fondness, and gradually develops to push the mood further. First with glitched guitars and eventually sweeps of violin, all working together to create a song which aches with the fondness of nostalgic contemplation.

‘transatlantic flight song’ is out now, and you can find since torino at the usual places.

william h. travis – unfuck my mind

Described as “a moniker for a person and a group of friends from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” william h. travis makes an empathetic brand of folk which walks the line between fondness and disaffection. As such, latest track ‘unfuck my mind’ could be something of a theme tune for the project. A song delivered from a jaded person stuck within the awful present, though nevertheless pining for a return to something more curious and joyful. “Candy cigarettes, big league chew were fantastic / now I can’t even drink water without the microplastic,” as a typical verse goes. “Is it the world or is it me, it’s the two of us probably.”

Zoe Firn – Forever New

The latest single from Brooklyn songwriter Zoe Firn, ‘Forever New’ is a song about the enduring nature of love drawn from an experience of that very thing. The song “is inspired by my grandparents, who were married for over 50 years until my granddad passed last October,” Firn explains. “According to gramgram, she and granddad are together in every life, past, present, and future.” Written from the perspective of her grandmother, the track illuminates this romantic idea further, serving as both a highly personal picture of a treasured relationship and a wider embrace of the hope and joy. “Told the grandkids how we met / in every other past life,” as one verse goes. “Distance never did keep us apart / on earth and I believe / that neither does time.”

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“At some very basic and intuitive level, [Will] Kennedy taps into the stuff that’s really important. Getting lost in the present, side by side with those you love.” That’s how we described ‘Bird Sanctuary’, the first single from 22° Halo‘s new album Lily of the Valley, coming this November on Tiny Library Records. The single introduced the style with experience of the natural world, but new track ‘Virtual You’ shows such feelings are not unique to the great outdoors. As the title suggests, the song delves into cyberspace and the abundant nostalgia it offers. But rather than finding melancholy in those old photographs of cherished moments now past, the song is delivered with something brighter. Wistful, yes, and not immune from a certain sense of longing, but always with an overarching gratitude that such times happened at all.

Chris Acker – Shit Surprise

“The most beautiful and poetic song about stepping in dog shit that has ever been written.” That’s how label Gar Hole Records describe Chris Acker’s ‘Shit Surprise’. The first track from upcoming album Famous Lunch, the song is an ode to the cosmic justice which so often comes attached to vanity. How those walking a little too tall will inevitably get slapped down again. Behind Acker’s trademark absurdity is the essential troubadour tale, where the confused dreamer collides with the banalities of life and comes to feel cursed for his failings. And, most importantly, the tongue-in-cheek style sacrifices none of the track’s emotional weight, positioning Acker alongside the likes of Dean Johnson as one of the most authentic and interesting practitioners of contemporary folk.

Watch the video directed and edited by Cooper Kenward with animation by Anubha Gupta below:

Famous Lunch is out on the 11th October via Gar Hole Records and you can pre-order it now.

Liv Greene – Katie

Described as “a reckoning with reality, a vulnerable snapshot of hard-won self-acceptance,” Deep Feeler is the forthcoming full-length from Nashville songwriter Liv Greene on Free Dirt Records. The product of a decision to finally embrace a truer self within her work, the album sees Greene cease attempts to bury personal truths, reframing songwriting from an escape mechanism to a kind of spotlight. Belonging to a rich lineage of songwriters going back through Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and others, the album emerges defiant in its unguardedness, finding healing within the act of revealing one’s core. New single ‘Katie’ is a great example of the style. A lesson in how learning to be oneself can lead to objective good. “This came out of a relationship that wasn’t my first queer love experience,” as Greene explains, “but it was my first time allowing it to not be a bad thing. It comes from a place of tenderness—of allowing yourself to feel those romantic feelings and really revel in them.”

Deep Feeler is out on the 18th October via Free Dirt Records and you can pre-order it now.

Lutalo – Oh Well

Last month we featured two new singles from Lutalo‘s upcoming album The Academy, coming soon via Winspear. A hint at the spectrum of moods present on the record, with ‘The Bed’ offering a bright folk sound and ‘Broken Twin’ something altogether darker. Latest track ‘Oh Well’ splits the difference between the two, marbling heavy reverb with an almost transcendent falsetto to evoke Lutalo’s teenage years in Minnesota, a time set against the backdrop of his mother’s mental health challenges. What results is a spectrum of emotions packed tightly together, where confusion and desperation sit alongside fondness, and a crushing weight is always threatening to overtake everything.

Molina – Organs

This October Danish–Chilean composer Molina will release debut full-length When you wake up via Escho, an album which looks to in some way transcend the rush of contemporary living via a committed awareness of life’s small details. Thus emerges a layered brand of dream pop which eschews the nostalgia so common for the genre in favour of a close attention to the present. Latest single ‘Organs’ sees ML Buch lend their talents to push this sound further. A song “very much a fusion of our individual approaches to perceiving melodies, recordings and sound in general,” as Molina explains. “We are both fascinated by the ‘pulse’ in music and how a song can be perceived to move at different paces. We also share a mutual attraction to catchy melodies. ML tends to unfold words with the melody in an elastic manner, while I prefer more on-the-note vocals that introduce unexpected harmonic shifts. ‘Organs’ kind of holds all those elements of fascination and exploration together.”

Sam Weber – Tamarindo Sunsets

In recent months we’ve previewed the Clear + Plain, the new album from Vancouver Island-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Sam Weber, first with the evocative ‘Oregon‘ and later the warm and relaxed ‘Void‘. “But while the languid tone might suggest a track of romance and intimacy,” we wrote of the latter, “the lyrics paint a more ambiguous picture, where mortality flashes into view with an unnerving abruptness.” With the album out now via Sonic Unyon Records, Weber is back with new single, ‘Tamarindo Sunsets’. A song about “staring into the digital abyss and being confronted with greener and greener grass,” as he explains. “Reckoning with what it means to find that beauty, peace, satisfaction in your heart.”

Clear + Plain is out now via Sonic Unyon.

Soot Sprite x Muttering – Burn The Leaves

Hot on the heels of recent single I Went Swimming / Home Among Your Bones, which we described as “a refusal to romanticise difficult relationships, a determination to learn lessons and live more healthily,” Soot Sprite are back with For Joy, a new collaborative EP with London‘s Muttering. Again released via Specialist Subject Records, the three-song release sees Elise Cook and Chaz Bush share songwriting duties, with Bush taking the reins for first single ‘Burn The Leaves’. A weighty and cathartic examination of the past inspired by J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, drawing on the novel’s bittersweet retrospection on a time which could not last. “We all have certain anchor points that you look back on,” Bush explains. “Memories that hold significance and in difficult times often hope to rekindle. The thought of what could have been.”

This Lonesome Paradise – These Western Roads

With forthcoming album Luna Nocturna, California psych-folk outfit This Lonesome Paradise conjure a world worthy of their name, drawing the listener into a sonic environment as stark and striking as the American West of Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre. Lead single ‘These Western Roads’ offers a path into this landscape. A dark and brooding slice of country noir which simmers with equal parts beauty and foreboding. But more than a lesson in cinematic worldbuilding, the album serves as a meditation on the American Dream with all its brutality, broken promises and betrayals. A project doomed from its very inception, destined to always be haunted by the means in which reached for its goals.

Luna Nocturna is out on the 18th October via Bad Vibes Good Friends and you can pre-order it now.

Why Bonnie – Three Big Moons

“Foregoes easy pigeonholing in terms of style, unified instead by the defiant new self-confidence which underpins it.” That’s how we described Wish On The Bone, the new full-length from Why Bonnie coming later this week on Fire Talk Records, in a preview back in June. A style fitting for the new philosophy of lead Blair Howerton, who is looking to escape preconception and expectation to embrace the freedom of constant change. Take latest single ‘Three Big Moons’, where the old Why Bonnie country twang is repurposed to tell an old story in a different way. Themes of loneliness and isolation are keystones of the genre, but here the dusty roads and full moon heartbreak are swapped out for something altogether more extraterrestrial.

I was a heavy weight
Out there in space
Took one for the team
And took a swan dive into nothing
They pinned a note to my collar
It said “we couldn’t save her”
And dropped down the american flag
Like it was a favor
Walked around a few earth hours
Until my feet got sore
Found a nice big crater
24 by 24

Wish On The Bone will be released via Fire Talk Records on 30th August and is available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

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With the album’s release approaching, Lutalo has returned with a pair of singles, ‘The Bed’ and ‘The Broken Twin’, which further further introduce the sound. The former is a bright folk song which feels far larger than its relatively short runtime suggests, a band joining the acoustic rhythm and Lutalo’s vocals possessing some of that Dylan-esque swagger in the refrain. On the other hand, ‘The Broken Twin’ offers a far moodier atmosphere, its rhythm more conflicted and dark with its faltering drums. But the vocals emerge through this sound with a sense of insistence, driving through towards the momentous conclusion.

It started to phase me
No time can run out
It started to play me
The word had come round
I sorted the colors and followed the sound

Watch the video below by Hannah Cobb and Joey Cobb:

The Academy is out on the 20th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.

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Back in May we wrote about Turn Around For Me / See You Soon, the new double single from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower ahead of their anticipated second album The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, coming early next year via Last Night From Glasgow. “[Stephen] McAll and co. breathe extra life into the arrangement,” we wrote of ‘Turn Around For Me’, “and the song swells with an affirming rhythm which tips it towards indie rock territory.” The follow-up ‘See You Soon’ is no different. A continuation of the band’s exploration of memory which draws on the concept of saudade—the nostalgic longing for some absent person or thing—the song captures a picture of everyday life as haunted by a missing piece. Something which can never be resolved, a wound which will go on hurting.

Jordan Whitlock, Memory Spells – Heaven and Here

Back in February, we wrote about the collaboration between songwriter/producer Jordan Whitlock and Matt Bauer‘s Memory Spells, describing single ‘Take My Hand’ as “Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic.” Now the duo have returned with a brand new single ‘ Heaven and Here’, another impressively atmospheric piece of cinematic pop music. Combining ambient and classical elements with Whitlock’s piercingly poignant vocals, it has all the drama and aching emotion of a tragedy. Sombre strings ache and sway over glitchy atmospherics and the muted thump of percussion as Whitlock delivers lyrics that possess a spare and opaque poetry.

Wildflowers bloom
Bend toward the sun
I follow you out through the waves
Nothing between
Heaven and here
Only the words I couldn’t say

‘Heaven and Here’ is out now via streaming services.

Lutalo – Ocean Swallows Him Whole

Following on from 2023’s AGAIN, a record which explored the various forms of oppression woven through our societies, Lutalo is returning this September with debut full-length The Academy on Winspear. Described as a time capsule of lessons learnt in their first chapter of life, the album sees the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delve into their past and invite the audience along for the ride. Single ‘Ocean Swallows Him Whole’ uses the doomed figure of Icarus to capture the peaks and troughs of this journey, drawing an energizing momentum from adrenaline rush, even if it comes from a fall.

Watch the video by director, cinematographer and editor Rich Smith below:

The Academy is out on the 20th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

 Melanie MacLaren – Heaven Is

A song she says is “about a lot of the myths and imagery we’re fed about the afterlife,” ‘Heaven Is’ is the latest single from Nashville singer songwriter Melanie MacLaren. Delivered in an easy country-pop style and with equal helpings of bittersweet feeling and wry humour, it combines existential musings with observations altogether more terrestrial. So heaven becomes both “a place up in the air” filled with lost loved ones and something in the here and now, like “sipping beer in folding chairs,” or “eating fruit straight off the vine.” “[‘Heaven Is’] is about the experience of how deconstructing those myths leads to reality check that we really have no idea what happens,” MacLaren describes, “besides that we leave, and everyone else does too.”

Heaven is the place where the dead girls go
Heaven is the place up in the air
Heaven is a place i don’t think about much
But I’ll have to one day I’m aware

‘Heaven Is’ is out now via streaming services.

Miserable chillers – Great American Turn Off

Miserable chillers has made a name with an idiosyncratic, constantly inventive sound, following a myriad of creative directions from Kate Bush-esque art pop to SNES soundtracks and field recordings. A mixtape featuring recordings made between 2018 and 2024, Great American Turn Off not only personifies the spirit of Miguel Gallego’s work, but serves as the ideal introduction for those looking to dive in for the first time. The release functions best as a full entity, rewarding those who take forty minutes to lose themselves in its easy rhythms, but we recommended single ‘The Shaft’ for anyone who needs a quicker dose.

Great American Turn Off is out now and available to hear in full here.

Molly Murphy – Seabird

Specializing in what she calls “lo-fi folk tunes summoned from the Blue Ridge and set loose in New York City,” Molly Murphy makes bright and emotionally resonant folk music. Her latest single is a cover of  The Alessi Brothers 1976 song ‘Seabird’. Complete with vocal harmonies, subtle mandolin and slide guitar, it’s a lush and laidback take on the original. Murphy’s vocals take centre stage, confidently but vulnerably delivering lyrics that use the imagery of the titular bird covering vast distances of remote ocean as a metaphor for distances altogether more human. “Like a lonely seabird,” Murphy sings, “you’ve been away from land too long / Oh, too long.”

Old Amica – Tiden far

Described as a release about time, Old Amica‘s ‘Tiden far’ sees the Swedish project turn their attention memory, looking to invoke how we experience the past, where the amorphous drift comes to form strange patterns and meanings. As such, the single is suitably hazy and slow-moving, its drama arising from a concealed hand as though always masked by something. Familiar sights and sensations as experienced through a gauze curtain. Old voices coming through a crackling radio, messages moving through the accumulated years with something to offer us yet.

Shady Baby – Feel It

Following a couple of singles in 2023, Brighton garage rockers Shady Baby are back with a brand new single, ‘Feel It’. Comprising of Sam Leaver (vocals, guitar), Nick Varnava (bass) and Tom Jackson (drums), Shady Baby draw on late 90s and early 00s alternative rock, and ‘Feel It’ is no different. A rich,  enveloping wall of sound is punctured by energizing electric guitar and crisp percussion, with enough hooks to appeal to the radio and festival circuit and enough grunge to bring in the rock-heads. All this raw energy is used to explore feelings of agitation and doubt. “‘Feel It’ started off as a song about grappling with impatience,” says Leaver, “but along the way it evolved into exploring the uncertainties of new relationships.”

‘Feel It’ is out now on streaming services.

Special World – Cloak in the Attic

This month saw Special World, that’s the solo recording project of Philly‘s Andy Molholt (who you might know from Speedy Ortiz), released their debut physical release with a self-titled collection. Described as ‘early’ songs, the cassette provides a peek into the inventive and often idiosyncratic style of the Special World sound, something demonstrated by the single and opener ‘Cloak in the Attic’. Starting with a glass smash but progressing with a lethargic rhythm, the song slowly crawls over the listener and absorbs them into its peculiar world. A place often strange and always colourful, where the light bends in odd shapes and everything takes on the loaded, abstract logic of dreams.

the cloak in the attic is hidden
obscured by a flowering gem
where is the proof?
no fumes left to reduce
cannot refuse a bargain which i cannot lose

night after night we misconstrue

Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips – Dissolve

Described as “a visceral journey through the late-night mental crumblings of summer, capturing the essence of spontaneity and sincerity,” ‘Dissolve’ is the first single from Stelth Ulvang’s upcoming self-titled album, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips. Ulvang might be best known as the pianist for folk sensation The Lumineers, but has long pursued a variety of creative outlets, and the new album is something of an antidote to radio-friendly anthemic polish which has come to mark The Lumineers sound. ‘Dissolve’ is our first glimpse of a collection of songs which instead leans into the vulnerable and raw side of things, allowing Ulvang to show a slightly stranger but altogether more authentic side to his work.

YULLOLA – Silk Nightdress

At the end of last month, Maine songwriter and producer YULLOLA released Zen Maiden, a brand new record that exists in an unreal world of its own. Direct, pop-inflected indie rock songs sit next to cinematic spiritual jazz segues and dreamy spoken word sections. All of which makes sense when you understand where the album came from. “This year I truly was considering becoming a nun whilst getting obsessed with vocal inflections of kulning and female Bulgarian choirs,” YULLOLA describes, “spending hours in the forests of Maine just making sounds.” Opener ‘Silk Nightdress’ is the perfect introduction, a spoken word track with all the shimmering unreality and dark cinematic romance of Twin Peaks at its most melodramatic.

Zen Maiden is out now and available via the YULLOLA Bandcamp page.

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The recording project of Oakland-based illustrator and lettering artist Kyle Benson, Company Vacation uses music as a way to delve deeper into the everyday, and in doing so invites the listener to notice and appreciate the magic in the small details. Out at the beginning of Feruary, new album Okay Headspace feels like the culmination of these ideas, and succinct single ‘I Have a Little Room in My House’ serves at the nostalgic, buoyant prologue. “As a kid, I dominated the family computer. It was steroids to my tiny brain,” Benson explains. “My parents kept it opposite the TV, centrally located in the family room, to keep anyone from using it to look at porn. Having a computer room felt like the luxury of the rich.”

Lately, I’ve been feeling small
But I feel a whole lot cuter
When I play computer

I have a little room in my house
it has a chair and a desk
it’s where I get on the Internet

Watch the video below, with animation by Jared Clark Gay and illustration by Benson himself:

Okay Headspace is out on the 9th February and available to pre-order now.

 Creekbed Carter Hogan – If I Was

With a self-titled album on its way Gar Hole Records, Austin songwriter Creekbed Carter Hogan has released single ‘If I Was’ to introduce their unwavering style of folk. The record sees the trans artist both catalogue the past and confront the present, with Hogan searching for ways to survive and find community in a society which too often seems to have been built to prevent such endeavours. “If I was a loaded gun / You might / Treat me better,” they sing, hinting at the defiance which sits at the heart of their work, an anti-capitalist song which yearns for something more.

Watch the video directed by Jordan Moser below:

Creekbed Carter is out via Gar Hole Records on the 22nd March and you can pre-order it now.

Den Der Hale – Donkey Skin

With their evocative blend of psych, folk and post-rock, Sweden‘s Den Der Hale established themselves as a mysterious force back in 2019 with EP Harsyra, and having now signed to FatCat Records, forthcoming album Pastoral Light looks set to build upon these foundations to paint a bleak picture of humankind’s decimation of the natural world. After the foreboding simmer of Bela Tarr-inspired ‘Horse From Turin’, the five-piece are back with new single ‘Donkey Skin’. A track which draws on the seventies animation of the same name to create an ethereal sound at once alluring and dangerous, doing for French fairy tales what Lankum do for Irish folk tales.

Hatis Noit – Jomon

Having featured in David Lynch’s Manchester International Festival showcase in 2019 and appearing in Rick Rubin’s Showtime documentary series Shangri-La, Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit released the superlative debut album Aura on Erased Tapes in 2022. “Words cannot describe everything we feel,” she explained in the liner notes. “How can one accurately verbalise the sensation we feel when we’re a newborn and our mother holds us in her arms, and we feel her skin on our cheek […] Music is a language that can translate that sensation, feeling, the memory of love.” The description goes some way to describing the album’s tactile, enveloping sound, one all the more impressive for the fact that it is conjured exclusively from Noit’s voice, looped and layered into entire worlds. Made with Berlin-based Taiwanese-Japanese media artist NAOWAO, the new video for the single ‘Jomon’ brings this to life even further, matching the almost shamanistic sound with visuals every bit as mystical, collapsing the apparently divided spheres of human, natural and spiritual experience onto a single plane.

Aura is out now via Erased Tapes and available from Bandcamp.

Kaia Kater – The Internet

Born in Montreal and now based in Toronto, Kaia Kater makes music inspired by Canadian folk music, her father’s Grenadian heritage and the Appalachian music of her college years in West Virginia. Planning to release a new record sometime in 2024, Kater kicked off the year by releasing a new single, ‘The Internet’. A bright and tumbling folk song, it captures the strangeness of communicating with loved ones at a digital remove, replacing physical proximity with a stream of ones and zeros pinged around the world via satellites and fibre optic cables. “I can only talk to you through the Internet,” Kater sings, “in bits and in bytes and right angles.”

Large Brush Collection – Arm’s Length

Back in September we wrote a preview of Off Center, the forthcoming record by Austin folk rockers Large Brush Collection. “The band combine intuitive rhythms with intricate detail to conjure soundscapes able to explore the most personal of things,” we wrote, impressed with their ability to explore thorny issues with nuance and tenderness. The album comes out at the end of the week, and in anticipation Large Brush Collection have unveiled one last single. Titled ‘Arm’s Length’, it is perhaps the most important track of all. “This was the first song I brought to the group when Dan (Magorrian) and Gaby (Torres) and I began playing together,” describes songwriter/bassist Nora Predey. “And we all really connected over it. In a way, I think it became the foundation of the band.” With Torres’s flute and snaking melodies, the song ebbs and flows between dreamy and anxious, floating along sedately before rupturing with stabs of stormy guitar and clattering percussion.

LOUD HOUND – Comet

The project of New Jersey singer-songwriter Tommy Florio, LOUD HOUND is a project that crafts polished pop songs made emotive and interesting with lo-fi guitar and introspective lyrics. Following last year’s album It’s Okay To Be Lonely Part II, LOUD HOUND has returned with a brand new single ‘Comet’, which exists at the quiet, melancholy end of Florio’s stylistic repertoire. This is due to the circumstances in which it was created. “[I] rented a house in the middle of the mountains of Pennsylvania so I could clear my head after the most gut-wrenching break up,” Florio describes. “I needed to isolate myself from the world to understand what just happened and process my emotions so I could slowly get back to myself.” But it’s not all hushed heartbreak, Florio’s tired voice reaches out for hope and healing, and the energetic electronics that support the chorus suggest they might be on the horizon.

Lutalo & Claud – Running

‘Running’ is a joint single between Vermont-based songwriter Lutalo and Brooklyn’s Claud, a song which lands at the super catchy sweet spot between indie rock and pop. Both artists released records last year, Lutalo with AGAIN on Winspear (which we described as “blend of folk, rock and soul which…critique capitalist and racist systems”), and Claud with Supermodels on Saddest Factory Records, both of which established them as some of the freshest new indie pop talent around. The new single is no different, an upbeat, driving indie pop song which explores a tricky relationship with a domineering parent. It comes complete with a video directed by Eleanor Petry which sees the pair act out this relationship in a beautifully warm and grainy seventies colour palette.

‘Running’ is out now via Winspear. Listen via streaming services and purchase a download from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.

Sam Evian – Wild Days

If the soulful psych pop of 2021’s Time To Melt saw Sam Evian embrace a retro aesthetic, then forthcoming album Plunge sees the New York songwriter take things to a whole other level. Carved from the lush pop that marked the seventies, the record is written from the perspective of Evian’s parents, tracing a story of love in all of its complexities and complications. A team of friends including Liam Kazar, Sean Mullins, El Kempner (Palehound) and Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief) all offered their talents, following Evian’s orders to keep things fun and immediate. “No-one knew the songs or what the plan was,” he explains. “We kept it loose and fun. This was the spirit of the sessions. No headphones, no playback, minimal overdubs, or bleed. Fast and loose.” Lead single ‘Wild Day’ gives a glimpse as to what to expect from the album, where the nostalgic haze is leavened by the spontaneity of the process.

Watch the video by CJ Harvey below:

Plunge is out on the 22nd March via Flying Cloud Recordings/Thirty Tigers and you can pre-order it now.

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Opener ‘PLPH’ introduces the blend of folk, rock and soul which constitutes the Lutalo sound, as well as the critique of capitalist and racist systems that extends across the release. “I sit inside your pretty little painted house,” go the opening lines, calling out the window dressing on these violent levers of power, and the song ends with a defiant refrain. “I won’t play your game / It’s making me go insane.” With its languid rhythm and grungy attitude, ‘Hold My Head’ is no less evocative, a meditation on addiction that feels like a response to the previous track. A picture of the coping mechanisms required to live in a broken world.

Take my blood
Till I’m bone dry
Give it to me
A bold face lie
Throw my vote
Into the box
Cast me away
An old pair of socks

The rest of the songs on the release cover a variety of topics, though all circle back to the oppression built into our society. “I’m analysing those systems and patterns, and also asking, ‘Can we continue to not perpetuate this?’” Lutalo explains. “Because it’s hurt a lot of people historically. I’m just asking people to question it.” ‘The Old Cast’ asks to be lifted beyond the fate which seems inevitable, and ‘Push Back Baby’ confronts corporate greed head on, both tracks understated in sound but cutting beneath the surface. ‘Strange Folk’ smoulders with a volatile energy, threatening to spill over, but instead just embraces it own momentum. Closer ‘WAR’ rises from this energised, a call to arms which shakes free from the fuzz of the record and grows confident in its contempt.

Held in paper skin
One just wants to feel care
Torn apart from within
In defiance or despair
To war again

AGAIN is out now via Winspear and available from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.

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