With singles ‘Everything’ and ‘Closer’, London duo atmos bloom have indicated the dreamy depths of their new album Everythingness, as well as the push and pull between influence and experimentation which marks their shoegaze-inflected sound. “[‘Closer’] finds Gratton and Paterson looking for contentment in the present and the constant change it represents,” we wrote of the latter single, “something achieved with a woozy, almost ethereal sound that sits on a knife edge between lucidity and dreams, sanding the edges off of reality in order to consider it more fully.” With the release of Everythingness fast approaching via Spirit Goth Records, atmos bloom have shared latest track ‘It’s Enough’, and again the song finds itself caught between competing forces. Namely the difficulty of living up to the expectations of different people, each with their own distinctive image of you in their head.

Chris Acker – Overdrafted

“A country-folk lamentation about the cruel thing banks do when you have less than zero dollars.” That’s how the press release describes ‘Overdrafted’, the new single from New Orleans-based songwriter Chris Acker. His first new music since 2024 album Famous Lunch, the song explores what he calls the “half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined.” As we wrote back in 2024: “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.” But what’s remarkable is, despite the self-deprecation and wry humour, there’s some strange beauty here too, a heartwarming sense of camaraderie with everyone who finds themselves “in the red but still trying to tread.” You certainly won’t hear a more affecting account of having to make do with single ply toilet paper this year.

Jacob Brodovsky – Beneath It All

The songs of Jacob Brodovsky have never been afraid to delve into the personal, with new album Tell The Kids We Tried meditating, as we put it, “on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” but latest single ‘Beneath It All’ pushes further than most. Brodovsky had been the proud director of a Jewish summer camp, a place where he had spent over two decades of his life, only to recently face backlash from some members of the wider community for liking a social media post about a benefit show Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. An ugly situation developed, with the pressure tipping over into full-blown harassment, leaving him little choice but to resign and leave the place which had come to feel like a second home. “I wrote ‘Beneath It All’ about trying to hold onto the community that raised me while it shrinks into itself,” Brodovsky explains. “A community of good people, many of whom blinded by trauma, grief, and a refusal to acknowledge harm.” The album track featured the fantastic Charlotte Cornfield, while a new alternate live version sees Keiran Placatka, Dominique Adams and Leith Ross join instead:

Tell The Kids We Tried is out now via Make My Day Records and available from Bandcamp.

Jonathan Something – Country Rose

Recording under the moniker Jonathan Something, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Searles won acclaim through the late 2010s and early 2020s, writing prolifically across rock, folk and pop styles, though emerged from the period disillusioned with the industry and music more generally. “I was finding it hard to identify with being an artist anymore,” he explains. “It didn’t bring me the same joy or comfort it used to, and I found that the only way for me to really enjoy music again was to stop making it.” Cue several years away from songwriting, a spell only broken when ill health pushed him back towards music, even if at first merely sitting at a piano now caused him anxiety. “Eventually, I realized that I needed to turn it into something useful,” Searles continues. “I needed to use it as a catalyst to start thinking more seriously about spirituality and growth and the changes I needed to make in my life. And that journey became [new album] One More Lonesome Cowboy Song.” The record will be released this autumn via High Shelter, but for now you can listen to single ‘Country Rose’ for a taste of existential, transformative tone which marks the songs. Watch a live performance of the track recorded by Dogstar Films below:

One More Lonesome Cowboy Song will be released on the 16th October via High Shelter.

LAPÊCHE – Phantom Of Cinder

Brooklyn’s LAPÊCHE began life back in 2016 as the solo project of Krista Holly Diem, but has since grown into a full-blown band. Drawing on shoegaze and post-punk, they make indie rock songs that are both shadowy and catchy, centering on a sense of considered patience that the band says is born from “a shared language of healing, honesty and presence.” Back in February, they released a new record Autotelic via Tiny Engines, a collection of emotionally intricate but very much listenable rock songs. One standout was album closer ‘Phantom of Cinder’, a typically restrained track about how we hold on to shards of the past like splinters in our skin. “This song came from feeling haunted by old versions of myself,” Diem describes. “It is about the things we carry, the memories that refuse to disappear, and the moments that shape us long after they have passed. Sometimes healing is not about letting go. Sometimes it is about learning to live with what remains.” Watch the Jacob Halpren-directed video for ‘Phantom of Cinder’ below:

Autotelic is out now via Tiny Engines and available from the LAPÊCHE Bandcamp page.

Mama’s Broke – Build It Up

The recording project of Canadian pair Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria, Mama’s Broke has made a name over the last decade or so with a rootless, ever-searching style of folk music which played like the songs of old. Stories to be shared around campfires and small town bars before packing up and hitting the road once more. Latest album Reunion, coming later this summer via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, continues this style, possessing a timeless quality that suggests these aren’t so much new songs as memories passed down through the ages. As single ‘Build It Up’ attests, the result is at once intimate and urgent, delivered with the earnest conviction of those unwilling to let go of this world we’re slowly destroying. “If you don’t build it up,” as the telling refrain states, “somebody else will tear it down.”

Nick Bellerose – maybe i think

Montreal’s Nick Bellerose spent nearly two decades living a double life. His career as an international diplomat saw him travel the globe, “handling global crises in the foreign service.” But, privately, his true calling was music, something he used as an anchor to himself when thousands of miles from home. A couple of years ago, things changed. A series of tragedies, spearheaded by the death of his mother, led him to pick up a guitar and start to sing, making the decision to swap “the world stage of diplomacy for the visceral truth of the microphone.” Bellerose cites the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen as influences, something plainly clear in latest single ‘maybe i think’. Characteristically bittersweet, the track explores heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming.

Perennial – Modernism

Formed in Connecticut over a decade ago, Perennial are a self-styled “modernist punk” band who have blown away sweaty basement shows across the globe with their punk rock patchwork style that knits together just about every left-field and out-there style you can think of. The press release describes their forthcoming new record (aptly titled Modernism) as “Op art to dance to”, but the better metaphor is the tagline of a “1,200 second action painting”, as Perennial streak and splatter disparate elements of their seemingly endless record collection into hectic patterns that feel at once reverential and totally new. The real triumph is how Perennial keep these eccentric experiments so catchy and immediate (two words you may now immediately associate with sub-2-minute melange of free jazz, ambient electronica, big beat, dub and Musique concrète), as the opener and title track attests. Check it out below:

Sharp Pins – Saturday Sun

The project of Chicago’s Kai Slater (who you may also know from Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe), Sharp Pins is an outlet for lo-fi garage pop that could have come swaggering straight out of the swinging sixties. Not content with putting out two records last year (which clocked in with a combined total of 35 tracks), Slater is already back at it, announcing plans to re-release the album MOD MAYDAY 23, first released on tape a couple of years ago when he was still a teenager, via K Records and perennial. “[MOD MAYDAY 23 is] The soundtrack to my 18th summer riding a Chinese Taotao 50cc scooter around Taqueria Moran and four tracking my Sta-Prest-Dreams,” Slater describes. “I thought it would be cool to record a bunch of songs that never really got recorded in a semi-more-thought-out-way.” And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a brand new Sharp Pins single too. Titled ‘Saturday Sun’, it’s another slice of throwback pop music that’s sure to soundtrack the rest of the summer.

‘Saturday Sun’ is out now via the Sharp Pins Bandcamp page. MOD MAYDAY 23 will be released on 4^th September via K Records and perennial.

Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker – Sigils of Decay (for João da Cruz e Sousa)

Next month, American Dreams will release the third edition of Songs for Sad Poets, a collaborative project between Tehran-based composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn writer/philosopher Eugene Thacker, inspired by the tradition of poètes maudits or ‘cursed poets’. As Thacker describes, “[the term] referred to obscure or unknown poets who had endured some form of suffering and who felt compelled to write about it.” In the duo’s hands, this inspiration becomes something haunting, soundscapes that mould ideas from poetry, philosophy and music into new forms.  The first two volumes were entirely instrumental, but this new one is a little different. Amini fed Thacker’s poems into voice synthesis software and then processed and layered the output until any notion of “voice” is dissolved in noise. Lead single introduces how this sounds, a tribute to late nineteenth-century Brazilian symbolist poet João da Cruz e Sousa.

Wishy – All The Rage

“An unapologetically romantic track which creates the slightly intoxicated state of the title in all of its headspinning glory, refusing to dial down the lyrics in order to fully embrace the headspace. As though to be in love is to experience everything saturated and bright.” So we wrote of ‘Lovesick’, the lead single from Wishy‘s new full-length Nature’s Pill back in June, the Indianapolis outfit’s first full-length since the celebrated Triple 7 back in 2024. With the album slated for release via Winspear this autumn, Wishy have put out ‘All the Rage’ to keep the anticipation high. Thematically, the track is diametrically opposed to its predecessor, existing in the aftermath of a break-up and seeking solace amid the gloom. However, take a casual listen and you’d never know it. Because, for all of the bummed out frustration and wistful longing of the lyrics, the sound itself is buoyant and bright, a twee spirit which leans into the rhythm of the sound as though to cleanse itself via momentum alone.

Nature’s Pill will be released on the 2nd October via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the Wishy Bandcamp page.

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

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.

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