The latest signing of Furious Hooves, BAL is the brand new project of Jack Foster and Jordan Powers, long-time bandmates from acts like House of Fools and Far-Less, who longed to tap into a different side of their artistic sensibilities. Namely a passion for sci-fi and 90s alt/heavy rock. Debut single ‘Seafoam’ introduces this style, a track which transports you to a lush new world, one weighted not by gravity as we know it but hefty guitars and drums. Check out the video by Brandon Hackler below:

‘Seafoam’ is out now via Furious Hooves and you can get it from the BAL Bandcamp page.

Bartees Strange – Heavy Heart

We’ve followed Washington D.C.’s Bartees Strange since 2018’s Magic Boy, and his subsequent rise has been nothing short of meteoric. After his acclaimed debut album Live Forever on Memory Music, Strange has now signed with 4AD, a new period marked by new single ‘Heavy Heart’. The single feels like an acknowledgement of everything that has changed and all that has not. An apology, a promise.

I never wanna miss you this bad
I never want to run out like that
Sometimes I feel just like my Dad
Rushing around
I never saw the God in that
Why work so hard if you can’t fall back?
Then I remember, I rely too much upon
My heavy heart

Check out the video directed by Marisa Dabice of Mannequin Pussy below:

‘Heavy Heart’ is out now via 4AD and you can get it from the Bartees Strange Bandcamp page.

Cave People – I Don’t Want Hope

“I don’t want hope / I don’t need that kind of misinformation.” So opens the lead single from upcoming LP Wind Burn by Philadelphia‘s Cave People on Disposable America. But contrary to its central sentiment, ‘I Don’t Want Hope’ is an upbeat indie rock number that finds some affirming joy in relinquishing one’s optimism. As though the only thing weighing it down were the dreams and expectations, empty things now cast to the wind. “Just don’t give me something to believe,” the track continues, “it won’t agree with my new cynicism / fatalist but at least it’s my decision.”

Dao Strom – Inside

Following 2020’s Traveler’s Ode, Portland, Oregon-based artist Dao Strom has returned with a brand new album, Redux, on Antiquated Future Records. Or perhaps not brand new, because as the title suggests, the tracks are reimaginings of older songs taken from past decades, reworked into what the label describes as a “haunting song-cycle about loved ones, the natural world, and the nuances of emotional memory and Vietnamese diasporic identity.” It’s a process which proved more fruitful than Dao Strom ever expected. “I wrote my songs from a place of honesty in those times,” she explains, “yet in re-recording discovered in them even truer timbres. As if the songs had been waiting for me all this time, to come back to them, to reclaim something left undone; still hidden; left othered.” Check out the single ‘Inside’ below:

Dittocrush & Daniel Young – Coral Rose

With last year’s debut album Growth at a Death Pace, Dittocrush introduced their transportive blend of organic and electronic sounds, using analogue tape samples to create slow and subtle soundscapes full of spirit and texture. A collaboration with Daniel Young, new single ‘Coral Rose’ is no less evocative. Wending pedal steel anchors the track in the American landscape, though by the close you will suddenly realise you have been taken away from earth and returned just as gently.

Laveda – bb

Albany’s Laveda have made their name with a brand of dream pop which feels far larger and deeper than something made by two people. New single ‘bb’ sees Jake Brooks and Ali Genevich pull the trick once again. An introspective meditation on pandemic isolation, the track grows slowly from morose shadow and blossoms into something urgent. “It sounds sad, but it’s not,” Genevich explains. “It’s just reality, and sometimes it’s ok to be angry with the way things are.”

Mark Twang – Sweetness & Love

Gambier, Ohio duo Mark Twang are preparing to release their debut full-length, Companion, and the first single gives a real insight into the album’s sincere, reflective tone. Rising from the ashes of a past relationship, ‘Sweetness & Love’ stands apart from the traditional bitter break-up track, instead choosing to acknowledge and foster the fondness that remains. What emerges is small and tender, and no less beautiful for it.

i hope you find someone
who can give you what you want
i wish you nothing but sweetness and love

Wombo – Below the House

Louisville‘s Wombo have been putting out a series of great singles on Fire Talk Records and their latest ‘Below the House’ is no different. The song is “about leaving things buried for the best sometimes when there’s nothing you could gain from trying to make sense of them,” as the band put it. A track “loosely based on a nightmareish type dream” which exudes its own inherent unease. Like some liminal space between waking and dreaming where nothing is quite what it seems.

‘Below the House’ is out now via Fire Talk Records and you can get it from the Wombo Bandcamp page.

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