“Highlights how grand need not equate to ostentatious.” So we wrote of ‘Cartwheels For Coins‘, a recent single from Way Through by Cici Arthur, the new collaboration between Toronto artists Joseph Shabason, Chris A. Cummings and Thom Gill. “Because for all of the richness of the [project’s] sound, there’s a grounded quality to it too. A kind of attention to detail which allows each track to become its own little slice of life.” With the album out now via Western Vinyl, Cici Arthur are back with the opener and title track as a final single. The perfect encapsulation of the record’s ability to exist as something both cinematic Technicolor and drably human. “What good are dead ends when I’m looking for a way through?” as Cummings sings. ““When the miracle you’d hoped for never comes it’s hard to take, but it’s your fault for hoping.”

Way Through is out now via Western Vinyl and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Dusty Lucite – Old Feelings (feat. D. Crane)

Led by H.L Stratton-Kuhta, Portland, Oregon-based indie outfit Dusty Lucite reach across a whole myriad of genres to bring to life a sound as colourful and idiosyncratic as it is fun. Latest album Normal Harder serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, pitching the listener into a singular world carved from psych-inflected pop and folk. The album is something of a grab bag, mixing raucous garage rock numbers with sedate, dreamy croons, and thus no one single can quite capture the experience, but standout ‘Old Feelings’ is perhaps the best place to dive in. It’s a song which embodies both the playful spirit and emotional depth of the Dusty Lucite sound, enlisting D. Crane (of BOAT, Unlikely Friends) to add to the swirl of melancholic contemplation.

Normal Harder is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dwi Riana x Julie Meunier – Elsewhere

Back in 2023, songwriters Dwi Riana and Julie Meunier teamed up for single ‘World War X‘. “An exchange between lovers which begins as a seemingly innocuous conversation but ratchets up with every sentence,” as we wrote, “soon precipitating into an argument which draws the relationship’s tensions out into the open.” Now the pair have reunited for brand new track ‘Elsewhere’. What they describe as “a love song for winter,” the single celebrates those cold days that send you into cosy refuge, as well as the self-reflective peace which descends along with the snow. “When it snows here in Toronto, I can’t help but think of where I come from,” Dwi Riana explains. “As each snowflake chaotically float along in the air, I think about all the little choices I’ve made in life to end up here.”

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

Eli Carvajal – Fear of Love

Across a number of albums, London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal has made a name with a markedly unguarded, earnest style, combining folk and pop sensibilities into something at once playful, curious and heartfelt. Following on from 2024 release Eat Shiitake Now, Carvajal is kicking off 2025 with a new single ‘Fear of Love’. It’s a song of two halves which emerged from a period of transition which in turn suggests his next direction. “The first [half] came in March 2022, isolated at home in Watford, aching to start a new life in Japan,” as Carvajal explains. “The second came a year later in Higashikitazawa, Tokyo, surfacing for air after a year afraid. This is a bridge between my last life and this one, my last album and the next. Hydrangeas were harmed.”

Fime – Better Half of a Dollar

Having made waves with 2019 EP Sprawl, the rise of Fime was in many ways derailed just as it was beginning, the LA outfit suffering the consequences of 2020 and everything that time brought with it. A period of mourning and self-reflection followed, before they teamed up with Melina Duterte (Jay Som) to record full-length Sweeter Memory, an album which grappled with nostalgia as the bittersweet, counterproductive force it can so often be. With this context in mind, new single ‘Better Half of a Dollar’ feels like the dawning of a new era. One which has decided to lift itself from beneath the past and all of its unrealised dreams to contend with the present on its own terms. A song as searing and intense as anything Fime have written to date, with lead Beto Brakmo declining the temptation to retreat into nostalgia, instead staring the precarious, volatile present dead in the eye and refusing to blink.

Watch the video directed by Hailey Ruffner below:

‘Better Half of a Dollar’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Leoblu – livingroomfloor

“An indie pop song filtered through a digital prism, it combines synths, beats and Carlsson’s signature vocals to create something at once emotional and oddly mesmerising.” So we wrote of ‘PEACHES’ by Åland-born, Berlin-based producer Leoblu last year, the song continuing the artist’s willingness to test genre expectations to reach new ground. Latest single ‘livingroomfloor’ is no different, evoking the intimate space of its title to explore the immediate experience of love, Leoblu creating a beguiling pop soundscape which is at once grounded and ethereal, alluring and strange. “Love is full of contradictions,” as Leoblu puts it. “It can be overwhelming yet fragile, euphoric yet filled with doubt. ‘livingroomfloor’ is about letting yourself feel it all, and trying to stay present in these feelings.”

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

Mumble Tide – Pea Soup

“Grounds both the style and theme of the album, offering a sound undeniably sad yet reaching towards something more uplifting.” That’s how we described ‘Mawpao’ from Mumble Tide‘s forthcoming full-length Might As Well Play Another One on Breakfast Records. The song typified a release written as duo Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers moved through a break-up to genuine friendship. Latest single ‘Pea Soup’ embraces this space in all of its contradictions, juxtaposing bright power pop tones with morose bedroom pop reflection to emerge with a picture of a moment with all the dark, light and undecided future left intact. “‘Pea Soup’ is one big lumpy splurge, Leonard explains, “scribbled down on a hot day hiding away in my bedroom. It’s a bit of throwback to OG Mumble Tide with a chorus too big to slurp in one go.”

Watch the video by Mumble Tide, with colour and title card by Steph Dutton, below:

Might As Well Play Another One will be released via Breakfast Records on the 1st May and you can pre-order it now from the Mumble Tide Bandcamp page.

naya mö – reverb boy

We’ve featured a number of singles from naya mö‘s forthcoming debut EP Dealing With Ghosts in recent months, with ‘wanderlust‘ “draw[ing] on the grunge and alt-pop of the nineties and the soaring indie rock of the mid 00s [to create] something that sparkles with possibility despite being coated in gritty fuzz and shadowy reverb” and ‘outsider‘ “tap[ping] into a gauzy shoegaze style to create an enveloping sense of loneliness, though [one] charged with enough energy to face this darkness with a steely defiance.” Latest track ‘reverb boy’ continues the dreamy aesthetic to offer a picture of the titular character—a figure adrift from everything yet able to make his voice heard around the world. “The EP is about the ghosts that haunt my mind and body—good and bad, dark and light, love and fear,” Mö explains. “Shadows of memories, ideas, regret, and people linger in my head. I wrote songs about them and drenched them in distortion, reverb, and fuzz.”

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

Palmyra – Arizona

Emerging from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Palmyra is a folk rock outfit consisting of trio Teddy Chipouras, Mānoa Bell and Sasha Landon. Next month sees the release of new full-length album Restless on Hey Boy Records, and the band have shared new single ‘Arizona’. Described as “a little dose of summer in the dead of winter,” the song evokes the affirming joy of a road trip with a fresh, vivid Americana style, where everyday worries seem to evaporate within the languid rhythms of easy forward motion. “I was in a haze in Arizona come back won’t it come back,” as the opening lines detail:

Hours felt like days and I was happy for the first time in a while
I was at a payphone in Sedona calling someone falling
Up over my head and back to Boston leave me in the desert please

Leave me open
Arizona

Restless is out on the 28th March via Hey Boy Records and you can pre-order it now.

Triathalon – RIP

It is not every day you come across an album built around the maxim ‘play this at my funeral,’ but Triathalon’s forthcoming full-length Funeral Music is exactly that. The New York trio (Adam Intrator, Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne) thought long and hard about what might soundtrack their respective requiems when writing their fifth record, and the result is perhaps their darkest and most unguarded collection of songs to date. Ahead of its release in May on Lex Records, Triathlon have shared single ‘RIP’ to give an indication of the mood. A song so shadowy and dramatic is sounds almost sublime. “The aim for ‘RIP’ was to kick start feelings on what it felt like to listen to a late 90s rock song for the first time as a kid in your parents car in the backseat and asking to hear it louder,” as Intrator explains. “‘RIP’ has a double meaning; it’s about both dying and being reborn.”

Wishy – Fly

Back in January we featured ‘Planet Popstar’, a single by Wishy from the Triple Seven sessions which saw Kevin Krauter’s vocals “[land] somewhere between impassioned and laconic, while supporting harmonies from Nina Pitchkites work to leaven the heavy thicket of guitar to create something almost ethereal,” as we wrote. “And this otherworldly tone is a fitting match for the track’s themes, something of a message beamed into space into the hope it might be received, no matter how far away from earth the recipient might be.” The Indianapolis outfit have now announced the Planet Popstar EP, coming this spring on Winspear, and latest single ‘Fly’ is everything fans of the band have come to love. This time Pitchkites takes lead vocals for a song that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.

Someday, babe, I don’t wanna feel the way
I don’t need to know the taste
Of not being with you

Watch the video below, filmed by Wishy themselves with editing, color grading and title card by Bobby Sheppard:

Planet Popstar is out on the 25th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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Latest single ‘Mawpao’ grounds both the style and theme of the album, offering a sound undeniably sad yet reaching towards something more uplifting. The track opens in a moment of hushed solitude, Leonard’s reflective vocals sitting on a bed of synths and woodwind, though gradually rises across its length as further elements layer in. The sense of melancholy not so much overcome as accepted. “I wrote ‘Mawpao’ in my bedroom looking out of the window, feeling a sense of peace after a bumpy few months/years,” Leonard explains. “I lived with some real assholes in that London house, but the view of the sky was pretty. There’s a magic in writing songs where you can turn things around, flip them over until they look and feel better. I think I am quite good at catastrophising – especially when it comes to my no-good-rotten-self, but actually deep down I believe that I am good at writing songs, or at least that there is some inherent good in the songs, even if it is just for me.”

Watch the video directed by Steph and Marie Dutton below:

Might As Well Play Another One will be released via Breakfast Records on the 1st May and you can pre-order it now from the Mumble Tide Bandcamp page.

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Lily of the Valley, the timely new album from 22° Halo, might centre on something intensely personal and difficult, but it’s more widely relevant too as it actively works to fight off despair and let light in on an otherwise dark time. As we described when writing of previous single ‘Virtual You’, the sound is “wistful, yes, and not immune from a certain sense of longing, but always with an overarching gratitude that such times happened at all.” With the album now out via Tiny Library Records, Will Kennedy has unveiled final single, ‘Cobwebs’. A fittingly introspective track which tracks the early days of the diagnosis which sits at the heart of the album, looking to preserve ordinary life while wrestling with an all-encompassing uncertainty.

I’m trying to believe that you’re good
I’m trying to believe that I’m good
I’m trying to believe that we’re good
I’m trying to believe

Clara Mann – Stadiums

UK singer-songwriter Clara Mann has announced her debut album, Rift, the follow up to 2021 EP Consolations (Sad Club Records). A culmination of her young career so far, label The state51 Conspiracy call the record “a tangible expression of Clara’s entire world—a snow globe raised in her palms for the world to see, in all its layers and complexities, containing all her love, relationships, memories, and experiences.” Mann describes her music as “almost-folk”, and the album’s two lead singles introduce this perfectly. Finely wrought and patient, minimal percussion lapping at the edges of the impressive vocals. ‘Stadiums’ is perhaps the standout, precise and emotive in equal measure, swaying around a still and poised centre.

Decant – Rest

Bay Area trio Decant are this month releasing two singles, both in preview of an upcoming EP set for release early next year and to celebrate the fact the tracks appear in the film credits for the movie Rust. The first single ‘Rest’ introduces the band’s evocative style, something folky that splits the difference between shadow and warmth. The result is at once poignant and moody, aching with a nocturnal longing yet holding on to a sense of light.

German Error Message – Lilt

Two decades since the project’s conception, the latest release from Paul Kintzing’s German Error Message is a self-titled collection of songs written and recorded since 2020. First released digitally earlier this year, the album is now getting a cassette release from Lily Tapes & Discs as part of their Fall ’24 batch. It’s both reassuringly familiar and somehow fresh, the warm and hushed lo-fi songs reaching out toward a newfound sense of brightness. As Lily Tapes put it: “Where previous albums may have built insular and hermetic worlds with their hushed delivery, German Error Message sprawls outwards, unfolding as a series of nested home-recording experiments disguised as folk songs.” Check out ‘Lilt’ as a taster.

Hamburger – Frankenstein

Bristol six-piece Hamburger are gearing up for the release of their new EP Beat Back the Ghouls via Specialist Subject Records later this month, and latest single ‘Frankenstein’ shows how the collection both builds upon their previous work and pushes the sound in new directions. Where debut EP Teenage Terrified offered equal parts rawness and invention, Hamburger use the new release to show off a more sophisticated, layered sound without sacrificing any of the personality that fans have come to love. ‘Frankenstein’ is the ideal introduction. A richly wistful track which pines for summers past with equal parts soaring energy and enveloping fuzz.

Lone Striker – Dunno

You might know Tom Brown as part of bands like Rural France and Teenage Tom Petties, but new project Lone Striker moves away from the fuzzy jangle of those projects towards something more akin to Americana, albeit one with an off-kilter wobble. With a self-titled album coming next year Repeating Cloud, Safe Suburban Home and Hidden Bay Records, Brown has shared the title track to introduce the project. Something of a theme song for Lone Striker which doubles as an ode to those old school number nines.

Mumble Tide – The Rails

Consisting of singer Gina Leonard and composer Ryan Rogers, Mumble Tide is a Bristol-based project which has made a name with a maximalist amalgamation of synth pop and country. But new single ‘The Rails’, out now on Breakfast Records, sees the outfit pivot towards a different direction. With help from producer Stew Jackson (Massive Attack), Mumble Tide worked with newfound patience, crafting a slow and careful arrangement in which Leonard’s vocals can be heard in all their nuance and depth. The result draws heavily on sixties folk but elevates such sensibilities with an almost cinematic sheen, and the emotive, assured mood which results is central to the track’s themes. “’The Rails’ is like an angry kiss, or throwing stones at a mirror,” Leonard explains. “It’s about leaning into all the things that hold me back and in the process realising that they’re not as solid as they seem.”

Otala – Patchwork

With a sound that combines jazz, math and post-rock with ambient and spoken word, Nottingham’s Otala are not ones to be held to genre conventions. Having recently signed to London’s Lil Chop Record Shop, the band are preparing to release new EP Fire! To The River next February, and single ‘Patchwork’ gives listeners a chance to immerse themselves within the evocative and inventive Otala sound. A song that has been part of the outfit’s repertoire for a long while now reimagined as something fitting their current level. “’Patchwork’ is a song we have been performing since we began playing as Otala, but one that we’d originally planned to let fade into our history,” the band explain. “After seeing a live video from an old set we decided to put the time in to adapt and reanimate it into something we’re proud to release.”

Watch the video by Rory Allen below:

‘Patchwork’ is out now via Lil Chop Record Shop and available from Bandcamp. Fire! To The River will be released in February.

Ruby Gill – Some Kind Of Control

We’ve previously described the work of  South Africa-born, Melbourne/Naarm-based pianist, guitarist and singer-songwriter Ruby Gill as “setting its sights on the overbearing, patronising force of male entitlement,” and “aris[ing] from a very personal situation but end[ing] up speaking to a far wider experience.” New single ‘Some Kind of Control’ follows in the same vein to explore the strange blend of agency and restriction experienced during the lockdown period of the pandemic. “I had been grappling with what it meant to have all and no control over my time and body—all at once,” Gill explains:

In a big way, the world was in charge, but also in a day-to-day way, I had all the power: I could move freely through my kitchen and clothes and kindness however I wished—it was a new experience for me after feeling quite trapped in some difficult spaces and systems for a long time—“always babysitting other people’s arguments instead of my own” as the lyrics say. I feel like this song encompasses so much of what I’ve learnt and reclaimed in the past few years, and feels very reflective musically of my true, silly, powerful self and community.

Watch the video filmed, directed and edited by Bridgette Winten, with shoot and lighting assistance by Sophie Christopher below:

‘Some Kind of Control’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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