Drawing on a combination of sixties British folk and seventies country rock to explore the intersection of humanity and the natural world, the album is Cameron’s first full-band offering and a fitting follow-up to the Polaris Music Prize nominated Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady and Daybreak Over Jackson Street. “These songs share my curiosity about the mystical world, drawing on my attachment to the forests and the plains,” Cameron explains. “This record explores the sounds of those places while telling stories revealing what makes us human.”

New single ‘Rain’ gives listeners a further glimpse at what Blood Moon has to offer. A clear indication of Steph Cameron’s newly rich arrangements, using the stripped back folk of Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady as the foundation to build a style of which Stevie Nicks would be proud. Most importantly, this transition loses none of the heart or depth of feeling, but instead uses such features as the fuel to drive a freshly propulsive sound.

Blood Moon is out on the 25th April via Neon Moon Records.

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Based in Brooklyn, Ben Van Bonn has made a name combining the traditional and the contemporary, taking a classic American fingerpicked style and reaching in new directions. Debut album Myth of the Middle Rung displayed how evocative this style could be, with singles like ‘Concord, MA’ highlighting a distinctive combination of archaic and digital sensibilities which created something delicate, spacious and shot through with some cryptic ancient power. Now Van Bonn is back with Further Than Thought, a new full-length which strips things back further, forgoing any vocals and removing all instruments but guitar and electric bass. Named after an aquatic portal in the Farallon Islands, first single ‘Great West Arch’ doubles down on intricate fingerpicking to transport the audience to the Californian coast, and serves as a timely reminder that less is often more.

Further Than Thought is out on the 29th November and available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

Blue Deputy – Cypress

Blue Deputy was formed by Andy Bunting in Philadelphia in 2020, and immediately won fans with the self-produced single ‘New Jersey’. Since then, Bunting has moved to Belfast and recruited Caoilfhinn McFadden (bass) and Cathal Francis (guitar and vocals) to form the current Blue Deputy lineup. The band are currently working on their debut EP, and new single ‘Cypress’ is perhaps our first taste of that. Released via new Dalliance Recordings imprint Under The Rolling Y, the song combines everything from soft bedroom pop and lyrical folk rock to the emotional intensity of Midwest emo. Bunting’s vocals smoulder and sway over steady percussion, subtle synths and wistful slide guitar, all coming together to from something that feels soft and raw with a clear-eyed clarity.

Daughter of Swords – Alone Together

Daughter of Swords is the solo project of North Carolina‘s Alex Sauser-Monnig, who you may also know as one third of Mountain Man and one half of The A’s. Their debut album, Dawnbreaker, came out in 2019, and followed a similar folk blueprint to those other projects. But the last few years have been ones of great personal change for Sauser-Monnig, and new single ‘Alone Together’ very much reflects that. Created with help from log-time pals Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso), and TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), the song pulses with synths and blossoming electronics, driven forward on a stream of potent guitar and muscular percussion. It’s a dispatch from what label Psychic Hotline describe as “[a] fresh chapter of exploration and liberation,” exuding a buoyant confidence as we all trudge on through the barrage of bad news and complicated feelings.

Elori Saxl – Grows Along The River Fast

“Arrangements which combine digitally processed recordings of natural phenomena with analogue synths, MIDI samples and woodwind by Stuart Bogie, evoking not only the interplay between geography, ecology and human development in the area, but also the emotional landscape which results.” So we wrote last month when introducing Earth Focus, the new album from  New York-based composer Elori Saxl on Western Vinyl. A soundtrack to the PBS documentary of the same name, the record evokes the Southern Californian topography, especially along the LA River, highlighting the environment’s rhythms and changes, so it is fitting latest single ‘Grows Along The River Fast’ offers a different take to first single ‘Grows Along The River Slow’. A variation which switches up the length and tempo to offer a different picture of the same waterway, susceptible as it is to the varying conditions of the land.

Max García Conover – coming up low

A new month, a new single from Max García Conover, and this time he has company. ‘coming up low’ sees Buenos Aires’ Paula Prieto and New England’s Ben Cosgrove lend their talents, joining Conover on what is a characteristically sincere and tender track. Because while there are more voices in the mix, the song is a lesson in understatement. Mining the image of the moon in all of its isolation and pale sympathy, not to mention the way it encapsulates the stark power of a simple image. “I watched you dress in the soft light of the moon,” as one verse goes, “I was desperate and I was hopeless except for hoping that you wouldnt notice / I watched you dress in the soft light of the moon.” Elsewhere the night comes crashing down, and worst fears are realised, yet the lasting impression is that familiar blend of melancholy and hope experienced when looking up to see the moon rising again.

All month the moon coming up low coming up low coming up low
I awoke and you were missing and you left me a letter in the kitchen

Pocket Full of Crumbs – Ice Water

This summer, San Francisco outfit Pocket Full of Crumbs released In My Hands I Hold A Lucky Cricket, a full-length album on Cherub Dream Records. With its marriage of post-punk, alt rock and shoegaze, the record embraces the twin forces of gauzy texture and crushing weight to create something which nods to the nineties while keeping its eye fixed firmly forward. It saw an admirable degree of variation across the songs—from the twitchy energy of tracks like ‘Blink’ to the altogether heftier ‘In My Home’. Fan favourite ‘Ice Water’ offers yet another dimension, where increased clarity grounds a downbeat and ambiguous sound which threatens to spill over into dark chaos but never quite does, highlighting an understanding of mood and sense of control which is sometimes lacking within the genre.

Sonya – Inside & Out

Sonya released their debut At What Cost? earlier this year, a succinct collection of songs as comfortable offering late-night emotion as it was an upbeat swagger. If this duality marked the album, then new single ‘Inside & Out’ confronts such an idea head on. Another example of Sonya’s fantastic ability to sound at once confessional and carefree, intimate feelings communicated without sacrificing any of sense of confidence or attitude. With a taut rhythm that pulls the audience in and a singalong finale keeping them there until the close, the song is yet more evidence that the star of Sonya is rising and one to watch in the coming months.

‘Inside & Out’ is now available via streaming services.

Steph Cameron – Today

Having just announced a UK and European tour along with fellow Canadian songwriter Abigail Lapell, Saskatoon’s Steph Cameron has shared new single, ‘Today’. Her first new release in seven years, the single offers a glimpse of a full-length forthcoming next year on Neon Moon Records, and sees Cameron build upon the atmospheric and thematically charged style of folk which made previous records Sad-Eyed Lonesome Lady and Daybreak Over Jackson Street so special. A song as assured as it is emotive, simmering with brooding longing as it contemplates complex ideas of identity and history with a straightforward confidence. “’Today’ is a song about reconnecting with both our living and ancestral communities,” she explains. “It is about the pain of turning away from your identity and the strength and pride found in turning toward it.”

‘Today’ is out now via Neon Moon Records. You can find the dates of the Steph Cameron and Abigail Lapell tour here. 

Stephen Becker – Range

The forthcoming album from  LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Stephen Becker, Middle Child Syndrome is a record concerned with change in all its guises, exploring the duality of permanence and decay inherent within existence itself with a distinctively personal slant. “The album sees Becker lean into this unorthodox style with an almost stream-of-consciousness immediacy,” we wrote in a preview, “as though the audience is given a direct invitation into his daily existence.” With vocals from Alena Spanger, latest single ‘Range’ puts forward a more subdued, restrained aspect of the record, the absence of drums creating a kind of torpor into which anxious thoughts inevitably seep, and the slow drift of time offers not peace but unease.

Microcosm of your parents, brother left LA
By this age you already had Michael I was late
Melody recycled wind me up and watch me spin

I’m not lost, I’m just outside my range
I’m not lost, I’m just a little spaced

This Lonesome Paradise – Into the Ether

Led by E. Ray Béchard, This Lonesome Paradise specialise in a dark and mysterious brand of Western noir. Last week they released a new record, Luna Nocturna, via Bad Vibes Good Friends, a collection of eight songs that we previously described as “a meditation on the American Dream with all its brutality, broken promises and betrayals.” Likening it to a Cormac McCarthy novel, the label describe the album as “an evocative journey through desolate landscapes and haunting narratives, capturing the raw essence of the American West.” This is very much apparent on centrepiece and standout track ‘Into the Ether’, a slinky and surreal slow-burn rock song that feels like a midnight cruise along a desert highway, taking us deep into the shadowy heart of the nation.

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Lead single ‘Summer in Your Mouth’ introduces the new album’s direction, offering a literate and impassioned picture of seasonal depression amid changing seasons on the prairie. Not that lead Joel Stretch necessarily set out to write a song about such themes. “The title of this song references an Al Purdy poem called ‘Transient’ about travelling across Canada by train as an adolescent,” Stretch explains. “The opening lines are about crossing the prairies ‘so close to the violent sway of the fields it’s like running and running naked with the summer in your mouth.’ I borrowed that line as a starting point for this song.”

The song’s direction was decided by a matter of circumstance. Because Starpainter were writing within a long prairie winter, meaning Purdy’s image took on a newfound resonance. What emerged was a song which longs for the season on the other side of the spectrum, unfolding with a slow-burning richness that holds onto the promise of change as one might the sensations of a fond dream. Or, as Stretch puts it, “an ode to summer that I wrote in the dead of winter.”

Rattlesnake Dream is out on the 2nd June via Neon Moon Records. Pre-order it now via the Starpainter webstore.

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Best Fern is the ambient pop collaboration between New York’s Alexia Avina and Montreal’s Nick Schofield. The pair met while in residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where they drew on the surrounding Rocky Mountain landscape to devise a style that sits in the ethereal middle ground between ambient and pop. The debut Best Fern album, Earth Then Air, releases early next year on Backward Music and Youngbloods, and lead single ‘Way Inside’ is an indicator of what is to come. A track at once soaring and earthy, the fecund mistiness eradicating any distinction between organic and dream matter. The song comes complete with a video directed & edited by Hugo Bernier. Watch it below:

Earth Then Air releases on 3^rd February via Youngbloods. Preorder it now via the Best Fern Bandcamp page.

CO-ED DORMS – Milk Drinker

Part of what they call the “Neo-Classical Post-Industrial Post-Punk Revival,” English four-piece CO-ED DORMS have shared new single ‘Milk Drinker’ as a statement of intent. A finely crafted track which grasps for a number of stylistic influences, the lush instrumentation held in line by almost marching percussion, while the near spoken-word vocals are sardonic and playful and wry.  Think Black Country, New Road fronted by Mark E. Smith, this time sponsored by Big Dairy. Drink the damn milk.

Cynthia Hamar – Where Your Love Lives

Back in June, we wrote about Alberta-born Métis singer-songwriter Cynthia Hamar, labelling single ‘Shaken’ as “a track which finds a balance between soulful confidence and poignant sadness, led by the kind of bitter assurance gained only from learning the hard way.” Again out via Neon Moon Records, latest track ‘Where Your Love Lives’ is no less mature and reflective in its tone, taking a nostalgic look at the past in all its bittersweet glory. Charting the things gained and lost along the way, and the slow change constantly unfolding. The song’s video furthers this excavation of bygone years, with director Korban Hamar and editor Jessica Lowe creating a collage of home videos from Hamar’s family collection.

‘Where Your Love Lives’ is out now via Neon Moon Records and you can listen in the usual places.

Dunebug – Still Dreaming

Now based in London, Dunebug is the project of Manchester-born Chi Limpiroj. Regular readers will be familiar with her work as we’ve covered a couple of singles in the last few years which, along with a self-titled EP released in 2019, have established a distinctively bittersweet lo-fi indie pop style. Now Dunebug has returned with a new single, ‘Still Dreaming’, the latest release ahead of a forthcoming debut album. Limpiroj describes ‘Still Dreaming’ as “a song about being afraid to sleep due to recurring nightmares of an abusive past lover,” but despite this heavy subject matter it’s presented as a surprisingly sweet laidback pop song. The track comes complete with a contradictorily bright video by Alyssa Mello, which you can check out below:

‘Still Dreaming’ is out now and available from the Dunebug Bandcamp page.

Esme White – Pearly Gate Crashers

Hailing from New York and now based in London, singer-songwriter Esme White started writing during the early months of the pandemic and has worked with Spiritual Records in Chalk Farm on new tracks. Single ‘Pearly Gate Crashers’ is a great introduction to White’s sound, an infectiously upbeat folk rock track with real narrative weight. God is real but heaven is closed, great crowds gathering at the gates demanding to be let in. Shady snakes in suits bribe angels for backdoor entries as old ladies threaten to burn the whole thing down, the rhythm building as a sense of desperation grows.

Yeah I may be human
but that’s not on me, that’s on you, man

‘Pearly Gate Crashers’ is out now. You can find Esme White on Instagram.

LIES – Camera Chimera

The new project of Mike and Nate Kinsella, LIES have won attention with a string of singles which combine beauty and strangeness into something fitting for the contemporary moment. Latest track ‘Camera Chimera’ further develops this style, an exploration of life online which starts out seductively mellow and soon morphs into something dark and unnerving. “It’s about not only feeling manipulated by others, but also being confronted with the reality and consequences of your own lies and manipulation,” Mike Kinsella explains, “and how that can mentally and emotionally cause one to spiral.” The song comes with a video directed by Rachel Cabbit of POND Creative which furthers these themes, amplifying the mood of shadowy mystery by printing and scanning frames to produce a distorted, lo-fi style.

‘Camera Chimera’ is out now via Polyvinyl Record Co. and available from the usual places.

Mizan K – Go

‘Go’ is the latest single from New York’s Mizan K, an effortless pop song that bubbles with quiet energy that she describes as a “four-minute fever-dream inspired by fragments of fantastical children’s novels.” Built on an infectious melody and adorned with quirky embellishments, the track is a strange, kaleidoscopic commentary on our hyperactive, money-focused world. As Mizan K goes on to explain: “A dozen celestial characters including myself, float in a space-casino and chase their fate in a speedy and unstable world. The singer (me) is a trickster, presenting glimmers of opportunity, then changing voices to relay worldly wisdom and warnings of failure. The song winds its way through a frantic universe while angling towards fun and optimism.”

My Politic – Cursing at the Night & the Morning

Next month, Nashville-based duo My Politic will release Missouri Folklore: Songs & Stories From Home, an album grounded in the landscape of the Ozark Mountains which looks to explore the nuanced and often conflicted identities of those who call Missouri home. “There are songs about judgment, existentialism, forgiveness, love, death, growing, and healing,” as Kaston Guffey explains. “It’s a lot of material focused on the nuance and mundanity, in some sense, of being a person.” Latest single ‘Cursing at the Night & the Morning’ captures this spirit of imperfection with a keen eye and careful charm, steeped in the wistful ache of all the best folk music but choosing to confront this nostalgia too.

What I know and what I’ve heard
Are different things I’m sure
But the differences all blur
Cuz time’s a warping glass

Siv Jakobsen x Ane Brun – Sun, Moon, Stars

With new album Gardening coming next January on The Nordic Mellow, Oslo songwriter Siv Jakobsen has unveiled latest single, ‘Sun, Moon Stars’. With Jakobsen joined by renowned Norwegian songwriter Ane Brun, the track weaves a plaintive mood scored with careful details and evocative harmonies. An ode to the people who stand steadfast through the worst moments, reliable points which allow us to navigate our own ways through. The song is “inspired by my least favourite month of the year and the heaviness I tend to feel during it,” as Jakobsen explains, “as well as the beauty and hope I’ve found in a companion that has the ability to pull me out of the dreariest corner of my mind, even during the darkest month of the year.”

Gardening is out on the 20th January via The Nordic Mellow.

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The work of Royal Leamington Spa’s Bastien Kalb has always reached wide in search of inspiration, be it toward Zinedine Zidane for 2015’s Dinking In The Shadows of Zizou or Giallo and 70s crime flicks for 2020’s The Killing of Eugene Peeps. Latest record Organ Recital, out next month on Gearbox Records, is no less ambitious. Something of a sequel to Eugene Peeps, the album is conceived as a fantasy world beyond our own, a dimension distinct from reality if not entirely insulated from it, various elements leaking through just as real sounds and sensations might enter a dream. Single ‘In The Woods’ displays just how immersive such a style can be, VHS textures and cinematic strings combining into a collision of real and unreal.

Cynthia Hamar – Shaken

Cynthia Hamar is a Métis singer-songwriter from Alberta who has just released brand new single ‘Shaken’ on Neon Moon Records. With its languid rhythms and evocative delivery, the track finds a balance between soulful confidence and poignant sadness, led by the kind of bitter assurance gained only from learning the hard way. “‘Shaken’ is an internal conversation about trauma,” Hamar explains, “recognizing the deep groaning and the need to let go of the pain to embrace a brighter future.” Hamar wrote the song over a period of years, addressed to herself amid changing family dynamics and relationship issues. “It’s written from a point of exhaustion,” she continues, “surrendering to a solution and I hope it inspires the listener to process their own pain and see the comfort in choosing to forgive and move on.”

Rise up and take the place you been
Designed for from the start
Leave the haunted place behind my friend,
Boldly make your mark
But you gotta let it go
love knows when to let it go
I know

Dolfiin Alexander – Free Wheeler

Dolfiin Alexander is set to release new album Free Wheeler via Anxiety Blanket Records on the 1st July, with the title track offering a glimpse of what you can expect. The release was for the most part written and recorded during a summer road trip through Germany, Italy and Estonia, and the single possesses that hybrid blend of wonder and melancholy unique to travelling. Its lo-fi textures and heartfelt vocals capture a heightened awareness of both the surroundings and the self, appreciative of the small moments yet already mourning their passing.

Free Wheeler is out on the 1st July via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

Emily Fairlight x The Shifting Sands – Head Above

Ahead of collaborative album Sun Casts A Shadow on Fishrider Records and Occultation Records, Emily Fairlight and The Shifting Sands have unveiled brand new single, ‘Head Above’. The track serves as a perfect introduction to the stripped-back intimacy of the album, where stylistic excesses are stripped away in favour of direct emotion. “We never meant it to result in an album,” explains The Shifting Sands’ Mike McLeod. “We went to record a song or two and got on a roll. After making heavily layered sonic pop albums with the Sands, where I’d hide behind my songs with layers of guitars and synths and bury my vocals, I wanted to get past that. This album sounds like playing in your lounge, a complete work that captures a special moment.”

Free Lunch – Burnt O

Bournemouth duo Free Lunch are set to release mini-album Dumbwaiter this July on Devil Town Tapes, and single ‘Burnt O’ gives an indication what to expect from the release. Drawing from their parents’ record collection (Neil Young and Supertramp are cited) and possessing a rich country twang, the song builds with a loveably leftfield sensibility, harking back to the lo-fi beginnings of the Free Lunch project and culminating with best duelling banjos this side of the Chattooga River. Just one slice of a release described as “an audio scrapbook of characters—mostly loners and oddballs, but each with a heart of gold.”

Hunter Ellis – For the Beast (feat. Lady Dan)

Later this summer, Earth Libraries are releasing Princess Daddy, the new album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Hunter Ellis. Recorded between Prairie Sun and Hunter’s own Koala Pocket Studios and featuring an array of friends and guests, the LP draws on Ellis’s Californian roots to develop a psych- and surf-inflected sound. Single ‘For the Best’ shows how such a sound can produce a nuanced and immersive atmosphere, with labelmate Lady Dan lending vocals to a soundscape simultaneously stark and colourful.

Princess Daddy is out on the 26th August via Earth Libraries and you can pre-order it now from the Hunter Ellis website.

Matthew Bailey – Full – Time Hobby

Matthew Bailey views forthcoming album Peachfruit as a collection of short stories. The Toronto-based songwriter, guitarist, producer and recording engineer uses each track to interrogate the influence memories can have on our sense of identity and history. Written while on tour playing guitar for Andy Shauf, single ‘Full – Time Hobby’ wrestles with Bailey’s experiences in the music industry, and how its insidious facets, be they rooted in finances or pride, can wither the purity of creation and lead the artist away from the reason the work started in the first place.

Melanie MacLaren – Orion

Back in August we wrote about Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren with the single, ‘Graveyard Shift‘, a song which “possess[ed] the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” New track ‘Orion’ lives up to this style, its slow, rich opening soon giving way to a palpable urgency. A declaration of love and intent rising on a bed of synths and pedal steel, MacLaren’s voice at once affectionate and fierce. “And I know I said that I would die before I settle down,” she sings, the sentimental tone wielding a cynical edge, “but Jesus Christ, its just nice when you’re around.”

‘Orion’ is out now and available to purchase from the Melanie Maclaren Bandcamp page.

Sigh Down One – Durocher

Sigh Down One is the recording project of Vancouver resident Sasha J. Langford, who this month released their latest album, Desire, or a Common Place. Signalling something of a pivot away from the ‘contemplative grunge’ of previous records, the album sees Langford embraces a vivid dream pop aesthetic, swapping out raw energy in favour of drifting richness. Single ‘Durocher’ channels the Lynchian brand of dream pop, its tender tones possessing a certain otherworldliness which gradually gathers a sense of weight, taking the listener by the hand to show them something new.

Slim Wrist – The Soft

Consisting of Edinburgh duo Fern Morris and Brian Pokora, Slim Wrist combine the organic and the digital to conjure an unconventional pop somewhere between Sylvan Esso and Kraków Loves Adana. With album Closer For Comforting forthcoming later this year, the pair have released new single ‘The Soft’, a perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with the band’s dreamy and dramatic style. A sound at once spacious and detailed, its glitching electronics washed with lush textures, the fragmented beat eventually making good on its promise to kick into rhythm as Morris’s vocals soar above.

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