Back in 1987, San Francisco alt rock outfit Donner Party released a self-titled debut full-length, a record which drew on the strange, macabre imagery behind the project’s name (the Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who alleged became murderous cannibals when stranded in the Sierra Nevada) to explore themes of anxiety and death with a tone both playful and esoteric. Hence tracks titled ‘Godlike Porpoise Head Of Blue-Eyed Mary’, ‘John Wilkes Booth’, ‘The Owl Of Minerva’ and more. Fast forward nearly forty years and Donner Party are re-releasing the album via Trussed Recordings, with the tracks remastered by Melbourne-based musician and engineer Mikey Young. Single ‘Halo’ serves as an introduction to a whole new generation, its racing rhythm and country twang embodying the band’s mischievous spirit and infectious energy. “There’s a halo on my head,” as the chorus goes, “though it sometimes fades, I would sooner lose my life than trade my halo away.”

Eli Carvajal – Scar

“Manag[es] to evoke the ways in which love elevates the ordinary into something wonderful, and creates the possibilities of new myths and dreams before us.” That’s what we had to say about ‘Stretch Marks‘ by London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal back in March, a song “simple in execution and all the more convincing for it,” as we continued, which “marks Carvajal as a songwriter to watch as we move further into 2025.” Well, now we’re further into 2025, the wait to hear more is almost over, as Carvajal is preparing to release new full-length Eyen Forever in October via Safe Suburban Home Records. Latest single ‘Scar’ is every bit as observant and tender, welcoming the audience into the mundane details of everyday existence in order to gesture towards themes more poignant and sweeping. “I wrote this song on my 29th birthday, while I was living in Tokyo, when I cut my finger while cutting garlic,” Carvajal explains. “A symbolic spilling of blood over the last year of my twenties. I imagine the drops of blood as rubies springing up; this theme of transformation continues as I reflect on everyday life in Japan and my feelings around approaching thirty.”

Joyer – Cure

Nick and Shane Sullivan, the sibling duo behind Joyer, have gone their separate ways since the release of previous record, Night Songs, each moving to a new city and having to grapple with the distance and loneliness when going through the already challenging post-tour blues. But if new full-length On the Other End of the Line… is anything to go by, the experience has only strengthened their resolve to utilise Joyer as a force for connection and meaning. Forthcoming via Julia’s War Recordings, the full-length sands down the shoegaze scale of the previous record while maintaining its pop melodies, as well as pushing the Joyer arrangements into newly ambitious territory. Lead single ‘Cure’ gives a hint at what to expect, detailing how we search for small moments of connection within the isolation of the contemporary world.

MacGregor Burns – What I’ve Been Looking For

“Through a number of singles in recent months, LA songwriter MacGregor Burns has established a style at once emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic,” we wrote back in June, with songs like ‘Silent Answers‘, ‘Can’t Go Back‘ and ‘I’m Not Supposed to Be Here Anymore‘ falling somewhere on the spectrum between slacker rock and folk. Latest offering ‘What I’ve Been Looking For’ both continues this style and nudges it in new directions. Relatively sparse and slow-moving, there’s a slightly forlorn tone to the track, though as a subtle R&B groove establishes itself and Burns’s vocals rise in conviction, the result is romantic rather than lonely. The spacious arrangement revealed to be not the product of stark solitude but rather a burgeoning clarity, the delivery aching with the knowledge of having stumbled upon that which he so keenly desires yet had previously proved elusive.

‘What I’ve Been Looking For’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Minus The Bear – Drilling

Back in July we wrote of how Suicide Squeeze Records are putting out a deluxe edition of Minus The Bear‘s seminal album Menos el Oso to celebrate its twentieth anniversary this month, with the original album expanded with a number of demo versions of some of the most beloved tracks. After ‘The Pig War’ a few weeks ago, the band are now back with a brand new video for ‘Drilling’, directed/edited by Cheyne Smith and produced by Minus the Bear and Do Better For Artists. Check it out below, and be sure to catch Minus The Bear on their North American tour this autumn if they pass a town near you. All the dates are available here.

Suicide Squeeze Records will release Menos el Oso (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) on 22nd August. Get a copy now from the Minus the Bear Bandcamp page.

My Generation – Want It

My Generation are a new band from LA, who recently unveiled themselves to the world with debut single ‘Want It’. What label Post Present Medium describe as “a sparse yet lambent meandering jam,” the track is a great intro to the trio, that is N.A.S. (P22, Purity) Sara Mayako (Mayako XO, Behavior Mayako XO) and Sophie Weil (Syko Friend, Pink Trash Can). It’s oddly timeless, the raw guitar, subtle percussion and detached drawl of vocals sounding could be modern or fifty years old, like some unearthed long-lost 7” gem that has lost none of its electric verve.

The New Eves – The New Eve

On the first day of August, Brighton-based quartet The New Eves released their debut album The New Eve Is Rising, via Transgressive. The record captures the band’s theatrical and ritualistic live performances and their distinctive “Hagstone rock” style that combine mystical freak folk, reckless punk and poetic radical feminism. It’s the product not of a superstitious or occult past, but rather something altogether new, a self-created mythology. As the label put it: “It’s a boundless, uninhibited kind of magic that feels completely new; that’s writing its own rulebook for how to exist – as a band, as women, as humans in the world – from the ground up.” The opener and title track is (unsurprisingly) the best place to start, something like a mission statement of the project as a whole.

Noele Flowers – Ricky, you are a vision

Back in 2023 we wrote about Massachusetts-raised, Hudson Valley-based songwriter Noele Flowers and her EP Wait For Me, explaining how the title track existed in a strange liminal space, where shoots of possibility were shaded by the still looming past. A love song, but one flavoured by a blend of hope and anxiety. Flowers is now preparing to release debut full-length Historically Close Friends to build upon this style, and has unveiled lead single ‘Ricky, you are a vision’ as a preview. Recorded with the help of her former choir, Khorikos, the track is what she describes as “an imagined love song,” where she puts herself in the shoes of a historical figure in order to write. Namely twelfth-century abbess, writer, and composer Hildegard von Bingen (who you might remember as the focus of Larum‘s recent release), addressing likely lover Richardis von Stade. A track not without a certain sense of hesitancy in it gentle warmth, yet imbued with an encompassing fondness with furthers the patience which Flowers set out with the previous release.

If history remembers us as lovers, they won’t be quite wrong
Cause I wrote you into every remedy and every song
You are a vision

Historically Close Friends is coming soon.

OK Cool – Last

“Combines emo confession with an infectious forward motion to create something genuinely cathartic despite its dark tone.” That’s how we described ‘Waawooweewaa’ from OK Cool‘s new full-length, Chit Chat, back in May. A track which served as the ideal introduction to Bridget Stiebris and Haley Blomquist Waller’s fresh style, reaching across the spectrum of indie rock, math and shoegaze and combining the influence into something new. With the album out now via Take A Hike Records, the Chicago outfit has shared closer ‘Last’ as a new single. Another emotionally charged number which pairs vulnerability with layers of energy and reverb, feeling far larger than its relatively short runtime thanks to its equal embrace of heart and heft. “Sweetness will you be my last / all my lives have come to pass,” goes one typically conflicted verse, “I can’t see it, i don’t know is my driving way too slow.” Yet for all of the uncertainty, the overarching result is again catharsis, as though OK COOL have found a way to not so much solve life’s problems but power on through regardless.

one day you’ll believe me
one day i’ll believe me too

The post Weekly Listening: August 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With new EP Learning To Love Again on the horizon via Nettwerk, Aisha Badru has unveiled new track ‘Lazy River’. A meditation on the process of healing and the various twists and bends which accompany it, and moreover learning to be kind to oneself while adrift on slack currents. The track’s essence is brought to life by hushed, almost whispered vocals, moving away from the style in which Badru has made her name to explore new sounds and moods. “It’s this freeing of myself and allowing myself to try things that people would not expect of me,” as Badru reveals. “I feel more comfortable not meeting those expectations.”

Time moves like a river, winding and slow
Holding on to you is helping me float
I drift in the breeze as your memory washes over me
I will let you go, eventually

Getting over you is like a lazy river ride
I’ve been taking my time

Watch the video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick below:

Learning To Love Again is out on the 2nd June via Nettwerk.

Color TV – Planchette

Based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Color TV is a project led Mark Teachout. Having been self-releasing music since 1993, Teachout teamed up with Animal Tapes for Witching a Well, a full-length released late last year. Opener and single ‘Planchette’ serves as the perfect introduction to the experimental, lo-fi sound. It slowly coalesces into life with a palpable assurance, channelling the likes of Guided By Voices, Sebadoh and Califone in its reflective and enveloping textures.

His His – People, Places, Changes

“A small daydream where one’s wishes are allowed to drift to the surface, and longing is permitted to express its true form.” That’s how we described ‘West Coast‘, the previous track from Toronto’s His His. New single ‘People, Places, Changes’ is an altogether more morose affair, confronting grief in all of its lingering influence. Written after the loss of a loved one, the song plays with a bittersweet warmth, both pining for what has now gone and determined to capture the fondness which persists all the same.

‘People, Places, Changes’ is out now.

Kalila Badali – Panacea

Based in Toronto, Kalila Badali is a singer-songwriter whose musical style combines witchy folk and moody art pop and helps her make sense of the world and its mysteries as a neurodivergent person. She is also a psychotherapist, running a private practice that works with neurodivergent people, LGBTQ2SIA+ people, and arts workers. This other avenue of her life informs her music, something that is sure to be apparent on her forthcoming EP, Panacea. The latest single and title track is a wonderful introduction to the record, an ethereal and melodic folk song that Badali wrote when helping a friend through mental illness. It’s a rare example of a song that explores such struggles from the perspective of a therapist, expressing a deep desire to help a loved one whilst trying (seemingly in vain) the dangers of growing too close in the process.

Unconsciously, I’ve attached myself to you.
Rhizomal, with roots instead of a body.

Noele Flowers – Wait for Me

Describing herself as “a relentlessly optimistic, anxiety-ridden, and friendship-obsessed songwriter,” Massachusetts-raised, Brooklyn-based Noele Flowers is preparing to release a new EP titled Wait For Me. Perhaps the most folk-adjacent song on the record, the latest single and title track is a ballad that pairs acoustic guitar with three-part vocal harmonies and includes piano from Aviv Gilad and strong quartet arrangement played by Tiger Darrow and Chase Potter. It’s a song about falling in love while still recovering from the end of a previous relationship. As Flowers explains: “This song is about the anxiety that comes with feeling like your healing process is going to get in the way of something good—asking someone to wait for you.” But it’s deeper than that too, its message of patience applicable to pretty much all aspects of life.

Pacing – Aliens

“Things are getting kinda weird over here.” So sings Katie McTigue on the new Pacing single, ‘Aliens’. Part of WAVE, a forthcoming compilation by Very Jazzed, the song sees McTigue push further than the playful self-deprecation of recent album hatemail into an altogether darker space. A slow burning folk number which starts out placid but gradually escalates into something disorderly, a lonely nighttime drive suddenly interrupted by something bright and loud. Whether this sudden company is extraterrestrial or something more metaphorical is up to you, but either way, the force imposes itself on the sound and abducts McTigue, forcing her to view the world from above regardless of her opinions of such a vantage.

‘Aliens’ is out now and available on streaming services.

Tinge – Armed to the Teeth

Led by Veronica Blackhawk, an Anishinaabe multi-hyphenate from Lake of the Woods, Ontario and now based in Winnipeg, Tinge follows the likes of Camp Cope in heartfelt yet fierce music unafraid to dig through the most personal depths. Having recently signed with House of Wonders Records, the outfit are preparing the release their debut EP Big Deep Sigh next month and have unveiled single ‘Armed to the Teeth’ by way of introduction. A slow burning confessional which finds cathartic release in its forthright style. “This EP means I am finally ready to take up space and open it up for others going through similar phases in their growth,” Blackhawk explains of the release. “To finally exhale those deep breaths I’ve been drawing in over the past few years.”

TV Room – Stacey

Following on from previous single pretend, which we described as “A song about being close to someone, almost too close to say what needs to be said,” TV Room has returned with Sad Club Records with new track, ‘Stacey’. Another example of Lucy Rushton’s ability to write songs at once understated and charged with feeling, the song confronts the decidedly disheartening prospect of negotiating a friend who might not be that much of a friend after all. “It’s about being around people who have main character syndrome and romanticise all the damage they are causing around them instead of taking responsibility for it,” as Rushton explains. “About giving up hope on trying to understand someone and keep up a connection with a person who is trying to hurt and compete with you instead of appreciating the relationship you have and in turn destroying it.” TV Club might describe bad experiences in relationships, but they find room to say what needs to be said.

‘Stacey’ is out now and available from Sad Club Records.

The post Weekly Listening: February 2023 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.