’Holy Roller’ was a lesson for me, a song that happened with no planning, no ‘trying to write’, but a pure, detached channeling. That metaphor made perfect sense to me after the fact, there is a voice in my heart that I have a complex relationship with that tells me to move around, be somewhat nomadic, not really settle down in one specific place. During that writing session, that bittersweet feeling of moving from my home state kept returning.

Hiding Places have now unveiled their brand new album The Secret To Good Living, to be released later this spring, and have shared a couple of new tracks to preview the record. First came ‘Waiting’, a song written by vocalist/guitarist Nicholas Byrne which sits in the middle of a Venn diagram between grunge and alt country, laden with the weight of mortality and its portentous shadow as it extends across industrial America. “Heard it from around the corner / The whistling wind,” Bryne sings with trademark despondence. “The burlap bag in the barbed wire / Was ripped to shreds / Broken glass beside the highway / Crushed cement / Blinding headlights cut / the cold air /A painless end.” Again the sound not only mirrors the track’s themes but the very conditions of its creation. “I recalled the slow death of my uncle, and the painful anticipation that filled the interstitial space between here and gone,” he explains. “I wrote the verses six months later in the freezing cold on my way home from my studio in the industrial part of our neighborhood. I sang this song to my aunt years later as she was dying. We both cried.”

‘Waiting’ comes complete with a video directed and animated by Byrne himself, with additional live show footage by Sam and Ky:

Described by Keelin as “a meditation on how we can be so hard on ourselves in the face of keeping up long-distance relationships and friendships,” subsequent single ‘One Hand’ is no less evocative or foreboding. The main body of the track is expansive and stark, almost hypnotic in its slow unfurling, yet always stalked by the possibility of sudden change. As though within the sound’s gradual procession, something is coalescing. A storm perhaps, some dark mass gathering itself to the point in which a threshold is reached and thunder might be unleashed. Only this violent potential is never fully realised, the weight always at a distance, the front breaking one valley over. The result is therefore lonely in its own way, yearning for that which is unfolding beyond its horizon.

I took too long to call for some reason
I took too long to write for some reason
I want too much, too many friends to count on one hand, or two, or ten
I took too much too quick because I want to win just like they did
They want too much
You took too long

Watch the video directed by Henry Cutting below:

The Secret To Good Living will be released on the 3rd April via Keeled Scales and you can pre-order it now from the Hiding Places Bandcamp page.

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Within this context, it is tempting to view ‘I Thought Love Meant’ as a kind of epiphany. The conclusion which sets out the wisdom gleaned up to now. The track which sets out exactly what love means after all. But while there is an undoubted clarity within the lush yet understated arrangement and Natalie Jane Hill’s delivery, the insight here is that no such realisation could ever be reached. Love cannot be defined or explained away, even appears to actively resist such attempts. Like an apparition shimmering on the edge of your vision which shifts should you attempt to look at it directly. Love is a mystery. That’s the conclusion Hill offers with Hopeful Woman. It will grow bigger and smaller according to rules beyond your understanding. Accepting this fact is the only path to being okay.

Watch the video filmed at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina below, directed and edited by Spencer Kelly, along with director of photography Gray McClamrock and colorist Kyle Messina:

Hopeful Woman will be released on the 6th March via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Charlie Boss, album painting by Bobbye Fermie

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“They say it was a failed utopia / but it ain’t failed if you’re flexible.” So sings LA-based songwriter Dolly Creamer on latest single ‘Like Water’, two lines which could be said to serve as the mission statement of the song. With a loose, easygoing spirit, the track embraces this philosophy to create its own small world within the imperfect whole, leaning into the image of the title to stay attuned to the natural world and go with the flow of life. Sarah Harris, Sasha Massey, Joon Voigt, Riley Geare and Joel Crocco lend their talents to flesh out the sound, and Voigt also created a suitably lo-fi video to further bring the mood to life as part of their thunderwurld motion picture co. The result is an affirming reminder of the hope inherent within any community.

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

Erik Hall – A Folk Study (Laurie Spiegel)

Back in November we introduced Solo Three, the closing release in a trilogy of albums by Erik Hall on Western Vinyl which sees the Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist reimagining contemporary classical pieces by passing them through the prism of his own unique minimalist sensibilities. Where predecessors Music for 18 Musicians and Canto Ostinato focused solely on the work of Steve Reich and Simeon ten Holt respectively, Solo Three casts a wider net, the release featuring reinterpretations of pieces by Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Reich again and, as with the latest single, Laurie Spiegel. As though led by the title, Hall brings an added tempo and warmth to ‘A Folk Study’, favouring an acoustic palette to tease out the organic spirit of Spiegel’s original.

Hiding Places – Holy Roller

“I’m a holy roller / I move so much.” So sings Audrey Keelin of Hiding Places on single ‘Holy Roller’, invoking a phrase in the Holiness movement for those of the congregation so struck by the presence of God they dance and shake uncontrollably. Released to celebrate the Brooklyn-based outfit’s signing with Keeled Scales, the single embraces this sense of spontaneity in more ways than one, not only in how it explores the restless spirit of its creator but also in terms of its very construction. “’Holy Roller’ was a lesson for me, a song that happened with no planning, no ‘trying to write’, but a pure, detached channeling,” Keelin explains. “That metaphor made perfect sense to me after the fact, there is a voice in my heart that I have a complex relationship with that tells me to move around, be somewhat nomadic, not really settle down in one specific place. During that writing session, that bittersweet feeling of moving from my home state kept returning,”

Howling Bells – Chimera

Back in October we introduced Strange Life, the first new album from Sydney-born, London-based outfit Howling Bells for over a decade. “The album not only breaks the hiatus but reflects on it,” we described when talking of lead single ‘Heavy Lifting’, a testament to the effort and resilience required to persist within the music industry and develop a sense of confidence. Latest single ‘Chimera’ continues this meditation on making art, exploring the double-edged sword of ambition and how it can both cut you down and lift you towards higher achievements. “Chimera is a strange word. It means a few different and curious things; in this context, however, I’m using it to mean something of an absurd nature, unattainable, a fantasy. Such is the relationship we have with music at times,” lead Juanita Stein explains. “This song speaks to my experience as a musician, surviving the perpetual ups and downs of the game. But if you’re lucky enough, you have someone who can cut through the noise and help you realise that the fantasy is half the joy. That the longing is part of the journey and that our achievements along the way are deeply meaningful. At its core, ‘Chimera’ is a song about hope and relinquishing control.”

Strange Life will be released on the 13th February via Nude Records.

Ken Wohlrob – William

“A song is a stubborn thing. It’ll resist you with all its might. As you try to bend it and twist it, it will reject your strokes of genius, leaving you feeling like a damn fool for thinking they would work in the first place. A song will tell you, in no uncertain terms, what it wants to be.” So explains musician and composer Ken Wohlrob of new single ‘William’, a track which seemed to repel all attempts to develop it beyond its core guitar riff. You might know Wohlrob from acts like End of Hope, Swarm of Flies, Northern Heretic and Eternal Black, but his solo work offers space for something more meditative. And it was with that spirit he decided to drop the attempt to complicate the sound and let ‘William’ have its own way. “What I had was a single take of a repetitive guitar riff, played live through a reverse-echo feedback loop for eleven minutes,” he continues. “The feedback loop created oscillations and repetitions that took on a life of their own, extending past the riff, even re-absorbing it. There was a compelling journey in that single guitar line.”

No Singing – Care Takers

In recent years, Ben Godfrey has made a name with baroque, off-the-cuff recordings under the moniker Belaver, offering what we’ve called “a blend of deadpan humour and human heart which proves ideally suited to capturing the bleak and bizarre milieu to which it belongs.” Now Godfrey is back with new project No Singing, and there’s something of a stylistic change. Gone are the live arrangements and wry sensibilities in favour of something more considered, personal and nostalgic. Single ‘Care Takers’ introduces the sound, the tale of a character who intends to find a car and drive until the gas runs out. Only this yearning for forward motion is complicated by its very existence, both the lo-fi sound and Godfrey’s vocals betraying a sense of stasis. The stuck feeling of being young and lonely within a city which barely knows you exist, longing for any sense of speed which might allow an escape.

Sam Wenc – Limitless of Blue

Recording under the moniker Post Moves, Philadelphia-based composer, improviser and interdisciplinary artist Sam Wenc released fifteen albums across a variety of labels, establishing the sonic strand of his work as something intricate, finely crafted yet always surprising (just check out Cut Into Your Own Dimension or Heart Music). Wenc has decided to release latest album Language At An Angle under his own name, though it very much feels a continuation of an ongoing body of work. Inspired by and dedicated to pedal steel virtuoso Susan Alcorn who passed away earlier in the year, the record is a lesson in the possibilities of the instrument, one grounded in years of experience and deepened by an ongoing practice of sitting meditation, as well as a reminder of the raw power of art. Perhaps the only real way we can truly confront the unknowable and create meaning, this record suggests, is to continue the work of our forebears and never stop pushing the boundaries. Listen to lead track ‘Limitless of Blue’ now, and watch the video directed by Mikel Patrick Avery below:

Language At An Angle will be released via Lobby Art Editions on the 30th January and you can pre-order it now.

Sophie Gault – Is There Anyone Out There

We last wrote about Nashville-based songwriter Sophie Gault back in 2023 with the release of ‘Christmas in the Psych Ward‘ from album Baltic Street Hotel, a track which followed a lineage of Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Patty Griffin to delve, as we put it, “into highly personal experiences of bipolar disorder with a tone both steely and wry.” With new album UNHINGED set for release in January 2026 via Torrez Music Group, Gault has now returned with single ‘Is There Anyone Out There’, and the track is no less emotive or evocative. A version of the Gurf Morlix song of the same name, the track preserves the intimacy of the original while reaching towards something more connected and communal. Morlix’s album Kiss of the Diamondback came out in the heaviest days of the pandemic and its sound was very much informed by the isolation and solitude of the period, but Gault adds a certain layer of warmth to create a mood that’s still melancholic but a little more bittersweet.

Unhinged will be released via Torrez Music Group on the 23rd January and you can pre-save it now.

vireo – the great golden gloom

We’ve featured a couple of tracks from vireo‘s forthcoming album The Great Golden Gloom in recent weeks, firstly ‘catching minnows’ back in September and more recently ‘icanicanican‘. Both tracks highlighted the spirit of a project attuned, as we put it, “to the curative power of the environment and the small beauties therein, packed full of brightness and wonder as though written in honour of the joy of being alive.” With the record now out, Chris Beaulieu and co. have shared the title track as one final single. Serving as the conclusion of the album, the track is in many ways a culmination of its ideas and tones. One grounded in the richness of nature yet marked by a trademark sense of invention, its bright style is as earnest as anything vireo have put out to date, and perhaps more accomplished and assured. The sound of a band who have discovered both their musical style and view of the world and have taken great pleasure in committing it to tape.

Weirs – Lord Bateman (Live at Feast V)

“A hymn delivered not from the still air and stone of a cathedral but God’s own Earth,” was how we described ‘I Want to Die Easy‘ from Weirs‘ album Diamond Grove earlier in the year. “Where fellow contemporary traditionalists like Lankum and ØXN highlight the stark, foreboding tones of the genre to push towards the realm of folk horror, the Weirs sound is more in line with the work of Terrence Mallick. Songs heightened not by an emergent dread or the suggestion of the supernatural but rather an abundance of life itself. The humblest of details given the closest of attention and the latent beauty revealed.” To celebrate the album and kick off a new tour, Weirs have shared a live version of the epic ‘Lord Bateman’, complete with a video filmed at their album release show at the 5th annual Feast in Orange County, North Carolina. “Each year in the fall, friends and I host Feast, a harvest meal and music event that spans the first weekend of October,” explains lead Oliver Child-Lanning. “This year, to mark the release of Weirs’ new album Diamond Grove, we opened Saturday night by playing through ‘Lord Bateman’ from the album in its entirety, with shadow puppets by my sister Violet and other friends and family. Everyone gathered around the glowing puppet theater as we played and sang, accompanied by insects and the fall breeze.”

Diamond Grove is out now via Dear Life Records and you can get it from the Weirs Bandcamp page.

Where’s Beth – Overtime Waltz

Following on from 2024 album Bone Broth, a release we described as “a picture of domesticity in the weeks and days around marriage,” which “for all its tender fondness, still finds room for the peculiar and idiosyncratic details,” Sarabeth Weszely’s Where’s Beth has returned with a festive offering that uses the pressures of the period to highlight chronic struggles and loneliness. “I wrote ‘Overtime Waltz’ from a place of burnout,” Weszely explains, “working long hours in NYC, struggling to connect with loved ones even when we were physically together, and feeling a vague and relentless sense of grief.” Abbey Blackwell (Alvvways) contributes upright bass and harmonies while Steve Moore (Sufjan Stevens) adds Wurlitzer and synth, lifting the sound to its full, melancholic warmth.

Is the snow ever coming, will it always be rain?
Will the cold bring numbing to take away the pain?
I’m needing some kindness to show me the way

Watch the lyric video below:

‘Overtime Waltz’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

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With a sound described as “part pop, part doom, part dance,” Court Jester is the new project from Leicester born cross-disciplinary artist, musician and writer Courtney Askey. New release I’m My Favourite Clown introduces the project’s idiosyncratic tone, its electronic beats and emotive vocals twisted and elevated by an experimental edge. Take lead single ‘Holdem’, a contemplative track which proceeds with a restrained, reflective air for a good portion of its length, though always seems on the verge of spilling over into something larger and less controlled. As the momentum gathers, an electrified intensity enters the sonic palette to make good on this promise, the song suddenly charged with what might be conviction, desperation or else simple stark honesty.

Elisa Thorn – Idle Talk

“I’ve spent years searching for a way of playing the harp that feels true to me, and after a decade and a half of relentless curiosity, I think I’ve started to find it.” So describes Vancouver-based harpist, vocalist, and composer Elisa Thorn, whose brand new album xiik manages to utilise the full range of the harp’s potential without succumbing to the ostentation which can sometimes accompany the instrument. The result is introspective, controlled yet full of invention, marrying pop and avant garde sensibilities into something that refuses easy categorisation. Single ‘Idle Talk’ embodies the style, something which might at first sound like sonic daydream yet soon unfurls to reveal a radical heart beneath the surface, moving with precision and purpose to reclaim the female connection which has been co-opted or taken from them.

Bodies soft enough to hold you
Stories strong enough to kill you

Erik Hall – Music for a Large Ensemble (Steve Reich)

Early next year, Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Hall will release new album Solo Three via Western Vinyl, the third in a trilogy of records which reinterpret and reimagine contemporary classical pieces within his own minimalist style. Previous releases Music for 18 Musicians and Canto Ostinato focused solely on the work of Steve Reich and Simeon ten Holt respectively, but Solo Three expands its reach across four different composers including Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine and Laurie Spiegel. But for the lead single and the album’s closing track, Hall comes full circle and returns to Steve Reich with his version of ‘Music for a Large Ensemble’, playing every note himself and layering them painstakingly, lovingly, into the full arrangement. “I wanted to conclude this series of albums the way it began, as a sort of bookend and an ode to the process of making them,” he explains. “Beyond the interest of his concept or experiment, Reich’s music also simply imbues a gratifying emotional arc that’s accessible to any ears; something akin to a pop sensibility. The CD of his 1980 recording has lived in my car for years, and it was a total joy to transport this work into the sonic world of my studio.”

Leilani Patao – portrait

We’ve covered several singles from Leilani Patao‘s EP daisy in recent weeks, describing how the release is forgoing the rat race of self-promotion and streaming services in favour of old school word of mouth, “possessing,” as we wrote, “that emotional authenticity which marked the earlier generations of bedroom pop.” With the EP now out via Audio Antihero, Patao has shared latest track ‘Portrait’, and the result is no less compassionate and heartfelt. A song relatively restrained in sound but not in sentiment, giving voice to the experience of falling in love in all of its uncertainties and joys, and learning to submit to the overwhelming feelings of such a process. “In the most plain terms I can put it,” Patao says, “this song is about being loved really well by a wonderful lesbian.”

Natalie Jane Hill – Never Left Me

“[What] emerges is an ecosystem as detailed and changeable as any conjured on Azaela, an interior environment as mysterious as that of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One that holds the best and worst of life and, importantly, holds enough space to sit with both simultaneously, never losing sight of the possibility of change on the horizon.” So we wrote of Solely by Texas-born, North Carolina-based songwriter Natalie Jane Hill back in 2021, praising the arrangements as deft, nuanced and intricate. Now Hill is preparing to release Hopeful Woman, her first album since Solely, and one which continues to develop this style of careful, humane folk an proves what might be her most authentic record yet. Lead single ‘Never Left Me’ offers our first glimpse inside, a song which pairs a kind of domestic modesty with something bright and forthright, Hill’s assured vocals leading the listener into a world where the biggest of questions are addressed not through drastic action or bombast but rather a committed embrace of the small gestures and slow rhythms of life.

Watch the video directed and edited by Spencer Kelly below:

Hopeful Woman will be released on the 6th March 6th via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Ohly – Not Today

“The embodiment of the project, as though everything which has come before has coalesced into a single song. A track full of tiny details and huge themes, zooming into the smallest moments of life in order to evoke the intangible joy of existence.” That’s how we described Ohly‘s ‘If I Go‘ back in June, a single the Detroit-based songwriter openly described as his magnum opus. How does one go about following up a song which such clear personal significance? Latest release ‘Not Today’ answers this question. Ohly writing about the temptation to put things off, to not grasp the full potential of things, be that friendship, songwriting or self-acceptance. “Not today, not today / there’s too much standing in my way.” Though of course there’s an irony too, because it isn’t a deferral after all, but is itself the answer to the question.

‘Not Today’ is out now via streaming services.

Robert Stillman – Reality Distortion Field

Described by label Orindal Records as a “speculative suite of jazz, ambient and smooth pop-inspired compositions that challenge the myths of Silicon Valley’s early ‘90s techno-utopianism,” 10,000 Rivers is the new album from saxophonist, improviser and composer Robert Stillman. What originated as an exploration of reality and the ways the assertations and delusions of the tech industry attempt to shape it, the release eventually became something of an unintentional concept album based around Steve Jobs. Stillman follows the work of artist and writer James Bridle (whose books New Dark Age and Ways of Being we’d personally recommend) through to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, and ultimately follows Isaacson’s anti-hagiographic lead to paint a far more complex, challenging and interesting picture. “10,000 Rivers points to an alternative narrative about a man who is tormented by the instability of his reality, so tries to invent his way out of it,” as Stillman explains. “Ultimately, his tech designs become expressions of his will to replace the messy, disordered, temporary nature of the world with something that strives to be barely physical: streamlined, symmetrical, uncomplicated, and deathless.”

The song comes complete with a video by James Bridle himself, who also designed the cover:

10,000 Rivers will be released on the 9th January via Orindal (US) and Kit Records (UK) and you can pre-order it now.

SIKADE – eleven

“Embodies the balance between intimacy and scale which marks the project, drawing the listener in with hushed, harp-led verses before the chorus arrives in waves of drama and intensity.” So we wrote of ‘body of water‘ by Oslo-based singer-songwriter, harpist and producer Linnea Vestre, AKA SIKADE, back in August. The track was taken from their upcoming debut album which gave, as we continued, “the sense of having been pulled into a portentous dream.” With the record’s release approaching via re:memory, SIKADE has returned with new single ‘eleven’, and the result is no less ethereal or enveloping. A track where the line between sensuality and symbolism dissolves, the harp and strings pushing towards a lushness which is almost cinematic.

‘eleven’ is out now via streaming services. Keep an eye on the SIKADE Bandcamp page for further news on the album.

Spell of Leaves – Defrost

“Sometimes I try counting the stars at night / Hanging out there just like bandits in the sky.” So sings Trevor Brown of Spell of Leaves in the opening lines of the North Carolinan band’s new single, ‘Defrost’. The image is a fitting introduction to a track loaded with mystery, the ambiguous lyrics painting a vista that’s stark and lonely yet pregnant with a sense of possibility too, as though some unexpected force might suddenly arrive in the night. This force might merely be the luck of a gambler, the translucent body of a ghost, the aforementioned brigade of bandits, or else the great flaming tale of a comet as Hale Bopp arcs across the sky. The band cite Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 as an influence on the song and it is easy to see why, the cryptic atmosphere full of strange symbols and existential struggle, a place where some malicious meaning seems to hang out of view, and the dead are never far from mind.

I thought heaven was a place beyond that cold seam of light
Not some distant neon vacancy sign
A pattern against all that emptiness, I guess
The bigger the cost the less the coincidence

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The release is only days away, and the title track serves as a fitting final single. The one song which binds together all of the others, as though providing the environment in which the rest take place. “Every song on this record seems to have its long lost twin,” Alexa Rose explains:

One falls in love while the other falls out. One relaxes into an ordinary day while one grieves what is forever altered. One is settled into the memory of an old mountain homestead, and one barrels down a highway, restless and unrooted. Eventually they meet, estranged, but undeniably related. ‘Atmosphere’ is the sky above all these scenes, heavy yet weightless at the same time. When I set out to make this record, I knew I wanted it to feel like a gradient of a storm, like having the clouds move through you. My hope was that this song would serve as the beginning of that, a shift in the air pressure, a few pleasurable drops of rain while the sun still generously warms your shoulders.

Atmosphere will be released on the 31st October and you can pre-order it now from the Alexa Rose website.

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Coming this autumn via Dear Life Records, Diamond Grove is essentially this particular moment preserved in sound. A repertoire of classic songs so indebted to the particular conditions of the moment that they have never sounded quite the same before, and likely never will again. “We wanted Diamond Grove to be a record in the truest sense,” as Child-Lannin describes in the liner notes. “A living document of a specific time, place, and gathering of friends. Recorded in farmhouses, fields, and an abandoned silo, it channels the spirit of traditional music as a shared practice, alive with the sounds of its surroundings.”

The result owes more to musique concrète than the crisp, professional recordings of the folk revival. It is up for debate whether this represents a stylistic leap for the genre or a circle back towards an even older tradition, music delivered and enjoyed in situ. But to ponder whether Weirs exist in defiance or deference of their forebears is to miss the point completely. This is not an attempt to raze conventions, nor reproduce them. But rather imagine how folk could and should sound today. If the entirety of traditional music could be viewed as a series of specific moments threaded into a timeless whole, then with Diamond Grove, Weirs offer their own bead to add to the chain.

Album opener and lead single ‘I Want to Die Easy’ immediately invites the audience to step into this specific time and place. A song forever embedded within the environment in which it was created, both thanks to the ambient hum and insect chirps which form its rich backdrop, and the effect the acoustics of the dairy farm silo interior where it was recorded. Because while Weirs take inspiration from A Golden Ring of Gospel’s recording of the song, as preserved in the Folkways collection Sharon Mountain Harmony, their version swaps out the immaculate polish for something more rustic and organic. A hymn delivered not from the still air and stone of a cathedral but God’s own Earth. Where fellow contemporary traditionalists like Lankum and ØXN highlight the stark, foreboding tones of the genre to push towards the realm of folk horror, the Weirs sound is more in line with the work of Terrence Mallick. Songs heightened not by an emergent dread or the suggestion of the supernatural but rather an abundance of life itself. The humblest of details given the closest of attention and the latent beauty revealed.

Photo by Libby Rodenbough

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Lead single and album opener ‘Ida Red’ is the perfect introduction to the style. Taking inspiration from the likes of Linefork, KY banjo player and singer Morgan Sexton, who took classic Appalachian folk music and made it his own with layers of improvisation and quirk, the song finds Joseph Decosimo and co. carrying this torch forward. A blurring of the line between careful craft and inquisitive malleablity, entirely true to the musical history from which is descends yet never restrained by its conventions.

Photo by Robert Birnbach

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‘Alone Together’ is the opener on Alex, the sort-of-self-titled new Daughter of Swords record, out now via Psychic Hotline. The album sees this new stage of the project solidified and celebrated, Sauser-Monnig embracing a new kaleidoscopic approach to songwriting. “Since the release of her debut album, Daughter of Swords’ music has grown thornier,” as the label puts it. “An unpredictable and knotty tangle of technicolor synths, heady guitar, bubbling rhythms, a sheen enveloping songs about raw human intensity writ large—crushes, desire, anger, alienation, the horrors of late-stage capitalism the cascading paradigm shifts it seems we’re all hurtling toward.”

If that sounds messy, well, that’s because it is, but in the best way possible. Sauser-Monnig takes on the overwhelming, confusingly contradictive nature of contemporary life by mimicking it in music. If their career thus far has been defined by the restraint and minimalism of voice and (sometimes) guitar, Alex is something of its inverse, throwing everything into the pot and stirring gleefully. There’s danceable electronic pop and rumbling indie rock, easy melodies and tangles of synthetic textures. Take the bright, Dear Nora-esque ‘Hard On’, or the loose-limbed smear of ‘All I Want Is You’ that segues from catchy verses to a chorus that shakes itself free with a slo-mo crash and wallop. But the record has its reserved moments too. ‘Morning In Madison’ is all soft hues and dawn-time hush, while ‘Song’ wouldn’t be out of place on a Mountain Man record, just voice and gentle guitar and aching negative space.

In some ways Alex is the perfect spring record. There are quiet moments of green shoots and bursting buds, and others of sudden, somewhat shocking, metamorphosis. The brash pop moments must be how a butterfly feels after emerging from its chrysalis, suddenly brighter, bolder, realising it has these beautiful wings and deciding to flap them. The record was produced by Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn at their studio in Chapel Hill, and their fingerprints are evident. Left-field pop structures and inventive electronics create something equal parts catchy and deep. This is perhaps best evidenced by ‘Talk To You’, an invigorating indie pop song about the heart-quickening rush of physical desire. It’s built on an insistent handclap beat and decorated with a cacophony of samples that splash across the song like comic book sound effects.

But all this colour and playfulness supports something harder and sharper. These songs are built on a reckoning with some pretty serious subject matter. Sauser-Monnig explores their place in the world, including but not limited to the music biz, gender, desire (both in a sensual sense and a selfless one) and the perhaps vain hope for a better world. Ostensibly upbeat with its clanking clockwork rhythm, ‘Money Hits’ takes a swing at the rigged game that is capitalism and the infuriating wealth inequality that it causes. “’Money Hits’ is a song about financial striving,” Sauser-Monnig describes. “The fact that capitalism is a joke and everyone at the bottom is living its appalling punchline. Money is imaginary—a deadly and expensive roadblock at every turn for the poor, but so abundant as to almost become air for the affluent.” Harking back to Dawnbreaker, it also draws on natural imagery. “Floating, flying shimmering, diving / Like a bird on the wing,” they sing of the initial rush “when the money hits.” But these metaphors have a secondary effect too, drawing attention to the destructive effect of our extractive, exploitative society. “But nature will have the last laugh on all of us,” Sauser-Monnig continues. “[Money is] also so imaginary that as the consequences of our inability to get off fossil fuels passes tipping points, no one will be able to buy their way back to a liveable world.”

It is this collision of the personal and the political which marks Alex. The anti-capitalist sentiment feels more than just empty slogans parroted from a podcast, something borne of lived experience and a very real concern for our planet and all the people living on it. This political awareness means the introspective moments of self-reflection feel less like selfish solipsism and more a blueprint for liberation. A less-than-gentle nudge to defy convention and have the courage to live life as oneself in a world that feels increasingly allergic to outliers and eccentrics. It’s also a reminder that the weirdness that you (or I, or we) are feeling is not some fault or deficiency, but to be expected. As Sauser-Monnig sings on ‘Strange’:

I feel strange
But it’s just a natural reaction
To a world coming apart at the seams

Alex is out now via Psychic Hotline. Order your copy from the Daughter of Swords Bandcamp page.

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This would mean we have a kind of identity that is composed of these negative attributes, things which never had names, which can’t be remembered based on our or at least my default kind of attention. This also extends to processes that run in the background. Sometimes I wake up and don’t know where I am or what stage of development I am at and it’s so devastating to realize how responsible my own narrative is for keeping everything in play that pertains to me. And so much gets lost to that narrative, but also comes back in flashes. So searching became a way to describe actively looking for those kinds of things. 

If Genevieve represented an attempt to perform such a search within a relationship and personal history, then Fust’s new record Big Ugly widens the scope. A reckoning with Southern identity which looks to revive that which is lost to the narrative, and to locate and seriously consider those negative attributes amassed and repressed through the years. That is, to not merely position oneself within a wider history, but to appreciate the endurance of the past in everyday existence. To come to understand that years do not so much expire as accumulate all around. Like love in their debut, Fust offer the past as something persistent, if uneven. Because after all, what are memories if not their own form love?

So while opener ‘Spangled’ kicks things off with a familiar picture of Southern decline (“They tore down the hospital / Out on Route 11 / I’m not sure what happened / Seems like repossession”), the record pays as much attention to that which lasts in spite of everything. A position inspired by a pair of complimentary experiences Dowdy has lived in recent years. Firstly, the occasion he came upon an ancient gutter during a visit to Athens, and was struck by the fact that even our most mundane surroundings are potential monuments of the future. Then were the trips Dowdy took with his grandmother to southern West Virginia, where he came to understand how the histories that might appear to have eroded or dissipated from one person’s perspective were still very much alive from another. Both occasions complicated the boundary between the past and the present. What we once had, we will always have, in one way or another. Ghosts do not vacate their haunting grounds so easily.

As with any ghost story worth its salt, the result is neither wholly horrifying nor romantic. With the symbolic connotations of the title weighing heavy, ‘Spangled’ plays as a kind of alternative national anthem for a long-troubled nation. The realistic twin to its idealised original, detailing the vast, shadowy body of the American iceberg which supports the stars and stripes’ dazzling white mythology upon its tip. There’s God and loss and violence, a kind of directionlessness, heavy liquor, trauma as an echo through the ages. A sense of burning hard and bright and quicker than intended, sometimes arcing upwards but inevitably falling back exactly where you started. Or worse, into a decaying version of that same place.

Big Ugly functions as a detailed picture of such a milieu, offering small glimpses into the lives of various characters which move across the frame. The artwork is a mural taken from the Big Ugly Community Centre that once served as a backdrop to a school play. Here it serves an identical purpose, albeit in a more abstract light. We meet people wandering as though dazed in the post-industrial present, pining for hard labour and good wages, struggling to find hours selling junk at the gas station. Or struggling with small home improvements as their houses slowly fall down around them.

But also, most importantly, we see life continuing its rhythms, memories repeating, hopes emerging still. A picture of Appalachian or Southern life which does not yearn for escape or preach self-improvement, but loves and dreams instead. “They’ll have to haul me off,” as the title track opens. “Off a down slope / in some front end loader / in a pine box / if they want me gone / if they want me lost / If they don’t want my lonesome here / they’ll have to haul me off.” You are from where you are from, after all. A squalid home is home nonetheless, and the funny thing about fondness and pride is how they survive the most naked of truths. Fust aren’t interested in willful ignorance, rose-tinted reminiscence or giddy myth-making. The record wears its name for a reason. They want the big ugly whole.

Big Ugly is out now via Dear Life Records and available from the Fust Bandcamp page.

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The recording project of Texas musician Daniel Bryson (who also plays drums in Skirts), A.L. West is an outlet for lo-fi bedroom pop meets indie rock. He recently released a new double single, Nothing At All / Rabbitbrush 2, which is the perfect introduction for newcomers. ‘Nothing At All’ is a lovely patient indie pop song, but it’s ‘Rabbitbrush 2’ that sees things kicked into another gear. As its name suggests, the track is something of a sequel to one from 2023 A.L. West album The Store, but whereas the original was a gentle folk-inflected bedroom pop song, ‘Rabbitbrush 2’ is thick with a heavy fuzz, building from lulls of plodding percussion and Bryson’s draw out vocals into peaks of triumphant noise.

Watch the video by Alex Montenegro below:

Nothing At All / Rabbitbrush 2 is out now via the A.L. West Bandcamp page.

Casper Skulls – Roddy Piper

Turning the page onto a new chapter for the Sudbury/Toronto indie rock outfit, new album Kit-Cat promises to see Casper Skulls push themselves to new heights. Single ‘Spindletop‘ introduced this refreshed sound, drawing on There Will Be Blood to create a moody, ominous atmosphere, and now ‘Roddy Piper’ introduces a more energetic and soaring dimension. Drawing on the titular figure, the track uses a wrestling analogy to explore confrontation within a relationship, the combination of upbeat rhythm and fuzzy weight evoking the dramatic ups and downs of a choreographed bout. Watch the Mortal Kombat-inspired video, directed by Curtis Carriere and Jordan Vandenberg (of Goodscreen Media) along with the band themselves, below:

Kit-Cat will be released on the 11th April via Next Door Records and you can pre-order it now.

Celeste Madden – Lapdog

Having signed with Sad Club Records, recent months have seen Celeste Madden unveil a handful of singles, with tracks like ‘Joan of Arc‘ and ‘Fever Dream‘ embodying the London-based songwriter’s singular style. Songs both unashamedly melodramatic and undeniably strange, drawing the listener directly into Madden’s psyche so that we too might experience the diverse range of moods and feelings therein. Having announced that EP Is It Really Goodnight? will be released next month, Madden has now returned with new single ‘Lapdog’. Another dreamlike folk song where placid surfaces hide a roiling depth beneath, reflecting on difficult experiences in order to exorcise the hold of the past.

‘Lapdog’ is out now and available via the Celeste Madden Bandcamp page. Is It Really Goodnight? will be released on the 27th March via Sad Club Records.

Craig Finn – People of Substance

Anyone who caught Craig Finn on his This Is What It Looks Like tour last autumn will be champing at the bit for a new album, Finn using the solo sets to introduce a number of new narrative-driven songs full of the detail, emotion and empathy which has so long marked his work. The record, it turns out, is called Always Been, and will be released this spring. A fitting addition to Finn’s oeuvre in the year The Hold Steady‘s Separation Sunday celebrates its twentieth anniversary, the album traces the arc of a protagonist through a rise and fall and eventual redemption, the character committing the life of a priest despite his lack of faith. A whole cast of characters pass into the frame within the telling of this story, but for now we have single ‘People of Substance’ as a glimpse at the world within.

Watch the visualizer by David Kelling below:

Always Been is out on the 4th April and you can pre-order it now.

Dead Bandit – Pink

“Something of a landscape,” was how we described Dead Bandit‘s self-titled album, coming soon on Quindi Records, in a preview back in January. “One rural in tone which seems at once physical and emotional. Often stark and severe in its loneliness, a kind of haunted prairie or steppe, yet often possessing some kind of yearning fondness for the wide open space.” New single ‘Pink’ furthers the style. A cryptic, slow-building number which possesses a kind of shadowed mystery, the layered guitar and creeping beats never puncturing the understated air, as though the truth of the track is always drifting just out of view.

Jacob Faurholt – I Will Hold You

We’ve featured the prolific Danish songwriter Jacob Faurholt multiple times in recent years, an outsider artist in the vein of Daniel Johnston and co. who looks to explore existential themes via lo-fi, idiosyncratic combination of folk, rock and pop. Recorded in the room beneath his children’s bedroom while they were asleep, the most recent release of Faurholt’s we covered embraced a hushed style, but new single ‘I Will Hold You’ pivots away from this entirely. It was written in the aftermath of a Dinosaur Jr. gig, post-show tinnitus still ringing, which anchors its poignant emotion and melodies with a dense undercurrent of noise.

‘I Will Hold You’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Léna Bartels – January is the Loneliest Month

It’s Gonna be a Wonderful New Year, a split between NYC’s Léna Bartels and Nico Hedley, is the first release on new label Rock For Sale Records who release music on cassette tapes and not streaming services. Bartels and Hedley have collaborated across a range of projects (both realised and not quite), and this EP is from the intimate end of the spectrum. The pair describe it as a collection of “songs from winter. Songs for the new year. Songs to get by by,” and if lead single, Bartels’s ‘January is the Loneliest Month’ is anything to go by, it makes good on the promise of its admirably optimistic title. Though not with saccharine cheerfulness but a quiet persistence and steady belief in new beginnings.

Lucy Liyou – Arrested

‘Arrested’ is the lead single from Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name, the new record from Lucy Liyou. Released next month via Orange Milk Records, the album promises to be the Los Angeles musician’s most pop-oriented to date, but anyone expecting a collection of up-tempo dancefloor fillers might be disappointed. As ‘Arrested’ attests, Liyou’s distinctive style is far more complex than that, possessing both a fragile minimalism and lush melodrama, the understated ethereality of the sound and poignant longing of the vocals combining into a reflective and melancholic mood. The sensation of watching a fond memory fade at the edges as the desire to return to its smallest details only grows.

Watch the video shot and directed by Park Seung Won below:

Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name is out on the 21st March via Orange Milk Records and you can pre-order it now.

Mumu The Free Diver – Blossoms

The project of Raleigh, NC-based singer-songwriter Aki Laakso, Mumu The Free Diver offers an evocative brand of indie folk which embraces the authenticity of the DIY aesthetic. Recorded at home with what Laakso describes as “a cheap mic, an old guitar and a bargain-bin audio interface,” new song ‘Blossoms’ swaps out technical polish for a sense of immediacy, sounding like a direct communication from within a moment of grief-stricken vulnerability. But don’t let the description fool you, for though the arrangement is based around acoustic guitar and humble, near-spoken vocals, the track possesses a real sense of richness too. As though through its unguarded nature flows a certain intensity, be it born of compassion, panic, plain hard longing, or indeed a combination of all three.

Penny Loafer – Fridge

Consisting of Emma Barnes (vocals, guitar, keys) and Seth Parker (drums, percussion), Penny Loafer make self-described “post-college rock” which draws from nineties heavyweights like Fugazi and Sonic Youth to offer songs about everyday life which nevertheless possess real weight and bite. With debut EP Daily Deal set for release via Indecent Artistry next month, the Athens, GA-duo have shared single ‘Fridge’. It’s an example of all the ingredients which make the Penny Loafer sound so enticing, with deadpan observation and wry humour meeting tangible heft, all strung together by a chugging momentum which pulls the audience along for the ride. A little bit salty, a little bit sweet and with a noticeable acidic edge.

Tractor Beam – SHOW YOU

“Draws from across the ages in their work, owing as much to 00s indie as 60s folk, and all wrapped up the the contemporary DIY aesthetic, leading to a sound both emotionally immediate and tangibly nostalgic.” So we wrote of Toronto-born, Vancouver-based artist Tractor Beam back in 2023. Now Sasha Balazic and co. are set to return with Monoliths & The Early Reflection, and latest single ‘SHOW YOU’ sees the outfit combine their usual freak folk sensibilities and a more chaotic noise pop style within a single track. The result feels like witnessing a band solidify their ambitions in real time, expanding the possibilities of the Tractor Beam project and pushing closer to their final form. Watch the video directed by Aiden Millroy below:

Monoliths & The Early Reflection is out on the 19th February via Good Stones // Calm Water.

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