A pair of tracks from Mox bookend the album, an act we’ve described previously as “follow[ing] in the lineage of Alex G, combining boundless creativity with tangible emotion.” Opener ‘Scared’ sets the tone, displaying combination of bruising heft and emotional tenderness, while closer ‘Leaving’ is more restrained and slow building, allowing the warmth of the project more room to shine.

The offerings from Christina’s Trip opt for a more shoegaze-adjacent style, though again the interplay between heaviness and light is an important element. Take ‘F.B.A.T.’ with its mix of shimmer and scuzz and no small amount of energy. Or the squally ‘Sweep Me’, which embraces the chaos of its sound to culminate in a mood almost buoyant.

The songs from Natasha Sandworms are cleaner in style yet just as infectious, be it the retro indie pop bounce of ‘Bird of My Life’ or gradual unfurling of ‘Perfect Feeling’. There’s a wistfulness to both songs, though rather than being stuck looking backwards in self-reflection, they manage to chart a course forward, however uncertain or bittersweet the awaiting future might prove to be.

Lucky Three is out now via Cherub Dream Records and available from Bandcamp.

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The brand new Trails and Ways full-length Open Water will be released soon, and the band have shared two singles to reintroduce themselves after their time away. Described by the band as a song “about making peace, learning Spanish, and swimming open water,” first single ‘Patiently’ immediately re-establishes what made the group so fun back in the day. And its upbeat, positive sound carries a fitting message too. A reminder that life is richer in company, and that social isolation can be overcome, written and performed by a trio who worked through that very process themselves to bring the track to life.

Follow-up ‘Young’ is no less accomplished, though dials down some of its predecessor’s energy to offer something more sleek and dreamy. But despite the decidedly hazy sound, there is still a central rhythm to the song, a sense of forward momentum which speaks to the themes of growth and maturation which inform the track. “When we were young / we didn’t sit, too much to do,” as the opening verse goes, “now we’re settled down / we don’t move over the ground like we used to.”

Both ‘Patiently’ and ‘Young’ can be found on the Trails and Ways Bandcamp page.

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sachi’s mirror is now returning with room to receive, an EP set for release later this month including a run of cassettes via Cone Shape Top Imprint. “Across five tracks, Pan explores the sonic capabilities of her instrument, melding violin with synthesizers, field recordings, and voice to craft icy-hot string textures, crepuscular melodies, and pulsing emotional undercurrents,” the label describes. “An alchemy of ambient vignettes, dreamy exotica, avant-garde classical composition, and art-pop sensibilities, room to receive reimagines a closed door as a shining portal.”

The first cut from the EP, ‘heat resonance’ embodies the care and craft of this style, once again matching precise detail with a sense of sweeping space. What results is something which complicates the distinction between the composed and the improvised, each detail feeling at once exact and organic, bound by an internal logic in the manner of a fantastic dream. Pan’s vocals and her signature violin only elevate this mood further, adding emotional resonance to the shimmering world and marking sachi’s mirror as a project to watch moving forwards.

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Lead single and title track ‘See It All’ is the ideal introduction to the record. The song has roots in a psychosomatic episode which turned out to be an inflection point in Lizzy Dutton’s path towards improving mental health. It opens as a relatively simple folk song but unfurls into something as vivid and enveloping as the experience itself. Alek Barkats and Geoff Saba add piano and clarinet respectively, bringing to life the album’s orchestral sensibilities and furthermore highlighting its ability to be at once inventive and intuitive.

Oh, well I think I’m going mad
I know there’s something there
There’s something there

I hope you see it all

See It All is out on the 25th April via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

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Wells enlisted a host of talent to help bring the songs to life Jack Brown (Healing Potpourri) adds bass and piano, Zach Elsasser (Affectionately, Jay Som) drums, Lizzy Dutton violin and vocals and Ainsley Wagoner (Silverware) vocals, plus Stephen Steinbrink and Jason Kick (Mild High Club, Healing Potpourri) produced the release. What results is a sound rich and idiosyncratic enough to match Wells’s vision, each track carving out its own small, ethereal world. Take the latest single and title track, ‘The Lesson’. A song of subtle detail and alluring patience which closes out the release with a space of relative calm. Indeed, if predecessor ‘Ophelia’ paints a darker picture, then ‘The Lesson’ serves as the quiet on the other side of the storm. Not a definite safe haven, but a place from which you might catch your breath before pushing towards something better and new.

Steinbrink also features in the track, and his fingerprints are clear in its execution. Writing of his 2023 album Disappearing Coin, we described how the album represented “a wilful attempt to make music with the same creativity and sense of awe-filled wonder that he felt when exploring these other avenues,” leaning heavily on the magic trick imagery of its title to become “a figure who, guided by invention and playfulness, looks to use mastery of a physical craft in order to open the door to small, intangible miracles.” The Lesson is very much informed by the same ideas, with Asha Wells highlighting how thinking outside the box can lead to the more intuitive, authentic expressions of emotion, and collaboration need not preclude a singular style.

The Lesson will be released on the 3oth May via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

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With 2023 album Cleaning Up With Big Mess, Copenhagen‘s Big Mess introduced a genre-spanning style which tapped into the unbridled joy of good old-fashioned punk rock, and new release Terry EP indicates they have no intention of slowing down. The record is out now via Specialist Subject Records, and opener and title track shows off the vibe of the collection. Repurposing Kirsty MacColl’s hit into a power pop gem, ‘Terry’ distils the wry humour and bite of the original into their purest states. The result races into life from the off and never lets up, harnessing MacColl’s cheeky defiance as its own form of momentum, and proving as cathartic as it is fun.

Ciao Malz – Clementine (Elliott Smith cover)

Back in December, Ciao Malz released their debut EP Safe Then Sorry, a four-song grab bag that veered between alt-country twang and woozy pop confidence. Now Malia DelaCruz is showing another dimension to the project with a cover of Elliott Smith’s ‘Clementine’, recapturing the hushed intimacy of the original in all of its sincerity and narrative depth. “‘Clementine’ is probably my favorite Elliott Smith song,” as DelaCruz explains. “The way he picks up on a bartender singing and turns it into something so eerie and beautiful is wild. The harmonies are something I’ve always wanted to nail, and I love experimenting with them when I’m recording. And yeah, sometimes it’s just fun to channel Elliott Smith for a while.”

You can find Ciao Malz on Bandcamp.

Committeemen – Therapy

Consisting of DJ Gilmore-Innis (vocals/guitar), Ken Dannelley (drums), Matt Kast (bass), and Graham Bell (guitar), Houston punk rockers Committeemen owe as much to post punk royalty like Gang of Four as they do contemporaries Osees and Parquet Courts. But, they’re no cheap copy, managing to recombine this range of influences into something wholly their own. With a new EP on the way via Rue Defense, single ‘Therapy’ highlights the searing intensity of their sound. Taking aim at the burgeoning ecosystem of quacks and narcissists which seems determined to tell us how to live, this is blistering punk complete with yell-along chorus, treating this vapid, insidious cohort of podcasters, Youtubers and televangelists with the contempt they deserve.

Daily Toll – Killincs

Described as “eleven songs traversing three years of forged friendships, collaborative experimentation and a shared love of growing through words and song,” new album A Profound Non-Event sees Sydney post-punks Daily Toll take the next step in their evolution, building upon what came before with a growing sense of confidence and conviction. With the release coming this June on Tough Love, the trio have shared lead single ‘Killincs’, and the track embodies the sound of a band striving towards their most truthful form while appreciating such a quest might prove unending. “The light reflects an upside-down image of a life I might never visit,” as lead Kata Szász-Komlós sings. “Too far to touch, not far enough to forget.” And as the song progresses, its verbosity belying the relatively understated, assured tone, it becomes clear the unresolved is something to be accepted, even embraced. As a later line states: “I have the key still, but I’ve buried the path.”

Watch the video directed and edited by Szász-Komlós below:

A Profound Non-Event is out on the 20th June via Tough Love and you can pre-order it now.

eggcorn – Observer Effect

Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed, eggcorn‘s new album Observer Effect sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences. Moving away from the synth pop sensibilities of debut Your Own True Love, the album adopts a pop-inflected brand of chamber folk which combines sincere compassion with unerring honesty, a sound able to probe deep into the heart of the matter and unafraid of getting dirty in the process. The lead single and title track is the ideal entry point, Hoffman using the impatient frustration of a slow-healing injury to delve into unpalatable truths about herself and the desires therein, baring vulnerabilities and reckoning with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness.

MF Tomlinson – Die To Wake Up From A Dream

Over a series of releases in recent times, Brisbane/Meanjin born, London based artist MF Tomlinson has challenged genre conventions, progressing beyond classic folk styles with the addition of psych, rock and other sensibilities. This summer will see him return with Die To Wake Up From A Dream, a brand new album via PRAH Recordings which continues this exploration of the possibilities of folk. Described by Tomlinson himself as a treatise on “resilience, hope and the frankly wildly psychedelic experience of being alive,” the lead single and title track shows one such possibility, drawing on everything from John Martyn to Talk Talk and My Bloody Valentine to create a sound which might originate in folk but ends up beyond any easy genre categorisation.

Watch the accompanying video—described as a “visual essay”—by Andrea Zvadova below:

Die To Wake Up From A Dream is out on the 11th July via PRAH Recordings.

sachi’s mirror – a new shape

The recording project of Oakland-based experimental violinist and composer Shaina Pan, sachi’s mirror offers rich, genre-bending soundscapes which use pedal effects to push the violin to new ground. Classically trained, Pan dipped a toe in experimental music as a vocalist and bassist for Bay Area art-punks Juicebumps during the pandemic, and is now reaching further across ambient, avant-garde and art pop sensibilities to weave her own compositions. Taken from debut release coral miracle church, single ‘a new shape’ embodies the style, a song full of space and intricate detail which grows with subtle grace. Spoken word samples further the mood, and the result feels like a doorway into some adjacent, ethereal world.

Serfing – no new friends

Consisting of Austin Weber and David Caploe (Singer of Hate Drugs, BEST DAD), LA‘s Serfing are preparing to release their debut EP to properly introduce themselves to the world. Lead single ‘no new friends’ is the first taste of what to expect. Painted in long, relaxed strokes, the track offers a dreamy meditation on making connections with other people, its languorous tempo able to draw out both the warmth and anguish inherent within such a process. “It’s hard to keep yourself from falling / falling in love,” as the opening lines go. “Spend enough time with somebody / falling in love.” But true to the ambiguous mood of a sound that could be taken as dawning fondness or anxious hesitancy, the lyrics soon offer conflicting thoughts.

Why even plant a tree to cut it down?
you know those roots are staying in the ground
better off just being no-one
than falling in love

The Taxpayers – Outline of Your Blood

We’ve covered a number of singles from Circle Breaker, the new full-length from  Portland, Oregon emo outfit The Taxpayers, in recent weeks, be it ‘At War With The Dogcatchers‘ with its search for love amid tragedy and cruelty or ‘I Am One Thousand‘, an ode to those afflicted by war and its adjacent sufferings. With the album now out via Ernest Jenning Record Co., The Taxpayers are releasing a new single, ‘Outline of Your Blood’, as a celebration. The closing track to the album which encapsulates everything which came before, stricken by discouragement and burgeoning doom yet unable to shake a sense of hope despite it all. As the title suggests, this is an album of cycles, the grandest of which being the circle of life itself, and no matter how dark the present, The Taxpayers want to remind you that new life is always being born too.

Circle Breaker is out now via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Wishy – Over and Over

“Everything fans of the band have come to love.” That’s how we described ‘Fly’ back in February, the lead single from Wishy‘s forthcoming EP Planet Popstar. “A song,” as we put it, “that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.” With the EP coming next month on Winspear, the Indianapolis outfit are back with fresh track ‘Over and Over’. With vocal duties shifting back to Kevin Krauter, and Nina Pitchkites offering backing harmonies, the song sees fingerpicked guitar melded with breakbeat rhythms, offering a sound packed full of detail while maintaining a languid calm, and further marking Wishy as one of the most inventive acts working today.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Demi Fenicle, edited by Aaron Agler and with visual Effects by Stephen Orban, which you can watch below:

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

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The project of Agriculture’s Leah B Levinson, Cali Bellow makes music concerned with the tension and interplay between the interior and exterior, real and fictional. Thematically, new album Ciao Bella owes as much to Dark Souls and The Muppets as it does Ursula Le Guinn and Joanna Russ, not to mention the environment of Altadena, California. A deep consideration of ideas of artifice and abstraction which always challenges limitations, be they of genre, gender or spirituality. Taking inspiration from songs like ‘Full Of Happiness’ by H.O.T. and ‘I, Me, Mine’ by Godflesh, as well as the hyperactive soundtracks of games like Sonic, new single ‘Goldin Scepter’ is a microcosm of the wider album. A myriad of influences deconstructed and rearranged in order to build a world of its own. “I wanted to pull on the zany character that a lot of ska, funk and pop music teases and push it to a more monstrous effect,” as Levinson explains.

country girl – your favorite girl

Blending an upbringing in classical music with a present love of pop, country girl creates music to bring to life those small personal experiences which make life worth living. Having recently signed with the FADER Label, the project is now back with a new single ‘your favorite girl’, the ideal introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the project. “A song about the movie scenes we film, direct, and act in our heads while in the frenzy of a crush,” as the artist explains. That pressing desire to be a main character in story, however small that story might be. Even if it just means being someone else’s favorite girl.

I wanna look you in the eye
Oh man it gets me every time
I wanna shine inside your world
I wanna be your favorite girl

‘your favorite girl’ is out now via FADER label and available from the usual places.

Death And The Maiden – Waratah

Based in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand trio Death And The Maiden take not only their name from an engraving by Edvard Munch, but their entire atmosphere. A meeting of strength and vulnerability, shadow and light. Moreover, a willingness to embrace ambiguity within a sound which draws upon everything from electronic, folk and psych to house and dance. Released via Fishrider Records (southern hemisphere) and Occultation Recordings (northern hemisphere), new album Uneven Ground is perhaps their most experimental to date, though conversely sees them embrace pop too. Single ‘Waratah’ displays such contradictions in all their alluring layers, allowing freedom and restraint to sit side by side.

dog eyes – drive

“A reach towards an almost cinematic brand of pop that leaves none of the emotion behind,” we wrote of ‘moment’ by dog eyes, “where friendship is at once the most intimate and soaring experiences one might be lucky enough to hold in their life.” The song typified the Oakland band’s new album holy friend, which explores how relationships and connection not only shape us but morph over time. With the record now out via Grand Jury Music, dog eyes have released a new single, ‘drive’. An example of the more folk-adjacent side of the album, the song tells the story of a road trip into the mountains with all the quiet seclusion of the leafy backroads, gentle guitar and ramshackle percussion sparkling sleepily behind sincere vocals. The result feels like a small and sweet moment grasped in its moment of transience and fixed to tape.

I would not say words if I did not mean them
Tired of monotony
Just drive this Sequoia please
To some distance where I cannot see
Where I’ll forget how to tell where I am

Dogwood Tales – driver’s side fantasy

Based in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Dogwood Tales originated in 2016 with Ben Ryan and Kyle Grim and soon expanded to become a full band with the addition of Danny Gibney (bass), Stephen Kuester (pedal steel) and Jake Golibart (drums). Working within a country-inflected rock style, the project has released a number of albums and EPs, most recently Rodeo via WarHen Records, and is putting out a brand new tape later this summer. Latest single ‘driver’s side fantasy’ introduces the sound, occupying that post-Drive-By Trucker’s sphere alongside the likes of MJ Lenderman. Watch the video filmed by Travis Legg below:

‘driver’s side fantasy’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Dwi Riana x Orkes Garasi – Ku Bisa

Indonesian-Canadian artist Dwi Riana has made a name for working across genres, finding inspiration in everything from folk, hip hop and traditional music to bossa nova and jazz, and new single ‘Ku Bisa’ is the project of yet another direction. “I had the amazing opportunity of composing for an Indonesian short film titled A Day Apart on the Seventeenth, directed by Noel Pendawa,” they explain, a process which saw them team up with Toronto-based Indonesian Keroncong band, Orkes Garasi. Channelling the themes of Pendawa’s film, the song explores ideas of homesickness by melding Keroncong and folk styles, and the result sees the narrator turning to dreams as their only mode of escape.

‘Ku Bisa’ is out now via streaming services.

Mother Sun – Giant Bog

“I think with these songs we wanted to create a record that sonically speaks to the magic that is constantly unfolding all around in the natural world.” That’s how lead Jared Doherty describes Mother Sun’s latest album, Meadow 6, which is coming soon via Earth Libraries. Fittingly, many of the songs originated when playing guitar outside in the garden, with the Kamloops, BC outfit not only exploring the diversity of nature but humanity’s relationship with it. Something to escape into, to explore and study, cultivate and exploit. Crafted from a vivid psych-rock sound that reaches towards jazz, krautrock and retro folk, the album comes to form an environment of its own, as captured by new single and closer, ‘Giant Bog’. A sprawling track which serves as a kind of retro-futurist hothouse within which all manner of things can sprout and grow wild.

Stephen Becker – I Held An Echo

This October, Stephen Becker is releasing his new full-length Middle Child Syndrome via Record Euphoria. The album sees the LA-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter work in the indie-psych tradition of the late noughties/early 2010s, adding jazz and baroque pop sensibilities to a more traditional singer-songwriter style. An effort, at least in part, to rise above the mundane present, as though to be trapped within conventions is to be restricted by the same inability to communicate effectively that haunts our everyday lives. Single ‘I Held An Echo’ hints at the widescreen scope of the resulting sound, though the glitch and shimmer of the dreamlike arrangement hints at the precarity of any attempt to escape our usual constraints.

Middle Child Syndrome is out on the 25th October via Record Euphoria and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Yammerer – ESZ – Erth Station Zebra

How do you convince people to engage with album-length work in this age of streaming and algorithmic playlists? Liverpool’s Yammerer have one potential solution. Erth Station Zebra might be packaged as an album on Bandcamp and the like, but the release is intended as a single composition. Or as the band put it, “a transcendent odyssey” which runs through six movements across its forty-four minutes. Previous releases like Reality Escape Resort might have positioned them in the contemporary post-punk revival, but there was always something different about the outfit. An extra level of ambition and invention. Erth Station Zebra sees them embrace this side of their work wholeheartedly, leaning into transportive psych to not only revitalise the appetite for in-depth pieces of work, but position themselves as one of the UK’s most interesting projects to keep an eye on moving into the future.

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“The ‘Holy Friend’ as a concept, creates an ideal person from scraps of perfection/the divine we find in flawed places,” Firstman explains. “Hopeful, yet grounded, the ‘Holy Friend’ is a testament to the idea that age brings nuance. Something bigger than the sum of its parts that helps guide us, rooted and reflected in the nuance of friendship.” The wistful hush of ‘fair’ was followed by the downbeat fondness of ‘rusty, my dog’, establishing the intimate and often melancholic side of the dog eyes sound, though within the ostensibly quiet arrangement of the latter stirred something larger. An epic quality which might not have quite punctured the presiding subdued vibe, but burned beneath the surface nonetheless.

New single ‘moment’ allows this to bloom further into view, maintaining the bedroom pop sensibilities but fleshing out the sound with a vivid shimmer. What results is the surest evidence of the dog eyes evolution as a project. A reach towards an almost cinematic brand of pop that leaves none of the emotion behind. Something which might fit on the soundtrack of Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow—where friendship is at once the most intimate and soaring experiences one might be lucky enough to hold in their life.

holy friend is out on the 16th August via Grand Jury Music and you can pre-order it from the dog eyes Bandcamp page.

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Like many artists in recent years, ahem found the process of making new album Avoider a unique and challenging experience. “We were writing songs in ways we never had before,” they explain, with trio Alyse Emanuel, Courtney Berndt and Erik Anderson often working in separate basements. But rather than treat the circumstances as a limitation to be worked around, the outfit choose to embrace the frustrations to charge the songs themselves, something most apparent in single ‘Waterlogged’. As the title suggests, the song provides a sense of confinement or submergence against which it struggles. “A kind of unresolved hope that maybe we can someday break a little loose and get free in whatever ways we need too,” as the band put it. “We wanted the song to feel like you were getting free especially as it went on—like it feels like a celebration of that aspiration and hope even if you’re still just actually stuck.”

Derek Ted – BLACK WIDOW LIGHTNING

Following on from 2022’s times have changed, a record which developed the warm, earnest side of Derek Ted‘s work, the LA-based songwriter returns this year with new album, day went away. First single ‘BLACK WIDOW LIGHTNING’ offers our first glimpse of what to expect. Finding a balance between loose-limbed energy and sincere tenderness, the song is a three-and-a-half minute dose of fondness, capturing a late summer light where the shadows are stretching and temperatures holding, and where the suggestion of any end only serves to strengthen the appreciation of the moment.

Black widow lightning
The end of summer’s coming
I love you more than ever
I love you like no other

Evelyn – I’m A Dog

Described by the artist as both “a heart-swelling love song about attachment theory,” and “a Cancer Moon abandonment-wound ballad sponsored by Big Feelings,” ‘I’m a Dog’ sees Evelyn grapple with the various contradictions bound up within any relationship in search of some sweet catharsis. Especially how the security and comfort of an intimate connection seems to conjure the possibility of the very opposite, as though to experience a good thing is to summon its shadow too. “Late at night, you’re sleeping by my side / And I’m playing out ways that you could die,” as one verse plays, “I keep track of your breathing / I’ll feel better in the morning.”

Watch the video directed by Izzy Dow and shot and edited by Tim Gersten below:

‘I’m a Dog’ is out now and available via Bandcamp. Evelyn’s album Someday We Will Eat A Feast of Light which will be released later this summer.

Fake Fruit – Mucho Mistrust

“This song was a snapshot of how I got through a difficult year.” So says Ham D’Amato of Fake Fruit on the lead single and title track from the Oakland indie rock outfit’s forthcoming record on Carpark Records. Written in response the the end of a relationship and the start of a new one, an alopecia diagnosis and looming big birthday, it’s a typically vibrant and unpredictable song from a band that burn bright with volatile energy. Wry humour and cathartic noise combine to great effect to live up to the Blondie-homage title, which the band say is intended to “encapsulate both the anxieties of daily life, a bloodless music industry, and global capitalism as well as the clear-eyed scepticism needed to rebel against it.”

Holding Hour – Come Undone

Des Moines, Iowa duo Holding Hour first caught our attention back in 2022 (when they went by elison), with single ‘Hopes & Horoscopes‘ confronting vices and regrets with a sound energetic and confident enough to emerge with an affirming air. Latest single ‘Come Undone’ is no less nuanced in its tone, Marissa Kephart’s reflective, hushed vocals painting an introspective mood as the instrumentation rises into something far larger. Holding Hour again mine the rich creative seam at the intersection of dream pop and shoegaze to offer something ethereal yet sensual. “Say something sweet to me,” as one of the verses goes, “I wanna hear my name inside your mouth / Before you chew and spit it out.”

Julia-Sophie – numb

The debut solo album from Anglo-French avant-garde electronic pop artist Julia-Sophie coming soon via Ba Da Bing Records, forgive too slow is a record which charts a journey through life. There are moments of self-destruction, of romance and longing, not to mention the inevitable loss which chases everything. But such developments are not presented in palatable, linear sequence. Instead, Julia-Sophie uses her danceable electro pop sound to present something messier but more authentic. As though the album is not a straight line towards a final goal but an orbit around an elusive answer. Single ‘numb’ highlights the sensuality and cinematic depth of the sound, where the crystalline shimmer of the track makes everything feel so fragile and precious and sharp.

forgive too slow will be released via Ba Da Bing Records on 26th July. Pre-order now from the Julia-Sophie Bandcamp page.

Leif Vollebekk – Moondog

This September see the return of Canadian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Leif Vollebekk with brand new full-length Revelation on Secret City Records. Pairing his distinctively earnest vocals with almost cinematic arrangements, the album sees Vollebekk follow Jung’s Dreams, Memories, Reflections through to themes such as alchemy and the mystery of the divine, as well as the pervasive uncertainty of our existentially threatened present. What results is something which sits at the intersection between the earthly and ethereal, a style typified by lead single ‘Moondog’. Love held up in all of its magic and strangeness, where chance and predetermination move our lives with their inscrutable gravities.

Watch the video directed by Kaveh Nabatian below:

Revelation is out on the 27th September via Secret City Records.

Nick Zanca – Little Professor

Having spent a decade making electronic music under the moniker Mister Lies and working as a producer with the likes of Wendy Eisenberg, Nick Zanca has now stepped out under his own name for Hindsight—an album which forgoes electronic styles in favour of a theatrical, jazz-inflected brand of rock music. Coming soon via American Dreams Records, the album sees Zanca follow a very personal line to explore some of our society’s most pressing themes, not least the crushing omnipresence of capitalism and the ways this works to undermine anyone who might wish to devote their life to something more fulfilling. Lead single ‘Little Professor’ engages with experiences in the wake of a childhood diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, not only castigating the harmful language and actions faced by such young people, but offering a new vision where neurodivergence is seen as something valued and respected. Watch the video directed by Hunter Adams and Carl Elsaesser below:

Hindsight will be released on 2nd August and is available via Bandcamp.

West of Roan – The Bell

West of Roan is the recording project of artists/musicians/puppeteers Annie Schermer and Channing Showalter who together draw on a rich folk tradition and centuries of myths and legends to create what they call “a deeply resonant balm for a fractured culture.” This summer, West of Roan will release their second album, Queen of Eyes, via SPINSTER and have unveiled the lead single and opening track by way of introduction. The pair say the song was inspired by “conversations about gods of loss and ancestral wounds [and] texts about the Sumerian underworld demon-goddess Ereshkigal,” all during a near-apocalyptic period of forest fires near their home and the global pandemic. But it’s more than a lament for a world gone bad. Built on the plaintive drone of harmonium and fiddle, it’s sober and aching but somehow hopeful too, finding potential for growth and healing in family, friends and the world around us.

sister find me
sister keep me fed

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Last year, East Vancouver post-punks Aversions put out the full-length You Wanted The Bike, an album which “combine[d] heavyweight riffs, pounded percussion and acerbic vocals to comment on our contemporary moment,” as we put it in a preview. Songs like ‘Undecider‘ channelled this raw energy into a sound of “anxiety and latent violence, drawing on a whole host of political and social themes in three and a half minutes of Strummer-esque polit-punk.” Recorded at the same time as that album but not quite sitting right among the rest of the tracks, latest single ‘Wormhole’ sees the three-piece reaching further afield for their stylistic influences, dialling back some of the ferocity to allow in alt-country sensibilities. But the lyrics are as cutting and contemporary as ever, charting the rise and fall of an internet personality who, after selling their soul for recognition, is left lonely on the other side of fame, banging the locked door leading back to normal life.

Blue Canopy x A Beacon School – Bright Spot II

When Blue Canopy‘s Alex Schiff asked Patrick Smith of A Beacon School to remix single ‘Bright Spot’ after its release back in 2022, he probably didn’t quite expect the level of collaboration and vision which followed. Fast-forward eighteen months and the result has now been released as a single via Grind Select. ‘Bright Spot II’ is not so much a remix as a reimagining, a sister track which drags a cover of darkness over the original’s sunny wistfulness, carving out a nocturnal space of electronics which further amplifies the themes of regret and longing in a song about facing difficult periods with a long-term partner. “I just wanted everything to be OK between us,” Schiff explains, “and this song sorts through my feelings throughout that time, hoping for a resolution.”

The song comes complete with a video by Ebony Davies with additional edits from Chase Wagner:

‘Bright Spot II’ is out now via Grind Select and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Dead Tongues – Body of Light

“Baby there ain’t no rules here / we can just slide / keep bending and drawing new lines / all shapes defined.” So opens ‘Body of Light’, the title track from one half of the upcoming double record from Ryan Gustafson’s The Dead Tongues on Psychic Hotline. Described as a pair of “interweaving and disparate albums,” the release embraces the diaphanous, intangible sentiment offered in those opening words, refusing to calcify into solid form in favour of something ephemeral. As the lead single suggests, the result is something intuitive and ever-shifting, mapped along the unseen currents of both our own interiors and the natural world. “Maybe you don’t know what to call it,” as Gustafson sings, “or it ain’t got a name / i’m here for it all just the same / all colors and shades / i’m just a body of light.” Watch the video by Gustafson and Cat Siravantha below:

Body of Light will be released digitally on the 14th June, and physically as a double album with I Am A Cloud on the 9th August via Psychic Hotline. Pre-order it now.

dog eyes – fair

dog eyes is the recording project of Oakland‘s Davis Leach and Haily Firstman which started when Leach helped produce Firstman’s previous project Mr Marigold. The pair soon realised their collaborative chemistry could stretch much further. Following on from the earnest, delightfully lo-fi debut good, proper sendoff on Grand Jury Music, new single ‘fair’ continues to develop the dog eyes sound. A track about friendship and its strange ebb and flow, the childlike wonder of the vocals is shaded by a lingering wistfulness, as though every perfect moment foreshadows its inevitable end. “When you’re a kid and you make a new friend you think they’ll be your friend forever and often they are not, the band explain. “They were there for a season. A love or crush can be the same.” Watch the video directed by Ev Fitzpatrick below:

‘fair’ is out now and available from the dogs eyes Bandcamp page.

Joy Guidry – I Will Always Miss You

Writing in March, we described how Brooklyn-based bassoonist and composer Joy Guidry was releasing new album AMEN via Whited Sepulchre Records, where Guidry experiments with the multitude of Black American music styles to create something new. Previous single ‘Members Don’t Get Weary’ combined jazz and gospel music into something impassioned and triumphant, whereas new track ‘I Will Always Miss You’ takes an entirely different path. Built upon a foundation of lush ambient synths and boasting some of the most evocative bassoon you are likely to hear, the instrumental piece offers a meditative space that’s rooted within the wider experience of life—where mourning and joy marble into a single whole.

Lake Michigan – Rituals

Described as an album about “love, OCD, class, addiction and probably a couple of other things too,” La Madrugada is the latest full-length release from Mexico City-based Lake Michigan on Start-track. The record continues the project’s gloomy, intimate bedroom pop style, with arrangements stripped back to their sparest elements to sound like raw messages as voiced in the latest hours of the night. Focusing on OCD and the general unease so intrinsic to the condition, single ‘Rituals’ is great entry point, its vocals emerging through the lo-fi sound as barely a murmur, heavy with weariness yet afraid of relaxing, as though compelled by the need to balance the world.

Mr. Sam and the People People – Go People Go (Part One)

This summer sees the release of Again! Again!, the new full-length album from New Orleans-based songwriting project Mr. Sam and the People People on Tape Dad (distributed by Gar Hole Records). Opening single ‘Go Baby Go (Part One)’ introduces the compassionate tone with a mindful reflection on the beauty inherent in simple things. Mr. Sam Gelband’s vocals land somewhere between Dean Johnson and Frederick Squires in their fond baritone. “I wrote ‘Go Baby Go’ to honor […] my closest people, the lake, the porch, the mountain, the shoreline, the neighbourhood, the quiet moments with myself,” Mr. Sam describes. “I know now that these things are the keepers of my truest joy, and I thank them.” Watch the video by Mayme O’Toole and Sam Gelband below:

Again! Again! is out via Tape Dad on the 11th June and available for pre-order now.

shn shn – Glimmer

We’ve covered the work of shn shn several times in recent years, always admiring how Toronto-based producer, singer-songwriter and creator Shanika Lewis-Waddell reimagines what the project might be with each release. “[shn shn] aims to do more than merely convince the listener to examine themselves,” we wrote of Form(s) last year. “Rather, it allows them to drift off to new frontiers. That is, to dream.” With its expansive ambient tones and idiosyncratic details, new single ‘Glimmer’ furthers this aesthetic. A meditation on the power of patience and understatement which coalesces into something quietly triumphant. “Building up gradually,” Lewis-Waddell sings, “unexpectedly found myself /so close yet so far / to a glimmer of hope.”

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