Building on the acclaim earned by Animal Poem, Anna Tivel is now set to return with a set of additional songs from the recording period. Fittingly titled Animal Poem B-Sides, the EP will not be released until next spring, though lead single ‘Swan Song’ shows the new tracks are just as evocative and finely crafted as their sisters on the main album. Described by Tivel as “a rumination on ephemerality and all the ways this life will move us before the whole thing flies away,” the song pairs a relaxed rhythm and poignant tone with something urgent beneath the surface, a loneliness hurried by the violent pressing of time. “The trumpeter swans leave the past in the fields / and head for a better unknown,” Tivel sings, “everything moving, a madness, an engine / flying down the road to forget that it’s ending / a star in the night is just air in the morning / up there burning alone / and you will be here ’til you’re gone.”

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The single was a fitting introduction to a decidedly existential record. Rudick uses the songs to dig into every facet of his identity in search of answers to life’s needling questions. Everything from the relationship between children and parents to the complications of maintaining a marriage, not to mention the spectres of violence and substance abuse (‘Fist Fight’), and the not insignificant effort of persisting in a band at a time when creativity is so often disregarded or disabused (‘Buyer’s Market’).

Those familiar with Young Elk’s previous work will recognise the atmosphere which emerges from such themes. Calm Down exists beneath the shadow of some great weight, representing the accumulated baggage of life that haunts every minute of our days whether we are aware of it or not. “I was also figuring out how to process the toxicity of my family after realizing their implications in childhood trauma and abuse,” as Rudick explains. The album does not offer an escape from this history, it doesn’t even try. Instead it acknowledges exactly what it is which sits above our heads in the hope that honesty and openness might go some way to lightening the load.

Living up to its title, ‘Little String’ explores these ideas further by positioning the American ideal of the family as a kind of tenuous binding, something which is supposed to hold a life (and society) together yet too often sees individuals lashed to people and places which drag them into darkness. “Give your fingertips some time / to unwind that tiny little string / that you used to bind your inner life / to someone’s complicated feelings,” Rudick sings in the opening verse, his voice as ever charged with equal parts compassion and fury, fighting to hold onto restraint amid the gravity of the realisations bestowed upon him. But, of course, it is not as simple as untying a knot. The past returns no matter what we do to release ourselves from its bindings. As demonstrated in the closer ‘Palmer ’68’, a song every bit as stark and tragic as anything else on the record, yet lit from within by something like love in spite of everything, even if it feels pitiful to admit.

palmer, alaska ’68
you were missing mother in a terrible way
you wrote her the same letter everyday
saying ‘baby, i still love you. are you ok?”

are you ok?

Calm Down is out now via Rue Defense and available from Bandcamp.

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Those familiar with previous Léna Bartels releases will appreciate how this multifaceted style applies to the very sound of her music. From the punchy, cathartic indie rock highs of debut Preservation to the intimate, wintery folk of recent split It’s Gonna Be a Wonderful New Year, the Portland-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter has explored a vast amount of terrain in a short space of time. The Brightest Silver Fish pushes this variation further still. Seventies songwriters such as Judee Sill are a touchstone, but so are alt rock and grunge acts from the nineties, electro pop and even mainstream country. The latter apparent on single ‘Bad Sugar’ with its simmering verses and bright, confessional choruses, as well as the genre’s classic concerns like working too hard for too little. But for all the stylistic shapeshifting, the album is notably cohesive, each venture out in a new direction not the consequence of idle wandering but the very thing demanded by the emotional landscape of each specific track. As though the songs are not traversing new spaces at all, rather showing the same thing viewed under a changing light.

Indeed, the image of light recurs across the record, reinforcing this sense of competing perspectives. Consider the morning rays on ‘Give Myself a Way’, a song loaded with double meanings right down to its playful title. Give myself a way easily becomes give myself away, agency flipped into submission depending on how you choose to hear it. Or ‘Amber’ with its rose-coloured curtains and shadows moving slow, at once a towering, shoegaze-inflected rock song and late night confession voiced to an empty room, where what might be a parent or lover speaks to the person submerged in their protective instincts. “While you’re sleeping I’ll brush the knots out” Bartels sings, an image that can again be split in two. A demonstration of tender intimacy that grows stranger and more foreboding within the song’s dark heft, the fine line between care and control blurred by the desperation of love.

Unfurling with slow grace, ‘Fighter’ approaches a similar situation from a different angle. The narrator is another mother or lover twisted up with the blessing of caring for someone, afflicted by the curse of being unable to guarantee that person’s constant comfort and joy. The taut, urgent rhythm of ‘I Knew’ captures the same despair in a very different manner, playing like an anxious thought on a loop. The result is curious, its perpetual motion paradoxically suggesting stasis, like a mind struck in a single groove. And while the whispered opening of tentative follow-up ‘Nothing Makes Me Feel Touched’ could hardly be more contrasting in style, the effect turns out to be very similar. “I confess that nothing’s getting on me / And nothing gets me off / And so I lay back in the twirl / As they are watering the brush” Bartels sings in another image of inertia, only for the track to again into a fervent, noisy conclusion based upon a repeated refrain: “When I insist there’s light to see / When I hold it up.”

Given the title and the artwork, it is tempting to return to the metaphor of the fish. One hooked in the mouth perhaps, being reeled through its surroundings with dizzying speed, overcome with pain and panic and doubt. Until the moment the surface is finally breached and the angler confronted, this fish can have no idea of the future before it. Whether its fate is to be kissed and released to go on swimming, or cracked on the head and stowed hollow-eyed on ice.

It is this torment of not knowing, both for themselves and those they care about, that concerns Léna Bartels’s narrators. Figures stuck between the simultaneous desire to fight against the line and submit to its inevitable pull. The Brightest Silver Fish offers no solution to the problem, just a picture of those muddling through. Consider the title track again, opening as a hushed, almost hesitant folk song, the lines delivered with a contradictory tone somewhere between intense concentration and absent-minded distraction. As though something intense and dramatic is unfolding outside the frame of the track and Bartels is determined not to look at it. Feeling, perhaps, to ignore its presence is to make life liveable. To be occupied within the song is to go some way toward shaping the conditions of the world.

Only the brightest silver fish
Shows when the light hits
I suppose I imagined it
Gasping for air in the beak of a gold goose
Greedy to want and dumb to refuse

The Brightest Silver Fish is out now via Glamour Gowns and available from the Léna Bartels Bandcamp page.

Photo by Morgan Healani Mein

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Drawing on the sensibilities of ambient, folk, post-rock, spoken word and sound collage, Dao Strom’s latest full-length Tender Revolutions is the embodiment of this style. A joint release between Antiquated Future Records and Beacon Sound, the album comes complete with an accompanying book, released via The 3rd Thing press, to support and expand upon its themes. “These songs are, for me, inward and outward (ex)tendings across boundaries of self, diaspora, modalities of voice, across fractures and refractions,” as Strom explains. “They are attempts at honoring small points and lines of connectivity I’ve been entangling in, for over a decade now, namely through creative collaborations and friendships with other Vietnamese women writers and artists.” A mission set out in the title itself. “The word tender is born of a gesture, an image, of something being stretched (the root ten- meaning “to stretch”),” Strom continues:

A thinning, an invocation of vulnerability, thus occurs with this action of stretching—to become tender, to tend toward in order to make contact with (an)other, requires stretching oneself; a thinning of the fabric or barrier between, occurs. What is a revolution that leads with this pretext of thinning—of allowing a softening, even a porousness, of that which holds us apart? And what does it mean to re-volve? To turn back (re-) again and again, to roll (volvere), in the cyclical way of celestial bodies or seasons, following a larger logic of changes as recurrent, trusting that this movement of a continual turning and turning (rolling back) will eventually arrive us also at a turning over: a (r)evolving of the old into a possible new. [R]evolution as ongoing, inevitable, as both instigating and returning.

But/and: a tender is also a boat—a smaller vessel that can access waters the larger boat is too big for; a tender is needed, for instance, to carry passengers from the larger boat to shore, to ferry objects between two larger vessels. Smallness is needed to access the spaces in-between, those shallower waters and narrower channels, to navigate aspects not visible until one gets closer in. Tender is, too, a form of currency—exchange: value of one good validated by another. Does this mean to tender is to navigate certain transactions from the level of the water?

Tender is our form of currency
The hands of the tenders also tender
(and sometimes raw)
We could follow the river

Unfurling with a slow pace that could be read as either calmness or solemnity, latest single ‘take’ taps into the larger rhythms Dao Strom alludes to in the above artist statement. Its lush ambient patience is not so much glacial as seasonal or celestial. What results is the sense of a new plane opening up within the ordinary arrangement of space and time. One created free from the strictures of normal human order, or else in defiance of such self-imposed limitation. That is, a place where history, memory, physical experience and dreams can coexist, coalesce, combine to form a radical new sense of possibility. “I’m taking something back / I’ll let you know where I find it,” as Strom sings in the opening lines. “The world might slip off track / when your pain moves away from the centre.”

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Latest single ‘Shadow of Lately’ is a good example, a track that ruminates on the sense of restlessness that creeps in with the repetitions of life and home. The song finds Valazza still in Portland during a period of self-imposed isolation. “Much of my last year living in Portland was spent walking through neighborhoods and keeping to myself,” she explains. “After going through a difficult breakup from a five year relationship, I found it hard to go out and be social. Keeping up with people became harder and I slowly found myself alone in my basement apartment, fearing the outside world, especially during the darker months of winter.”

If you are unfamiliar with the music of Kassi Valazza, we have previously described it as “bear[ing] all the hallmarks of the best retro tracks while refusing to fall for nostalgic imitation,” drawing on a rich lineage of folk and country songwriters while keeping things fresh. ‘Shadow of Lately’ is no exception, golden-hued and breezy despite the pangs of anxiety that lick at its edges. Opening with gentle acoustic guitar and Valazza’s distinctively timeless vocals, it soon blossoms into a mid-tempo country song complete with electric guitar and pedal steel.

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With the release of the album fast approaching, The Taxpayers have shared brand new single ‘I Am One Thousand’. A song which takes on a different dimension of our troubled present. Teaching English learners within the public school system a few years ago, it dawned on lead Rob Taxpayer how so much of the world exists under the trauma of violence. In a single class were students from Afghanistan, Burma, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Honduras and Ukraine, all of which are experiencing war to one degree or another.

“To suddenly have war thrust upon you. Unfathomable. But a reality for so many,” as Taxpayer says. “As part of a writing assignment, we were discussing the places we come from. A student from Burma was describing escaping the violence, and feeling guilt when thinking about family and friends who were not able to leave. At the end of the discussion, she said, ‘I left for my children. I live for the future’.” ‘I Am One Thousand’ is a song written for and dedicated to such people—those given no choice over the difficulties thrust upon them, yet reacting to the cruel, overwhelming present with hope and defiance.

Watch the video by Preston Spurlock below:

Circle Breaker will be released on the 21st March via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

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Last week saw the release of Melody Trail, the new record from the ever-prolific Sam Sodomsky’s The Bird Calls. Again put out by Ruination Records, the album in part deals with Sodomsky losing his position at Pitchfork after Condé Nast’s decision to absorb the site into GQ last year, pulling the rug from under his feet and throwing into doubt one of the last bastions of independent music criticism. But anyone expecting a minor key downer will be sorely disappointed, instead drawing on a range of left of centre pop and folk to create something quite unlike any previous The Bird Calls work. The title track is probably the best place to start, a catchy and breezy acoustic strum that somehow sounds both weary and hopeful, vowing to make a fresh start if not quite committing to actually doing it.

And I’m trying to get my life back
Riding on the right track
Time to move on

Born Ruffians – Mean Time

Having made their name in the indie rock boom of the 00s, Toronto’s Born Ruffians have constantly evolved over their near-two-decade lifespan, resisting the temptation to settle into a groove or rely on nostalgia to instead push their sound to new dimensions. Forthcoming this summer via Wavy Haze and Yep Rock Records, their new album Beauty’s Pride represents another reinvention, embracing change alongside the real-life experience of becoming a parent, as highlighted by lead single ‘Mean Time’. A “sort of autobiographical/speculative non-fiction inspired by Nabokov’s beautiful autobiography Speak, Memory,” as vocalist/guitarist Luke Lalonde puts it. “It’s about those two black voids, the before and the after, and all of the extraordinary moments in between.”

Beauty’s Pride is out on the 6th June via Wavy Haze Records and Yep Roc Records.

Cameron Knowler – Felicity

CRK, the (quasi-)self-titled by Arizona musician Cameron Knowler forthcoming on Worried Songs, is fundamentally a record of time and space. A meditation of Knowler’s hometown of Yuma, Arizona both in its physical presence and historical weight, all achieved via a style of instrumental folk both traditional and visionary. Together with a video featuring local landmarks ranging from the purple Gila Mountains to lettuce fields and a long abandoned adobe prison, single ‘Felicity’ offers the listener an introduction to this style. A soundscape littered with features of the past, indeed shaped by their weight, yet one which is neither overburdened by the load nor bewitched by the seductive will to return to that former place.

Watch the video shot, edited and directed by Steven Perlin below:

CRK will be out on the 4th April via Worried Songs and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Elskavon – How Cold

Elskavon’s new album Panoramas, coming this summer via Western Vinyl, sees Chris Bartels continue to evolve the project, drawing on everything which came before but finding a novel form. As lead single ‘How Cold’ shows, this involves challenging preconceptions of genre and style, crossing boundaries and questioning conventions, be it around what exactly a song or album can be, or indeed the role vocals can play within this. This exploratory mindset allows for a real authenticity to develop, creating an emotional resonance unhindered by any constraints. “This album is a deep dive into everything that’s shaped me as a creator,” as Bartels explains. “My favorite songs and albums are tied to memories and seasons—beautiful, painful, grand, and small—and those experiences inform everything I do.”

Panoramas is out on the 20th June via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

Fake Dad – Machinery

Consisting of Andrea de Varona and Josh Ford, LA’s Fake Dad make crunchy pop rock that’s concerned with both having fun and making a point. With new EP Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine on the horizon, the duo have unveiled single ‘Machinery’ to introduce this style. It’s a track which originated after a bad experience at a musical showcase, where female artists were forced to play into their own objectification in order to earn attention. “This song was written as a response to the way this kind of woman on woman (or more generally, artist on artist) hate perpetuates these spaces while the real culprits—our sick, sad society governed by narcissistic, billionaire white men—totally fly under the radar,” de Varona explains. “In the end, the man is the real one we’re calling out. The one that we’re sick and tired of watching get what they want, while we sit back eating from their palm.”

‘Machinery’ is out now and available at the usual places. Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine is coming soon.

Hour – Hallmark (Live at Philamoca, Philadelphia)

Following on from beautiful 2024 album Ease the Work, a release we described in our review of last year’s best releases, as “perform[ing] the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness,” Philadelphia ensemble Hour are returning this month with new live album Subminiature on Dear Life Records. Collected across two years of live performances, the album serves as what the label calls “a capstone for the band’s oeuvre to date,” offering versions of pieces from Tiny Houses and Anemone Red alongside brand new arrangements to best represent a project that’s always adapting and evolving. Different songs recorded at different shows, performed by a changing cast of musicians across various months and years, yet all linked by the same spirit. That vital piece of the Hour DNA which commits to such fluidity as a fundamental part of what the project represents.

Watch the video directed/edited by Matt Ober below:

Subminiature is out on the 14th February via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Larum – O Virga Mediatrix (feat Bill Orcutt)

The recording project of Chet Doxas and Micah Frank, Larum combines woodwind and electronics to create a sound full of detail and intangible depth, something evident on 2022 EP The Music of Hildegard von Bingen Part One, which occupied a unique intersection between the early medieval and avant garde cutting edge. As the title suggested, the release was only the first instalment of the project, and this April Larum will return with appropriately named follow-up The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Part Two. Again the result is almost paradoxical in form, managing to imbue the work of an eleventh-century theologian, mystic and composer not just with contemporary resonance but a sense of pioneering potential. Featuring guitarist and composer Bill Orcutt, single ‘O Virga Mediatrix’ embodies this aesthetic, the track representing a thread which stretches away from the present in both directions, inviting the audience to following towards the mysterious spaces beyond.

MacGregor Burns – Put It All On Me

Described as “a new wave sad boy anthem that is a longing cry to pass the blame,” ‘Put It All On Me’ is the latest single from LA-based singer-songwriter MacGregor Burns. Previous tracks ‘Silent Answers‘ and ‘Can’t Go Back‘ highlighted the artist’s idiosyncratic style, “combining nostalgic nods […] while forging a new path forwards, [looking] for further clues in the fertile space between the familiar and the new.” ‘Put It All On Me’ continues this vibe but with some stylistic differences. Namely the lack of guitar, leading to a decidedly wistful sound that nods to the likes of the Psychedelic Furs but nevertheless carries its own bright forward motion.

‘Put It All On Me’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Royal Oakie Records – Canyon Country: LA Fires Benefit Compilation

“[Displays] a sense of cohesion and togetherness which hints at the radical potential within the collective, something we need to remember now more than ever as the suite of challenges which marks the contemporary moment only widens and deepens,” so we wrote of if only i could fly, a compilation in support of those affected by the LA fires organised by  Little Mazarn, hemlock and Jolie Holland. But we could easily have been writing about Canyon County, the new benefit compilation from Royal Oakie Records too. Featuring a mix of unreleased and album tracks from the likes of Holy Matter, Half Stack, Michael James Tapscott and Lauren Helene Green, the comp is what the label describe as a “love letter to Los Angeles and its surrounding canyons and coastlines,” as embodied by the languid warmth of Sandy’s ‘Band Without A Song’.

The Taxpayers – At War With The Dogcatchers

Portland, Oregon emo outfit The Taxpayers might have been on hiatus from releasing new music for going on a decade, but this March puts an end to that. Released via Ernest Jenning Record Co., their latest full-length Circle Breakers reckons with the changes in the world in the time since their previous record, with understandably dark results. Alongside the global pandemic, continued climate breakdown and turn towards reactionary politics were a series of personal tragedies too, and the record sees The Taxpayers pushing through a seemingly unending experience of loss with both fury and hope for something better. Latest single ‘At War With The Dogcatchers’ draws on a run-in with the titular enemies after a deceased friend’s dog was seized and taken to a pound. A song about “loving the broken things in spite of the dogcatchers of the world,” as the band explain, “and trying to find meaning in those things amidst the tragedies.”

Watch the video by Preston Spurlock below

Circle Breaker will be released on the 21st March via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Yael S. Copeland – 2AM

“Unable to lose the romantic notion that things can be different, can improve. Mellow Submarine looks for good thoughts amid the chaos, and might just have you believing they are just around the corner after all.” So we wrote of Yael S. Copeland‘s most recent full-length back in 2023, applauding the manner in which the Queens-based songwriter looks to preserve the small, fleeting moments within an often calamitous world. Detailing an after hours encounter between two receptive strangers, new single ‘2AM’ is no different, offering a distinctively nocturnal tone to conjure a sense of ethereal romance. A sort of lightning-in-a-bottle sensation both characters can only cling to while it lasts. “You know we / Will probably be / only friends / for this night,” as Copeland sings in the chorus, “Maybe till the morning?”

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The title track introduces the style with a fittingly intimate sound, positioning Allred next to the likes of Phil Elverum in his ability to weave mournful and often idiosyncratic soundscapes without sacrificing human warmth. “[The single] is about longing for a sense of community when friends are vastly scattered far and wide,” Allred explains. “Navigating the complexities of life and feeling a profound appreciation for old normalcy whilst reaching for an appreciation for what I have and who I am now.”

The details at the track’s heart are ostensibly mundane. Watching (or missing) Jeopardy, watching dogs at the dog park, walking a graveyard after dark. The individual threads which constitute the fabric of a fulfilled life. And with these in mind, the repeated refrain—”I want to belong in the beautiful world”—starts out like a plea but comes to represent something of a mission statement. The intention behind the track, and indeed the record more generally, making itself clearer with every repetition.

Watch the video directed by Allred and Fay Funk below:

The Beautiful World will be released on the 24th January via Erased Tapes and you can pre-order it now.

Photograph by Jayden Becker. Album photography by David Allred with creative direction by Robert Raths

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Thus shimmering opener ‘Find Me Where You Look’ is vibrant with the possibilities of burgeoning love, while introspective follow-up ‘The Woods’ contemplates the past from a position of apparent strength. “A few years back I did an exercise where I took a several-hours-long night walk in the woods of Maine and thought through every year of my life from birth to present in chronological order, remembering as much as I could,” as Terepka explained. “I was surprised by how many forgotten memories were stirred up and came out of it with a feeling of empathy for my younger self, as well as a strong desire to not repeat past mistakes.”

But looks closely and the song shows the finest of cracks, fissures inevitably tested by the weight of any serious love. And with these flaws comes the foreshadowing of an eventual fracture. “I know that you love me now / Makes me want to shake off the rest of these ghosts,” as Terepka sings, though ghosts are nothing if not persistent. By the time ‘The Field’ rolls around, there’s a cloud over things. A gentle piano line adds an undeniably romantic tone yet there is disquiet too. The sense of communication beginning to fail. The line between two people glitching. The ominously titled ‘Silence’ follows with something like desperation, as though things are starting to slip through the fingers and all there’s left to do is grasp blindly at what you can.

Closer ‘Saying It’ serves as a fitting conclusion. A “very direct breakup song” as Terepka describes it, which came together quickly with the urgency of the present moment. “When my relationship fell apart, I wasn’t sure I could release the love songs on this record,” Terepka continues. “Then this song suddenly came together and finished the story. It completes the record and grounds it in present reality.” And direct the track certainly is, offering a picture of separation in all of its mundane torture. The cracks now open, the fracture complete. “Golden hour with my dog / Trampling down this forest floor,” as the opening verse plays. “While you grab the rest of your boxes / With your parents helping you out /Six years on the last of you is gone from our house.”

It was so good
It dug into my heart
It turned my whole world into a garden
It dried out under the light

Saying goodbye

Not Yet is out now and available from the Nate Terepka Bandcamp page.

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Their first release since 2016’s And Then Like Lions, Blind Pilot‘s forthcoming album In The Shadow Of The Holy Mountain finds the Oregon outfit having undergone something of a necessary hiatus. “I was struggling with a lot of fear surrounding expectations of who I was supposed to be,” lead Israel Nebeker says, “I’d lost my path with music.” The time away allowed Nebeker to travel to Scandinavia to reconnect with his Sámi heritage, as well as visit places like Mexico City as part of a humanitarian group helping migrants. “I got the idea to write a song that looks at ideas of ownership and othering, and what it does when we tell people, ‘This is our home, not yours’.” he continues. The new record flowed out in less than a month. Lead single ‘Just A Bird’ introduces the new sound, one possessing all the heart which won fans over to Blind Pilot in the first place, but an extra sense of focus for those energies. Watch the visualizer by Lotte Budai below:

In The Shadow Of The Holy Mountain is out on the 16th August via ATO Records and you can pre-order it now.

Coolhand Jax – Everything Changes All of the Time

After moving on from surf-psych band Sunshine Brothers Inc., Los Angeles-based songwriter Jake Weissman took to the road across America and started working on new demos. The songs would eventually make up the first Coolhand Jax releases, which came out via Spirit Goth Records, and the project has never looked back. Latest single ‘Everything Changes All of the Time’ shows Weissman’s knack for combining bright rhythms with intimate emotion, following a challenging conversation during a car ride which turns towards themes of loss and death. But far from emerging as something bleak, Coolhand Jax instead wrap these ideas in a rich, wistful sound that highlights the romance of such themes. Finding some comfort in the concept of change, if only to feel a sense of movement.

Cooza – Blonde

In June, UK folk songwriter Cooza released Getting Better At Knowing You, a brand new full-length on Folk Boy Records. Described as an album “written for and about his sister Ellie,” the songs might have emerged from a period of mourning, but their intent is to do more than evoke feelings of grief. Because while loss sits at the heart of Getting Better At Knowing You, the record actively works against the totality so often ascribed to the experience. Ellie might not be here in the way she once was, Cooza seems to be saying, but she is far from lost. Single ‘Blonde’ is our first taste of this affirming album and the tender, incredibly intimate emotions found therein.

Getting Better At Knowing You is out now via Folk Boy Records.

G. Himsel – Sweet William

You might know Geoff Himsel as the songwriter behind Portsmouth, New Hampshire trio Bird Friend, but after finding his groove in recent times and writing an abundance of material, he has decided to begin releasing music under the solo moniker G. Himsel for the first time. With an album on the horizon, Himsel has unveiled single ‘Sweet William’ for a glimpse into the world of his sound. A sonic representation of the New England landscape, where expansiveness meets intricate detail and whispered subtleties, resulting in something patient, delicate, and fully attuned to geographies both physical and emotional.

hey i’m outside – Frontyard

“You’re in an overgrown front yard at sunset. The worldwide vibe is kinda off right now but you gotta try anyway.” That’s how Medford, MA’s outfit hey i’m outside describe the vibe of ‘Frontyard’, the first single from their upcoming album. The tone is heartfelt if a little woozy, as though clinging on as everything we know shifts off-kilter. It finds a person trying to preserve the small joys and points of interest they stumble across, even if the attempt is doomed to fail. “saw you in the front yard / looking at flowers, just about dark,” as the first verse plays. “I lined up my camera, I tried to compose / but a fragment of time can only come close.”

Jacob Furr – Take Care

“I was thinking about an old junkyard/antique collection that I know of and how those objects were all once important to someone’s life,” explains Jacob Furr of new track ‘Take Care’. The Texas-based songwriter uses the energies and meaning inherent within such ephemera as a springboard to explore care in a wider sense. What results is every bit as warm and compassionate as anything Furr has written to date, serving as a reminder of both the power of kindness and the need to cultivate such feelings to stave off the selfishness and cynicism so prevalent in these days. “Take care of the well that’s in your heart,” as he sings, “draw deeply on its waters but don’t let down your guard / Because the darkness comes without / The darkness comes within / and it’ll try to take everything you’ve been given.”

Jae Soto – Standing

The solo moniker of Brooklyn-based songwriter and producer Justina-Maria Soto, Jae Soto creates music which exists at the intersection of the traditional and contemporary, with classic songwriting sensibilities merging and interacting with various electronic styles. Released via Switch Hit Records, new album Leave the Light On demonstrates the inventiveness and potential of such a style, showing how an exploratory sound need not lack a sense of meticulous crafting. Single ‘Standing’ is a good place to jump in, introducing the themes of growth and self-care that run across the record. It’s a song which represents “an earnest reflection of the solitary, empty feeling a person can have after coming out of a long, stressful period where they were operating in survival mode,” Soto explains. “It can sort of feel like you’re living as a ghost since the rest of your life hasn’t caught up to shape around the new person you’ve become. Ultimately, the message is ‘I’m still here!'”

Julie Doiron & Astral Swans – Last Night I Saw My Love

Following on from the successful collaborative EP Split with Chad Vangaalen, Astral Swans are now preparing to release Split 2, a second joint EP this time with Canadian songwriting royalty Julie Doiron. Released via Stoner Bird Records and as a limited edition lathe cut vinyl via Red Spade Records, the EP finds two artists at the height of their abilities, however contrasting their styles. Doiron with her earnest invocations of love, Astral Swans with an altogether more sardonic slacker contemplations. Focus track ‘Last Night I Saw My Love’ captures the full nuance of the style—an ode to a lover delivered over great distances which chugs and croons its fondness with a building momentum.

Luke De-Sciscio – Only A Woman Knows

Most people might take a few months to themselves on entering parenthood, getting to grips with the inevitable life changes, but for prolific songwriter Luke De-Sciscio, the process only served up a deeper source of inspiration. Where previous LP Papa painted a couple on the precipice of their new life, latest album Theo sees them fully immersed within it. A collection of songs written and recorded in snatched moments during his daughter’s first six weeks, the record offers an unusually immediate picture of new fatherhood, something furthered by the live-recorded style. Single ‘Only A Woman Knows’ demonstrates the release’s delicate power, where anxiety and self-doubt bubble on the surface of a new wellspring of love.

Madam Sad – Hope For You

Madam Sad, that’s Hamilton, Ontario-based duo Maddison Schreiber and Evelyn Charlotte Joe, is a project which exists in defiance of poverty and disability, functioning both as a source of healing and a way to spite the challenges life has placed in their way. New single ‘Hope For You’ shows the heart which underpins the Madam Sad sound, as well as its willingness to confront difficult things with a compassionate face. “The song title is a way of holding myself accountable to make sure I am always hoping for the happiness of those who have hurt me,” as Schreiber says. “I also do get to a more genuine place where I feel compassion for an ex-lover’s success, and that’s a nice kind of sad.”

‘Hope For You’ is out now via streaming services.

Marisa Finley – Hallelujah (Movin Through Ya)

Exploring the timeless themes of love, loss and growing up, the work of Canadian singer-songwriter Marisa Finley uses a hazy, reflective sound to further its wistful charms. Her debut single ‘Hallelujah’ sees her team up with friend and collaborator Peter Mol, a musician and producer known for work with the likes of Father John Misty and Quincy Jones, and the result is as richly heartfelt as it is melancholic. An indie pop song bathed in ambient textures and sound recordings, as though Finley’s voice emerges through the cloudy fog of her accumulated past to make itself heard. What she has to say delivered with a heavy heart, charting the experience of falling in love prematurely and the slow process of realisation, though always with an assured fondness that respects the time which has passed.

‘Hallelujah (Movin Through Ya)’ is out now via streaming services.

Soot Sprite – I Went Swimming

Next month sees Exeter trio Soot Sprite return with I Went Swimming / Home Among Your Bones, a brand new 7″ double single on Specialist Subject Records. Through releases like album Poltergeist and single ‘Lazy‘, the band have established a cathartic, often confrontational style, calling out the slights and injustices of modern living in search of a sense of self-worth. ‘I Went Swimming’ applies the style to personal relationships, its thundering momentum and impassioned delivery typifying Soot Sprite’s willingness to stand up to all that is toxic and wrong. The track is about “recognising a red flag in your relationship and emotionally shutting down to that person and cutting things off,” as lead Elise Cook explains. “Some people describe this as getting ‘the ick’ but that feels like a trivial term. Sometimes we have to learn from our mistakes and protect ourselves and that’s exactly what this is about.”

The sky is filling up with red flags
And you can’t take that back
I went swimming in the water
And now I only see black

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