In February we previewed Shadow Child, the latest album from Abigail Lapell which was recorded while the Canadian songwriter was pregnant and unsurprisingly explores motherhood. “The tracks emerged stripped back and stark,” we wrote, “a stylistic move at least in part dictated by Lapell’s difficult experiences with IVF and miscarriage that comes to paint the journey to parenthood in all of its too-often unspoken truth.” With the release fast approaching, Lapell has shared the title track along with a video to further introduce this style. “I recently found all my old super 8 films, and I thought this odd little black and white claymation might fit well with ‘Shadow Child’, a song about pregnancy and childbirth – creation and transformation,” she explains. “But when I actually tried pairing the two, it was crazy. The unedited ‘backwards’ visuals fit the song exactly perfectly – like down to the second. Complete with the final reveal of the figure’s shadow, and then my own hands in silhouette, returning it to a formless blob. I couldn’t believe it.”

Shadow Child will be released on the 8th May via Outside Music and you can pre-order it now from the Abigail Lapell Bandcamp page.

Air Mail – Won’t You

Following on from singles ‘Wide Awake (a.m.)’ (“uses a melodic and melancholic style to explore the strange sensation of being faced with disaster at a distance”) and ‘Moss Song’ (“its warm tones and languid rhythms allowing in the outside environment, playing like spring blooming in real time”), Niko Francis’s Air Mail has unveiled debut LP a.m. Continental with latest track ‘Won’t You’. Again falling somewhere between Lenderman-esque alt country and the sun-drenched pop of acts likes Cut Worms, the track explores the sensation of a relationship being slowly dismantled by forces beyond anyone’s control. It meditates not only on the pain of a separation but the enduring fondness that survives beyond physical remove. “As long as words are sincere / and what you want is clear,”  Francis sings in the first verse, “as long as you still feel near, even when you’re far from here / won’t you stay and love me?”

Ben Auld – Red Bandana

This May, Norwich-based artist Ben Auld will release Loserdom, a brand new album via Safe Suburban Home and Repeating Cloud which signals something of a sea change. Whereas Auld’s previous work tended towards the twee end of indie folk, the new record draws on influences like Tony Molina and Teenage Fanclub to offer loud, scrappy and spirited style of power pop. Lead single ‘Red Bandana’ heralds this new sound, as well as the mix of unabashed sincerity and tongue-in-cheek charm which marks his writing. “I was trying to write something that captured the explosive pang that can happen when you reflect on places you’ve lived and people you’ve known,” Auld explains of the single. “That sudden reminder of a life you used to have, the impossibility of returning to it, and the pain of living in the past.”

Frog – Je Nes Sais Pas

When cult favourites Frog put out their 1000 Variations of the Same Song album last year, we didn’t think they were actually aiming for the big four figures. But follow-up The Count arrived hot on the heels of its predecessor and now the New York outfit are already gearing up to release the third full-length in the cycle, Frog for Sale. Described as an album “about how money sometimes gets in the way of love,” the record sees the Bateman brothers take inspiration from the likes of Buddy Holly and Paul McCartney, again switching up the Frog sound while maintaining that idiosyncratic charm that’s made them so beloved. Lead single ‘Je Nes Sais Pas’ is available now, a track of bright energy and fading dreams, not to mention a trademark wit and humour. “You’re just no good anymore since you went away and didn’t darken any door,” as Bateman sings in one typical verse. “Now you got your hair like Anna Wintour except poor.”

Jillian Lake – Human

“Attuned to emotional forces and their significant gravitational pull, namely the strange tension of watching a loved one attempt to navigate a difficult period, willing more than anything to save them from the turmoil but conscious of being dragged into the mire yourself.” So we wrote of ‘Cold Where You Are’ by Jillian Lake last month, a single which embodies the balance between compassion and suffering which marks the Vancouver-based songwriter’s work. Now Lake has shared brand new single ‘Human’ and this balance has never been more evident. It’s an intensely personal song which reckons with the self in the most intimate way possible, displaying Lake’s turn towards richer arrangements while still evoking the austere stillness of an empty room. A place where there is nowhere to look but inwards, no matter how uncomfortable. “’Human’ is a song I wrote about the fear that you’re losing pieces of yourself, and starting to not recognize yourself,” Lake explains. “I remember the first time I saw the Eiffel tower I was so amazed and astonished. When I went back to Paris years later I just stared at it and didn’t really feel anything. It scared me that I lost that sense of wonder. I missed the old version of myself.”

‘Human’ is out now via streaming services.

Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – Wing Song

We’ve followed the idiosyncratic, ever-inventive songwriting of Matthew Squires for a number of years now, from his ‘Ballad of Norm MacDonald‘ and quasi-cover ‘Poor Men Southeast of Portland‘ to ‘Song of a Cactus‘ in 2024. Now, having moved to Ithaca, New York, Squires has teamed up with Zach Totta of Sunk Coast for a new track, and the result is no less distinctive. With vocals that rival Daniel Johnston in their ability to echo Kermit the Frog, the song is classic Matthew Squires, proving that genuinely compassionate music need not leave playfulness or strangeness at the door. “In the face of the absurd, it’s there I’ll find my answer,” he sings in one fitting verse, “I’ll decode the hidden words inside the movements of a dancer: / It’s the story of a king who forgot if he has merit / He sprouts himself some wings and then he sings ‘til all can hear it.”

Old Amica – Bländverk

“A record which explores time with Old Amica’s signature care and patience […] suspended in a negative space seemingly disconnected from anything tangible, memories floating by in abstract grace.” That’s how we described the Swedish duo’s album För alltid back in 2024, again noting how their blend of organic and digital sensibilities manages to evoke memory in all of its emotional depth. With a new full-length set for release next month via Whitelabrecs, Old Amica are now back with ‘Bländverk’, a spare piano-based track that again explores the poignant, often ethereal world of recollection. Stretched across ten minutes, the song mimics the gauzy filter memory can bring, where the reality of a moment is softened, a monument worn smooth by the passing of time.

Sulka – All Bets Off

This summer Glasgow-based songwriter Lukas Clasen, AKA Sulka, will release new full-length Bute on Lost Map and No Soap Records. Following last year’s single ‘Halloween’, that as we said previously combined “subdued vocals with an eerie backdrop of distorted guitars and synths,” he has now released a second track from the album to further whet appetites. Titled ‘All Bets Off’, it’s an ostensibly charming indie pop song that nevertheless delves into a toxic relationship. And not your average one either. Written from an equine perspective, it explores the exploitation at the heart of horse racing. “The song was partly inspired by a storyline in the TV show The Sopranos, where Tony buys a race horse and develops a genuine love for it,” Clasen explains. “I thought writing a song from the horse’s perspective would make an interesting device for exploring the ups and downs of a volatile relationship”

Tory Silver – Microwave

Pittsburgh-based Tory Silver makes a brand of indie rock that she says “[channels] the small joys and inevitable uncertainties of residing in a body.” She has a new record, In Through the Front with Lasers, coming at the end of May via Michi Tapes and has unveiled new single ‘Microwave’ in anticipation. The song is set in the cold chill of dawn, our narrator sat bleary-eyed in their kitchen, enjoying the quiet ahead of a day of selling their body for what Silver describes in an Instagram post as a “silly grocery job under crapitalism.” There’s a healthy does of existential dread sure, but there’s also enough garage rock crunch for it to feel rousing too. An anthem for the masses forced to drag themselves out of bed every morning to keep on keeping on.

Scrambled eggs
On my plate
Getting cold
Microwave

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Well, it turns out the album is titled The Great Golden Gloom and is set for release next month. vireo have now returned with a brand new single to further our whet appetites. Originating in a simple banjo loop, the track came to life through a gradual process of deepening, with lead Chris Beaulieu and drummer Anthony Capozzi staying up all night adding different layers of sound to the loop using whatever was to hand. Multiple guitars enter the fray, as well as bells and a floor tom, not to mention a pie plate mic’d through a distorted amp and recordings of scribbling and paper being torn. “From that base, we sculpted a song,” Beaulieu explains. “Suzanne [Gomes] added flute and vocoder vox to tie it all together.” A fitting process for a track described as concerning the limits of one’s capabilities, and one which creates a sound as rich as anything vireo have put out to date.

The Great Golden Gloom will be released on the 14th November.

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Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Those lines, from Mary Oliver’s celebrated poem ‘Wild Geese’, feel relevant to Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, the new album by Pittsburgh songwriter Merce Lemon. Like Oliver, Lemon’s work is rooted firmly in place, drawing much inspiration from the natural world and communities who live in harmony with it, what the poet Maxime Kumin once referred to as “the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal.”

Following the release of her 2020 debut Moonth, Merce Lemon found the process of making and performing music began to lose its sparkle. “[It] was just something I’d always done, and I didn’t want to lose the magic of that,” she describes. “But I was just having less fun.” So she put music on the back burner a while and got, quite literally, back to basics. “I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time I slowly accumulated songs.”

The result of that slow accumulation is a collection of nine songs with dirt under their fingernails, equal parts wild and vulnerable as they reckon with the changing tides of love in all its guises. It’s as if this newfound connection to the land provided fertile conditions for more than just vegetable life, that Lemon had found her place in Oliver’s “family of things.” “There’s seeds between all of my teeth, I’ve been eating like the birds,” Lemon sings on opener ‘Birdseed’. “So maybe I’ll grow wings, wouldn’t that be something?” Across the track, she morphs into other animals (“and my wings turn to fins when I’m swimming”), quite literally embodying this connection with the rest of nature. It calls to mind another line from ‘Wild Geese’: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

As it’s title suggests, birds are also the central image on ‘Crow’. “Every year the crows migrate over Pittsburgh,” Lemon describes. “I wrote this song after sitting on my roof in 2019, watching the sky turn black with fluttering wings, flying in mass towards the blue water tower planted on the hill in the distance.” The song is an exploration of several of the record’s central themes—loneliness versus community, longing and belonging, her relationship with the city of Pittsburgh—and it seems important to mention that Lemon grew up in the city, embedded in it’s creative scene by her parents from a very early age and raised as part of one big communal family of artists and musicians.

So when Lemon sings, “They’d make a city of this ghost town,” she could be singing of this community. Something of an ecosystem in itself, a web of connections and relationships that form a support network which cradles and nurtures its members. Like many of the songs on the record, the track shifts gear at around the halfway mark, whipping up into a squall of noisy guitar and full-throated vocals to lend a raw passion to the climax.

Lemon’s songwriting is often gentle, careful and sincere ruminations on love and solitude, but this underlying ferality is perhaps the record’s biggest strength, and the most obvious step forward from Moonth. A reminder the soft animal can still bear its teeth, a kind of wildness that turns heartfelt, mid-tempo folk rock songs into blown-out anthems, building towards crescendos of wailing guitar and pure feeling. Take ‘Slipknot’ with its runaway chorus and shrinking guitar or the dark and crunchy ‘Foolish and Fast’ that seems suffused with a barely restrained energy.

Perhaps the best example is ‘Backyard Lover’, a sober reflection on grief and all that comes with it. “Now I am falling to a dark place” Lemon sings, “Where just remembering her death’s about all I can take”. The song feels like all the album’s threads gathered together and woven into something sad and beautiful. Part resigned, part melancholic, part furious. And it’s the latter emotion that eventually boils over. “But nothing’s good enough, you fucking liar” she growls before a storm of guitar and crashing percussion engulfs everything.

But even in the wildest moments, a tranquillity sits at the heart of Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, quiet and immutable. That underlying stillness of the world, something which could be mistaken for the sting of loneliness on the surface, but is revealed to be a balm and comfort if only you open your heart and let it in. As if to reinforce this, the closer and title track is perhaps the most sedate moment on the record, all patient acoustic guitar and heartfelt vocals. “And a tree fell, I smell the wood,” Lemon sings, as close to nature, and perhaps herself, as she could ever be. “And the bark is coming off / I write my words down on it.”

Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild is out now via Darling Records. Get a copy from the Merce Lemon Bandcamp page.

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Our first glimpse of an EP forthcoming via AWAL, new single ‘wes anderson (your dog)’ was conceived in a fit of boredom during a screening of Anderson’s Asteroid City, and channels the experience into a sound capable of exploring wider themes. Guitar from LA-based producer and musician AYUSH and drums by New York’s Giulianna Iapalucci (pka Rocco!) flesh out the track, and mixing from Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and mastering by Nick Garcia make this perhaps the most collaborative boyhood. release to date.

It’s a slow creeper which looks to escape the sluggish rhythm of its present situation, evolving with an organic grace into something dreamy enough to transcend the moment. “Feeling stuck (but free to leave) in my seat echoed the feeling of being stuck (but free to leave) a relationship that isn’t working anymore, he describes. “This song is an ode to the monotony of a certain kind of cyclical dysfunction.”

‘wes anderson (your dog)’ is out now via streaming services.

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The recording project of Chicago-based violinist and songwriter Mallory Linehan, Chelsea Bridge is something of a shapeshifting entity. One as likely to entice the listener in with hazy dreamscapes as it is blast them with intense noise, willing to present sensual and detached sensibilities side by side. Perhaps not a shapeshifter, then, but rather something fluid, an amorphous thing able to exist across and between fixed points. It is therefore fitting that new album K, coming next month via Whited Sepulchre, could be described as both the most accessible and experimental Chelsea Bridge record to date. A collection of songs which sees Linehan reach for pop sensibilities as naturally as she might classical or avant garde, as though to prove such a distinction is of little consequence to an artist fully embracing an intuitive mode of working. Single ‘The Morning’ introduces the result, where plucked violin seems to work hand over hand to tease a lush pop soundscape into life.

cryer mya – Leylines

Based in south London by way of Bristol, cryer mya is the new recording project of songwriter Rishi Saluja. Having previously played in bands with psychedelic influences, Saluja uses the moniker to combine such sensibilities with more personal tastes in soul and folk, resulting in a richly realised sound sure to grab the ears of fans of Sam Evian and Alice Phoebe Lou. Lead single ‘Leylines’ provides the first taste of the cryer mya style, taking a languid summer rhythm and populating it with vocals both heartfelt and searching, the easygoing warmth belying the depth of a track which explores themes of spirituality and mystery.

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

 Ead Wood – Menu

Ead Wood might hail from Bristol in the UK, but their Americana-inflected sound positions them closer to acts like Friendship than any of their British brethren. Following on from last year’s EP A Sparkling Gift, the outfit have returned with new single ‘Menu’ on Breakfast Records. A song which typifies the balance between sincerity and playfulness which marks the Ead Wood sound, delving into an ostensibly mundane situation to reveal the deeper meanings beneath the surface. “‘Menu’ is a (somewhat) lighthearted song about decision making anxieties,” as lead Ed Soles explains. “[That feeling] of being frozen in fear of making the wrong choice, even in those situations where it may not seem to even matter. This is never more apparent than ordering at a restaurant, where I often get the same as whoever I’m with to avoid having to make my own decision, even if it’s not something I want.”

‘Menu’ is out now via Breakfast Records and available from Bandcamp.

Holy Matter – Prince Gloom

This autumn, Leanna Kaiser will release her debut album under her Holy Matter moniker. Titled Beauty Looking Back, the record explores “the changing seasons of life and the passage of time,” featuring intimate meditations on the cyclical patterns of past, present and future that attempt to capture the paradox of time and how we experience it. Namely, how things seem at once immutable and ever-changing. “Holy Matter comes from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers,” Kaiser explains. “There’s one passage that has stayed with me, since – a page with the repeated mantra ‘I change; I am the same.’ This, I would say, is the best description of what this album is about.” Latest single ‘Prince Gloom’ is dreamy and diaphanous, unfurling in a slow, almost tropical swirl.

Japandroids – Chicago

Seven years after their last record, Vancouver indie rock legends Japandroids have announced one last album before they lay the project to rest. Billed by duo Brian King and David Prowse as a parting gift to fans, Fate & Alcohol seems intent on going out in a blaze of glory. “On our last record we wanted to broaden the definition of a Japandroids song,” King explains, “and purposely left our demos quite open and malleable so that we had more flexibility to experiment in the studio.” If lead single ‘Chicago’ is anything to go by, this translates to a sound that’s bolder and more widescreen than anything Japandroids have made to date. Which is saying something for a band who have always been unapologetically maximalist, combining punk rock energy with good-time, fists-in-the-air classic rock.

Kitty Fitz – Laughing Stock

Inspired by both 90s power pop and contemporary pop songwriters like Lorde and Caroline Polachek, the work of London’s Kitty Fitz combines a sometimes chaotic, danceable energy with candid and introspective explorations of turbulent relationships and self-doubt. Less poppy than last year’s debut EP All My Own Stunts, new single ‘Laughing Stock’ has been honed on the live circuit for over a year, forgoing the more bombastic synth pop elements in favour of something a little more poignant. What Fitz describes as “the epitome of me attempting to pass off my own fear of commitment and rejection as character flaw, as being cool and aloof, or once again feeling in a way ‘unloveable,'” the song’s breezy surface is something of a facade, beneath which squirm anxious thoughts and fears.

Maya Ruth – oblivion

“Chapped lips / But nothing like the harshness of smoke / We fall asleep restlessly / Counting the years on our toes.” So sings Maya Ruth in the opening of new single ‘Oblivion’. A song which began life as a poem before morphing into a grungy rock hit, the track mines the banality of every day life for its inherent absurdity, offering a bittersweet sound of sweet textures and edgy bite. The result is both alluring and slightly unnerving, as though beneath the monotony of our normal experience lies something more exciting, something more dangerous. “Die with me here / And you’ll be asking for more,” as Ruth sings in the chorus. “Doesn’t it scare you? / But don’t you feel good?”

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

Merce Lemon – Backyard Lover

Following recent single ‘Will You Do Me a Kindness’, what we called “a song that ebbs and flows between quiet introspection and a wild, barely-restrained energy,” Pittsburgh songwriter Merce Lemon has announced a new record, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. Released via LA label Darling Records, the album promises to marry quiet vulnerability with cathartic power, something immediately apparent on lead single ‘Backyard Lover’. What starts as a warm and swaying country song, complete with propulsive percussion and wistful pedal steel, gathers into a sharp point of wailing guitar and emotional release. It’s a glimpse at a theme that winds throughout the record, and Lemon’s work in general.  “So many of my songs are touched by and explore death, specifically in relation to the loss I experienced of my best friend when I was fifteen years old,” she explains. “That loss has forever changed me and who I am in my relationships to lovers, friends, family.”

Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild will be released on 27^th September via Darling Records. Pre-order a copy now from the Merce Lemon Bandcamp page.

Nuisance – Holy Basil

Over recent years, few could have done more to work against the traditional studio-based recording process than William Seidel and Ryan Weber of Nuisance. Whether working as part of Eric & Magill or REW<<, Weber has created albums in some of the world’s remotest areas while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, while Seidel has worked on music in hotels and mini-cab taxis during his extensive travels. Not to mention their development of the virtual sounds database Poetic Devices which underpins Nuisance releases. The pair are now back with Squash Blossom Necklace, a new full-length which furthers their exploration of possibilities within this frame of working, bending genre conventions in order to incorporate pop, folk, electronic and classical sensibilities into something unique to them. Listen to single ‘Holy Basil’ now:

Sylvia – Found and Lost

With members hailing from all over Australia, Sylvia is a Melbourne/Naarm-based band which is equally diverse in its points of reference. Gemma (vocals/guitar) is one half of dream pop duo Earache, Murray (drums) used to power Brisbane noise-rock outfit No Sister, Dee (bass) also plays in dystopian industrial band Red Hell while Sean (guitar) spent time in powerviolence as part of Canberra’s Hygiene. United as Sylvia, the result draws on all of this past experience to create something straddling shoegaze, power pop and indie rock, while maintaining a certain intensity of noise too. New EP II is a good place to jump in, with single ‘Found and Lost’ seeing noisy rock and twee pop collide in a short, sharp burst.

variety – Plover

Earlier this year, Austin-based outfit variety—That’s Jordan Emmert (Porcelain/Pleasure Venom), Nick Stout (New Strangers), Rhys Woodruff (Borzoi/Leche) and Zach Wood (Borzoi)—released ‘Plover’, the first single of their forthcoming album pencilled for release this autumn. A twitchy rush of anxious energy, the song uses the titular wader and ornithological themes more generally to paint a picture of an ecosystem gripped by a constant tension. As though every environment is a network of individuals with competing desires, be they animal or human, and each organism is set on edge by the presence of everything else. Watch the video directed by Taylor Browne below:

‘Plover’ is out now and the variety album is coming soon.

Wild Pink – The Fences of Stonehenge

Following on from 2022’s hit ILYSM and John Ross’s successful collaboration with Laura Wolf under the moniker lilts, Wild Pink have signed with the good folks at Fire Talk and announced new full-length album, Dulling The Horns. But if Ross’s recent output has seen discursions into dreamy and often ornate pop styles, the new record is a recentering of Wild Pink as a rock band. One ready to be more immediate, less polished and finely crafted. “I wanted to make economical songs,” as Ross explains. “Music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking.” First single ‘The Fences of Stonehenge’ leads the way, heralding not only a fresh collection of songs but what feels like a new era for the band. One which finds them revitalised and ready to commit wholeheartedly all over again.

Dulling The Horns is out on the 4th October via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

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Back last summer we featured ‘Froze Up’ by Brooklyn songwriter Alexei Shishkin, from his record Goodbye Summer on Rue Defense. The track “serve[d] as an entry point for those unfamiliar with his jazz-inflected pop rock style,” as we put it back then. Shiskin followed that with another album, dagger, released back in February and, nothing if not prolific, is now readying another new record, Open Door Policy, which will come out in June via Candlepin Records. Latest single ‘Bermuda’ offers a glimpse of what to expect, combing lap steel and nylon guitar into something full of bright rhythm, while Shiskin’s slightly wry vocals add an almost Berman-esque tone.

I know when we’re older
We’ll be so hungover
That our eloquence is gone
We’ll see
Find me when you wake up
Cut the wedding cake up
And stay up until the break of dawn

Animal, Surrender – After

The project of Peter Kerlin (Sunwatchers and Chris Forsyth & Solar Motel Band) and drummer Rob Smith (Grey/Smith, Rhyton, Pigeons, D. Charles Spear), Animal, Surrender! occupies the intersection of post-rock, folk and jazz. Lead by bass and decorated with an array of details, the band’s sound looks to conjure small worlds of their own, with arrangements often warm and weird and caught between fondness and unease. New single ‘After’, a reimagining of the Mike Wexler song of the same name, is the ideal introduction to the self-titled Animal, Surrender! debut coming soon on Ernest Jenning Record Co. A track which lives up to the band’s name, sitting with the tension between the human and animal tendencies within us, and how our determination to eradicate the unpredictability of the natural world has come to hasten its destruction.

Ghost Fan Club – Shoulders

We have featured Tyler Costolo’s Ghost Fan Club project a couple of times in recent years, most recently with the single ‘Crutch’, a song which continued to display a softer, more nuanced style to Costolo’s output as Two Meters. In July he will release a self-titled EP via Knifepunch Records which promises to add a new edge (plus drums from Swim Camp‘s Tom Morris) to explore themes of depression, grief, instability, and lost time. Lead single ‘Shoulders’ dives headlong into these difficult topics, capturing in raw detail the ordeal of trying to accept and live with feelings of depression while laying awake at night. “When I was young I worried the pain would never go away,” Costolo sings in the opening line. “I should have known this is just the way I am.”

IAN SWEET – Anthems For A Seventeen Year​‐​Old Girl

Has there been a more evocative song in the twenty-first century than ‘Anthems For A Seventeen Year​‐​Old Girl’? Feeling oddly timeless even when it released back in 2002, the track seems to lose none of its melancholy magic as the years go by. If you need further proof, step forward this new cover by Jilian Medford’s IAN SWEET, which maintains the original’s telephone line crackle and potent melodrama and adds just a little more bombast. “This song hits different for me now than it did when I was actually seventeen,” Medford describes. “It so poignantly nails the difficulty of trying to exist within the moment of being a teenager while you’re simultaneously looking towards the inevitable transitions looming on the horizon.”

kennedy mann – It wasn’t just you, i felt it too

Best known as the lead of Philadelphia dream pop band Highnoon, songwriter kennedy mann has recently begun to create music under their own name too. Clocking in at less than 90 seconds, latest single ‘It wasn’t just you, i felt it too’ is the definition of short and sweet. What they describe as an “itty bitty lil ditty, full of love,” it’s an acoustic indie pop song that’s full of the fizzy energy of a new friendship, swimming along with a sense of impatient possibility. Soft and vulnerable but full of quiet joy, it has the feeling that the saturation of the world has been turned up, everything looking a little more vivid and colourful now this person is in their life. “And something tells me we’ll be friends for life,” as Mann sings at the close, “I’ve got a feeling that I’m right.”

Nick Delffs – Power and Position

“This world is a prison / But there must be a way out / If you find a way you better take it now.” So sings Nick Delffs on ‘Power and Position’, the lead single from his upcoming album Transitional Phase, out this summer on Mama Bird Recording Co. “A song about the contemplation of power struggles while in pursuit of collaboration and harmony,” as Delffs puts it. “It’s my way of grappling with the cosmic dissonance and the comedy of failure and stubbornness.” The idea is conveyed via a danceable new wave groove, the song’s thematic shackles shaken off with loose-limbed confidence, providing both a cautionary tale and soothing consolation to anyone who finds themselves pulled out of shape by the crude forces of our world.

Once you get a little
It’s never enough
Once you get a taste
it’s in your blood
So rule your little kingdom
And just try to hold on
Take what you can before you lose it all

Watch the video directed, edited and filmed by Adam Wright at DayMoon Films below:

Transitional Phase is out on the 26th July via Mama Bird Recording Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Richard Tripps – Blue Eyed Open Sky

This July songwriter and multi instrumentalist Richard Tripps is releasing new album Between the Morning via Perpetual Doom. Recorded on a 4-track tape recorder in his tent cabin by the river in Big Sur, the album takes inspiration from the lo-fi aesthetic of acts like The Range of Light, The Velvet Underground, White Fence and early Oh Sees to offer a sound full of texture. ‘Blue Eyed Open Sky’ shows how evocative the style can be, its balance of upbeat rhythm and hazy tape tones capturing a mood somewhere between carefree calm and wistful reflection. An easy meandering sound which not only evokes the river next to which it was created, but in its direct, imperfect immediacy, feels porous to the entire surrounding environment.

vireo – Cloudgazers

“When’s the last time a bigwig laid on their back and watched the clouds?” So asks Chris Beaulieu of vireo on their new single ‘Cloudgazers’. Following last year’s charmingly homespun single ‘Big Elsewhere’, the Pittsburgh indie pop outfit return with something equally endearing. It’s a soft and gauzy song that evokes the act of the title with warm textures, gentle electronics and little squiggly guitar lines. At once dreamy and organic, it makes a pretty convincing case that the world would be a better place if we all took the time to look up and wonder every once in a while. So why not put on your headphones, find a nice grassy hill and let your anxieties melt away as you watch the sky above?

Why Bonnie – Dotted Line

The latest act to join Fire Talk‘s stellar roster, Why Bonnie have released new single ‘Dotted Line’ as a taste of what to expect from the band’s next phase. Lead Blair Howerton describes how the song was written under “the weight of capitalism,” and the track’s prevailing tones conjure that strange mix of desperation and mourning which comes with living within a society of unquenchable desires. “I was thinking of all the things we’re told are markers of success, and how at this rate, I’ll probably never have any of them,” Howerton explains. But rather than succumbing to the despair of this knowledge, Why Bonnie instead offer a building defiance, as though deciding to fashion past regrets and naivety into some talisman against the devils looking to make their deals.

I should’ve known better
Turns out it was a lie
I should’ve known better
Than to sign on the dotted line
I should’ve known better

‘Dotted Line’ is out now via Fire Talk Records and available from Bandcamp.

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The song’s crux is its title and and chorus, a phrase inspired by Colin Miller, with whom Merce Lemon released a split single of Will Oldham covers earlier this year. “The phrase ‘will you do me a kindness’ came from a YouTube video Colin showed me while we were recording last spring,” Lemon explains. “This song started with those words, and I built a story around it.”

It’s a story that relies more on symbolism than narrative thrust, evoking a thick, enveloping sense of nostalgia and yearning so sweet it stings. “Some of the imagery came from pictures Colin sent me of his home at Haw Creek,” she says, “especially the collection of outdoor chairs that the storms often blow around in his front yard.” A scene evoked by the song itself, where quiet domesticity is disturbed by forces unseen but no less capable of rearranging one’s entire experience of the world.

Will you do me a kindness?
Point the sun
Right into my flesh
I want
Nothing left
Will you do me a kindness?

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The title of Adam Spry’s forthcoming album Slightly Off Kilter gives a hint as to what to expect from the San Francisco songwriter. Dispatches from an artist somewhat out of whack with the world, trying to create and communicate in a society which hardly values such things. But with wry humour and a few coats of seventies rock polish, Spry plants his flag regardless, and single ‘Rotten Mausoleum’ captures the bravery of such an act with its tongue-in-cheek humour, however futile it might seem. “Walking through the streets of Rome, I kept picturing an emperor who ‘went into the family business’ so to speak,” Spry explains of his inspiration. “He just wanted to play the lute and study philosophy with his friends. Sick and tired of the class disparity around him, he decided to have the old statues torn down. He was of course killed and replaced with someone who would rule with an iron fist and was subsequently erased from history.”

Emperor made of marble
All you do is stare
Rotten Mausoleum
There’s someone in my chair

Check out the video filmed by Spry himself and edited by Matt Kreizenbeck below:

Slightly Off Kilter will be released on the 24th March and you can pre-order it now.

Bailey Miller – cul-de-sac

“A sound best described as translucent,” was how we described Bailey Miller’s Still Water, released last year on Whited Sepulchre Records. “Not too clear, not too fogged, any ethereality countered by directness, yet nothing allowed to be too grounded for long.” This February sees Miller return with love is a dying, a follow-up record which forgoes some of the nuance and layering in favour of a more forthright tone. Directness as the prime focus. Intention unmasked and offered up. Single ‘cul-de-sac’ gives an indication of what such a change sounds like, its hushed and understated style made almost cavernous by the sense of space Miller conjures around it. An echo which carries the full weight of the dark which surrounds any instance of love.

Crosslegged – Automatic

Ahead of brand new full-length Another Blue, which releases at the end of the month, Keba Robinson’s Crosslegged has unveiled a new track, ‘Automatic’. The album’s second single following the playfully undulating ‘Only in The’, ‘Automatic’ is a tender and assured grower, its spacious sound unfurling into an all-encompassing warmth before folding back up again, Robinson controlling the mood with an expert hand. By the close the listener is cast out into a hazy drift, anchored only by the crooned vocals, a safe hand ever-present allowing you to close your eyes and enjoy the float.

En Attendant Ana – Same Old Story

Ahead of their new LP, Principa, out next month via Trouble in Mind, Paris-based En Attendant Ana have unveiled single ‘Same Old Story’ to give an indication as to what to expect. A blend of playful indie pop rhythms and post-punk angles, the track whips up a detailed and often disorientating sound, pitching the listener into a funhouse room of mirrors with only the smooth clarity of Margaux Bouchaudon’s vocals as a guide. The sound is intended to represent the band as they appear “behind closed doors,” as they put it, “locked in a mortifying loop, repeating over and over the same gestures of a banal and falsely comfortable scene… until exhaustion,” leading to a sound which captures the idiosyncratic combination of escalation and fatigue typical of a racing mind.

Principa is out on the 24th February and you can pre-order it now.

Grocer – Downtown Side

Following on from last year’s Number’s Game, Philadelphia‘s Grocer are set to return with a brand new EP Scatter Plot on Grind Select. Single ‘Downtown Side’ shows the band pushing further into the volatile blend of pop charm and angular dissonance which has come to be their signature, this time utilising the frantic, twitchy energy to capture personal experiences of anxiety and unease. Because the lyrics deal with lead Nicholas Rahn’s experience of living with Vasovagal Syncope, a condition where specific triggers can cause him to faint, and moreover the secondary anxieties which come along with it. Including the very real fear “that at any given point in time,” as he puts it, “I am actually unconscious and simply experiencing a lifelike dream.”

then I realized…
Was I even alive?
I coulda passed out cold on my walk from home
I could be bleeding from my head on the side of the curb
Am I dreaming that I’m even waiting for a dessert?

Jack Keyes – Skyscraper

Across a series of albums and singles in recent years, Kentucky-based songwriter Jack Keyes has developed a warm and intimate sound somewhere between folk and bedroom pop. With a new full-length due later this year, new single ‘Skyscraper’ serves as both an acknowledgement of collaboration and a reminder to trust one’s own tastes. “[The single] is a celebration of the wonderful musical community I’ve found in Kentucky,” Keyes says “with contributions from friends I’ve met throughout my musical journey in town,” but also “about wanting to be more comfortable in my own choices and in my own skin.” A song which feels like an artist taking stock of how far they have come before setting off on a new journey.

Joanna Mattrey & Steven Long – EP

Next month Joanna Mattrey & Steven Long will release their debut full-length Strider on Dear Life Records. An ambient album written and recorded with a clear set of rules: each track must revolve around one idea and one idea alone. But while this seemingly spartan approach might stand distinct in a genre prone to ambiguous meanderings, Mattrey and Long were endlessly inventive within each song, looking everywhere for possible sounds. That includes a variety of synths, a toy keyboard, a seventies electric Kimball organ and the “curious and magical” Stroh Violin, as well as field recordings
of ice clashing in the Hudson river. Not to mention, as per the liner notes, how the pair “banged, blew on, and bowed various dusty pieces of junk, antiques, and old metal franklin stoves that filled [Mattrey’s] family’s house in upstate New York.”

Jonny G and the Music Factory – Life of Jonny

Next month, Jonny G and the Music Factory (AKA Jonny Gundersen) is releasing his debut full-length album Life of Jonny via Bud Tapes. Having been working as a musician for over decade, the record finds Gundersen in a pretty unique position—in possession of all the hard-won experience required to craft a collection of meaningful songs, yet still retaining the freshness and freedom which comes with a debut. Both the lead single and opener, the title track highlights how powerful such a mix can be, living up to its title to cast an eye over Gundersen’s life and paint a nuanced picture of living and creating. Highly personal details to capture something more universal, from the experience of existing within a working class space to the ups and downs of life in general. What changes within a person, what proves enduring.

Moved back home.
Life is change
I have changed
and now I’m changing again

Pile – Nude With A Suitcase

With new LP All Fiction arriving next month on Exploding in Sound, rock stalwarts Pile have been sharing numerous singles over recent weeks, from the frantic motion of ‘Loops’ to the slow tilting heft of ‘Poisons’. Latest track ‘Nude With A Suitcase’ is no less striking, a dense, tenebrous song which invites the listener inside its cryptic world with what might be alluring shimmer or ominous dread. A fitting ambiguity for an record built around subjectivity and its disorientating pressures, forcing the listener to sit down and examine just what is unfolding around them, even if there is no correct answer at all. Watch the video by Sam Circle with animation from Lynn Tomlinson below:

All Fiction is out on the 17th February via Exploding In Sound and you can pre-order it now.

Romanie – Anthony

Belgian born, Naarm/Melbourne based songwriter Romanie has never been afraid to push into personal territory in her music. 2021’s Little Big Steps delved into themes of loneliness and self-doubt, but new single ‘Anthony’ cuts especially close to the bone. Written after seeing Anthony Hopkins in The Father, and in the aftermath of losing a close relative with dementia, the track combines a pressing energy with passionate delivery to confront the cruelty of the illness while declaring an unwavering love. A promise to go on caring and remembering no matter what is taken away.

Sad Girls Aquatics Club – Who’s Your Witness

A self-described “dramatic duo” from Pittsburgh, PA, Sad Girls Aquatics Club specialise in what they describe as “breakup pop”. First announcing themselves with debut EP Vodkawine back in 2018, the pair (Chelsea Rumbaugh and Marie Mashyna) make sharp and slightly melancholy pop songs that combine personal angst and a sense of wider social critique. They now have a full-length record on the way, and have recently released a couple of singles in anticipation of its release. ‘Who’s Your Witness’ might be the standout, a somewhat facetious wave goodbye to someone or thing that has outstayed its welcome, all wrapped in a 90s alt-rock fuzz.

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This summer saw the release of moss longing, a brand new vireo album which furthers this eco-folk style. Set against a backdrop of wild field recordings and possessing a wilder carefree spirit, lead single ‘Coyote’ introduced the themes of the collection. Songs centring on “climate anxiety, folklore, wanderlust and children’s books” wrapped in Beaulieu’s distinctively earnest tone. “Shaded by a sense of sadness,” as we put it in a preview, “but not beholden to it.”

The mood encapsulates the record as a whole. Be it the meditative kalimba-driven sound of opener ‘Talkings’ or the odd yet upbeat ‘Dance of the Travelling Screams’, vireo’s songs seem permeated by a boundless energy. As though tapping into the land and ecosystems it houses and playing back the rhythms it finds there. Even the more reserved tracks are brought to life in vivid detail, be it the reflective warmth of ‘Kin’ or guarded mystery of ‘Night Eye’, its strange nocturnal tones shimmering mirage-like, a thousand shapes moving in the dark.

The latter hints at something else abundant across the album. Because for all of vireo’s grounding in the natural world, there’s a spiritual or mythic quality to their songs too. The sense something older and more fantastic lies within the wild. That nature is more than the sum of its parts. With its titular magic trout, ‘Prize Fish’ deals with this more directly. A song about losing one’s religion which nevertheless allows another form of wonder into the world.

With moss longing, vireo holds up eco-folk as a kind of renewable creative energy. A source of inspiration to be cherished, held dear and protected with unapologetic vehemence. “I’m out on the water / where the mist whispers / stories indiscernible,” Beaulieu sings on ‘Wist/Mist’. “Let’s whittle the words into something useful / to keep our tiny selves afloat.”

moss longing is out now and available from the vireo Bandcamp page.

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Ahead of a second full-length record due sometime in the near future, Pittsburgh‘s Animal Scream have released brand new single, ‘Fires After Dark’, released via American Hermitage as a 7″ vinyl along with b-side ‘Cinnamon Blue’. The song was written during 2020’s turbulent summer of protest, with duo Chad Monticue and Josh Sickels describing the track as concerning “the essence of creating art during twisted up days, even when you feel out of place and at your most insignificant.” What results is something which lives up to its title, a sound undoubtedly dark and a little chaotic, though its energies are channelled into bright sparks of defiant feeling.

‘Fires After Dark’ is out now via American Hermitage and available as a 7″ single from Bandcamp.

Astra Forward – There, There, Here Is Here

Astra Forward is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer based in London who makes what she describes as “dreamy and intimate songs about the enchantment of nature and the power of human connection.” Latest single ‘There, There, Here is Here’ captures this ethos beautifully, with classic folk stylings as well as a timeless ethereal atmosphere channeling a bond between human emotion and the natural world that feels somehow ancient. It is at once delicate and powerful, existing in a barely-there hush before Pascal Colman’s guitar comes winding out of the shadows with ominous strength. “It feels like this song was written for me, not by me,” Astra Forward describes, “because when my world collapsed, ‘There, There, Here is Here’ was what I needed to hear. My hope is that it can be your medicine too.”

Girlpuppy – I Want To Be There

The recording moniker of Atlanta‘s Becca Harvey, girlpuppy is gearing up to release new album When I’m Alone this autumn on Royal Mountain Records. The involvement of Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) on debut EP Swan led some to label girlpuppy the heir apparent to the sad girl indie folk crown, and latest single ‘I Want To Be There’ does little to dispel the tag. Centring on the time a landlord kicked Harvey and three friends out of the dream home, only for the friends to up and leave for New York, the song paints a self-deprecating picture of emotional distress. “I felt like I had no friends which made me wonder what was wrong with me,” she explains, “which kind of made me spiral into self-hatred. I like to call this one the ‘self-hate anthem’ of the album.”

When I’m Alone is out on 28th October via Royal Mountain Records and you can pre-order it now.

The Human Fly – A New Perspective

Philadelphia/New York outfit The Human Fly have recently released Thrill of Living, a new album on Dead Definition. Opener ‘A New Perspective’ introduces their blend of alt-country and indie rock, as well as the distinctive delivery and lyricism of lead Robert Mathis. A search for a home, or even just a clearer definition of exactly what that might mean. “I need a new perspective / I need a new directive / been nameless as a comet,” he sings, his tone finding a line somewhere between heartfelt sincerity and Berman-esque wryness. Moving through states, seeking something which might not exist.

Maybe home is just perpetually chasing peacefulness
or maybe home is when you find it
and if I do, I can send you the address

Izzy Oram Brown – Mess

Having spent years honing her craft, be it studying musical history or supporting other musicians, Brooklyn‘s Izzy Oram Brown has recently unveiled her debut album, Mess. Despite being Oram Brown’s first real foray into songwriting and production, and irrespective of the title, the album is a careful, finely-tuned collection. The product of time dedicated to music, all the prior learning put to new use. The title track introduces the record’s themes and narrative, and in turn signals the relevance of the title. The inherent messiness of life, be that within the tangled desires and hang-ups of a relationship or a person’s connection to the wider world.

And the birds they sang, their final breaths
And the Tennessee heat pressed down on my chest
I do not remember making this mess
I do not remember making this mess

Pet Owner – Hi-Res

The recording project of Lucerne, Switzerland’s Lea Mathis, Pet Owner combines pop, folk and electronic styles into a transportive, idiosyncratic sound. Ahead of upcoming debut Natural Behaviour on Red Brick Chapel, new single, ‘Hi-Res’ introduces the inventive shapes such a combination can take. Mathis’s vocals skate over a bed of playful electronics, the whole thing ebbing and flowing to add an organic air to the otherwise digital soundscape.

Rachel Angel – Closer to Myself

Miami’s Rachel Angel is set to release new album Midnite Heart Attack next month on Ruzafa Records, an album born of a difficult time spent abroad. The title refers to “a defining moment of reckoning,” Angel explains, “upon which one is confronted with the decision to change or die,” and single ‘Closer to Myself’ goes some way to delineating the result of such an epiphany. A classic country pop song describing a moment of movement from uprooted confusion to the solid foundation of self-assurance. “Roll around in circles feeling lost,” Angel sings, “Got stuck in the britches on a cross / Ring around the rosie / Paint me true,” though soon a direction forms and with it understand:

I’m getting closer to myself
And less to you

And when I finally close my eyes and see
I find that it was always in front of me

Rich Ruth – Older But Not Less Confused

Earlier this summer, Rich Ruth released I Survived, It’s Over, a brand new album on Third Man Records written at home in Tennessee “amidst the quiet and tumult” of a tornado’s aftermath. This juxtaposition informs the near endlessly inventive sound, the record challenging any distinction between order and chaos, hush and noise, and indeed that between humble domestic beauty and the massive sublime. No one track can be representative of a record so adventurous, but ‘Older But Not Less Confused’ is as good a diving in point as any, and the video directed by Brook Linder goes some way to capturing Rich Ruth’s ability to knit seemingly disparate elements into a cohesive system far larger than its constituent parts.

I Survived, It’s Over is out now via Third Man Records and you can get it from the Rich Ruth Bandcamp page.

Sonic Løland & Simen Mitlid – Everything at Once

Back in February we wrote of And Then the Sun Came Up, the debut album Sonic Løland coming later this autumn on Koke Plate. New single ‘Everything at Once’ invites Simen Mitlid to help create something delicate and heartfelt, though the soft indie folk sound of the first half is changed midway through. The sound suddenly becomes distorted, feedback coming from the guitars, as though some alteration has occurred from which there is no return.

And Then the Sun Came Up is out via Koke Plate in September.

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