We’ve covered  Bergen-based songwriter Bo Milli several times in recent months. Most recently with ‘Making Friends’, which we described as “a track which charts the rollercoaster ride of young life through the prism of a hectic night out, capturing a sense of both the carefree abandon and creeping loneliness of late nights, new faces and a sense of endless possibility.” Latest track ‘I’m In’ is equally varied in its peaks and troughs, starting out as a wistful pop number but soon morphing into something bigger, charging things with an indie rock momentum reminiscent of The Beths.

C.O.F.F.I.N – Factory Man

When the drummer is the lead vocalist you know things are going to get hectic. Enter Sydney’s C.O.F.F.I.N, a four-piece rock band who’re here to burn through their frustrations with new full-length Australia Stops. A joint release between Damaged Record Co (Australia), Bad Vibrations (Europe) and Goner Records (North America), the album positions C.O.F.F.I.N as another key member of the furious, glorious generation of rockers emerging from Down Under, joining country mates Last Quokka in their twin motivations of castigating the political landscape and driving social change through sheer momentum. Take single ‘Factory Man’, a rock song in the classic sense, looking shake off the shackles and smash some skulls with its heft and energy.

But when the lights went out
With no rest to give us warning
Machinery ran red
I ain’t living
I ain’t loving
Or hearing your humming song oh no
It’s the stabbed silent of the wish you pled

Watch the video edited by Ben Portnoy below, with Gasometer footage filmed by Zoe Mulcahy, Lansdowne footage by Schooner:

Australia Stops is out now and available from the C.O.F.F.I.N Bandcamp page.

Duffy x Uhlmann – Etch

Duffy x Ulhmann, the new project of Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Gregory Uhlmann, have recently released their debut album Doubles on Orindal Records. An exercise in improvisation built entirely on trust, the record sees the duo lay down patient yet detailed guitar-based duets, and the result is something organic in the way only true intimacy could manage. Single ‘Etch’ is the perfect example, a track shorn of any ostentation to sound entirely natural, as though its gentle rhythms existed long before Duffy x Uhlmann set them down with their guitars. The result invites the audience not so much into the same room as the musicians as the very relationship between them, offering small glimpses of a mutual exchange perpetually ongoing.

Doubles is out now via Orindal Records and available from Bandcamp.

Gabriel Birnbaum – Above A Forest With A House That’s On Fire

Songwriter, producer and composer Gabriel Birnbaum (of Wilder Maker) is preparing to unveil the latest installation of his solo Nightwater project, All the Dead Do is Dream, on Western Vinyl. Nightwater started as a self-applied antidote to election anxiety, with Birnbaum using a Tascam 4-track as a vehicle of escape from the growing dread of the twenty-four hour news cycle. And just as these long nocturnal hours offered relief from terror to the artist, the resulting art came to take on a similar form too. Ambient soundscapes intended to serve a functional purpose, a space into which the listener can submerge themselves away from the surrounding world. All the Dead Do is Dream continues this practice, a sleep aid which looks to tap into pacifying patterns of breathing, and single ‘Above A Forest With A House That’s On Fire’ typifies the mindful, hypnagogic mood.

Watch the visualiser by Jules Evens below which furthers the therapeutic value of the track by reinforcing the breathing rhythms:

Nightwater | All the Dead Do is Dream is out via Western Vinyl on the 3rd November and you pre-order it now.

Montañera – Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista

Earlier this month we featured ‘Un Día Voy a Ser Mariposa‘, the first single from Montañera‘s new album, A Flor De Piel, coming this November (alaso on Western Vinyl). “A track of layered details and searching emotion which seems to be always reaching for some higher plane,” as we put it, taken from a record “of quasi-dreamscapes which push at the borders of reality, drawing the listener into surreal new worlds.” The London-based Colombian artist has now shared second single ‘Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista’, a song which again pushes into ethereal tones while always remaining anchored in the intimacy of María Mónica Gutiérrez’s vocals.

A Flor De Piel is out on the 17th November and you can pre-order it now from the Montañera Bandcamp page.

Otracami – Fold

The first glimpse her debut full-length touching the stove coil, Otracami‘s new single ‘Fold’ is an examination of the contortions people sometimes put themselves through to try to fit into a relationship. The project of New York-based Camila Ortiz, Otracami is an outlet for personal exploration, its songs delving back into the past and untying its knots, attempting to make peace with the present. ‘Fold’ is the perfect example, an almost time-travel style journey back to a very specific moment (Ortiz leaves a party, rides the bus, climbs the stairs to her partner’s apartment) and the swirling thoughts and anxieties that it held.

Watch the video by Sai Tripathi below:

‘Fold’ is out now and available via the Otracami Bandcamp page.

Pony Girl – Highways

Just over a month out from the release of their new record, Laff It Off, Canadian art pop duo Pony Girl have unveiled new single ‘Highways’. The song uses roads as a metaphor for the sense of endless possibility and interconnection experienced when you fall for someone new, what the band describe as “expanding roads of connection that stretch out through time.” Musically it’s lush and dreamy like a night-time drive at the heart of summer, the smooth and sparkly chorus emphasising the themes of heartsick romanticism.

Check out Stephanie Kuse‘s animated video below:

Laff It Off comes out via Paper Bag Records on 27th October. Pre-order it now from the Pony Girl Bandcamp page.

vireo – Big Elsewhere

How many great works of art have been created in the impatient lull of waiting for a pizza? That’s the origin story of ‘Big Elsewhere’, the latest single from Vireo, which was written as a game during a delayed delivery while lead Chris Beaulieu and Suzanne Gomes were cooped up in quarantine. “We each chose a single note or a small melodic phrase to layer on top of each other,” Beaulieu describes. “Then we added a chord progression on top and took turns writing vocal melodies.” Homemade percussion came next (think wooden spoons and mason jars), followed by lyrics, and finally the whole thing was run through a salvaged reel-to-reel tape recorder for just that little extra DIY character. The result is beautiful, despite (or perhaps because of) its humble beginnings.

‘Big Elsewhere’ is out now via streaming services.

Wurld Series – Lord of Shelves

Later this autumn, Aotearoa/New Zealand indie rockers Wurld Series will release The Giant’s Lawn, a brand new record on Meritorio Records and Melted Ice Cream. The record promises to see the band explore new avenues, adding mystical nods to oddball psych and left-field folk, what the press release calls “earthen psychedelia, off-grid community folk, and highly bookish, antipodean snock.” Opening track ‘The Giant’s Lawn Part I’ embraces this weirdness from the off, a rambling, jazzy folk song that feels like meeting a mysterious stranger on a woodland path. But lead single ‘Lord of the Shelves’ is very much the Wurld Series we’ve come to expect, a Flying Nun-style indie rock song that shows the band haven’t abandoned their core foundations.

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With the album due this autumn, Pony Girl have now returned with brand new single, ‘I Believe in Nothing’. A song which again faces up to the demoralising truths of reality without internalising the consequences, opting instead to allow the related thoughts and emotions to merely run off their backs. “Everything is absurd and meaningless, but that’s a positive,” as the band explain. “‘I Believe In Nothing’ is a mantra for detachment, for releasing yourself of strong emotions, for taking control of your life.” The mood is brought to life with the outfit’s distinctively colourful art pop style, building towards a triumphant crescendo which soars high above any strife. Check out the video below, with animation from Shiyi Li:

Laff It Off is out on the 27th October via Paper Bag Records and you can pre-order it now from the Pony Girl Bandcamp page.

Photo by François Mittins, art direction and design by Pascal Huot

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After the success of previous LP Cola, A Beacon School (AKA New York songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Patrick J Smith) has announced a return with brand new full-length yoyo later this year via Grind Select. The previous album was notable for its ability to combine bright pop with shoegaze and electronic elements, and lead single ‘Potion’ suggests the new record furthers this style. A song of sunny tones and pressing energy which provides all the lush textures of dream pop without sacrificing any of the detail or momentum. “‘Potion’ was written in one sitting back in 2019 and has been a live staple since then,” Smith explains. “It’s about feeling a burst of excitement about something new but also the fear that accompanies it.” Check out the video by Chase Wagner below:

yoyo is out on the 13th October 13 via Grind Select and you can pre-order it now.

Bo Milli – Making Friends

Be it the digital age dramas of ‘FOMO‘ or the climate anxiety of ‘Good Kid‘, Bergen-based songwriter Bo Milli is an artist dialled in to the pressing issues of the contemporary moment. Latest standalone single ‘Making Friends’ is no less immediate in its concerns, though its focus has a more timeless quality. A track which charts the rollercoaster ride of young life through the prism of a hectic night out, capturing a sense of both the carefree abandon and creeping loneliness of late nights, new faces and a sense of endless possibility.

‘Making Friends’ is out now and available from the Bo Milli Bandcamp page.

Cal Rifkin – Break My Heart

Based in Washington D.C., Cal Rifkin is the project of Erik Grimm (guitar/vocals), Keith Butler Jr. (drums) and Robin Rhodes (bass) who bonded over a “shared love for greasy Ledo’s pizza, early 90s baseball aesthetics, and rock ‘n’ roll music.” Late last month, the trio released Better Luck Next Time, a five-song EP that plays like a distillation of their signature style, namely hook-laden power pop with singalong choruses, vocal harmonies and enough noisy rock ‘n roll grit to keep the rock heads onside. There’s absolutely no filler across the record, but current favourite ‘Break My Heart’ might be the best introduction. It’s an energetic rock song that skirts the line between cool and sincere, complete with a ludicrously catchy chorus.

So come on and break my heart in two
Could be the best thing you could do

Isabel Crespo Pardo – la l​í​nea será

Based in New York, Isabel Crespo Pardo is a Latinx vocalist, improviser-composer and interdisciplinary artist. Combining music, visual art, text and performance, their work is a web of both composition and improvisation that sets out to explore (and then evolve in response to) what they describe as “the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit.” Later this month, Pardo will release an album, el rostro (des​)​cubierto, on Lobby Art Records, “forty minutes of wondering and wandering with hand over heart,” as they put it, “aching in solitude and giving and craving forgiveness.” Lead single ‘la l​í​nea será’ introduces the record’s sound, which sees Pardo joined by Afarin Nazarijou (qanun) Skyler Hill (electric guitar) and Seajun Kwon (acoustic bass) to create something that sounds somehow novel and timeless.

Katie Von Schleicher – Elixir

Since her last record Consummation released in 2020 on Full Time Hobby and Ba Da Bing Records, Katie Von Schleicher has released a handful of singles; first two b-sides from the album and then standalone piece ‘could’ which she described as “a fun foray into the world of strings.” Fast forward a couple of years and the Brooklyn-based artist has unveiled a new single, ‘Elixir’. Released via Durham, NC label Sipsman, the track is a duet with Aly Spaltro (aka Lady Lamb) and showcases a lighter, more playful side to Von Schleicher’s work, all droll delivery and cuttingly sincere lyrics. “How can I reach out to the poems that I’ve loved, embrace plain speech more,” Von Schleicher asks of the song’s inspiration, “and how, for just one goddamned time, can I bring my sense of humour into my music?”

my body with blood – Time and Again

‘Time and Again’ introduces the music of Asheville-based slowcore project, my body with blood. Together with Eli Whitlow (drums), Ivo Pestana (bass) and Cass Dayton (backing vocals), they make a melancholic but never morose sound, probing into the frustrations of a repeating pattern. “I lost a friend, his father tried / To bring me back to Jesus,” goes one of the verses. “The year will end / And I’ll count the ways that I’ve failed.” But there’s a certain sense of reflection to the tone, a perspective only gained by some modicum of distance, and with it the prospect that such cycles might at least be weathered if not entirely conquered.

It’s the same
Time, time and again
I’ve memorized the cycle
The cycle by now

You can find my body with blood on Instagram.

Pony Girl – Laff It Off

Following on from last year’s shadowy Enny One Will Love You, Pony Girl are returning later this year with new LP, Laff It Off, on Paper Bag Records. A release described as a sister record to the previous album, examining many of the same themes and situations but this time with a focus on the playful side of things. The title track is itself the twin of previous single, ‘Running in Circles‘, which we described as “a slow-burning pop number which slowly unravels into something more chaotic as another crushingly mundane day in work pushes the narrator to the brink.” The new single presents us with the same situation but reacts differently, a refusal in the face of the employment grindstone which emerges with bright humanity intact. “We first wrote [the refrain] ‘I don’t wanna be working every day’ as a lark,” the band explain, “but ultimately fell for it as a chant to get through the next shift.” Watch the video below produced by K Collective and directed by DELGATZ:

Laff It Off is out via Paper Bag Records on the 27th October and you can pre-order it now.

Quinn Devlin – Movie Scene

Back in April we featured ‘Lilian’, a single from Pennsylvania-born multi-instrumentalist Quinn Devlin, a track we described as “solo intimacy blown up into something communal, the sound’s careful richness developing into an affirming final chorus.” Devlin has since been picked up by Lorkin O’Reilly’s A For Effort Records, and plans to release full-length album Pair Of Threes later this year. In the meantime, new track ‘Movie Scene’ gives a taster of what’s to come. Its winding folk style paints a summer afternoon in all of its ideal fondness, channelling the country classics to invoke a nostalgically golden hue.

Pair Of Threes is out this September via A For Effort Records.

Stephen Steinbrink – Cruiser

With new album Disappearing Coin coming later this summer on Western Vinyl, Stephen Steinbrink has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Cruiser’. The record’s title refers to a magician’s trick Steinbrink saw on Youtube—where a coin is made to vanish in front of a viewing highschooler—speaking to the blend of ordinary and extraordinary which marks the songs. The new single aims to reach for the perspective of this amazed, awkward bystander. An attempt to write from the perspective of a character embedded within the “conservative defoliated suburban environments,” a landscape familiar to Steinbrink from his own youth, with Boy Scouts (AKA Boy Scouts) lending vocals too. As he continues:

This character feels he has to hide what he loves, hyper-vigilant for opportunities to mold himself into a shape that will be accepted by the people around him, independent because no one is paying attention. There are parts of myself in the character, but it’s mostly an amalgamation of friends I grew up with in the punk/DIY scene in Phoenix in the late 2000s before we all moved away.

Disappearing Coin is out on the 18th August via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

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Following on from the exquisite Skulls Example back in 2018, Dear Nora returns with new record human futures this autumn on Orindal Records. Lead single ‘Scrolls of Doom’ is every bit as idiosyncratic and inventive as the rest of Katy Davidson’s work. A view of the world from an oblique angle which somehow better portrays its folly and wonder. “I make billions in seconds flat / and I stuff it under my cowboy hat,” Davidson sings, deadpan. “Yeah, you punk me and I’m perplexed / but we all know what happens next.” A time capsule of a specific period, a prophecy of what’s to come. The human futures, here and now.

Eliza Edens – Westlawn Cemetery

Back in August we wrote about ‘I Needed You‘, the lead single from Eliza Edens‘s forthcoming release, We’ll Become the Flowers. “A meditation on the strangeness of an aftermath,” as we put it, “when nothing is as it used to feel and anger and longing are impossible split.” The latest track from the album, ‘Westlawn Cemetery’ balances fond visions of the past and concerns about the future through its titular location. A scene of familiarity from childhood nevertheless loaded with themes of death and change. The permanence of the headstones representing the ephemeral nature of life.

Hallelujah The Hills – God Is So Lonely Tonight

Back in July, Boston favourites Hallelujah The Hills released their first single since 2019’s I’m You with ‘Superglued to You’, a track of open hearts and racing momentum bound together by Ryan Walsh’s ever-inventive lyricism. Brand new single ‘God Is So Lonely Tonight’ pushes further onto this ground, albeit this time concerning a different relationship and with a more reflective, wry tone. But as the song develops so too does the energy underpinning it, contemplation transformed into conviction as another shout-a-long chorus arrives. “And you know he don’t even know my name / But he needs me, he needs me, he needs me all just the same,” Walsh sings. “You know that God is / God is / God is / so lonely tonight.”

‘God Is So Lonely Tonight’ is out now and available from the Hallelujah the Hills Bandcamp page.

Hunting – Piano Fire

Vancouver duo Hunting have announced their brand new LP, You’ve Got Love (But it Even Tears You Apart), will be released via Nevado Music this autumn, and have unveiled a cover of Sparklehorse‘s ‘Piano Fire’ by way of introduction. Released to coincide with Mark Linkous’s sixtieth birthday, their take captures both the energy and strangeness of the original, and the stop-motion video created by Hunting’s own Jessicka Lynne at Field and Glass Studio only pushes further into the track’s surreal nature.

You’ve Got Love (But it Even Tears You Apart) is out on the 11th November via Nevado Music.

JPW – Wealth of the Canyon

What better schooling can there be in music than consistently talking to the best? As the writer and host behind the ever-present Aquarium Drunkard, Jason Woodbury has had the opportunity to do just that, and his debut solo record Something Happening / Always Happening, out now on Fort Lowell Records, suggests he has been taking notes. Under the moniker JPW, Woodbury creates songs dialled in to both the surrounding landscape and the mystical dimensions above and beyond it. Classic cosmic folk rock which might well beam you up, if only to get a better look at the world below. Take single ‘Wealth of the Canyon’, its sound rich and enveloping, its easy rhythms so laidback as to be practically horizontal. But within the warmth lies something mysterious, something quite possibly sublime. A cloaked thing which you can only hope to catch in glances as time goes by.

Maripool – This Time Again

The moniker of Lisbon-born, London-based artist Natasha Simões, Maripool offers a brand of bedroom pop equal parts bright and moody. Released via Practice Music, new single ‘This Time Again’ captures the balance perfectly, with a certain tension between the easy-going instrumentation and Simões vocals. A juxtaposition caught in the lyrics, where the ostensibly frolicsome nature of the song is undermined by a shadowy edge. Something sinister lurking just beneath the surface.

And I get to see you when I see you
And I knew you were the one
To say I could see it in your eyes
With all of your lies

And I’d like to see you cry
And I’d like to see you die

Pony Girl – Running in Circles

Ahead of their new LP Enny One Will Love You on Paper Bag Records, Ottawa-Hull-based outfit Pony Girl have shared their latest offering, ‘Running in Circles’. A slow-burning pop number which slowly unravels into something more chaotic as another crushingly mundane day in work pushes the narrator to the brink. The song comes with a suitably cinematic video produced by K Collective in association with Dan Rascal & Cloud in the Sky, directed and edited by Dom Llanos with director of photography Santiago Trugeda. A flash horror movie which captures the enmeshed relationship between deadening boredom and overwhelming anger. Check it out below:

Enny One Wil Love You is out on the 14th October via Paper Bag Records and you can pre-order it now.

Sarah La Puerta – A Gun

Artist, musician and calligrapher Sarah La Puerta embraces the in-between. Be it the spaces between artforms, between places themselves, or the metaphysical gap between so-called reality and everything else. It’s fitting then that debut album Strange Paradise, released last year on Perpetual Doom, started in Austin and finished in upstate New York, and took on a whole world of inspiration to inform its search for paradise in the smallest, strangest gaps of life. La Puerta has recently unveiled a new video for single the ‘A Gun’, where director Christopher Michael Hefner further excavates the record’s surreal and elusive spirit, ensuring the search continues on.

Strange Paradise is out now and available via Bandcamp.

Shalom – DTAP

Ahead of a debut album scheduled for sometime in 2023 on Saddle Creek, Brooklyn‘s Shalom has unveiled new single, ‘DTAP’. Packaged together with a cover of Hovvdy‘s ‘True Love’, the single offers an unabashedly upbeat vision of love. A breathless and overwhelming experience unique to those early, giddy days. As Shalom explains, the song is about “dreaming of someone and the magic that happens when you don’t really care where or when as long as the who is right, the right person.” And it rings true even if real life experiences didn’t quite line up at the time of recording. “Even though I was in the midst of processing my big breakup, there’s something so pure about that song so the joy prevails,” Shalom continues. “Joy prevails, different time, any place.”

DTAP / True Love is out now via Saddle Creek.

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