Alongside core members Berman (vocals), Ricky Lorenzo (guitar), Dana Guth (bass) and DJ Nelson (drums/samples), the new album welcomes Daniel Juergens into the Little Oso fold, bolstering the sound with synthesizer and samplers, as well as viola and violin by Elisabeth Fuchsia. Juergens also recorded and mixed the release, with Andy Tyler Clarke (Spirit of the Beehive, Cloud Nothings) mastering, and the result is by far the richest and most complex the project has sounded to date. But more than a mere stylistic evolution for the band, this development is inherently tied to their thematic interests too. We live in a world where the line between physical and digital existence is porous, machine learning is thrust upon us, and perhaps most strikingly, we’re surrounded by things we could never truly make our own no matter what the tech overlords might claim. Such heady themes require a careful balance of intricacy, fury and good old fashioned human feeling, and Little Oso 2.0 appear ready to meet the moment.

I don’t need much, I just need this
(A place I’ve never been)
Will someone please give me the cheat code to
(A place I’ve never been)

The song comes complete with a video to further the themes, directed and written by Jeannette Berman with director of photography Dean Luis Chuquimongo and editor/colorist Ricardo Lorenzo, and featuring 3D Animator by Haven.

Simulation Games will be released via Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home in late spring/early summer 2027. The single is available now from Bandcamp.

The post Little Oso – Simulation Games appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The style offers the listener a more active role than most records, Bessel not so much showing the soundscape he created as inviting us to chart our own path through it. “An effort to conjure a sense of place which goes beyond traditional world-building,” as we continued, “working to not merely create something new but evoke the sense of revealing something which has always been present, waiting for someone with the patience and attention to bring them to light.” What results is an album crafted in the lineage of William Basinski and The Caretaker, where the borders between landscape, memory and fiction blur into an encompassing whole.

The album is now a month away from release via Lore City Music, and Eric Angelo Bessel has shared brand new single ‘Book of Astrology’. With the cryptic connotations of its esoteric title held aloft, the song is a perfect example of duality’s at the heart of the project. A sound brought to life with ambient textures that might be primal or futuristic, and one which utilises the tension between the withheld and the apparent to keep the audience engaged. Illusion of an Inland Ocean is a record that’s as capable of enveloping a listener as it is demanding their attention, and promises to be the most mysterious and thrilling release of Bessel’s career to date.

Illusion of an Inland Ocean will be released on the 30th October via Lore City Music and you can pre-order it now.

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Founded in 2018 by musician Adam Kinner and artistic director/writer Jacob Wren, and now expanded into a wider ensemble, The Air Contains Honey is a Montreal-based project which crosses artistic boundaries to meld the musical and the literary in a genuinely innovative way. After gradually evolving over the years, the project is now preparing to release their first full-length, The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes, via Quindi Records, and the album quite literally lives up to its name. With arrangements orchestrated to be performed by nineteen musicians, the record sees the group sing quotes from across literature and theory (lines from Agnes Martin, Diane di Prima and Chris Kraus feature, to name just a few), resulting in a novel form which sits between indie pop, jazz and something like musical theatre. Lead track ‘Sexuality’ is the perfect example of the release’s ambition and invention. A number built around words from Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations which encapsulates not only the artistic vision of the record but also the welcoming communal spirit with which it is brought to life.

Damn Shame – Making Habits

“Every year that passes / taking stock with where we’re at and / Making plans to break through and make change.” So sings Portland, Maine multi-instrumentalist Robb Paniconi, AKA Damn Shame, on the closing track of new EP For Lack of Trying, out now via Repeating Cloud. As the title might suggest, the release is crafted around this sense of striving, be it towards a better future or healthier version of oneself. But it is forever held back by some self-defeating dimension, or else the hectic distraction that is the contemporary world. ‘Making Habits’ is a summation of the project musically as well as thematically, Paniconi bolstering his songwriting with an array of experimental flourishes, from found sounds and field recording to synths and tape loops. The result is all the more sincere and sympathetic as a result, positioning him alongside the likes of Ben Cooper’s Radical Face or even the slower side of Trace Mountains.

Daniel Glenn Padgett – Geraldine x Rocky Top!

Blurring the lines between DIY experimentalism and classical composition, the work of US-born, UK-based artist Daniel Glenn Padgett draws utilises both analogue and electronic modes to collapse the distance between the past and the present, bringing forward that which seemed lost or else opening up a nostalgic path backwards. Latest single ‘Geraldine x Rocky Top!’ is the ideal introduction to this style, a glitchy dance-based number which opens with a voice note from Parisian photographer Geraldine Morat and grows to incorporate a samples from the anthology of American folk music. On the surface, the result is an infectious slice of pop which hums with a bright energy for its brisk two minute run-time, though delve slightly deeper and the true nature of DGP’s work reveals itself. A cross-pollination between the contemporary and the traditional which charges both which newfound energy, as though commingling these ostensibly mismatched styles allows a kind of mutual invigoration.

David James Allen – So Much Pain

Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist David James Allen has shared a number of singles from his new full-length Jubilation Potpurri in recent months, and now the album is finally out via Littleknown Records, he is sharing one more. Following on from the likes of ‘By Your Side‘ (“an ode to the safe harbour of a significant other, where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove”) and ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)‘ (“a vow to confront life’s struggles head on, standing on your own two feet, fists raised and ready for anything”), latest track ‘So Much Pain’ explores far more uncertain, vulnerable headspace, though you wouldn’t know it from the sound itself. “There’s so much pain / Seen so much pain / It hurts to be alone / Feeling scared on my own,” Allen sings in the opening verse, though the arrangement is full of soulful swagger and confidence, redirecting the needy longing of the lyrics into something altogether different. As though, in voicing such vulnerabilities, Allen isn’t so much underscoring his fear of solitude as championing its opposite, connecting to the universal human experience of loneliness to better communicate the power of connection.

The French – Maybe Tomorrow

The ongoing mission to make Darren Hayman‘s vast back catalogue available online shows no sign going down (read more on the project here), with Audio Antihero now unearthing some deep cuts Hayman’s bands Hefner and The French recorded during sessions with the legendary John Peel. “When Hefner became a ‘Peel band’ and recorded their first session, I felt that a true life goal had been achieved,” he explains. “Many bands, much more revered and successful than myself, would have wished they’d recorded a Peel session. I could die a little happier.” Invited to a session with no record to promote, Hefner instead recorded a collection of gospel singles, with Peel delighted by a band using his sessions to push themselves and break new ground. Hence, when it came time for The French to visit a year later, they followed suit with another experimental idea, this time recording their own versions of four television theme songs, released here as TV Themes. Alongside ‘Crockett’s Theme’ and ‘Theme from Hill Street Blues’ and ‘Big John, Little John’, Hayman and John Morrison also recorded ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, their take on the theme from The Littlest Hobo which shows both the nostalgic spirit of the project and the invention with which they brought it to life.

henry o henry – There

Back in August we previewed henry o henry‘s new full-length Apocrypha, describing how the Dublin-born, US-based songwriter uses “the experience of being an immigrant in America for over thirty years to observe the country from the novel perspective of an adopted son.” After lead single ‘The Fool‘ (“worn and wistful and weathered but with a glint in its eye, moving with a sincerity and easy grace that comes with experience”) came ‘The Parade’, “an example of the careful patience which marks so much of the album,” as we put it, “understated yet strangely hypnotic, as though its mellow rhythms slowly envelop the listener and hold them within their world.” With the record now out via Western Vinyl, henry o henry has shared final single ‘There’. An album highlight which serves as a metacommentary on the creative process which brought it to life, specifically how making art can take personal feelings and transform them into something greater and long-lasting. “It feels like a triumph over something,” as henry o henry says, “even if you’re a bit embarrassed by some of the sentiment.”

Jonathan Something – The Garden

“A prime example of how One More Lonesome Cowboy Song lives up to its name, the track manages to evoke both the intimacy of personal experience and something far larger, bringing in the melancholy of the archetypal wanderer in search of meaning.” So we wrote of ‘Gasoline‘, a single from Jonathan Something‘s new album forthcoming via High Shelter, back in August, a song typical of a record all about yearning for something more. The record’s release is now less than a month away and Jonathan Searles has shared new track ‘The Garden’ to pave the way. “‘The Garden’ is a collection of epiphanies I had regarding self growth while wrestling demons.” as Searles explains. “I kept the conclusions and deeper meaning behind each verse as cryptic as possible to avoid preaching while still resonating as widely as possible. The goal was to offer my hand to hold for those who needed it and a high five for those who just wanna vibe.”

One More Lonesome Cowboy Song will be released on the 16th October via High Shelter.

Josephine Illingworth – Who Burnt The Mountain

After the release of EP Bright Things I Found In The Dark earlier this year, London-based songwriter Josephine Illingworth returns with new single ‘Who Burnt The Mountain’ in partnership with Sounds Right, a global music initiative that allows nature to generate royalties on streaming platforms. Released as part of the Sounds Right and EarthPercent Climate Week NYC releases, the track confronts the urgent ecological crisis by drawing on the sounds of nature itself, though these gradually distort and denature as the song unfolds to mirror the ongoing loss of habitat and biodiversity. “‘Who Burnt The Mountain’ is a rallying call against the desecration of our wild spaces, and an expression of grief that I, as a young woman, feel in seeing the wilderness that has been a space of sanctuary and identity for me being literally burnt out of existence, often thanks to the decisions of distant male politicians,” Illingworth explains. “The song is about wildfire and deforestation, and the flattening and privatisation of these wildernesses in the UK. I gradually distorted the bird field recordings as the song goes on, ending so that they sound almost like human screams.” Watch the video filmed by Reuben Denison below:

Who Burnt The Mountain is out now via Sounds Right, with royalties donated to frontline conservation projects around the world.

MANAS (Tashi Dorji & Thom Nguyen) – 100 sunset

The project of Asheville-based duo Tashi Dorji and Thom Nguyen, MANAS gather threads of free jazz, noise, punk and experimental music into propulsive improvised tracks that pay attention to small details while possessing a physical intensity and unpredictability. “Improvised music, this music-making in the immediacy and now, in the moment, feels way more radical than anything I’ve ever done,” says Dorji. “Making improvised music and creating radical music with the intention of opening people’s ears.” October sees the release of a new MANAS record, The most yielding thing in the world will overcome the most rigid, via American Dreams. The album came into being as the score to 100 Sunset, the debut feature film from director Kunsang Kyirong. Our first glimpse is the opening track, which is named for the film, a 13-minute exercise in restrained forward motion that builds toward a blown-out crescendo, the pair merging guitar and percussion into a single, unified instrument of urgent power.

Melissa Weikart – L’amour se construit

Back in July, we featured ‘Crash’, a single by French-American songwriter Melissa Weikart. Calling it “lush, immersive and slightly warped at the edges,” it was the perfect introduction to an artist who exists “between the poles of experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop.” Weikart has just announced that the song was our first taste of a new album, titled Contact, which will be released via Midnight Special Records at the end of next month. To coincide with the album announcement, Weikart has unveiled a second single titled ‘L’amour se construit’. Translating into English as “love is built”, it’s what Weikart describes as “a plea to not only accept but welcome the inevitable messiness that accompanies our emotions around love.” Musically this translates into something as strange as it is sophisticated, drawing on foundations of both jazz and smooth seventies folk and bending them into dreamlike shapes with a psychedelic flourish. Watch the suitably surreal Ruby Cicero-directed video below:

Contact will be released via Midnight Special Records on 23^rd October. Pre-order ti now from the Melissa Weikart Bandcamp page.

summersets – Forgetting For The Better

“Drunk conversations, uncomfortable truths / Daily routines, bills that are due,” so opens ‘Forgetting For the Better’, one of the standout tracks on Pine Trees In A Perfect Row, the new record from Kalle Mattson and Andrew Sowka’s summersets project. The line is indicative of an album that is very much grounded in reality, exploring the contemporary moment without sanding away its uncomfortable edges. The pair of childhood friends reunited in their northern Ontario hometown of Sault Ste. Marie after being priced out of the big cities, and this frankness and economic realism is littered across the record. Mattson calls it “a (complicated) love letter to Northern Ontario and small town Canadian identity and experience… with the intention of speaking to a (hopefully) universal sentiment: that you never really leave your home.” As that quote might suggest, there is a glimmer of magic braided throughout too. ‘Forgetting For the Better’ is the perfect example, a gentle folk song that explores life’s ups and downs (from car crashes and playoff defeats to “the words that I said”) with a combination of wistful regret and mellow warmth.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in 2021, Brooklyn-based bassist, composer and singer Carmen Quill released Don’t Get Comfy / Nowhere, a debut album which emerged more from personal need than any sense of creative practice. The songs consisted of nothing beyond vocals, upright bass and background noise but were able to tackle the most intimate of subjects, from romantic relationships to the loss of a parent. Quill’s latest full-length Harmless, to be released this November via Ruination Record Co., builds upon this framework, their compositions slowly yet surely blooming from minimalism towards something richer and deeper. As the title track suggests, this is often achieved by way of the mantra or incantation. The song rises out of a simple, repeated set of questions (“Why do I feel so helpless? / Why do I feel so aimless? / Nothing I do is harmless”) towards a considered engagement with themes of agency and complicity in the age of televised genocide and rampant inequality. As Quill explains: “I wrote ‘Harmless’ in a moment when I was feeling acutely the everyday sensation of not knowing what to do with myself when I look around and see so much big shit going wrong.”

Charlotte Greve – Lighter Blue

After ‘Membranes‘ (“considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings”) and ‘Own Lap‘ (“an eleven-minute epic brought to life with full orchestral grandeur which nevertheless never loses sight of the personal amid the sweeping majesty”), Charlotte Greve continues to introduce her forthcoming album WATERBODIES with the release of latest single, ‘Lighter Blue’. Centering on geological imagery and underlined by a beguilingly rhythmic pull, the track considers the curative potential of art, as though the will to create can illuminate the otherwise shadowy avenues of our lives and allow us to live with newfound meaning. “The silent crater/volcano represents a period of disconnection from making art and feeling out of touch with it,” Greve explains. “Tiptoeing around, feeling lost and ungrounded because something essential is missing. In that state, doubt about all things arises, making space for insecurity to flourish. The moment music arrives again, suddenly everything makes sense, the path is lit and you can just walk on it. The forever torch, showing you the way to live your life, gifting you melodies that carry you through the day with purpose.”

Watch the video, shot, edited, and produced by Annika Nagel, below:

WATERBODIES will be released on the 2nd October via New Amsterdam and you can pre-order it now.

Chloë Ester – Bitter End

Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, Chloë Ester is a songwriter who announced herself back in 2020 with debut EP Dying All The Time, establishing a narrative-led brand of indie rock which was happy to blur genre lines in order to capture a sense of simultaneous vulnerability and empowerment. Now Ester is preparing to return with follow-up EP I Could Be The One to further this style, widening the palette and scope of her sound without sacrificing any of the rawness and heart which makes it so engaging. Single ‘Bitter End’ is an ideal entry point, a reflection on a break-up which pairs personal uncertainty with upbeat brightness to explore the tension between regretful introspection and the desire to let go.

Cloudbelly – Poppa

Described by the band as a “meditation on intimacy, belonging, and the things that complicate them,” Cloudbelly‘s third full-length Throwing The Game promises to take the indie folk formula of its predecessor i know i know i know and push it to the edges of the genre, creating something sprawling and shape-shifting in order to explore the full contours of an emotional landscape which stretches both back into the past and out in the future. After lead single ‘Oh, Antarctica!‘ saw Corey Laitman and co. face down what we called “the dispiriting experience of mourning the future in a present world which seems to be tilting in a bad direction,” follow-up ‘Poppa’ turns its attention in the opposite direction to explore the memories of a loved one, and how dignity can persevere through the trials of later life. Namely Laitman’s grandfather, a man who lived for the wilderness yet ultimately found himself in a high-rise caring for his ailing wife. As the press release puts it: “If there is a contradiction in the coexistence of tenderness and grief, this song doesn’t seek to resolve it. The contradiction itself is the emotional event.”

The Fourth Wall – Future Memory

“Combs through the contradictions of the immigrant experience in order to voice feelings otherwise impossible to convey […] a mixture of hope, denial and genuine love which not only subverts expectations but confounds any attempt to properly reassess.” So we wrote of The Fourth Wall‘s Return Forever back in 2024, Stephen Agustin’s ambitious and confronting writing earning the record a place among of favourite albums on the year. Now the Portland-by-way-of-Hawaii project is back with brand new album Memories of the Future, and the release might somehow top its predecessor in terms of depth and scope. Using Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and Frederic Jameson’s work on sci-fi and postmodernism as starting points, Agustin explores the collective failure of the imagination when it comes to dreaming of the future, and the personal and political stasis which results. What emerges is the apocalyptic vision our present time deserves, where the hyperactive stimulation of the digital age masks a fundamental emptiness. “How long will it take / To see the future as a memory,” asks closer ‘Future Memory’, a fitting conclusion to a fatalistic yet clear-eyed album about a world in crisis.

Watch the video by Agustin below:

Memories of the Future is out now via DevilDuck Records and available from The Fourth Wall Bandcamp page.

Hour – Pearls

Last month we introduced Ghost Bridge, the new album from Hour coming soon via Dear Life Records, with the title track. “A song, clocking in at near ten minutes which must rank among [Michael] Cormier-O’Leary’s most ambitious and thematically loaded to date,” as we wrote. “The level of detail is striking but there is no ounce of ostentation. Lesser acts might be overwhelmed if tasked with exploring concepts of loss and mortality, prone to slipping into maudlin excess, but with a unique blend of compassion and abstraction, it seems Hour are up to the task.” The achievement is made possible by a rich ensemble cast, and William H. Travis’s video for new single ‘Pearls’ manages the unenviable task of catching them all gathered in one place (with the notable exception of flute player Adelyn Strei), offering a rare chance to see Hour in its (almost) complete form. “I think his footage succeeds in demonstrating the love we all share for one another in our large, many-tentacled band,” as Cormier-O’Leary says. “It’s a perfect moment in time, a pearl if you will.”

Ghost Bridge will be released on the 9th October via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it from the Hour Bandcamp page.

How Strange It Is – Tough Luck

This autumn, Portland, Oregon outfit How Strange It Is will release their new album THERE IS NO EVIL with Disposable America and Pleasure Tapes. Consisting of Jordan Krinsky (vocals, guitar, synth), Caleb Ballard (additional vocals, guitar, clarinet, synth), Annie Miranda (bass), Annie Fifer (additional vocals, guitar) and Kyle Gordon (drums), the band have developed a fuzzy brand of indie rock across a pair of past releases, and the new record only furthers this style. Take latest single ‘Tough Luck’, an atmospheric, almost ethereal track which cycles through the whole gamut of emotions to capture the strange experience of life. “This song leans into the comedy of circumstance,” the band explain. “When you’re going through it and the world keeps throwing cosmic jokes at you. When you meet up to have a post-mortem with your ex and love songs start playing on the radio. It could be a cinematic moment where you realize you’re still in love but its actually over and that’s ok. The rollercoaster of those feelings.”

Watch the video below, directed by Jess Poe and edited by Poe & Jamison Winternintz:

THERE IS NO EVIL will be released on 20th October via Disposable America and Pleasure Tapes and you can pre-order it now.

John Van Deusen – There Is A Way Home

John Van Deusen made a name fronting celebrated Seattle outfit The Lonely Forest for the best part of a decade, releasing two EPs and four full-lengths in the 2000s/2010s. But his solo work is undoubtedly his most ambitious undertaking to date. Released across two years, forty track double album As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise confronts Van Deusen’s personal struggles with faith, depression and suicidal ideation, drawing on influences as disparate as The Beach Boys, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins and Death Cab For Cutie in the process. After the first part was released back in 2025, John Van Deusen is now sharing Pt. 2 to finally complete the project. “What does it mean to be depressed while worshipping God?” he asks in the album notes. “What does it say about being human?” As the title might suggest, As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise is able to sit with suffering without reducing the entirety of existence to its confines, and wise enough to contemplate the mystery of God even as the immediacy of pain threatens to obscure our connection to the metaphysical. Listen to single ‘There Is A Way Home’ now:

Kin Hana – Howling World

You might know Hudson Valley songwriter and guitarist Aaron Hodges from his work under the moniker Longshoreman, or as part of the psych-folk band Nighttime, but more recently he has adopted the name Kin Hana to usher in a new era of drone/doom-adjacent folk. Next month, Kin Hana will release Howling World, a new full-length which feels like an embodiment of Hodges’s vision, where personal intimacy is matched by an elemental, almost otherworldly atmosphere (Jason Molina and Béla Tarr are cited as touchstones). The result, as highlighted by the lead single title track, manages to communicate both immediate, instinctive emotion (be that wonder, longing or dread) and genuine thematic depth. “This song came out of René Magritte’s painting Young Girl Eating a Bird,” Hana explains. “I was drawn to the contradiction in the image—she seems to be turning away from the world while at the same time literally devouring a piece of it. There’s something wild and irrational about the act that I felt I understood without being able to fully explain. The ‘howling world’ became both the senseless world she’s turning away from and the one she’s suddenly part of. I realized that feeling ran through much of the record, and the song eventually gave the album its name.”

Kyla Marlena – 21

“To me, this record feels alive. Like it has a pulse,” explains Toronto-based cellist and songwriter Kyla Marlena of her debut album Hold Time. “It’s dynamic within and between songs, it can be unpredictable.” Forthcoming this November via idée fixe, the record is something of a pivot for an artist who started out writing instrumental compositions in relative solitude, offering a rich folk rock sound forged through serious collaboration. Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), Julian Psihoigos (Georgia Harmer, Katie Tupper), Felix Fox (BADBADNOTGOOD, Jonah Yano), Jasper Smith (Benjamin Dakota Rogers), Karen Ng (The Weather Station) and Noah Williamson (Sonder) all lend their talents, Marlena not so much instructing these musicians as corralling their energies, leading to a sound that’s authentic and organic. Lead single and album opener ’21’ gives an indication of what to expect, showing how Marlena explores themes of memory and time in a manner which subverts expectations, forgoing the hazy dreaminess which so often accompanies such ideas in favour of something more immediate, scrappy and raw.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in June we introduced Recurring Common Dream, the forthcoming EP from Great Klons, describing how the release ups the ante on its rather chaotic predecessor. Written and recorded amid a time of turmoil both personal and political, the EP sees Scott Klon and co. expand their already inventive, genre-bending sound to match the uncertainty of the moment. After lead single ‘More Beauty in the Rain‘, Great Klons are now back with follow-up ‘Hidden Signage’. A vivid slice of indie pop rooted in both driving percussion and fresh guitar which uses vocal harmonies and electric violin to further amp up the emotional resonance. And emotional the track is, proceeding with a decidedly wistful air, reflecting on imperfect times with the inevitable fondness we hold for the past.

‘Hidden Signage’ is out now on streaming services.

henry o henry – The Fool

Born in Dublin but now “thirty years a US immigrant,” henry o henry makes music that observes the US from the perspective of an adopted son. He has spent years “absorbing the country’s mythologies” while working various trades across the country (an image that evokes Whitman’s I Hear America Singing), but he has retained ties with his roots too. “Ireland is the DNA of the thing,” as he puts it, “the thing before every other thing.” In September, he will release an album Apocrypha on Western Vinyl. It brings together a collection songs in the lineage of Cale and Drake and Cohen, which function as dispatches from his personal vantage point, or as the press release puts it “the specific weight of being somewhere for a long time without quite being from there.” Lead single ‘The Fool’ is the ideal entry point, a song worn and wistful and weathered but with a glint in its eye, moving with a sincerity and easy grace that comes with experience.

Josaleigh Pollett – Cherry

We’ve written about Josaleigh Pollett‘s new full-length If I Let It Quiet plenty in recent months, with singles like ‘Radio Player‘, ‘The Witness‘, ‘Like a River‘ and ‘Bed of Quiet‘ all suggesting the album will be a fitting follow-up to its predecessor In the Garden, By The Weeds. With the record out now via Audio Antihero and Lavender Vinyl, the Salt Lake City-based artist has shared final single ‘Cherry’ in celebration, and the track is every bit as evocative as we’ve come to expect. Displaying Pollett’s uncanny ability to combine the resonant emotion of memory with the tactility of the present moment, the song emerges through dappled electronics and announces itself with forthright clarity.

We break like belonging,
We’re broken like bread,
When you look you don’t see it,
Don’t know where we’ve been,
From two of us brothers
To both of us dead,
Laid to rest in the 90’s
in the back seat of a van

Jude Brothers – Desire & Devotion

Jude Brothers describes herself as an “Arkansas-forged and New Mexico-moulded folksy leaning singer songwriter with a penchant for whimsy and tender heartedness,” which is just about the perfect introduction. Later this year, she will release Dogwood Maiden Voyage, a collection of timeless folk songs built on the foundations of harp and voice, which she says “reckons with the costs of surrendering wholly to love.” Latest single ‘Desire & Devotion’ does just that, a hymn-like timeless folk song that is suffused with all the doomed romance of a Brontë novel. “How can you doubt me now?” Brothers asks in the line that gives the track its title, “My love ain’t no solemn vow! It is a churning sea.”

King’s Evil – S/T

Stemming from a discussion at a tiki bar back in early 2020, King’s Evil is a new project between Sami Martasian of Puppy Problems and JM Dussault of (T-T)b. The pair, already established as some of Boston‘s most interesting songwriters, imagined a new vehicle for songwriting where the stakes were slightly lower and the scope for invention expanded. A place where they might take risks otherwise avoided in their usual work. The eventual result, a self-titled EP coming via Worry Bead Records, is a testament to the power of such a spirit of working, one which eschews the usual desire to plan and demo songs in order to fully lean into the moment, not to mention that of collaboration. “To hear them say it,” as the label states, “King’s Evil is a project explicitly about the community and solidarity you build in proximity to other artists you admire. Finding energy and freedom in allowing someone else you admire to figuratively root around in your brain.” Listen to the title track now:

Legit Smitty – Picture In My Wallet

Jake Smith, aka Legit Smitty, wrote his forthcoming new record This Living Ain’t That Hard following a serious car accident while on family vacation in Hawaii. Such a near-death event understandably brought a newfound perspective, and the album is an expression of that. As Smith puts it, he is more determined than ever to “continue to share his heart in order that others might feel more at home in their own skin.” Latest single ‘Picture In My Wallet’ is a good introduction, a downbeat but still hopeful song which Smith says “details how his love will remain unchanging, as will his faults.”

‘Picture In My Wallet’ is available now on streaming services. Stay tuned for news on This Living Ain’t That Hard.

oh, hooray – MY BROTHER’S NEW BLACK EYE

A few weeks ago we featured a couple of tracks from the city has teeth i think i saw them once, the new record from Houston‘s oh, hooray. We described those songs as “fatalistic, furious and at least halfway triumphant,” calling them “dispatches from the American present, a time we might label ‘late capitalism’ if only the late didn’t seem such an overly optimistic diagnosis.” That description holds up across the record, but some songs are more personal in scope than others. A good example is ‘MY BROTHER’S NEW BLACK EYE’, which details an exasperating relationship with the title’s mercurial sibling. “‘MY BROTHER’S NEW BLACK EYE’ is about my brother,” describes lead Jamie McDonald. “I love him, I hate him, I am confused by him, I support him, I resent him. No matter how much he has alienated myself or my family, he will always be just that. My Brother.”

the city has teeth i think i saw them once is out now and available from the usual places.

Promiseland BBQ x Tory Silver – Where’d All the Firemen Go?

Promiseland BBQ is the recording project of Ross Weidman, originally from West Virginia and now based in Pasadena. We last featured his music back in 2023, writing about the album Murder In The Friendly City, which explored his parents hometown in blue collar Appalachia following the death of his mother. He released another EP, Promiseland BBQ Airways, last year, and is now back with a new standalone single, ‘Where Did All the Firemen Go?’ Altogether more lighthearted than the last album, Wediman says the song, a full band arrangement including Tory Silver on vocals, “imagine[s] a world where everyone got the job they wanted,” a laidback and swaying country rock jam that sees a cast of characters swap professions and bemoans the loss of a certain brand of smalltown hero.

You can download ‘Where Did All the Firemen Go?’ now from the Promiseland BBQ Bandcamp page.

Sand Duney – Saw You In the Roses

September will see the release of Plant Material, the debut full-length from Sand Duney (Portland, Oregon songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jess Jones), via the triple threat of Orindal Records, Anything Bagel and Bud Tapes. As per the press release, the record “explores a deepening of selfhood, love, and understanding the natural world,” while searching for “hope and a daily rhythm in a world that’s changing in massive and indecipherable ways.” Our first glimpse is ‘Saw You In the Roses’ a giddy, ambling psych pop song that continues the signature Sand Duney style, what we have described in the past as “equal parts meditative and energetic.” Jones plays every instrument, from guitar and bass to pedal steel, organ and drums, layers which reel and swim around her relaxed and composed vocals. Check out the video, directed and edited by Dawn Riddle, below:

Plant Material will be released on 4^th September and is available to pre-order from the Sand Duney Bandcamp page.

Sera Cahoone – Not How I Hoped

Alongside drumming for acts such Carissa’s Wierd and Band of Horses, Seattle’s Sera Cahoone has developed rich oeuvre of solo work, starting with the dusky, melancholic self-titled album back in 2006. Twenty Years on, Cahoone is preparing to release her fifth full-length I’ve Missed You All These Years via Sub Pop, and it seems time has only deepened her warm and aching sound. As its title suggests, latest single ‘Not How I Hoped’ confronts disappointment and regret with unerring candour, the clarity of Cahoone’s voice supported by a vivid arrangement featuring violin, pedal steel, piano and Hammond organ. “This song flew out of my broken heart many moons ago,” Cahoone explains. “It was the first song I wrote for this record. It’s quite sad, but writing it really helped me work through those hard feelings.”

Watch the video below, made by Cahoone herself along with Adam Evarts and Arriba Media LLC:

I’ve Missed You All These Years will be released on the 28th August via Sub Pop and you can pre-order it now.

W. Y. Huang – Running Into Walls

Last month, we introduced On Stranger Hills, the forthcoming new record from Singapore-born, New York-based singer-songwriter W. Y. Huang. Lead single ‘Born to Lose’ “owe[d] a debut to both Daniel Johnston and Adrienne Lenker and drawing on [Huang’s] own immigrant experience,” and now W.Y. Huang has unveiled a second track to further generate anticipation. Titled ‘Running Into Walls’, it’s an introspective indie folk song that the press release says “stages a tender reckoning with inherited trauma and the unbearable weight of survival.” It’s set during a late-night train ride, and captures perfectly the sense of solitude and emotional clarity that such journeys often evoke, mimicking the brain’s tendency to ruminate as the carriage falls silent and dark landscapes fly past the window.

‘Running Into Walls’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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red birds on a branch furthers this style. Each track is a snapshot, or rather a specific scene suspended. A moment or memory frozen in time yet still possessing all its dimensions. The listener is invited to step inside these tableaus, not only to explore the fine details therein, but also imagine the narratives which have led to that picture, as well as that which is yet to unfold.

The entire effect is captured within the very first moments of opening track ‘Spiral Kitchen Linoleum’. “Unopened mail by the microwave,” Rogers sings over a warm and wistful arrangement. “She sensed there’s something you wanted to say / All the words just looking for the right ones / spiral kitchen linoleum.” The precision of the imagery does more than conjure a scene. It evokes memory, yearning, fears and dreams, as though life itself is distilled in the smallest of things. Unopened mail, the hum of a refrigerator (it is fitting the next track on the record, ‘Nighthawks’, evokes Hopper). These details point to the past, yes, but also the future, its characters heading towards a difficult confrontation, the kitchen seemingly laying in wait.

The result is something of a new era for Tremolo Fields. John Ross of Wild Pink produced the release and his fingerprints are noticeable. Where still as can be had a certain off-kilter charm, red birds on a branch is richer, deeper, more complete. The rough edges of its predecessor not so much smoothed over but layered into a more cohesive whole. Be it the nocturnal glow of the aforementioned ‘Nighthawks’, where a loneliness seems to bloom into shimmering possibility, or the altogether sleeker ‘Rooftops’ and its brooding allure. Ross helps breathe an effortless complexity through the arrangements which matches the project’s overall spirit. The beguiling attraction of an image. The surface and its implicit depth.

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“Picks through self-destructive tendencies in something like a lament, swapping guitar for organ to further amplify the sorrowful atmosphere of the Minneapolis-based songwriter’s work.” So we wrote of Annie Schultz’s recent single ‘MIS‘, a track which marked a conscious effort to move away from the blueprint of previous album It Bends Until It Breaks to open up new territory. Latest single ‘Search and Destroy’ is further proof such experimentation yields fruit. Schultz uses a woozily layered combination of drum machine and keyboards to evoke a dreamlike world, though a pressing electric bassline pulls the listener through. What emerges is something hypnotic and slightly ambiguous, playing somewhere between antagonistic and alluring and never quite showing its hand.

‘Search and Destroy’ is out now via Trailing Twelve and available from the usual places.

Bleary – Foyer

“If Bleary‘s new single ‘bug’ seems to carry a notable sense of depth, then it is with good reason,” we wrote in a preview of the Nashville band’s full-length Little Brain back in February, the song taken from a body of work first developed before the pandemic then more recently honed into something special. With the album’s release little over a month away via yk records, the outfit have shared brand new track ‘Foyer’, and the result is no less impressive. The perfect introduction to the signature Bleary aesthetic, where big wall-of-sound shoegaze sensibilities are paired with a mood more reflective and melancholic. The result is something equal parts visceral and thoughtful that’s sure to swallow you in its embrace.

Death Tennis – Racehorse

Based in Montreal, Death Tennis are a indie rock band unafraid of emotion, as new EP Thank You. No, Thank You attests. Talya Gad (vocals) Marco Petrella (guitar, vocals), Dave Hjin (electric guitars, acoustic guitars), Nathan Cann (electric guitars), Matthew McCormack (bass) and Daniel Pavkeje (drums) add healthy dollops of alt and shoegaze influences to bring these high stakes to life, allowing tenderness and weight to sit side by side. Take opener and single ‘Racehorse’, an emotive number which places Gad’s sincere vocals front and centre, though gradually deepens into something epic. “‘Racehorse’ is a song about loss, told from the perspective of the recently departed,” the band explain. “Do we get a chance to communicate with those we loved from the other side?”

Frog – Dark Out

“Thank you for the day but go slow when you walk out, its dark out,” sings Daniel Bateman on ‘Dark Out’, the latest single from Frog‘s new album Frog for Sale, coming soon via Audio Antihero. “The dogs are barking like Dachau / I need you when it’s dark out.” These lines might sound like depression condensed into half a verse, but the track itself is altogether more jaunty and cool, continuing the new sleek style introduced on previous albums 1000 Variations of the Same Song and The Count. The result has all the idiosyncratic style which has won the New York outfit such a following, managing to maintain a toe-tapping brightness despite the desperation and soul bubbling beneath the surface.

Golden Tiles – Peace

Portland trio Golden Tiles announced themselves to the world in late 2024 with The First EP. Back then we described their sound as “a bright, laidback brand of basement rock which combines playful melodies, fuzzy textures and reflective vocals,” inspired by the last forty-odd years of PNW lo-fi indie rock. Next month, Golden Tiles will release their debut LP, Set Up on the Leaves, via Antiquated Future Records, and the record looks to build on the band’s early promise. Expect catchy pop melodies, left-field song structures and an eye for improvisation, taking something that could feel nostalgic and twisting it into new shapes. Lead single ‘Peace’ is a great introduction. A fleeting sub two-minute rock song that feels warm and intimate but with an air of bittersweet mystery, there and then gone in a flash of satisfying guitar, rambling percussion and fragmentary lyrics.

Josephine Illingworth – The Mythical

The work of London-based musician and multi-disciplinary artist Josephine Illingworth sits at the intersection of song, storytelling and soundscape, drawing on traditions of folk music and folklore but with a modern, experimental edge. Her forthcoming EP, Bright Things I Found In The Dark, follows the narrative of a girl raised by wolves, mapped across the lunar cycle and enveloped in field recordings to intertwine each song in the rhythms of nature. Lead single ‘The Mythical’ was in some ways the record’s genesis, the first song written for it and a critical inflection point in the story where it is still unclear which direction it will take. “[‘The Mythical’] sits in the moment of childhood awakening where reality sharpens and the soft edges of fairytale fall away,” Illingworth describes, “when you can no longer see shapes in the clouds or voices under the bed. It’s about refusing to quite let that other world go.”

Bright Things I Found In The Dark will be released on 1st May.

Motherhood – Kyle Hangs Ten

Canadian rock outfit Motherhood have never been content to sit still, constantly hopping between genres and moods across their five full-length albums, and often within those records too. When working on last year’s Thunder Perfect Mind, they couldn’t quite settle on a single form of one of the songs, vacillating between surf and spaghetti western sensibilities. The later vibe won out for the eventual album track ‘Kyle Hangs At Noon’, but the sister version was also recorded and is now being released as a b-side. ‘Kyle Hangs Ten’ is an interesting counterpart to its twin, ramping up the tempo to make for a perfect slice of summer, while also serving as a window into the creative spirit of a band constantly pushing at the boundaries of their own work. “Usually by the time we release a song, the original influences have been hidden under layers of subterfuge, with our attraction to play far outweighing our ability to stay put,” they explain. “With ‘Kyle Hangs Ten,’ we were trying to write the most surfy song we could without over-complicating a genre that, at it’s core, is just swaggy country music.”

Nic Panken – Out in the Rain

“An compassionate number which takes the image of its title further than you might expect, pushing the love song beyond romance and into something existential.” That’s how we described ‘2 Hearts‘ by Nic Panken back in March, the latest single from the Spirit Family Reunion frontperson’s forthcoming solo album, Near Divine or Merely Rhyme. With the record now just a week away, Panken has unveiled brand new single ‘Out in the Rain’ to further whet appetites. A song which again elevates a personal experience into something near spiritual, it finds Panken positioning love and beauty as things which connect us to older, more mysterious forces. “Did I see you baring your soul / Uncovered the holy portal,” as he sings in one typically striking verse, “Heart was free then, resting in flight / A parcel of light immortal.”

villagerrr – Swimming

Last month we shared ‘Locket’, the lead single from villagerrr’s new record Carousel. We described how the record celebrates the act of opening up, that combination of fear and joy involved in, as we put it “the attempt to communicate in earnest with another person within a world which often seems designed to hinder such a thing.” Winspear will release the record at the end of next month, and villagerrr have dropped a new track to tide us over until then. Titled ‘Swimming’, it’s another slice of sincere indie pop, this time nudged in a country-ish direction with sparkles of pedal steel and Mark Scott’s signature heart-on-sleeve lyrics that focus on small pleasures in the face of the day-to-day trials of existence. “I cried watching the TV, it felt a lot like healing,” he sings in a typically frank line that captures the song’s balance between struggle and self-acceptance. “This song will be my enemy / My brain it wants to kill me.”

Zoon – One Too Many Nights (feat. Sam Jr.)

We have previously described the work of Daniel Monkman’s project Zoon as “an ever-evolving sound rooted in shoegaze that explores themes of activism and Indigenous experience.” The Polaris Prize-shortlisted musician draws as much from traditional First Nations music as they do contemporary indie rock, and in doing so explores themes both national and intensely personal. June sees the release of a brand new Zoon record, Happy Thought School, on Paper Bag Records, and lead single ‘One Too Many Nights’ is our first glimpse. Monkman is joined by Sam Jr. for a cathartic exploration of the strange unmooring caused by the end of a relationship. “When a relationship ends, it’s not just the person you lose it’s the version of yourself that existed beside them,” Monkman describes. ‘“One Too Many Nights’ is about that recalibration. I don’t date often, so when something shifts, it shifts my whole orbit. In that moment, being alone felt like the honest path forward.”

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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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Based in Humboldt County, California, songwriter and producer Gabriel Izak makes contemplative, emotionally earnest songs which fall in the centre of a venn diagram between folk, pop and rock. Latest single ‘Sin Eater’ is the ideal entry point for the uninitiated, embodying the spirit of the project and the mood which results. It traces how personal pain so often has familial roots, and how one might go about absolving themselves of this weight. “[I] wrote this three years ago, after I had a conversation where someone told me I should visualize sending family guilt ‘up to the cosmic compost heap’,” Izak explained in an Instagram post. “Couldn’t manage to fit that line in a song but wanted to write about intergenerational stuff. And how it can feel like you don’t deserve to move through it and let go, but you totally do.” Supporting vocals from Marley Jarvis only deepen the emotion of the track, and fans of acts like Big Thief and Hovvdy are sure to find plenty of admire.

Cut the cord, but still we’re tied
To the shame of legacy
Prehistoric, hollow eyed
No man is my enemy
And all I ever wanted was to set you free

JJJJJerome Ellis – Evensong, Part 1 (for and after June Kramer)

“A space carved out of the hectic every day into which the listener is invited, Ellis using the album as a kind of intermission within ordinary time where we might consider histories both personal and communal, as well as those of the natural world, and thus come to honour and understand ourselves more faithfully.” So we wrote of Vesper Shadow, the new album by JJJJJerome Ellis coming next month via Shelter Press. In the preview, published back in September, we described how the title track “breath[es] new life into the Gospel mainstay ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’ in a way only Ellis could” to introduce “the dynamic between detail and space which marks Vesper Sparrow, but also the sense of reverence and possibility inherent within the style.” With the record’s release steadily approaching, Ellis has unveiled album opener ‘Evensong, Part 1 (for and after June Kramer)’ to allow audiences another glimpse inside. “The stutter can be a musical instrument,” they say in the opening line, before proceeding the prove the statement with such invention and grace.

Jordan Whitlock & Memory Spells – False Lights (Reprise)

“Suffused with the lush, shadowy grandeur of Lynch at his most romantic.” That’s how we’ve described collaboration between Jordan Whitlock and Matt Bauer‘s Memory Spells, tracks like ‘Take My Hand‘ and ‘Heaven and Here‘ demonstrating an orchestral, cinematic brand of folk rock fit to support the poetic songwriting of the duo. New song ‘False Lights (Reprise)’ reimagines a track from Bauer’s 2015 album Dream’s End, evoking the old maritime legend of wreckers luring vessels onto rocks in order to plunder their goods to explore more personal ideas of loss and ruin. As you might expect from such a description, the track sits at the darker, more melancholic end of the project’s spectrum, though within its tales of deception and devastation flickers something more hopeful or defiant too. A true light to match the malicious mimic, however black the night.

Oh how many wrecks like
Run aground chasing all false lights
Broken apart with want
For what‘s not there’s to have?
From the shore, strangers rifle their pockets
Rip the lockets from around their necks
Gentle waves lap the decks
And still the stars shine ever brighter

‘False Lights (Reprise)’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Joyer – At the Movies

We’ve featured a couple of tracks from Joyer‘s new album On the Other End of the Line… in recent weeks, with ‘Cure‘ showing how the pair have “sand[ed] down the shoegaze scale of the previous record while maintaining its pop melodies […] pushing the Joyer arrangements into newly ambitious territory.” While ‘Glare of the Beer Can‘ “sit[s] in [the] half space between reality and daydream,” as we wrote, “breathing a sense of romance into the ordinary, even if the longing at its heart seems destined to go unsatisfied for a good period yet.” With the album coming soon via Julia’s War Recordings, the duo have returned with ‘At the Movies’, a song which paints another method of retreating from life’s pressures. Where its predecessor used romance as a way to overcome the everyday, the new song champions the safe harbour of the pictures. A space away from the world, even existence itself, if only for a few hours.

Watch the video animated by Sabrina Nichols below:

On the Other End of the Line… is out on the 24th October via Julia’s War Recordings and you can pre-order it now from the Joyer Bandcamp page.

Lisa SQ – Make It Up to You

Recording under the moniker Lisa SQ, Montreal-born, Hamilton-based multidisciplinary artist Lisa Savard-Quong creates indie rock with an avant garde edge, bending the conventions of the genre with a playful, curious and slightly surreal personality. With debut album Reel Me In coming next month, Lisa SQ has released new single ‘Make It Up to You’ to introduce the style. A delightfully bittersweet ode to self-destructive tendencies brought to life with a team of friends and collaborators, including Tyler Kyte, Adam Hindle and Michael Brushy (all of Dwayne Gretzky fame), Simeon Abbott and producer Ian Docherty (July Talk). “Tyler Kyte (Dwayne Gretzky) and I were talking about people who always invite drama into their lives, and I kept picturing these classic tragic heroes, doomed but relatable,” as Savard-Quong explains. “The song grew out of that and my own pacing, daydreaming, and writing in the attic.”

‘Make It Up to You’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Reel Me In is coming soon.

Rivulets – Came

Under the moniker Rivulets, Portland, Oregon-based songwriter Nathan Amundson has created stark, emotionally charged music which sits at the intersection of folk, slowcore and electrified rock for several decades. Latest single ‘Came’ sits at the dark, downbeat end of this spectrum, a lonely song stripped back to its essential features, the guitar and murmured vocals enveloped by a shadowy emptiness, as though the real weight of the sound lies in its negative space. Amundson’s voice plays within this atmosphere as something hushed and half-defeated, his questions rhetorical and addressed to nothing but the night itself. Like the words of a man clinging on through the dark hours in the hope of glimpsing some streak of light on the horizon.

roman around – Moves pt.2

We last wrote about roman around (AKA Fresno, CA’s Roman Rivera) a year ago upon the release of full-length The Toll of Unconditional Love on Trailing Twelve Records, describing how the album drew on intensely personal experiences to explore how love can persist and flourish within the most difficult circumstances. Now Rivera is back with brand new release Wish (Tapes EP) which looks to both continue the style and evolve the project to chart new sonic territory. Fittingly, single ‘Moves pt. 2’ serves as a extension of the track ‘Moves’ from the previous album. A meditation on the passage of time which explores not only that which changes but also those things which remain. Not least those features of US policy, be it the long years of military occupation or the contemporary rise of mass deportation.

Wish (Tapes EP) is out now via Trailing Twelve Records.

Silver Liz – Dream More Vivid

Early next year, Brooklyn-based dream pop duo Silver Liz will release III, a brand new full-length album put out on their own Extremely Pure label. Carrie and Matt Wagner have made a name with an imaginative, idiosyncratic style of shoegaze and dream pop, previous albums I Can Feel the Weight and It Is Lighter Than You Think owing as much to the contemporary cutting edge as the nineties classics, expanding the possibilities of a genre often prone to imitation. The new record promises to be their most ambitious to date, embracing a maximalist approach to create something colourful and shifting, each track its own kaleidoscope packed with texture and detail. Listen to lead single ‘Dream More Vivid’ now:

Sulka – Halloween

The recording project of Glasgow-based songwriter Lukas Clasen, Sulka originated as a DIY effort, Clasen not only playing all the instruments on the early releases but producing and engineering them too. That era of the project peaked in 2021 with the release of Take Care via Lost Map Records, and by the time 2023 full-length Distractions came around, Sulka was recording in a studio with a full-band for the first time. The first release since that album, latest single ‘Halloween’ finds Clasen still evolving his sound, pairing subdued vocals with an eerie backdrop of distorted guitars and synths to evoke the season of its title. The track which emerges captures the duality of Halloween, where nostalgic comfort meets the shadowy unease of the unknown.

It’s Halloween, we’re out tonight
But your mask can’t hide your eye
I’ve been down, but I’m alright
The world can end, but you’ll survive

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