“Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique.” So we wrote when covering single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ last year, and DSH’s forthcoming new full-length Orbits Intervened takes things even further to become perhaps their most ambitious release to date. A collection of sprawling songs large and detailed enough to carry a range of narratives and thematic concerns, touching on everything from personal heartbreak and grief to the cultural trauma of things like the Magdalene laundries scandal. Lead single ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day’ hints at the release’s nuance and depth, a song full of tension despite its patient rhythm, caught between resistance to change and the desire to surrender to its constant flow.

Orbits Intervened will be released on the 5th June.

eggcorn – Hitler Was a Vegetarian

Last month we introduced Observer Effect, the new album from eggcorn coming soon on Spirit House. “Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed,” we wrote, “[the record] sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences.” After the title track used pop-inflected chamber folk to “bare vulnerabilities and reckon with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness,” latest single ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ again finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour. As its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa. “I am tender but that doesn’t make me nice,” as Hoffman sings at the climax of the song. “And I’m sorry and I’m sorry and it’s not fair to you.”

Ella Hanshaw – One More Hill

Born in 1934, Ella Hanshaw started playing guitar aged twelve, playing and singing for her family on their farm in Procious, West Virginia. From then until her death in 2020, Hanshaw wrote hundreds of songs, first heartsick ballads inspired by her favourite country singers and later Gospel songs she believed to be sent directly from God. Despite her obvious talents and huge repertoire, Hanshaw’s music was never recorded professionally, or released publicly, at least until now. Gathered from both home and church tape recordings by Hanshaw’s granddaughter, and released by the fine folks at SPINSTER, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book brings together two distinct collections of her work. Side A features the Gospel songs, while Side B the country ones. Lead single ‘One More Hill’, recorded with Hanshaw’s band the Hallelujah Hill Quartet, opens the collection and is a good example of the its prevailing theme, what the label describe as “love and longing for what we cannot quite touch—not yet, anyway.”

Festiva – Ghosts and Lichens

Carver Arena-Bruce has long released music under the moniker Festiva, with albums like Songs I Don’t Sing for Anyone showing off the Portland, Maine singer and guitarist’s bold, cathartic garage rock style (“If there were a Venn diagram with Sonic Youth in one bubble and CCR in the other, Festiva’s [sound] would be in the middle,” as Arena-Bruce puts it). But the project also has a full-band iteration, with Noah Grenier-Farwell (drums) and Simi Kunin (bass) of Amiright? joining to help realise Festiva’s full noisy potential. Out via Repeating Cloud, new full-length Everything In Moderation shows how powerful this can be, with songs like ‘Ghosts and Lichens’ matching Arena-Bruce’s singular vocal style with a sense of heft and volatility.

Florry – First it was a movie, then it was a book

Philadelphia‘s DIY country superstars Florry have a new record on the way via Dear Life Records. It’s their second effort since bandleader Francie Medosch transformed what was once a solo project into a bona fide folk rock band, and early signs suggest it could see Florry hit yet another level. “A portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers,” as the label describe it, “uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait.” Released a couple weeks ago, single ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’ confirms this hype, a freewheeling country-fried rocker that kicks off the album with limitless energy and dedication to the vision of what Florry means both to Medosch and the community that has formed around her.

First it was a movie, then it was a book
They chopped my life up, put it on tv so I had to take a look
Well that Holly Hunter is so relatable, when she screamed I cried
if I wasn’t feeling so empty baby Id give that movie five out of five

Watch the video directed and edited by Jon Cox below:

Sounds Like… is out on the 23rd May via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Laila Smith – Diorama

Something Dreadful’s Going To Happen, the upcoming release from musician and artist Laila Smith, is more than your average EP. Not only are the songs themselves experimental in their own right, adding avant garde noise sensibilities to what are ostensibly folk arrangements, they are also accompanied by an immersive video game available on Smith’s website. Lead single ‘Diorama’ introduces the project, matching an interactive experience to the song to further its explorations of trauma and the power dynamics which shape us on both personal and societal levels. “I’ve created a digital twin of the physical diorama featured in my album art,” Smith explains, “an explorable environment where fans manipulate a miniature version of me through rooms filled with objects from my personal history.” Taking inspiration from the art style of 90s era internet, the work takes on a strangely retrofuturist vibe, harkening back to a time where the online space felt like fertile ground for a better, more creative future. As Smith puts it: “it’s an attempt to reclaim digital space as somewhere strange and sacred rather than optimized and consumable.”

‘Diorama’ is out now via streaming services.

Rival Consoles – Known Shape

“Might be the project’s most impressive [record] to date, focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria too.” So we wrote of Landscape from Memory, the upcoming from Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. The release sees Ryan Lee West delve into what he calls “a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” building from the flashes of memory and inspiration found within. Embodying the spirit of the release, latest single ‘Known Shape’ shows how Rival Consoles retains a sense of humanity within its digital sound. “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms,” West explains. “The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in ‘Known Shape’ for some kind of answer or emotion.”

Sally Anne Morgan – I Saw a Heron

The music of North Carolina artist and naturalist Sally Anne Morgan is inextricable from the landscape in which she creates it. Her blend of traditional instrumentation and more modern composition is an exploration of the people, places and nature that surround her home at the edge of North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Morgan’s forthcoming record, Second Circle The Horizon, is a direct example, an attempt to translate both the rhythm and randomness of the natural world into a language more musical. “I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds,” she describes, “some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern.” Our first taste is ‘I Saw a Heron’, a piece built of fiddle, violin and piano that feels as fresh and lush as a spring morning walk through a sunlit valley.

Slow Mass – Freeze Frame

Next month sees the release of Low On Foot, the new album from Slow Mass on Landland Corportage. Their first since 2018, the record finds the Chicago outfit bigger and bolder than ever, their line-up increasing to six members (and subsequently seven after recording) and their sound pushing in all directions. Single ‘Freeze Frame’ bears the fruits of this evolution, a sound at once weightier than anything they released previously yet also more tender and heartfelt. Because Slow Mass haven’t merely taken their work down one specific road but added depth to everything, meaning their current iteration can be heavier and more delicate all at once. The juxtaposition is fitting for ‘Freeze Frame’, a song all about the tension between who you are and who you might have been, holding space for those desires to change as a person while learning to embrace one’s own identity.

Watch

Low On Foot is out on the 16th May via Landland Colportage and you can pre-order it now.

Symbol Soup – Miniatures

Back in 2023 Symbol Soup released full-length Slow Puncture via Sad Club Records, an album “brought to life with a decidedly American aesthetic, following a lineage rising in the 90s from songwriters like Mark Linkous and persisting through a myriad of contemporaries,” as we described in our review, “but one which draws parallels between the US and Rea’s hometown of Milton Keynes. A city with a short history inside a country with a long one, designed purely for modern living and possessing the strange balance between potential and hollowness of any ahistorical space.” New single ‘Miniatures’ is again concerned with place and a person’s identity within it, specifically how overly familiar surroundings can come to make a life seem rote and insignificant. But with Symbol Soup’s signature blend of melancholy and warmth, the song manages to reposition such feelings into something like relief. Perhaps being small isn’t the worst thing in the world?

Watch the video by Hello Mary below:

‘Miniatures’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from Bandcamp.

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Supported by Jonjo Kunz-Loncq (drums) and Robbie Carman (bass), and produced by Joseph Fútak and mastered by Tom Nixon, Celeste Madden walks this line between loss and promise with a decidedly ethereal air. Something apparent from the opening notes of ‘Nightly Routine’, its poignant hush evoking that late-night loneliness of an empty room. “Brushed my teeth for what I thought / Was gonna be my last,” as the opening lines go. “Lean into the aftershock / Of April fading fast / Into the citrine summer dew.” The juxtaposition of personal stillness versus passing time leads to a building tension. The frustration inherent within the state of being unable to properly make oneself known.

This is my nightly routine
This is my bread and butter
Everybody knows what’s wrong with me
But nobody knows what’s the matter

‘Lapdog’ is no different, a “dreamlike folk song where placid surfaces hide a roiling depth beneath,” as we described previously, “reflecting on difficult experiences in order to exorcise the hold of the past,” while centrepiece ‘Millennium’ turns towards hopes of resuscitating a relationship, building in intensity across the track as the vocals grow increasingly desperate. Named after the episode of The X-Files in which Mulder and Scully finally kiss, the song lands somewhere between a promise and demand, wishing to retain the devotion of a shared history even in a fractious present.

This duality between sorrow and love marks the entire release, not least closer ‘Fever Dream’. “Pairing acute longing with an ethereal air,” as we wrote in a preview, “the song charts those heady days of romance where pleasure and frustration accentuate one another and everything feels so close yet so far away. A state almost unreal in its experience.” The EP, unready or unable to quite answer its central question, lives within this space. It is not clear if it really goodnight, because for now at least, Celeste Madden has made a home within the grey boundary in between.

Is It Really Goodnight? is out now via Sad Club Records and you can get it from the Celeste Bandcamp page.

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Released via Sad Club Records, new track ‘Stupid Body’ is a perfect introduction to this style, a grungey alt pop song that explores the frustration and exhaustion of persistent health issues. “I wanted this song to feel like you are inside my head during my lowest of lows,” as Gandhi explains. “I wrote it at a time when I was fed up with being dismissed by doctors and having issues with body image. I felt detached from my body, so I addressed it as a separate entity in the song. ‘Stupid Body’ is a space for anyone with disabilities or insecurities to scream, cry, and release.”

But, rather than write something soft and subdued, tall child instead explores these issues with cathartic directness. “Honestly, I was tired of feeling sad and writing sad songs, and then performing sad songs to a crowd of sad people,” Gandhi continues. “I have grown into anger now, and it’s much more fun to translate into music.”

Check out the visualiser by H Holliday below:

‘Stupid Body’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from the usual places.

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The recording project of Texas musician Daniel Bryson (who also plays drums in Skirts), A.L. West is an outlet for lo-fi bedroom pop meets indie rock. He recently released a new double single, Nothing At All / Rabbitbrush 2, which is the perfect introduction for newcomers. ‘Nothing At All’ is a lovely patient indie pop song, but it’s ‘Rabbitbrush 2’ that sees things kicked into another gear. As its name suggests, the track is something of a sequel to one from 2023 A.L. West album The Store, but whereas the original was a gentle folk-inflected bedroom pop song, ‘Rabbitbrush 2’ is thick with a heavy fuzz, building from lulls of plodding percussion and Bryson’s draw out vocals into peaks of triumphant noise.

Watch the video by Alex Montenegro below:

Nothing At All / Rabbitbrush 2 is out now via the A.L. West Bandcamp page.

Casper Skulls – Roddy Piper

Turning the page onto a new chapter for the Sudbury/Toronto indie rock outfit, new album Kit-Cat promises to see Casper Skulls push themselves to new heights. Single ‘Spindletop‘ introduced this refreshed sound, drawing on There Will Be Blood to create a moody, ominous atmosphere, and now ‘Roddy Piper’ introduces a more energetic and soaring dimension. Drawing on the titular figure, the track uses a wrestling analogy to explore confrontation within a relationship, the combination of upbeat rhythm and fuzzy weight evoking the dramatic ups and downs of a choreographed bout. Watch the Mortal Kombat-inspired video, directed by Curtis Carriere and Jordan Vandenberg (of Goodscreen Media) along with the band themselves, below:

Kit-Cat will be released on the 11th April via Next Door Records and you can pre-order it now.

Celeste Madden – Lapdog

Having signed with Sad Club Records, recent months have seen Celeste Madden unveil a handful of singles, with tracks like ‘Joan of Arc‘ and ‘Fever Dream‘ embodying the London-based songwriter’s singular style. Songs both unashamedly melodramatic and undeniably strange, drawing the listener directly into Madden’s psyche so that we too might experience the diverse range of moods and feelings therein. Having announced that EP Is It Really Goodnight? will be released next month, Madden has now returned with new single ‘Lapdog’. Another dreamlike folk song where placid surfaces hide a roiling depth beneath, reflecting on difficult experiences in order to exorcise the hold of the past.

‘Lapdog’ is out now and available via the Celeste Madden Bandcamp page. Is It Really Goodnight? will be released on the 27th March via Sad Club Records.

Craig Finn – People of Substance

Anyone who caught Craig Finn on his This Is What It Looks Like tour last autumn will be champing at the bit for a new album, Finn using the solo sets to introduce a number of new narrative-driven songs full of the detail, emotion and empathy which has so long marked his work. The record, it turns out, is called Always Been, and will be released this spring. A fitting addition to Finn’s oeuvre in the year The Hold Steady‘s Separation Sunday celebrates its twentieth anniversary, the album traces the arc of a protagonist through a rise and fall and eventual redemption, the character committing the life of a priest despite his lack of faith. A whole cast of characters pass into the frame within the telling of this story, but for now we have single ‘People of Substance’ as a glimpse at the world within.

Watch the visualizer by David Kelling below:

Always Been is out on the 4th April and you can pre-order it now.

Dead Bandit – Pink

“Something of a landscape,” was how we described Dead Bandit‘s self-titled album, coming soon on Quindi Records, in a preview back in January. “One rural in tone which seems at once physical and emotional. Often stark and severe in its loneliness, a kind of haunted prairie or steppe, yet often possessing some kind of yearning fondness for the wide open space.” New single ‘Pink’ furthers the style. A cryptic, slow-building number which possesses a kind of shadowed mystery, the layered guitar and creeping beats never puncturing the understated air, as though the truth of the track is always drifting just out of view.

Jacob Faurholt – I Will Hold You

We’ve featured the prolific Danish songwriter Jacob Faurholt multiple times in recent years, an outsider artist in the vein of Daniel Johnston and co. who looks to explore existential themes via lo-fi, idiosyncratic combination of folk, rock and pop. Recorded in the room beneath his children’s bedroom while they were asleep, the most recent release of Faurholt’s we covered embraced a hushed style, but new single ‘I Will Hold You’ pivots away from this entirely. It was written in the aftermath of a Dinosaur Jr. gig, post-show tinnitus still ringing, which anchors its poignant emotion and melodies with a dense undercurrent of noise.

‘I Will Hold You’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Léna Bartels – January is the Loneliest Month

It’s Gonna be a Wonderful New Year, a split between NYC’s Léna Bartels and Nico Hedley, is the first release on new label Rock For Sale Records who release music on cassette tapes and not streaming services. Bartels and Hedley have collaborated across a range of projects (both realised and not quite), and this EP is from the intimate end of the spectrum. The pair describe it as a collection of “songs from winter. Songs for the new year. Songs to get by by,” and if lead single, Bartels’s ‘January is the Loneliest Month’ is anything to go by, it makes good on the promise of its admirably optimistic title. Though not with saccharine cheerfulness but a quiet persistence and steady belief in new beginnings.

Lucy Liyou – Arrested

‘Arrested’ is the lead single from Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name, the new record from Lucy Liyou. Released next month via Orange Milk Records, the album promises to be the Los Angeles musician’s most pop-oriented to date, but anyone expecting a collection of up-tempo dancefloor fillers might be disappointed. As ‘Arrested’ attests, Liyou’s distinctive style is far more complex than that, possessing both a fragile minimalism and lush melodrama, the understated ethereality of the sound and poignant longing of the vocals combining into a reflective and melancholic mood. The sensation of watching a fond memory fade at the edges as the desire to return to its smallest details only grows.

Watch the video shot and directed by Park Seung Won below:

Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name is out on the 21st March via Orange Milk Records and you can pre-order it now.

Mumu The Free Diver – Blossoms

The project of Raleigh, NC-based singer-songwriter Aki Laakso, Mumu The Free Diver offers an evocative brand of indie folk which embraces the authenticity of the DIY aesthetic. Recorded at home with what Laakso describes as “a cheap mic, an old guitar and a bargain-bin audio interface,” new song ‘Blossoms’ swaps out technical polish for a sense of immediacy, sounding like a direct communication from within a moment of grief-stricken vulnerability. But don’t let the description fool you, for though the arrangement is based around acoustic guitar and humble, near-spoken vocals, the track possesses a real sense of richness too. As though through its unguarded nature flows a certain intensity, be it born of compassion, panic, plain hard longing, or indeed a combination of all three.

Penny Loafer – Fridge

Consisting of Emma Barnes (vocals, guitar, keys) and Seth Parker (drums, percussion), Penny Loafer make self-described “post-college rock” which draws from nineties heavyweights like Fugazi and Sonic Youth to offer songs about everyday life which nevertheless possess real weight and bite. With debut EP Daily Deal set for release via Indecent Artistry next month, the Athens, GA-duo have shared single ‘Fridge’. It’s an example of all the ingredients which make the Penny Loafer sound so enticing, with deadpan observation and wry humour meeting tangible heft, all strung together by a chugging momentum which pulls the audience along for the ride. A little bit salty, a little bit sweet and with a noticeable acidic edge.

Tractor Beam – SHOW YOU

“Draws from across the ages in their work, owing as much to 00s indie as 60s folk, and all wrapped up the the contemporary DIY aesthetic, leading to a sound both emotionally immediate and tangibly nostalgic.” So we wrote of Toronto-born, Vancouver-based artist Tractor Beam back in 2023. Now Sasha Balazic and co. are set to return with Monoliths & The Early Reflection, and latest single ‘SHOW YOU’ sees the outfit combine their usual freak folk sensibilities and a more chaotic noise pop style within a single track. The result feels like witnessing a band solidify their ambitions in real time, expanding the possibilities of the Tractor Beam project and pushing closer to their final form. Watch the video directed by Aiden Millroy below:

Monoliths & The Early Reflection is out on the 19th February via Good Stones // Calm Water.

The post Weekly Listening: February 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The result is essentially an emotional arc traced through songs, beginning with the opener and title track. “This song really marks a place in time for me, and pinpoints how I was feeling at the very beginning of the writing of this EP,” Fitz explains. “I was feeling a sense of complete rejection from myself, like there was something wrong with me and the desire to push everything and everyone away from me. The avoidance I was feeling is the big theme throughout the EP. A message I’ve learned from writing this song was that there’s power in never quite being exactly who people want you to be, even if the journey to learning it is hard and flawed.” Watch the video below, with photography by Jody Evans, collage by Ewan McIntosh and visualiser by Tallulah Webb:

From there, we follow Kitty Fitz on the path out of this nadir. Both ‘Laughing Stock’ and ‘Life of the Party’ explore ideas of social anxiety and difficulties with commitment, pairing unguarded ideas of self-rejection and avoidance with quirky charm to open up the relatability of such things. And by closer ‘End of the World’, this act of opening up comes to form its own therapeutic purpose. As though the path to self-acceptance leads only through vulnerability and honesty.

The Man in Me is out now via Sad Club Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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The song comes to represent the antithesis of this period. A lesson in unguarded feelings which isn’t afraid to risk overstatement in trying to explain the sensation of the moment. “‘Joan of Arc’ is a very melodramatic song—I think partly because I was younger, and partly because it’s impossible to think the world isn’t ending when you love someone and it doesn’t work out,” Madden continues. “There’s a lot of religious imagery in the song, which I always love using because it was the background of my early childhood, but also because my relationship felt like my religion, and having it taken away made a real empty space in me.”

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Over the past thirty years, Cursive have established themselves as one of the most consistent and inventive indie rock/emo bands, providing a series of albums which delve into dark, challenging themes with a searing energy. And they show no signs of letting up, with new album Devourer coming later this year on new label Run For Cover. Every bit as intense as anything in their back catalogue, the record explores ideas of consumption in its various guises and how this inevitably slides towards imperialistic exploitation of power. Lead single ‘Up and Away’ introduces the themes with a surprisingly poppy style, though one which squares melody and dissonance off against one another to better capture the tension at the album’s heart. “‘I had the ‘up, up, up, up, up, up and away’ section of lyrics in my head from its inception but hadn’t planned on using something so bright, cheery and arguably trite,” explains singer/guitarist Tim Kasher, “until it occurred to me that what I was really singing about was something floating away from me, something I was losing, not my personal elevation into some stratosphere.”

Watch the video by Brea Grant below, the first in a series of collaborations between Cursive and genre directors which draws on horror tropes to bring the themes of depression further into relief.

Devourer is out on the 13th September via Run For Cover Records and you can pre-order it now.

Evan Uhlmann – Lake Michigan

After penning his first song at the tender age of five and later studying under Ray Davies of The Kinks, it’s fair to say songwriting is in Evan Uhlmann‘s blood. The Chicago-based musician has now enlisted the help of brother Greg Uhlmann (who you might now from his collaboration with Hand Habits as Duffy x Uhlmann on Orindal Records) to record a new collection of songs to be released via Future Gods. First single ‘Lake Michigan’ is the perfect introduction to the kind of intimate, reflective tone of this phase of Uhlmann’s career, tapping into the quotidian rhythms of life to better explore a deep well of emotions. “I wrote this song while grappling with self-doubt in a new relationship, consumed by the fear of not being worthy and the anxiety of anticipating where things might lead before they even started,” he explains. “Lake Michigan became my reflective space; a place to process this unfolding experience.”

Watch the video below with art direction and animation by Sam Congdon:

‘Lake Michigan’ is out now via Future Gods and available from Bandcamp.

Great Klons – Twilight Gardener

Starting out as the bassist for indie pop outfit Eureka Birds in the 2010s before moving to record solo as Great Klons, Scott Klon has been making music for over a decade now, exploring everything from dub-adjacent noise pop to Spaghetti Western-inspired psych folk. The latest Great Klons EP expands upon this with another inventive collision of genres, as indie rock, psych, folk and Krautrock influences all coalesce into a singular sound able to explore ideas of instability within the contemporary moment. With its dual vocals, woozy organ and underlying Motorik beat, single ‘Twilight Garden’ uses Klon’s current home of Finger Lakes, NY as an example of the friction and unease of our present. A time when wealth and poverty make uneasy bedfellows and once proud places crumble amid a wider gentrification. “Lakeside transitory towns / and in between a hundred more,” as Klon sings in the opening verse, “and in the middle the church is falling down / where there are more graves than people.”

‘Twilight Gardener’ is out now via streaming services and you can follow Great Klons on Instagram.

Herr God – jesus candle in the liquor store

The side project of songwriter Chloe Gallardo, San Francisco-based slowcore outfit Herr God is named for a line in a Sylvia Plath poem, a reference which goes some way to illustrate its bruised, introspective style. Herr God has recently released debut single ‘jesus candle in the liquor store’, a song which introduces this style perfectly with its lethargic, downbeat atmosphere. Distorted guitars grumble and smoulder behind shuffling percussion and Gallardo’s listless, mumbled vocals, all coming together to evoke something dark and gloomy but with a strange fatalistic energy.

Watch the video by Ella May Sahlman (director), Liz Charky (director of photography), Zoé Kraft (editor) and Natalia Minguez (PA/BTS) below:

‘jesus candle in the liquor store’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Holy Matter – Wishing Well

Last October we wrote about Leanna Kaiser’s Holy Matter, describing how single ‘Autumn’s Envy’ “occupies the liminal space between the real, emotional and spiritual, as though through loss and introspection, one can lead themselves towards uncanny places.” Again released via Royal Oakie Records, latest single ‘Wishing Well’ sees the LA-based musician and experimental filmmaker continue to mine the rich strangeness of such spaces, where desires are matched by the understanding of their own impossibility. Amid a dreamy, retro soundscape, Kaiser admires a crush from afar while knowing deep down any potential romance is doomed to fail, a weightless headspace where things are both decided and not. “This was a rare instance of knowing exactly how I wanted a song to sound as I was writing it, and it actually turning out identically to how I heard it in my head,” as she explains. “I kept thinking about this restaurant I went to as a kid called The Wishing Well, which had a faux stone well in the middle of its wood-panelled dining room. I imagined this song playing in that dingy room over some crappy 70s restaurant speakers.”

Watch the video directed by Kaiser herself below:

‘Wishing Well’ is out now via Royal Oakie Records and available from Bandcamp.

Luce Rushton – Slinky

Back in April we introduced Slinky, the debut EP from Luce Rushton. Then writing of single ‘How It Works’, we described how the EP is “follows the travails of a young artist attempting to negotiate their own tricky interior within an already overwhelming world,” delivered with a “seamless blend of wry humour and earnest emotion.” Now the record is out in full, Rushton has released a video for the title track which furthers the exploration of gender presented across the release. “The word originally referred to feeling forced into ‘slinky’ women’s clothing throughout my life,” Rushton explains. “In the song, I look back on those feelings and reflect on how much I’ve changed and learned about myself.’’

look how hard i try to
climb up to the ladies room
and what you made me do
sped all day and it costs a fortune
debtor
corner
but you wouldn’t catch me dead in it anymore though

Slinky is out now via Sad Club Records and available from Bandcamp.

No Beauty – JUNE

Led by Helena Alexandria alongside Jonathan Malstrom and Will Fachin, No Beauty is a Hamilton, Ontario-based project gearing up to release their new EP, No Beauty Will Remain, this summer. Single ‘June’ typifies the blend of lightness and weight which constitutes their brand of indie rock. Weighty guitars are propelled by a driving drum line, positioning No Beauty alongside the likes of Basement Revolver in their cathartic heft. But amid the density lies an altogether brighter dimension, with ‘JUNE’ offering a picture of summertime love radiant enough to transcend any encroaching darkness.

a cashmere glow from a small window
fell on the bed
we talked for all the hours on the bed
we found out we had perfect bodies on the bed

Watch the video by Alice Hirsch (director, DOP, editor) and Helena Zogogiannis (AD, creative director, props) below:

No Beauty Will Remain will be released later this summer. No Beauty can be found at the usual places.

Sam Weber – Oregon

Ahead of hitting the road with Anna Tivel this month, Vancouver Island-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Sam Weber has revealed the latest track from his forthcoming album, Clear + Plain. ‘Oregon’ typifies the fusion of traditional and contemporary sensibilities which marks Weber’s sound, with strong percussion and bass anchoring layered vocals and his signature guitar work to offer an ode to its titular state. “‘Oregon’ was written on a trip to Ashland,” as Weber expands. “We were renting a casita on this big property where all these hippies lived. It’s a bit of a sensory abstract poem that just sort of emerged. I think the imagery is my own from the I-5 corridor, seeing the lush green flora, very pagan-beautiful, natural imagery of the state, contrasted with the scraps of humanity strewn around. And the progressive culture of Portland.”

Clear + Plain will be released on the 23rd August and you can find Sam Weber at the usual places.

Secret Flowers – Malibu Burns

Los Angeles fourpiece Secret Flowers—that’s Michael Hentz (vocals, guitar), Jacquelyn Sky (vocals, drums), David Greening (guitar), and Abraham Rodriguez-Smith (bass)—fall somewhere at the intersection of dream pop, psych and shoegaze, offering a sound as confident with dark romance as with laidback jams. New release Balboa EP shows off the full potential of this blend, as shown by lead single ‘Malibu Burning’. Inspired by the wildfires in California over recent years, the song offers slow, lush duet which envelops the listener, evoking not only the stasis of our alarming moment, but the wish to retreat to the small comforts of our loved ones amid encroaching catastrophe.

Slice – Shopping

Consisting of Megan Magiera (guitar, vocals), Barbara Barrera (bass) and Alex Hattick (keys, vocals), Slice have developed a loyal fanbase in Long Beach with their impassioned indie rock sound. After almost a decade of playing together, new single ‘Shopping’, out via Selenite Records, signals a new era for the outfit. It’s the culmination of what has come before, drawing equal does of angst and catharsis to explore themes both personal and political. “When I was writing the lyrics, I was thinking about the different clear-outs of unhoused communities in Echo Park, in Santa Monica, even in Downtown Long Beach,” Hattick explains. “The irony of unhoused communities being cleared out while unaffordable high-rise loft apartments are being built is impossible to ignore. When you’re removing people from these spaces, where do they go? Where do you expect people to go when there’s nowhere to go?”

Thavoron – My Man

Seattle-based Cambodian-American artist Thavoron has made a name for emotive, searching songwriting through a series of singles with Trailing Twelve Records, exploring themes of grief, desire and cultural identity from within the queer experience. Latest track ‘My Man’ is every bit as evocative as we’ve come to expect. A slow-burn anthem which aches with longing, shot through with striking imagery and unguarded emotion. But the sound escalates as the song progresses, gathering a momentum as though Thavoron finds a newfound conviction within it’s build, coming to reach the conclusion that the other he so desires does not hold the key to his own identity. That feeling at home in one’s body is a process to be face on their own terms. Watch the video directed by Thavoron and Maddie Ludgate below:

‘My Man’ is out now via Trailing Twelve Records.

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Later this spring Chicago‘s Babe Report will release their debut full-length album Did You Get Better via Exploding In Sound, the long awaited follow up to their rambunctious 2021 EP The Future of Teeth. But if the band took their time between releases, they waste none within the songs themselves. The ten tracks clock in at less than half an hour in total and all are charged with the same frantic momentum which made aforementioned EP such a fun experience. Or perhaps even more momentum, as opener and lead single ‘Turtle of Reaper’ attests. A searing indictment of clickbait culture which burns white hot, the chorus invokes the hysteria of the Millennium Bug as guitars and drums combine into a frenzy of their own.

Cosmo Sheldrake – More Than A Mountain

London-born, Stroud-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Cosmo Sheldrake always pushes the boundaries of what music can do and be. His previous album Wild Wet World offered undersea soundscapes which incorporated everything from “plaintive whale song to clicking parrotfish and snapping shrimp.” Latest record Eye To The Ear is even more ambitious, a twenty-one song album which combines traditional and electronic instrumentation and also, to quote the album notes, “both human and more-than-human voices” to address both the dire situation faced by the natural world as well as the radical possibilities which might cease or reverse its destruction. Single ‘More Than A Mountain’ is as good a place to dive in as any, offering an understated, brooding tone as it meditates on the scene before us.

Got the beast but left the burden,
It’s the step before the fall,
It’s the pause before the question,
It’s the window or the wall

Little Wings – Ha Ha Blues

Back in February we introduced High On The Glade, the forthcoming album from Little Wings on Perpetual Doom with single ‘Bubbles Go Pop’. A song “every bit as idiosyncratic and inventive as you’d hope,” we wrote, which told “the story of a wild party in a zany vaudevillian procession befitting of a Pynchon novel.” Second single ‘Ha Ha Blues’ might have a more languid rhythm but the writing is no less inventive. Beneath the  rhythm’s apparent warmth stirs a darker, melancholic edge. “Field thinks of this as being his most Irish record, full of heartbreak and violence,” the album notes describe, and ‘Ha Ha Blues’ hints at this side of the record despite its sunny disposition.

Ha ha blues what can I do you for?
What did you choose before a door in your distance
My what news mining persistence
How many wishes once the floor falls through?

Max Blansjaar – Burning In Our Name

After single ‘Anna Madonna’, a song which “acknowledges the hurtful nature of the world and the resulting temptation to react with anger or bitterness” but “becomes the antithesis to such moods,” Max Blansjaar has shared ‘Burning In Our Name’ to further introduce upcoming album False Comforts on Beanie Tapes. It’s another blurring of the line between wry humour and earnest emotion as Blansjaar negotiates the experience of perpetual difficulty that is existing in this world of ours. “Caught up in a maze of hedonists and lies / Putting all our faith in devils in disguise,” as he sings in the chorus. “Just trying to escape when everything’s on fire / And burning in our name.”

nudista – Somebody Else

‘Somebody Else’ is the latest single from London duo nudista (Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman), ahead of their sophomore EP Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does on Sad Club Records. As with previous singles ‘Different Eyes’ and ‘Waiting Line’, it’s a song full of emotive introspection and a desire to live a truer, better connected life. “’Somebody Else’ is about coming to the realisation of having been living a life not trusting your own voice and path,” Cabello explains. “It explores the idea of not knowing fully who you are, about going on a self-exploration journey to find the voice within you and to tune into your own instinct.” It might unfurl with a gentle grace, all soft acoustic guitar and subtle percussion, but it’s message of self-determination is a powerful one. As Cabello puts it at the end of the chorus: “I guess I’ve just been living for somebody else.”

Nothing Makes Sense Until It Does will be released via Sad Club Records and you can pre-order it now from the nudista Bandcamp page.

Shit Present – Acting Tough

“Start again and you’ll be fine / Aren’t you sick of looking for answers all the time?” So ask Exeter outfit Shit Present on the title track of their forthcoming EP, Acting Tough on the ever-reliable Specialist Subject Records. The song introduces the band’s signature blend of pop punk energy, emo sincerity and raw punk rock attitude, making for a sound at once empathetic and cathartic. A useful blend considering the track’s intentions. An attempt to disarm the defence mechanisms of insecurity, and banish the nagging weight of pessimism through sheer momentum and shout-along release.

It’s such a shame to have to see you acting tough
Did somebody make you feel like you aren’t good enough

Tara Jane O’Neil – Glass Island

Written during what she calls “the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her self-titled album,” The Cool Cloud of Okayness is the forthcoming new album from California multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Tara Jane O’Neil. Fittingly for a record preoccupied with life’s changeable nature, it was recorded at O’Neil’s home studio, which is built on the ashes of her previous home destroyed by the Thomas wildfire that devastated southern California in 2017. These themes of destruction and new growth, life’s cyclical rhythms and cruel repetitions snake throughout the record, nurturing green shoots of hope in the charred earth of loss and grief. Latest single ‘Glass Island’ explores these patterns with all the delicate beauty the title suggests. “Another day,” O’Neil sings, “ring around the moon and back again,
dig in again.”

The song comes complete with a video by Harry Dodge:

The Cool Cloud of Okayness is out on the 26th April via Orindal Records and you can pre-order it now.

tilt – all and nothing

tilt is the project of Brooklyn-based trio Isabel Crespo Pardo (vocals), Kalia Vandever (trombone, vocals) and Carmen Quill (acoustic bass, vocals), who draw on their considerable solo credentials to make formally inventive, jazz-inflected art pop. Next month, tilt will release their debut album something we once knew on Dear Life Records, a record which takes us by the hand and leads us into a world of improvisation and idiosyncratic style. Lead single ‘all and nothing’ feels like a doorway into this landscape, a calm song that breathes in an organic rhythm behind its careful composition. A delicate but confident vocal duet rises and falls on the mournful draught of Vandever’s trombone, tracing elegant and unexpected patterns on the backdrop of negative space. The result is both bright and somehow pensive, like the shapes thrown by golden afternoon sunlight as it slants through a window.

Work Wife – Control

“A warm and introspective song of trying to find yourself in the vast bustle of the city amidst its noise and countless strangers […] ending in a thumping singalong finale.” That’s how we described ‘Strangers’, the first single from Work Wife‘s EP Waste Management. With the EP now out via Born Losers Records, latest single ‘Control’ highlights a different side to the release, swapping out the intimate clarity of the opener in favour of something dreamy and enveloping. Despite clocking in at barely two minutes, the track possesses a real sense of scale, washing over the listener with layered richness. When Meredith Lampe’s vocals eventually emerge, it feels as though you have passed into the centre of something to find the intimate truth within.

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The EP’s title is a nod to both the positives and negatives of such an experience. “The word slinky reminds me of the feminine clothes I would feel so uncomfortable in and at the same time the word makes me think of how free and malleable my gender feels to me now,” Rushton explains. “I am more comfortable with both femininity and masculinity now in a way I never was before and there is a slinkiness between them.”

As new single ‘How It Works’ attests, Rushton approaches such ideas with a seamless blend of wry humour and earnest emotion. With its stripped back arrangement and air of bittersweet wistfulness, the track explores a the end of a relationship via encounters with sensory reminders of the now-absent person. “This song was originally written in 2017 when I walked past someone who wore the same perfume as an ex,” Rushton continues. “Sometimes breakups are so overwhelming that all your senses feel heightened in strange and unpredictable ways, and suddenly the smallest reminder of a person can set you off. When you are defenceless against the invisible and painful reminders of what could have been.”

Slinky will be released via Sad Club Records on the 6th of June.

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Back in July we wrote about  Fort Worth, TX songwriter Cameron Smith, describing how single ‘Under the Cover of Darkness’ drew on “the loaded depths of the southern gothic genre” to evoke “the heartsick wanderer which can be traced back through Molina and van Zandt, where the long night is illuminated only by the blood moon and low fuel light on the dash.” Recorded as part of a Café Solo Songwriters Live session, latest single ‘Shadows of the Moonlight’ follows a similar spirit. This time it takes inspiration from the story of Smith’s great-grandfather Sam Smith who served in WWI and worked as a cowboy before being killed while working as a lineman for the Texas Louisiana Power Company. “I’m not a cowboy but Sam was,” as Smith explains. “It’s a campfire song; a reflection on the mental, spiritual and physical distances a person can travel between night and day.”

You can grab the track now from the Cameron Smith Bandcamp page.

h. pruz – I Keep Changing

The third single from their forthcoming record No Glory, ‘I Keep Changing’ is the perfect introduction to the music of h. pruz, aka Queens-based songwriter Hannah Pruzinsky. It’s a rich and direct track that wanders further toward rock than previous h. pruz songs, giving weight to the very real emotional power that has always underpinned their music. Like much of the record, the song focuses on a pivotal moment, conjuring almost physical dimensions to inner turmoil and subsequent growth. “The song emerged a few weeks following a pretty life-altering break-up, Pruzinsky describes to Stereogum. “I’m trying to capture the feeling of the moment when you can feel something inside you giving way to a newer form, and how ugly yet unstoppable and freeing that ultimately felt.”

No Glory comes out on 29^th March via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. and is available to pre-order via the h. pruz Bandcamp page.

Habibi – On The Road

Brooklyn’s Habibi return later this spring with Dreamachine, their first new record in four years. Released via Kill Rock Stars, the album promises to be something of an evolution for the garage rock five-piece, drawing on everything from post punk and lo-fi experimentalism to vintage disco and the Middle Eastern psych influences that have always made Habibi stand out. And it’s not a case of style over substance either, the band utilizing these disparate elements to explore themes both physical and spiritual. “There’s always a desire for transcendence in our music,” says lead Rahill Jamalifard, “a desire to go beyond our limitations. Whether it’s spiritual or physical or emotional, it feels like this album really embodies that search for something more.” Check out lead single ‘On The Road’ for an early taste, a beguiling and deadpan track with infectious percussion and stabs of wiry guitar.

On the road again, on the road again
Driving north towards the great star of Bethlehem

Dreamachine will be released on 31st May via Kill Rock Stars and is available to pre-order via Bandcamp.

Hailaker – Gist

A collaboration between songwriters Ed Tullett (Lowsimmer) and Jemima Coulter, Hailaker put out two records pre-pandemic, with both their self-titled debut and follow-up Holding proving testaments to the bond between the artists. However, several years of isolation and social distancing, not to mention other creative endeavours in the interim, left the pair wondering whether the spark had extinguished. It was only when Coulter suggested they park any songwriting ambitions and instead just enjoy one another’s company again did the connection rekindle, and the resulting songs are as ambitious and inventive as anything Hailaker has released to date. Take new single ‘Gist’ with its newfound pop sensibilities, sounding like a new dawn fitting for the circumstances, and one suggestive of a bright future for the project once again.

‘Gist’ is out now via Believe.

Jackie West – Snow Amplified

Back in December, we described how Jackie West‘s ‘Tiny Flowers ii’ drew the audience in with a decidedly ambiguous tone, with a specific line from the song “complicat[ing] the second listen and every one thereafter, its gravity subverting the track’s structure and perspective from what the sound might originally suggest.” West has now announced her debut full-length, appropriately titled Close To The Mystery, to be released this May via Ruination Record Co., made in the hope of edging closer to the truth at the heart of any relationship. But with its oscillation between stark fingerpicked hush and chaotic, weighty momentum, new single ‘Snow Amplified’ suggests such mysteries might resist easy explanation, and instead only draw the audience deeper into the rich ambiguity of Jackie West’s work.

Kierst – Southern Star

“A reflection on longing and self-worth which owes as much to Grouper and Mazzy Star as it does contemporary bedroom pop, the intimate vocals and pressing rhythm lifted by an ethereal soundscape, resulting in a mood which transcends the immediate pain for heartbreak.” That’s how we described ‘Phone Call from Kierst‘s Thud EP on Sad Club Records. Following on from the success of the release, which among other things saw a track placed on Disney+ series Extraordinary, Kierst has returned with a brand new single, ‘Southern Star’. Just as emotive as anything on the previous record, the new single offers the kind of lush dreaminess only possible with patience and attention. “I wrote this a long time ago when I was really heartbroken, there’s no other way to put it,” Kierst explains. “But years have gone by and the song has gone through countless versions and been transformed by people I hold dear—and in that way, it means so much more to me now than ever before.”

‘Southern Star’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from the usual places.

Luke De-Sciscio – Papa

Looking to capitalise on the creative breakthrough of recent full-length Heaven, an album which parked any sense of overworking in favour of “an intuitive flow which charges the songs with a sense of poetic authenticity,” prolific songwriter Luke De-Sciscio has already released new album, Papa. Described as “nine songs of delicate brevity,” the album takes stock of the ephemeral moments shared by a couple as they pass through the trials of young love towards parenthood, both as a way to preserve what has been and as a kind of ritual farewell. ‘Insights of a Heart’ is the perfect introduction to this tender, reflective collection, understated yet shot through by a frantic longing which belongs to the late night. ‘Blank Inside, Designed And Printed In The UK’ is no less keen in its observations, evoking the mysterious space between an end and a start with De-Scisco’s trademark reverence for human feeling.

Papa is out now and available from the Luke De-Sciscio Bandcamp page.

Mandy – High School Boyfriend

Best known as the lead singer of Chicago noise rockers Melkbelly, Miranda Winters has also quietly written her own music for over a decade. Despite some small releases over the years, she is now about to step into the limelight proper with the release of Lawn Girl, her debut “solo” full-length on Exploding in Sound Records, released under the moniker Mandy. With assistance from Linda Sherman (guitar), Lizz Smith (bass) and Wendy Zeldin (drums), Mandy make what Winters calls “dirty-bubblegum pop rock” that explores being a daughter, a mother and a woman in general. Lead single ‘High School Boyfriend’ is an exhilarating introduction, a crunchy rock song that packs anthemic noise and clear-eyed sincerity into its barely two minute runtime. Watch the video by  Liam Winters and Marty Schousboe below:

Lawn Girl will be released on 26th April via Exploding in Sound. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Pacing x Career Woman – Boyfriends

After the success of album Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen, Pacing has teamed up with Melody Caudill, AKA Career Woman, for a new single on Lauren Records. ‘Boyfriends’ collides the trademark sensibilities of both artists, blending confessional emotion with quirky charm to offer something between wistful rumination and scream of frustration. But by the end of the joint chorus, the overring emotion is something affirming. “It feels very nostalgic to me,” McTigue explains, “like I can’t tell which parts are about being a kid and which parts are about being a grownup.”

We promised that we would live together in a tree
And watch the world end
But you got a boyfriend
I got a… really cool pen
But you got a boyfriend

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