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.

With the album’s release on the horizon, Perennial have unveiled latest single ‘Ready! Steady! Go!’, another blast of relentless energy that somehow combines raucous punk rock with an air of 60s cool. The juxtaposition is just one of the many which mark the sound of Modernism—the record dense yet propulsive, experimental but intuitive, caustic and welcoming—and ‘Ready! Steady! Go!’ embodies the vibe perfectly. A song at once buoyant and bruising which seems to want to both dance with you and slap you around that face, earning each of the three exclamation marks in its title as it barrels towards its conclusion in under two minutes. Watch the video, directed, filmed & edited by the band, below:

Modernism will release on 18th September via Safe Suburban Homes (UK) and Ernest Jenning Record Co. Order a copy now from the Perennial Bandcamp page, includingCD and a limited edition white vinyl.

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With singles ‘Everything’ and ‘Closer’, London duo atmos bloom have indicated the dreamy depths of their new album Everythingness, as well as the push and pull between influence and experimentation which marks their shoegaze-inflected sound. “[‘Closer’] finds Gratton and Paterson looking for contentment in the present and the constant change it represents,” we wrote of the latter single, “something achieved with a woozy, almost ethereal sound that sits on a knife edge between lucidity and dreams, sanding the edges off of reality in order to consider it more fully.” With the release of Everythingness fast approaching via Spirit Goth Records, atmos bloom have shared latest track ‘It’s Enough’, and again the song finds itself caught between competing forces. Namely the difficulty of living up to the expectations of different people, each with their own distinctive image of you in their head.

Chris Acker – Overdrafted

“A country-folk lamentation about the cruel thing banks do when you have less than zero dollars.” That’s how the press release describes ‘Overdrafted’, the new single from New Orleans-based songwriter Chris Acker. His first new music since 2024 album Famous Lunch, the song explores what he calls the “half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined.” As we wrote back in 2024: “Behind Acker’s trademark absurdity is the essential troubadour tale, where the confused dreamer collides with the banalities of life and comes to feel cursed for his failings.” But what’s remarkable is, despite the self-deprecation and wry humour, there’s some strange beauty here too, a heartwarming sense of camaraderie with everyone who finds themselves “in the red but still trying to tread.” You certainly won’t hear a more affecting account of having to make do with single ply toilet paper this year.

Jacob Brodovsky – Beneath It All

The songs of Jacob Brodovsky have never been afraid to delve into the personal, with new album Tell The Kids We Tried meditating, as we put it, “on themes of community, connection and family within the tumult that is the present moment,” but latest single ‘Beneath It All’ pushes further than most. Brodovsky had been the proud director of a Jewish summer camp, a place where he had spent over two decades of his life, only to recently face backlash from some members of the wider community for liking a social media post about a benefit show Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. An ugly situation developed, with the pressure tipping over into full-blown harassment, leaving him little choice but to resign and leave the place which had come to feel like a second home. “I wrote ‘Beneath It All’ about trying to hold onto the community that raised me while it shrinks into itself,” Brodovsky explains. “A community of good people, many of whom blinded by trauma, grief, and a refusal to acknowledge harm.” The album track featured the fantastic Charlotte Cornfield, while a new alternate live version sees Keiran Placatka, Dominique Adams and Leith Ross join instead:

Tell The Kids We Tried is out now via Make My Day Records and available from Bandcamp.

Jonathan Something – Country Rose

Recording under the moniker Jonathan Something, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Searles won acclaim through the late 2010s and early 2020s, writing prolifically across rock, folk and pop styles, though emerged from the period disillusioned with the industry and music more generally. “I was finding it hard to identify with being an artist anymore,” he explains. “It didn’t bring me the same joy or comfort it used to, and I found that the only way for me to really enjoy music again was to stop making it.” Cue several years away from songwriting, a spell only broken when ill health pushed him back towards music, even if at first merely sitting at a piano now caused him anxiety. “Eventually, I realized that I needed to turn it into something useful,” Searles continues. “I needed to use it as a catalyst to start thinking more seriously about spirituality and growth and the changes I needed to make in my life. And that journey became [new album] One More Lonesome Cowboy Song.” The record will be released this autumn via High Shelter, but for now you can listen to single ‘Country Rose’ for a taste of existential, transformative tone which marks the songs. Watch a live performance of the track recorded by Dogstar Films below:

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

LAPÊCHE – Phantom Of Cinder

Brooklyn’s LAPÊCHE began life back in 2016 as the solo project of Krista Holly Diem, but has since grown into a full-blown band. Drawing on shoegaze and post-punk, they make indie rock songs that are both shadowy and catchy, centering on a sense of considered patience that the band says is born from “a shared language of healing, honesty and presence.” Back in February, they released a new record Autotelic via Tiny Engines, a collection of emotionally intricate but very much listenable rock songs. One standout was album closer ‘Phantom of Cinder’, a typically restrained track about how we hold on to shards of the past like splinters in our skin. “This song came from feeling haunted by old versions of myself,” Diem describes. “It is about the things we carry, the memories that refuse to disappear, and the moments that shape us long after they have passed. Sometimes healing is not about letting go. Sometimes it is about learning to live with what remains.” Watch the Jacob Halpren-directed video for ‘Phantom of Cinder’ below:

Autotelic is out now via Tiny Engines and available from the LAPÊCHE Bandcamp page.

Mama’s Broke – Build It Up

The recording project of Canadian pair Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria, Mama’s Broke has made a name over the last decade or so with a rootless, ever-searching style of folk music which played like the songs of old. Stories to be shared around campfires and small town bars before packing up and hitting the road once more. Latest album Reunion, coming later this summer via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, continues this style, possessing a timeless quality that suggests these aren’t so much new songs as memories passed down through the ages. As single ‘Build It Up’ attests, the result is at once intimate and urgent, delivered with the earnest conviction of those unwilling to let go of this world we’re slowly destroying. “If you don’t build it up,” as the telling refrain states, “somebody else will tear it down.”

Nick Bellerose – maybe i think

Montreal’s Nick Bellerose spent nearly two decades living a double life. His career as an international diplomat saw him travel the globe, “handling global crises in the foreign service.” But, privately, his true calling was music, something he used as an anchor to himself when thousands of miles from home. A couple of years ago, things changed. A series of tragedies, spearheaded by the death of his mother, led him to pick up a guitar and start to sing, making the decision to swap “the world stage of diplomacy for the visceral truth of the microphone.” Bellerose cites the likes of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen as influences, something plainly clear in latest single ‘maybe i think’. Characteristically bittersweet, the track explores heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming.

Perennial – Modernism

Formed in Connecticut over a decade ago, Perennial are a self-styled “modernist punk” band who have blown away sweaty basement shows across the globe with their punk rock patchwork style that knits together just about every left-field and out-there style you can think of. The press release describes their forthcoming new record (aptly titled Modernism) as “Op art to dance to”, but the better metaphor is the tagline of a “1,200 second action painting”, as Perennial streak and splatter disparate elements of their seemingly endless record collection into hectic patterns that feel at once reverential and totally new. The real triumph is how Perennial keep these eccentric experiments so catchy and immediate (two words you may now immediately associate with sub-2-minute melange of free jazz, ambient electronica, big beat, dub and Musique concrète), as the opener and title track attests. Check it out below:

Sharp Pins – Saturday Sun

The project of Chicago’s Kai Slater (who you may also know from Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe), Sharp Pins is an outlet for lo-fi garage pop that could have come swaggering straight out of the swinging sixties. Not content with putting out two records last year (which clocked in with a combined total of 35 tracks), Slater is already back at it, announcing plans to re-release the album MOD MAYDAY 23, first released on tape a couple of years ago when he was still a teenager, via K Records and perennial. “[MOD MAYDAY 23 is] The soundtrack to my 18th summer riding a Chinese Taotao 50cc scooter around Taqueria Moran and four tracking my Sta-Prest-Dreams,” Slater describes. “I thought it would be cool to record a bunch of songs that never really got recorded in a semi-more-thought-out-way.” And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a brand new Sharp Pins single too. Titled ‘Saturday Sun’, it’s another slice of throwback pop music that’s sure to soundtrack the rest of the summer.

‘Saturday Sun’ is out now via the Sharp Pins Bandcamp page. MOD MAYDAY 23 will be released on 4^th September via K Records and perennial.

Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker – Sigils of Decay (for João da Cruz e Sousa)

Next month, American Dreams will release the third edition of Songs for Sad Poets, a collaborative project between Tehran-based composer Siavash Amini and Brooklyn writer/philosopher Eugene Thacker, inspired by the tradition of poètes maudits or ‘cursed poets’. As Thacker describes, “[the term] referred to obscure or unknown poets who had endured some form of suffering and who felt compelled to write about it.” In the duo’s hands, this inspiration becomes something haunting, soundscapes that mould ideas from poetry, philosophy and music into new forms.  The first two volumes were entirely instrumental, but this new one is a little different. Amini fed Thacker’s poems into voice synthesis software and then processed and layered the output until any notion of “voice” is dissolved in noise. Lead single introduces how this sounds, a tribute to late nineteenth-century Brazilian symbolist poet João da Cruz e Sousa.

Wishy – All The Rage

“An unapologetically romantic track which creates the slightly intoxicated state of the title in all of its headspinning glory, refusing to dial down the lyrics in order to fully embrace the headspace. As though to be in love is to experience everything saturated and bright.” So we wrote of ‘Lovesick’, the lead single from Wishy‘s new full-length Nature’s Pill back in June, the Indianapolis outfit’s first full-length since the celebrated Triple 7 back in 2024. With the album slated for release via Winspear this autumn, Wishy have put out ‘All the Rage’ to keep the anticipation high. Thematically, the track is diametrically opposed to its predecessor, existing in the aftermath of a break-up and seeking solace amid the gloom. However, take a casual listen and you’d never know it. Because, for all of the bummed out frustration and wistful longing of the lyrics, the sound itself is buoyant and bright, a twee spirit which leans into the rhythm of the sound as though to cleanse itself via momentum alone.

Nature’s Pill will be released on the 2nd October via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the Wishy Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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

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

Air Mail – Won’t You

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

Ben Auld – Red Bandana

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

Frog – Je Nes Sais Pas

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

Jillian Lake – Human

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

‘Human’ is out now via streaming services.

Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – Wing Song

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

Old Amica – Bländverk

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

Sulka – All Bets Off

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

Tory Silver – Microwave

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

Scrambled eggs
On my plate
Getting cold
Microwave

The post Weekly Listening: March 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back in 1987, San Francisco alt rock outfit Donner Party released a self-titled debut full-length, a record which drew on the strange, macabre imagery behind the project’s name (the Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who alleged became murderous cannibals when stranded in the Sierra Nevada) to explore themes of anxiety and death with a tone both playful and esoteric. Hence tracks titled ‘Godlike Porpoise Head Of Blue-Eyed Mary’, ‘John Wilkes Booth’, ‘The Owl Of Minerva’ and more. Fast forward nearly forty years and Donner Party are re-releasing the album via Trussed Recordings, with the tracks remastered by Melbourne-based musician and engineer Mikey Young. Single ‘Halo’ serves as an introduction to a whole new generation, its racing rhythm and country twang embodying the band’s mischievous spirit and infectious energy. “There’s a halo on my head,” as the chorus goes, “though it sometimes fades, I would sooner lose my life than trade my halo away.”

Eli Carvajal – Scar

“Manag[es] to evoke the ways in which love elevates the ordinary into something wonderful, and creates the possibilities of new myths and dreams before us.” That’s what we had to say about ‘Stretch Marks‘ by London-based songwriter Eli Carvajal back in March, a song “simple in execution and all the more convincing for it,” as we continued, which “marks Carvajal as a songwriter to watch as we move further into 2025.” Well, now we’re further into 2025, the wait to hear more is almost over, as Carvajal is preparing to release new full-length Eyen Forever in October via Safe Suburban Home Records. Latest single ‘Scar’ is every bit as observant and tender, welcoming the audience into the mundane details of everyday existence in order to gesture towards themes more poignant and sweeping. “I wrote this song on my 29th birthday, while I was living in Tokyo, when I cut my finger while cutting garlic,” Carvajal explains. “A symbolic spilling of blood over the last year of my twenties. I imagine the drops of blood as rubies springing up; this theme of transformation continues as I reflect on everyday life in Japan and my feelings around approaching thirty.”

Joyer – Cure

Nick and Shane Sullivan, the sibling duo behind Joyer, have gone their separate ways since the release of previous record, Night Songs, each moving to a new city and having to grapple with the distance and loneliness when going through the already challenging post-tour blues. But if new full-length On the Other End of the Line… is anything to go by, the experience has only strengthened their resolve to utilise Joyer as a force for connection and meaning. Forthcoming via Julia’s War Recordings, the full-length sands down the shoegaze scale of the previous record while maintaining its pop melodies, as well as pushing the Joyer arrangements into newly ambitious territory. Lead single ‘Cure’ gives a hint at what to expect, detailing how we search for small moments of connection within the isolation of the contemporary world.

MacGregor Burns – What I’ve Been Looking For

“Through a number of singles in recent months, LA songwriter MacGregor Burns has established a style at once emotionally resonant and idiosyncratic,” we wrote back in June, with songs like ‘Silent Answers‘, ‘Can’t Go Back‘ and ‘I’m Not Supposed to Be Here Anymore‘ falling somewhere on the spectrum between slacker rock and folk. Latest offering ‘What I’ve Been Looking For’ both continues this style and nudges it in new directions. Relatively sparse and slow-moving, there’s a slightly forlorn tone to the track, though as a subtle R&B groove establishes itself and Burns’s vocals rise in conviction, the result is romantic rather than lonely. The spacious arrangement revealed to be not the product of stark solitude but rather a burgeoning clarity, the delivery aching with the knowledge of having stumbled upon that which he so keenly desires yet had previously proved elusive.

‘What I’ve Been Looking For’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Minus The Bear – Drilling

Back in July we wrote of how Suicide Squeeze Records are putting out a deluxe edition of Minus The Bear‘s seminal album Menos el Oso to celebrate its twentieth anniversary this month, with the original album expanded with a number of demo versions of some of the most beloved tracks. After ‘The Pig War’ a few weeks ago, the band are now back with a brand new video for ‘Drilling’, directed/edited by Cheyne Smith and produced by Minus the Bear and Do Better For Artists. Check it out below, and be sure to catch Minus The Bear on their North American tour this autumn if they pass a town near you. All the dates are available here.

Suicide Squeeze Records will release Menos el Oso (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) on 22nd August. Get a copy now from the Minus the Bear Bandcamp page.

My Generation – Want It

My Generation are a new band from LA, who recently unveiled themselves to the world with debut single ‘Want It’. What label Post Present Medium describe as “a sparse yet lambent meandering jam,” the track is a great intro to the trio, that is N.A.S. (P22, Purity) Sara Mayako (Mayako XO, Behavior Mayako XO) and Sophie Weil (Syko Friend, Pink Trash Can). It’s oddly timeless, the raw guitar, subtle percussion and detached drawl of vocals sounding could be modern or fifty years old, like some unearthed long-lost 7” gem that has lost none of its electric verve.

The New Eves – The New Eve

On the first day of August, Brighton-based quartet The New Eves released their debut album The New Eve Is Rising, via Transgressive. The record captures the band’s theatrical and ritualistic live performances and their distinctive “Hagstone rock” style that combine mystical freak folk, reckless punk and poetic radical feminism. It’s the product not of a superstitious or occult past, but rather something altogether new, a self-created mythology. As the label put it: “It’s a boundless, uninhibited kind of magic that feels completely new; that’s writing its own rulebook for how to exist – as a band, as women, as humans in the world – from the ground up.” The opener and title track is (unsurprisingly) the best place to start, something like a mission statement of the project as a whole.

Noele Flowers – Ricky, you are a vision

Back in 2023 we wrote about Massachusetts-raised, Hudson Valley-based songwriter Noele Flowers and her EP Wait For Me, explaining how the title track existed in a strange liminal space, where shoots of possibility were shaded by the still looming past. A love song, but one flavoured by a blend of hope and anxiety. Flowers is now preparing to release debut full-length Historically Close Friends to build upon this style, and has unveiled lead single ‘Ricky, you are a vision’ as a preview. Recorded with the help of her former choir, Khorikos, the track is what she describes as “an imagined love song,” where she puts herself in the shoes of a historical figure in order to write. Namely twelfth-century abbess, writer, and composer Hildegard von Bingen (who you might remember as the focus of Larum‘s recent release), addressing likely lover Richardis von Stade. A track not without a certain sense of hesitancy in it gentle warmth, yet imbued with an encompassing fondness with furthers the patience which Flowers set out with the previous release.

If history remembers us as lovers, they won’t be quite wrong
Cause I wrote you into every remedy and every song
You are a vision

Historically Close Friends is coming soon.

OK Cool – Last

“Combines emo confession with an infectious forward motion to create something genuinely cathartic despite its dark tone.” That’s how we described ‘Waawooweewaa’ from OK Cool‘s new full-length, Chit Chat, back in May. A track which served as the ideal introduction to Bridget Stiebris and Haley Blomquist Waller’s fresh style, reaching across the spectrum of indie rock, math and shoegaze and combining the influence into something new. With the album out now via Take A Hike Records, the Chicago outfit has shared closer ‘Last’ as a new single. Another emotionally charged number which pairs vulnerability with layers of energy and reverb, feeling far larger than its relatively short runtime thanks to its equal embrace of heart and heft. “Sweetness will you be my last / all my lives have come to pass,” goes one typically conflicted verse, “I can’t see it, i don’t know is my driving way too slow.” Yet for all of the uncertainty, the overarching result is again catharsis, as though OK COOL have found a way to not so much solve life’s problems but power on through regardless.

one day you’ll believe me
one day i’ll believe me too

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

Having orbited around one another in the LA music scene for a short while, Derek Ted and Braden Lawrence gradually began to collaborate, helping one another with solo work, producing other artists, then eventually writing original material as a duo. The product of the relationship is beaming, a brand new project which will release its debut self-titled EP this June via Rose Garden, and lead single ‘slow sinkin’ gives a flavour of what to expect from the outfit. With Field Medic adding guest vocals, the track possesses all of the earnestness fans of Ted and Lawrence’s solo work will know well, the bright rhythm and heartfelt tone the sonic equivalent of shaking clarity into a clouded mind. “Lyrically, it’s about looking back on the past and how easy it is to get caught up in your own BS,” the band explain. “It’s our most acoustic track on the EP, and we wanted it to feel more natural and organic.”

Watch the video directed by Olivia Alonso Gough with cinematography and colour by Michael Greenwood below:

Beaming EP is out on the 13th June via Rose Garden and you can pre-save it now.

Bouquet – Hold On

Almost a decade since their previous album was released, LA-based dream pop duo Bouquet are preparing to unveil a brand new full-length. Consisting of interdisciplinary artist, writer and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and songwriter and producer Max Foreman, the project made a name with a rich and romantic style that championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses, and new single ‘Hold On’ represents a continuation of the style. With Pennypacker Riggs providing vocals and guitar and Foreman vocals, synthesizer and drum machine, the song is a lesson in precision, not drowning the audience in reverb and haze but instead beckoning them into its ethereal, wistful world.

Course – Hue Mirror

Led by Jess Robbins, Chicago synth pop outfit Course formed in the months before the pandemic, so adapting to challenging conditions has always been part of the project’s DNA. Their third album Hue Mirror is no exception. After suffering with chronic pain for years, Robbins was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition ankylosing spondylitis, and wrote the record within the vertiginous early days of processing the news. The lead single and title track introduces the tone of the record, one delivered with equal doses of tenderness and fear. “I wrote this song during the confusion and uncertainty of my future,” Robbins explains. “The song touches on the idea of how a medicine for this disease comes at a price, the pain I had been having for so long, and the sneakiness of not knowing when the next flare will come.”

You find me again
And again
Driving fear
Comes over me
In the light of pain

Hue Mirror is out on the 25th April and you can pre-order it via the Spondylitis Association of America, with all proceeds being donated to research.

Jess Kerber – I Wonder If I’ll Forget This

Born to musician parents, and a guitarist herself since the age of twelve, Nashville’s Jess Kerber makes warm and timeless songs that feel like worthy entries to the American folk tradition. New single ‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is a case in point, a wonderfully understated track that aches with real emotion. Kerber’s vocals are flanked by acoustic guitar and the barely-there texture of organ drone, an arrangement that allows the songwriting to shine through. It’s impressively mature, particularly in the way it combines genuine vulnerability with a sense of steadfast tenacity, a sensation Kerber likens to “the feeling of being little and learning to swim, grabbing the edge of the pool.”

‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is out now via Felte Records and is available on streaming services.

JLJR – Arms For Eyes

With new EP The Rest of Your Life coming soon via Paper Moon Records, JLJR has shared new single ‘Arms For Eyes’. Building upon the mix of emotion and narrative which marked the JLJR debut, the track adopts a tone both reflective and defiant to chart the end of a distinctive kind of relationship. One troubled and difficult to live through, yet equally one whose closure takes something from you too. “It’s a reflection on the disintegration of a bad friendship,” as JLJR puts it, “and the struggle to be yourself after someone robs you of part of your identity.”

‘Arms For Eyes’ is out now via Paper Moon Records.

Luah – Wanting You

“Something like a memory, or rather several memories superimposed. A way in which to not so much return to the past as view it more vividly, somehow striking in both its intimacy and remove. That place we long for but can never return to.” So we wrote of ‘Ocean O. (home 4 the holidays)’ by Brendan Paul Sullivan’s Luah back in January. It was a song which embodied the sincerity and heart of the project, not to mention the gentle patience with with emotion is brought to life. With album Some Blue Heaven coming next month, latest new single ‘Wanting You’ takes this sense of patience even further. A layered, slow burning psych folk song that taps into the rhythms of the diurnal cycle, moving from day to night as it progresses and gradually coalescing into something almost cosmic.

Molly Ganley – Comparisons

Last week saw the release of Eldest Daughter, the debut album from NYC indie folk artist Molly Ganley. Described as “a nostalgic and honest account of finding your way,” it’s a very human record about growth and change and navigating life’s strange turns with as much grace as is possible. One standout is ‘Comparisons’, a track that sits at the centre of the album and proves the perfect introduction to what Ganley does so well. Backed by pedal steel, piano and backing vocals from country folk duo Raising Daughters, the song confronts the futile and needless woes that result from comparing oneself to others.

Monnone Alone – Dry Doubt

Eighteen months ago, Melbourne‘s Monnone Alone released single ‘Loose Terrain’, a stellar slice of jangle pop where bright playfulness was shadowed by the slightest mark of wistful longing. With three albums already under their belt, the track seemed to be a culmination of their talents and experience, only for the project to settle into a prolonged period of radio silence. Such quiet can go one of two ways in the music industry—positive or negative—but luckily for us, in Monnone Alone’s case, the answer is the former. Because while they might have have appeared inactive from the outside, the truth was they were hard at work on brand new full-length, Here Comes the Afternoon. Pencilled for early May, the release is a joint endeavour, with Lost And Lonesome (Aus), Meritorio (EU), Safe Suburban Home (UK) and Repeating Cloud (US) teaming up to spread the record far and wide. Album opener and new single ‘Dry Doubt’ suggests ‘Loose Terrain’ was anything but a flash in the pan, so the date can’t arrive soon enough.

Orchid Mantis – Spirit Circle

Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the Orchid Mantis project as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles, each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux. Coming this spring on Daydream Records and Start-Track, the latest Orchid Mantis full-length Possession Pact pivots towards a nineties slowcore style, channeling forebears like Low, Bedhead and Codeine to offer a new dimension to the project. Opener and lead single ‘Spirit Circle’ typifies the understated brooding atmosphere. A song bathed in shadowy textures and melancholic quiet, always threatening to rise into something more intense but for the most part maintaining its muted darkness.

Steven van Betten & Andrew Rowan – Cloud Behind the Sun

Back in 2023 we wrote about Friends and Family, the debut solo full-length by Steven van Betten on Future Gods which highlighted the LA songwriter’s distinctively compassionate, humane style. Now van Betten has returned with brand new EP Cloud Behind the Sun, though has parked the solo venture in favour of continuing a collaboration with composer Andrew Rowan which stretches back more than a decade. The lead single title track shows the three-song release to be every bit as thoughtful and heartfelt as its predecessor, taking the ostensibly ordinary experience of passing an ex on the street and mining the moment for all of its depth and weight. Something made possible not least thanks to Rowan’s almost cinematic arrangement, its intricacy revealing itself as slowly yet decisively as spring through a thawing winter ground.

Wryn – Only Thing

We’ve covered a couple of singles by Californian songwriter Wryn in recent weeks, with both ‘Snake‘ and ‘Slow Down‘ introducing the themes of change and self-actualisation which run through their upcoming full-length, Shapes. The record’s release is fast approaching on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and Wryn has returned with new single ‘Only Thing’ to further expand upon these ideas. The song opens with a spare, almost hesitant tone, but gradually builds in momentum, as though deciding to embrace life’s inevitable forward motion. “Life is always shifting and evolving,” as Wryn puts it, “and that’s a good thing. Change is the only constant.”

Watch the suitably literal video directed by DanTroon-Sazani below:

Shapes will be released on the 28th March via Righteous Babe Records and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – I don’t love you

Writing of release Spring Songs in April of last year, we described how Lahore-born, Orlando-based songwriter Zoya Zafar utilised a controlled, unadorned style to communicate a considerable depth of feeling. “Zafar uses minimalism not as an austere stylistic choice but as a tool to hone her music’s emotional weight,” as we put it, “suffusing it with warmth despite its direct and unfussy arrangement.” New single ‘i don’t love you’ is no less charged in its mood, beginning life with no accompaniment other than acoustic guitar before Max Helgemo helped evolve it into something richer without sacrificing the poignant spareness.

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Lily of the Valley, the timely new album from 22° Halo, might centre on something intensely personal and difficult, but it’s more widely relevant too as it actively works to fight off despair and let light in on an otherwise dark time. As we described when writing of previous single ‘Virtual You’, the sound is “wistful, yes, and not immune from a certain sense of longing, but always with an overarching gratitude that such times happened at all.” With the album now out via Tiny Library Records, Will Kennedy has unveiled final single, ‘Cobwebs’. A fittingly introspective track which tracks the early days of the diagnosis which sits at the heart of the album, looking to preserve ordinary life while wrestling with an all-encompassing uncertainty.

I’m trying to believe that you’re good
I’m trying to believe that I’m good
I’m trying to believe that we’re good
I’m trying to believe

Clara Mann – Stadiums

UK singer-songwriter Clara Mann has announced her debut album, Rift, the follow up to 2021 EP Consolations (Sad Club Records). A culmination of her young career so far, label The state51 Conspiracy call the record “a tangible expression of Clara’s entire world—a snow globe raised in her palms for the world to see, in all its layers and complexities, containing all her love, relationships, memories, and experiences.” Mann describes her music as “almost-folk”, and the album’s two lead singles introduce this perfectly. Finely wrought and patient, minimal percussion lapping at the edges of the impressive vocals. ‘Stadiums’ is perhaps the standout, precise and emotive in equal measure, swaying around a still and poised centre.

Decant – Rest

Bay Area trio Decant are this month releasing two singles, both in preview of an upcoming EP set for release early next year and to celebrate the fact the tracks appear in the film credits for the movie Rust. The first single ‘Rest’ introduces the band’s evocative style, something folky that splits the difference between shadow and warmth. The result is at once poignant and moody, aching with a nocturnal longing yet holding on to a sense of light.

German Error Message – Lilt

Two decades since the project’s conception, the latest release from Paul Kintzing’s German Error Message is a self-titled collection of songs written and recorded since 2020. First released digitally earlier this year, the album is now getting a cassette release from Lily Tapes & Discs as part of their Fall ’24 batch. It’s both reassuringly familiar and somehow fresh, the warm and hushed lo-fi songs reaching out toward a newfound sense of brightness. As Lily Tapes put it: “Where previous albums may have built insular and hermetic worlds with their hushed delivery, German Error Message sprawls outwards, unfolding as a series of nested home-recording experiments disguised as folk songs.” Check out ‘Lilt’ as a taster.

Hamburger – Frankenstein

Bristol six-piece Hamburger are gearing up for the release of their new EP Beat Back the Ghouls via Specialist Subject Records later this month, and latest single ‘Frankenstein’ shows how the collection both builds upon their previous work and pushes the sound in new directions. Where debut EP Teenage Terrified offered equal parts rawness and invention, Hamburger use the new release to show off a more sophisticated, layered sound without sacrificing any of the personality that fans have come to love. ‘Frankenstein’ is the ideal introduction. A richly wistful track which pines for summers past with equal parts soaring energy and enveloping fuzz.

Lone Striker – Dunno

You might know Tom Brown as part of bands like Rural France and Teenage Tom Petties, but new project Lone Striker moves away from the fuzzy jangle of those projects towards something more akin to Americana, albeit one with an off-kilter wobble. With a self-titled album coming next year Repeating Cloud, Safe Suburban Home and Hidden Bay Records, Brown has shared the title track to introduce the project. Something of a theme song for Lone Striker which doubles as an ode to those old school number nines.

Mumble Tide – The Rails

Consisting of singer Gina Leonard and composer Ryan Rogers, Mumble Tide is a Bristol-based project which has made a name with a maximalist amalgamation of synth pop and country. But new single ‘The Rails’, out now on Breakfast Records, sees the outfit pivot towards a different direction. With help from producer Stew Jackson (Massive Attack), Mumble Tide worked with newfound patience, crafting a slow and careful arrangement in which Leonard’s vocals can be heard in all their nuance and depth. The result draws heavily on sixties folk but elevates such sensibilities with an almost cinematic sheen, and the emotive, assured mood which results is central to the track’s themes. “’The Rails’ is like an angry kiss, or throwing stones at a mirror,” Leonard explains. “It’s about leaning into all the things that hold me back and in the process realising that they’re not as solid as they seem.”

Otala – Patchwork

With a sound that combines jazz, math and post-rock with ambient and spoken word, Nottingham’s Otala are not ones to be held to genre conventions. Having recently signed to London’s Lil Chop Record Shop, the band are preparing to release new EP Fire! To The River next February, and single ‘Patchwork’ gives listeners a chance to immerse themselves within the evocative and inventive Otala sound. A song that has been part of the outfit’s repertoire for a long while now reimagined as something fitting their current level. “’Patchwork’ is a song we have been performing since we began playing as Otala, but one that we’d originally planned to let fade into our history,” the band explain. “After seeing a live video from an old set we decided to put the time in to adapt and reanimate it into something we’re proud to release.”

Watch the video by Rory Allen below:

‘Patchwork’ is out now via Lil Chop Record Shop and available from Bandcamp. Fire! To The River will be released in February.

Ruby Gill – Some Kind Of Control

We’ve previously described the work of  South Africa-born, Melbourne/Naarm-based pianist, guitarist and singer-songwriter Ruby Gill as “setting its sights on the overbearing, patronising force of male entitlement,” and “aris[ing] from a very personal situation but end[ing] up speaking to a far wider experience.” New single ‘Some Kind of Control’ follows in the same vein to explore the strange blend of agency and restriction experienced during the lockdown period of the pandemic. “I had been grappling with what it meant to have all and no control over my time and body—all at once,” Gill explains:

In a big way, the world was in charge, but also in a day-to-day way, I had all the power: I could move freely through my kitchen and clothes and kindness however I wished—it was a new experience for me after feeling quite trapped in some difficult spaces and systems for a long time—“always babysitting other people’s arguments instead of my own” as the lyrics say. I feel like this song encompasses so much of what I’ve learnt and reclaimed in the past few years, and feels very reflective musically of my true, silly, powerful self and community.

Watch the video filmed, directed and edited by Bridgette Winten, with shoot and lighting assistance by Sophie Christopher below:

‘Some Kind of Control’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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With new full-length How Lucky To Be Somebody coming early in 2025 via Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home, Little Oso have shared single ‘Other People’s Lives’ to introduce this bittersweet style perfectly. Our first taste of an album which “chronicles all of the multiple truths of what it feels like to exist,” as Berman says, “and how at the end of the day, at least we get to be here to experience something together.” Nostalgic dream pop tones and Berman’s fond vocal style possess a real sense of sincerity, as though attempting to celebrate the tenuous present as it gets squeezed smaller and smaller by a variety of looming threats. As the refrain goes: “We could build a good life / in the end times.”

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‘Berlin’, the second single from Brooklyn-based artist AUDG on Paper Moon Records, is a song which exists in the gap in every relationship between perception and reality. With a guest appearance from Molly Albert, the track evokes the particular loneliness of realising another person is not the one you have conjured in your head. Morose and vulnerable indie pop, searching for a way forward when the trap door has opened beneath your feet.

‘Berlin’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Elora – Hazard Lights

‘Hazard Lights’ is the latest single from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Elora. What label Paper Moon Records call “a living breathing manifestation of reclaiming control and jumpstarting a new perspective,” the song draws on the styles of 70s pop and contemporary acts like Weyes Blood to create a buoyant sound at once fresh and timeless. “It takes strength to know when you’re down, to grab the wheel and pull yourself out,” as Elora says, and as the track builds into its sunny swagger, that’s exactly the impression it sets.

‘Hazard Lights’ is out now via Paper Moon Records. Find Elora at all the usual places.

Laura Misch – Light Years

Laura Misch is a multidisciplinary artist and producer based in London. But her new album Sample the Sky exists within the liminal space between the city and the natural world beyond its limits. With a layered sound consisting of saxophone, vocals, field recordings and electronics, Misch probes in this border between the urban and the organic to trace often forgotten connections between humanity and the wider web of existence. Previous single ‘Portals’ did this through the lens of her grandfather’s passing, while new track ‘Light Years’ offers a moodier sound but one no less insistent in the way it suggests an overarching interconnection between all forms of life.

The Planes – First Breath After Mask

Rising from the opening stages of the pandemic but coming to represent a more generalised anxiety and the subsequent efforts of relief, ‘First Breath After Mask’ by The Planes is a song at once depressed and affirming. As though from with its own inertia stirs some last attempt at catharsis. The track is indicative of the outfit’s latest album Dark Matter Recycling Co., out now via Safe Suburban Home Records and Totally Real Records, which offers sounds from across the alt rock spectrum without ever fully letting go of The Planes’ indie pop past.

Saapato – Somewhere Else

The music of Saapato, AKA Philadelphia-based ambient musician Brendan Principato, is always firmly rooted within a specific place. Be it a local wildlife sanctuary or his childhood home, Principato employs what he calls “textural soundscape creation and sound bath performance” to capture his surroundings as sound. Latest album Somewhere Else, set for release next month with Aural Canyon Music, is a little different in that the space is not as physical as previous releases, though no less real and familiar. “An exploration of places inside our heads that we lose and find over and over again,” as he explains. “Dynamic, intangible and intimately personal psychic states that are the emotional amalgam of an individual life full of experiences, memories, mis-rememberings, dreams, seasons, surprises, and routines.” Listen to the title track now for a first taste of this liminal space between the inside and outside of our heads.

Salt Cathedral – Complacent

“Don’t stay motionless / by the side of the road, / don’t suspend joy / or love halfheartedly / don’t save yourself / now / or ever.” These words from the poem ‘No Te Salves’ (‘Don’t Save Yourself’) by Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti form the basis of Salt Cathedral’s new single, ‘Complacent’. Hailing from Colombia and now based in Brooklyn, the duo (Juliana Ronderos & Nicolas Losada) won attention in 2020 with album CARISMA, offering a pop style that’s simultaneously sleek, sincere and surreal. The new single builds upon these foundations to form a sound as experimental as it is urgent, leading the listener into the world of Salt Cathedral and demanding they live life to the full. “This is my ode to [Benedetti’s] poem,” as they explain, “my own cry in the battle with mediocrity.”

The track also comes with a video created by Ronderos along with Alex Fischman Cardenas, which you can watch below:

‘Complacent’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Tar Of – Ey Vaay

The project of New York‘s Ariyan Basu and Ramin Rahni, Tar Of make art pop of the avant garde variety. Later this month they will release new album Confidence Freaks Me Out,  a 24-track epic that the duo describe as “an exercise in patiently constructed joyous absurdity.” Latest single ‘Ey Vaay’ is a good example, composed of duelling sax and guitar riffs which egg each other on towards a hyperactive rhythm. The only lyric is a Farsi phrase repeated over and over, bending its meaning until it is no longer recognisable and all that remains is the runaway energy accelerating into absurdity.

Wish Queen – Grievances

With album Saturnalia looming on the horizon, Cleveland-based singer/songwriter Grace Sullivan, AKA Wish Queen, has unveiled new single, ‘Grievances’. The track is the ideal entry point of a record which combines alt-pop confidence with confessional intimacy. Wish Queen is something of an alter-ego, allowing Sullivan to transcend the various anxieties and frustrations of contemporary living, and the single serves as a list of grievances from which the project might free her. As though, in offering them up via song, some form of exorcism occurs, and Wish Queen is thus free to soar above the melancholy and the sound.

Wishy – Donut

The new project led by Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites, Wishy are preparing to release their debut EP Paradise via Winspear later this year, and lead single ‘Donut’ serves as their opening salvo. It’s a song which embraces alt rock energy and grungy weight alongside a gauzy shoegaze texture, making for something both propulsive and transportive. Pitchkites’s vocals slice through the haze with real clarity, a thread the listener follows into the sound and holds on to through the enveloping experience.

I’ll leave the keys on the table
Believe me when I say I’m not coming back

Don’t follow me
I’m vibrating ecstasy
Want it to take hold of me
Don’t follow me
I’m fine but
I’m driving on a donut

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We first wrote about Nashville duo Angel Saint Queen back last summer, describing single ‘Diable Lake’ as “a track which highlights the duo’s bittersweet tone, capturing a sadness for leaving and excitement for what comes next.” Latest single ‘You Were There’ is no less conflicted in its tone, evoking the strange blend of sadness and relief left in the wake of a break-up. Though sound’s raw energy embraces the emotion wholeheartedly, building from restrained beginnings into a blaze of feeling. One last conflagration at the end of a fiery relationship before the new dawn arrives.

‘You Were There’ is out now and available from the usual places.

bugcatcher – Desert

The recording project of Rochester‘s Jake Denning and a variety of friends, Bugcatcher operates within the slacker end of the alt-country spectrum, though crafts its DIY aesthetic with a precise hand. With an album coming soon, the outfit have released new single ‘Desert’, a song which both serves as an ode to the titular landscape and a search for meaning within an otherwise barren milieu. “I’m going across the desert / I’ll find the holy land myself,” Denning sings, buoyed by the understated rhythm of the sound. “I’m going across the desert / Got my soul for all my wealth.”

Running across the desert
The walls of Jordan are calling me
Going across the desert
Where dinosaur bones are buried in sleep

C.J. Red Mouth – Red Line

With EP Greenhouse on the horizon, C.J. Red Mouth (AKA Durham, North Carolina songwriter C.J. Yang) has unveiled brand new single, ‘Red Line’. The EP centres on the search from freedom within restrictive systems and relationships, and the single typifies the building catharsis which results. A reflection on an old commute, the slow creeping sound evokes the grimy dark of the Boston subway with guitar from June Isenhart (Miss Bones). The track gathers momentum as though quite literally barrelling toward the light at the end of the tunnel, culminating in an ecstatic finale complete with primal screaming.

Scream over the roaring dark
Scream until I hear myself

Daneshevskaya – Somewhere in the Middle

When Anna Daneshevskaya Beckerman took her Russian-Jewish middle name as the moniker for her songwriting project, she did so with significant intention. Daneshevskaya is also the surname of her grandmother, a poet who helped to cultivate her granddaughter’s creative sensibilities, and ultimately served as great inspiration for Beckerman’s own voice. In this way, Daneshevskaya represents a continuation of her grandmother’s vocation, though one processed through Beckerman’s own distinctive eye for detail, spinning off from poetry into vivid indie rock. Released to celebrate signing with Winspear and an imminent tour supporting Black Country, New Road, new single ‘Somewhere in the Middle’ is the ideal introduction for the uninitiated. A curious, searching song which broaches the subject of identity from an unguarded, almost child-like perspective. “My grandma had two sisters and her parents would say ‘Anita has the looks, Miriam has the books, and Gloria has the charm’,” Beckerman explains. “I used to think about which one I would want to be. I never questioned having to choose.” Watch the video by Mia Duncan below:

‘Somewhere in the Middle’ is out now via Winspear and available from Bandcamp.

Dustin Mayle – Saturn’s Last Ring

Ohio songwriter Dustin Mayle recently released latest album Dear Loretta, a collection of songs which fall into the DIY folk tradition but nevertheless achieve a tangible richness despite their lo-fi leanings. Take single ‘Saturn’s Last Ring’, its intimate acoustic style periodically coalescing into something bigger and bolder before unwinding to its former state just as quickly. Mayle’s vocals add an opaque lyricism, nodding towards the mythic undertones of Jason Molina or Adrienne Lenker, catching onto a repeated refrain as the instrumentation swells, as though having tapped into some kind of incantation.

Hannah Cameron – Smells Like Leaving

Later this year, Naarm / Melbourne singer-songwriter Hannah Cameron will release Holding Pattern, her third studio album. Recorded with producer Matt Redlich in his studio alongside longtime collaborators Luke Hodgson (bass) and Leigh Fisher (drums), the album was written largely on baritone guitar. This is immediately apparent on latest single ‘Smells Like Leaving’, a sombre slow burner that details a post-breakup road trip with wistful pedal steel and evocative lyrics that read like staccato poetry. Watch the very apt video, shot by Cameron herself, below:

The blink and dash
The petty cash
The cigarette that’s burned to ash
Smells like leaving

Holding Pattern releases on 22nd September. Pre-order a copy from the Hannah Cameron Bandcamp page.

Laura Zarougian – Cairo

Self-described as “one part Armenian cowgirl and one part indie rock,” the music of Laura Zarougian draws on everything from mystical desert rock to the wistful classics of Emmylou Harris and Neil Young in order to tell the story of her forebears. New single ‘Cairo’ applies this to the city of its title, casting Egypt as a distant, almost mythical place, one constructed from old tales and holding secrets too. “My father was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt,” Zarougian explains. “What I know of Cairo is from the stories—the ones my father told me, and the ones that were withheld.”

We don’t have the money to bring his body up the Nile
you will marry an older man, remember to smile
Cairo, you’re a gilded frame,
yeah you’ve got the man beguiled
we’re headed on an aeroplane
we won’t see you for a while

I can tell you’re hiding something,
look at you I know you’re bluffing

Nymphlord – Bougainvillea

A combination of “radio-ready pop hooks” and “a ferocious feminist punk energy,” that’s how we described the music of Nymphlord back in May, along with “an ethereal experimentalism that sees acoustic guitar become otherworldly.” With the release of EP Mothers Cry And Then We Die. fast approaching, the LA-based artist has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Bougainvillea’. A song which blurs hectic energy with a downbeat emotional state to paint a subversive picture of California, drawing equally from retro surf rock and contemporary pop to undermine the sunny stereotypes. A landscape where even the prettiest things have teeth.

Hot day
Muggy day
Same thing
Always
I still feel so cold in LA

Mothers Cry And Then We Die. is out on the 25th August and you can pre-order it now.

Wandering Summer – Show Me The Way

Wandering Summer, the new project of Geddy Laurance (Boyracer, City Yelps, Wonderswan), might be rooted in its Leeds home, but it certainly reaches far and wide to bring the sound to life. An amalgamation of bouncy energy and nostalgic fuzz which owes more to New York noise bands or Californian and Glaswegian pop than anything coming out of Yorkshire. Though as their self-titled EP shows, there’s something particular to the sound that marks its place in the world. An ability to evoke both rolling fields and endless terraced housing, simultaneously embracing its surroundings and dreaming of escape. Single ‘Show Me The Way’ sits at the popppiest end of the Wander Summer style, where wistful fondness is only matched by the sense of eager forward motion.

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