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.

‘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

The post Weekly Listening: October 2023 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Describing themselves as “a quixotic mix of American post-punk and ’80s post-hardcore,” East Vancouver Aversions combine heavyweight riffs, pounded percussion and acerbic vocals to comment on our contemporary moment. Loosely based on the visual essay About Face by graphic novelist Nate Powell, Aversions say ‘New Whip’ is a song about “how the impact of generational thinking shapes the people we become, and the beliefs and opinions we’ll go to any lengths to enforce…shin[ing] a light on how toxic masculinity is passed down like a gene.”

‘New Whip’ is out now via the Aversions Bandcamp page.

bedbugz – if i cried, we’d both drown

Back in June we wrote about Canterbury outfit bedbugz and their self-titled single on Tonetic Records. “With its upbeat rhythm and searching vocals, the title track is a bittersweet tale of young love,” we described, “while the b-side sets out further into shoegaze territory.” The debut bedbugz full-length all hail the goblin king! is out later this week, and lead single, ‘if i cried, we’d both drown’, shows how the band have knitted these styles into something of their own. A sound which owes a debt to both bedroom pop and indie rock without quite belonging to either, and offers a delightful blend of sincere emotion and noisy charm. Check out the video by Elliott Sirota-Gott and Tom Postgate below:

‘if i cried, we’d both drown’ is out now via Tonetic Records.

bmq – Spontaneity

Tokyo‘s bmq have been at work for fifteen years, though it is only now they are releasing their debut full-length album, Order, Spontaneity and the Body. Drawing inspiration from fields as diverse as post-punk, krautrock, ambient and US indie rock, the record feels like it utilises every month of this gestation period, weaving a finely honed style which constantly tests the line between control and volatility. Take single ‘Spontaneity’, which explores the tension between repetition and change with a simmering energy, unpredictable but always harnessed by an understated confidence. The sound of a band who have spent a long time working out what they want to say and how they want to say it.

Burs – Nearly

Back in September, Toronto‘s Burs released their latest album Holding Patterns, a record which blended various shades of indie, folk and dream pop to allow the quartet to explore a myriad of different moods and settings. What resulted was a rich and often ethereal collection of songs able to change with fluid ease, from the vast, spacious opener ‘The Year Now’ to the urgent ‘Lily’. But it is perhaps latest single ‘Nearly’ which best encapsulates the Burs style. The restrained acoustic intro heralding the considerable chemistry of their dual vocal style, the track slowly deepening with subtle layers of textures and warmth.

Once again I find myself awake inside a dream
Two of us and me, myself and I
Four on the floor, one in the door, a light
Out of purgatory darkly shines

Cat Clyde – Mystic Light

Next February sees the release of Down Rounder, the latest album from Ontario‘s Cat Clyde. Writing back in 2019 we described Clyde’s sound as encompassing “everything from folk and rock to blues and jazz, leading to a sound that swaggers with attitude and smoulders with smoky emotion, and lead single ‘Mystic Light’ suggests the new record builds upon these foundations to offer a fresh vision of the country style. One crafted from personal emotion but imbued with something more ancient and mysterious too. Watch the video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick below:

Down Rounder is out on the 17th February and you can pre-order it now.

Caroline Strickland – Invoice

New York’s Caroline Strickland unveiled her debut single, ‘Invoice’, this month. A confessional track which pits deceptions and truths against one another, exploring the ways in which honesty can hurt the hardest, and lies hold small victories of their own. All set within a swirling moment of love persisting beyond a relationship, and a job with zero fulfilment or worth, Strickland’s vocals burning with a smoky intensity as she navigates both. “It makes you feel devastated, feel like letting go,” as Strickland’s own perceptive take puts it, “feel like California, feel like rock and roll.” Coming clean might be cathartic, but creating fictions might just be the best escape route.

Maybe with the extra cash
I’ll take a trip Ireland
Pretend my name is Marianne
play some music I can drown in
Remind myself it’s over
Standing on the streets of Sligo

Dignan Porch – Electric Threads

Led by South London’s Joe Walsh, Dignan Porch made a name across the 2010s with a distinctive blend of psych rock and fuzz pop, working with labels such as Captured Tracks and Art Is Hard along the way. With Walsh having now moved to Manchester, next February sees the release of a brand new album Electric Threads, this time a joint release by the stellar trio of Hidden Bay, Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home Records. The title track gives a glimpse into the newest iteration of the project. A combination of earnest emotion and off-kilter playfulness which refuses to recognise any distinction between fun and melancholy.

Electric Threads is out on the 23rd February via Repeating Cloud, Hidden Bay and Safe Suburban Home Records and you can pre-order it now.

Lina K.O. – Two-Player Mode

Brooklyn-based artist Lina K.O. is gearing up to release new EP Earth Apple next month, and the latest single serves as a great introduction to her sound. Falling on the rockier side of what she herself describes as “digitally-infused melancholic indie,” the song combines Bridgers-esque indie folk with a grungy weight to achieve its delightfully ambiguous tone. Where doubt and assurance act as perfect counterbalances against one another, Lina K.O. singing with reflective wisdom even within the confusing immediacy of the moment. Check out the video by Mike White and Lina K.O herself below:

Earth Apple is out on the 13th January and you can pre-order it now.

Luke De-Sciscio – The Tourist

There are prolific songwriters and then there is Luke De-Sciscio. Reaching double figures of full-length albums at only thirty, De-Sciscio has consistently honed his work and challenged prior expectations, forever circling around that elusively perfect way in which to communicate what needs saying. Through a series of highs (e.g. being booked to support the likes of Cat Stevens and Jose Feliciano) and lows (the COVID-induced cancellation of said shows), he has not stopped in this search, and new album if one thing were different, nothing would be the same feels like the closest he’s yet come to reaching that mythical ideal. Take closer ‘The Tourist’, seven minutes plus of stark passion and poignance. The culmination of everything which has been before.

Niall Summerton – Human, Dying

You would be forgiven for taking a quick listen to the work of Leeds-based songwriter Niall Summerton and concluding his work to be that of warm, easy-going assurance. But as the name of new single ‘Human, Dying’ gives away, his work uses this welcoming richness as way into the weightier, darker themes of the human experience. With new album What Am I Made Of? coming soon via Tiny Library Records, the new song offers the perfect example of this style. Confronting the heaviest question of them all, Summerton threads anxieties around mortality into the textures of the everyday, and in doing so not only captures a compassionate view of the subject but also something of its pervasive, ever-present weight.

What Am I Made Of? will be release in April 2023 via Tiny Library Records.

Stella Rose – Angel

Following on from the success of debut single ‘Muddled Man’ a few weeks ago, New York-based singer, poet, and musician Stella Rose has shared brand new track, ‘Angel’, via Kro Records. After the insistent energy of the first single, ‘Angel’ offers an altogether more reflective tone, swapping out the electrified intensity for something slower and richer. What results is a strange ode to melancholy, exploring how sadness can serve as the shadow to highlight the brighter parts of life. The song comes with a video directed by Primordialfreaks, who explains how the film aimed to capture the light and dark of the song. “It’s a sad but also triumphant song, like a celebration of loss and loneliness and how the most difficult things can make life more pure in a strange sort of way.”

‘Angel’ is out now via Kro Records.

Sun Kin – I Know This One

We’ve written a fair bit about Kabir Kumar’s Sun Kin this year, from the upbeat pop of single ‘I Wanna Believe‘ to the deep, thematically rich ambient styles of painting whales part 1  and 2. Somewhere in the mix Kumar found the time to release another single, ‘I Know This One’, ironically a song about the creative frustrations which emerge when you set the bar too high and push every new piece to be a genre-bending prototype. Luckily, there’s an antidote to such a malady—dropping any notions of genius and appreciating the simple joys of life. Namely hanging out with your cat.

i’m always saying
how i can’t behave
right in front of you
there sits a bowl of your food
i poured in the morning
of this blessed day

The post Weekly Listening: December 2022 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.