With the record out now via Rue Defense, Simple Shapes have shared new single ‘I’ve Never Learned a Lesson’. The song encapsulates the themes of the album as a whole, exploring nostalgia in all of its contradictions, the past a place full of allure yet not exactly one you’d want to experience again. The project has always aimed to combine late nineties/early noughties indie rock sensibilities with contemporary production and here Pete Bensen (guitar/vocals), Quin Saunders (bass), Justine Yee (guitar), Jeremiah Larsen (drums) and JJ Shafe (synth/vocals) are firing on all cylinders. A band that should appeal as much to fans of Archers of Loaf as those of of MJ Lenderman, and which appears to have fully found their groove.

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Brooklyn’s Alexei Shishkin might describe himself as a “DIY nobody of the internet void,” but that hasn’t stopped his prolific run of releases, with three in 2024 alone. That trio, dagger, Open Door Policy and Greenwich Mean EP showed the wildly varied style of Shiskin’s work, veering from rock to bedroom pop to jazz and back. Fast forward almost a year, a relative age in Shishkin-time, and he’s back with a brand new full-length, Good Times. To be released this September on Rue Defense, the album takes the level of invention to a new level, as demonstrated by lead single ‘Disco Elysium’. It’s inspired by the eponymous video game, Shishkin even incorporating sounds from the game into the track itself. “You’re a degenerate, amnesiac detective coming off a crazy bender, and you’re trying to solve a murder that happened in a small post-revolution town,” Shiskin explains of his inspiration. “The game covers everything from psychology to politics to lost love to life, death, and introspection. It’s honestly one of the most well-written, exciting things I’ve ever experienced.”

Josie – My Boy and I

Josie are a group from Copenhagen who make scrappy, jangly and impossibly catchy indie pop songs. Their debut album, A Life On Sweets Alone, comes out in September via perennialdeath and K Records, and the latter in particular should give you an idea of what to expect. Think sugary hooks, raw punky energy and lyrics and vocals that continue the long lineage of K Records-associated twee pop. Lead single ‘My Boy and I’ is our first taste of what to expect, barrelling headlong into two and a half minutes of indie pop as endearing as it is infectious.

Watch the video, directed and shot by Little Richard Perusi, below:

A Life On Sweets Alone will be released on 26^th September and is available to pre-order from the Josie Bandcamp page.

Lathe of Heaven – Aurora

Aurora, the second album from Brooklyn’s Lathe of Heaven coming later this summer on Sacred Bones, promises to function like a collection of sci-fi short stories. It takes inspiration from the work of authors like Ursula K. le Guin, Octavia Butler, Greg Egan, and Peter Watts to explore worldly themes in bold, imaginative ways. Loosely inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s short story ‘If I Forget Thee, O Earth…’, the title track introduces one such tale, combining New Wave colour and post-punk cool into something not only transportive but almost devotional. “In the story a man and his son take a trip from their colony on the moon to a lookout point where Earth (long abandoned due to nuclear war) can be seen rising across the vast gulf of space,” the band explain. “Playing with this concept, I took a more personal and romantic approach, exploring similar themes of loss, love, and devotion at the end of the world.”

Watch the video directed by Devan Davies below:

Aurora will be released on the 29th August via Sacred Bones Records and you can pre-order it now.

Michael Nau – Smokeflowers

His first new music since 2023 album Accompany, Michael Nau has returned with a double single, Smokeflowers / Sing To via Karma Chief Records. Something of a departure from the previous record’s full-band arrangements, both songs were recorded at home alone, written and recorded without a new record in mind. “I was testing out a new tape machine that I had, and then I sold it,” Nau explains. “They’re single songs that just kind of happened without other songs around.” The result is something unhurried and almost devotional and its soft and shimmering atmosphere. ‘Smokeflowers’ in particular is oddly powerful in it’s understated majesty, Nau’s opaquely poetic lyrics unfurling in a syrupy, waltzy melody.

pôt-pot – WRSW

In September, Irish/Portuguese quintet pôt-pot will release a new record, Warsaw 480km, on Felte Records. The band, led by vocalist/guitarist Mark Waldron-Hyden, deal in a raw and hypnotic blend of psych, krautrock and post punk, a sound rich and multi-layered, but somehow delivered with taut economy. Many of the songs were penned during a period of grief and personal upheaval, and lead single ‘WRSW’ is the prime example. Waldron-Hyden explains the song is based on his experience of “being driven in a very nice car to collect and deliver my father’s ashes,” and captures feelings both of grim forward motion and numb unreality perfectly. This journey is also where the record gets its title. “At one point the driver told me about a journey he’d taken from Ireland to Poland,” Waldron-Hyden continues, “where after days of driving, in the dead of night, a single road sign appeared, reading WARSAW 480 KM. I identified with that image of blackness punctuated suddenly by some faraway but tangible relief.”

Shabason, Krgovich, Tenniscoats – Our Detour

When touring Japan together in 2024, Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich met Saya and Takashi Ueno of Tenniscoats, who played as a backing band. The four had little time to rehearse but quickly discovered they did not need it, the subsequent shows fluid, unpredictable and spontaneous, successful in the way only genuine artistic connection could allow. So successful, in fact, the quartet took the opportunity to further the collaboration, spending two days at the Guggenheim House in Kobe with nothing prepared and only their mutual curiosity for direction. The result, released as Shabason, Krgovich, Tenniscoats with Western Vinyl, is full-length album Wao, and first single ‘Our Detour’ is the first glimpse at this lightning-in-a-bottle creative process. A lesson in instinct and invention which reaches for inspiration from the everyday and returns it back to us as something bright and magic.

Wao will be released on the 29th August via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

Simple Shapes – Mallard

Portland indie rockers Simple Shapes have just announced their debut LP Sundial, which is slated for release later this summer. Their first new music since 2022’s Soundtrack EP, the record promises to build on the foundations of previous releases (think late 90s alt rock meets contemporary indie pop) and expand the Simple Shapes sound in new directions. Lead single ‘Mallard’ is a great start, introducing the band’s sonic range and loud-quiet dynamics. It opens with a spry and sunny energy before erupting into yelled vocals and blasts of noisy emotion, effortlessly moving between the two until a final cathartic denouement.

Studio Electrophonique – David and Jayne

The solo project of singer-songwriter James Leesley, Studio Electrophonique has made a splash in its local Sheffield and beyond, releasing two EPs which use a warm, nostalgic brand of indie pop to mine the mundane everyday of its inherent emotional resonance. With his self-titled debut full-length coming this September via Paris-based label Valley of Eyes Records, Leesley has unveiled bittersweet new single ‘David and Jayne’. The first song he wrote for the album and the one which paved the way for the rest. “It felt like the opening scene to a film; the words came to me more as dialogue, or script, than lyrics,” Leesley explains, “and that opened up a new and very appealing writing perspective—I was almost tempted to pretend to be Alain Resnais directing an imaginary film at the British seaside.” Watch the video directed by Leesley himself below:

Studio Electrophonique will be released on the 26th September via Valley of Eyes Records.

Tan Cologne – In Resin

“Represents both a continuation of [their previous] style and a broadening of its horizons,” was how we described Tan Cologne‘s new album Unknown Beyond with back in June. “Almost literally, in fact, with [Lauren] Green and [Marissa] Macias turning their attention skyward with the same curiosity, openness and longing which has always underpinned their work.” Lead single ‘Cool Star’ showed how central grief is to the record, possessing what we called “a vibe again ambivalent in its meaning, sounding at once like an otherworldly escape from our terrestrial suffering and some mournful elegy delivered in its aftermath,” and new single ‘In Resin’ is no less nuanced and dramatic. What the band describe as an encapsulation of the past few years, which uses its gauzy layers to present the various lives we live simultaneously, a series of selves superimposed.

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November sees Simple Shapes return with a new EP, Soundtrack. This time Bensen (lead vocals/guitar) is joined by Jeremiah Larsen (drums), Cassi Carter (bass), Justine Yee (guitar), JJ Shafe (vocals/synth) and Fabián Guerrero (saxophone), and the record is engineered by Elly Swope. The first peek at the release, recent single ‘American Lightning’ blurred indie rock and New Wave sensibilities to conjure something bundled up in nostalgia, unsure whether to cling to the old vision or let go for good.

Today sees the release of the EP’s second track, ‘Tortoise Party’. A song which, despite its easygoing opening, does little to live up to its chelonian title, the relaxed tones soon kicking into higher gear and finding an infectiously skipping rhythm. As the track progresses, this energy is overlaid with layers of guitar, Benson’s vocals surfing the various waves of sound as the drums power through with buoyant momentum. Exactly what a tortoise party is, we’re still not sure, though we know it is moody, groovy, and a whole lot of fun.

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Now Simple Shapes are back with Rue Defense for a brand new ‘cassingle’ Florence/Figure it Out. Building upon the previous single, the tracks feel like Simple Shapes settling into their true form, combining cathartic energy with nostalgic emotion to reflect on moments great and small. Opener ‘Florence’ occupies the former of these categories, drawing on the imagery of the Renaissance in Florence, Italy to examine our relationship with place and time. With its high energy and impassioned delivery, the song asks what it means to belong both in terms of our place on the map and our place in history, rising into a triumphant closing minute.

‘Figure It Out’ is rooted in altogether more mundane circumstances, the song describing everyday activities like dancing in your bedroom and smoking on the roof, though is no less striking as a result. With a characteristic blend of mood and groove, Simple Shapes elevate these actions into things to be cherished and celebrated, and in reflecting on them find a way to charge the present with newfound meaning.

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The album isn’t out until next year, though today Simple Shapes unveil the lead single ‘Shorty McFly’ by way of introduction. With its acoustic opening, the song stands in contrast to the propulsive momentum of ‘NE Sandy’, though it sooner coalesces into a suitably energetic rhythm. And where the previous track had a certain lo-fi texture, the sound is now far deeper and richer, weaving a sound both vivid and immediate. Drawing the listener into the world of the track, a soundscape which shifts and changes around them.

This direct and disorientating style emerges from the underpinning themes too. An exploration of ghosts in their various guises, Simple Shapes use the imagery of paranormal TV shows to evoke the experience of being ghosted in a relationship. The wistful, nostalgic edge to the track speaks to the inherently backward-looking nature of both experiences, while the rising intensity carries the visceral impact of raw emotions. Be it the trauma of sudden absences, or absences suddenly filled.

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