Last week, New Haven, Connecticut band All The Pretty Horses released a new album, Witches Up No Mountain Switches Down No Valley, on Candlepin Records. Led by Austin Travers, the band craft slowcore-inflected bedroom pop that is equally comfortable in an intimate hush as it is in triumphant noise. Described as a love letter to cat Franny (AKA the Frances of the title), the record’s second track is a good introduction, moving from near-whispered vocals and shambling percussion into something joyously clamorous, all smashed cymbals and rousing guitar. It’s also charmingly sincere, taking the conventions of a standard love song and framing around not another human but a beloved pet. “When Frances meets me in my backyard,” Traver sings, “this song will fill her heart, her eyes stare into mine as I reach the chorus line.”

Cali Bellow – LFG!!!! (i just died)

Ever find yourself wondering what would happen if you took some of the early 2000s’ biggest musical styles and shoved them into a blender? Say, punk rock from the likes of Rancid and commercial pop from Spice Girls, NSYNC and Aqua? Well, ponder no further, because Cali Bellow has shared ‘LFG!!!! (i just died)’, the latest single from upcoming genre-bending album Ciao Bella. The single combines all those sensibilities and more. As we wrote in August, the album is inspired by everything from Dark Souls, The Muppets, Ursula Le Guinn and Joanna Russ, and the new single shows just how idiosyncratic and infectious a sound such a wide palette can create.

Ciao Bella is out on the 25th October and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Carpet – Soft and Hidden

Carpet is the solo recording project of Rob Slater, a Leeds-based artist perhaps best known for his work as a musician and recording engineer at Greenmount Studios. Slater has played in a myriad of bands—from Thank and Mi Mye to Post War Glamour Girls and Crake, as well as noisy punk outfit The Spills—though Carpet sees him go back to the beginning to reclaim the lo-fi sensibilities which first sparked his imagination in his youth. With EP Fruit coming soon via Launchpad+, Slater has unveiled single ‘Soft and Hidden’. A song which lives up to its title with its hushed and intimate sound, and serves as the ideal introduction to a release concerned with mining life for those small, fond moments.

Fruit is out on the 1st November via Launchpad+.

Clem Snide – Free

Oh Smokey, the tenth full-length from Eef Barzelay’s Clem Snide, finds a songwriter at something of an inflection point. With break-ups putting an end to long-term relationships both personal and professional, Barzelay left his home of Nashville after twenty years and set about searching for the next step without quite knowing what that might even look like. It’s therefore unsurprising the album is preoccupied with the unknown, a collection of “slow, sad songs about God and death” as Barzelay himself puts it which reflects on life’s ups and downs with a mix of empathy, wry realism and hope that only experience can bring. Single ‘Free’ shows the record’s compassionate tone, with Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman helping elevate the Clem Snide sound into some of its warmest, richest territory to date.

Oh Smokey is out on the 27th September and you can pre-order it now.

Dorio – Drive / Last Day of Summer

Recording under the moniker Dorio, Texas-based multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Chad Doriocourt makes what we’ve described previously as “vivid, inquisitive songs that balance an easy-spirited energy with an underlying empathy for the human experience.” Released via Earth Libraries, new double single The Drive Collection sees Dorio continue to experiment with the pop genre, drawing the audience in with laidback simplicity and catchy earworms. Which isn’t to say there’s no substance under the surface. ‘Drive’ juxtaposes its sunny rhythm with doubt and nostalgic yearning, while the ‘Last Day of Summer’ offers an idiosyncratic snapshot of summer romance.

The Drive Collection is out now via Earth Libraries and available from Bandcamp.

max garcía conover – sue and buz catch up during fireworks

One of the most prolific and consistently interesting songwriters working today, max garcía conover has made a name with an emotive brand of folk which pairs lyrical dexterity with an earnest immediacy. New single ‘sue and buz catch up during fireworks’ captures the style perfectly, a song which unspools like long-held thoughts suddenly released, its verses dense with words but entirely natural in flow. “I wrote [the song] after spending the Fourth of July with family and friends, watching fireworks and repeatedly having the same conversation about the calamities of this country, its role in the world and the futurelessness we felt,” Conover explains. “Lot of that has since been put into a somewhat different light and I think the song landed somewhere else too, moving beyond despair without shying away from it.”

‘sue and buz catch up during fireworks’ is out now via streaming services.

 Slark Moan – Nervous Breakdown

“Oozes calm confidence and newfound wisdom [even] as life’s many emotions threaten to burst from the seams.” So we wrote of single ‘Dollhouse Heart’ from Slark Moan‘s upcoming EP, The Return of Guitar Music. The project is the alter ego of New York-based artist Mark Sloan—someone who has worked with the likes of Torres, Margo Price, Erin Rae, and SG Goodman—and provides space to utilise an expertise in craft to explore personal uncertainties. Latest track ‘Nervous Breakdown’ is no different, effortlessly blending genres to recreate an experience of feeling anything but effortless. “When I wrote the song, I was having a hard time trusting myself, and experiencing anxiety around choices I had made and uncertainty about where I needed to go,” Sloan explains. “I felt like I was always playing catch up to where I needed to be, like I had just arrived at a party just as everyone else was mapping the train ride home.” Watch the video directed by Evan Murray below:

The Return of Guitar Music is out on the 25th October.

Steve Slagg – The Newest Soil

“I spread my father’s ashes in the winter / With my brothers and my sister.” So opens ‘The Newest Soil’, opener and lead single from Steve Slagg’s latest album, I Don’t Want to Get Adjusted to This World. The record sees Missouri–born, Chicago-based songwriter place personal human experience within the wider patterns of the natural world, not only to reposition death as just another part of the living cycle, but also interrogate the ways in which our current actions might impinge on this order of things. As the opening suggests, ‘The Newest Soil’ begins this with the most intimate of subjects, describing how Slagg and his family spread his father’s ashes upon receiving his remains after a period in which his body had been donated to science.

My daddy had a body but he freed it
He knew he wouldn’t need it
At least for the next couple thousand years
This side of the veil of tears
Content he was investing in sequoias
Letting creation enjoy us

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“An embrace of contradiction,” was how we described Wins Above Replacement, last year’s sports-themed full-length by the amazing Lorenzo Landini. “Because, like sports, life can feel like a whole lot of suffering until those moments where it’s suddenly wonderful.” What he calls “a piece about hungering to belong in an increasingly disconnected and brutalizing culture,” new single ‘Leave No Trace’ sees Landini adopt a newly polished style without sacrificing the immediacy and charm which made the previous album so striking. Again the mood splits the difference between playfulness and sincerity, the vocals full of searching questions and wry humour, with a rock energy coming to drive the track forward and towards its cathartic conclusion.

Braden Lawrence – Gary

A song “told through the lens of an elderly man who’s looking for love after a tragic loss,” ‘Gary’ is the lead single and title track from a forthcoming EP by Braden Lawrence. Perhaps best known as a founding member of Philly rock band The Districts, Lawrence also previously recorded under the moniker Haggert Mctaggert, but has switched to his real name for last year’s album When You Lose the Light, released via Anxiety Blanket Records. Again on Anxiety Blanket, the Gary EP promises to continue the record’s blend of folk songwriting and contemporary indie pop. ‘Gary’ the single is a good introduction, a downbeat but sincere song full of wistful longing for things past, all hushed vocals and gently poignant instrumentation.

When you lose something you find something new
That’s what they said and then I met you

‘Gary’ is out now via streaming services.

Hatis Noit – Aura (Laraaji Rework)

The latest “rework” of a track from their acclaimed album Aura on Erased Tapes, London-based, Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit has teamed up with “multi-instrumentalist, laughter meditation practitioner and ambient godfather” Laraaji to reinterpret the album’s opener and title track. Previous reworkings have seen the likes of Preservation and Armand Hammer push Noit’s work towards hip hop, whereas Laraaji uses open tune zither, kalimba and vocals to lead it further out into ambient landscapes, leading to a multi-timbral sound which reaches the for the horizon.

Hemlock Ernst – Raised in the South

Hemlock Ernst, the rap project of Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring, has announced a new album, Studying Absence in collaboration with Icky Reels. Released via Beans‘ Tygr Rawwk Rcrds this coming October, the record sees Herring swap the typical jazz and soul beats of the Hemlock Ernst sound for Icky Reels’s industrial sensibilities and forces his most ambitious record to date. One loaded with all the history and ghosts of the South, that which happened and what might have been. “Studying Absence is what I see when I look in the mirror,” as Herring explains. “The record explores the magic that can arise when people are brought together by fate, and the poignant absence that underlines the human experience.” Check out lead single ‘Raised in the South’ now:

Studying Absence is out on the 16th October via Tygr Rawwk Rcrds.

Julia-Sophie – i was only

With new full-length forgive too slow, out now via Ba Da Bing Records, Julia-Sophie “uses her danceable electro pop sound to present something messier but more authentic,” we wrote in a preview. “As though the album is not a straight line towards a final goal but an orbit around an elusive answer.” Closer ‘telephone‘ offered what we described as “a lush song of love, loneliness and longing, where the brightness on the horizon might be some emergent hope or just the neon smudge of the last place still open so late at night,” whereas final single ‘i was only’ invites Noah Yorke to paint the romantic yearning underpinning the entire release. “I was only falling in love with you,” Julia-Sophie sings, and the swirling soundscape comes to mimic such an overwhelming descent.

ladylike – Horse’s Mouth

Taking equal doses of folk, shoegaze and post-rock to form their distinctive sound, Brighton‘s ladylike sit somewhere between caroline and Big Thief, conjuring expansive soundscapes populated with intricate details. Following on from the success of debut single ‘Southbound’ and slots at Glastonbury and Green Man, new track ‘Horse’s Mouth’ is the ideal starting point for those looking to get on board before ladylike really take off. An ever-shifting song which seems at once intimate and sprawling, as though in delving so deep in its introspection it inverts to find a vast internal landscape, one as majestic and melancholic as anything you might find in the wild.

Langkamer – At the Lake

Last month we introduced Langzamer, the forthcoming album by Langkamer on Breakfast Records, with lead single ‘Richard E. Grant’. Indicating something of a change of tone for the outfit, the song displayed a slower, more considered pace to house its confessional exploration of grief. Latest single ‘At the Lake’ invites The Gold Dregs to help Langkamer further this sound, reaching for something as close to Americana as anything they have released to date. “‘At The Lake’ is a song about the fallout of binge drinking culture,” says drummer/lead vocalist Josh Jarman, “and the prestige that we attach to the idea of the poète maudit. The way we romanticise unhealthy behaviour in the name of creativity.” Hence references to Janis Joplin and James Joyce in the almost mournful sound, the track unfurling with all the slow, soul-searching regret of the worst day after.

Langzamer will be released on Breakfast Records on 16th October and is available to pre-order via the Langkamer Bandcamp.

Madam Sad – Exs

Earlier in the month shared Madam Sad‘s ‘Hope For You’, a single which introduced Maddison Schreiber and Evelyn Charlotte Joe’s “willingness,” as we put it, “to confront difficult things with a compassionate face.” With its depiction of relationships and their inevitable end, latest single ‘Exs’ is no different. A song which looks to utilise a sense of personal growth in order to face such breaks with a more neutral, or even positive, attitude. “The song title is a way of holding myself accountable to make sure I am always hoping for the happiness of those who have hurt me,” Schreiber explains. “I also do get to a more genuine place where I feel compassion for an ex-lover’s success, and that’s a nice kind of sad.”

Exs is out now via streaming services.

Niall Summerton – Train

If Niall Summerton‘s previous album What Am I Made Of? presented “easygoing pop […] packed with lo-fi charm,” as we wrote last year, then new single ‘Train’ offers an altogether more shadowy side to his work. Again released via Tiny Library Records, the single pairs prominent drums and almost grungy guitar into a more conflicted atmosphere, the skipping rhythm faltering on occasion as though to evoke the apprehension at the track’s heart before rising into the squally climax. “It’s going to get harder,” Summerton sings, and amid the tumult of the closing seconds, you get the sense the prophecy has already arrived.

‘Train’ is out now via streaming services.

Nick Zanka – Softshoe

Described as “one part intervention, one part pep talk,” ‘Softshoe is the latest single from Nick Zanca ahead of his forthcoming LP, Hindsight. Recent singles ‘Little Professor’ and ‘You Two’ took on neurodivergence and open relationships respectively, and ‘Softshoe’ feels like it meets both tracks halfway. “I wrote this song for a dear friend and longtime collaborator during a period where we were struggling to communicate,” Zanca explains. “When zoomed out, it is a love song to a friend and a promise to persist and keep the faith.”

Slark Moan – Dollhouse Heart

The first glimpse of forthcoming EP The Return of Guitar Music, ‘Dollhouse Heart’ is the new single from Slark Moan, alter ego of New York multi-instrumentalist Mark Sloan. “[The song] is about feeling small amidst the enormity of life, and the overwhelming sadness and beauty of living an ephemeral existence within an infinite universe,” Sloan explains, illustrating both the scope and inspiring nature of the record. “I recognize that I’ve gained an unabashed realism,” they continue, “creative empowerment, and gratitude that my younger self just couldn’t access.” Sloan is joined by Nashville songwriter and visual artist Meg Elsier, and together they conjure something that oozes calm confidence and newfound wisdom as life’s many emotions threaten to burst from the seams. Watch Diego Molina’s video below:

‘Dollhouse Heart’ is out now on streaming services.

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