The Fabulous Truth, the new album from Brooklyn‘s Eve Essex forthcoming via Soap Library, uses the full spectrum of styles and genres in attempt to offer the elusive phenomenon of its title. “Trip-hop, outlaw country, kosmische, spiritual jazz, avant-garde classical, and—yes—musical theatre,” are all cited as touchstones in the press release, as Essex moves with an improvisational freedom in search of a sound capable of capturing the full duality of intimacy and expansiveness which exists within the boundaries of our selves. The style is encapsulated by latest single ‘Room with a View’, in which a hauntingly patient sound evokes the strange geography of our interiors, where whispered secrets and vast expanses can feel like one and the same. Watch the animated video by Andy Cahill below:

The Fabulous Truth is out on the 21st June via Soap Library and you can pre-order it now.

Fine – Coasting

Recording under the moniker Fine (that’s feen-uh), Copehagen-based songwriter Fine Glindvad Jensen collides folk sensibilities with those of dream pop and electronic genres, stitching together guitars, drums, samples and synthesisers to form ambiguous, often minimal soundscapes for her vocals to drift across. So while debut album Rocky Top Ballads might be full of the melancholy and longing of classic country music, its intentions are far more evasive, drawing the listener into a shimmering world where ennui and fondness are marbled into one. The result, as highlighted by single ‘Coasting’, are songs whose apparent simplicity belies the true depth of meaning, Fine’s minimalist style allowing the listener to feel they are edging closer to the elusive heart of each track with every repeated listen.

Rocky Top Ballads comes out on 7th June is is available to order from the Fine Bandcamp page.

Hearsing – Montauk

Consisting of multi-instrumentalists Avery Murphy and Jordan Taylor, Hearsing look to offer a new flavour of western music by drawing on the surf punk roots of its founders (who were both founding members of the ensemble SUBPAR). The band have a new EP Pastoral on the way, and single ‘Montauk’ gives a glimpse of the expansive, nostalgic quality of the Hearsing sound. Ellington Peet (drums, percussion, synthesizer, production), Cole Brossus (lap steel guitar) and Kemper Thornberry (additional vocals) complete the line-up, helping to create a vivid soundscape which feels like a world of its own. Because as ‘Montauk’ suggests, Pastoral sees Hearsing push beyond personal experience into a more allegorical and creative style of lyricism, and it is fitting the sound comes to feel like an environment you might step inside.

I live behind a truck stop
North of Jersey
Every day I smell the sea
I work inside a steel mill
Cause veneration is better than defeat

Check out the video by Diego Diaz-Lundquist below:

‘Montauk’ is out now and available from the usual places. Pastoral is coming soon.

La Bonte – Marching In A Field Of Wheat

Following on from 2022’s Grist For The Mill, La Bonte is returning this summer with Economy Play, a new EP again released via Anxiety Blanket Records. Garrett La Bonte has made a name with a considered, reflective sound able to examine grief and love with the kind of thoughtful tone such subjects demand. Living up to its title, the new EP continues this sensibility with a measured hand, choosing to not overextend itself within an environment of financial constraints to instead deliver a shorter release that does justice to the ideas underpinning it. Single ‘Marching In A Field Of Wheat’ confronts this society of precarity directly, sparking with the tension between capitalism and creativity as it comes to understand the empty promise of the American dream. But while the less-is-more descriptor might apply to the release’s quantity, the sound refutes such ideals, rising with tumultuous weight as though directly wrestling with the malevolent forces within.

Mal Not Bad – Come On/Hard Times / Mustang

Following the track ‘No Worries’ back in March, Mal Hauser’s Mal Not Bad has released a new double single ahead of their debut full-length This Is Your New Life which will be released in August by Same Same. Described as “a succinct glimpse” into the record’s sonic palette, the songs inhabit slightly different sides of the LA artist’s style. ‘Come On/Hard Times’ is a sober slice of ambient indie folk adorned with subtle glitchy electronics, while ‘Mustang’ invites LA band Junaco along to create an emotive and haunting downtempo electro pop song. “‘Mustang’ feels like the emotional release of ‘Come On/Hard Times’, Hauser describes, “though both songs remain in moments of reflection and stillness.”

Find yourself inside a new life
Find yourself inside a different mind

Come On​/​Hard Times / Mustang is out now via the Mal Not Bad Bandcamp page.

Steak Blake – Under Knives

Next month, Blake Joshua (of Beige Banquet) will release an EP with his solo project Steak Blake. Titled This One, the record promises to continue the Steak Blake MO we first glimpsed on last year’s ‘Wonderbread’, all sharp post punk guitars, deadpan vocals and introspective, politically conscious lyrics. To announce the EP, Steak Blake has unveiled lead single and opening track ‘Under Knives’, a lo-fi but hook-laden punk song that is certain to appeal to fans of the likes of Gorgeous Bully. “The song speaks to the relentless challenges of modern life,” Joshua describes of the single, “depicting a state where people constantly feel behind and unable to escape from reality. It explores the psychological burden of believing that these struggles are self-inflicted, turning to vices as a form of escapism, a way to momentarily relieve stress and despair.”

STEFA* – differ3nt today

Born With An Extra Rib, the debut album by Queens vocalist, composer, educator and performance artist Stefa Marin Alarcón (aka STEFA*) is something of an amalgamation between autobiography and origin story. Exploring personal stories on a grand scale, the record sees STEFA* blend classical, electronic, punk and Latin styles to capture the different selves they embodied throughout its nine year gestation. Genre convention goes out the window, replaced with a sense of freedom and desire to embrace change. Latest single ‘differ3nt today’ is a great example, a downtempo electronic song that draws on contemporary pop and a decidedly 90s nostalgic sensibility. “I wanted this to feel like an anthem for people,” Alarcón describes of the song. “For everyone – not just for trans people, not just for non-binary people, not just for queer people. We all change so often and we have a right to change, so I wanted it to be an invitation for people to ask these same questions.”

Born With An Extra Rib is out now via Bandcamp.

Tasha – Michigan

Over two years since her last release, Tasha has signed to Bayonet Records and released a new single, ‘Michigan’. Produced by Gregory Uhlmann and written during a “both lonely and extremely creatively fulfilling” writing trip to a friend’s house in the titular state, the track is suffused with the sadness and gladness found in the warm glow of a late summer afternoon. Steady percussion propels things forward, but Tasha’s vocals glide at their own pace, attuned more with the slow rhythms of the natural world than our usual human calendar. “This song is about the missing and the return, Tasha describes,” the reliable comfort of a sunset on a nice day, a friend to sit with, and the shining hope of more comfort to come.”

Drive to Michigan, spend some time alone
Make good friends with the horses down the road
Oh I wish our dog was here with me
But I know he’s barking loudly somewhere warm and free

Wishy – Love On The Outside

Fresh from the success of 2023 EP Paradise, Indianapolis outfit Wishy have wasted no time in announcing their debut full-length album, Triple Seven. Again released via Winspear, the record looks to build on the combination of dream pop, shoegaze and indie rock which we so admired on the EP last year. Lead single ‘Love On The Outside’ plays these various stylistic influences off against one another, granting the track equal doses of heaviness and anthemic release. Such a duality is fitting for a track charting those early days of a relationship, where the tantalising promise of all the possible futures is troubled by an impatience to get to those halcyon days. A song sweet, frustrated and full of the hooks which make Wishy so engaging.

Check out the accompanying video by Rich Smith below:

Triple Seven is out on the 16th August via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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Based in Fort Worth, TX, singer-songwriter and musician Cameron Smith cut his teeth in hardcore and post-punk before settling into a solo career in folk rock. Drawing on the loaded depths of the southern gothic genre, Smith has now made the field his own, and latest single ‘Under the Cover of Darkness’ serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated. A song for the heartsick wanderer which can be traced back through Molina and van Zandt, where the long night is illuminated only by the blood moon and low fuel light on the dash. But through its melancholic haze rises an impassioned chorus, doubling down on the will to eventually make it home.

Coming home tonight
I’m coming home tonight
Under the cover of darkness
Where the sky grows wide

Dippers – Recurrent Sight

Hailing from Naarm/Melbourne, Dippers is the project of Matthew Ford and Innez Tulloch. Formerly known as Thigh Master, the band make an energetic and immediate brand of jangly indie pop which wears its rough edges with pride, and forthcoming album Clastic Rock promises to find the band at its most raucous to date. That is, if lead single ‘Recurrent Sight’ is anything to go by. The song is inspired by a coping method Ford devised to help with what he describes as “the constant mental anguish caused by the less gratifying neurodivergent traits,” namely, “to portray myself as the protagonist in a coming of age sci-fi film, where an extra-terrestrial life-force is attempting to send me a message via tedious and inconvenient hijinks.” The sound intensifies as it progresses, ramping up towards the transportive tumult of the closing guitar solo.

Jacob Furr – Not That Bad

The music of Jacob Furr has always felt like it served a clear purpose, be it the intensely personal picture of grief that was Trails & Traces or Sierra Madre and its wider wrestle with darkness and loss. Through the analogy of a (not always so) trusty car, latest single ‘Not That Bad’ sees the Texas artist explore this functional aspect of songwriting, where the mechanics of progress are dented by bad luck and punctuated by small moments of faith. “‘Not That Bad’ was written in the middle of the night in the backseat of my ’89 Camry while broken down beside I-20 somewhere around 2015,” Furr explains. “Music has been the vehicle that has carried me through so many days and nights, and sometimes it feels like a broken down car. But then a friend comes along, you get the new alternator installed, and off you go again with your dreams and plans.”

Empty space in the middle of my heart
With my faith in this broken down car
I’m leaving tonight
Turn the key praying for the best
Tomorrow I’ll sing this song again
If the tune don’t let me down

Julie Meunier – I Don’t Want To Be Friends

We first featured the work of Julie Meunier back in April with ‘World War X‘, a collaboration with Dwi Riana we described as “an exchange between lovers which begins as a seemingly innocuous conversation but ratchets up with every sentence, soon precipitating into an argument which draws the relationship’s tensions out into the open.” Meunier’s latest single ‘I Don’t Want To Be Friends’ is equally personal in focus but more a monologue than dialogue. A one-sided conversation which arose from the lockdown-era of the pandemic, where the desire for human connection was balanced against a fear of romance or intimacy.

Lady Apple Tree – S/T

Back in April we wrote about ‘Silver Hands‘, the first single from a forthcoming self-titled EP from Lady Apple Tree, AKA Northern California-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Haylie Hostetter. “A soulful, sinuous song built around the voice at its heart,” as we wrote, “Hostetter’s vocals rising from sultry croon to impassioned urgency, playing like something from a forgotten country star brought into the present.” Hostetter has now returned with the title track of the EP, a reflection on the orchards of Northern California which mines the landscapes for all of its metaphorical weight, again slotting into the classic country style with its balance of melancholic nostalgia and playful charm.

The New Eves – Mother / Original Sin

Having just signed with Broadside Hacks Recordings and Slow Dance Records, Brighton outfit The New Eves have released the double single, Mother / Original Sin. The former track first appeared on a Slow Dance compilation last year, introducing band’s idiosyncratic blend of punk and pagan sensibilities, owing as much to Picnic at Hanging Rock as The Velvet Underground. ‘Original Sin’ pushes this combination further, a folk horror reimaging of Genesis as told from Eve’s perspective, pride, shame, pleasure and pain combining into one heady mix, though the presiding emotion is that of a defiance. Check out the video directed by the band themselves below:

Original Sin/Mother is out now and available from the usual places.

Steak Blake – Wonderbread

‘Wonderbread’, the latest single from London-based artist Steak Bake on Step Sideways Records, was written when the artist returned home to their native Minneapolis. George Floyd had been recently murdered near their mother’s home, and song inevitably saw a turn towards all those past encounters with prejudiced authority. “When I was only ten or twelve years old / my father sat me down and told me about the skin I hold,” go the opening lines, the droll vocals sitting in a bed of taut post-punk menace. “This is how we live, this is what you’re not / You your father’s son so you might get shot.” And it doesn’t take long for the volatile potential to be realised, the track dipping into manic bursts of noise as though coming to appreciate the absurdity of a nation which has such circumstances inscribed into its very soul.

Tiny Leaves – Campanula Rotundifolia

Tiny Leaves is the moniker of composer and multi-instrumentalist Joel Pike, who hails from the borderlands between England and Wales. The project has just released its fifth full length album, Mynd, which weaves a sonic portrait of the Shropshire countryside that Pike calls home. The record is built from strings, piano, synth soundscapes and, perhaps most importantly, field recordings from a residency Pike completed at The Long Mynd, a heathland plateau and designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the area. Single ‘Campanula Rotundifolia’ captures this landscape in both its sweeping vastness and intricate detail, resulting in not so much of a static picture of the surroundings as a moving, breathing environment.

Mynd is out now and available from the Tiny Leaves Bandcamp page.

Tractor Beam – Backseat

Tractor Beam is the “post-folk” recording project of producer Sasha Balazic. Hailing from Toronto and based in Vancouver, Balazic draws from across the ages in their work, owing as much to 00s indie as 60s folk, and all wrapped up the the contemporary DIY aesthetic, leading to a sound both emotionally immediate and tangibly nostalgic. Having recently released new record Turtles All The Way on Kingfisher Bluez, Tractor Beam have shared their latest single, ‘Backseat’. The ideal introduction to the intimate, reflective tone of the album, where Balazic’s warm vocals blur the line between past memories and future dreams.

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