“I wanted to write a record that I needed to hear in high school.” That’s the mission statement behind Blvck Hippie‘s Basketball Camp, a new album coming in June on The Record Machine. Backed by Casey Rittinger (drums), Tyrell Williams (bass, backing vocals) and Joe Kyle (guitar, talk box), lead Josh Shaw weaves elements of indie rock, dream pop, post-punk, jazz and emo into a sound as inventive as it is immediate, reflecting on past loneliness with with equal parts sympathy and catharsis. Lead single ‘Streetlights’ introduces the style by musing on a particularly low moment some years previous. “Oh how I wish things could have been different / Why can’t I be what you need?” they sing in the closing refrain, Shaw’s delivery maintaining its sincere yearning quality as the backing vocals descend into desperate yelps.

 Glom – Below

Based in Brooklyn by way of Washington, DC, Glom have established their weighty yet accessible blend of alt and indie rock across a number of releases, managing to repurpose the dark and heavy vibes of the genre into something textured enough to wrap around yourself for comfort. Ahead of a tour later this spring, the band are back with ‘Below’, a new single which furthers this style. A meditation on getting older which takes heart in accepting there might never be a moment where you become the person you always imagined. “I was 29 and creeping up on the next decade of my life, a decade where I thought I would have it all figured out,” they explain. “A year and a half later, I don’t have it “all figured out” and probably won’t for another few years, but the cathartic release of the final chorus illustrates me being ok with the fact that my journey won’t have all the answers I’m looking for right away.”

‘Below’ is out now and available from the usual places. You can find tour dates on the Glom website.

Kyle Andrews – Old Fashioned

“Somebody told you / You were nothing / Why was it easy to believe?” So asks ‘Old Fashioned’ the new single from Wisconsin-based songwriter Kyle Andrews. Having released his first album on Badman Recording Company back in 2006, Andrews went on to set up his own label Elephant Lady Records and put out a string of releases over the years, always sticking to his DIY bedroom recorded roots while pushing the possibilities of such a set up to new heights. Subsequent singles and their accompanying videos have won accolades from the Guggenheim, triggered mass participant water fights and launched cameras hundreds of thousands of feet into the air on a weather balloon. But for all the viral success of such ideas, it is the songwriting which has been the constant, as displayed on the new single ‘Old Fashioned’. The song lands on the reflective, wistful end of Kyle Andrews’s pop-inflected folk style, though is shot through with the kind of authenticity and warmth which has come to mark his every release.

Watch the video filmed and edited by Andrews himself below:

Grab ‘Old Fashioned’ now from Bandcamp.

Membra – Always Blue

The recording project of Brooklyn-based composer, sound designer and filmmaker Ned Porter, Membra utilises the full diversity of its creator’s artistic sensibilities to create experimental pop songs at once intricate and intuitive. Described as “a musical terrarium,” the appropriately titled debut Membra album Blocks of Color Blocks of Sound welcomes the audience into a miniature world which reveals itself in increasing detail the closer you look. Take single ‘Always Blue’, which on the surface can be enjoyed as a left-field pop number, though any listener willing to peer deeper will be greeted with a teaming environment of found sounds and tape loops, elements Porter expertly tessellates into something beyond even the sum of its many parts.

Molly Drag – Dogfight

Michael Charles Hansford’s Molly Drag has been writing atmospheric, often melancholic songs for almost a decade now, first appearing on VSF back in 2015 with Deeply Flawed and more recently in 2019 with album Touchstone. The latter saw a chink of light pierce the project’s gloomy mood for the first time, something subsequent albums have built upon while maintaining the original Molly Drag spirit. Out next month on I’m Into Life Records, new full-length Mammoth represents the next step in this evolution, as highlighted by lead single ‘Dogfight’. The lyrics are full of the visceral emotion and deep yearning which has long marked Hansford’s intimate style, but are delivered here against a sound charged by bright shimmering momentum. What results is a track again centring on raw emotion and suffering, but one which refuses to be buried by the accumulated weight of life, instead reaching towards the surface in search of reprieve.

Mt Fog – Drifting

Described as “a creation of love and a response to the world’s chaos and absurdity,” Seattle‘s Mt Fog employ a combination of folk, pop and electronic styles to conjure the antithesis of such disorder, welcoming the listener into richly woven soundscapes as a kind of safe harbour. With new album ultraviolet heart machine coming soon, the band have unveiled new track ‘Drifting’ as an early taster, and the track is indicative of Mt Fog’s ability to merge the earthly and ethereal. Or rather to position the earthly as its own kind of ethereal space, offering the natural world as a place to escape into and revealing the magic and healing potential therein.

My Dear Companion – These Words

Gothenburg‘s My Dear Companion is the recording project of Lea-Marie Sittler (Lea & The Loved Ones), Agnes Åhlund (Glitterfittan) and Hannah Shermis (Eldstorm), but listen to the way the trio’s vocals coalesce on new single ‘These Words’ and you’d be forgiven for thinking they had merged into single force. A tale of love and loss timeless in its themes yet full of the immediacy of yearning, each of the trio draw from the same well of emotion so as to collapse the space between them. The result is warm and fond and loaded with nostalgia, affirming with the knowledge that such sadness is omnipresence for us all.

‘These Words’ is out now.

Sofia Bolt (ft. Stella Donnelly) – Bus Song

Next month France-born, LA-based songwriter and producer Sofia Bolt will release new album Vendredi Minuit via Born Losers Records. Building upon the nostalgic tones introduced on debut full-length Waves and subsequent EP Soft Like a Peach, the record sees Bolt employ a hazy, reflective tone to explore her relationship with time—from the small personal moments which shaped her to the wider familial and historical forces which mould us all. And if Vendredi Minuit is a tour through the decades, then latest single ‘Bus Song’ encapsulates the theme most directly, inviting the audience onto an LA bus to contemplate life as it passes by the window. Welsh-Australian favourite Stella Donnelly lends vocals too, and the result is a careful balance between tension and catharsis as the taut vocals find release in the chorus’s languid rhythms.

Watch the video by Will Evans below, including Arthur H. Virtue’s footage as part of the Al Larvick Conservation Fund:

Vendredi Minuit is out via Born Losers Records on the 10th May and you can pre-order it now.

TESHA – Come Down

TESHA has made a name crafting evocative and often strange pop sounds, with Growing Pains II channelling the likes of Fever Ray to offer something “ethereal yet rooted in personal suffering” and singles such as ‘Like a Man’ seething with anger both personal and political. Latest single ‘Come Down’ is no less striking, simmering with a latent energy which collapses the difference between sensuality and rage. The final third sees something of a pivot in tone as the momentum decelerates into a languid croon, though the mix of allure and danger at the track’s heart never quite fades away.

‘Come Down’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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A release which “accepted this state of things, viewing honesty as the first step towards moving forward.” That’s how we described It’s Been a Long Year Vol. 1, the recent EP by the Montreal-based songwriter Alex Nicol. It was a collection of songs “written in a time when the pandemic only underlined years of chronic neglect and saw once bustling towns pushed further into decay,” which presented a lingering sense of loss with a wry playfulness. This December sees Nicol add a second batch of songs to the EP for a full-length album, Been A Long Year Vol​. ​1 & 2, and new single ‘Working On My Tan’ dials into this mood again to offer sound attuned to both the sadness and mysteriousness of the world we have created.

Watch the video by Jérémie Boivin below:

Been A Long Year Vol​.​1 & 2 is out on the 1st December and you can pre-order it now.

Christopher Tignor – Forms In a Flame

Writing of previous single ‘Ritual of a Thousand Limbs‘, we described how Christopher Tignor’s new album The Art of Surrender “explore[s] instinctive territory, pushing the violin towards an almost atavistic sound which foregoes too much planning or intention to instead embrace raw movement.” The album is out now via Western Vinyl, and final single ‘Forms In a Flame’ is the jewel at the heart of the release. A mammoth, near thirteen-minute collision of poignant classical and urgent electronic styles, fragile, aching violin joined by glitter atmospherics and galloping percussion.

Daneshevskaya – Challenger Deep

Daneshevskaya‘s forthcoming album Long Is The Tunnel, out next month on Winspear, presents a peculiar image of time. One “where the past, present and future are treated not as distinct things but rather parts of an encompassing whole,” as we wrote of single ‘Somewhere in the Middle‘. It’s a fitting device for a record which explores how personal histories and present experiences come to shape the world as we experience it. Latest track ‘Challenger Deep’ is typical of the poetic tone of Daneshevskaya’s work, the wistful fondness of the delivery landing somewhere between lullaby, hymn and love song.

There’s a foxhole prayer I say
A mistake I like to make
Saving you for the end
It’s all pinks and reds
There’s a dog chasing the fence
And now I’ll never see you again

Will you wait for me
Where there is no later on
Will you wait for me at the end, the end

Watch the video filmed by Madeline Leshner and edited by Zach Stone below:

Long Is The Tunnel is out via Winspear on the 10th November and you can pre-order it now from the Daneshevskaya Bandcamp page.

Gilded Lows – Brave

After learning the trade as part of Austin jazz punk outfit Dead Swagger, Spencer Carter has since turned his attention to new project Gilded Lows. Taking some of the croon of the previous band and adding a healthy dose of cowboy attitude, Gilded Lows follows a lineage descending from Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Nick Cave. A country style charged by Spencer’s baritone to sound both full of longing and supremely confident. That old cowboy spirit where the wish for a better life is matched only by nostalgia for what was. The result is a present at once fatalistic and self-deprecating. “I’m not brave / I’m not sweet,” Spencer sings at the close of the track, “In fact, I’m the one who’s terrified of feeling much of anything.”

‘Brave’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Middle Sattre – Pouring Water

“It’s my way of processing internalized homophobia, religious trauma, and shame from growing up gay in the Mormon church,” explains lead Hunter Prueger of Middle Sattre. Writing songs as an act of both confrontation and defiance. The project started as a solo project in Salt Lake City and has since blossomed into a eight-piece in Austin, retaining the intensely personal tone while pushing the instrumentation in all sorts of interesting directions. The result, as captured by new single ‘Pouring Water’, lands somewhere between Sufjan Stevens and Typhoon, where collaboration brings a immersive richness to the sound but never occludes the intimate lyricism at the track’s heart.

Riley Skinner – Dirty

Based in Minneapolis, singer-songwriter Riley Skinner makes music that invites the listener into a world of honest and courageous vulnerability. Next month, she will release new album Surrender, a record that explores queer identity through the lens of the natural world, embracing its inherent chaos to experience the peace and acceptance at its heart. Latest single ‘Dirty’ is a great example, a quietly powerful folk rock song about finding the bravery to be your true self. “When I wrote ‘Dirty’,” Skinner describes, “I was thinking about the ways in which we withdraw from closeness and love because we feel we are not worthy or deserving of receiving it.”

Surrender releases on 10^th November and you can pre-order it now from the Riley Skinner Bandcamp page.

TESHA – Like a man

Back in 2019, we wrote about Growing Pains II by Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based artist TESHA. A collection of songs we called “ethereal yet rooted in personal suffering,” it drew on the likes of  Bjork and Fever Ray to combine experimental electronics with an otherworldly power. Now TESHA is back with a brand new single, ‘Like a Man’, which seethes with righteous anger as it takes aim at the patriarchy and the ongoing unrest in her home country. A dark and pulsating pop song, it urges an end to the masculine posturing and the blind search for power, instead finding strength in compassion and vulnerability.

‘Like a man’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Upper Narrows – My Lottery Dream

While We’re Warm, the upcoming album from Upper Narrows on Repeating Cloud, represents a meeting point between digital and organic sensibilities. “[Tyler] Jackson’s delivery [provides] that human core to what could otherwise be an almost extraterrestrial soundscape,” as we put it in a preview. “His voice [adds] a warmth so often lost in synth pop, and helps the album to live up to its name.” The final single before the album’s release, ‘My Lottery Dream’ furthers this style, leading the listener into a detailed, technological soundscape with the vocals as a guiding hand. But despite the blips and bloops, it maintains a real heartfelt humanity.

Weeper – De Algo Hay Que Morirse

‘De Algo Hay Que Morirse’, the new single from Buenos Aires-based indie pop band Weeper, was written about a recurring dream experienced by lead Mary Craig. “I used to drive people off of cliffs, bridges, etc to our deaths and wake up,” she describes. “When I dreamt the dream with my Argentine partner, he responded, ‘You have to die of something – De algo hay que morirse.’” The song starts gentle and heartfelt as it reflects on the dream’s sense of loss and guilt, but builds in energy as it progresses. “I’m alive and I can’t believe my luck,” Craig sings around the halfway mark as she comes to find a carefree joy in accepting her own mortality.

‘De Algo Hay Que Morirse’ is out now via streaming services.

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Tracklist:

Field Medic – henna tattoo
Leggy – Taffy
Myshiuno – Turf War In Chinatown, SF
Press Club – Suburbia
Shady Bug – Make it Up
Calicoco – Anchor Park
LUNCH – Forget Everything
krissanthemum – Honesty Hour
Wy – Pavements
UV Rays – Flowerhead
Fanclub – Stranger
Jeffrey Silverstein – Easy Rider
Ryan Dugré – Tonight
Okay Embrace – Phantom Text
Samia – Lasting Friend
community college – karaoke
runnner – eggshell
Fields of Heaven – Song of Loss
Minor Moon – Hold Me Up (Liar)
Lampland – You Little Liar
Westkust – Swebeach
kate can wait – licantropía
Bleeder – Rusted and Raw
Laveda – Dream Sleep
Pass/Ages – As It Rises
Yuri Tománek – In the end, we all fade away
Tender Glue – Dear Peri
Red Wedding – Bones
Women Tied to Railroad Tracks – Endless Carpet
Eyesore & the Jinx – On An Island
Bellows – What Can I Tell You About the World?
Merival – Sinner
Vassals – Lil Anvil
The This – The Strangest Ritual
Breakup Films – You Said You Hate Not Seeing Me
The Phone Booth – Healthcare
Seamstress – Everything
Zelma Stone – Light Bulb Boy
Charlotte Cornfield – Andrew
Wicketkeeper – Night Night (Whatever)
a. harlana – faces
Lady Dan – What Sanity
Tesha – Funeral

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Nowhere is this made more clear than on opening track, ‘Funeral’, a song directly inspired by the death of Elias’s parents. Specifically, the focus is placed on her mother’s funeral, conjuring the disconcerting disembodiment of such an occasion, where the gravity of the situation manifests as eerie and unreal.

I won’t shed a tear for you
Even if you wanted me to
Shed your worries, come dear
Promises you feel to keep in

‘I Can’t Sleep’ is the slow aftermath, a time alone after the fact where ghosts seep into the silence of the room and the pain begins to reconfigure identity to allow for its presence. The off-kilter tones of ‘Wonder’ swirl and stir into their own dream logic, the vocals possessing an unsettling innocence that brings to mind Nicole Dollanganger. “He went to London, out of town,” Elias sings in her disarming tone. “Never came back, they said that she drowned.” Such a juxtaposition is indicative of the TESHA aesthetic, where violence lurks beneath the supernal textures.

‘See So Good’ finds Elias smoky and sinister, a Cold Specks-esque blend of hymnal folk and gauzy ambience that emerges with a creeping immersiveness and seems to preach a relinquishment of past trauma, paving the way for ‘Soft And Smooth But Not Silent’. The release’s closing track, the song might maintain an uncanny sensibility but it is altogether lighter, as through rising through or above the troubles detailed previous, and turning once more toward the possibility of living and growing.

Growing Pain II is out now and you can listen via Spotify.

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