Recorded in an old church near the birthplace of lead Daniel Hedin and taking years to bring to fruition, ‘Hideous Form’ is the new single from Det Hemliga Folket, a collaboration between Hedin and Budapest‘s Marton Fogl. The sound feels intrinsically tied to the origins of the track, offering an austere space full of shadow and cryptic weight, Hedin reaching beyond his surroundings and the present mood to re-engage with something more elemental. A song fitting for a project built around Hedin’s desire to connect with heritage, be that the ancestors who walked the land before him or the very earth of Sweden itself. Det Hemliga Folket is “a re-connection with the wild north inside me and the ancestral blues that whispers within the sound of the earth, the whispers in my head of the very fabric of the land,” he explains. “I hear the ocean and the silence of the forests that raised me like mothers and fathers. The darkness that’s been a part of me is an engine that never can die. It’s not just me, it is the earth where I am from, the deep beneath the soil of the north that is always calling me home.”

Dylan Henner – I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with her Beauty

A collection “which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past.” That’s how we described Star Dream FM, the new album from Dylan Henner out via Phantom Limb, with previous singles ‘We Ditched School and Climbed Over the Neighbour’s Fence to Swim in their Pool All Day‘ and ‘We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked‘ “embracing not just a sentimental fondness for the specific moment but one wider in scope,” as we put it, “longing for the kind of curiosity and carefree spirit which marks youth.” With the album now out, Henner has shared another single and the title of the track says it all. ‘I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with Her Beauty’ is “about the frenzy and passion of love in adolescence,” as Henner explains. “About how your crush can change the whole universe with their presence, make everything feel bigger than you could possibly handle sometimes or so delicate you could lose it in an instance at others. The harp was supposed to represent the sort of angelic ascension of renaissance or classical beauty, which is the only lens you can ever see your crush with when you’re seventeen.”

ERIKA DOHI – Myth of Tomorrow

Later this week, Osaka-born, New York-based composer and pianist Erika Dohi will release Myth of Tomorrow, a brand new full-length via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records. Described as “a sonic meditation on catastrophe, resilience, and rebirth,” the album builds upon the eclectic style of predecessor I, Castorpollux to push Dohi’s sound in new directions, utilising a variety of sensibilities from dance, jazz, ambient and classical modes to create soundscapes as singular as they are striking. The record draws its title from the Taro Okamoto’s mural of the same name, and the title track draws the clearest line between the two artworks. A song concerned with the endless cycles of existence, not only asking what they demand of us but also how we might find peace and healing within the recurring patterns of life. “For me, the song reflects on resilience and regeneration in the face of life’s relentless cycles,” Dohi explains. “Through its lyrics, I explore the contradictions of modern existence—the struggle to find happiness in repetition, the unspoken burdens we carry, and the illusions we chase in pursuit of fulfillment. Yet, amidst all of this, the song also asks us to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the beauty in the everyday: the sun rising without fail, the moon’s quiet waning, the resilience of a dandelion growing through cracks in asphalt. It’s a song of introspection that invites us to confront our disconnection and rediscover what moves us to live and hope for tomorrow.”

Myth of Tomorrow will be released on the 24th October via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records and you can pre-order it now.

Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Fluorescent Light

Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover are no strangers to collaboration, the pair releasing Among Horses III back in 2018 on Son Canciones and the anniversary single ‘How Does the Horse Go Home?‘ five years later. “The genius of both Heynderickx and Conover is their ability to draw a relatable emotion from their subject matter,” we wrote, “tapping into a universal sense of nostalgia and longing and presenting it back to us, shaping and polished into its most gleaming form.” Based on the life and work of Woodie Guthrie and this time to be released via Fat Possum, What of Our Nature is a brand new full-length by the pair which builds upon the chemistry they’ve crafted over the years to offer songs as inventive and heartfelt as anything they’ve released to date. After the verbose and sometimes frantic ‘Boar’, latest single ‘Fluorescent Light’ highlights a more delicate, restrained dimension to the record, though true to Guthrie’s spirit, there’s a seam of social commentary running through it too. A tone at once playful, melancholic and cutting, able to take aim at the banalities and cruelties of contemporary life without losing its airy brightness.

Kramies – Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour

Back in August we introduced Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, the new album from Kramies on Hidden Shoal, with single ‘Hollywood Signs’. The track showed the album’s nuanced nature, the sound following “a newly nostalgic direction, full of dreamlike longing and evening colours,” as we put it, yet one which possesses “something strange and quietly unsettling, full of the mysterious allure which Kramies has always offered.” With the record out now, the title track has been unveiled as a new single, the cornerstone of the record which embodies all of its richness and duality. Blending autobiography with fiction, ‘Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour’ rises from relative restraint into something enveloping, Kramies moving from a spacious, drifting sound into something rich and triumphant, playing like a metamorphosis witnessed in real time.

Langkamer – Crows

Following on from 2024 album Langzamer, as well as lead Josh Jarman’s solo release under the moniker Classic Trucks earlier this year, Bristol‘s Langkamer are preparing to release their fourth album in as many years. Coming early next January via Breakfast Records, No was recorded in the Spanish hills at Zarzalico and carries some of the Mediterranean clarity in its sound, creating enough space to examine the full scale of our frenetic contemporary life. Lead single ‘Crows’ gives a taste of what to expect, a track fired by nervous energy and unanswered questions, barrelling forwards despite its clear desire to stop and change. “’Crows’ is a song about the crazy shapes we contort ourselves into trying to create art in the era of late-stage capitalism,” the band explain. “Working a thousand jobs. Writing songs with the left hand while writing emails with the right hand. Your day is already doomed the moment you open your eyes. Everything’s a bad omen.”

Orchid Mantis – Strange Heaven

Change and evolution are key features in the career of any artist, especially one as prolific as Orchid Mantis. “Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the [project] as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles,” we wrote back in March, “each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux.” In Airports, the second Orchid Mantis full-length to be released this year, not only continues this process but meditates on the very meaning of such an endeavour. What does it mean to commit to a life making music? And how might it help chart all that is lost and preserved over the years? The result feels like the culmination of everything Orchid Mantis has done to date, returning to old styles and techniques as readily is it breaks new ground, and thus becomes something of a mission statement for the project. A declaration of intent to give the past and future equal billing, full of the spirit which has been pieced together over the years yet open to possibility. New single and closer ‘Strange Heaven’ expresses the sentiment most succinctly:

as it fades away
we could keep drifting
we could form a star
we could be lifted

The Planes – Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)

We last wrote about New York indie rock outfit The Planes back in 2023, describing ‘First Breath After Mask’, a single from EP Dark Matter Recycling Co., as “a song at once depressed and affirming. As though from with its own inertia stirs some last attempt at catharsis.” Now the band are back with Motel For Lightning Bug, a brand new release which sees them continue their own idiosyncratic mix of rock and pop influences, harnessing some of the energy of their livewire shows without losing a sense of emotion or reflection. It is fitting that opener and single ‘Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)’ is a reworking of a fan favourite from live shows, what the band call label as “slacker indie rock bubblegum” which deals with loss with equal parts wistfulness and wry humour, not to mention an infectious sense of momentum which only builds across the length of the track.

Sister Wanzala – Now You’re Mine

Back in 2022 we heralded the apparently triumphant return of London sibling trio Sister Wanzala, singles ‘Perfume‘ and ‘Top Drawer‘ appearing after a three-year hiatus which started soon after the release of 2019 EP The Circus and signalling an almost reluctant determination to pursue making music in an age which can often appear to be designed to convince you otherwise. Fittingly, both tracks featured dreams as a central motif, though rather than some inspirational battle cry to all those who which to pursue their passions, they either described these dreams as full of disaster (‘Top Drawer’) or declared a desire to have them removed entirely (‘Perfume’). You can already guess what happened next. The return was a false dawn, Sister Wanzala retreated into their shells again, only… what’s that? A new track, two years later? Another self-deprecating press release declaring their career a failure and promising more of the same? You’ll understand if we don’t call ‘Now You’re Mine’ anything more than another small blip in might otherwise be a pristine half-decade of silence, but as soon as the jazzy opening unfurls with all its nineties daytime TV swagger and the cold groove settles with effortless cool, you’ll be glad you got anything from the project, no matter how alluring and brief.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2025 #2 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

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