Following in the lineage of songwriters such as Lana Del Ray and Ethel Cain, april june is a Madrid-based artist whose Gothic brand of synth pop muddies the line between desire, fantasy and reality. With a full-length edging closer, april june has been releasing a steady stream of singles in recent times, and the latest ‘it’s all my fault’ serves as the ideal introduction for those not already onboard. Shimmering nostalgia, heartbreak and loneliness marble into something enveloping, with a melodramatic gloom that is nevertheless shot through with shining longing.

ARXX – Baby Uh Huh

Earlier this year, Brighton duo ARXX released their album Ride Or Die via Submarine Cat Records, a record which saw Hanni Pidduck and Clara Townsend push the garage rock sound which made their name towards polished, soaring power pop. To close out the year, ARXX have returned with another evolution, this time of single ‘Baby Uh Huh’. Developed in collaboration with trans collective charity We Exist, the reimagined version collects a bunch of friends to celebrate the Queer community’s communal power, taking an already affirming track and elevating its joyous spirit even higher. “We were looking at the world around us, at all the attacks on Queer lives and in particular Trans lives and we wanted to do something to show our support with our Queer community,” the duo explain. “‘Baby Uh Huh’ is about finding the right people to surround yourself with to make you a better version of yourself, which is a very Queer experience.”

You can grab the charity single on Bandcamp. Ride Or Die is out now via Submarine Cat Records.

body / negative – sleepy (feat. Midwife)

Back in October we introduced body / negative‘s forthcoming album everett, with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Andy Schiaffino enlisting the help of Midwife to create an incredibly personal memorial to her parents. “An attempt at communication through planes of existence and accumulated time,” as we described of the title track, “reaching across seemingly impassable gaps to ensure the line between loved ones remains open, regardless of how distant they might come to seem.” Latest track ‘sleepy’ is no less poignant, its sparse arrangement and layered samples playing like an evening in an empty room. Only within the stillness something else stirs, echoes of past days returning to dispel the apparent solitude, as though time is not a straight line but a stack of superimposed snapshots.

everett is out on the 8th December via Track Number Records and you can pre-order it from the body / negative Bandcamp page.

Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover – How Does The Horse Go Home?

Both Haley Heynderickx and Max Garcia Conover have been regular fixtures here at VSF over the years, so it was a real treat to have the pair join forces for Among Horses III, one of a series of collaborative releases from Son Canciones. “Whether writing confessions about themselves or imagined fictions about others, 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.” To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the EP, the pair have returned with a new extended edition, featuring new songs like the ‘How Does The Horse Go Home?’—another deft, striking contemplation on love in all of its changing, persistent forms.

Land Dweller – Losing Touch

Having previously recorded under the moniker Varsity Dad, Denver‘s Dan Harvey has now taken up the name Land Dweller and is preparing to release the project’s debut full-length Past Life. With Harvey on bass, guitar and vocals and Larry Shaw lending drums, the album establishes the Land Dweller MO—a blend of slacker and garage rock which melds bright rhythms and nostalgic textures. Take lead single ‘Losing Touch’, where the sound’s fatalistic reflection is counterbalanced by a rising rhythm, allowing for something at once despondent and cathartic.

Luah – To Relate

Luah is the recording project of Brendan Paul Sullivan, a Florida-born, Baltimore-raised and Kingston, New York-based songwriter, alongside an assortment of friends. The first taste of a forthcoming album, new single ‘To Relate’ is a slow unfurling of a song. Downbeat vocals bob along a meandering arrangement, so what might at first appear to be a morose mood is gradually revealed to be something more varied and natural. As though in committing to the flow, Sullivan not only accepts the changeable currents but finds beauty in every small eddy and pull.

Other Suns – To Adrianne

The cornerstone of debut full-length album Songs About Death, ‘To Adrianne’ introduces the hushed, introspective sound of Other Suns. Opening with the gentle lap of the tide, the song uses a spare folk sound to conjure something both warm and searching. A space outside of normal things in which to voice questions or share sentiments in the aftermath of loss. Or perhaps just to listen, to attune to the quiet sadness inherent in all things in an effort to sense the connection which exists between them. As the final line offers: “If everything dies, I’m not alone.”

Touch the Clouds – Dissolve

“A study on retrospection itself, calling attention to the artifice of memory and the rose-tinted fictions it has us believe.” That’s how we described ‘Gordie and the Cruisers‘ by Detroit‘s Touch the Clouds back in 2022. A bright indie rock anthem which held a more ambiguous message underneath. New track ‘Dissolve’ is no less dichotomous in style, its driving momentum and impassioned vocals detailing a headspace altogether less certain. As though only in leaning into forward motion can one shake free of the baggage of modern living. “I’ve been goin’ through a lot / trying to find a little peace / in all the yuck / racing around inside of me,” as the song opens. “Like dogs on the loose / running the street / howling a tune / into the moonlight.”

The Wolf In Our Own Backyard – God Help Me

The songwriting project of Kevin Gigler, The Wolf In Our Own Backyard is a Providence, Rhode Island-based outfit that works within folk’s best traditions. New album Stuck in Useless Country is full of wry humour, self-deprecation and dissatisfaction, all delivered with an upbeat and often scrappy folk rock style which twists and bends conventions as it sees fit. Single ‘God Help Me’ is perhaps one of the more traditional tracks on the album, though is shot through with the same spirit. Think John Prine’s ‘Paradise’ updated for a slightly later stage of capitalism, where the citizens of said useless country are left with no recourse but to mourn its perpetual decay.

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In preparation for a full-length album, the group have been steadily releasing a stream of singles over recent months. ‘Gordie and the Cruisers’ is the latest of these, a track which utilises the inventive and nuanced Touch the Clouds sound to explore themes equally complex. Because while on the surface the bright, anthemic tone recreates the abandon of youth in all its vivid joy, there are more ambiguous threads too. A study on retrospection itself, calling attention to the artifice of memory and the rose-tinted fictions it has us believe.

What results is a song which offers cathartic crescendos with one hand and punctures them with the other. Choosing to interrogate its own escapism, and thus resist the dead end of nostalgia. “Are we going back to visit the past?” as the opening line asks. “Are we on that path to nowhere?”

we were driving away as fast as we could
with a hand in the air like a sail, as sunlight set
speed was bending the trees at the edge of the road
young and on fire, yet lifeless

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US-born, Sydney-based songwriter Ainsley Farrell is set to release her album Dirt later this year, and new single ‘The Way Back’ gives an indication of what is to come. With its careful yet constant rhythm, the song faces up to suffering with a steely determination, urging anyone struggling to hold on a little longer until the clouds begin to break. Farrell wrote the song while a close friend experienced a difficult period, channelling her feelings of futility at being unable to help from a distance into a kind of promise. An insistence that things will not always be this way. “This song is metaphorically holding her in the light, holding some of that pain for her,” as Farrell puts it. “Until she’s ready to put one foot in front of the other and realize it’s worth sticking it out in this world.”

Attia Taylor – S/T

Out next month via Lame-O Records, Space Ghost is the debut album of songwriter and activist Attia Taylor. Taking it’s name from the absurd Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the record draws upon childhood memories within its psych-inflected style, taking the best and worst of the past in order to craft the possibility of healing in the present. The title track is a great entry point, its lush 60s aesthetic populated by Taylor’s confident delivery, though beneath the florid surface lies something more uncertain as she explores her relationship with her mother and their hit-and-miss attempts at connection.

The Burning Hell – The Last Normal Day

Garbage Island. No, it’s not the new official title of the United Kingdom but the forthcoming album by Canadian outfit The Burning Hell on BB*Island. Led by songwriter Mathias Kom along with with multi-instrumentalists Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll and a variety of rotating guests, the band make everything from tongue-in-cheek anti-folk to racing indie rock. Latest single ‘The Last Normal Day’ sees the likes of Nick Ferrio join the gang to weave a bright and mischievous ode to a pre-apocalyptic world. A track which might be terrifying if it wasn’t so much fun.

Watching things get destroyed, a
Brand new schadenfreude
Crept into our conversations
And our dreams

Garbage Island is out on the 24th June via BB Island and you can pre-order it now.

dampsquib – a new slice of pie

The moniker of Brighton born multi-instrumentalist Matt Farrugia, dampsquib takes a heap of experience working in ambient, art rock and pop styles and combines into its own singular entity. His forthcoming EP is described as a “smorgasbord of musical ideas,” refusing to sit still in any one genre in its quest for experimental and improvisational sounds, and single ‘a new slice of piece’ gives one example of what such a process might sound like. Ambient Rhodes and piano lines coalesce with Farrugia’s vocals, the looping Wurlitzer supported by drums run through a tape machine to achieve that trademark 90s texture.

Doll Spirit Vessel – Train Brain Rot

“Write another half song / Grief under a summer sun,” opens ‘Train Brain Rot by Kati Malison’s Doll Spirit Vessel project. “Dead flies in the candle crater / Promised that I’d call you later / But I’m not me, this is a shell of someone.” The lead single from debut album What Stays which is coming later this summer on Disposable America, the song hints at both the band’s wry humour and questioning tone, the slacker-esque sound refusing to settle for easy comforts even as it invites identity crises to the door. Check out the video directed by Jon Cox and Kati Malison below:

What Stays is out on the 12th August via Disposable America and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

elison – Covered Me

Writing about single ‘Hopes & Horoscopes‘ back in January, we described the work of Des Moines duo Elison as “distinctive balance between tender emotion and gauzy soundscapes” which the band used to “confront bad habits and vices, from mourning unrealised dreams to becoming lost in superstition or introspection.” New single ‘Covered Me’ adds a sense of momentum to the style, the insistent drums evoking a certain tension as elison chart a troubled relationship with a narcissistic partner.

You’re the reason I don’t trust myself
With me you’re someone else
Nothing you say is true
Cause you want everyone to love you

Frank Meadows – Dead Weight

To call Frank Meadows’s forthcoming record Dead Weight a country album is both entirely fitting and slightly reductive, drawing as it does from a rich array of influences scattered across the American continent. Out next month on Ruination Record Co., the release sees the Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist look to the various stops of his past in order to more fully realise the current moment, stringing the pearls together with a palpable momentum which gives the whole thing an affirming air. The title track is as good an introduction as any, full of the warmth and self-reflection with marks the record thanks to Meadows’s piano-led style and contributions from the likes of Michael Cormier O’Leary, Oliver Kalb and Winston Cook-Wilson.

Maja Lena – No More Flowers

Ahead of forthcoming album Pluto on Chiverin Records, Maja Lena has shared brand new single, ‘No More Flowers’. With bucolic folk and cosmic synth sounds, the song explores the way in which friendships can change or end, and acknowledges that sometimes it is better to walk away rather than try to resuscitate something outside of your control. Like much of the record, imagery and ideas are drawn from fictional sources, in this case a particular branch of animation. “I’d been re-watching Studio Ghibli films at the time and fell in love with some of the earlier heavily synth driven soundtracks,” Lena explains. “I liked the idea of some the parts sounding like creatures from another world in conversation with each other, which Rob [Pemberton] managed to emulate better than I could imagine.” Check out Martha Webb’s video below:

Pluto is out via Chiverin Records on the 18th November. You can buy the single via Bandcamp.

Maya Lucia – sleepy baby club

We first covered Maya Lucia with the release of lashing out back in 2019, an EP which signalled a pivot from love ballads into rambunctious garage rock. New record miss girl world builds upon these foundations, again channelling the mischief and exaggerated pain of youth into something full of both fun and heart. Described as “an internal dialogue of growing up and moving on,” single ‘sleepy baby club’ song faces a decidedly pessimistic present without losing hope of something better just over the hill, all delivered with an infectious pop rock bounce.

Touch the Clouds – Feeling Light

With members of Few and Far Between, King For A Day, Lovesick, and others, Touch the Clouds is something of a Detroit scene supergroup. With equal parts pop and punk, the band combine the energy of post-hardcore with the invention of space rock, allowing infectious harmonies and vast ambient textures to coexist with the same song. Take ‘Feeling Light’, the first track from a forthcoming Touch the Clouds album, a song full of impassioned energy and left-field turns which combines emo earnestness with a transportive atmosphere.

I’m feeling light
floating right
in tune with ultraviolet I’m set free

TOLEDO – L-Train

New York‘s TOLEDO have released brand new single ‘L-Train’ with Grand Jury Music, a track which finds Dan Álvarez de Toledo and Jordan Dunn-Pilz confront the struggles of living and creating within the contemporary moment. ‘L-Train’ was “written at a low point for the both of us,” the band explain. “We had just moved to Bushwick and started playing shows every week. We were drinking and partying and losing sight of ourselves.” The age-old paradox of the touring musician, where a career expressing yourself can turn upside down, pushing the truth further away.

each morning I wake up
the headache
the shape of release still far from my doorbell
and I don’t wanna do this anymore
i wanna know me better

Check out the animated video by Kohana Wilson below:

‘L-Train’ is out now via Grand Jury Music and is available from the TOLEDO Bandcamp page.

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