Minneapolis has a rich heritage in energetic indie rock, so its great to see bands like The Dead Century carrying the flame onwards. First drafted during the pandemic but now equally relevant in light of the city’s occupation, latest single ‘Been Better’ wears its influences proudly, taking the raucousness of The Replacements and some of The Hold Steady‘s buoyant positivity and applying them to the less than positive present. The result, essentially a dispatch from a profoundly difficult time, is propulsive, impassioned and ultimately affirming in spite of everything. One, much like the people on the ground of its home city, willing to confront the gravity of the moment and fight for something better regardless of how far away that might seem.

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

figure eight – hummingbird

Back in 2024 we featured Bay Area outfit figure eight, describing how the project has evolved from the experimental noise project of duo Nash Rood and Abby Goeser into something far more developed, with single ‘1999 (cherry)’ from their self-titled EP highlighting the nuance and balance of the sound. “Twin threads of lightness and weight weave across the track into what appears to be the spirit of this new version of figure eight,” we wrote, “a band aware of the transcendent power available at both ends of the spectrum.” Now they are back with until the sun swallows the earth / hummingbird, a double single on Cherub Dream Records, and you only have to contrast the titles tracks to see the balance between heft and elegance remains. After the slow-burn expanse of ‘until the sun swallows the earth’, ‘hummingbird’ offers something more gauzy and restrained, the sound muted though no less full of atmosphere, and ultimately fulfilling its promise to spill over into something thunderous.

Griffin Brown – DRAW

“I need a hint, like a task, to check off and put behind me,” sings New York‘s Griffin Brown on ‘DRAW’, the first glimpse of his forthcoming album Begriffin. “But I don’t quite know what my success would guarantee.” This marbling of assurance and doubt not only runs through the lyrical aspect of the track, but the woozy sound itself. Brown evokes the feeling of starting something without knowing how it will end with a propulsive chorus that never seems to quite reach its natural conclusion. A joint release between Spread Way Out and Better Company Records, Begriffin itself progresses in such a manner.It is undeniably confident and marked by forward motion, yet unsure of its final destination. As though Brown knows what he needs to do and how to do it, just not what the end result might be.

Watch the video by Brown below:

Begriffen will be released on the 8th May via Spread Way Out and Better Company Records. Get it from Bandcamp.

Little Lungs – Dragonfruit

“Songs personal, compassionate and often affirming, driven by equal parts warmth and energy.” That’s how we described the work of Baltimore folk rock outfit Little Lungs back in February, single ‘The Heat’ introducing the band’s forthcoming album of the same name. “A typically emotive track build around [lead Leena] Rhodes’s vocals,” we wrote, “and the braid of tenderness and strength they are able to evoke.” With The Heat coming later this week, Little Lungs have shared new track ‘Dragonfruit’. An example of the more electronic dimension which exists on the record, the song opens like the soundtrack to long lost videogame but soon blossoms into something charged and sweeping, and again Rhodes’s delivery is placed centre stage. “Standing outside, the middle of fall / Dragonfruit vodka clenched in your palm,” she sings in a verse indicative of the striking image-led style of the track. “You met my eyes / I knew that you changed / I hated you then but I couldn’t escape.”

Watch the visualiser by Zack Willis with clips from Leena Rhodes below [WARNING: contains flashing, high-contrast imagery that may triggering to individuals with photosensitivity or epilepsy]:

The Heat will be released on 12th March. Get a copy from the Little Lungs Bandcamp page.

Lucy Liyou – Babygirl

“Possess[es] both a fragile minimalism and lush melodrama […] The sensation of watching a fond memory fade at the edges as the desire to return to its smallest details only grows.” So we wrote of Lucy Liyou‘s debut Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name back in 2025, an album that was both an exercise in musical invention and most personal of documents, a description that more than holds true for Liyou forthcoming new album, MR COBRA. A release described by label Orange Milk Records as “a semi-autobiographical solo theater-music piece […] that combines free-jazz, Korean folk opera, musique-concrète, 2000s era pop, text-to-speech recordings, film, comedy, and drag-inspired performance,” the record sees fury, frustration, love and yearning all swirl together with the extravagance and grace of the best stage show, allowing Liyou to explore ideas of transition and identity in ways otherwise out of reach. “I was really inspired by sounds and images that felt satisfyingly ‘false’ or “unclarifyingly” true, whatever that means,” she expands. “I was drawn to Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures, my favorite drag queens in Los Angeles, who magically bombed every Monday, Ryan Trecartin’s A Family Finds Entertainment, Sunik Kim’s Potential, and so much more. I wanted frenzy that felt disembodying, so disembodying that this time of my life could conjure a laugh.” Check out single ‘Babygirl’ below:

Primula – Cobblestone

Do not be fooled by the title, Primula‘s latest EP Nothing New signals a fresh chapter for the Malmö/Stockholm-based outfit. Having made a name across the Swedish scene with a jazz-inflected sound, the new release sees the band bend more towards folk sensibilities, though without sacrificing the sense of collaboration and invention which made their earlier work so special. Single ‘Cobblestone’ serves as the ideal introduction. It’s a track daring enough to eschew the conventional structures of indie music in order to create a dynamic sound that evokes the nuances of being alive. “‘Cobblestone’ is about the difficult yet comforting realization that you’re just a small piece in a much bigger world,” the band explain. “There’s a freedom in not having to be so significant on your own. Even if you feel insignificant by yourself, you’re still an essential part of making something whole.”

Nothing New will be released later this year.

Stephen Becker – Bad Idea

Back in 2024, Stephen Becker released Middle Child Syndrome, an album we described as “an effort, at least in part, to rise above the mundane present, as though to be trapped within conventions is to be restricted by the same inability to communicate effectively that haunts our everyday lives.” Now Becker is set to return with new full-length Gravity Blanket, and the record is no less thoughtful or ambitious. It sees him sift through the ostensibly banal details of memories in order to excavate a deeper human meaning with an otherwise unsatisfying present. As with Middle Child Syndrome, the result is forthright and unguarded, willing to open itself up to vulnerability in order to make progress, as highlighted by opener and lead single ‘Bad Idea’. “‘Bad Idea’ is about a breakup I went through after seeing the ballet,” as Becker explains. “The haunting feeling of the dancers’ movements lingering in my mind, the sad-sweet taste of spiked lemonade on the train ride home. I was thinking about, and trying to manifest, change with a newfound determination to break free from unhealthy routines and patterns in life and in love.”

Watch the video directed by Haoyan of America below:

Gravity Blanket will be released on the 24th April and you can pre-order it now.

True Green – Bindi Sue

True Green, the project of Minneapolis songwriter Dan Hornsby, is named after “medieval nun Hildegard of Bingen’s idea of viriditas, and also a lawn care company.” This combination goes some way towards capturing the project’s style, which uses a laidback, often irreverent tone to tell stories with real feeling. Later this month, True Green will release sophomore album Hail Disaster, a record which, as its title suggests, explores “tragedies real and imagined”. New single ‘Bindi Sue’ is one last glimpse before the big day. A tribute to everyone’s favourite Aussie naturalist Steve Irwin, the song is wryly funny and genuinely poignant. It evokes both the loss felt by an entire generation following Irwin’s untimely death, and the joy of his good-natured relationship with the natural world. “He didn’t hunt them,” as the song begins, “they were his friends”.

Where’s Beth – Ache Is A Cricket In The Night

‘Ache Is A Cricket In The Night’ is the title track from the new record by Where’s Beth, the recording project of Seattle-based Sarabeth Weszely. The follow up to 2024 debut Bone Broth, the album “draw[s] on apparently mundane moments from every day life,” as we put it previously, “to chart the universal experiences of love, grief and longing,” building upon the style of its predecessor in the process. The album is now out, and the title track is an ideal entry point for those unfamiliar with the Where’s Beth project, looking for a place to dive in. “I can feel your heart beat like a candleflame / Fingers stretching out, flicker in the rain,” Weszely sings in the opening lines, immediately evoking the intimacy and compassion of the record. “Wind blows, I want to tell you it’s okay / To let in.” The rest of the track unfolds within the warmth of this beginning, a safe harbour from the outside world and its accumulation of difficulties, but importantly not a total escape. For, as the title suggests, Where’s Beth is not interested in blocking out sadness or suffering but rather creating enough distance that we might examine them in the context of everything else.

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Seattle‘s Corespondents have been together for over two decades now, honing and evolving an idiosyncratic, endlessly inventive sound that blends post-rock, psych and surf sensibilities. With little interest in playing the game demanded by the music industry (the in-joke that is the apparently misspelled band name is just the start of it), the outfit have intsead ploughed their own furrow, embracing a playful humour and uncategorisable style even if it condemns them to something of a cult, underground act. New album Exploding House, coming soon via Antiquated Future Records, does not betray any of these ideals, though might nevertheless just break Corespondents into the wider consciousness. Because, as single ‘Queen Nut’ shows, this is a release from a band at the height of their powers. An album clearly full of craft, vision and daring, but one which wears its ambition lightly. Corespondents are not here to bamboozle the listener into appreciation, but beckon with a laidback, oddball charm.

Erik Hall – Strumming Music (Charlemagne Palestine)

We’ve shared a couple of tracks from Erik Hall‘s Solo Three in recent months, the third and final part of a sequence of albums on which the Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist reimagines contemporary classical pieces within his own minimalist vision. After ‘Music for a Large Ensemble‘ by Steve Reich and ‘A Folk Study‘ by Laura Spiegel, Hall has now shared a final single to celebrate the album’s release via Western Vinyl. ‘Strumming Music’ softens the idiosyncratic intensity of Charlemagne Palestine’s original without losing its spirit, blurring the edges into something meditative and enveloping.

Jackie West – Course of Action

Silent Century, the new album from Jackie West coming this February on Ruination Records, plays as something of a covnversation. A dialogue most personal, held between the West the artist and West herself, but also something wider. A polyphony featuring an untold number of perspectives which exists in defiance of years of gendered silencing, elevating the voices of those too often unheard to emerge as a kind of portrait of the feminine experience. Latest single ‘Course of Action’ embodies both the curiosity and ferocity which makes such a project possible. West not only fills the enforced gaps within the collective voice, but points to its enduring power. A warm tangle of guitars form the track’s texture, though it is driven forward by a kraut-adjacent beat, and together with the reharmonised chord which emerges in the back half, the sound gives the impression of something perpetual. As though Jackie West has not created a discrete song but tapped into something ever-present and without end.

June Swoon – Denver

“June Swoon is a true outlaw” explains the bio of the cult LA-based songwriter, an apt description for someone who fled the confines of a fundamentalist sect as a teen, escaping into the Southwestern desert and moonlighting as a touring musician while steadily building her own catalogue of work. After two self-produced albums, new EP Big Truck offers the new chapter of this burgeoning career, embracing the circumstances of its creation and channelling the sensation of being on the run, fighting the desire to look over your shoulder at everything you’ve left behind. Opening track ‘Denver’ is the ideal introduction to the spirit of the release, a track of equal parts wistful emotion and windows-down attitude which embraces it classic country roots unapologetically while also carving out a space for itself within the contemporary alt-country movement too.

Sluice – Beadie

Formed by lead Justin Morris after becoming discouraged pursuing indie rock in New York, North Carolina‘s Sluice have made a name with a pair of celebrated albums, most recently 2023’s Radial Gate which we described as “follow[ing] the project name and doubles down on the imagery of water.” As we continued: “whether Morris is skimming along the surface or submerging himself in plunge pools, the lasting sense is that of control. For if life is a flowing river, Radial Gate represents an attempt to apply structures along its course so that we might more fully engage with the power and potential to be found therein.” Now Sluice are back with new album Companion on Mtn Laurel Recording Co., solidifying into a four piece with with Morris joined by Oliver Child-Lanning (bass, various other instruments), Avery Sullivan (drums) and Libby Rodenbough (fiddle). Lead single and album opener ‘Beadie’ sets the tone, a song about love and self-care which treats such subjects with an almost spiritual air, while still possessing an earnest, unguarded personability.

Watch the video filmed by Avery Sullivan & Charlie Boss and edited by Sullivan & Libby Rodenbough below:

Companion will be released on the 27th March via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Taroug – 1995

The solo project of German–Tunisian drummer and electronic music producer Tarek Zarroug, Taroug blends digital and organic sounds to create conceptual soundscapes able to evoke the full richness of personal history. Named after the Chott El Djerid, a vast salt lake in southern Tunisia, latest album Chott is the perfect example of the style, blending a nostalgic, melancholic minimalism with moments of bright intensity. As single ‘1995’ highlights, Zarroug weaves personal features into these arrangements to further ground the themes of identity and memory. A song which reflects on his early childhood in Tunisia that is able to capture both the intimacy of fond experience and the expansive landscape within which it took place.

Van Chamberlain – Running Through the World

We’ve featured two singles from Van Chamberlain‘s new full-length As Far As the Eye Can See in recent months, the New York outfit scheduling the album as a waterfall release with a new song unveiled each month. First came ‘Miracle Drug‘, a track we called “decidedly bittersweet in nature, a nascent crush brought to life in all of its longing and shimmering potential. Where the line between melancholy and possibility is porous and the world itself feels new.” Then the more ruminative ‘Solutions‘, what we described as “a song delivered from the mire of the present, dreaming of a fresh start that’s not yet quite in reach and all the more alluring for it.” Now Van Chamberlain have returned with ‘Running Through the World’, and again the sense of possibility imbued with the sound is tangible. What the band call “an anthem of nonconformity” which chooses to pursue love and optimism regardless of how intent the world seems to be on erasing such things.

Where’s Beth – White Ants

Back in December we featured ‘Overtime Waltz‘, a single from Sarabeth Weszely’s Where’s Beth we described as “a festive offering that uses the pressures of the period to highlight chronic struggles and loneliness.” It turns out the single was the first from forthcoming new Where’s Beth album Ache Is A Cricket In The Night, and now Weszely has returned with opening track ‘White Ants’ to further introduce the release. Released in 2024, predecessor Bone Bone offered “a picture of domesticity in the weeks and days around marriage,” we wrote in our review, a sincere album which nevertheless still found “room for the peculiar and idiosyncratic details too.” The new album builds upon this style and expands its focus, drawing on apparently mundane moments from every day life to chart the universal experiences of love, grief and longing.

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“They say it was a failed utopia / but it ain’t failed if you’re flexible.” So sings LA-based songwriter Dolly Creamer on latest single ‘Like Water’, two lines which could be said to serve as the mission statement of the song. With a loose, easygoing spirit, the track embraces this philosophy to create its own small world within the imperfect whole, leaning into the image of the title to stay attuned to the natural world and go with the flow of life. Sarah Harris, Sasha Massey, Joon Voigt, Riley Geare and Joel Crocco lend their talents to flesh out the sound, and Voigt also created a suitably lo-fi video to further bring the mood to life as part of their thunderwurld motion picture co. The result is an affirming reminder of the hope inherent within any community.

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

Erik Hall – A Folk Study (Laurie Spiegel)

Back in November we introduced Solo Three, the closing release in a trilogy of albums by Erik Hall on Western Vinyl which sees the Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist reimagining contemporary classical pieces by passing them through the prism of his own unique minimalist sensibilities. Where predecessors Music for 18 Musicians and Canto Ostinato focused solely on the work of Steve Reich and Simeon ten Holt respectively, Solo Three casts a wider net, the release featuring reinterpretations of pieces by Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Reich again and, as with the latest single, Laurie Spiegel. As though led by the title, Hall brings an added tempo and warmth to ‘A Folk Study’, favouring an acoustic palette to tease out the organic spirit of Spiegel’s original.

Hiding Places – Holy Roller

“I’m a holy roller / I move so much.” So sings Audrey Keelin of Hiding Places on single ‘Holy Roller’, invoking a phrase in the Holiness movement for those of the congregation so struck by the presence of God they dance and shake uncontrollably. Released to celebrate the Brooklyn-based outfit’s signing with Keeled Scales, the single embraces this sense of spontaneity in more ways than one, not only in how it explores the restless spirit of its creator but also in terms of its very construction. “’Holy Roller’ was a lesson for me, a song that happened with no planning, no ‘trying to write’, but a pure, detached channeling,” Keelin explains. “That metaphor made perfect sense to me after the fact, there is a voice in my heart that I have a complex relationship with that tells me to move around, be somewhat nomadic, not really settle down in one specific place. During that writing session, that bittersweet feeling of moving from my home state kept returning,”

Howling Bells – Chimera

Back in October we introduced Strange Life, the first new album from Sydney-born, London-based outfit Howling Bells for over a decade. “The album not only breaks the hiatus but reflects on it,” we described when talking of lead single ‘Heavy Lifting’, a testament to the effort and resilience required to persist within the music industry and develop a sense of confidence. Latest single ‘Chimera’ continues this meditation on making art, exploring the double-edged sword of ambition and how it can both cut you down and lift you towards higher achievements. “Chimera is a strange word. It means a few different and curious things; in this context, however, I’m using it to mean something of an absurd nature, unattainable, a fantasy. Such is the relationship we have with music at times,” lead Juanita Stein explains. “This song speaks to my experience as a musician, surviving the perpetual ups and downs of the game. But if you’re lucky enough, you have someone who can cut through the noise and help you realise that the fantasy is half the joy. That the longing is part of the journey and that our achievements along the way are deeply meaningful. At its core, ‘Chimera’ is a song about hope and relinquishing control.”

Strange Life will be released on the 13th February via Nude Records.

Ken Wohlrob – William

“A song is a stubborn thing. It’ll resist you with all its might. As you try to bend it and twist it, it will reject your strokes of genius, leaving you feeling like a damn fool for thinking they would work in the first place. A song will tell you, in no uncertain terms, what it wants to be.” So explains musician and composer Ken Wohlrob of new single ‘William’, a track which seemed to repel all attempts to develop it beyond its core guitar riff. You might know Wohlrob from acts like End of Hope, Swarm of Flies, Northern Heretic and Eternal Black, but his solo work offers space for something more meditative. And it was with that spirit he decided to drop the attempt to complicate the sound and let ‘William’ have its own way. “What I had was a single take of a repetitive guitar riff, played live through a reverse-echo feedback loop for eleven minutes,” he continues. “The feedback loop created oscillations and repetitions that took on a life of their own, extending past the riff, even re-absorbing it. There was a compelling journey in that single guitar line.”

No Singing – Care Takers

In recent years, Ben Godfrey has made a name with baroque, off-the-cuff recordings under the moniker Belaver, offering what we’ve called “a blend of deadpan humour and human heart which proves ideally suited to capturing the bleak and bizarre milieu to which it belongs.” Now Godfrey is back with new project No Singing, and there’s something of a stylistic change. Gone are the live arrangements and wry sensibilities in favour of something more considered, personal and nostalgic. Single ‘Care Takers’ introduces the sound, the tale of a character who intends to find a car and drive until the gas runs out. Only this yearning for forward motion is complicated by its very existence, both the lo-fi sound and Godfrey’s vocals betraying a sense of stasis. The stuck feeling of being young and lonely within a city which barely knows you exist, longing for any sense of speed which might allow an escape.

Sam Wenc – Limitless of Blue

Recording under the moniker Post Moves, Philadelphia-based composer, improviser and interdisciplinary artist Sam Wenc released fifteen albums across a variety of labels, establishing the sonic strand of his work as something intricate, finely crafted yet always surprising (just check out Cut Into Your Own Dimension or Heart Music). Wenc has decided to release latest album Language At An Angle under his own name, though it very much feels a continuation of an ongoing body of work. Inspired by and dedicated to pedal steel virtuoso Susan Alcorn who passed away earlier in the year, the record is a lesson in the possibilities of the instrument, one grounded in years of experience and deepened by an ongoing practice of sitting meditation, as well as a reminder of the raw power of art. Perhaps the only real way we can truly confront the unknowable and create meaning, this record suggests, is to continue the work of our forebears and never stop pushing the boundaries. Listen to lead track ‘Limitless of Blue’ now, and watch the video directed by Mikel Patrick Avery below:

Language At An Angle will be released via Lobby Art Editions on the 30th January and you can pre-order it now.

Sophie Gault – Is There Anyone Out There

We last wrote about Nashville-based songwriter Sophie Gault back in 2023 with the release of ‘Christmas in the Psych Ward‘ from album Baltic Street Hotel, a track which followed a lineage of Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Patty Griffin to delve, as we put it, “into highly personal experiences of bipolar disorder with a tone both steely and wry.” With new album UNHINGED set for release in January 2026 via Torrez Music Group, Gault has now returned with single ‘Is There Anyone Out There’, and the track is no less emotive or evocative. A version of the Gurf Morlix song of the same name, the track preserves the intimacy of the original while reaching towards something more connected and communal. Morlix’s album Kiss of the Diamondback came out in the heaviest days of the pandemic and its sound was very much informed by the isolation and solitude of the period, but Gault adds a certain layer of warmth to create a mood that’s still melancholic but a little more bittersweet.

Unhinged will be released via Torrez Music Group on the 23rd January and you can pre-save it now.

vireo – the great golden gloom

We’ve featured a couple of tracks from vireo‘s forthcoming album The Great Golden Gloom in recent weeks, firstly ‘catching minnows’ back in September and more recently ‘icanicanican‘. Both tracks highlighted the spirit of a project attuned, as we put it, “to the curative power of the environment and the small beauties therein, packed full of brightness and wonder as though written in honour of the joy of being alive.” With the record now out, Chris Beaulieu and co. have shared the title track as one final single. Serving as the conclusion of the album, the track is in many ways a culmination of its ideas and tones. One grounded in the richness of nature yet marked by a trademark sense of invention, its bright style is as earnest as anything vireo have put out to date, and perhaps more accomplished and assured. The sound of a band who have discovered both their musical style and view of the world and have taken great pleasure in committing it to tape.

Weirs – Lord Bateman (Live at Feast V)

“A hymn delivered not from the still air and stone of a cathedral but God’s own Earth,” was how we described ‘I Want to Die Easy‘ from Weirs‘ album Diamond Grove earlier in the year. “Where fellow contemporary traditionalists like Lankum and ØXN highlight the stark, foreboding tones of the genre to push towards the realm of folk horror, the Weirs sound is more in line with the work of Terrence Mallick. Songs heightened not by an emergent dread or the suggestion of the supernatural but rather an abundance of life itself. The humblest of details given the closest of attention and the latent beauty revealed.” To celebrate the album and kick off a new tour, Weirs have shared a live version of the epic ‘Lord Bateman’, complete with a video filmed at their album release show at the 5th annual Feast in Orange County, North Carolina. “Each year in the fall, friends and I host Feast, a harvest meal and music event that spans the first weekend of October,” explains lead Oliver Child-Lanning. “This year, to mark the release of Weirs’ new album Diamond Grove, we opened Saturday night by playing through ‘Lord Bateman’ from the album in its entirety, with shadow puppets by my sister Violet and other friends and family. Everyone gathered around the glowing puppet theater as we played and sang, accompanied by insects and the fall breeze.”

Diamond Grove is out now via Dear Life Records and you can get it from the Weirs Bandcamp page.

Where’s Beth – Overtime Waltz

Following on from 2024 album Bone Broth, a release we described as “a picture of domesticity in the weeks and days around marriage,” which “for all its tender fondness, still finds room for the peculiar and idiosyncratic details,” Sarabeth Weszely’s Where’s Beth has returned with a festive offering that uses the pressures of the period to highlight chronic struggles and loneliness. “I wrote ‘Overtime Waltz’ from a place of burnout,” Weszely explains, “working long hours in NYC, struggling to connect with loved ones even when we were physically together, and feeling a vague and relentless sense of grief.” Abbey Blackwell (Alvvways) contributes upright bass and harmonies while Steve Moore (Sufjan Stevens) adds Wurlitzer and synth, lifting the sound to its full, melancholic warmth.

Is the snow ever coming, will it always be rain?
Will the cold bring numbing to take away the pain?
I’m needing some kindness to show me the way

Watch the lyric video below:

‘Overtime Waltz’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

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Where’s Beth is now back with debut full-length Bone Broth, and the album feels in many ways the full realisation of Weszely’s style. A picture of domesticity in the weeks and days around marriage to collaborator Jesse Thorson, the album is perhaps the most sincere Where’s Beth release to date, though for all its tender fondness, it still finds room for the peculiar and idiosyncratic details too. All of these moods are contained within the opening tracks. ‘Devotion’ lives up to its title with its bright clarity and softness, declaring love with a certain defiance, while ‘Quiet’ wears its doubts on its sleeve (“Am I selfish? Am I strange? Am I losing my way?” as Weszely ponders). Then there’s ‘I Am No Conqueror’, a romantic love song, yes, but one which mentions dogs sitting on heads during yoga and StarCraft’s platinum league.

What results is a picture of a relationship with both its mundane details and luminous joy left intact. ‘If Only For This’ broaches the friction between religious beliefs and personal desire and ‘I Can’t Save All the Bees’ charts the intimate details of a hospital visit, while songs like ‘Close’ and ‘Lullaby’ paint a picture of closeness via space and lonely absences. As though to understand what it means to connect with another person only comes into relief in those moments apart. Sitting at the heart of the record, the title track brings all the threads together. A song earnest and soft and sometimes so odd as to be grotesque, its airy tones counterbalanced by a tactile strangeness which brings to life the twin threads of desire and dependency. “I keep the bones from what you eat inside my freezer,” Weszely sings, “to bring when you feel sick / you’ll come to me / and drink drink drink.”

Bone Broth is out now and available from the Where’s Beth Bandcamp page.

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Philly songwriter Alex Barkats is releasing new album Here we are in the garden later this summer via Ghost Mountain Records, and lead single and opening track ‘Jewels’ gives a window into what to expect from the release. A song of conflicted feelings, where the bright folk sound is shaded by something more melancholic. As though every good moment will also be shadowed by the understanding such a time can only be temporary. But Barkats works against this mood in an effort to carve out a more fulfilling frame of mind. “It’s about finding comfort in routine,” he explains. “Especially when the world is still crumbling. You have to go through so much trial and error to know how to build joy for yourself.”

Antonia Estelle – Don’t Know Why

Back in 2023 we wrote about the Edmonton-based songwriter Antonia Estelle with the EP Poser, describing how the title track embellished acoustic guitar with “syrup-heavy drums,” “gusts of distorted guitar,” and “vocals swaying with quiet intensity like a flickering flame” to explore “the strange balance of a dysfunctional relationship and the ultimate unknowability of selfhood.” Now based in Berlin to study Audio Production at Funkhaus, Estelle is gearing up to release her debut full length, and latest single ‘Don’t Know Why’ introduces the idiosyncratic yet intuitive nature of her work. A sleek pop song which embraces a sense of movement and flow. “My goal while creating this piece was to lean into freedom and playfulness,” Estelle explains. “In the past, I have relied heavily on words and finding meaning in music, but with this song, I wanted to let go of meaning and rather create something that made me want to move my body.”

Blaine Todd – Everyman

Based on Alameda, a former naval base and island in the San Francisco Bay, Blaine Todd is a folk artist in the wanderer tradition. The songwriter as a kind of outlaw perpetually passing through. New album Goodbye ‘Til I Do Good By You follows Todd on this journey, its authentic country sound having an eye on the stars as well as the road, its subtly cosmic style charged with equal parts melancholy and wry humour. “Well, my days go like smoke,” as he sings at the beginning of opener ‘Everyman’, I want to laugh but I choke / Must I be the punchline in some cosmic joke / While just around the bend / Another fire starts smoldering / It flummoxes my ass to no end.” What results is a jaunt to the heart of the human condition, as well as the picture of the beauty and cruelty of the world we’re made to walk.

I nearly found it just today
Held hysteria at bay
But all I can recall is my mother sayin:
Every man rides the horse that he deserves

Jack Gaby – Young Adult

Naarm / Melbourne-based songwriter Jack Gaby has made a name with a bright and jangly brand of indie pop, but there’s more to his work than sunbleached positivity. New single ‘Young Adult’ shows an altogether more contemplative dimension to Gaby’s sound, drifting with a slack rhythm as he considers the wonders and pitfalls of early adulthood. “I went through a period at this age when I was a mess,” as Gaby puts it. “This track is about the tumultuous emotions I experienced at the time.” But rather than present this headspace as a chaotic sound, the sluggish momentum makes for a different kind of experience. One suggestive of the real kicker of such periods, where it feels like you might never gather enough energy to escape the pull of negative feelings, and instead drift within their circular currents forever.

Las Nubes – Enredados (Misty’s Mix)

“Deals with the ways in which activism can be co-opted and exploited,” we wrote of ‘Pesada‘, the recent single from Las Nubes‘ new album Tormentas Malsanas, “the sound [as] tumultuous and hefty as you might expect for such a subject, taking no prisoners with its crushing weight.” With the album now out, the Miami, Florida duo have released one final single, ‘Enredados (Misty’s Mix)’. Not sacrificing one iota of the raucous spirit which marks the work of Ale Campos and Emile Milgrim, the song ramps up the rhythm underpinning the sound to offer something more energetic, grabbing the listener and pulling them along for the ride with all the uncompromising attitude they’ve made their own.

Mary Ocher – The Rubaiyat Medley

To say Mary Ocher’s latest album Your Guide to Revolution is ambitious in its intentions is to risk understatement. A kaleidoscopic and politically charged collection of songs which draws on Ocher’s childhood (born in Moscow to Jewish-Ukrainian parents before emigrating to Tel Aviv during the Gulf War) as a way into wider themes of resistance and civil disobedience. A huge array of styles and influences are utilised across the record, both to evoke the gamut of emotions triggered within the contemporary struggle and to ground the release within a wider history of such subversive art. A central part of the album is a series of three tracks which rework pieces by harpist Dorothy Ashby based on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khyyam, a triptych of songs which Ocher has collected into a short film which echoes The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov. Watch it below:

Your Guide to Revolution is out now via the Underground Institute and available from Bandcamp.

Narwhals – Moor Fires

Based between Manchester and the West Yorkshire borough of Calderdale, Narwhals is an indie rock/shoegaze project led by singer-songwriter Jacob Patrick. Drawing on The North’s rich post-punk history, the Narwhals style combines needling guitar and dynamic percussion with Patrick’s signature deep and morose vocals to craft something that sounds big and rich and poignant. Nowhere is this more apparent than on new single ‘Moor Fires’, what the press release calls “a track about grief and heartbreak […] about rebirth and finding peace.” It displays everything that’s great about the Narwhals sound, somber and sonorous but full of energy. Perhaps most impressive is the composure and poise that sits at its centre like the tranquil eye of of a gigantic storm. Frequent collaborator Thē Jaffa also makes an appearance, their backing vocals bringing a lighter counterpoint to Patrick’s and thereby leavening the song as a whole.

Peiriant – Taflu Dŵr

With an experimental sound that draws on everything from folk and post-rock to classical and sound art, mid Wales duo Peiriant combine traditional and electronic styles with samples and found objects for semi-improvised pieces. What results is an almost sculptural approach to music, with Rose and Dan Linn-Pearl building out from a skeleton of an idea with layers of drone and dissonance. One which relies on the push and pull between the main components of violin and electric guitar. New single ‘Taflu Dŵr’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, encapsulating both the detail of the Peiriant sound and the duo’s expert ability to utilise space.

Where’s Beth – Quiet

Writing of single ‘Wide Eyes’ back in March, we described how New York’s Where’s Beth channelled the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Connie Converse in embracing and “idiosyncratic style with conviction and grace to create a sense of authenticity.” Ahead of the debut Where’s Beth full-length Bone Broth, Sarabeth Weszely is back with new single ‘Quiet’. The song again uses a fond, intimate sound to explore wider themes. Written during a trip to Romania where she was struck by the low cost of living and wide open spaces in comparison to New York, the song charts the difficulties of urban living with a tangible warmth. “I was thinking about my relationship to land in the context of a competitive capitalist market (realizing how wild the cost of “air-space” in my home city was compared to the fertile and beautiful land I was spending a few dollars a day to live on),”  This song gives voice to a tension that is familiar to many people who choose to live in cities, whether for career goals or the intoxicating thrill of a crowd.”

Wishy – Triple Seven

With the release of Wishy‘s Triple Seven looming next month on Winspear, the  Indianapolis band have unveiled the title track to allow audiences to get a little more acquainted with the forthcoming full-length. A slice of lush dream pop which both pays homage to forebears likes The Cranberries and Cocteau Twins while fashioning the nineties-nostalgic sound into something entirely their own. “A little bit uncertain / I wasn’t really sure / I walked out in silence / I shut that door,” Nina Pitchkites sings in the opening, but the bright sound soon smothers any sense of doubt, instead offering an affirming if slightly wistful track to soundtrack your later summer evenings as the sun dips below the horizon.

Watch the video directed, filmed and edited by Haoyan of America below:

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

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The latest Where’s Beth single ‘Wide Eyes’ builds upon the foundations laid by For My Mom & Other Lovers. A poignant, piano-led number which welcomes the audience into the reflective warmth of its world, then slowly reveals a mix of searching emotion and playful humour. Or as Weszely puts it “A little ambient folk comfort song for anyone who ever feels like a cat.” The track evokes the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Connie Converse, embracing its idiosyncratic style with conviction and grace to create a sense of authenticity—be it considering the strange experience of loneliness even within a network of loving relationships, or pushing the metaphor of the cat to better convey the contradictions of living day to day.

I’m like a cat
if you wait for me, I’ll come to you
And I’ll lay my weight upon you
‘til you’re not afraid

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The song is the opening track from for my mom & other lovers, an EP out now via Pitch & Prose. The label describe the collection as somewhere between Joni Mitchell and Kimya Dawson, poetic and playful and grounded in experience. The sound of a specific life caught in all of its peculiar detail. Take the slowly building ‘Meat’, its sincerity underlined by a certain mischief, the daring willingness to say what she really thinks. Or ‘La Abundancia’ with its delicate bed of acoustic and electric guitars supporting Weszely’s singular lyrics. Part confession, part ode to life itself. An acknowledgement of the latent beauty in everything, as well as the inevitable transience of even the most important and strong.

Even this abundance will grow tired inside of me
Even this green life will grow tired inside of me
Even this unbearable joy will grow tired in me

The gentle toe-tapping rhythm of ‘Want’ again belies its confessional vulnerability, while ‘Angela’ lingers with the almost-there vividness of a cherished memory. Though again the Where’s Beth personality shows through, Weszely’s name dropping of things like IKEA helping to add a real world banal to the hazy poetry. The success of the writing is how this accentuates rather than undercuts the overall mood, and never feels like a winking irony. Rather the truest picture of a particular moment, a particular time. A particular person standing amid it all.

for my mom & other lovers is out now via Pitch & Prose and you can get it from the Where’s Beth Bandcamp page.

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“A melodic journal recollecting my childhood and study guide to rebuilding the once broken foundation of my spiritual temple.” That’s how California’s Abraham Linkedin describes album New Castle. A collection of songs drawing on chillwave and hauntological styles to conjure the forgotten past and unrealised futures simultaneously. With its rich and textured tones overlaying the languid vocals, single ‘En Garde’ introduces the style, though New Castle’s true value is as a complete album.

Allison Lorenzen – Vale (feat. Midwife)

Back in November we wrote about Tender, an album by Allison Lorenzen on Whited Sepulchre Records. “A subversion of the traditional healing narrative,” as we described it. “A rejection of linear progress, an acknowledgement of the uneven topography of life.” Lorenzen has now teamed up with Jack Manzi’s Silver Island Studios for a series of videos, most recently for the single ‘Vale’ which sees her return to the mountains of Colorado. The landscape changes as Lorenzen walks the road, though quick cuts and close-up shots upend a simple sense of progression and speak to the song’s ethereal strangeness.

Tender is out now via Whited Sepulchre and you can get it from Bandcamp.

chemical club – Hell in a Heatwave

Ontario-based duo chemical club have made their name with a series of lo-fi bedroom pop releases, most recently following on from 2021 EP Arm’s Length with numerous singles on Arts & Crafts. The latest of these is ‘Hell in a Heatwave’, a subdued pop hit simmering beneath the surface with equal parts suffering and desire to change. The track takes “an honest look at who you are and how you can improve upon that,” the band explain. “Leaving unhealthy habits behind and holding yourself accountable for your own actions and behaviours.” Even if this requires a certain degree of discomfort in the immediate moment.

‘Hell in a Heatwave’ is out now via Arts & Crafts and you can get it from their webstore.

Faye – Teeth

Charlotte duo Faye are set to release their brand new record You’re Better on Self Aware Records, and latest single ‘Teeth’ gives an indication of the direction the band have taken since their self-titled EP. A building sense of energy, an escalation, the various elements spiralling in increasingly smaller circles like a spring coiling tighter and tighter, always threatening to explode. “I am the hand, you are the teeth,” sings Sarah Blumenthal, fighting to be heard above the descending noise.

Frankie Cosmos – One Year Stand

This autumn Frankie Cosmos will release Inner World Peace, their fifth full-length record via Sub Pop. In anticipation, the band (founding member Greta Kline, keyboardist Lauren Martin, guitarist/bassist Alex bailey and drummer Luke Pyenson) have released lead single ‘One Year Stand’, the album’s soft and patient centrepiece which proves the perfect introduction to a record which approaches existential questions of selfhood and quantum time with patience and kindness. The track comes complete with a video directed by Eliza Lu Doyle and starring Kline and Bailey. “It feels like an encapsulation of the record in that it’s strange and vast while also being contained and interior,” Kline explains. “Clowning and playing are a huge part of collaborating for me and Eliza. We wanted to perform a dance without dancing — the kind of movements you fall into in private, banal moments, playing without even realizing.”

Inner World Peace will be released via Sub Pop on 21st October. Pre-order it now via the Frankie Cosmos Bandcamp page.

Horatio James – they will have us

Led by singer songwriter James Gable, London‘s Horatio James write folk songs and then bend them into new and interesting shapes. New single ‘they will have us’ was written on bouzouki and takes elements of classic British folk and pop to create something that feels somehow both fresh and timeless. Gable is joined on the track by Marina Ritschel (vocals), Oli Fenton (drums) and Tristan Gable (electric guitar), fleshing out what could have been a hushed acoustic song into something dynamic and subtly infectious, an incense-scented indie pop song perfect for these long summer evenings.

Joyeria – Colour Film

Ahead of new EP FIM out via Speedy Wunderground this autumn, Canada-born, London-based project Joyeria have unveiled brand new single, ‘Colour Film’. A slacker rock gem that sits somewhere between David Berman and Nap Eyes. “‘Colour Film’ is about the mindless daily routine of being alive,” Joyeria explains. “What David Foster Wallace called ‘water’. I apparently have the ability to choose how I feel or think as I participate in being alive just as I can choose how I feel and think when I explain songs.” Of course it’s not as easy as Wallace might have intimated, something Joyeria highlights through his wry and volatile style. Check the video directed by Alex Bischof below:

FIM is out via Speedy Wunderground on 14th October and you can pre-order it now.

Tender Glue – Simple Boys

Tender Glue is the project of New York‘s Tom Gluewicki, who makes indie pop that spans the spectrum, from light and catchy to introspective and emotional. Latest single ‘Simple Boys’ sits at the breezy end of things, a summertime bop that pairs punchy percussion with laidback guitar and Gluewicki’s raw vocals. Lyrically, it’s a wryly humorous ode to the titular “simple boys”, those men who never really grow up and despite being annoying, just want the same simple things as everyone else.

‘Simple Boys’ is out now via Don’t Label Me Records and available from the Tender Glue Bandcamp page.

Thanya Iyer – leave the room and face the waves

“Rest is in many ways a reflection of myself,” explains Thanya Iyer of her latest release on Topshelf Records. An EP which asks, “who am I when it all stops?” Following on from successful debut KIND, the collection finds Iyer amid the slowdown of the pandemic and removed from the communities of making and performing music. The obligatory isolation could be faced in a variety of ways, but Iyer chose to be embrace it and use it purposefully. A period in which to examine what it means to rest in our busy world. With its slinky, jazz-flavoured tones, single ‘leave the room and face the waves’ finds much richness within the quiet, even if dreams inevitably turn toward the outside world. Check out the video Iyer created along with Sophie Grouev and Amanda Stormyr below:

rest is out on 24th August via Topshelf Records and you can pre-order it now.

Upchuck – Boss up

Based in Atlanta, punk five-piece Upchuck were brought together by “connections made in skateboarding, construction, and teenage delinquency.” Next month they will release their debut album Sense Yourself on Famous Class Records, a collection of what the label calls “haunting tales of discrimination, ignorance, and life in a doomed generation.” Lead single ‘Boss Up’ is indicative of the record as a whole, a slice of furious punk intended to empower and strengthen. As the press release continues “Only the wise and relentless will thrive in a revolutionized and radical world, and Upchuck is sternly feeding the fuel for a new gen.”

Where’s Beth – Come Inside

Based in New York, Where’s Beth creates a lush brand of folk able to weave intricate details into a seamless whole. Latest single ‘Come Inside’ is the perfect example, the gentle hushed tones belying the track’s underlying nuance, threads spun to hold the listener within a quiet space. “Come into my quiet,” implore the vocals, “there’s no one else there sometimes,” but by then we need no such offer. They are already held tightly within. Watch the animated video by James Geneser below:

‘Come Inside’ is out now and available from the Where’s Beth Bandcamp page.

Young Jesus – Ocean

Though always orbiting around the distinctive ideas and lyricism of lead John Rossiter, the music of Young Jesus is always changing. Each new release has felt like a new attempt to get closer to essence of what they are trying to say. Different angles, a reframing of things, as though never quite satisfied the last record communicated as completely and efficiently as it might have hoped. Out via Saddle Creek later this year, latest album Shepherd Head is no different, Rossiter again reshuffling the pack and dealing a new hand. He weaves a fine patchwork crafted from found sounds as though life itself lie within its constituent parts. A tapestry both vulnerable and tender, where great loss and transcendence are not so different after all. First single ‘Ocean’ invites Tomberlin aboard, and you can watch the video directed by Stuart McClave below:

Shepherd Head will be released via Saddle Creek on 16th September. You can order it now from the Young Jesus Bandcamp page.

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