With the release of the EP fast approaching, Why Dogs Why are back with the title track as the latest single. What they call “a song about feeling pressure from those around you to behave a certain way—essentially about masking in everyday life,” this might be the band’s most personal track to date. One built upon almost hesitant beginnings, the sound simmering as Alex Johnson paints a picture of self-imposed isolation in the face of various fears, before deepening both in energy and detail to offer a sustained, immersive experience. What results is a song uniquely equipped to deal with the emotional weather of such an existence, ebbing and flowing between rising intensity and hushed, lonely quiet. “Dance monkey, dance away / When you feel afraid of making a big mistake,” Johnson sings in the refrain. “Dance monkey, dance away / When you feel ashamed and your head needs a break.”

I want to die, blue in the lips
My heart aside, I’ll play the hits

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The release of Avery Friedman‘s forthcoming album New Thing is fast-approaching on Audio Antihero. Previous singles ‘Flowers Fell’ and ‘Photo Booth’ introduced a sound which, as we put it, “seems to sit in the interstitial space between trauma and growth,” and if these two states exist at opposite ends of a continuum, then latest single and title track sees Friedman dig further back in her personal history towards the difficult end. “I wrote ‘New Thing’ in one sitting after riding the subway home alone at night for the first time since being mugged at knifepoint months prior,” as she explains. “I was shocked and disoriented by the anxiety I experienced doing something so routine—I felt foreign to myself.” But however directly the song confronts this upsetting experience, it also represents the beginning of the path forward, allowing Friedman a method by which to return to her body and start the process of becoming whole again.

Hallelujah The Hills – Fake Flowers at Sunset

Boston indie rock royalty Hallelujah The Hills have never been ones to shy away from a challenge, Ryan H. Walsh and co. have released a plethora of idiosyncratic albums across their near two-decade career. But their latest project DECK pushes the boat out even for them. A joint release between Discrete Pageantry Records and Best Brother Records, DECK is a something of a magnum opus—a quadruple album two-and-a-half years in the making which maps entirely to a deck of cards. That’s four LPs (fittingly titled CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS and SPADES) and fifty-two songs, all brought to life with an enviable supporting cast which includes Craig Finn (The Hold Steady), Patrick Stickles (Titus Andronicus), Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz), Tanya Donelly (Belly, Breeders), Clint Conley (Mission of Burma), Ezra Furman and Cassie Berman (Silver Jews). It is Berman who appears on new single ‘Fake Flowers at Sunset’ (that’s three of diamonds within the pack), providing supporting vocals to a song which evokes the push and pull of love in its combination of mournful folk and pressing disco beat.

Honey I’m Home – Wishful Thinking

Dutch outfit Honey I’m Home might have already supported the likes of Goat Girl, The Buoys, Blood Wizard and Hotline TNT, but have only now released their debut single, ‘Wishful Thinking’. Operating at the intersection of shoegaze, indie rock and post-punk, the song introduces the band’s penchant for shadowy textures and visceral energy, tapping into ethereal moods without sacrificing a certain emotional immediacy to achieve a cathartic sound. “‘Wishful Thinking’ explores the longing to reconnect with people no longer in your life, whether it’s a lost love or a departed family member,” as vocalist and guitarist Thom Schotanus explains. “We tried to capture the intensity of that unfulfilled desire with a layered, dreamlike soundscape.”

‘Wishful Thinking’ is out now via streaming services.

Jahnah Camille – what do you do?

Writing last May, we described how Jahnah Camille‘s album i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl used a number of different styles and genres to “offer a picture of late adolescence in all of its bittersweet nuance, its introspective contemplation matched only by its bold confessional attitude.” The record, released via Winspear, made the list of our favourite releases of 2024, so it is very much welcome news that Camille is returning with a new EP, My sunny oath! As lead single ‘what do you do?’ shows, the six-song release sees a newfound focus on the louder, stormier end of the spectrum, Camille working with producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman) to explore grunge and shoegaze-inflected styles of indie rock. Exploding into life from the off, the song packs a newfound punch without sacrificing the heart which marked previous releases, and emerges with an affirming sense of forward motion.

Watch the video below, directed by Harrison Shook with assistance from Polycarpe Ancelet and Ava Cavasos:

My sunny oath! is out on the 13th June via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

Ruby Gill – The Flood

We’ve featured a couple of songs from Ruby Gill‘s forthcoming album Some Kind of Control in recent months, with both the title track and ‘Touch Me There‘ highlighting what the artist describes as a “cheekier, looser, gayer and even more raw” style. Both singles explored ideas of agency and control in various guises, from the experience of lockdown to the empowerment found in the queer community, and latest track ‘The Flood’ is no different. A song inspired by Gill’s experience of being trapped in the cyclone which struck eThekwini/Durban in 2023 which questions just who possesses power in a contemporary society facing a worsening environment year upon year. Watch the video directed by Emily Dynes below:

Some Kind of Control is out now and available to purchase.

Sea Lemon – Stay

After the success of 2023 EP Stop At Nothing (an evocative release populated by protagonists, as we put it, which “feel at once fearful and dangerous, some absence at the heart of their existence pushing them toward the darkest of places”) and subsequent singles like ‘Crystals‘ and ‘Sweet Anecdote‘, Natalie Lew’s Sea Lemon is preparing to release debut full-length Diving For A Prize this June via Luminelle Recordings. As the prior singles suggested, the album looks to broaden the dream pop and shoegaze styles which inform the Sea Lemon sound, pushing towards increasingly fantastical directions. And new single ‘Stay’ is no different. Suspended in gauzy textures, the track weaves a warm, enveloping space into which the listener is invited, then reflects the world back to us at odd angles to more fully reveal the strangeness at its core. “‘Stay’ […] is a little vignette of a man I saw in a local thrift store,” Lew explains. “This older guy, probably in his 70s or 80s, was acting as a security guard at this thrift store near my house, but he was basically asleep on the couch the entire time I was there. I couldn’t stop thinking about him after I left, and wrote Stay as a reaction to seeing this guy who I felt deserved to take a break.”

Watch video by Otium with styling by Greta Akopov below:

Diving For A Prize is out on the 13th June via Luminelle Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

So It Was – In a Rose

We first covered Daniel Lobb’s So It Was back in 2023 with the release of full-length Round the Mountain, an album which ranged from the “combination of earnest heart and laidback charm” of singles like ‘Speak Now!‘ and “something altogether more taut and building” in the case of ‘Dance Now!‘, a song which “confront[ed] the uneasy truth of change with as much positivity as it can muster.” Now So It Was has returned with ‘In a Rose’, a new single which combines the ornate detail of acts like Beirut, a Vampire Weekend-style playfulness, and some of the indie rock attitude of The Strokes to take on the modern blight of consumerism. “Aaa-ccumulation / Is such a silly pose,” as Lobb sings. “We countin’ on our fingers / We countin’ on our toes.”

Soot Sprite – Days After Days

Writing back in February, we introduced Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon, the new album from Exeter-based emos Soot Sprite, calling it “a call to arms to fight against the forces that make contemporary life so difficult, and a reminder of the radical potential within empathy and community.” With the release via Specialist Subject Records on the horizon, Soot Sprite have now shared new single, ‘Days After Days’. The album’s opener, the song acts as a mission statement, not only raising awareness of the stakes at hand but also the importance of celebrating every inch of ground won. “It’s about facing the endless horrors of the world and remembering to pay attention to the good,” as lead Elise Cook explains. “People on the ground, activism, and remembering that we shouldn’t be hardened by everything we witness or we can lose empathy. And it feels like without empathy we’ll never be able to achieve class consciousness, and lose our sense of community.”

Uncanny Valet – Almost Island

The recording project of New York-based electronic musician and producer David Queen, Uncanny Valet is a descendant of the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Ryuichi Sakamoto, marrying precise production with an unbridled creative vision in effort to push electronic music into uncharted territory. New album Almost Island carries the mission further, taking elements of eighties pop, ambient, dub and even Saturday morning cartoons and recombining them into something new. The result rarely sits still (just listen to the stylistics differences between the sleek sophisti-pop grooves of ‘Cameo Glass’ and melancholic drift of ‘Archway’), not only straddling the nostalgic and the contemporary but mining this juxtaposition for all of its thematic resonance, making for a sound that wouldn’t be out of place in an Adam Curtis documentary. Nowhere is that more obvious than on the closer and title track, a graceful and thickly-textured piece of ambient beauty.

Almost Island is out now and available from the Uncanny Valet Bandcamp page.

Why Dogs Why – Clunkers

Los Angeles-based project Why Dogs Why are preparing to release brand new EP Play The Hits this May, and have shared lead single ‘Clunkers’ by way of introduction. Writing back in 2023, we described previous EP Homebody as “full of buoyant energy and wacky lyricism, anchored by an underlying volatility and unease,” and the ‘Clunkers’ is no different. It’s a song which embraces both scrappy indie rock sensibilities and the smooth surf pop of yesteryear to explore themes of idealism and disappointment, the sound filled with brightness and forward motion but again troubled by the possibility of a less than perfect reality. “We’ll book a tour up the coast / And drive right through the bay,” as lead Alex Johnson sings, “When no one comes out to see us / We’ll hit the motel bedbug hay.” But however disheartening real life might prove, Why Dogs Why champion committing to your dreams if only for the romantic hell of it.

Let’s write some clunkers together, baby,
Some songs we’ll sing for fourteen fans.
Let’s write some clunkers together, baby.
Our dads will never understand.

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“I really wanna scream but don’t know if I can (and don’t know if I should),” explains opener ‘Scream’, a sub-minute number which hints at simmering frustration and lurking threat. “There’s a weakness in the structure / No strength left for me to muster.” The fresh tones of ‘(Driving on the) Wrong Side of the Road’ feel mismatched against such sentiments, apparently caught up in its own carefree motion, though a quick glance at the lyrics—with their disregard for stop signs and speed limits, a refusal to use headlights at night— see the mood tip from carefree into careless, the track’s momentum suddenly that of someone harbouring malicious intentions or something of a death wish.

Endangering pedestrians
Skidding to a hard stop
I’m facing off with a mid-sized sedan
I’ll bump into you at the top

Driving on the wrong side of the road

The languid ‘Your Cocoon’ is sedate in comparison, playing with the rich croon of a romantic summertime tryst, though again the lyrics hide something stranger. A tale of ennui, the dejection of those surrounded by things they cannot have, be it the future they imagined or the luxuries advertised. The frustrations of the previous songs having boiled dry, leaving nothing much at all. The title track follows with a more explicitly downbeat conclusion, a song of loneliness, guilt and regret which gets at the cruelty of the contemporary age. A time where we know too much, yet berate ourselves for not knowing more.

Homebody is out now and available from the Why Dogs Why Bandcamp page.

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Bo Milli is the recording project of Emilie Østebø, who is based in the Norwegian city of Bergen. Her debut single ‘At The Wheel’ caught the attention of the management firm who also look after Sigrid and AURORA and sent her on a trajectory toward indie rock stardom. New single ‘How is it’ makes good on the first’s promise, a “power-chordy” number that’s a very youthful mix of apathy, anxiety and self-confidence. Think Soccer Mommy meets The Beths, telling tales of hungover bus rides, dancing to The Strokes and a lingering unease that persists despite everything. “It was the second day in a row on the verge of crying,” Østebø sings. “And I had no idea as to why.”

Buggs – Mother

Following on from the success of previous single ‘Flaws‘, a track which landed on Killing Eve no less, London-based outfit Buggs are back with a brand new song on Sad Club Records. With its volatile tempo and nods to Greek myth, ‘Mother’ is full of the idiosyncratic personality of the previous releases. An examination of motherhood and femininity which doubles as both ode and urgent question. “It’s a cry out to my mother/women of the world,” lead Alice Western explains, “asking ‘how do we do this! How do you do this? How do we get through it!'”

Deniz Cuylan – Hidden Language Of Four

Back in 2021, Turkey-born, LA-based guitarist and composer Deniz Cuylan released No Such Thing as Free Will with Hush Hush Records, an album of which fused classic guitar, jazz and minimalist ambient styles into something playful and unique. Never one to settle, follow-up album Rings of Juniper sees Cuylan build this foundation, aiming for a more direct approach which allows his guitar and compositional work to test the line between natural spontaneity and an almost automated efficiency. The result, as shown by single ‘Hidden Language of Four’, is both of those things, possessing an organic sense of order akin to the inner workings of biology.

Gloria de Oliveira & Dean Hurley – Something to Behold

Next month sees the release of Oceans of Time, a collaboration between Gloria de Oliveira and Dean Hurley on Sacred Bones Records. Those familiar with Hurley’s work will recognise the ethereal, suggestive quality of the atmosphere, dreamscapes across which de Oliveira’s vocals play, though amid the intangible shimmer lies something more direct too. An understanding of the elastic strangeness of time, an appreciation of deep emotional truths. Single ‘Something to Behold’ sets the tone, its immersive, Lynchian blend of alluring and eerie all the more impressive for having been crafted between two people who have never met or spoken.

Mim Jensen – Germaphobe

Based in Ōtautahi (Christchurch), Mim Jensen makes soaring indie rock that rides the highs and braves the lows of love and loss. A prolific member of the local scene for a number of years, Jensen has just released her debut single, ‘Germaphobe’. It’s a song about that difficult point in a relationship when it becomes clear things are not working out. “Germaphobe was the result of some uncomfortable emotions and self-reflection,” Jensen explains. “It’s about navigating an incredibly hard time in your life but ultimately learning how to stand in your own power.” But despite its awkward subject matter, the song is delivered with gusto, growing from a quietly turbulent opening into a rock song full of energy and emotion.

Sister Gemini – Scooter Song

Sister Gemini is the indie pop project of Los Angeles-based songwriter Remy Gassman. A vehicle for songs both sharp and sweet, turning toward the rosy past in an effort to flee a difficult present. Latest single ‘Scooter Song’ deals with the process head on, presenting a series of images and events from childhood, remembering them fondly while mourning the inability to return. “Now that I’m older I still see things the same,” Gassman sings, “look back and wonder if you’ve grown into your face / and I’d give everything to go back to that place.”

Swamp Dogg – Soul To Blessed Soul

Back in February, Don Giovanni Records released I Need A Job​.​.​.​So I Can Buy More Auto​-​Tune by legendary soul/R&B artist Swamp Dogg (the musical alter ego of Jerry Williams). The album felt like a celebration of a long career, and proved that there is plenty life in the old Dogg yet, bursting at the seams with his characteristic risqué humour and irreverent persona. Fresh from celebrating his eightieth birthday with a sold out show in LA and a festival appearance in Berlin, Swamp Dogg has recently released a new video for the track ‘Soul To Blessed Soul’, the album’s swaying slow-burner that’s a genuine heartfelt love song beneath the smooth, suggestive surface. Take a look at the typically eccentric video, directed by MoogStar Clemon below:

I Need A Job​.​.​.​So I Can Buy More Auto​-​Tune is out now via Don Giovanni Records and you can get it from the Swamp Dogg Bandcamp page.

Tommy Lefroy – Dog Eat Dog

Based between London and LA, Tommy Lefroy is the project of Wynter Bethel and Tessa Mouzourakis, who make literate and pop-tinged indie rock in the vein of Phoebe Bridgers or Lucy Dacus. Latest single ‘Dog Eat Dog’ is a song that takes aim at the patriarchy from a position of dogged strength, full of the tenacious determination to live on one’s own terms. Check out the music video, which sees Bethel and Mouzourakis channel Joan of Arc and don literal armour in preparation for this fight, below:

‘Dog Eat Dog’ is out now via LAB Records and available via Bandcamp.

Why Dogs Why – List of Fears

The music of Why Dogs Why has caught our eye in the past with what we’ve called its “tongue-in-cheek humour and razor sharp commentary on the banality of contemporary life.” Yet none of the previous releases have been quite as sharp as new single ‘List of Fears’, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it slice of hyperactive panic delivered without even a pause for breath. Dying alone, answering phones, spinal injury, tall stacks of loans… all your worries are catered for, but they’ve never sounded like so much fun.

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From the rosy nostalgia and/or existential meltdown courtesy of algorithmic reminders of decade-old events, to general misanthropic rage and a pining for something more straightforward amid the clutter. ‘Don’t want a lot in life, just some kitchen scissors that actually work,’ Johnson sings, ‘don’t want a lot in life, just to learn to be more like Picard than Kirk.’

The song was taken from the EP, Dress Well Enough, which has now been released via Very Jazzed. Consisting of three songs, the EP confronts perceived character defects, with each track focusing on a flaw. With its collection of irritations and burning frustration, ‘T.O.C.’ concentrated on short-temperedness, while the title track turns its attentions to self-consciousness. With a characteristically rich and upbeat style, the song explores the misleading and exhausting business of cultivating a persona through exterior surfaces, and how people are often not what they seem upon first impression.

“In my experience, nobody really knows what they’re doing” Johnson explains, “but if they dress the part and convince everyone else that they do, then they’ll start to believe it themselves.” A process doubly taxing—intended not only to convince strangers but oneself too. “Personally, my confidence (or a lack thereof) often comes as a result of other people’s perceptions of me,” he continues. “This song is about that, and the way that we all do our best to maintain a certain level of control over how we are perceived by others.”

Final track ‘Tying Knots’ concentrates, or perhaps doesn’t, on inattentiveness. A drifting, regretful track of lost focus, where the cloudiness comes to mimic the sliding attention of the lyrics. One which finds Why Dogs Why at its most melancholic, weighed down by the textures of the track, and Bijan Eghtesady’s drums never quite shaking free of the gauzy shroud.

I heard a sound that wasn’t me –
all focus lost eternally.
I thought a lot about defeat.
I guess I’ll go to bed early,
without me

Dress Well Enough is out now via Very Jazzed and you can grab it from the Why Dogs Why Bandcamp page.

Album artwork by Sam Mitchell, with additional edits by Ian Joslin

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A series of singles and covers have followed, taking on everything from Martian horses to the dread of self-diagnosing via the internet. The singles game looks to amp up further this year, through what is being tentatively labelled the ‘Why Dogs Why 2021 World Takeover’ with the good folks at Very Jazzed. The first song to see light of day, ‘T.O.C.’ sees Bijan Eghtesady join on drums for what is another distinctive balance between sardonic wit and sincere emotion.

Kicking out of a hazy, easy-going rhythm, the song is a what Johnson describes as a confrontation of “the many feelings one is presented with upon logging on to various social media platforms first thing in the morning.” All of the familiar offenders are present, from the rosy nostalgia and/or existential meltdown courtesy of algorithmic reminders of decade-old events, to general misanthropic rage and a pining for something more straightforward amid the clutter. “Don’t want a lot in life, just some kitchen scissors that actually work,” Johnson sings, “don’t want a lot in life, just to learn to be more like Picard than Kirk.”

Artwork by sammala and Small Factory

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Tracklisting:

Typhoon – Rorschach
Cloud – Two Hands Bound
Trust Fall – do it right
Wooing – In Colour
Tree House – Nonsense
Long Neck – Milky Way
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Special Moves – Half and Half
Lying Down – Betty and Barney
Pastel – Close
Monarch Mtn – Saint in Armor II
Doomking – I Laid the Prairies to Rest
vierzig skizzen – passwords
Old Robes – The Spider and the Spectator
Jeremy Squires – Gift
Bill Vuono – Think of Me (feat. Earl McVeigh)
Kraków Loves Adana – Rapture
Cool American – Focus
Bucolic – Blue Tree
There’s Talk – Give It Up
Airium + Double Honey – Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools
The Saxophones – Just You
Jelani Sei – LVNDR TWN
Why Dogs Why – Linus

You can find all of our monthly roundup mixes here, and be sure to stick around into March to see what musical goodies we’ll be sending your way. And, of course, please reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram if you have something you think we should hear.

The post February 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A new volume will be posted every few weeks and will offer a collection of really great songs that we’re determined not to let slip past our radar.

Kraków Loves Adana – Rapture

The second single from upcoming full-length Songs After The Blue, ‘Rapture’ sees Kraków Loves Adana perfect their slightly weird and fully nostalgic brand of pop music. The project of Hamburg-based duo Deniz Cicek and Robert Heitmann, the sound here is one of ominous romance, as though working emotions loose from the past, exploring the strange spaces and film-grain footage of sun-bleached tapes, their contents at once dark and neon-lit, love and heartbreak entwined into cinematic spectacle.

“Tell me what’s next
Tell me what’s best
Put a cassette into the tape deck

Gotta play it for me
Hear the voices weep
Let the sad poets sing me to sleep”

The single comes complete with a fantastically fitting video by Wy’s Ebba Ågren, which also fulfils the slightly weird/fully nostalgic criteria:

Songs After The Blue is set for release on the 6th April via Better Call Rob. In the meantime, be sure to check out the first single ‘American Boy‘ too.

Cool American – Focus

Following up 2017’s excellent Infinite Hiatus, Portland’s Cool American are back with the latest instalment of their better luck next year series, which collects the b-sides and demos that didn’t fit on the full releases. That, however, does not mean a dip in quality. As ‘Focus’ attests, the differences between these songs and those on Infinite Hiatus are just stylistic, swapping out the runaway energy for something a little more languid and dreamy. Therefore the band get a chance to flex their musical muscles and try out some different formulae, and in doing so explore other faces of the millennial ennui they are making a career exploring.

better luck next year: vol 3 is out on the 16th February via Good Cheer Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp. The first and second volumes, as well as Infinite Hiatus, are available there too.

Bucolic – Blue Tree

The recording project of New Jersey’s Seth Carpenter, Bucolic makes music combining dream and bedroom pop to create something at once downbeat and uplifting. Taken from a forthcoming EP, Glow Worm, ‘Blue Tree’ serves as a great introduction for those new to his sound. Opening with a an emotional sparseness, the Carpenter’s vocals enter to portray a kind of detached regret, as though too sad to properly register the loss. Or else, the Bucolic sound is one so used to the idea of regret, so rooted in the melancholic way of things, that the loss becomes proof of something, using time passing as a way to remember what we still have left.

Glow Worm will be released in March so keep an eye on the Bucolic Bandcamp page.

There’s Talk – Give It Up

The latest single of Oakland’s dreampop trio There’s Talk, ‘Give It Up’ is the opening track of a new EP, bathed water moon. The title of the release feels pertinent, because if ever a string of three near-abstract words could describe the There’s Talk sound then it is this—ethereal and lightweight yet hiding a darker side, the bright face of Olivia Lee’s vocals masking some cold, desolate flip-side, of which her melancholic style seems all too aware.

You can pre-order bathed water moon now from the There’s Talk Bandcamp page, including lovely 7″ vinyl edition complete with an art print and pin badge.

Doomking – I Laid the Prairies to Rest

We featured Doomking, the recording project of Victoria-based musician Jordan Soles, back in 2015 upon the release of their album, A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence. We described the album as “a release very much of and for our times,” with a “mixture of impassioned sentiments and general despondency shrouded in a haze of confusion,” all fuelled by the fracturing of human connection as we increasingly move contact online.

Stripping things back from A Mark of Something, Doomking’s new single ‘I Laid the Prairies to Rest’ feels like the aftermath of the previous album. With the last thrashings of resistance all but ended, an insulated sense of isolation has taken over—sparse and lonely and poignantly pretty, the prairies committed to sound.

‘I Laid the Prairies to Rest’ is available now from the Doomking Bandcamp page.

Airium + Double Honey – Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools

A collaboration between producer Airium and vocalist Double Honey, ‘Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools’ is a rich, expansive electronic pop song inspired by the work of David Hockney. Here, the honey-thick vocals and soaring instrumentation are coloured by an over-arching melancholy, a kind of life-affirming gloom that descends as the sun sets over a city. Indeed, the vocals and instrumental brightness fade into the night-time solemnity, so that the closing stages play like the sun’s dip below the horizon, replaced by shadows and blinking neon.

Airium + Double Honey can be found on Soundcloud.

The Saxophones – Just You

Back in October we told you about ‘Aloha’, the new single from California’s The Saxophones, a track which we described as “both sad and somehow not… like gentle moonlight glinting across a tropical bay.” We also mentioned that the b-side was a cover of ‘Just You’ from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, and the band have now released this into the world too. As we expected it’s pretty much the perfect material for The Saxophones, unfurling in a ways that’s equal parts sultry and strange.

Get ‘Aloha’ from The Saxophones Bandcamp page.

Jelani Sei – LVNDR TWN

Released last autumn, LVNDR TWN was the latest genre-bending release from Hartford’s Jelani Sei—combining r&b, indie rock, pop and soul, as well as mathy flourishes and a sprinkling of a Dirty Projectors-esque oddness, to make a sound that’s as entertaining as it is unpinnable. If, like us, you are late on this one, then allow ‘Divinity’ to win you over. Starting sunny and driven forward by a strong drum beat, the subverts the pop genre by refusing to settle into any familiar pattern, the style, tempo and vocals changing at will to create a thriving collage of musical goodness.

LVNDR TWN is out now and available from the Jelani Sei Bandcamp page.

Why Dogs Why – Linus

Why Dogs Why is the recording project of Alex Johnson from Northridge, LA. Formed after his previous outfit Bedbugs ceased toward the end of 2017, the moniker will be used by Johnson for a series of singles, one every two weeks until the summer. Mixed by Derek Ted, ‘Linus’ is the first such track, detailing a bittersweet opinion of suburban life in the San Fernando Valley that manifests as an agoraphobic terror. As such, ‘Linus’ is a frantic panic of a song, racing with anxious statements and a certain volatility, as if the whole thing might come apart at the seams at any given moment.

Grab ‘Linus’ now from the Why Dogs Why Bandcamp page.

Tree House – Nonsense

Tree House, the project of London resident Will Fortna, released his debut EP, Into the Ocean, back in September on Memorials of Distinction Records. We missed the boat at the time, but a recent video for the EP’s opening track, ‘Nonsense’, gives us the perfect opportunity to catch up. The song exists on the smoother end of the bedroom pop spectrum, minimalist grooves undulating behind Fortna’s gently sighing vocals. The video is equally dreamy, a video collage featuring doves and lizards and pastel-hued clouds.

You can get Into the Ocean from the Memorials of Distinction Bandcamp page.

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