The title track opens the record, “a rich and fond slice of folk rock which blooms like a slow-dawning epiphany,” as we described previously, “Orchard’s vocals building in conviction along with the rhythm, as though emerging through long years-worth of accumulated doubts to embrace a preferred state of being.” ‘Nothing Fog’ follows, using what we called “a decidedly sincere style” to “explore a sense of uncertainty, its confessional tone unafraid of revealing its own vulnerabilities and loss of confidence,” while ‘Pale Blue’ builds upon this compassionate style with a picture of fondness and longing with backing vocals by Jess Kerber. Living up to its title ‘It Took Me So Long To See I Was Not Here At All’ continues with equal parts questioning and gradual insight, again the tempo lifting as the song progresses as though Orchard is finding strength through its very delivery.

It took me so long to see I was not here at all
In my selfie camera a transparent fading doll
Prick my finger
Drink my blood
Make me feel something
Wake me up

Which is not to say this path to fulfillment is linear and ever-improving. “I feel so damn nervous / Like there’s cracks in the floor / And the whole world’s a stranger / Knocking at my door,” Orchard sings on the hushed, hesitant ‘Moonfall’, a mood echoed on ‘Together Alone’. After these songs, the earthy ‘Something’s Gotta Go’ arrives like a newfound determination to work. A song which, as we put it, “finds Orchard with his sleeves rolled up as he digs through the dirt. Crunchy Americana meets Neil Young folk rock which sees him picks through internal knots and tangles that have been tripping him up over the years.” In the end, it is closer ‘Down‘ which suggests a viable path forward. “A dream-folk track which preaches the benefits submission within an overwhelming world,” we wrote back in April, “complicating the lines between playfulness, sadness and acquiescence.” A fitting conclusion to a record which doesn’t pretend to have the answers, only displays the value asking honest questions all the same.

I get lost in a maze
And I just lay down
I don’t want to be found

Behind The Shadow Glass is out now and available from the Will Orchard Bandcamp page.

Cover art by Adi Dahlke

The post Will Orchard – Behind The Shadow Glass appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Not many albums can claim to draw on inspiration as widely as Good Times, the new full-length from Alexei Shishkin on Rue Defense. Recorded with a spur-of-the-moment immediacy, the record sees Shiskin reaching for whatever happened to be around during the recording process, often writing the music first then adding lyrics about whatever topic might be in mind. Hence recent singles about video games (‘Disco Elysium‘) and football (‘Tiki Taka 2006‘), and new single ‘Ode to Carl Dennis’ switches things up again. As the title suggests, the track turns to literature for its inspiration, Shishkin drawing on one of his favourite poets. “[Dennis] has a poem called “At Home With Cézanne” that I had read the night before and really enjoyed,” he explains. “Again, Brad and I wrote the bulk of the music first, and then I fit lyrics to the music. I couldn’t find the text of the poem anywhere online, so here’s a picture of it. I took his characters, but tried to re-imagine them in a slightly different, parallel universe.”

David James Allen – Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)

Based in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canadian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist David James Allen writes classic country songs, full of aching longing, wistful reflection and undying hope, as well as a small cosmic twist. With new full-length Jubilation Potpourri set for release on 2026, Allen has shared brand new single ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)’ to set the tone. A song which shows how the age-old themes of work, loss and responsibility are as much a facet of contemporary folk as any other era. “I wrote ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)’ just after I got laid off,” Allen explains. “At the time, I was the sole provider for my family, and the weight of that reality hit pretty hard. The song came out of reflecting on that pressure—not just mine, but the collective squeeze so many people feel when work dries up, when bills pile up, and when life becomes a grind.” But rather than dwell on the darkness, Allen instead offers a remedy, reminding us how healing (re)connection can be in a challenging, often lonely life.

Dylan Henner – We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked

“Late one evening, I was listening to the radio alone at home. I couldn’t find the station I wanted, so I shifted the dial around for a while. Between frequencies, fading in and out of fidelity, I found a station I’d never heard before. To my amazement, the station was broadcasting my own memories. Memories from when I was seventeen.” So explains Dylan Henner of his new album Star Dream FM (forthcoming this autmn via Phantom Limb), the mysterious producer taking this fantastical concept as the basis for a collection which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past. Single ‘We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked’ shows just how rich an experience this proves to be, Henner elaborating an ambient style with piano, marimba, digital choir and synths to prove how human a digital soundscape can be. Personal details might be scant for this secretive artist, yet, perhaps counterintuitively, few acts welcome listeners so close within their work.

Hannah Frances – Surviving You

“Both continues the mission of its predecessor and begins to move beyond it.” So we wrote of ‘Falling From and Further’, the lead single from Hannah Frances‘s new album Nested in Tangles, coming this autumn via Fire Talk Records. The song took “the folk song as a backbone only,” we continued, “elaborating the sound with layers of prog and jazz sensibilities so that the track becomes a world of its own without ever losing the core thread of personal vulnerability which has long run through Frances’s work.” Exploring ideas of generational trauma and the coping mechanisms we develop in response, second single ‘Surviving You’ further builds on this style. Frances utilises the full depth of her jazz-inflected folk rock sound to chart a path towards health and self-acceptance. “It’s a personal account of receiving harm from people who have projected their own pain onto me, who refuse to see themselves or take accountability for the impact of their actions,” she explains. “I was reckoning with my rage, and recognizing how much I’ve lived in survival mode for the majority of my life. This is for anyone who grew up in a turbulent and harmful home and is learning to affirm their lived experience.”

Watch the video filmed by Derrick Alexander, edited and colored by Vanessa Castro, and directed by Frances herself below:

Nested in Tangles will be released on the 10th October via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it from the Hannah Frances Bandcamp page.

Kitba – Wolf’s Mouth

“Proof that art can offer a picture of identity more nuanced than simple labels,” we wrote of Kitba‘s self-titled album back in 2023. “A deeper understanding reached via an embrace of confusion. Identity as an ongoing thing.” Fresh from I’ll Send You A Sign, a collaborative release with Dan Knishkowy under the name R&D, Kitba (AKA Brooklyn-based harpist and songwriter Rebecca El-Saleh) is preparing to return with a brand new full-length, Hold the Edges. The record continues and deepens this exploration of identity with a typically lush, detailed and intuitive sound. With the album set for release next month via Ruination Record Co., single ‘Wolf’s Mouth’ serves to introduce the record’s searching tone and its embrace of ambiguity. As though realising the path to self-discovery is not a finite number of epiphanic steps but rather something convoluted and unending, full knowledge always just out of reach. “The song is based on a recurring childhood nightmare where I was in a room with a filing cabinet in the corner and a large wolf that would open its mouth,” El-Saleh describes. “I would place my head inside its mouth and then wake up. I never got to see beyond the bite and I often wonder what was in the cabinet and why.”

Watch the video by Dani Shapiro below:

Hold the Edges will be released via Ruination Record Co. on 19th September and is available to pre-order now.

Piggietails – Cycling Song

Piggietails are a four-piece from Naarm/Melbourne, comprising of Cal Blackburn, Jet Noonan, Izzy Hardisty and Tino D’Onghia. In September, Spoilsport Records will release their self-titled record, a collection of ten songs which introduce the band’s signature easygoing charm and a low-key style they refer to as “everyday music.” The label describe how Piggietails draw inspiration from “eighties Australiana guitar pop, the indie rock stylings of Yo La Tengo and a splash of the revivalist jangle of the noughties.” So, as you might expect, their songs are a little bit jangly but not too twee, favouring gentleness over detailed maximalism. Lead single ‘Cycling Song’ is our first taste, a soft indie pop song that nevertheless has some of the freewheeling energy its title suggests.

SIKADE – body of water

The recording project of Oslo-based singer-songwriter, harpist and producer Linnea Vestre, SIKADE makes an ethereal brand of music, combining alt, indie, dream pop and folk influences into something at once delicate and enveloping. With a debut SIKADE album on the horizon, Vestre has released new single ‘body of water’ via label re:memory. Adding a shoegazey sheen to the sound, the track embodies the balance between intimacy and scale which marks the project, drawing the listener in with hushed, harp-led verses before the chorus arrives in waves of drama and intensity. “A body of water / that’s how she sees you,” the track opens, “a silvery surface / the face of a mirror.” Imagery characteristically striking and ambiguous which gives the sense of having been pulled into a portentous dream.

Soup Dreams – Wonderdog

Next month, Philadelphia’s Soup Dreams will release their debut LP, Hellbender, via Candlepin Records and Pleasure Tapes. The band combine the slight twang and songwriting chops of country rock with some lo-fi fuzz and raw indie rock energy, meaning fans of Merce Lemon, Sadurn, Tuxis Giant and the burgeoning countrygaze scene will finds lots to like. Following the runaway lead single ‘Radiator Baby’ and the heartfelt follow-up ‘Red Bird’, the band have unveiled one final single to herald the record. Titled ‘Wonderdog’, the song is an aching lament but not as you know it, the hazy textures and melancholic reflection countered with equal forces of energy and weight, all driving towards a conclusion that’s as energetic and is it cathartic.

Tiberius – Felt

Introducing Troubadour, the new album from Boston farm emo outfit Tiberius, last month, we described how lead Brendan Wright and co. use the album to reckon with fundamental questions both artistic and personal. Who do you want to be? What role should music play in the decision? Lead single ‘Sag’ was thus understandably conflicted, “pulled in all directions by competing emotions,” as we put it. “Uncertainty, doubt, desperation, a recurrent yet skittish determination to embrace some inner truth. With the album’s release via Audio Antihero edging nearer, Tiberius have shared another single, ‘Felt’. A track which essentially serves as the inflection point which birthed the record, where Wright was forced to confront their identity without the crutch of other people. “When I wrote ‘Felt’, I was fairly fresh out of a breakup and was spending a lot of time looking for distractions,” they explain. “Instead of tackling some bigger questions, and engaging in a healthy recovery, I was tucking away my feelings into compartments and distracting myself with casual dating. I was spending some late nights slipping into the backstories of strangers’ lives—exhilarating, but merely theatrical. It never eased the issue at hand. I was alone, and I was terrified to sit with that.”

The post Weekly Listening: August 2025 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With the release of Behind the Shadow Glass fast approaching, Will Orchard has now returned with new single and album opener, ‘In The Shadow of Their Dark’. A rich and fond slice of folk rock which blooms like a slow-dawning epiphany, Orchard’s vocals building in conviction along with the rhythm, as though emerging through long years-worth of accumulated doubts to embrace a preferred state of being. “I wrote ‘In The Shadow of Their Dark’ while feeling deeply anonymous in a new city,” he explains. “When you don’t feel intertwined with a place, you feel like a stranger. This song embraces that feeling of invisibility and loneliness. It made it all the more freeing to leave that place, and helped me to remember that life is impermanent and nothing is certain. There’s a certain magic in that reminder, when it encourages you to be your truest self.”

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Back in May we introduced Part Of The Problem, Baby, the new full-length from Fortitude Valley coming this August on Specialist Subject Records, with single ‘Sunshine State‘. “A track which finds [lead Laura] Kovac addressing her younger self,” we described, “delving into the person she was before and during her move from Brisbane to the UK, and how the competing desires for home and escape never really go away.” With the album’s release edging closer, Fortitude Valley are back with new track ‘Video (Right There With You)’. “The song is about trying to get inside the head of someone you love, and how hard it can be surviving together in what feels like an increasingly hostile and scary world,” Kovic explains. “It also plays into the central theme of the album, which is about feeling distant from people you care about, both literally and figuratively.”

Watch the video directed by Stuart Laws below, shot as the band performed at the Machynlleth Comedy Fest and starring comedian Celya AB.

Part Of The Problem, Baby is out 1st August on Specialist Subject Records and you can pre-order it now from the Fortitude Valley Bandcamp page.

 French for Rabbits – Gold and Blue

Ahead of the Matariki holiday and an upcoming winter tour around Aotearoa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based outfit French for Rabbits have returned with brand new standalone single, ‘Gold and Blue’. Written by lead Brooke Singer in a prolific period before the birth of her son, the track meditates on the future and the mysterious ways in which it realises itself, be it through chance, fate or an intuitive reaching forward. The song comes complete with a video by director Martin Sagadin and cinematographer Bill Bycroft. “For the video, we wanted to throw the listener through time and space,” Singer explains, “feel a gasp for breath as they tumble them through the present and past to moments of change, connection, and fluctuation.”

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

Glenn Echo – Give + Take

The project of Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Matt Gaydar, Glenn Echo is an outlet for patient and introspective folk music. Gaydar has just released a new Glenn Echo EP, No Believer, a collection of five songs recorded with help from Will Stratton that showcase this style perfectly. Second track ‘Give + Take is perhaps the standout, opening with the warm country croon of guitar before settling into a slow, contemplative momentum. “Been driving away, over the county line,” Gaydar sings in the opening line which immediately captures the song’s sense of night-time hush, “past the firehouse, all through the night, blind driving, silent.”

Jess Kerber – Tropical Storm

We’ve written about a number of singles from Jess Kerber‘s debut album From Way Down Here in recent months, describing how the Nashville-based songwriter melds traditional folk and contemporary electronic sensibilities to bring her emotive style to life. ‘Next to You’ rose from a dreamy haze to clarity, while ‘Never Again’ introduced the themes of loss and belonging so central to the record. With the album now out via Felte Records, Kerber has released latest single ‘Tropical Storm’. Another poignant, wistful slice of nostalgic longing, rooted in the specific imagery of memories as imprinted on the young mind. Watch the video edited by Kerber herself below:

From Way Down Here is out now via Felte Records and available from the Jess Kerber Bandcamp page.

Jeffrey Martin – Edge of Lost

With albums like One Go Around and Thank God We Left The Garden, Portland, Oregon songwriter Jeffrey Martin has developed an evocative brand of folk concerned with both the personal and the societal, centring the classic Americana style within the unique circumstances of the present (“The climate is collapsing, diseases rising, robots striving to take over the globe, and still there’s not enough money for the people who actually need it,” as we wrote of the latter album, “still the future holds a distant promise, the past haunts with its glory and regret”). Out via Fluff and Gravy Records, new single ‘Edge of Lost’ is every bit as heartfelt and urgent. Inspired by Davey Schaupp’s No Place to Grow Old, a documentary interviewing people experiencing homelessness or the threat of it across Portland, the song explores the strange contradictions of such a life. Where existence is at once heavier than it should be yet also translucently thin, the eyes of society sliding past as you though barely exist at all. “I tried to capture the chasm between the housed and unhoused,” Martin explains, “and how the psychological burden of that divide is a very difficult thing to hold as people try to navigate their way out of homelessness.”

Jillian Lake – Tactile

“There’s a city in my head,” sings Jillian Lake on latest single ‘Tactile’, a line repeated across the track in what might be warning or explanation. Based in Vancouver, the singer-songwriter has made a name with intimate, personal folk songs, though has increasingly pushed her sound into richer, more urgent territory without sacrificing any of the heartfelt charm. The new single is a lesson in how effective such a combination can be. Indeed, the refrain can be held as a key to the song’s spirit, presenting an exploration of grief in all of its complexity, an emotional landscape as bustling, nuanced and contradictory as any urban space. ‘Tactile’ is about how grief is this invisible and intangible thing that is so hard to navigate,” Lake explains. “A scraped knee, a black eye, a broken arm—is so much easier to make sense of than something you can’t pinpoint. Something you can’t bandage or brace.”

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

Jouska – Flower Moon

Jouska is the recording project of  Norwegian songwriter and producer Marit Othilie Thorvik. Originally a duo, the project started out making pop-orientated electronic music, but now that it’s Thorvik alone, the atmosphere has evolved into something more intimate and introspective. New single ‘Flower Moon’, Jouska’s first since 2023 record Suddenly My Mind Is Blank, leans into dream pop dimension of the project to invoke a sense of detachment, the vocals drifting through a wash of ethereal tones as though untethered yet longing for solid ground. “I was anxious,” as Thorvik explains, “distracted by things at home. Physically in one place, emotionally somewhere else, missing out on both.”

múm – Mild At Heart

Icelandic experimental royalty múm have established themselves as one of the most interesting and atmospheric projects since their inception in the nineties, each of the six previous albums building upon the last while always exploring new territory. Their first full-length in over ten years, History of Silence finds the band as ambitious as ever. An album “recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years,” the release blends electronic and analogue sounds to explore ideas of distance in our fast-changing world, the songs rejecting linear progress to instead embrace tangents and digressions. Take the way lead single ‘Mild at Heart’ shifts and drifts across its length, a controlled, ever-curious track that shows the power of understatement while also reaching towards new ground.

Watch the video filmed & edited by Sigurlaug Gísladóttir below:

History of Silence will be released via Morr Music on 15th September. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

The Noisy – Twos

Back in 2024 Philly dream pop outfit The Noisy released The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, an album written for and funded by the queer community which served as a celebration of their kinship, performance, joyous excesses and plurity. Now The Noisy are preparing to release a deluxe version of the record via Audio Antihero, appropriately titled The Secret Ingredient is Even More Meat, offering reimagined versions of the songs. Single ‘Twos’ and its gloriously cinematic video by Sam Cush indicates the new direction they take. “I wrote this song like a pop song but wanted the production to bend towards Mannequin Pussy with sludgy guitars and twinkly keys,” frontperson Sara Mae Henke explains. “The music video literalizes the too much-ness of the story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Grey Gardens meets two dates to the prom.”

‘Twos’ is out now via Audio Antihero and available from Bandcamp.

Tyler Bradley Walker – Because of the Many

We introduced The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me, the debut solo album from Tyler Bradley Walker, back in May, describing how the artist best known as one half of electronic rock duo Gone to Color was every bit as ambitious and adventurous in his solo work. ” Single ‘Moon Broke Quiet’ offered “a spacious, evocative soundscape which seems to sit at an angle to reality,” we wrote, “everything a little stark and surreal and strange […] occup[ying] that nocturnal liminal space between waking life and dreams.” With the album now out, TBW has shared opening track ‘Because of the Many’ as a new single, an experimental pop protest song that takes aim at modern day USA. The track’s idiosyncrasy and slow-burn intensity is intensified with a video every bit as odd.

Out gunned, not done
The fucking light is green
No one eats their eggs that way
Wise man funny man
Write your own story
Very large worlds untouched untouched

Watch the video directed by Andrew Petersson and produced By Carson Cox (Mod Visual) below:

The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me is out now and available to purchase from the Tyler Bradley Walker Bandcamp page.

Will Orchard – Something’s Gotta Go

If you’ve been reading VSF over the last few months, you may know that Nashville-via-New England songwriter Will Orchard has a new record, Behind the Shadow Glass, coming out later this year. The initial two singles ‘Down’ and ‘Nothing Fog’ gave a pretty good idea of what to expect, and now we have a third cut to further whet appetites. Titled ‘Something’s Gotta Go’, the song finds Orchard with his sleeves rolled up as he digs through the dirt. Crunchy Americana meets Neil Young folk rock which sees him picks through internal knots and tangles that have been tripping him up over the years. “[The song] is a cathartic release, and an acknowledgement of self-inflicted pain.” Orchard describes. “It’s about getting into the pattern of never being satisfied with yourself. Calling the song finished was somewhat of a challenge because of how raw and in some ways, non-poetic it felt. But that’s the spirit of the song, just putting it all out there and letting go of your will to try so hard.”

Wombo – Neon Bog

“Feeling every inch the product of a band nearing ten years together, [Danger in Fives] finds the Wombo sound realised in its purest form,” we wrote of the Louisville trio’s new album coming later this summer on Fire Talk Records, “combining the experimentation and risk-taking which marked their earlier releases with the growing confidence so evident on Fairy Rust. That is, the sound of project which has come to understand its spirit and ambitions and is now committing to them with total conviction.” Latest single ‘Neon Bog’ shows just how deep such conviction runs, the band embracing happenstance and happy accidents during the recording process to create something as atmospheric as it is idiosyncratic.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Cameron Lowe along with assistant director Scotty “Sleepy” Anderson. The film leans further into the haunting tones of the song, using practical effects a la Michel Gondry. “I’ve been watching a lot of the TV show Ghost Adventures and have been somewhat haunted by the implications of the paranormal,” as Lowe explains. “I thought the video was a good outlet for expressing that in an abstract way.”

Danger in Fives is out on the 8th August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now from the Wombo Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2025 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A collaboration between multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Tessa Collins and drummer Andrew Wilkinson, Altai create music that lands somewhere between dream pop, post-punk and folk. Both members live on farms, and say their forthcoming debut EP was created “between dodgy Wi-Fi and driving tractors.” Lead single ‘Like You Need It’ is a good introduction. Released just as the southern hemisphere moves into autumn, the song is suffused with a romantic nostalgia and the gnawing melancholy of the changing seasons. “Wanting to be wanted, feeling woeful as the cheery summer days come to an end,” the band describe. “You turn to your partner for affectionate reassurance that might just ease the seasonal blues.”

‘Like You Need It’ is out now via Broken Palace.

Ava McCoy – More Than a Friend

Described by the artist as “a patchwork quilt of me post-college,” Ava McCoy‘s forthcoming album Dragonfly “run[s] the gamut between hushed folk and driving indie rock to offer a sonic palette wide enough to paint a diverse collection of scenes and feelings,” as we wrote in a preview. With the record set for release via Acrophase Records at the end of the month, McCoy is back with ‘More Than a Friend’, another square in this mosaic which focuses on a Christmas spent in the UK reflecting on past loves and the compromises which came with them. But with a propulsive energy and bright jangle, the track finds freedom in the situation, embracing the agency of being single.

Don’t Worry – Unbelieveable

“Balancing heart-on-the-sleeve emo confession with a distinctively British self-deprecation.” So we wrote of Don’t Worry‘s forthcoming album Idealism back in April, a full-length which sees the Essex outfit evolve their sound while staying true to the spirit that has won them fans with previous albums. With the record set for release this summer on Specialist Subject Records, Don’t Worry are back with ‘Unbelievable’, a song which evokes the dystopia of lockdown-era Britain with a disarmingly bright and sunny sound. The single therefore owes an equal debt to the romanticised past and soul-sapping present, the warm Beatles-esque tones belying the cold hard reality of the contemporary moment.

Frankie Cosmos – Bitch Heart

New York indie favourites Frankie Cosmos are returning this June with brand new full-length Different Talking on Sub Pop, with the ever present lead Greta Kline joined by Alex Bailey, Katie Von Schleicher and Hugo Stanley in the project’s current iteration to create what might be their most collaborative record to date. The album collects a myriad of memories and images into a cohesive whole, exploring growing older amid the unstoppable passage of time, and latest single ‘Bitch Heart’ centres on the competing allures of comfort and raw experience which push and pull a person over the course of their lives. The track comes complete with a video by Eliza Lu Doyle which further pushes into these ideas, all shot on infrared and thermal cameras to position it firmly within a surreal space. “To me the song is about being torn between the comforts of domesticated life and your innate wildness,” Doyle explains. “There’s a yearning for a more feral time—before you touched your fucking phone all day. So we made Greta into a dog-shepherd, someone who straddles those two realms.”

Different Talking is out on the 27th June via Sub Pop and you can pre-order it now.

Fuubutsushi – Loop Trail

This June sees the release of Columbia Deluxe, a live release by ambient jazz quartet Fuubutsushi, via American Dreams. Taken from a show at the Columbia Experimental Music Festival, the project’s only live performance to date, the collection finds the quartet working to adapt tracks recorded remotely for the live setting, drawing from the breadth of their work and allowing intuition, risk-taking and collaborative spirit to flourish in close proximity. Half the magic of the release is the way in which the tracks flow into one another across the performance, meaning it is best experienced as a whole. Though lead track ‘Loop Trail’ offers a suitable snapshot of what to expect. A number indebted to both the patience of ambient aesthetics and old-school punk ethos, drawing the audience into a soundscape at once poignant and meditative.

HLLLYH – Uru Buru

Last month we introduced HLLLYH, a project risen from the ashes of 00s favourites the Mae Shi which is preparing to release brand new album, URUBURU. What the band describe as “an end-of-the-world story written on a mobius strip” the record lacks none of the invention and personality which made the Mae Shi stand out so clearly from the crowd of indie buzz bands. Released as the latest single, the opener and title track shows such a spirit is present from the very start, the newly invigorated outfit wasting no time to establish their fist-pumping charm and offering a timely reminder that energy persists irrespective of everything. “We’ve been eating our own tail for as long as i remember / We’ve been doing it wrong right from the start,” as the opening verse states. “But one thing I know / one thing that’s sure / one light outshines.”

URUBURU is out on the 27th June via Team Shi and you can pre-order it from the HLLLYH Bandcamp page.

Hudson Freeman – Good Faith

Combining the atmospheric intensity of slowcore with the closeness of bedroom pop, the work of Hudson Freeman pushes boundaries in terms of genre conventions while maintaining a direct emotional resonance. Later this month the Springfield, Missouri songwriter will release Is A Folk Artist, a brand new album which employs this style to explore some of the largest themes possible. Because though the record is situated within a coming-of-age experience, it probes deeper than the usual uncertainty and angst of young life. Rather, Freeman follows the likes of David Bazan in using the period to reflect on the metaphysical as well as the personal, drawing on a religious upbringing to explore how meaning might be located within the digital present. Check out latest single ‘Good Faith’ now:

Is A Folk Artist is out on the 29th May via Mendel Records.

Jack Goldstein – MUD MICE

The music of Margate’s Jack Goldstein is nothing if not ambitious. He bends the pop spectrum into a perfect circle and makes himself comfortable at the point where both poles—earworm commercial and oddball avant garde—meet. Forthcoming album HELLFIRE BUMPER STICKER COWPUNCHING JEWBOY is a case in point. Goldstein describes it as ​”a fever dream in a parallel dimension where Britney Spears makes a fully fledged country and western album around the time she shaves her head—the moment this cosmic heartache begins to envenom the world.” If that’s hared to envisage, then give lead single ‘MUD MICE’ a spin. A ludicrously infectious and imaginative song that displays both a  country twang and pop polish.

HELLFIRE BUMPER STICKER COWPUNCHING JEWBOY is out on the 20th June via Fabulous Things.

Juan Wauters – Dime Amiga

Although now based in NYC, Juan Wauters was born in Montevideo and, for the first time in his career, returned to the Uruguayan capital to make album MVD LUV, coming via Captured Tracks. Created not just in his own studio, but also the city itself (on sidewalks, rooftops, in the homes of friends), the album has a sense of Montevideo in its very bones. Latest single ‘Dime Amiga’ is a good place to start. Sung in Spanish, it’s a gentle and heartwarming song about the importance of loved ones. “‘Dime Amiga’ is a song that sparked while seeing my daughter cry,” Wauters sings. “The chorus just came out as we were there. I wanted the song to highlight life’s difficulties and how important it is to have a friend on your side if it ever gets hard.” His daughter also has a starring role in the video (written and directed by Lucía Garibaldi, Fatos Marishta, Eric McLeland, Matthew Volz and Wauters himself), which sees her wander off into the bustle of New York as Wauters’s busks for donut money.

MVD LUV will be released via Captured Tracks on 27th June. Pre-order it now from the Juan Wauters Bandcamp page.

Mourning [A] Blkstar – Letter To A Nervous System

We’ve covered a couple of singles from Mourning [A] Blkstar‘s new full-length Flowers of the Living in recent months, first the patient and quietly radical ‘Stop Lion 2‘ and then the striking ‘Let ‘Em Eat‘. The latter “pivots from bright, affirming beginnings into something else entirely,” we wrote in our piece, the song staying “true to the visionary, boundary-pushing spirit of the project” by shifting the vibe entirely and welcoming rapper Fatboi Sharif for a closing verse. With the album out later this week on Don Giovanni Records, MAB has unveiled final single ‘Letter To A Nervous System’ and the track is no less inventive. Another lesson in the power of understatement, the languid rhythm and crooned vocals full of assured confidence and aching longing.

Flowers of the Living is out on the 16th May via Don Giovanni Records and you can pre-order it now.

Snake Lips – Thumbs Up

This summer sees the return of Portland, Maine indie punk outfit Snake Lips with Cat Beach, a brand new full-length on Repeating Cloud. Previous release Happy Anxious was an album “delivered with both volatility and wry humour,” as we wrote in a preview, “as though strung out between hope and despair and choosing to ride the instability,” and the new record looks to build upon these foundations, as introduced by lead single, ‘Thumbs Up’. It’s a surf-inflected slice of garage rock which again embraces the danger and thrill of sheer momentum, burning bright and quick no matter consequences and ultimately revealing the real threat comes from within. “Brake check / I’m driving in the wrong lane / Blacked out / Alcohol and cocaine,” as the song opens. “So cool / I’m calling you the wrong name / Too bad / I’m the only one in my way.”

Watch the video by Ninety-Five Films below:

Cat Beach will be released on the 25th July via Repeating Cloud and you can pre-order it now.

Will Orchard – Nothing Fog

“A dream-folk track which preaches the benefits submission within an overwhelming world, complicating the lines between playfulness, sadness and acquiescence.” So we wrote of Will Orchard‘s ‘Down‘ back in April, what has since been revealed to be the closing track of his forthcoming third album, Behind The Shadow Glass. To announce the record, Orchard has shared another single, ‘Nothing Fog’. Again presenting a nuanced atmosphere, the track uses a decidedly sincere style to explore a sense of uncertainty, its confessional tone unafraid of revealing its own vulnerabilities and loss of confidence. Yet it is the sound’s brightness which persists in spite of all of this, leading to something ultimately affirming. “‘Nothing Fog’ expresses something very central to my struggle as a human,” as Orchard puts it. “The feeling of pushing your own wants and needs aside, and always trying to consider every perspective, until you can no longer recognize your own.”

Yoshika Colwell – A Poem About Walking

In April we introduced On The Wing, the forthcoming release from Yoshika Colwell on Blue Flowers. An album, at its heart “about acceptance and release, and freedom from old binds,” as Colwell herself describes, collecting a series of key experiences and events from across the years in order to not only process the journey so far but to chart a more hopeful path forward. Latest single ‘A Poem About Walking’ embodies the compassion and self-acceptance of this endeavour, finding its subject at the rock bottom of a troubled relationship though still holding onto small embers of possibility. The hope, that is, to achieve a more fulfilling and healthy existence, even if it means passing through a period of solitude and reflection in order to map out its shape. Watch the video by Tilly Wace below:

On The Wing is out on the 25th July via Blue Flowers and you can pre-order it now.

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The album felt like Will Orchard finding his groove, and subsequent releases have built upon it. The 2023 record Learning to Stand “unfurl[ed] with a careful tenderness,” as we wrote, “and [drew] the listener into a space of calm contemplation,” and his latest single ‘Down’ further pushes into the style. A dream-folk track which preaches the benefits submission within an overwhelming world, complicating the lines between playfulness, sadness and acquiescence. “I get lost in a maze / And I just lay down / I don’t want to be found,” Orchard sings in the opening lines. “There go the bright red dragons scorching overhead / I am a fading star gone to bed.”

When the light of the morning
Creeps over the hill
The honey bees find me
Eyes open and still

Even if I taste like everyone else
Can I at least have my own sweet finish
As I sink down, down?

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A feature of the Zoroastrian tradition of sky burial, the tower of silence is a raised circular structure used to offer the bodies of the dead to vultures and other scavengers without the remains contaminating the earth. A single from 2021 album Lain Prone, Belaver‘s ‘Tower of Silence’ mines this imagery for its themes of isolation and slow disintegration, not only referring to the process itself but also the manner in which such rituals are under threat in the contemporary age, as the bird populations are challenged by the unfolding breakdown of the climate. A new video directed, shot, and produced by A. Jung casts the track as a first-person horror story, leading the viewer through an assortment of corridors and rooms to discover a body, and then bending reality by replaying the journey on a projected screen.

Lain Prone is out now and available from the Belaver Bandcamp page.

Brake Run – Valid

The new project of Brianna Snider (half of duo Bexley Moms, and previously of saltlick), brake run combines slowcore and shoegaze influences into sound full of dark texture and pressing weight, as captured on new EP lift hill soundtrack. Single ‘valid’ is typical of the style, Snider’s vocals emerging from within a wall of gauzy guitars and pitch black atmospherics, transcending the gloom or else embracing the surroundings as the reality of things. Fans of the likes of Midwife take note.

without anything in my back pocket it feels very hard to cope

Expensive Music Band – Cool Aunty

Inspired by the birth of their daughter, Expensive Music Band’s Troon Lienad set out to write a song to celebrate the importance of aunties within the family structure. “A cultural exchange that is generational, witty and fun,” as the press release aptly describes it. Enter ‘Cool Aunty’, the latest single from the Cringila, Australia project’s forthcoming record Things to say at a barbecue, where Lienad looks forward to a potential future where his daughter is taken under the wing of the titular figure to become a person just as kind, stylish and effortlessly cool.

Kitba – My Words Don’t Work

“What’s my worth / If my words don’t work?” asks Brooklyn-based songwriter and harpist Rebecca Kitba Bryson El-Saleh, AKA Kitba, on the lead single from their upcoming self-titled debut. “Can’t get the meaning to hold / What’s the point / If my words don’t mean / What they’re supposed to mean?” Released via Ruination Records, the album sees El-Saleh look to conquer the barriers between interior and exterior worlds, and communicate the personal without the message becoming denatured in transit. ‘My Words Don’t Work’ starts this process by confronting the problem head on, and ultimately pushing beyond language to convey the meaning between or underneath words. Watch the video directed and edited by Robin Sessions below:

Kitba is out on the 21st July via Ruination Records and you can pre-order it now.

Requiem – Tired Hot and Bothered

Consisting of musician and multimedia artist Doug Kallmeyer, visual artist Monica Stroik and guitarist, soundscape designer and conceptualist Tristan Welch, DC-based outfit Requiem exists at the intersection of post-rock, pop and electronic sensibilities. A project which looks to combine the dramatic weight of Explosions in the Sky or GY!BE with the spacious qualities of ambient music, and further develop the result with visual accompaniments to their live shows so as to become a fully immersive experience. Debut POPulist Agendas is coming this summer on Mutineer Records, and lead single ‘Tired Hot and Bothered’ is the ideal introduction to the style, spanning the gamut of emotions and moods which feature in Requiem’s work and sounding altogether larger than its four minute runtime.

POPulist Agendas is out on the 7th August via Mutineer Records and you can pre-order it now.

Tiara Mustafa – Beyond the Shadow

Known primarily as one half of of Brunswick County, Virginia folk pop duo Tiara & Andrew, Tiara Mustafa recently released TRIBE, a solo EP on Grimalkin Records. Its two songs were born out of a very difficult period, which saw her mother diagnosed with cancer, the death of her cat and the loss of an album’s worth of Tiara & Andrew material. But rather than dwell on sadness and worry, Mustafa was able to find hope, something second track ‘Beyond the Shadow’ illustrates very well. “There’s a light in darkness, creeping up your spine,” Mustafa sings in what’s an ethereal and soothingly peaceful pop song, “Hide beyond the shadow, you will breathe in time.”

The Weather Holds – Five Roses

Producer and composer Devon Bate has worked behind the scenes on a number of Juno and Polaris award-winning albums, as well as equally stellar dance and theatre productions. But after giving so much to the Canadian arts in relative anonymity, at least to the general audience, his project The Weather Holds sees the favour repaid. Bate calls on the connections made over the years to create a supergroup which unites the indie and classical music scenes. An immense amount of talent features, including the likes of Common Holly, Jean-Michel Blais, Jeremy Dutcher and composer Beatrice Ferreira to name but a few, and resulting album You Couldn’t Ask For a More Beautiful Day is striking in its richness. Take single ‘Five Roses’, a celebration of the Montreal community brought to life by a dozen musicians.

Who Is She? – Thursday

With new record Goddess Energy coming this August on Father/Daughter Records, Seattle supergroup Who Is She? have unveiled lead single, ‘Thursday’. The album sees Robin Edwards (Lisa Prank), Julia Shapiro (Chastity Belt) and Bree Mckenna (Tacocat) joined by fellow Tacocat member Emily Nokes, and the new song hints at the harmonies the newly bolstered line-up will bring. An ode to the titular day which will be stuck in your head all week, andan excellent example of the goddess energy emanating from the project. Check out the video directed by Sébastien Deramat below:

Goddess Energy is out on the 25th August via Father/Daughter Records and you can pre-order it now.

Will Orchard – Simple Magic

Will Orchard is a songwriter from the East Bay of Rhode Island who we first wrote about back in 2019, describing the tone as “certainly nostalgic, and therefore focused on things now lost, though cast in a fond light—committed to bringing to life those moments, however mundane or ordinary, that help us become ourselves.” Taken from new album Learning to Stand, latest single ‘Simple Magic’ is the encapsulation of this style, unfurling with a careful tenderness and drawing the listener into a space of calm contemplation.

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Rat Tally – Feel Something

The recording project of LA’s Addy Harris, Rat Tally makes an emo-inflected brand of indie rock, exploring tortured emotion and mental health struggles in a manner at once wistful and fierce.  New single ‘Feel Something’ is a perfect example. A song about depression and self-sabotage, Harris delves into the competing horrors of feeling bad and feeling nothing at all. “When you feel depressed and numb, and you’ll stop at nothing to feel anything at all,” she explains, “even if it means emotionally hurting yourself and sometimes the people around you.” Gathering momentum as it progresses, the track becomes both an expression of regret and something of an explanation, and thus a drive to continue forwards nonetheless.

But I just want to feel something
Even if I end up spitting out blood
I told you you’d get used to it
I think I always knew you never would
But I just want to feel something
Even if you end up spitting out blood
When you’re finally done with it
I’ll tell you I always knew one day you’d run

EL LAGO – Pyramid

Existing at the intersection of shoegaze, dream pop and post-punk, EL LAGO’s Pyramid is a nocturnal record, ominous and dark and shot through with shimmering points of light. Released last month on Wallflower Records, the EP packs a genuine sense of variety, from the brusque, Patio-esque detachment of ‘Moths’ to the breathless, soaring shoegaze of the title track. However, each track is linked by a common spirit, all existing in a mysterious twilit space where threat and wonder stand side by side.

Lead single ‘Citadel’ is as good an introduction as any. Kicking into dinghy rhythm, the song holds a promise at its heart, though whether this is a promise of awe or violence is left unsaid. As such, there’s an unhinged intensity to the sound, like Bambara’s crazed preacher vibe, or something that might roll through the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks.

Pyramid is out now on Wallflower Records and you can grab it from the EL LAGO Bandcamp page.

Will Orchard – Turning Back Again

Working under the moniker LittleBoyBigHeadOnBike, Will Orchard wrote and released hundreds of songs a year, his Bandcamp featuring a vast array of experimental and colourful albums that stitched a giant patchwork of his creative influences. After much touring, Orchard decided to reinvent his practice, focusing on less tracks for a longer period of time and putting them out under his own name.

The result is Old Friends on the Mountain, an album made with engineer Jeff Prystowsky (The Low Anthem) that is concerned with loss and longing ” for lost imagination, friends long gone, and memories slipping away.” Ahead of its release next January, Orchard has unveiled the lead single, ‘Turning Back Again’, showing off his more cohesive, Americana-inspired sound. The tone is certainly nostalgic, and therefore focused on things now lost, though cast in a fond light—committed to bringing to life those moments, however mundane or ordinary, that help us become ourselves.

Katie Kuffel – Jelly Donut

Back in October of last year, we had the honour of sharing Take It Up, the debut album from Seattle-based songwriter Katie Kuffel. The record was one “of complete authenticity,” we wrote. “All pretences have been dropped, all half-truths abandoned, every wrinkle of self-doubt examined and ironed out.” In cherry picking the best bits from blues, jazz, folk and pop, Kuffel’s piano-led sound is capable of being fun as well as emotionally deep, tied together by a sense of live energy that her soulful vocal style only grows.

Kuffel is back with a brand new single, ‘Jelly Donut’, a track which develops on the sound of the record. Revolving around ideas of recovery and healing in the face of trauma, there is once again a serious weight at the core, though that is only half of the story. Replete with an energetic groove and smoky charisma, a fluid confidence permeates the sound, producing an affirming mood that’s as enlivening as it is infectious. Check out the video from Amphora Media below:

Alex Chilltown – Drown

Alex Chilltown is the recording project of Croydon’s Josh Esaw, and their debut record Eulogies is very much a product of that south London milieu—a blend of dream pop and art rock for the hyperreal present, a place of concrete and tarmac and a constant bustle toward a future that no-one can quite imagine, so is instead painted as another cycle of the past.

Lead single ‘Drown’ gives a taste as to what to expect. Threaded by a taut energy and a richly intricate sound, the song has pressing tone, unfurling in a relentless flow. “I wanted to write something that felt urgent,” Esaw explains. “It represents a lot of anxieties I was having about myself and that’s why it has that kind of tightness to it like when your brain is stuck in an anxious thought pattern and you’re crippled with indecision but also can’t stop ruminating on that.”

Eulogies will be released on the 24th January via Fear of Missing Out Records and you can pre-order it from the Alex Chilltown Bandcamp page.

French for Rabbits – Highest Hill

Led by Brooke Singer, New Zealand dream pop band French For Rabbits make an ethereal, layered brand of music. Their previous record, The Weight of Melted Snow, released on Home Alone Music and Muscle Beach Records, was translucent and melancholic and alive, the songs the musical equivalent of a sea mist that drifts in with a beguiling hush and settles upon your skin.

‘Highest Hill’, sees French for Rabbits perfect the style, the muted atmosphere showing that emotional resonance need not resort to bombast or melodrama. Working with Misma Andrews, the band set out to record a video with Lucifer the cat and dogs Pepa and Jolene, though with too much footage and/or a reluctance to cut, they ended up crafting two films for the same track—the cat version and the dog version. You can see the one for the far superior animal below:

You can find French for Rabbits on Bandcamp, and find out about the upcoming tour dates on their website.

Lazy Legs – Silkworm

We’ve written about Portland, OR’s Lazy Legs a few times in the past, from their self-titled debut in 2016 to last year’s single, ‘Nosebleed‘. The latter was taken from a new record, Moth Mother, and we’re finally getting close to release, with the album out on the 15th November.

In the preview, we suggested that the new record would see Lazy Legs “orbiting closer to their grunge and slowcore influences,” and latest single ‘Silkworm’ continues the trend. Finding a shuffling rhythm from the tape hiss intro, Laura Wagner’s vocals shimmer across the track before an almighty crunch of sound, drums and guitar and bass clattering into a reverb-drenched crescendo. From here the track ebbs and flows, settling into brief moments of peace before diving headlong into the noise once more.

The Big Easy – Nothing Comes for Free

The recording project of Stephen Berthomieux and friends, The Big Easy makes a distinctive blend of bedroom pop and garage rock that leans into the lo-fi aesthetic as a route toward authenticity. From now until February, The Big Easy will release a brand new single on the first Friday of every month, and ‘Nothing Comes for Free’ is the first entry in the series.

With fuzzed out guitar and a drum machine whirring behind, Berthomieux puts his vocals through a guitar amp to give them a distorted edge too, his voice almost becoming another instrument in weaving the rich texture of the sound. Thematically, the title does the talking, exploring ideas of uncertainty in the face of our costly society.

Two packs a day is more than just a goal of mine
cause then they find my ashes they’re be nothing left that’s mine
and every fucking time that i find i spend the night
life’s like every episode of twilight zone
something must be wrong
i never trust myself

People Person – Bound

Coming from the abrasive world of post-metal and hardcore, People Person is a project that aims to take aggression and ferocity and channel them into a more thoughtful, considered sound. The result, album Look Outside, Watch Closely, is somewhere between post-rock, bedroom pop and ambient, the sound rising from confessional whispers to something intense and soaring. If heaviness comes in a variety of forms, People Person are keyed into the nuances.

Lead single ‘Bound’ is a case in point. Opening with a despondent pop-rock style in the vein of Daughter of Julien Baker, the song intensifies gradually, the band displaying a real expertise in the balance between build and payoff. The result is something more intricate that the one-speed rush of hardcore while avoiding the self-indulgence of post-rock, creating a sound at once vast and immediate.

Alexander Biggs – Madeleine

Australian songwriter Alexander Biggs makes music haunted by a sense of loneliness and loss, as though something important has gone missing from our times. Through poignant arrangements and evocative folk melodies, Biggs brings such emotions to life, binding it all together with his earnest vocal style somewhere between Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers.

Brand new single ‘Madaleine’ is described as an “observational piece,” collating several toxic relationships to paint something of a caricature—a person violent and volatile and suffering, lashing out as though to share some of the pain they are subjected to. Loaded with starkly beautiful lyrics and possessing a tenderness despite the bitter tone, the track is caught between two poles: the immediacy of hurt not lessened but matched by the slow sadness of understanding.

That’s all for Vol. 30 of Bright Sparks folks, but be sure to stick around the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing.

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