Hank Tree - Sorry Darling - Twice A Man - Oscar Lindsey - Amélie Giardini

Photo - Kersti Nagel

Hank Tree - Tagalong.

Glasgow's Hank Tree return with 'Tagalong', a striking new single that pairs intricate classical guitar with bursts of distortion, electronic percussion and haunting dual vocals to tell a powerful story of vulnerability, exploitation and the need for human connection.

Led by songwriter Fergus MacDonald, Hank Tree have long balanced fragility and intensity, but 'Tagalong' is among the project's most immediate and emotionally affecting releases. Built around fast-picked classical guitar, accordion, electronic beats and rich vocal harmonies from Clarissa Cheong, the track was shaped alongside acclaimed composer and producer Peter Broderick, whose production expands the song's intimate core into something both unsettling and beautiful.

Inspired by MacDonald's experiences working in the care sector, 'Tagalong' reflects on the story of a vulnerable person with learning difficulties who is manipulated into criminal activity by those seeking to exploit their trust. While rooted in real experiences, the song avoids becoming a literal retelling, instead exploring universal themes of dependence, manipulation and the search for acceptance. "I resisted writing about my work in care for a long time," says MacDonald. "But eventually I realised these experiences had stayed with me too deeply to ignore. They're stories that exist all around us, yet they're rarely reflected in music or the arts."

Rather than dwelling solely on darkness, 'Tagalong' invites listeners to consider the ways we all depend on others throughout our lives. "The more I wrote," MacDonald explains, "the more I realised the song wasn't just about care work. It's about relying on other people. Whether that's through family, friendship or love, it's something everyone understands."

============================================================================

Sorry Darling - Like You.

Brooklyn rockers Sorry Darling released their new single, "Like You," yesterday, the latest preview of their forthcoming EP, Mirrors, out October 6th. Amongst the EP's heavier hitters, "Like You" stands out as the melodic one — melancholic in tone but still driven by the band's signature rock n' roll pulse. Lead singer Liz Wagner Biro brings a smoky, plaintive quality to the track reminiscent of Placebo's Brian Molko, lending the song's ache an extra edge.

"Like You" tackles the way a relationship can erode someone's sense of self and capability. Its accompanying music video follows a pageant queen who places second and wakes up questioning the life she's built. - "It's almost as if you can do everything right, everything you think is being asked of you, and you still might not win," the band add "The real winning is choosing yourself."

The single is the second offering from their upcoming EP Mirrors. The collection  takes its title from the way a mirror can reflect backward, reveal what's around the corner, and throw light, or blame, wherever it's needed, with the EP's songs circling the idea of projection and being truly seen within a relationship. It was recorded with producer Mike Dwyer at The Bunker in Cairo, NY, marking the first time the band decamped upstate together to record — a departure from the day-commute sessions that shaped their self-titled debut LP. 

============================================================================

Twice A Man - Desert Snow.

Twice A Man unveil a beautiful visualiser for 'Desert Snow', the first to be plucked as an advance single from the electronic environmentalists' forthcoming album "Reveries Before Silence". The Swedes' new full-length has been chalked up for release on November 20, 2026.

Twice A Man comment: "The first single track, 'Desert Snow', is one of our musical footprints in a time marked by uncertainty, division, and change", Karl Gasleben explains on behalf of the band collective. "This song reflects on the world we live in today while reminding us that hope and positive thinking can still be a path toward unity. As modern societies continue to challenge our sense of human connection, we need to find what brings us together rather than what drives us apart.  

If we can discover a common voice that leads us away from war, polarisation, and the climate crisis, there is still a future worth believing in. We want to be able to look our children in the eyes and speak about tomorrow with honesty, responsibility, and hope. 'Desert Snow' is our contribution to that conversation – a song that carries both reflection and faith in a better future."

============================================================================

Photo - Cole Silberman

Oscar Lindsey - Painting The Walls.

Nashville-based artist Oscar Lindsey recently signed to Mom + Pop Music (Courtney Barnett, Caamp, Tiny Habits, Hudson Freeman) and will release his label debut, Sunshine, on October 16. Described by Lindsey as "every phase of an early-20s, fucked up love story," Sunshine is an honest and vulnerable chronicling of the final shove into "real adulthood," a period of change, growth, and self-annihilation. He self-produced and recorded the 10-track set primarily in his home studio, with strings and horns overdubbed by instrumentalist friends throughout the greater Nashville area.
 
Lindsey previously teased the upcoming album with singles "Metal Through Her Lips" and "Flip A Coin," and he returns today with "Painting The Walls." Of the new song, he offers, "I was attempting to see how honestly I could explain the mental anguish I was in. It was written in a particularly bad downward spiral of anxiety paired with OCD that makes me do a lot of self-soothing behavior. 

I knock things, I count things, everything has to be a certain way. I have to complete little tasks or I feel like something terrible will happen to me. The verses question why my brain is sabotaging itself. The chorus of the song expresses how these little tasks and rituals add up, and I can’t leave the house without doing them. All of this feels like a unique experience, but I have hopes that it will reach more people who can relate to it, and try to find some peace listening to it the same way I did by writing it."
 
Lead single "Metal Through Her Lips" has received an enthusiastic welcome from the internet's Alex G-loving lo-fi folk circles since its release in June, with Ones to Watch calling it a "complex and entirely captivating work of art." Written during Nashville's catastrophic ice storm this past winter, while in the midst of a long-term breakup, the song's opening line — "She puts metal through her lips like a fish that got caught by a fisherman" — showcases Lindsey's ability to set a scene in a way that immediately pulls the listener into his singular POV.

Oscar Lindsey · Painting The Walls

============================================================================

Amélie Giardini - Beast.

Have you ever kept going back - again and again - even when you knew a relationship was bad for you? Beast lives in that uncomfortable space between knowing and leaving. It explores the guilt we have for returning, for wanting, for still hoping — even when the greater guilt belongs elsewhere. At its heart is a deliberately twisted image: a fragile mind “leeching on a beast.” The narrator sees herself as the parasite, clinging to something she knows will hurt her, while slowly confronting the possibility that she may have been blaming the wrong creature all along.

Amélie is a Franco-Australian, London-based singer-songwriter whose work turns an observant eye towards the contradictions of human behaviour. Her writing explores the nuances of power - between individuals, within systems, and within ourselves - moving between vulnerability and control, complicity and resistance. Drawn to ambiguity rather than easy conclusions, her songs are often laced with dark humour and a wry self-awareness.

Raised on a small tropical island, Amélie developed an early sensitivity to the textures, colours and rhythms of nature - a sensibility that continues to shape both her music and its visual world. Alongside her music, she works across international environmental and human rights policy, a parallel life that exposes her to complex and often uncomfortable realities and sharpens her attention to human instincts and contradictions. Music offers another space in which to process and reframe what she sees.

Following her debut Sombre Maze and second single Red Pill, Beast marks the next chapter of the Colour Bound project - a body of work that will continue unfolding throughout the year.

============================================================================

Eliza Eden - Livvy Landin - Red Spot Rhythm Section - Josienne Clarke - Israel Nash - GracieHorse

Photo -  Emilio Herce

Eliza Eden - Death Drive.

Eliza Eden has announced a new album ‘Death Drive’ will be released October 30 on First City Artists (Coco, Alexa Rose) and this week shares the title track, along with a brand new video. Eliza Eden tells us about the new video: This video was inspired by the location. I spotted this antique car place off the side of the road in Stephentown, New York, not far from where I grew up in the Berkshires. 

I had been passing it my whole life—hundreds of charmingly dilapidated vintage automobiles in a giant field. It felt more like a museum than a junkyard, with all of the vehicles arranged by make and model. I drove past it again last fall after a visit to my dad and it hit me as the perfect location to shoot a music video—especially for a song named “Death Drive.” I sent a cold email to the owner, Bob, and he kindly let us shoot there. Then I wrote and self-directed for the first time.

Edens has written about the experience of losing their mother before, on the lush acoustic-fingerpicked ‘We’ll Become The Flowers’ (2022) and the quiet collection of lo-fi voice memos released on Bandcamp in 2025, ‘it’s your birthday & you’re gorgeous.’ But if there are seven stages to grief, Death Drive feels like the transcendent eighth stage–the moment when you rediscover playfulness and humor and start reaching outward again. “I was sick of writing sad songs,” Edens admits. Instead, in this collection, sentiments of loss feel buoyant and neon-tinged, discussed with a laugh late at night over beers with friends.

============================================================================

Livvy Landin - Feel Too Little.

There are a few very easy ways to write about Livvy Landin. She’s 18. She acts. She models. She grew up between Georgia and Michigan after being born in Colorado. However the more interesting story is that an 18-year-old woman sat down to write her debut single and somehow landed on the emotional economics of loving somebody who keeps convincing you that your heart is taking up too much room. That’s “Feel Too Little.”

There is some surprisingly deep thinking happening inside a very accessible up-tempo pop song. The premise is simple enough. You love someone openly and enthusiastically. Then, little by little, they make you wonder whether you’re a problem. Maybe you care too much. Maybe you feel too much. So you start editing yourself. You become easier. Quieter. Less demanding. Less emotional. Eventually, you’ve made yourself perfectly acceptable to someone else and almost unrecognizable to yourself. Cheery little subject for a debut single, right?

What makes Livvy interesting is that she doesn’t stop at heartbreak. She follows the thought all the way through. What if “too much” is relative? What if one person’s overwhelming amount of love is another person’s bare minimum? What if shrinking yourself isn’t maturity or compromise at all? What if you have simply handed your whole heart to somebody who arrived carrying half of theirs?

============================================================================

Red Spot Rhythm Section - Back of the Bar Room (Twilight Acoustic Sessions).

We were impressed the first time we featured Red Spot Rhythm Section and are really impressed with their latest EP that add another dimension to this often changing collection of musicians. Red Spot Rhythm Section releases have all featured guest vocalists as band leader Joshua Siegal is the first to admit that singing isn't his strong suit, that said these songs have plenty to say he's better than he thinks, guests are great but Joshua does a fine job, notably on "Fresh Air" and "Win For Losing,"

In 2025, Red Spot Rhythm Section songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Siegal put together multi-track acoustic sessions in preparation for an NPR folk radio show appearance. Featuring original music from the group’s recent 'Twilight' album. The sessions were recorded on a portable 8-track recorder and limited to acoustic instruments: piano, guitar, percussion, and melodica. 

The EP, 'Back of the Bar Room (Twilight Acoustic Sessions)', is a selection of favorites from those sessions, showcasing the songwriter in his natural element: at the piano, a guitar in his lap, and a recorder rolling somewhere nearby. The EP was released a week or so ago.

============================================================================

Photo - Alec Bowman-Clarke

Josienne Clarke - Green Grow the Laurels.

Today Josienne Clarke announces new album of traditional folk songs and shares 'Green Grow The Laurels' The album Regenerene MMXXVI is set for release on November 20th via Corduroy Punk. Nothing in traditional folk music exists in isolation. Songs traverse voices and generations, accumulating new meanings; things discarded are rediscovered and remade. So it feels fitting that acclaimed singer and songwriter Josienne Clarke’s recent singles, ‘Katie Cruel’ and ‘Banks of the Sweet Primroses’, initially released as standalone works, can now be revealed as part of something larger: Regenerene MMXXVI (pronounced ree-jen-er-reen  twenty-twenty-six), a 12-track album that returns to the traditional music that helped shape her career.

The announcement is accompanied by a new video for ‘Green Grow the Laurels’ by Alec Bowman_Clarke. Clarke’s arrangement takes a characteristically distilled approach to a song of romantic abandonment, her keening vocals and electric guitar finding fresh life on one of the traditional pieces that first helped establish her voice.

The record’s title is Clarke’s own invention, derived from the Middle English regeneren and Latin regenerare. It means to regenerate or, more literally, “to make new flesh”. Her Regenerene is a mythical female archetype existing in an infinite cycle of renewal, while the Roman numerals ground it in the present. “The folk tradition is, or at least should be, a living organism,” Clarke says. “Expanding, contracting, evolving and adapting to an ever-changing landscape, but remaining constant in its ability to process change.”

============================================================================

Photo - Jaycee Grover

Israel Nash - Pretty Boy Floyd.

Today, Israel Nash shares a cosmic country take on "Pretty Boy Floyd," the latest single from his adaptation of The Byrds' iconic 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which releases September 25 on his own label Desert Folklore Music. The album opener unfolds like a synth-dance track for the great outdoors, dressing up the Woody Guthrie-penned, banjo-fueled original with canyon-like reverb and big-sky soundscapes.  

Israel Nash on the new single: “I changed the chords, melody, tempo, instrumentation – really everything but Woody’s lyrics – because this wild story still burns on today. It’s the individual against authority. An endless battle for liberty. That nearly forgotten pillar of folk and rock ’n’ roll itself. Does anyone even remember!? I do.”

Reinterpreting this landmark record through a modern lens, Israel Nash transforms a country-rock classic into a genre-bending take on contemporary American roots music. He approached Sweetheart of the Rodeo not as a museum piece that can't be touched, but as a reminder that if Americana has never stood still, why should he? "Pretty Boy Floyd" follows last month's single, a psychedelic take on the Bob Dyland-penned "You Ain't Going Nowhere." 

Having reclaimed ownership of his back catalog and finished building his dream studio in the Texas Hill Country, Nash found himself free from the relentless schedule of album cycles and finally able to call his own shots. Sweetheart of the Rodeo developed during this prolific era that found him releasing a deluxe version of Rain Plans, creating the instrumental Moods album, and continuing to write original songs. Exploration runs throughout the project – classic melodies shift in new directions, familiar rhythms are rebuilt, tempos move differently. Even the track list is different. 

============================================================================

GracieHorse - 5 Card Stud.

GracieHorse’s sophomore album, the Chris Cohen-produced Breaking and Entering, will be out on January 29th. On her follow-up to 2023’s L.A. Sh*t, the Los Angeles transplant ups the ante with 9 new songs that seamlessly blend country, soul, Americana, and indie rock. 

Today you can listen to “5 Card Stud,” where she takes us along to a high-stakes poker game, singing “take a seat, settle in, keep your sleeves up, keep smiling.” GracieHorse says about the track: “5 Card Stud” is inspired by my friends who play poker. I think their lingo has a good lyrical quality that makes a good song. It’s basically about good luck and what people attribute their luck to. My friend got me a lucky hand root from a botanica for my birthday, and I kept it in my studio. I feel like it had a “hand” in helping me make some cool songs for this record.

Even as the cascading verses and breathless chorus pick up steam, we only feel the thrill of the moment as the player harnesses their luck and goes for the big win. Lines like “It isn’t college, and it ain't my dad” are the kind of sharp details that GracieHorse commands on Breaking and Entering. The track features the rhythm section of Emily Elhaj (Angel Olsen, Gina Birch, Sofia Bolt, Marina Allen) on bass and Dylan Hadley (Cate Le Bon, White Fence) on drums. Cohen plays acoustic guitar on the track, and Tim Ramsey (Martin Courtney, Kasey Johansing, Marina Allen) is on pedal steel.

============================================================================

Rusty Shackle - Sara Milonovich & Daisycutter - Swansea Sound

Rusty Shackle - Mayfield (Album).

Folk-rock band 'Rusty Shackle' have released their highly anticipated new album, 'Mayfield', Out Now via Get Folked Records. Produced by Todd Campbell (Son of Motorhead guitar-man Phil), the album marks the band’s most ambitious release to date. 'Mayfield' sees 'Rusty Shackle' embrace a more stripped-back and reflective sound, exploring themes of friendship, perseverance and rebuilding confidence through difficult moments.

Acoustic textures and uncluttered arrangements place storytelling firmly at the heart of the record, while warm indie-rock dynamics bring depth, colour and momentum. The result is an album that balances the intimacy and honesty of folk songwriting with 'Rusty Shackle’s distinctive rock sensibilities. At its core, 'Mayfield' is a record about resilience — finding strength in the people around us, navigating uncertainty and slowly rebuilding when life doesn’t go to plan. There is an understated honesty throughout the album, allowing its themes to resonate without ever feeling overstated.

Produced by Todd Campbell, 'Mayfield' captures 'Rusty Shackle' at their most considered and focused, combining organic instrumentation and heartfelt storytelling with the warmth and energy that have become central to the band’s sound. With its blend of folk storytelling, acoustic textures and understated rock energy, Mayfield represents a new chapter for Rusty Shackle and their most ambitious album yet.

============================================================================

Sara Milonovich & Daisycutter - Planting and Harvest.

Sara Milonovich & Daisycutter have released “Planting and Harvest” on Get It Played. This song is meant as a tribute to long enduring relationships, to love and partnerships that last through thick and thin. “I vow to love you even through planting and harvest” is a saying on a little hand painted sign that hangs in the kitchen of my family’s farmhouse. I first spotted the sign at a western goods store in Missouri several years ago while driving back to New York from Moab, Utah, and bought it for my parents’ anniversary that year. I stared at that sign every time I came home to visit, and knew there was a song in there somewhere.

Growing up on a farm, planting and harvest are the two most stressful seasons of the year, with the longest hours (even by farming standards!) and the most intense time, weather, and financial pressures all converging at once. The window to get crops in the ground and the window to get them harvested are pretty much make-or-break, and the results can determine the success or failure of an entire year’s hopes and efforts. Needless to say, this puts a great deal of strain on any relationship during those times (I’m sure other industries have equivalent situations – I know the music business does)!

The song is from the point of view of a couple looking back on all they’ve weathered together, reminiscing about the past and wondering about what the future holds: “…guess we’ll keep on working ’til there’s nothing left to look after, though the winter’s getting warmer and the summer’s never been more strange. But the swallows are still shoving mud up into the rafters, and we’ve been weathering storms since back before they all had names…”

============================================================================

Swansea Sound - Mean To Be Mean.

Today Swansea Sound released a superb new single and a beautiful tease for their forthcoming album 'Pre-post-truth’ due for release on the 13th November via Skep Wax Records, a label that has provided Beehive Candy some superb new music over the past few years! 

Sometimes described as an indie supergroup, Swansea Sound are Hue Williams (ex-The Pooh Sticks), Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey (Heavenly), Bob Collins (The Dentists) and Ian Button (Death In Vegas, Railcard).  ‘Pre-post-truth’ is their third album.  They have recorded sessions for 6Music, Radio X and WFMU (New York) and have just completed a tour of the US.

The highly anticipated album ‘Pre-post-truth’ sees Swansea Sound expand their musical ambition and broaden their lyrical targets. It used to be YouTube and Spotify that the band railed against, but now everyone’s getting their heads round those issues, so why not attack the whole edifice of tech-bro hegemony? 

This album is loud and it’s outspoken, but it’s also energetic and very witty.  There’s an awareness of impotence too: the songs are often self-mocking, asking if it’s even possible to make subversive statements in a world where the communication channels are all owned by the tech-bros themselves.

============================================================================

Convinced Friend - Miko Marks - Montello - Bitw - Mary Bragg - Mama’s Broke

Photo - Jessina Leonard

Convinced Friend - Nowhere Songs (Album).

The oilfield town where A.S. Wilson grew up, south of New Orleans, is disappearing. Not as metaphor — as fact. The land is sinking, the coastline receding, and the petrochemical industry that built its economy is still there, rusting into the swamp it helped poison. Wilson has built a life elsewhere; he's been away long enough to know he won't watch it go. But when he learned he was going to be a father, his relationship to home suddenly felt different: its erosion was more pressing, his separation from it more permanent, and altogether more tender than he expected.

Nowhere Songs, Wilson's second full-length fronting the Providence, RI rock outfit Convinced Friend, grew from that urgency. The record took shape around a literal due date — the room that served as Wilson’s home studio was about to become a nursery — and he treated the deadline with workmanlike seriousness. Where Convinced Friend’s self-titled debut found him making sense of faith and commitment, Wilson’s songwriting on Nowhere Songs reaches back further, to Houma, Louisiana, concerning itself with intimate portraits of the people Wilson grew up among. Wilson writes about them in first and second person — not gawking, but alongside, within. He was there. He left. He's not quite sure he earned the distinction.

“In some ways, I feel like I somehow got... I don’t want to say spared, that feels too strong, but – I got out and other people didn’t, and I don’t exactly know why,” says Wilson, noting that he’s one of two people from his graduating class to leave Louisiana – the other being a linebacker for Florida State.

============================================================================

Photo - Karen Santos

Miko Marks - Death Rolls Like Thunder.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Miko Marks returns this weekend with “Death Rolls Like Thunder,” the lead single from her forthcoming album, Hell Or High Water, which is due out October 30 via Redtone Records. On Hell Or High Water, Miko leans further into her blues influences, drawing on the country, gospel, soul, and rock n’ roll traditions that have long shaped her music. Produced by and co-written with longtime collaborator Justin Phipps, the album emerged from a period of massive personal change, including the amicable end of her 29-year marriage and the beginning of her journey with sobriety. “These songs acknowledge the darkness without surrendering to it,” she says.

That struggle between darkness and hope takes a dramatic turn on lead single “Death Rolls Like Thunder,” which uses the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand, as its setting. The devil rides in on a pale horse, his army following, as death and destruction appear inevitable before the tables turn and the riders who have come to conquer are defeated. For Miko, the battle represents the power of a people defending their land and their right to remain, and serves as a reminder of those throughout history who have found ways to hold on, resist, and rebuild.

Hell Or High Water is Miko’s first new studio album since 2022’s acclaimed Feel Like Going Home, which broke into the Top 10 on the Americana charts and led to her Grand Ole Opry debut. She’s been super busy since then, releasing a deluxe version of the album in 2024, returning to the Opry multiple times, and appearing at festivals like Stagecoach, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, MerleFest, Ottawa Bluesfest, and more.

============================================================================

Montello - Eleanor (When Will You Learn?).

Wigan/Manchester indie quartet Montello continue to make their mark with the new single, ‘Eleanor (When Will You Learn)’, showcasing yet another example of their signature melancholy that dances rather than mopes.

Proving they know how to make heartache move, the track balances its Vaccines and early Arctic Monkeys-esque indie credentials whilst drawing on elements of The Smiths, The Stone Roses and Oasis. Produced by Luke Owens (of fast-rising Manchester band Bank Holiday), the single pairs its jangling guitar lines, with a waltzing drum beat with anthemic vocal melodies to create a track which brings emotional sincerity and bittersweet lyrical honesty whilst retaining a purposeful indie accessibility. 

"‘Eleanor (When Will You Learn)’ is a song that describes the turmoil of a dysfunctional relationship with someone too concerned with themselves to care.” the band explain. “The banging-your-head-against-the-wall chic the lyrics embody result in a song that many of our audience can relate to, from the sarcastic ‘You know I love you's' to the bargaining of the titular question ‘When will you learn?’ - all neatly wrapped up in the instrumentation of a nostalgic noughties indie rock tune."

Since the release of their debut EP which kickstarted a rapid rise for the Manchester outfit Montello have toured across the UK, playing festivals including Truck Festival and the Isle Of Wight Festival whilst also earning support from tastemakers including Dork, Earmilk, Gigslutz, Notion, Ones To Watch, and Radio X (John Kennedy). Their growing momentum has seen them perform at iconic venues including O2 Ritz and Gorilla, before also headlining and selling out Manchester's Deaf Institute.

============================================================================

Bitw - Gaddo Glaw.

Bitw is the solo project of Welsh musician Gruff ab Arwel. A committed DIY artist, he has built a career of sorts on his own terms, creating lo-fi art pop (not his description) that takes itself seriously without taking himself too seriously. Now in his mid-thirties, Gruff has made the seamless transition from failing musician to failed musician, and is finally enjoying the freedom that comes with having nothing left to prove.

His latest album, Gaddo Glaw, is his most homemade and cost-effective work yet; a record made almost entirely alone with a borrowed Portastudio and a steady supply of bad news. The songs find Gruff generally giving up on hope and finding peace instead through accepting our impending doom. His first entirely Welsh-language release, Gaddo Glaw confronts geopolitical conflict, the climate crisis and the general feeling that things are falling apart, all delivered in easy-to-digest pop song form. Bleak in subject matter yet full of warmth, the album stops short of finding a beacon of hope, but nevertheless holds on for dear life to love as one of the best things full stop.

Gaddo Glaw (out this weekend on digital platforms), the first single and title track from Bitw’s forthcoming album, is an upbeat introduction to its bleak worldview. The song's foreboding message bottles the album's themes and mood in a neat three-and-a-half-minute capsule, its stuttering rhythms never settling and eerie lifeless choir accompanying Gruff's almost resigned tone. The single is backed by Dan Ddylanwad, an hour-long track that is sure to test the patience of even the most hardened Bitw fans.

============================================================================

Photo -  Alex Berger

Mary Bragg - Hi-Fi.

Revered Nashville-based singer/songwriter/producer Mary Bragg has released her new single “Hi-Fi.” The track is the latest to release off her forthcoming album Secrets to Strangers, produced by Grammy Award-winner John Paul White and lauded producer/engineer/keyboardist Ben Tanner, due out October 16th through Single Lock Records via Secretly Distribution. One of the more rock-tinged tracks on the album, the radio-ready “Hi-Fi” leans into its modern pop groove, while wrestling with uncompromising radical honesty.

"In numbing ourselves, trying to outrun our own truths, we romanticize the past in avoidance of the present,” stated Bragg. “This song is about considering the other option, where facing your own realities - including the brutal, ugly ones - make you a better person for it. There’s no drowning out the fact that we all have room for improvement as human beings, and sometimes I think just opening your eyes and ears to that can lead to some beautiful healing. It certainly has for me.”

“Hi-Fi” follows the release of “What Do I Do” (feat. John Paul White) along with an official video. Upon its release, Rolling Stone named it a Song You Need To Know, while Billboard added it to their New Music Friday Guide, along with highlights by No Depression and The Bluegrass Situation who called it "a passionate, soulful Americana song that’s existential, yes, but also aspirational. The production is a lovely vehicle for Bragg’s poetic and insightful lyric-smithing."

Every great song is essentially a secret told to a stranger. And when the truth is clear, the stranger recognizes themselves in it. Whether those conversations happen from the stage, in therapy, or between strangers at an airport bar, they’re all attempts to bridge the distance between people. With her sixth full-length album, Bragg does just that, as she delivers a collection of deeply personal stories offered to the outside world. 

============================================================================

Photo - Emma Ledgerwood

Mama’s Broke - Reunion (Album).

Mama’s Broke, the Nova Scotian duo of Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria, today release Reunion, via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group.  Building on their JUNO-nominated album Narrow Line (2022), Reunion reflects a world coming apart in plain sight, tracing fractured communities, the erosion of shared ground, and the growing awareness that the systems we were taught to trust no longer hold or deliver the promises they were meant to keep. The songs don’t preach or prescribe; they reflect, holding up a mirror and leaving space for something else to take shape.

Mama’s Broke have forged a style carried across landscapes rather than tied to one. For over a decade, the pair have been in near-constant motion, bringing their folk-without-borders approach to small clubs, DIY spaces, and everywhere in between. This tradition is continued with their biggest tour yet which will see them play across Canada and the US. Speaking on the upcoming dates the pair explain, “This album is named Reunion because it’s so much about coming together and galvanising against the forces that attempt to keep us isolated and afraid. This album is meant to be experienced in a room of people, not on the internet.” 

Reunion follows their JUNO-nominated album Narrow Line (2022), which saw NPR Music extend an invite to perform on the legendary NPR Tiny Desk. The album was recorded just outside Nashville in Goodlettsville, Tennessee,  and  features subtle contributions from bassist Paul Kowert (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings) and others, adding depth without pulling focus from the record’s acoustic core. 

At its heart, Mama’s Broke remains what it has always been: two voices, intertwined, both fragile and enduring. Reunion asks what it means to make something that lasts: not a place you’re from, or even a place you return to, but what you make together, and how long it lasts, if you tend to it.

============================================================================

The Morning Line - Ungus Ungus Ungus - Part Time Signals - Laurelyn Dossett - Brooke Annibale - Disgusting Sisters

The Morning Line - Spellbound.

With a new album announced for release next month, veteran Northern California indie rockers The Morning Line and Big Stir Records bring you the second single to preview the record. “Spellbound,” with its textured guitars and plaintively melodic vocals, is a moody but lovely change of pace from “Anhedonia,” the band's previous indie hit single, and together they hint at the stylistic depth the band displays on the new album Stars. The single is released this weekend (three weeks ahead of the release of the full-length record's street date).

Frontman Stephen Smith reveals the intention behind the track. “It's about someone re-entering the world, after a period of loneliness, upset, or treatment.” He goes on to point out some details that listeners, whether hearing the song for the first time now or when its original version appeared on the band's 2007 debut album Stay My Satellite, might overlook: “One word people often miss when listening to it is 'Darien,' the Connecticut town. The song was featured on the soundtrack of the 2012 film Just Like Being There, a documentary about the makers of rock show posters. It is the only The Morning Line song with horns – a trumpet part that leads the song to its end. It’s anthemic and earnest.” 

With dense lyrical and musical touches like this, the song still packs a visceral and emotional punch as its layers ebb and flow. It's another side of The Morning Line's fascinating take on guitar pop and just one of 21 examples on display on Stars, a record that's rapidly emerging as an essential event on 2026's indie rock calendar.  

============================================================================

Ungus Ungus Ungus - The Fun House (Album).

Musical contortionists Ungus Ungus Ungus return to bending boundaries with more of their signature mind-tickling tracks on their seventh studio album 'The Fun House', out yesterday August 28th.

With six full-length albums under their belt and having taken the stage at an array of internationally regarded festivals, including Woodford Folk, Port Fairy Folk and Rainbow Serpent, Ungus Ungus Ungus are back with an electrifying album that promises to deliver an unpredictable and enlivening experience, at times intentionally disorienting in its stylistic turns but always staying on track to a good time - much like the fairground ride from which the album takes its name.

With players based across three states, the Naarm/Melbourne-centred band returns with their shapeshifting, dancefloor-friendly sound. Conceptually, the album explores foundational dimensions of life together with its assorted peaks, valleys and contrasting flavours. Bandleader Max Schollar-Root says of the album: “As a band that plays fast and loose with genre, we have held nothing back stylistically, taking the listener on a journey from our signature circus party freak folk through psychedelic dub, funky hip-hop, electro swing, drum and bass, and ambient spaciousness.”

The album opens with ‘Funlerable’, a driving, moody track featuring circus organs and haunting vocals that speak to the duality of joy and vulnerability as an oscillating feature of life. ‘Poltergeist’ follows with a theatrical lament to lost love that builds from a slow cabaret feel to an uptempo frenzy. ‘Dr Quiet’ slows down the pace, giving way to atmospheric dub and sensuous, leisurely horns, setting the scene for the conceptual funk odyssey of ‘Wishes Three’, a foray into the foundations of where food comes from through deep grooves, group vocals and character-driven lyrics.

============================================================================

Part Time Signals - Green Light.

'Green Light' is the first single from 'Part Time Signals’ upcoming album 'Duck’s Back, Baby'. Placed as the opening track to their new album, Green Light symbolises the urge to get moving after remaining stagnant for quite some time. It’s like checking your watch and feeling like time is standing still but taking comfort in the knowledge that a green light will eventually shine. The song features layers of warbly guitars and keyboards, vocals drenched in spring reverb, luscious harmonies and crisp saturated drums. 

The band self-recorded Green Light at Giant Wafer Studios, and it features additional instrumentation from Stephen Black (flute & clarinet), Rhodri Brooks (pedal steel) and David Newington (vibraphone). Duck’s Back, Baby is the brand new album from Part Time Signals and the follow-up to their debut album Another Day In Paradise and EP The Window. It was self-recorded over an intensive five days at Giant Wafer Studios in Mid Wales, with subsequent additional recordings made at their rehearsal space and homes.
                 
The band say, “We’ve been quietly chipping away at this album for a few years, assembling it piece by piece since the initial studio session. In its essence it’s a collection of songs that reflect some of the many aspects of the human condition, and listening from start to finish there are plenty of dots to be connected.”
                       
With the main recording session being the band’s first time recording in a professional studio together, they explored the extensive instrumentation and equipment at hand to create different textures and atmospheres, further developing their sound. During subsequent sessions back in Cardiff, the band recorded additional performances from David Newington (vibraphone), Rhodri Brooks (pedal steel) and Stephen Black (clarinet, flute, saxophones).

============================================================================

Photo - Matthew Chenet

Laurelyn Dossett - How Many Moons? (Album).

After more than three decades writing songs for Grammy Award–winning artists and fostering some of the top talent in a rich North Carolina scene, Merlefest favorite Laurelyn Dossett is finally ready to step out for her debut solo album How Many Moons? The album, produced by M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger, is set for an August 28 release via Sycamore Road. Taylor says, “Laurelyn Dossett is a songwriter and human that I find immensely inspiring. A survivor and a wonder-er. I know she has played a huge part in the lives of so many creative people, and I'm honored to have played a part in her new album.”

How Many Moons is an embarrassment of sonic riches—and Dossett has clearly been saving her 12 best for her first. There’s everything on here from saucy, swampy, bluesy waltzes (“Tomorrow Won’t Remember”) to back-barn country rambles (lead single “How Many Moons”) and back-alley jazz-bar laments (“Run to the River”). “You and the Moon” has a gentle, ear-worm melody. She previously shared the heartbreaking single “Believe Me,” featuring producer M.C. Taylor. One could easily picture the song in a Norah Jones set. The serene lilt of “Glory Glory,  is an original song that features Taylor on electric and acoustic guitars and mandolin.

Dossett assembled a who’s-who of N.C. and regional players to help her deliver this stunning, eclectic solo debut. Players include Charly Lowry, artist and activist of the Lumbee and Tuscarora, who lends her vocals to “The Vision And The Call” (out June 29); Stephanie Coleman, a Brooklyn fiddler and musical partner of Nora Brown, whose worked with everyone from Rhiannon Giddens and Aoife O’Donovan to Béla Fleck; sacred steel legend DaShawn Hickman, whose pedal steel skills have wowed millions on America’s Got Talent; jazz/folk bassist Jason Sypher, whose list of notables includes Irma Thomas, Kermit Ruffins, and Clarence Gatemouth Brown, among many others; drummer Nick Falk (Molly Tuttle, The Wood Brothers, CAAMP and Hiss Golden Messenger); Riley Baugus (Willie Nelson, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant) and Taylor, who pitches in on acoustic/electric guitars and mandolin when he’s not behind the boards.

============================================================================

Photo - Sasha Pedro

Brooke Annibale - Try Again.

Indie singer/songwriter Brooke Annibale has released her new single “Try Again.” The track is the latest to release off her forthcoming album Bolder Font, which is due out on September 17th. The emotional centerpiece to Bolder Font, “Try Again” finds Brooke turning the lens on her own complicated relationship with music after a series of disheartening and unexpected setbacks: the thing that has always healed her is also the thing that has wounded her. 

"There was a point between records where it actually pained me to work on music, which was an unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling,” stated Annibale. “Music has been my safe place since I was a teenager, the one thing I've always turned to. Losing that felt like losing a relationship. So that's exactly how I wrote about it — like I was talking directly to music itself, the way you'd speak to someone you were afraid of losing. The conversation in this song toggles between talking to myself and talking to music like it was a person slipping away. Somewhere in the making of this record, I found my way back to that safe space again.”

“Try Again” follows the release of the wry, nostalgic “Birthday,” which was featured on Atwood who raved “A gentle giant of a song, it carries years of memory on a brooding pulse, wrapping Annibale’s raw, unflinching songwriting in sweet warmth.” Annibale also recently released the electrifying, irresistible “Make You Mine,” as well as “Daily Dose,” a spirited reflection on unfiltered enthusiasm; “My Favorite Part,” the heartbreakingly vulnerable opening track; and the title track “Bolder Font,” which wrestles with the album’s underlying theme of self-worth and the gap between who we are and the identities that have been placed on us.

============================================================================

Photo - Pierpaolo Saccomandi.

Disgusting Sisters - Not Cool.

Disgusting Sisters just shared their new single "Not Cool", taken from their upcoming debut album Skin & Blisters, which will be released October 30 on Source Records. "Not Cool" is, a punchy, hilarious new offering that blends tongue-in-cheek lyricism, addictive melodies and a strong dose of defiance. The single also references The Strokes, MDMA, Candy Crush and 36 year old men still buying boxers with their mum.  

On the new single, Disgusting Sisters say - "'Not Cool' is a song inspired by an ex boyfriend. We’ll let you decide if he’s cool or not. It’s also the first song we ever wrote as Disgusting Sisters, so it means a lot to us as it feels like the beginning of everything."

A lot of songwriters might use their craft as a means to process life, but not many end up with a wild end result like Disgusting Sisters. A winning mix of horror, humour, musical influences that span from electro to emo and a wealth of joint experience, it speaks to a childhood of pet rats and pranks; world-building and wicked games. The duo have already received press support from the likes of The Guardian, DIY and Clash as well plays at BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6Music. The album will arrive on Source Records, the iconic Anglo-French label historically home to artists including Air, Phoenix and Kings of Convenience.

============================================================================