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| Photo - Jack Dallas Champion |
Dublin-born, London-based songwriter and producer Kynsy, aka Ciara Lindsey, returns with ‘eleanor’, a striking new single that offers an exciting glimpse of the music following her 2024 EP Utopia. Blending jagged indie-rock textures, brooding atmospheres and an irresistible pop sensibility, the track brings her distinctive sound into sharp focus while revealing a growing confidence behind the production desk.
‘eleanor’ explores the intoxicating pull of someone admired from afar, despite knowing that the attraction is likely to end in heartbreak. Kynsy describes it as a dark, poetic take on teenage infatuation and unrequited love, wrapped in the romantic, reckless atmosphere of the early-2000s TV series Skins. There's a compelling tension between the song's emotional vulnerability and its restless, fractured sound.
Co-produced with drummer Rory Gilmore, also known as producer and DJ Body Clinic, and guitarist Tyler Darrington, aka T. Evann, the track draws on the adventurous energy of Sorry's debut album. Its combination of glitchy electronics and rock instrumentation reflects Kynsy's desire to explore more left-field production while retaining the immediacy of a great indie-pop song. The decision to work alongside her live-band collaborators has clearly paid off.
With three EPs already released and support from NME, DIY, Dork, BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music, Kynsy has steadily built a reputation as an artist unafraid to experiment. ‘eleanor’ is an assured and intriguing return, showcasing both her songwriting instincts and her ambitions as a producer. We look forward to hearing where she takes this sound next.
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| Photo - Luke Cooper |
Manchester art-pop favourites Dutch Uncles have announced their seventh studio album, Polygon Hotel, due for release on 19 February 2027 via Memphis Industries. The news arrives alongside first single ‘No Note’, a wonderfully off-kilter introduction to a record that promises some of the most adventurous and rewarding music of the band's 18-year career. A UK headline tour will follow in March.
Accompanied by a gloriously bizarre video featuring early PlayStation-inspired animation from cult artist Miles Buckle, ‘No Note’ sees the band battling themselves outside a Greggs before liberating a speedboat from a junkyard. Musically, it's just as entertaining, combining dancing marimbas and seasick tubular bells with a wonderfully strutting, almost pub-rock riff. Beneath the playful arrangement, however, lies a more serious reflection on time lost to social media and the frustration of feeling unable to escape its grip.
Following 2023's True Entertainment, which marked a fresh chapter after a six-year gap between albums, Polygon Hotel finds the Stockport-formed sextet continuing to explore their wonderfully unpredictable musical territory. Produced and mixed by the band themselves, with mastering by Felix Davis (Geese, Lime Garden), the album promises labyrinthine melodies, gloriously unusual rhythms and songs that move effortlessly between personal reflection, surreal humour and darker observations.
Frontman Duncan Wallis describes ‘No Note’ as a lament for the time invested in social media, and the uncomfortable realisation that so much of our attention has been handed over to platforms controlled by people with questionable intentions. There's even a little irony in the fact that, despite being about wasted time, the lyrics took just five minutes to write. Dutch Uncles have always excelled at making the unexpected sound irresistible, and ‘No Note’ is a terrific reminder of why they remain such a distinctive force in British art-pop. We can't wait to hear Polygon Hotel.
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| Photo - Natalie Deryn Johnson |
Award-winning singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer Kate Schutt returns with ‘I’ve Got To Go’, a wistful and haunting Americana ballad inspired by Austrian writer Christiane Ritter’s 1934 memoir, A Woman in the Polar Night. Imagined as a letter from Ritter to her husband, the song explores the emotional conflict of leaving behind a remote Arctic wilderness that has transformed her, knowing that conventional family life and everyday responsibilities await back home.
Ritter spent an extraordinary winter in a tiny hunter's hut in a remote fjord of Svalbard, alongside her husband and his hunting partner. As the long polar darkness gave way to the brightness of spring, the arrival of a ship meant her time in this remarkable landscape was coming to an end. Her husband would remain, while she faced the journey back to Austria, her child and the life she had left behind.
It is the unanswered questions surrounding that departure that inspired Schutt's songwriting. Did Ritter really want to leave? Had she considered staying for another year? And what did it feel like to know that an experience so profoundly life-changing might never happen again? As Kate explains, curiosity is at the heart of her creative process, with songwriting allowing her to explore feelings and questions that might otherwise remain unresolved.
The song also carries a deeply personal connection. Having travelled to the Arctic twice herself, spending around three weeks there on each occasion, Schutt knows how difficult it can be to leave. She recalls being so affected by Svalbard's extraordinary landscape that she wanted to miss her flight and stay long enough to witness the changing light and seasons. That genuine emotional connection gives ‘I've Got To Go’ an added depth, making it a beautifully reflective song about freedom, belonging and the bittersweet experience of leaving somewhere that has changed you.
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Toronto quartet Drop Dead Poppies have released their new album, Selling The Farm, a bold and adventurous collection that blends psychedelic rock, Southern rock and classic '70s influences with deeply personal songwriting. Full of grit, groove and freewheeling rock 'n' roll energy, the record explores life's complicated moments, embracing vulnerability, uncertainty and resilience without losing its sense of musical adventure.
One of the album's most powerful moments is ‘Lies’, inspired by vocalist and guitarist Poppy Miers' experience with stage 3 melanoma. Written as an imagined conversation between Miers and the cancer growing inside her body, the song explores the fear, denial and eventual acceptance surrounding her diagnosis. Miers describes the track as a strange way of confronting and accepting the experience, capturing the battle between the mind's determination to expose the truth and the seductive pull of denial. It's a remarkably personal piece that gives the album much of its emotional weight.
Formed in 2022, Drop Dead Poppies feature Miers alongside David Sufrin on drums, Mike Strizic on bass and Paul Phelan on guitar, slide and pedal steel. Together, they have developed a sound that combines the raw power of classic rock with hazy psychedelic textures and the earthy swagger of Southern rock. Their growing live reputation has taken them to celebrated Toronto venues including the Horseshoe Tavern, Dakota Tavern and Monarch Tavern, as well as festivals such as Riverfest Elora, NXNE, Come Together Festival and Gussapalooza.
With Selling The Farm, Drop Dead Poppies capture the chemistry and spontaneity of their live performances while demonstrating a real willingness to push their songwriting into more personal territory. It's an album that balances muscular musicianship with emotional honesty, and confirms the quartet as an exciting band with plenty of creative ambition. A compelling new chapter for a group clearly finding its own distinctive voice.
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London-based artist DAYLA shares the official video for her latest single ‘No1’, a playful yet emotionally honest exploration of modern dating, unrequited feelings and the dangers of getting caught up in romantic ‘what ifs’. Directed by Naomi Ngoo, the video follows DAYLA wandering through the streets of Soho and Chinatown, dressed in a distinctive star costume and searching for solace among the city's crowds. With its nods to Hollywood Boulevard mascots and teenage Indie Sleaze culture, it captures the feeling of being conspicuous yet completely unknown.
First written in Los Angeles and completed following the end of a six-year relationship, ‘No1’ transforms romantic uncertainty into something wonderfully catchy and sensual. The song explores limerence, the thrill of an unexpected winter spark and the realisation that sometimes a crush is simply a lack of information. Its wishful title provides a clever contrast with the reality of feeling overlooked, while DAYLA's unfiltered delivery gives the track plenty of personality.
For DAYLA, writing the song was a way of turning frustration into something creative. She hopes it will encourage anyone caught in a one-sided romantic situation to stop investing in someone who isn't matching their feelings and redirect that energy towards themselves. As she explains, we may think we become better at navigating love as we get older, but ultimately we all want the same thing: to love and be loved in return. It's an honest sentiment wrapped in an upbeat, free-spirited pop song.
DAYLA returned in September with ‘TV- 90s kid’, ending a six-year hiatus and earning support from Fault Magazine, Loud Women, Ones To Watch and The Most Radicalist. That dreamy art-pop single offered a nostalgic escape for millennials facing the realities of modern adulthood, and ‘No1’ continues to showcase her distinctive blend of emotional candour, playful attitude and imaginative production. It's great to have DAYLA back, and this latest release suggests there's plenty more to come.
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Vancouver songwriter Alex Little returns with Conversations In My Head, a new three-track EP released yesterday via Light Organ Records. Packed with punchy guitars, new-wave hooks and a wonderfully infectious punk attitude, it finds Little turning anxiety, self-doubt and life's awkward moments into songs that are as catchy as they are revealing. With echoes of Blondie, Buzzcocks and the quirky spirit of the B-52's, there's plenty of familiar musical DNA, but Little's funny, candid and unmistakably personal songwriting gives the collection its own identity.
Following 2025's Spider in the Sink, which explored fear and the unsettling feeling of being at odds with your own mind, the new EP takes an equally honest look at the gap between what we know and what we actually believe. The title track is a perfect example, pairing a slick, mid-tempo guitar groove with a stream of anxious thoughts about appearance, awkward social encounters and the fear of losing a friendship. It's painfully relatable, but Little delivers it with enough wit and energy to keep things far from gloomy.
‘Look Away’ takes aim at the wider world, confronting the silence and denial that allow harmful behaviour to continue unchecked. Sinister in mood but irresistibly danceable, it's a sharp and engaging piece of songwriting. ‘Validation’ then brings the focus back inward, exploring the familiar desire for reassurance from others, even when we know we should be confident in ourselves. Its triumphant musical feel makes a clever contrast with the vulnerability at its heart.
With a musical upbringing surrounded by records from The Replacements, David Bowie, The Beatles and Iggy Pop, Little has clearly absorbed some wonderful influences. Her journey through Vancouver's punk scene, including time behind the drums in Vapid, has helped shape a sound that is energetic, melodic and refreshingly direct. Conversations In My Head is a terrific little collection that turns life's mental battles into memorable rock songs, confirming Alex Little as a songwriter with plenty of personality, honesty and infectious musical instinct.
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