Savannah Pope - August - Ariana Fig - Scott C. Park

Savannah Pope - Panopticon.

We have a fascinating, thought provoking & addictive new track “Panopticon" from Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and visual artist Savannah Pope. “Panopticon” examines the lingering power certain people can hold over us long after a formative experience has ended. Written from Pope’s own history with body image and sexual trauma, the song captures the disorienting feeling of still being watched, measured, and judged by ghosts. 

The accompanying video is a piece of art. Drawing from Rococo painting, chiaroscuro, fashion editorials, dressing-room mirrors, and what Pope gleefully calls “Rococo drag,” the video holds fantasy and brutality in the same frame. A measuring-tape sequence turns the scrutiny of the dressing room into a surreal examination of how bodies are observed and constructed. Like the song, the film is lush, severe, beautiful, and unexpectedly funny.

Savannah Pope is a Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and visual artist creating at the intersection of art rock, cinematic pop, glam, cabaret, and performance art. Known for her opera-like voice, immersive visual worlds, and visceral songwriting, Pope has supported Andy Bell of Erasure across North America, performed three sold-out nights at Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre, and sold nearly 100 tickets for her New York headline debut at Joe’s Pub. 

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August - Midlife.

August are a four piece indie folk band from the UK. During the lockdown of 2020 Chris Carey and Sara Murray started writing songs together remotely as a therapeutic activity. Both had been in bands in their twenties and never lost the passion for making music, but careers and families had made it hard to keep it going. 

They soon had an album's worth of material and were joined by multi instrumentalist and solo artist, Simon Hedges ( formally of Airbus), and drummer Matt Cowley ( Dreadzone, Tony Christie. Big Boy Bloater and his solo project, Tremsprings). Simon then introduced the band to the incredible producer, Luke Oldfield, who produced their first album, Not the 90's at his legendary Tilehouse Studios. 

Their new EP Midlife is also produced by Luke Oldfield. The three songs on the EP challenge traditional, accepted and ingrained narratives around female power and value, and question who gets to be the narrator of our human story. The song is inspired by a visit to Delphi and hearing the story of the women who were chosen to be the oracle. They were women in their 50's and they lived an average of 7 years. The cave they made the oracle made prophecies from was on top of a crack in the earth, where poisonous gas escaped and gave the woman hallucinations and altered her voice. And over time it killed her.  

I was 53 when I visited the site and the story of these Pythia, as they were known, hit me as a powerful metaphor for all women's lives under patriarchy. They were given elevated spiritual positions but had no freedom. They were given power but no agency. There are no records of these women so we don't know their names.

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PHOTO - NATALIE NGUYEN

Ariana Fig - So Long, Sinnerstate! (Album). 

Hamilton, ON-born singer-songwriter Ariana Fig shares her debut full-length album, So Long, Sinnerstate!, a vibrant folk-pop collection that explores identity, ambition, and the winding road between who we are and who we’re still becoming. Marking her first full-length release after two independently released EPs, the record finds Fig expanding both her songwriting and sonic palette, pairing deeply personal reflections with stories inspired by literature, film, and imagined perspectives to create her most universal body of work to date.

“In a time for music where it seems like pumping out quick and fast singles is the way to go, I think there’s something pretty punk rock about releasing an album independently in 2026,” Fig says. “I’ve made two EPs under my own label, and I thought it was time to tell a larger story and let people know more about who Ariana Fig the artist is through my music.”

The album’s lead single and title track, “So Long, Sinnerstate!,” was inspired by the music she was listening to while writing, particularly MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks and Briston Maroney’s JIMMY. It’s a nostalgic track that reflects on the dreams of her younger self while looking toward the future with equal parts uncertainty and hope.

Centred on navigating identity, So Long, Sinnerstate! marks a turning point in Fig’s songwriting. Rather than writing solely from personal experience, she drew inspiration from books, films, and imagined perspectives, allowing the songs to speak beyond autobiography and resonate on a broader level.


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Photo - Danielle Macleod

Scott C. Park - Revival (Album).

Scott C. Park returns with Revival, an ambitious album that finds the Scottish songwriter at his most confident, playful and sonically adventurous yet. Veering between wiry indie rock, psychedelic pop, folk melancholy and ragged alternative rock, Park trades introspection for instinct, creating a record where every track inhabits its own vivid world while remaining unmistakably his own.

While Park's debut album Crossing the Line chronicled the emotional fallout of leaving his faith, Revival looks towards what comes next. Rather than dwelling on loss, the record is about rebuilding: rediscovering joy, creativity and the values that remain once old certainties have fallen away. "My first album was about leaving my faith," Park explains. "This album is about rebuilding—not a value system in terms of ethics, but rebuilding what gives me joy, what gives me pleasure, and how I feel about feeling that pleasure.”

Revival was shaped by a deliberately stripped-back approach. Park abandoned the heavily layered demos of his previous record in favour of live performances, resonant drums and arrangements that allow each song's character to shine: "I wanted each track to have more definition, each one to be more of a vibe unto itself—like an arrow rather than a club.”

That philosophy runs throughout the album. The sardonic indie rock of 'Marlene' sits comfortably beside the psychedelic pulse of 'That's Love', the knotty, rhythmically restless 'Nananaw' and the swaggering sleaze of 'Preach', while songs such as 'Porch Golfing' and 'Pepperblack 40' introduce outsider protagonists with warmth and humour. Elsewhere, 'Work of Art' and 'No-one's up in Heaven When I'm There' confront the lingering effects of religious repression and loneliness, before the title track brings the album to a bittersweet, cathartic close.

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Maripool - Twilark - Ariana Fig - Annie Leeth - Run Remedy - Ziemba

Photo - Carina Simoes

Maripool - Favourite.

Last month Lisbon-born, London-based songwriter Maripool (moniker of songwriter Natacha Simões) announced the release of her debut album Rotten Luck, an introspective body of work that captures the complexity of identity, memory, and return. Blending shoegaze and alt. indie, the record sees Simões pushing beyond the boundaries of previous EPs into something more expansive, collaborative, and emotionally direct.

This week, Maripool has shared ‘Favourite’, the second cut to be taken from the album. The single captures “the quiet unraveling of a relationship and the way the mind begins to drift elsewhere before things have fully ended. Finding distractions as a form of escapism and of softening the inevitable.”

Rotten Luck was written during a month-long residency in Lisbon in January 2025, and shaped by isolation as much as reconnection. Set within a decaying fisherman’s building across the river - a sparse room with a broken window, dripping ceilings, and no Wi-Fi - the environment forced a stillness that defined Simões’ writing process. Days were often spent in silence, watching the river or writing in bursts, while evenings brought a return to the city and a reconnection with a past life.

This duality sits at its heart. Across the album, Maripool explores displacement, migration, and the tension between past and present. Having left Lisbon as a teenager, returning to the city became a confrontation with identity - not just who she had become, but who she had once tried to leave behind. As she puts it, the album reflects “the process of reconnecting with a part of myself that never fully left… confronting who I am when everything external falls apart.” The album’s title, taken from one of the songs written during the residency, encapsulates this emotional landscape; a quiet reckoning with past missteps and the search for self that followed.

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Photo -  Layde Jane Vickers

Twilark - Tired to Sleep.

Raleigh-based songwriter Canon Pence, records as Twilark. This week he is sharing the third single from his forthcoming LP, "Tired to Sleep" a hangover anthem that balances darkness, humor, and heart. Erin Rae and Dominic Billett's hopeful harmonies bring a welcome sense of light to the morning after, while Pence's voice carries a warm, wistful ache. There's a gentle, conversational quality to his delivery that recalls Ben Gibbard at his most understated—intimate, melodic, and quietly devastating without ever feeling overworked.

Quote from Twilark: "Perhaps unsurprisingly, this song was written while wallowing in a hangover, the lyrics reflecting this with darkness, humor, and self-awareness. Drink some water and go back to sleep." North Carolina has long produced artists who balance experimentation with emotional immediacy. Twilark fits naturally within that continuum while carving out a voice that feels intimate, textured, and distinctly his own. 

The light touch of Pence’s voice establishes the spirit of this music, his meticulous storytelling and fine-tuned sense of the melancholic and ruminative. And it’s all shot through with a sense of gallows humor and a commitment to spontaneity and authenticity rather than perfection or self-seriousness. These values are even reflected in the album art which was created using a printing press and real book cloth; tactile and playful, touched by human hands.

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Photo - Natalie Nguyen

Ariana Fig - I Hope You Love Me.

Hamilton, ON-born singer-songwriter Ariana Fig shares “I Hope You Love Me,” a fast-moving, emotionally candid pop-folk single lifted from her upcoming debut album, So Long, Sinnerstate! (out August 14th). Written at the edge of a new relationship, the track captures the fragile, electric moment where excitement and fear collide: when falling in love feels like both a leap forward and a quiet plea for acceptance.

“I wrote the song the day before I went on my first date with my partner,” Fig explains. “It’s all about acknowledging how scary yet exciting new love can be, and hoping that someone new can learn to love you and your flaws.”

That emotional tension distills into the song’s title, which serves as both mantra and confession. For Fig, it reflects the internal dialogue of early love and the repetition of hope, uncertainty, and self-awareness that accompanies opening yourself up to someone new. “I would repeat it to myself during the early days of my relationship,” she says.

Written in collaboration with Emma Whale at Catherine North Studios in Hamilton, ON, the track began as a conversation about fear and the specific hesitation that comes from watching relationships around you fall apart. Instead of leaning into that anxiety, the pair shifted toward optimism, reframing vulnerability as possibility. “We wrote about the exciting possibility of finding yourself in someone else, and learning to love yourself while being with someone,” Fig shares.

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Photo -  José Nava

Annie Leeth - Effexor.

Singer-violinist-producer Annie Leeth constructs vivid and intriguing electro art-pop full of ache and hope, this week announcing Saturn Return and sharing the first single Effexor. 

Drawing listeners into introspective anger and acceptance, singer-musician-producer Annie Leeth's Saturn Return is an exploration in loss, self-love, and acceptance. Blending live percussion, layered strings and driving synths, the record captures the feeling of being alone and safe to process emotions after a long day; or a long year.

Saturn Return rides the line between experimental pop and electronica. Featuring percussion by Mason Davis and synth by Erik Olson, each track invites listeners into the vulnerability of youth's twilight, painful realization that the world one thought one was living in doesn’t exist. Drawing inspiration from fellow violinst-producer Laurie Anderson, as well as artists like Aphex Twin and Radiohead, Leeth’s experimental production is enveloping, sometimes otherworldly, but her measured hand allows breathing room for the lyrics to activate the foreground, raw and honest and full of acceptance that a clear, right answer is not worth waiting for.

Ultimately, Saturn Return is about the trauma of rejection  emotional equilibrium. It is a cohesive set of songs that, Leeth hopes, can act to remind listeners that they are not alone, and that feelings pass as long as they are acknowledged, as long as we continue to grow, learn, and be open to the experience.

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Run Remedy - Dissent.

Run Remedy returns with Not at the Table out September 11th, a strikingly intimate and conceptually ambitious EP that blurs the line between indie pop, lo-fi experimentation and alternative storytelling. Written in solitude and brought to life in a shipping container studio in Manchester, the project captures something raw and immediate: a body of work built on instinct, trust, and an unfiltered emotional core. Today she shares 'Dissent' as another preview for the EP.

The EP moves through a sequence of physical and emotional spaces, unfolding like a 24-hour cycle. Each track occupies its own sonic landscape, shifting from hushed, acoustic vulnerability to cinematic swells and fractured, experimental textures, all tied together by Run Remedy’s precise, confessional lyricism.

Sonically, Not at the Table pushes further into genre-bending territory than ever before. Drawing on influences ranging from Elliott Smith and The Smiths to Mitski, Adrianne Lenker and St. Vincent, the EP balances delicate folk intimacy with art-pop edge, post-rock builds and moments of off-kilter humour. There’s a constant interplay between sincerity and theatricality - a refusal to settle into one tone for too long.

“The title came first: a house, a dinner table, and the idea of everything that can’t be said in that shared space. The artwork, painted by artist Lili Holland-Fricke, shows that house, with different tensions playing out in each room. Each section zooms in on a different part of what’s happening inside, almost like moving through the house and getting closer to the different conversations (or non-conversations) happening in it.” 

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Photo - Jen Dessinger

Ziemba - The Pleasure Seekers.

Ziemba has not released a record in nearly six years and she's back this October with this absolute stunner. At times contemplative and earthy but more often truly baroque and stellar, The Braid is meticulously crafted and full of art rock / sophisti-pop gems. Gorgeous album cover, extraordinary songwriting and execution, this record is totally arresting. The first single, "The Pleasure Seekers" is out today. 

"The Pleasure Seekers" is both true story and allegory: a "not-wise-man" at a bar in Montana really did tell Ziemba’s René Kladzyk the lessons he learned during a mushroom trip about bad angels on a pleasure cruise to earth, and she latched onto the idea. “At that time, I was struggling with my own tendency toward escapism, excess and addiction,” Kladzyk said. “The fantasy that, maybe this is what I was brought here to do, maybe all my excesses have a celestial justification – it held a real allure for me, delusional as it was.” The song is a fitting introduction to a record that carefully maps the boundaries between hope and fantasy, escape and home, aiming for somewhere between transcendence and acceptance.

Buzzing with ferocious intensity, “The Pleasure Seekers” is the sonic version of sprinting through the pouring rain with utter abandon, tits out. “Running like a faucet, full blast.” Production marries “Sandanista!”-era The Clash, “White Chalk”-era PJ Harvey, and ABBA-esque choral pop. It just gets bigger and bigger. This song is horny for Life and all its marrow, while every so often catching glimpses of what it is we’re running from, chasing rapture. 

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