Max Aurora & The Southern Lights - Klimt 1918 - Cello - Scarlett Macfarlane

Max Aurora & The Southern Lights - How I Know It's Right.

There is a particular kind of clarity that comes after walking away from a fractured relationship. Naarm/ Melbourne outfit Max Aurora & The Southern Lights capture that sentiment with their indie/ pop-punk anthem ‘How I Know It's Right’, out Thursday, April 23. For the unfamiliar, Max Aurora & The Southern Lights blend their dreamy, bittersweet indie rock with the punch of pop-punk and emo. Winners of Melbourne's Women in Music mentorship for their 2023 debut single, Max Aurora & The Southern Lights promise a stack of new music in 2026.

Blending driving indie instrumentals with the punch and immediacy of pop-punk, 'How I Know It's Right' is loud without losing control, as explosive arrangements meet Max Aurora’s unfiltered take on messy heartbreaks. Produced by Cry Club's Jono O'Tooke, the track is built on a tight, restless interplay between its members. The tune's beating heart brings overwhelming energy and a sense of craziness after a heartbreak as Jack Eden’s heavy, overdriven guitar riffs cut through the mix, grounded by Sonja Down’s punchy, controlled drums and Damon Brammall’s gritty basslines.

Paired with Max’s considered disposition and melodic hooks, the song explores the pull toward connection in the aftermath of an unstable relationship. 'How I Know It’s Right' unpacks these emotions through vulnerable lyricism set against the dynamic, explosive instrumentation. Speaking on the track, Max shares: “'Written in a single night, 'How I Know It’s Right' explores the quiet relief of leaving a fractured relationship and the curiosity of what a wholesome love could feel like. It explores the urgent, wide-eyed wonder of what a truly wholesome connection feels like, and the restless patience in searching for it.” 

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Klimt 1918 - Aventine.

Rome's post-rockers Klimt 1918 present their most introspective, sky-gazing side with the stylish video noir 'Aventine' as the next advance single taken from their forthcoming new full-length "Àmor". The Italians' fifth album has been slated for release on June 12, 2026. The band comment: "If 'Aventine' were a color, it would be a shade of cobalt", frontman Marco Soellner muses. "It would have the cool tones of night and moonlight piercing through the canopy of maritime pines in summer. It is a solitary gaze from the top of a hill. It is the city below, sleeping silently and obliviously."

The burning pulse of the sun's nuclear fire scorching the desert. The smooth sliding of glistening skin over other skin in a throbbing rhythm. The swelling hum of motion in a mass of bodies. Klimt 1918 capture many such fleeting moments in time and preserve them through cascading walls of sound and the elegant drone of guitars.

The Italian's fifth album, "Àmor", represents a climax of their acclaimed previous work into a most melancholic, sensual, and majestic collection of captivating music. "Àmor" was born out of silence, solitude and social distancing. Yet as a deliberate artistic counterpoint, Klimt 1918 decided to have all their new songs revolve around carnality, ardour, physical contact between bodies, and the urgent, compelling feelings that keep people awake at night.

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Cello - We Do What We Want (When We Want When We Want To).

Brighton-based artist Cello has released her defiant second single, “We Do What We Want (When We Want When We Want To)”. Ahead of her forthcoming album ‘Kung Fu Disco’, Cello returns with a raw, high-energy new single titled “We Do What We Want (When We Want When We Want To)”. Channelling that feeling that anything is possible, the track captures the chaos, camaraderie, and freedom of teenage rebellion.

Opening with the defiant declaration, “Hey! We ain’t coming back to the shack, out the back,” the song sets the tone immediately: a refusal to return to the places and expectations that try to hold you in place. Instead, the track plunges listeners into the gritty world of basement handouts and late-night gatherings – cramped, damp spaces where rules dissolve and the night stretches endlessly ahead.

The hook becomes a rallying cry for youthful independence – that fleeting moment in life where the boundaries feel breakable and the future feels wide open. More than just a song, the track serves as a snapshot of a feeling: the rush of youth, the thrill of breaking away, and the belief that for one night – or maybe forever – you can do exactly what you want.

Cello · We Do What We Want (When We Want When We Want To)

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Scarlett Macfarlane - Sorry.

Scarlett Macfarlane shares her latest single, “Sorry,” a deeply personal and emotionally charged pop-rock single that leans into themes of regret, self-reflection, and the complicated path toward forgiveness. Balancing pensive introspection with soaring, cathartic release, “Sorry” captures the weight of late-night thoughts and the quiet courage it takes to face them head-on.

“I wrote the song based on a bad night’s sleep due to some negative inner voices and an overactive mind,” Scarlett explains. “I wanted to be vulnerable about my inner demons and hope that anyone who heard it could feel seen, feel safe to recognize that we all make mistakes, big and small, and join me in the journey of self-acceptance.” Originally titled “Regret,” the song evolved into something more direct and universal. “It was always an apology: to others, to the world, to myself.”

What makes “Sorry” especially striking is its duality: a song that feels both humbling and empowering in equal measure. While it confronts the discomfort of accountability, it also embraces the strength required to be honest without diminishing one’s own experience. That tension runs throughout the track, building from hushed vulnerability into a powerful, full-bodied release.

The recording process itself mirrored that emotional intensity. “I wrote the first draft of this song in my car crying outside my gym,” Scarlett shares. “Recording it was liberating. Making the voices I heard in my head exist in real life was profound.” Those voices remain embedded in the song’s DNA; most notably in the layered, whispered intro where fragments of real, unspoken apologies are woven into the texture as a deeply personal and largely hidden detail.

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Cello - Jessie Altman - Deer Tick

Cello - Vitamins.

A post-punk mantra wrapped in biting wit and restless energy, “Vitamins” introduces Cello as a singular new voice: confrontational, playful, and uncomfortably honest. Built on hypnotic repetition and deadpan delivery, the track skewers modern expectations of femininity, wellness culture, productivity, and obedience — turning self-care into something transactional, absurd, and quietly furious.

The lyrics move like a checklist from hell: “I’ll do my homework… I’ll be a good girl… I’ll do the housework… I’ll do your therapy… I’ll do my workout…” Each line lands with increasing tension, exposing the invisible labour demanded of women — emotional, domestic, physical, and aesthetic. When Cello asks, “Why don’t you give them to me?” it becomes less about supplements and more about validation, agency, and control.

There’s humour here, but it’s sharp-edged. “Vitamins” dances between satire and sincerity, capturing the exhaustion of trying to be everything at once: healthy, productive, sexy, compliant, resilient. Its chant-like chorus — “Vitamins, vitamins, yeah yeah” — feels both euphoric and hollow, mirroring the endless cycle of self-improvement sold back to us.

Cello’s background gives her sound an unexpected depth. Nicknamed for her classical roots, she trained as a cellist at the Junior Royal College of Music in London before tearing up the rulebook and moving toward post-punk minimalism. That classical discipline still pulses beneath her work — not in ornamentation, but in control, tension, and dramatic pacing. Every repetition is intentional. Every silence is loaded.

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Jessie Altman - Sleepwalking (EP).

In Jessie's own words: “Sleepwalking” is about moving through life on autopilot - staying in the haze because it feels easier than waking up. It captures that period when you’re going through the motions of your life without being present, and the moment you start to wonder how long you can keep drifting.

Voxwave's Helena Lynch had this to say in summarizing the release  "After her debut album “Aftermath,” which received recognition, the new EP “Sleepwalking” by Jessie Altman demonstrates growing artistic depth and emotional nuances. 

The four tracks of the EP are united by the mood of soft morning light. The singer does not moralize, does not call for “awakening” in the name of something great; she has caught the moment between illusion and consciousness and has managed to distinguish feigned clarity and sincere bewilderment. The EP is for those who are finally ready to open their eyes and see reality in all its complex beauty."

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Photo - Richard McCaffrey

Deer Tick - Mary Singletary.

Providence’s Deer Tick have announced the 5th June release of their ninth studio album,  'Coin-O-Matic', via ATO. The LP casts a bright light on a little-known facet of the American mythos: the hidden histories of the band’s home state of Rhode Island, where the everyday dramas of working-class families long collided with the menace of the mafia underworld. 

As they tapped into their infinite fascination with that strange duality, singer/guitarist John McCauley, guitarist/singer Ian O’Neil, drummer/singer Dennis Ryan, and bassist Christopher Ryan assembled a batch of songs exploring desperation, grief, redemption, and resilience with both cinematic detail and lived-in emotionality. A sharp new turn from one of indie-rock’s most enduringly vital forces, Coin-O-Matic arrives as a complicated love letter to a way of life slowly slipping from the collective memory.   
 
'Coin-O-Mati'c is deeply informed by the singular experience of growing up Irish-Catholic. That is exemplified by the album’s lead single, the ramshackle jangle-pop “Mary Singletary”, which Deer Tick share today. It tells a tender yet irreverent tale of interfaith teenage lust. “Most of the stories on the album are from my parents’ generation and the generation before that, when the idea of a Catholic and a Protestant getting together was very scandalous,” says McCauley. “With that song in particular, I liked the idea of writing about Catholic guilt and pre-marital sex and adding in a little bit of Looney Tunes-style violence—sometimes as a young Catholic boy, I did imagine a vengeful God cutting me down in a cartoonish kind of way.”

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