White Birches - Best Bear - Baldy Crawlers - Libby Ember - Crow and Gazelle

Photo - Ekaterina Iakiamseva

White Birches - Solace.

White Birches released their third album A New Reign last November. The album was praised for its balance of precision and vulnerability and was featured on several “best of 2026” lists. On May 1 (2026) they return with Solace, the third single from the album. Solace was the last song written for A New Reign. It captures a fleeting shift — the first sense of life returning after a period of darkness. Brief, uncertain, but impossible to ignore.

Many of the album’s songs revolve around enduring grief. Solace moves in a different direction — toward being present, even if only for a moment. “We needed to close the album with something reminiscent of hope and light,” says Jenny Gabrielsson Mare. “We tend to stay in darker spaces, and that matters. But there also has to be room for something else, for solace”.

Alongside the single, Fredrik Jonasson of White Birches has created a video. The release also includes a B-side: a cover of Invincible by Pat Benatar, originally featured in The Legend of Billie Jean a song about holding your ground in the face of injustice.


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Best Bear - Bare Minimum.

Philadelphia, Pa emo pop band Best Bear have signed to HHBTM Records, and announced a mini east coast tour along with a debut new video for "Bare Minimum." This band was a big discovery for the label in late 2022, but timing just didn't work out. Fast forward a few years later and the band are working on their follow up record and things just connected. 

First hearing Best Bear was like first seeing Bad Banana before they became Swearin and Waxahatchee blew up, or when first getting to hear Snail Mail when a friend passed me a demo. There are bands you just know are gonna hit the moment and I feel like Best Bear has that same potential. Gut wrenching heart on the sleeve honesty through the lyrics, pop sensibilities for crafting hooks, and a voice so fragile but so strong from the emotional depth of what is be sung. The new Best Bear album won't be out until early 2027, but the band are doing some shows through the east coast and they are debuting a new video directed by Jay Miller titled "Bare Minimum."

Known for their emotionally direct songwriting and dynamic, slow-building arrangements, the project centers around songs written by Blue Barnett, with a rotating lineup of collaborators shaping the live band. “Bare Minimum” captures the tension of giving everything you have in a relationship while being made to feel like it still falls short. The video mirrors that emotional arc, pairing performance with cinematic, narrative-driven visuals that emphasize isolation, imbalance, and eventual release.

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Baldy Crawlers - On Those Who Starve Children.

Baldy Crawlers release the deeply insightful new single “On Those Who Starve Children”.  Written in light of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the track is now available on all streaming platforms. 

Blending West Coast soul with East Coast grit, “On Those Who Starve Children” hits as much like a curse as it does a song. Baldy Crawlers leaves nothing unsaid, creating a bold, yet incredibly relevant track that is meant to have you spiraling. Written and directed at those who weaponize hunger against youth, "On Those Who Starve Children" forces the listener into the perpetrator's conscience—one victim at a time, forever. 

Recorded earlier in the year, “On Those Who Starve Children” was co-produced by Barry Wood and engineered by Jon Crawford at Village Tracks. In addition to the haunting lyrics, the track would be incomplete without the mesmerizing, yet soul-crushing vocals of Elizabeth Hangan. Sonically taking inspiration from Bob Dylan or Tom Waits, the track may sound quiet, but its message has never been louder or clearer.

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Libby Ember - I'll Stand in the Doorway.

Following the releases of acclaimed singles “Let Me Go” and “News at the Party” earlier this year, both of which garnered Spotify Editorial support, Montreal singer-songwriter Libby Ember returns with “I’ll Stand in the Doorway.” Amidst heart-sinking melancholy, it captures the emotional limbo of moving through a breakup while remaining tethered to someone’s world. Wrapped in dreamy, bedroom pop textures, “I’ll Stand in the Doorway” explores longing, proximity, and the quiet tension of being emotionally outside looking in.

Inspired by a real experience following a breakup, “I’ll Stand in the Doorway” reflects the strange emotional state of navigating a shared neighbourhood with an ex. Libby describes walking through familiar streets while on edge, bracing for the possibility of unexpected encounters and the resurfacing of memory in everyday spaces.

At its core, the song’s title becomes a metaphor for emotional boundaries and lingering attachment. It reflects the feeling of not being able to step back into someone’s life, while still holding space for reconnection. “I can’t actually step back into the room, someone’s life,” Libby explains. “But I’m telling them that I’ll never be far away and if they ever want to let me back in, I’ll be ready.”

Sonically, the track leans into a fuller, more immersive production style than Libby’s earlier releases. Built from layers of electric guitars, synths, and drums, the arrangement mirrors the intensity of crowded thoughts and unresolved emotion. Rather than stripping things back, the production embraces density to reflect how sadness can feel amplified rather than simplified.

Libby Ember · I'll Stand in the Doorway

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Photo - Myriam Riand

Crow and Gazelle - Belly of the Beast.

Texas-based duo Crow and Gazelle share their new single “Belly of the Beast,” the latest offering from their forthcoming album Truth Be Told, out this June. The band has also announced a run of shows throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to celebrate the album’s release. Truth Be Told is a sweeping, spiritually charged concept record that explores love, power, survival, and the truths buried beneath generations of fear, told through the voices of a woman and a man navigating a collapsing world.

Where lead single “Fall How It Will” introduced the album’s emotional and philosophical foundation, “Belly of the Beast” marks a turning point, where reflection gives way to confrontation. With doubled vocals and a driving, almost incantatory rhythm, the song unfolds like a spell, calling into question the systems we’ve been taught to accept as inevitable.

At its core, “Belly of the Beast” wrestles with the entangled forces of patriarchal religion, capitalism, and colonization, reframing them not as divine or natural orders, but as constructs built to dominate and divide. Through the lens of the album’s central heroine, a woman aligned with nature, memory, and resistance, the song imagines a path toward dismantling those systems from within.

“It’s a deeply spiritual war we’re under,” the band explains. “With violence, exploitation, and environmental destruction becoming normalized, we’re being asked to forget who we are and where we come from. This song is about remembering and about believing that love, not domination, is the force that will ultimately undo what’s been built.”

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Carrie Clark - Crow and Gazelle - Serafima and The Shakedowns - Sunnan

Carrie Clark - Resistor (EP).

Since the late 1990s, Carrie Clark has been a familiar presence within the Hamilton, Ontario music scene, contributing her bass and vocal talents to myriad albums and live performances by local artists. Most recently, Clark has become a full-fledged member of alt-country outfit Matt Paxton & The Pintos [now simply The Pintos], whose 2023 EP Tornado received international acclaim. However, since 2020 Clark has been creating her own music, and subsequently released her debut EP, Roll Me Up Integrity, two years later. She has now followed it up with Resistor, a six-track collection that highlights her expansive musical range. 

Working with Marco Bressette at Hamilton’s Deadquarters Studio, Clark called upon many colleagues to contribute to the sessions, but despite the variety of musical voices, Resistor adheres to Clark’s distinct creative vision.“I feel fortunate to have so many stellar musician friends,” she says. “We have all played together in so many unique situations, so recording is quite a natural and meditative experience. Marco and I have been friends since we were 16, rocking out in our early original bands.”

Resistor lifts off seductively with the atmospheric and semi-spoken “What Is Water,” which contains hints of the Hamilton scene’s patron saint Daniel Lanois. However, the song’s main inspiration, as Carrie explains, came from a Bruce Lee quote, “be water, my friend.” “The choices we make in any given moment define us, regardless of the choices made in the past, much like the fluidity of water. The calm lake after a storm doesn’t reveal a trace of the waves. You have to look at the surrounding land to discover its effects. The water itself can only be what it is at that moment.”

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Photo - Myriam Riand

Crow and Gazelle - Fall How It Will.

Texas-based duo Crow and Gazelle announce their forthcoming album Truth Be Told, out May 15, with the release of its lead single “Fall How It Will.” A sweeping, spiritually charged concept album, Truth Be Told explores love, power, survival, and the truths buried beneath generations of fear. Across its songs, the duo tells the story of a woman and a man navigating a collapsing world, reckoning with inherited harm, confronting patriarchal control, and searching for a more liberated way to live and love.

“Fall How It Will” is a haunting meditation on religious trauma and return. Framed as a moment of care between the record’s two central characters, the song rejects the lie of original sin in favor of something more expansive: original love. With imagery of a boundless garden and the well of knowledge alive within us all, it becomes a quiet call to recognize one’s own worthiness - to lie down somewhere easy and let the night “fall how it will.”

“We live in a world shaped by shame that was never truly ours to carry,” Lawrence explains. “When you’re taught to believe you are inherently unworthy, that love only counts if it looks a certain way, it creates fear and separation. But love, real love, draws us back to the truth. It reminds us there was never anything wrong with us to begin with.”

Crow and Gazelle is Oklahoma Red Dirt pioneer Mike McClure and multidisciplinary artist Chrislyn Lawrence, whose creative partnership sits at the center of the album’s force. McClure, a founding member of The Great Divide and an Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductee, is also a widely respected producer whose work has helped shape artists including Cross Canadian Ragweed, Turnpike Troubadours, and Kaitlin Butts. Lawrence brings an equally vital perspective as a poet, filmmaker, community organizer, and trauma-informed healer. Together, they create work that confronts difficult questions about belief, belonging, grief, and the myths that govern our lives.

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Serafima and The Shakedowns - I’ll Be Around / The Slender Rowan.

BWGiBWGAN just released “I’ll Be Around / The Slender Rowan,” the new double A-side single from Serafima and the Shakedowns. It’s the second single to be taken from the band’s debut album Ride Easy, on May 1.

Clocking in at under two minutes, “I’ll Be Around” is a life-affirming burst of pure joy - a heart-skipping showdown of warmth, colour, and bright-eyed promise that leaves you beaming. Serafima delivers it with a splash of old-time golden charm, kicking up a little dust and letting the good times lead the way. It’s the thrill of catching a face across the room your heart can’t quite forget, and that playful little thought drifting through your mind - “maybe I’ll let you take me out!!”. Cowboy boots filled with swagger, a melody that grins from ear to ear, and the Shakedowns riding an easy, buoyant groove make the whole thing feel like a two-step you didn’t know you needed.

On the flip side, “The Slender Rowan” reveals another shade of the band’s world. An arrangement of the traditional Russian folk song, it finds Serafima singing in fluent Russian while the Shakedowns lean into the melody’s old-world sway. The result feels both playful and timeless - a reminder that the band’s roots run wide, and that tradition can still feel alive on a dance floor.

Serafima’s songwriting sits somewhere between classic storytelling and left-field pop instinct. You can hear echoes of Johnny and June Carter Cash, Joni Mitchell, and Cake - not as pastiche, but as shared DNA. Her lyrics hit you in the heart and stick in your head - wry, time-twisting verses as deceptively complex as the lives they describe.

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Sunnan - Longing To Miss You.

Following their Swedish Grammy–nominated debut, the success of the Cinema Sound System EP, and their latest single “Sail (Lady In Waiting),” critically acclaimed cinematic soul outfit Sunnan recently returned with “Longing To Miss You” — the second single from their forthcoming sophomore album Spaghetti Soul, set for release in Autumn 2026.

According to the band, “Longing To Miss You” was the true spark behind Spaghetti Soul — the melody and emotional core that ignited the vision for the entire record. Written and recorded inside Fårö Church, with Ingmar Bergman resting just beyond its walls, the song was born in a setting deeply intertwined with the band’s cinematic identity.

The band explains: “Longing To Miss You emerged through questions of life, death, and how we all must learn to cope with the fact that loving also means losing.” With their signature Western-inspired sound — arpeggiated guitars, sweeping strings, and expansive arrangements — Sunnan explore loss not as inevitable doom, but as something that gives love its meaning. The result is a cinematic soundscape woven with melancholic lyricism — a testament to the strength, fragility, and enduring vitality of human emotion.

That vision carries into Spaghetti Soul, an album that deepens Sunnan’s cinematic exploration while expanding their sonic palette. If debut album Cinema was the feature film and Cinema Sound System the after party, Spaghetti Soul is their most immersive statement yet: a bold fusion of Italian Western grandeur and classic soul, filtered through a modern lens. The album positions Sunnan at the forefront of their self-defined genre, where orchestral drama meets raw emotional immediacy.

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