20-year-old singer/songwriter avalon has always had the same mission, remain authentic and use her music to show people the beauty in simply being human. With the release of her newest single, “sydney,” avalon proves that she is indeed sticking to her mission. “sydney” is a gut-punching honest ballad that finds avalon processing loss in real time.
“I wrote this song about my childhood best friend, whose name is actually Sydney,” shares avalon. “After 11 years, when we were both 16, our friendship ended quite abruptly. Fast forward to last year: I was going through a hard time in my life and all I wanted was my best friend. I began to mourn her. And mourning someone who is still alive is incredibly difficult. This song is many things: It’s a time capsule, a love letter, an apology, and an overdue, proper, goodbye to someone I will love for the rest of my life.”
avalon (born Avalon Annaliese Rose Baker) has built a reputation for turning her innermost thoughts into emotionally charged pop songs that feel both intimate and universal. Raised in Studio City in a home steeped in creativity—her mother runs the legendary Millennium Dance Complex—avalon began writing, producing, and recording at just 14. Early demos like “Perfume” and “How to Lie” went viral on TikTok, and her official debut single “look what you did to her” (October 2024) amassed over 77 million views, establishing avalon as one of alt-pop’s most magnetic new voices.
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Dragon Inn 3, the electronic pop project led by former Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin co-founder Philip Dickey, releases its new EP Full Disclosure this week via American Laundromat Records. The special limited-edition cassette release arrives in celebration of Cassette Store Week 2025 and is also available digitally.
The eight-track EP features four brand-new songs alongside four previously released digital singles, blending the band’s signature mix of dreamy synth-pop, sparkling power pop, and timeless melodic hooks.
The first four songs on Full Disclosure - “Send Your Love,” “Never Lost,” “Yer Too Good,” and “Taking It Back” - were written over the course of three decades, reflecting the band’s evolving creative life. Grace Bentley began “Never Lost” as a teenager in 2002, while Philip Dickey started “Send Your Love” in 2015 and found inspiration to finish it after watching True Romance for the first time last year. “Yer Too Good” and “Taking It Back” were co-written by Dickey and his sister and bandmate Sharon Hamm earlier this year.
“We could not have made these songs without some of our new and old friends,” says Dickey. “Ryan Wasoba, who I played shows with in the early 2000s, helped us record guitars on ‘Never Lost.’ Our new friends Nick Wilkerson on drums, Brandon Yangmi as recording engineer, and Scoops Dardaris on mixing helped us out on everything else.”
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Alex Little steps forward with “Sounds Like A Deal,” the first single from her forthcoming EP Spider in the Sink. A Vancouver-born songwriter with roots in both punk clubs and family record collections, Little distills years of playing, listening, and living into a song that refuses to look away from exploitation and spectacle. The track arrives with all the grit, energy, and sharp-eyed honesty that have made her one of the most compelling voices to emerge from the city’s rock underground.
Raised between False Creek and Commercial Drive, Little grew up absorbing a wide spectrum of sounds. Her mom played her The Replacements and Bowie, her dad brought The Beatles and Iggy Pop, and early shows included Roxy Music and Tom Jones before she turned ten. She first sat behind the kit in high school and in the punk band Vapid, before moving to the front of the stage with Alex Little and the Suspicious Minds. With Spider in the Sink, she now claims her name as a solo artist, writing songs that are unvarnished, melodic, and lived-in.
Produced by James Younger of Yukon Blonde, “Sounds Like A Deal” was sparked by Little’s reaction to a recent documentary on The Jerry Springer Show. “The poor treatment and exploitation of the people on the show was truly awful and I needed to sing about it,” she says. That urgency comes through in every line, as she transforms outrage into a searing rock anthem. The track was developed with guitarist and partner Adam Sabla, who worked closely with Alex to translate her ideas into arrangements and provided guitar parts and textures to support her vision. Powered by Tony Dallas on drums and Hayz Fisher on bass, the single embodies the wiry garage-rock riffs and new-wave edge that define the EP.
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