 |
| Photo - Jenna Elson |
It is frustrating waiting for someone to change, and even more so when defeat and hopelessness begin to settle in. Perth/Boorloo-based artist EDIE captures that anger and despair as she ushers in a new era on her latest single 'Fall Of Man', out Thursday, March 26. Following her 2024 EP 'unsaid' and the sharp-edged singles 'Bleed' and 'Girl’s Girl', 'Fall Of Man' signals a striking shift in EDIE's sound. Where her earlier releases leaned into indie pop/ alt-rock, she trades guitars for synths in this new chapter.
Exploring darker, alternative electro-pop, sparse synth lines and a pulsing electronic drumbeat form the foundation, allowing EDIE’s melodic verses and ominous choruses to sit front and centre. The result is an entrancing composition with a dreamlike quality.
Co-written with Calvin Bennett, 'Fall Of Man' pairs EDIE's biting lyricism with hypnotic pop production. Controlled and restrained in its opening moments, the track slowly builds tension as EDIE’s vocals hover over the minimal arrangement. What begins as a slow-burning atmosphere gradually swells into a cathartic final section, where waves of synths surge beneath her voice, releasing long-held emotion.
The track explores the emotional exhaustion that comes from trying to help someone who refuses to change, capturing the moment when hope begins to give way to resignation. Speaking on the meaning behind the song, EDIE explains: “This song explores my frustration about someone who is not willing to change or not willing to listen. It’s that feeling of defeat and hopelessness you get when you realise you can’t fix that person.”
============================================================================
DOPESICKFLY’s brand-new single “Side2Side” is a high-energy track that encourages listeners to let loose, get on their feet and move their bodies. The song blends the best of Funk, Soul, Disco, and HipHop to create an upbeat anthem about living life to the fullest and dancing the night away.
With its unique blend of genres, catchy hooks, and infectious beat, “Side2Side” is the perfect soundtrack for anyone looking to add some excitement and motivation to their daily routine. The lyrics reflect the band’s commitment to living life on their own terms. "We're excited to share this new single with the world," says Ant Thomaz, the band’s frontman. "We hope it brings people together, gets them moving, and inspires them to chase their dreams.” This single drop is ahead of their new EP "I Woke Up On My Good Side” due out Summer 2026.
DOPESICKFLY is a band built on friendship, chance encounters, and a deep love of groove and soul. Frontman Ant Thomaz, a singer-songwriter with Creole heritage, is known for his eclectic musical style. Nearly a decade ago in Glasgow, he met singer Wendy Rae at an open mic and was struck by the power and feeling in her voice. When they sang together, the chemistry was instant. What began as friends playing small shows quickly felt like family, with Ant and Wendy sharing lead vocals and a musical bond that reached beyond the stage.
============================================================================
Dani Ivory is back with her EP No Other Way, a project that reads like a late-night confession you weren’t meant to overhear. It’s intimate, unfiltered, and emotionally relentless. At the center of it all is “Looney Bin,” a track that doesn’t just set the tone for the EP, but defines it. “Looney Bin” is messy, loud, and self-aware in a way that feels intentional. Sonically, it leans bright and almost carefree, but underneath that gloss is heartbreak dressed up as rebellion. Ivory comes in swinging: “I’ve been beating down every single door / I got no good shoes left to throw I’m looking for some more / I just can’t wrap my head tight around the thought / You’ve had enough of my love don’t want me no more”
There’s no poetic cushioning, she says it plain and simple. You feel the exhaustion, the disbelief, the sting of realizing the love you were pouring out is no longer wanted. Then the chorus hits, and the unraveling becomes visual: “I turn into a wreck, a nasty mess / Mascara dripping, big hair flippin’ party bitch / I drink too much wine, I stay up all night / I’m a different woman when you’re roaming / Yeah I’m losing my mind to the Looney Bin” This is the heart of the EP. “Looney Bin” isn’t romanticizing chaos, it’s documenting it. Ivory doesn’t pretend she’s thriving. The “Looney Bin” isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind when love turns into abandonment and the house that once felt like home starts closing in.
That diary-like unraveling flows into the rest of No Other Way. On the gut-wrenching ballad “Anymore,” she trades chaos for clarity: “I ain't got much help / Well, I’ve got myself wrapped in a bunch / When I had a hunch you were creepin' behind closed doors / I'm not yours. No, no no no, I’m not yours anymore” Then there’s “Get Through,” which feels like bargaining in real time: “So, we’re gonna get through / There’s no other way around it /We can’t hop skip or go backward / We looked our whole damn lives and found it / Though all my friends think I’m absurd / For sticking around and watching you drown / But if you go down, baby, I go down”
And when you’re in the trenches of losing the person you love, “Hope” becomes exactly what its title suggests, the fragile thread you cling to when logic says let go. This EP is full of feeling, not just sadness, but anger, denial, devotion, and desperation. Dani Ivory stands brave in the middle of it all, spilling every thought without flinching. No Other Way doesn’t offer easy resolutions. Instead, it offers truth, and sometimes, that’s the only way through.
============================================================================
 |
| Photo - Zache Davis |
Los Angeles, California’s J Mau & The Kiss Off emerge from what they lovingly call their “beloved hellhole” with their debut single “Poison,” out March 25. Founded in 2025 by Justin “J Mau” Maurer, longtime punk lifer and founder of Clorox Girls, Suspect Parts, L.A. Drugz, and Maniac, the project finds Maurer turning toward something darker and dustier without losing the bite that’s always defined him. “Poison” is a cinematic honky tonk murder ballad filtered through decades of West Coast punk history. It’s the first glimpse of a songwriter who’s always followed the feeling, even when it led somewhere uncomfortable.
Maurer’s story isn’t mythology. It’s messy and real. A CODA raised between Los Angeles and Bainbridge Island by a single Deaf mother, American Sign Language was his first language. Punk became his second. After surviving a turbulent childhood and helping put his abusive father in jail as a teenager, Maurer found autonomy in the underground. By fifteen he was booking shows and touring. By twenty he was releasing records and circling the globe with Clorox Girls. Along the way he built a parallel career as one of the country’s most respected ASL interpreters, working alongside prominent political figures like Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden, stage interpreting for punk legends like Alice Bag and The Avengers, interpreting Deaf actor Troy Kotsur’s historic 2022 Academy Award acceptance speech, and appearing with Kotsur on Curb Your Enthusiasm. His life has always moved between worlds.
After stints living in Madrid, London, and Baja California, and in the wake of a divorce that leveled him, Maurer found himself flat on his back in an East Hollywood apartment, cowboy boots still on, old country records spinning. Hank Williams. Buck Owens. Merle Haggard. Gram Parsons. Kris Kristofferson. Townes Van Zandt. He finally understood it. “Real country music is poetry,” Maurer says. “It’s about failure, heartbreak, and the tragic human condition. Music to laugh and cry and live and die by.” That rock-bottom clarity led him to write “Poison.”
============================================================================
 |
| Photo - Corey Poluk |
Yea-Ming and the Rumors have announced that they will release a new album, titled Residue, on Bay Area label, Dandy Boy Records, on June 12th. Bay Area indie pop band Yea-Ming and The Rumours return with their fourth studio album, Residue. With Yea-Ming’s signature heart-tugging lyrics and Nico-esq voice, she continues to explore the rawness of human experience and emotions. While 2024’s I Can’t Have It All signified a time of change and transition for Yea-Ming, Residue embraces the reset and the examination of reality after a storm, grappling with the overbearing nature of memory (remembering and forgetting) while submitting to the coarseness of love, intimacy and regret.
With the help of long-time collaborator Eóin Galvin (Hoxton Mob, Readyville) on lead guitar and lap steel, Ryli colleagues Rob Good (The Goods, Ryli) on bass and Luke Robbins (Ryli, R.E. Seraphin) on drums, Yea-Ming takes us on a journey of regrowth, with songs like Paper Doll where she admits inauthenticity in a world where one has been taught to please everyone around them to survive. In Treasury of Loved Ones, Yea-Ming explores the permanence of memory, or what appears to be permanent even as time moves on and erases moments out of our lives.
It’s a sweet and sad ode to remembering our loved ones, especially those we have lost to in time and in death. In Fine Afternoon, we are confronted with the reality of a tainted rebirth as Yea-Ming sings “in this life renewed, you’re my residue” (here we find our album title) and we remember that resets are never clean. The Rumours explore a little bit musically this time as well, which you hear in uncharacteristic danceable numbers like in the catchy but vulnerable and sensuous St. Etienne-like Sweet Opiate. While Good served as the band’s skilled recording engineer, Yea-Ming mixed the album at home; her vision realized through exploring texture, rhythm and sound, making Residue a Yea-Ming production through and through.
============================================================================
