Following a taster with the release of ‘The Hunt’ Gothenburg alternative rock six-piece Divers released their new EP Shapeshifting last Friday via Little Low Recordings. The band's most expansive and fully-formed release to date, Shapeshifting is an EP about the person you become when life stops asking for your permission. Four tracks that move between weight and wonder, shadow and open air — each one circling the same essential question: who are you on the other side of change?
"I saw a film clip of myself yesterday, from when I was 30 years old," Lina explains. "I reacted to the fact that I was so young and unspoiled, not burdened by life. You think you've been through things at 30, but you have relatively no idea." It's that sense of growth, change and hard-won perspective — what Lina describes as echoing Bowie's belief that only when we get older do we become who we were meant to be when we were young — that runs through every track on the EP.
Recorded at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin — where David Bowie, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave all created landmark work — Shapeshifting finds Divers reaching a new dimension. Across four songs, the band deliver their most intricate and ambitious material yet, emerging from the sessions with the kind of creative resurgence long associated with the famous studio. With a wingspan that encompasses the band's entire palette from dark to sheer, it is their most fully realised release to date.
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Helsinki-based artist i know her just released her debut EP, At Least I Know How To Love. An honest, unflinching account of what it means to love people, lose them, and refuse to close off because of it. Built across nearly three years in her own studio, in libraries and cafés, the EP moves through toxic relationships and real pain, before arriving — bruised but open — at something that feels like grace.
Sonically, At Least I Know How To Love lives in the space between the intimate and the cinematic. Acoustic warmth bleeds into electronic texture. Quiet moments crack open into something overwhelming. Even its imperfections were chosen — an out-of-tune ukulele sits deliberately buried in one track, kept because it felt more true than any polished alternative. As i know her puts it: "I see myself as a very kind person — you could call me a people pleaser — and that has shaped my experiences in relationships. Although I've faced situations where my kindness has been taken for granted, I haven't let that harden me."
That refusal to harden is what makes the EP's focus track, "You," so quietly devastating. It is a song for someone so extraordinary that every available frame of reference — every film, every poem, every book — falls short. Not a lament, not a longing, but something closer to awe: the specific, disorienting feeling of loving someone your own words cannot reach. "None of these movies could capture your beauty, not a poem nor a book could ever come close to describing you." "Let them call it whatever they want but it's an understatement to call this love."
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| Photo - William McBell |
Danielle Nicole is excited to announce the release of her new album Fireflies, arriving August 28 via 40 Below Records. Alongside the announcement, Nicole is sharing the album’s powerful new single, “Tug Of War,” a soulful anthem about reclaiming strength in the face of imbalance and emotional exhaustion. “I wrote ‘Tug Of War’ for anyone finding themself no longer willing to accept the terms of a one way relationship,” says Danielle.
Long celebrated for her commanding voice, masterful bass playing, and emotionally fearless songwriting, Danielle Nicole traces the beginning of her musical journey back to a transformative moment in her teenage years: seeing Etta James perform live in Kansas City. "We had a great blues festival in Kansas City,” Nicole recalls, “and I was able to see Etta James perform. She was fearless. My parents were musicians who played in cover bands, so music was always part of my family — but I didn’t realize I wanted to sing and perform, too, until I heard Etta.”
That reverence for the great soul singers, storytellers, and trailblazers who came before her has fueled a career spanning nearly 25 years, including 10 Blues Music Awards, a Grammy nomination, and international acclaim as both a songwriter and performer. With Fireflies, Nicole delivers what may be her most personal and musically adventurous statement yet — a raw, deeply felt collection recorded live to analog tape that explores grief, resilience, empowerment, and transformation through a rich blend of blues, soul, R&B, and roots music.
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Cassius Wolf & Das Abs is the musical project of Cassius Wolf and Don Watson. Formed in Liverpool during the original wave of post-punk and new wave, the project began when Cassius met Don at school at the age of 11. The two later worked together at the now-legendary Liverpool club Eric’s, where they were immersed in the energy of the city’s thriving music scene, and officially formed the band in 1978. Surrounded by the influence of bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, OMD, and The Teardrop Explodes, their sound took shape through a shared love of independent creativity, punk attitude, and melodic experimentation. Decades later, that same spirit is driving the band’s long-awaited return, as archived material from their early recordings is being carefully restored, remixed, and introduced to a new audience.
The band’s latest release “Losing Sleep” offers a fresh insight into the scope of their upcoming album An Afternoon in Bedlam, due for release on 29 May 2026. Returning to a more direct post-punk style, the track leans into an anthemic, guitar-driven pop-punk sound, capturing the intensity of a relationship that begins to take over your thoughts to the point of distraction. There’s a sense of urgency running through it, where fixation and emotion blur into something more consuming.
Drawing from the lineage of early eighties post-punk, the track carries the spirit of bands like The Wild Swans, whose influence helped shape the northern scene, bridging the gap between Echo & the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, and later acts such as The Lightning Seeds, The Lotus Eaters, The Icicle Works and James. “Losing Sleep” is also rooted in the legacy of Paul Simpson and the musical imprint of Ian Broudie, channelling that same melodic instinct and emotional pull.
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Irish blues-rock artist Gráinne Duffy continues her ascent as one of modern blues and roots music’s most compelling voices with the release of her new album What Am I Supposed to Do, available now alongside the album’s powerful title track and accompanying video.
Built around a driving guitar riff and emotionally charged lyrics, “What Am I Supposed to Do” captures both personal unrest and the chaos of the world at large. “This song is typically rock style in terms of its structure and feel,” says Duffy. “There is a sense of reflection here between the madness outside in the world and something that is also in flux or in need of repair on the inside emotionally.” Recorded in Los Angeles in January 2025 while wildfires swept through the city, the song’s opening line — “Whole world is crazy, fallin’ down outside” — took on an especially poignant meaning during the sessions.
Legendary drummer Kenny Aronoff, who performs on the record, described the track as “a mix of U2 and The Rolling Stones,” underscoring the album’s blend of expansive rock energy and roots-driven soul.
Recorded at 64 Sound Studio in Los Angeles, What Am I Supposed to Do was co-produced by Justin Stanley and Marc Ford of The Black Crowes. The album features an all-star lineup including Aronoff (John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney), bassist Jørgen Carlsson of Gov’t Mule, keyboardist Peter Levin, Ford, and Duffy’s longtime collaborator Paul Sherry.
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