 |
| Photo - Jeff Sebens |
Heather Anne Lomax kicks off a bold new chapter with the release of “Step Aside,” the new single from her forthcoming album Who Do You Think You Are, due August 28th via The Blackbird Record Label. Driven by big guitars, powerful vocals, and the raw energy of classic Rock & Roll, the track sets the tone for an album built on instinct, reinvention, and following your own path.
“I wanted to write a bombastic barn burner,” says Lomax. “It’s actually based on my move from Los Angeles to Las Vegas — ‘I’m jumpin’ off a cliff now…won’t someone catch me, I’m taking a dive, can’t keep on living like I’m half alive.’”
Driven by big guitars, powerful vocals, and the energy of classic 1970s Rock & Roll records, “Step Aside” introduces an album that blends Blues, Rock, and Soul with the honest storytelling that has always been at the heart of Lomax’s music.
The inspiration for the new album started during a special night onstage at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. After releasing her previous record, Lomax added a couple of songs by the L.A. rock band Broken Homes into her live set, and something clicked. It felt like everything lined up at exactly the right moment. That spark became the beginning of a deeply collaborative album built around instinct, friendship, and musicians creating together.
============================================================================
Houndmouth releases their first album in five years, the Brad Cook-produced Lordy, via Dualtone Records. With its naked honesty, Lordy takes a stripped-back approach to Houndmouth's ever-evolving sound. It's an album about surviving, rebuilding, accepting, and thriving once more. Myers wrote most of the record's songs at home, strumming his Martin guitar while sunshine streamed through the kitchen windows. Years ago, he might've composed the record at night, tossing back a few drinks for encouragement. This was different. Clear-headed and wide awake, Myers reclaimed his muse during the daytime hours, starting with songs like "Tiger Blood" — a ragged folk-rocker that builds its way toward a screaming finish — and the album's gorgeously intimate title track.
For two years, Myers struggled to finish new songs. The end of one relationship. The beginning of another. The all-consuming feeling of new love. Myers' life had been eventful, both onstage and off, and all that living didn't leave him much time to create. Things changed when he paid a visit to Cook, the Grammy-winning producer who'd overseen Houndmouth's fourth record, Good For You. What began as a reunion of two friends soon gave way to something bigger: the restart of Myers' songwriting engines and, in its wake, the creation of Lordy.
Cook played an integral role in Lordy's creation — not just as a producer, but as a close friend and confidante, too. "When I visited him in North Carolina for the first time, he walked out of his garage and gave me a big bear hug," Myers says. "He told me he was happy for me, and he gave me a lot of confidence with my new songs."
Cook also reached out to others, surrounding Myers with a small circle of musicians who, like him, blurred the lines between modern-day indie music and the old-school roots of Americana. Iron & Wine's Sam Beam stopped by the studio during the creation of the album's final track, "Holy Moses," to offer advice and encouragement. Lenderman paid a visit, too, adding his trademark guitar licks — loose, lo-fi, and full of life — to multiple tracks. Phil Cook (Megafaun, Hiss Golden Messenger) played on several songs, as did Houndmouth's keyboardist, Caleb Hickman. For Myers, the musical input was uplifting. "I've spent years working with peers and contemporaries," he says, "but this felt different. I was surrounded by people who were literally trying to pick me up and help me out. They pushed me to do the work."
============================================================================
Barrie, ON-based indie folk artist Rogan Mei shares Dickies Green Plaid Jacket, a nostalgic collection of songs that wrestles with the people, places, memories, and former versions of ourselves we struggle to leave behind. Blending indie folk, Americana, rock, and alternative influences, the EP captures a period of searching for meaning, identity, connection, and a sense of home while embracing the uncertainty that comes with growth.
The project takes its name from a real jacket Rogan discovered after moving back home following a difficult forest firefighting season out west. Worn, ill-fitting, and long past its prime, the jacket gradually became a symbol for something much larger.
“It doesn’t fit me. It doesn’t suit me. It doesn’t even do its job particularly well,” Rogan explains. “I realized the jacket had become a symbol for a lot of things in my life. People, memories, dreams, and versions of myself that no longer fit, but that I couldn’t seem to part with.”
Dickies Green Plaid Jacket explores heartbreak, friendship, nostalgia, identity, and the tension between holding on and moving forward. Though each song approaches those themes from a different angle, a common thread runs throughout the project. “I think the main theme is searching,” Rogan says. “The characters in these songs are searching for meaning, searching for love, searching for home, or searching for who they’re supposed to be.”
============================================================================
Toronto's Doghouse Rose just returned with "It Gets Worse," the second advance single from their upcoming album Born To Break Even, due July 31 on Stomp Records. Where the album's title track leaned into the band's skate-punk roots, "It Gets Worse" turns the spotlight toward one of Doghouse Rose's greatest strengths: songwriting. Packed with towering harmonies, razor-sharp hooks, and enough power-pop charm to make Tsar, The Muffs, and No Doubt proud, the track proves that the band's biggest asset has never been speed. It's their ability to write choruses that stick around long after the last guitar chord fades.
Founded by best friends Sarah Beth and Jefferson Sheppard and rounded out by Gregory Laraigne and cousins Jordan and Garrick Zagerman, Doghouse Rose have spent more than a decade building their reputation one show at a time. From festival stages and packed clubs to community halls, dive bars, and even prisons, the Toronto five-piece has toured relentlessly across North America and Europe while sharing stages with Lagwagon, Teenage Bottlerocket, Strung Out, Belvedere, The Planet Smashers, The Creepshow, and countless others. Through it all, they've remained fiercely committed to the DIY ethos, chosen-family spirit, and sense of community that have defined the band from day one.
"It Gets Worse" arrives as the latest glimpse into Born To Break Even, Doghouse Rose's third full-length album for Stomp Records and their most vulnerable release to date. Produced, mixed, and mastered by Scott Komer (Boys Night Out, Silverstein), who also helmed the band's previous album Unlearn, the record finds Doghouse Rose pushing beyond the boundaries of their signature sound while holding tight to everything that made fans fall in love with them in the first place. Touching on themes of grief, frustration, depression, resilience, and personal growth, Born To Break Even explores heavier emotional territory without sacrificing the joy, humour, and positivity that have always been at the band's core. It's a record that acknowledges life's hard truths while refusing to let them have the final word. Older, wiser, and more self-aware than ever, Doghouse Rose continue to find ways to turn uncertainty into connection and hardship into celebration.
============================================================================
sundayclub released their self titled debut album via Paper Bag Records a couple of days ago, alongside focus track 'Corydon Ave (To Meet You)'. The album captures the first chapter of their life as a band — formed in the stillness of rural Manitoba and rooted in Winnipeg, romanticised and re-examined, its hard edges softened the way memory softens things, the way analogue photography blurs what digital sharpens. Across nine tracks, Courtney Carmichael and Nikki St. Pierre move through themes of identity, desire, self-image and belonging, all threaded together by the particular disorientation of early adulthood — the feeling of being caught between who you were and who you're becoming. Growing up, growing apart, growing into your skin.
That world has already been introduced through a run of early singles. 'Camera Shy', the band's own "quintessential sundayclub song", is feel-good and dreamy, a mission statement. 'Blue Wave' leans into "pre-nostalgia": the strange ache of missing a moment before it's even passed. 'Sad Summer' finds them at their most direct and emotionally exposed, capturing the paralysis of wanting to retreat from the world while feeling increasingly pressured to keep pace with it.
Yet it's 'Corydon Ave (To Meet You)' that emerges as the album's defining moment. The song began in the neighbourhood where Nikki grew up — Winnipeg's Corydon, a culturally rich pocket of the city that Courtney came to know through him. Spending time there, she found herself unexpectedly and intensely struck by a new acquaintance who happened to be from the same streets.
"Along with being struck with the beauty of it, I became impossibly and unexpectedly struck by a new acquaintance who also happened to be from the area. Realizing the intense feelings and infatuation that quickly developed, the song took a deeply personal turn. It became an opportunity to create this world in which the two of us could be together, despite it being so fragile in reality."
============================================================================
For Chicago-based singer-songwriter Stephen Kohler, music represents a universal language that allows all of us to connect and express. Raised in a musical family, Kohler started on the trumpet at the age of 12 and later discovered his love for the guitar, piano, and singing which he incorporated into a lifelong passion for composing, performing and producing.
Inspired by everything from the Beatles to Black Sabbath, Stephen loves to incorporate hook-laden melodies along with rhythmic punch. Having performed throughout Chicago for over 30 years in numerous original pop, rock and alternative bands, including Delusions of Grandeur, Braintree and Bed, he has played venues ranging from Metro, Double Door, and Lounge Ax to Evanston Space, Uncommon Ground, and Beat Kitchen.
In June of 2022, Kohler released the solo album Daydream, produced by Grammy-nominated musician Liam Davis (of the Power Pop band Frisbie), and followed up with the 2025 album Anthem, which was also produced by Davis and features his Frisbie band mate Gerald Dowd on drums and percussion. Fast forward to July 2026 and Kohler has re-teamed with Davis and Dowd for a brand new single "Paintbrush." The song was inspired by Kohler's late brother (who provided the original artwork for the single) and is a reminder to listeners that we all have an inner creator and can paint the universe with our own paintbrush.
============================================================================
