Sondre Lerche - Izzy Oram Brown - Pharis and Jason Romero - Nico Cann

Photo - Hilde Solli

Sondre Lerche - Little Kids.

Acclaimed singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche has announced his new album 'Acrobats' will be released on 21st August via PLZ / Virgin. His first full-length of brand new music in over four years, 'Acrobats' marks the return of the beloved Norwegian artist with an album that’s bold and bombastic; a polarising reflection on the dichotomy of finding love while in times of soulless global unrest and unfathomable human atrocities.

Yesterday Lerche unveiled the first look at the album with new single 'Little Kids,' a dreamy, sepia-toned melody featuring vivid string arrangements by Sean O’Hagan (High Llamas) and performed by the Stockholm Studio Orchestra. Its video was directed by rising Norwegian filmmaker Lea Meyer and inspires empathy and kindness towards our younger selves when seeking affirmation and love. The new song was co-produced by Alexander von Mehren and Lerche, and mixed by Jørgen Trœen.

“From the first verse’s innocent rejection, to the third verse’s plunge into premature adulthood, ‘Little Kids’ is about trying to avoid looking back in anger, and instead look back with newfound empathy and perspective on adolescent attempts at stumbling towards love, friendship and intimacy,” stated Lerche. “It’s about forgiving who you were and who you were with, and that feeling we get when we see photos of ourselves and realise we were so much younger than we thought at the time. It’s personal, but highly universal.”

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Photo - Nico Hedley

Izzy Oram Brown - Got Me Down.

We have the first single "Got Me Down" from the debut full-length by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Izzy Oram Brown. This follows her excellently reviewed EP Mess and a split EP with The Bird Calls and a run opening for the acclaimed guitarist Julian Lage. 

As a fixture in the Brooklyn indie scene, Izzy Oram Brown has been featured as a collaborator in rising bands such as Why Bonnie and Youbet. Stepping into her own with her full-length, What I Want is full of unexpected surprises and moments of instrumentation and sound design that go way beyond a singer-songwriter affair. The 4AD comparisons are strong here.

Got Me Down is an upbeat power pop hit about the moments when you find yourself making things harder by overthinking and getting in your own way.

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Pharis and Jason Romero - These Are The Days.

Four-time JUNO Award-winning singers, songwriters, banjo builders, and folk icons, Pharis and Jason Romero are releasing their seventh studio record. Due June 12 via Lula Records, These Are The Days That Turn In To Years is a songwriter’s deep exhale, replete with stories, love, and nostalgia. It’s four years after the duo’s banjo-heavy last release, and recorded in the same eclectically restored riverside barn in Horsefly, British Columbia. With Pharis’ love of storytelling as a base for the duo’s artistic connection, the songs are lush and saturated with their lives: incidental touring, raising two kids, making banjos, and playing this music because they love it. 

The songs are created as much from ideas - from being on the tops of mountains and phone calls with aging loved ones to insomnia, meditation and family feuds - as they are from the joy of playing and recording with a stellar band: fiddle, bass, piano, and percussion. Two people in the thick of their lives, reveling in the music, words, and community.

Now, they are releasing the new single “These Are The Days”, a waltzing exhale of love and affirmation. "These Are The Days" is the final song on Pharis and Jason’s new album, saving the best for last. Here, Pharis turns inward as a songwriter, giving voice to the feelings of a gentle lover who holds and treasures these moments. Ambient strings overlay the delightful piano work of Clinton Davis, while Pharis’s vocals (she sounds so much like herself) and Jason’s intuitively wonderful harmonies sit front and centre.

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Nico Cann - Take Me To The River.

22-year-old Milan-born and London-based alt-rock artist Nico Cann unveils the new single ‘Take Me To The River’, fusing raw emotion with a rich and anthemic sound. The new single comes with news of an upcoming UK tour with The Rifles. Weaned on classical piano and raised by rock bands, Nico’s music sits at the crossroads of introspection and energy, capturing honest stories of growing up in a world that never slows down.

Drawing inspiration from Bruce Springsteen to Sam Fender, his sound merges the warmth of ‘70s and ‘80s rock with a contemporary indie lift, displaying intimate, confessional writing set against a backdrop built to resonate on a larger scale. On stage, he channels that same energy, bringing his anthemic tracks to life whilst still turning every show into a moment of real human connection.

Now building toward his debut album Silver Lining - a body of work written, performed, and produced largely on his own, Nico’s new single ‘Take Me To The River’ highlights his evolution as an artist. Delivering a cinematic, explosive soundscape, blending biting guitar tones, expansive keys, and driving drums, the track channels an ’80s rock spirit beneath Nico’s charismatic and expressive lead vocals.

Analog warmth, youthful uncertainty, and hope collide on the single, bringing a sound which is assured and expansive, yet rooted in genuine, authentic artistry and sincere songwriting. Talking about the single, Nico explains: “I began writing "Take Me to the River" three years ago. The song went through multiple iterations and changes, especially lyrically. Like many of the other songs I'm writing for my debut project, Silver Lining, this one analyses a moment of feeling lost, or better, the limbo of uncertainty right after a breakup. "Should I call her, should I find my way?"

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Chalcedony - Dysmusia - Izzy Oram Brown

Chalcedony - Dollandia.

Chalcedony’s single Dollandia off recent ep “capsule” is a distorted dream state tangle of live-off-the-floor trippy noise, moody yet tempting lead vocals, and haunting doll lullaby backups. 

With the aesthetic and lyrics inspired by cult classic film “Valley of the Dolls”, the song is also a nod (pun very much intended) to mental health and prescription medications for depression, anxiety, insomnia and sleep disturbances such as night terrors, sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations. Dollandia, being the escape...but with overuse, consequences follow.

The single and ep was recorded and mixed by producer Felix Fung at Little Red Sounds in New Westminster, BC last summer. Dollandia’s single art features an original custom painting by drummer Vanessa Gidden. Cate Whatever, Gillian Callander and Vanessa are also currently self-producing the forthcoming music video for which they will be directing and art directing.

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Dysmusia - Where Does This Road Go.

Dysmusia is an Irish musician whose sound blends the heart of Antrim folk traditions with a modern edge of indie-rock. Based between Antrim and Dublin, he carries the influence of both rural roots and city creativity in everything he creates. Born into a deeply musical family, he picked up the guitar at just eight years old, teaching himself to play while surrounded by the rhythms and melodies of Irish country and show-band culture. His father performed in show bands, one brother took to the drums, and the other to bass—music wasn’t just a hobby in the household, it was the family language

I grew up in a mixed corner of Ballymena, though the wider town carried strong voices and stronger traditions, where difference could feel quietly magnified. On warm, still early‑summer evenings you’d hear drums drifting across the air, part of the atmosphere, even if not our world.

I never felt fully one thing or another, always slightly out of step, a lifelong minoratist. Later in Dublin I was still gently set apart, a ‘Nordy’ by shorthand, as if belonging always came with a small condition. My music comes from that in‑between place, the margins, the echoes, and the quiet ache that settles in as youth slips into memory.

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Photo - Nico Hedley

Izzy Oram Brown - Love U the Same.

released today we have the first single "Love U The Same" from the debut full-length by Brooklyn singer-songwriter Izzy Oram Brown. As a fixture in the Brooklyn indie scene, Izzy Oram Brown has been featured as a collaborator in rising bands such as Why Bonnie and Youbet. Stepping into her own with her full-length, What I Want is full of unexpected surprises and moments of instrumentation and sound design that go way beyond a singer-songwriter affair. 

 “Love U the Same”—a plainspoken, broadly strummed pop ballad and the emotional highwater mark of Izzy Oram Brown’s new LP What I Want—sketches out a journey toward accepting emotional paradox. Singing in hushed but soulful tones that bring to mind Christine McVie, the Massachusetts-born, Queens-dwelling songwriter returns to chords that she reframes in every verse, setting up a resolution that never comes, mirroring the lost promise of a broken compact between lovers who really tried to make it work. 

An ambiguous chord, neither bright or despairing, frames both an admission of hurt and bittersweet statement of re-devotion (“But no matter what I do or say, you’re with me.”) It is only after the narrator accepts that only time can make mutual empathy and acceptance possible that the harmony settles and the arrangement expands: “If we tire of the work/of finding who’s to blame/I will remember/I love you the same.” With its nostalgic, carefully arced melody and lyrics, the song holds pain, contradiction, and a genuine warmth of spirit easily. It’s a combination which often eludes even the greatest artists who write about romantic wires getting crossed.

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