The Summertimes return with their new single 'Save You Now,' via Golden Robot Records. The track serves as the first taste of the band’s forthcoming EP. With the world becoming increasingly difficult to navigate, 'Save You Now' asks a deceptively simple question: who’s going to save you? Populist demagogues? Tech-bro billionaires? The AI revolution? And, perhaps more importantly, who’s going to save them?
Rather than attempting to provide easy answers, The Summertimes wrap these hard questions in a sound that feels remarkably hopeful. Chiming guitars, swirling Hammond organ and a chorus of layered vocals combine to create a track that is melodic, uplifting and undeniably infectious. 'Save You Now' offers a first glimpse into what’s next for the band, re-establishing a sound that balances indie-rock sensibilities with a distinctly guitar-pop outlook.
Australian power-pop rockers The Summertimes have signed with one of the world’s leading indie record labels, Golden Robot Records, and will release a new EP in 2026. Led by songwriters David Beniuk and David Challenger, the EP will follow on from their debut 2023 self-titled LP that featured some of Australia's finest musicians, including drummer Stephen O'Brien (Tumbleweed), bassist Steve Bull (ICEHOUSE), keyboardist Marco Forlano (The Mustard), and guitarist Ashley Naylor (EVEN, The Church and Paul Kelly). Five-time ARIA award winner Paul McKercher, who’s worked with bands like Hoodoo Gurus, Midnight Oil, You Am I and The Vines, engineered, produced and mixed.
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Los Blancos - Olew'r Olewydd.
Los Blancos just returned (25 August) with ‘Olew'r Olewydd’, the first taste of their forthcoming third album and a snapshot of a band approaching ten years together. For almost a decade, the Carmarthenshire five-piece have been one of the defining voices in modern Welsh alternative music, building a sound from slacker rock, surf, punk, shoegaze and country that has always felt unmistakably their own.
Their debut album Sbwriel Gwyn was nominated for the Welsh Music Prize, Llond Llaw was shortlisted for Welsh-language Album of the Year, and in 2019 they received the Welsh Music Prize Triskell Award in recognition of their originality and impact. After their last record, Los Blancos hit a wall. Burnt out, they stepped away and gave themselves time to remember why they started making music together in the first place. ‘Olew'r Olewydd’ was the early demo that brought that feeling back. The reaction between the five of them was immediate: this is the sound.
Translating as ‘Olive Oil’, the track might be the clearest expression yet of the Los Blancos slacker ethos. It is loose, instinctive and slightly off-kilter, built around a loping groove, wiry guitars and flashes of early Beck. There is still the spirit of Pavement, Pixies, The Velvet Underground and Neil Young in there, but it feels less like a collection of influences and more like Los Blancos simply sounding like themselves.
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| Photo - Linda Bujoli |
"Only When I Lose Myself" is one of the most powerful singles from Depeche Mode’s later period — released in 1998, it carries the full emotional maturity and density of the band at its peak. Mélanie Pain, a historical voice of Nouvelle Vague since its very beginning, takes it on with natural authority.
But it is the arrangement that surprises: resolutely jazz, built around brass whose writing evokes the great Quincy Jones productions of the sixties. Between British new wave and American orchestral jazz, the song finds an unexpected and luminous third life.
"Only When I Lose Myselt" feat. Mélanie Pain is the third single taken from A Date with Depeche Mode, Nouvelle Vague’s upcoming album (out October 30th, on Kwaidan Records / [PIAS] Recordings).
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| Photo - Rachel Deeb |
Rayland Baxter has spent much of his career chasing clarity, but with his forthcoming album 'True Violet', out 23 October via ATO Records, he feels like the first time he's truly found it. His first album in more than four years, the 11-song collection captures the slow, steady metamorphosis of becoming someone new. The album was co-produced by Nick Waterhouse and Paul Butler and written during a years-long period of solitude in the hills of Tennessee where he penned more than 70 songs.
This week, Baxter released the album opener 'Better Man', co-written with and featuring background vocals from Tyler Ballgame, that serves as a prologue for the journey he takes throughout the album. The song arrives alongside an official video directed by Joshua Shoemaker. About the song, Baxter explains, “‘Better Man’ is a song about making it through the hard times and coming out the other side better than before. It's a reminder to myself that it's ok to close the book on a time in my life, as long as I remember the lessons I learned during that time.” “It's very personal and bloody,” Baxter says of True Violet. “There are bruises and bite marks in these songs. Tears and enlightenment and pains of the heart.”
Baxter spent the years surrounding his 2022 album If I Were A Butterfly touring heavily while navigating difficult relationships, personal loss, and the death of his father, Bucky Baxter, a multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Bob Dylan and as a member of Steve Earle and The Dukes whose musicianship and encouragement had shaped every previous chapter of his career. After returning to his quiet Tennessee hometown, Baxter found himself with the stillness to confront the patterns and emotions he had spent years outrunning.
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Ziemba has not released a record in nearly six years and she's back this October with a new album 'The Braid'. At times contemplative and earthy but more often truly baroque and stellar, The Braid is epic, meticulously crafted, and spilling over with art rock / sophisti-pop gems. Gorgeous album cover, extraordinary songwriting and execution, this record is totally arresting. This week we have the second single via a fantastic music video.
Regarding "We Implode," Kladzyk says: “I wrote this song across the course of a decade." The early verses of the song were written while deeply ensconced in a “doomed relationship,” later verses shifting to the bird’s eye view of today. “Are we so alike that we both want to implode, and when we implode while colliding it sparkles so devastatingly that neither of us can see at all?” Kladzyk sings dizzyingly from inside the whirlwind.
The verses are propulsive and driving, but this train is coming off the tracks. Kladzyk is aware of oncoming tragedy by the time we get to the chorus, the rhythm section fading away as a baroque-pop string section takes over. “All I know is the lie I carry in my love, and I’m happy.” Then she’s sucked back in, the ground shaking beneath her feet, holding on for dear life. How long can she cling to this love?
“We Implode” features some of Kladzyk’s most deft and surprising arrangements to date, shape-shifting from Cleaners from Venus-esque post-punk to Zombies-tinged strings to a stunning synth pop bridge that harkens The Pretenders: somehow it works, the production time-travelling along with the lyrics.
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| Photo - Charles Moss |
Manchester's Phoebe Green has just released 'Clothes Still On', the captivating new single from her forthcoming new album PREMATURE NOSTALGIA, out 2nd October via The Green Dream Machine / Absolute. 'Clothes Still On' follows the album’s previously released singles 'There's Always Someone Kicking The Seat' and 'Polluting You With Me'.
"'Clothes Still On' is probably my favourite song on the album," Phoebe shares. "It feels like such a perfect combination of mine and Lucy’s influences and sounds; for me the verses are quite 00s emo but also a little Alex G, the choruses have an almost Brockhampton style vocal, but Lucy’s signature mental synth sounds keep us in our dramatic electronic little world."
Written and produced alongside her sister Lucy Green (aka Elucyve) - a producer of contemporary classical and electronic music in her own right - PREMATURE NOSTALGIA was created between the flat the pair share in Manchester and their parents' home in Lytham St Annes.
Across the album, Phoebe and Lucy draw inspiration from artists such as Imogen Heap, Oklou, Jockstrap, James Blake, FKA twigs and Sega Bodega - embracing warped electronics, fragmented structures and experimental forms of pop songwriting.
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| Photo - William Neal |
Michael Lee & The Wartime Limousine announce their self-titled debut album, due out October 30 via Skylark Soul Co. Known for his dazzling musicianship and a fiery blues growl that once earned him a stint fronting the late B.B. King’s touring ensemble, the Fort Worth-based singer/guitarist and his band put a bold 21st-century spin on the funky, horn-fueled sounds of vintage soul music for a timeless body of work about the many ups and downs of love.
Along with the news, Michael Lee & The Wartime Limousine shares their new single “Drowning,” a deceptively bouncy ode to resilience in the face of adversity.
Michael on the new single: “I've been down this road myself, so this one comes from a very real, heavy place. It’s about that ‘come to Jesus’ moment you eventually have to face when you're caught up in your own debauchery. It’s the harsh realization that no one else is coming to save you, and you have to do the hard work of purging your soul to save yourself.”
The foundation for the songs on the self-titled debut was cut live in the studio with Michael, keyboardists Chad Stockslager (Joshua Ray Walker) and Jordache Grant (Abraham Alexander), pedal steel player and frequent Khruangbin collaborator Will Van Horn, as well as bassist Daniel Balis and drummer Matt Trimble (Bastards of Soul), all playing together and recording at Niles City Sound – an esteemed Fort Worth studio best known for launching Leon Bridges’ career over a decade ago. The end result blends everything from Motown to psychedelic soul as the bandleader showcases his versatility with a keen sense of restraint and vulnerability.
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