Telemac - Evie Williams - bauhofer - Nick & June - Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Mercury's Antennae

Photo - Philippe Poulénas

Telemac - Telemac (EP).

Telemac draws its strength from the tension between new wave, garage, and psychedelic rock. Driven by a seventies-flavored synth-bass, ethereal guitars, and sharp, propulsive drumming, the quartet weaves a sound where mystery flirts with frenzy, and where every track feels like a sensory experience.

The project revolves around four complementary personalities: Mélina (drums), Vincent and Karim (guitars), and Seb (vocals). Together, they craft a universe that borrows as much from the icy atmospheres of Joy Division as from the raw energy of The Cramps, while embracing the experimental legacy of The Velvet Underground. This alchemy gives rise to a distinctive sound — dark yet radiant, visceral yet poetic — somewhere between nocturnal wandering and a yearning for escape.

Telemac’s lyrics are introspective and evocative. They explore the search for self, emotional imbalance, the weight of illusion, and the excesses of our time. At times intimate, at times critical, they open cracks where lucidity and rebellion seep through. Fireflies, fragments of blue sky, and deceptive suns appear as recurring metaphors — symbols of a generation searching for meaning.

On stage, Telemac unleashes a raw, magnetic energy capable of plunging the audience into an electric trance. The band has made its mark in iconic venues such as Le Mécanique Ondulatoire and Supersonic in Paris, Rockstore and Victoire 2 in Montpellier, and the Secret Place — where they opened for The Warlocks — as well as in Toulouse, Perpignan, Cherbourg, and beyond. Their live set evolves fluidly, occasionally welcoming guest voices: Nika (Nika Leeflang Project) and Nico (MaisonClose) have already stepped up to the mic, adding new textures and contrasts to the live experience.

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Photo - Cammie Perkoulidis

Evie Williams - Heather Court.

Meanjin/Brisbane’s Evie Williams returned with ‘Heather Court’, Friday, December 5, a hazy indie folk-rock daydream. Shaped by loose drumming, laidback overdriven guitars and Evie's dulcet vocals, she shares a story about the unsteady pulse of early adulthood. Evie Williams has peppered releases across the years since her 2019 debut, exploring sounds that move through pop, country and indie folk. Highlights so far include being named a finalist for Brisbane City Council's QUBE Effect, performing at Hidden Lanes Festival, supporting EMEREE and Tyla Jane and selling out her debut full-band show earlier this year.  

Now with ‘Heather Court’, Evie leans into a moodier palette and turns inward, reflecting on her own tension between who she hoped to become and the reality she was living, a feeling she captures with raw honesty. Speaking on the single, she shares:
 
"‘Heather Court’ is a song about self-sabotage. It is the name of an old apartment block that I had visions of living in one day, with a beautiful balcony, a cat and a romanticised life. I would drive past and wonder how I would ever make a life like that, when I was going home to a mattress on the floor and my forgotten coffee on my desk. It highlights the feeling of wasted potential, the pearls on the dresser ready to be worn, but forgotten again."

That bittersweet tension is found in the track's warm, hazy production. With a mellow swing and a dreamy, slightly frayed edge, ‘Heather Court’ moves in a slow sway of fuzzy guitar layers and warm, feather-light vocals. The track toes the line between indie folk and psych rock with its lazy drum groove and drifting riffs as Evie’s voice threads through the haze of each verse and chorus. 

Evie Williams · Heather Court

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bauhofer  It's Alright.

After the last single was successfully received on various country-pop radio stations, Swiss singer-songwriter bauhofer from Wollerau (SZ) is now striking more melancholic yet powerful pop tones. 

With “It’s Alright”, the third single from the upcoming EP The River Seine (to be released in spring), bauhofer once again relies on his characteristic southern-rock blend of rock, blues, and country elements.

The new track tells the story of a painful breakup and the liberating feeling of being able to start anew—an emotional moment that bauhofer conveys impressively through his distinctive soundscape. The single was produced by Slade Templeton (Crimer, Crying Vessel) at Influx Studios in Bern.

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Photo - Luka Popp

Nick & June - New Year's Face (Album).

Berlin duo Nick & June (aka Nick Wolf and Suzie-Lou Kraft) released their new album 'New Year's Face' yesterday Friday, 5th December. Produced by Grammy-winning producer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Sharon Van Etten) and recorded in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 'New Year's Face', which includes collaborations with Owen Pallett, The National’s Kyle Resnick and Ben Lanz, The Antlers and others, will be released on CD, vinyl and digitally. 'New Year's Face' is the duo's first release since 2023's 'Beach Baby, Baby EP', which enjoyed over 30 million streams, widespread critical praise and led to sold-out shows across Europe.

Earlier this week they shared 'You Are The Voice That's Hunting My Soul For A Show', the last single before the album release: guitar washes, synthesisers, arpeggios—everything floats, everything shimmers. Suzie leads the voices, clear, unhurried, as if speaking a message into the night sky.  The lyrics glow like fragile neon in the dark. “Hey there, pinker moon / I’ve been tired for too long / Have you heard the news / I had it on my tongue”—fatigue, longing, a conversation with a celestial body as if it were a confidant. 

The recurring choruses, the light, flickering arpeggios, Suzie carrying the words—everything moves like fog over a city at night. Fragile truths suspended. “We are the bright and the dark”—a mantra binding the duality of hope and loss, intimacy and distance.  You Are the Voice That’s Hunting My Soul for a Show may be one of the most cinematic tracks on the album. Not just music, but a picture slowly emerging, unfolding, lingering long after the last note.    
 
Suzie-Lou explains: “Sometimes we sit on a song for a long time, and this was one of those cases. We spent a lot of time talking about the theme, exchanging opinions, debating words, trying out melodies—the awkward title stayed, but not much from the original sketch. Here, the arpeggio makes an appearance again, playfully weaving in some of the thought structures that run throughout the entire album.”


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Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Woolf.

Continuing the lead up to their 7th studio album Pale Bloom, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys are back with “Woolf” (December 5th). Opening with hesitant vocals that build into rich, layered harmonies, the third single from the Berlin based band is like two voices meeting across time. Kruger's voice multiplies into layered harmonies that feel like a dialogue between past and present, eventually soaring over driving guitars and viola with the refrain: Heaven is twisting / fraying / heaven is bending / ageing / heaven is twisting / fading / heaven / is brutal / baby.

The track moves unpredictably, with guitars and viola creating an urgent, searching sound. Kruger draws inspiration from Virginia Woolf, imagining a connection across a century between two artists wrestling with similar questions about freedom and identity. It's both a tribute and an attempt to rewrite history—offering solidarity to a voice from the past.

Kruger expands “‘Woolf’ is a twisted sort of love letter — or a summoning. Or a sentencing. To a godless void, to Virginia, to the patriarchy, to my past self. As the four distinct chapters of this not-very-long song suggest, I’m not quite sure how to thread all these selves together into a cohesive timeline or tempo. Luckily, music makes space for such a problem.” 

'Woolf' stands as the third insight into their upcoming album Pale Bloom. Unlike the Lost Boys' earlier albums, produced within a specific moment in time, Pale Bloom emerged slowly, trying to suspend a creation myth in its amber – an origin tale that is ancient and complex; full of mystery and metaphor – that seeks neither clarification nor end.

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys · Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Woolf

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Mercury's Antennae - The Veil Opaque v.2.

‘The Veil Opaque v.2 (single mix)’ is a newly altered remix, offering fans an elegant and atmospheric rendition of the album version from Among the Black Trees. The new single mix highlights Cindy Coulter’s driving bass line, Allen’s dream-felt voice, and Erick r Scheid’s ghostly shimmering 12-string hollow-body guitar and E-bow, with added synths and updated drum programming. 

‘Through the Veil (witchmoth mix)’, meanwhile, is a deeply layered, fully reimagined reinterpretation of the same song, created by Scheid. Drawing inspiration from the electronic genres of witch-house, dungeon synth, dark ambient and trip hop, ‘Through the Veil’ showcases his love for ritualistic ambient-electronica.

Two other exclusive tracks are also included. ‘Deer Island (a far unknown mix)’ is an acoustic reworking of the album track ‘As I Lay Hidden (Deer Island)’, and was part of a limited-edition EP giveaway in conjunction with the CD release party for Among the Black Trees. ‘O Virtus Sapientiae’ (or “Virtue of Divine Wisdom”) is a piece by Hildegard von Bingen, which Dru Allen spontaneously recorded while attending a seminar on Hildegard in a 12th-century abbey. Scheid in turn contributed the minimalist electronics, providing the perfect backdrop for the music of this remarkable visionary and composer.


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Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Evie Sands - Elise Davis - Sea Fever - Emily Taylor Hudson - Mess Esque - Art Bergmann

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Evening Train.

Following on from the release of her previously shared single ‘Evening Train’ earlier this year, Berlin based South African Lucy Kruger now returns with The Lost Boys to announce the details behind her new studio album ‘Transit Tapes (for women who move furniture around)’, which lands on the 2nd June 2021 via Unique Records.

Written by Lucy Kruger and forged in a tiny 34°c rehearsal space in Berlin, ‘Transit Tapes’ melts dreamy indie rock with dark folk and returns 12 pensive tracks exploring restlessness and a yearning to feel alive. This project is the first time Kruger has worked with drummer Martin Perret, guitarist Liú Mottes and bassist Andreas Miranda, who form The Lost Boys. The depth that The Lost Boys add is clear on the dramatic soundscape in A Paper Boat or the slow rumbling climb on A Stranger’s Chest.

‘Transit Tapes’ resumes the introspective exploration of Kruger’s 2019 release ‘Sleeping Tapes for some girls’ but has a marked shift in direction. Where sleeping tapes is quiet and behind a closed door, transit tapes is about opening that door, and exploring what is beyond the bedroom. There is a pull between loneliness and a want for independence, between a need for exploration and the safe comfort of familiarity. The reassuring knowns collide with a fear of slipping into old habits. These themes are expedited by Kruger’s relocation from Cape Town to Berlin 2018, when she began writing the album.

For Lucy, “the songs begin in the bedroom, as with Sleeping Tapes, but with an eye on the window and a hand on the door. There is a restlessness. A kind of building up of courage and the acknowledgement of a fear I had developed around making too much noise or causing too much of a scene. How are we supposed to discover who we are if we are not allowed to make a mess? To leak, spill, sweat, spit, shriek. Sometimes playing involves getting scratched or wounded. Laughing. Weeping… Transit Tapes is a gentle and sometimes not so gentle reminder to take off my winter coat and run naked like a wild thing towards the water.”

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys will release their new album Transit Tapes (for women who move furniture around) on the 2nd June 2021 via Unique Records.

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Evie Sands - Beautiful Lie.

 Evie Sands sought inspiration as she got in gear for a long-awaited new album after a two-decade wait. “I was in a meditation, a thing I only do once in a while,” she says. “And these words came to me: ‘Forgive yourself. Get out of your own way. All will follow.’” Putting that into practice, she got home and within hours had the song that would become the title track — and philosophy — of her new release, Get Out of Your Own Way, due out April 23, 2021 on R-Spot Records.

“I was just compelled,” she says. “The song kind of wrote itself.” Not every song on the album came about with that kind of rush. But the sense of it, the electricity and openness and optimism of it, is infused throughout this bristling set of songs — tales of overcoming hurdles, rebounding from heartbreak, finding light in darkness. It’s there in the healthy squint of “The Truth Is in Disguise,” the shining-through of “My Darkest Days,” the wrenchingly hopeful “Lovin’ You Enough,” the playful cultural critique of “Scandal du Jour,” and the expansively inspirational “If You Give Up.”

More than a collection of songs, this is an album with an arc, with interconnected stories to tell, the way classic albums used to be made. And it covers a lot of ground in sound and style, borne out by Sands’ deft arranging, bold playing and production. “Don’t Hold Back” is a brisk companion to the title song. “Beautiful Lie” looks at the sunny side of a relationship ending, with the epiphany of its central line, “We’ll both survive to love another day.” “Another Night” is a guitar-driven wild ride over to “the other side of the line.” “Leap of Faith,” melding some of Sands’ ’60s and ’70s pop and soul passions, asks, “Is this original sin, or just the state that I’m in?” “After Tonight” poignantly steps into the void of heartbreak. And a live favorite making its recorded debut, “Don’t Look Back, Don’t Look Down,” ties it all together, an active reminder to keep moving forward, the very theme that runs through the album and brought it to be in the first place.

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Elise Davis - Summertime.

Nashville-based singer/songwriter Elise Davis shares “Summertime,” the latest single off her new album Anxious. Happy. Chill. that releases on April 16 via Tone Tree. As her winter worries slip away into a haze of reverb, Davis’ breezy lyrics and homemade, lo-fi visualizer illustrate dreams of a slow, Southern summer. “Summertime” was featured this morning by Audiofemme, who called it “a sunshine-soaked version of ‘My Favorite Things’ – if Maria von Trapp had been a bit of a pothead” and said “the song is a balm after an apocalyptic winter, nothing if not soothing to the ears.”

“I have dealt with depression throughout my life. I always notice it is more frequent and intense in the cold. I guess that's what is often called seasonal depression,” explains Davis. “Aside from that, my soul has just always resonated with warm weather. As a kid in Arkansas I never wanted to be inside when it was warm, and I've remained that way my whole life.” She continues, “In the summer I am always sitting on the porch or wandering my yard. As the cold set in this past year I wrote this song. It is a simple anthem of my love of summer and my constant excitement for when it will return. I can sit outside at night listening to the bugs, the calmness, the fireflies, and flowers. It is in those times I am happiest.”

Written during the rush of a new relationship and recorded just days after her wedding, Anxious. Happy. Chill. is the happiest album Elise Davis has made. The independent, no-boys-allowed anthems that made up her first two albums are swapped out for lean, guitar-driven rockers and lushly-layered love songs that remain every bit as resilient and empowered as before. Davis recently shared two other songs off the album, the blissful “Yellow Bed” and the thoughtful “Empty Rooms,” which was featured by Apple Music’s Record Bin Radio with Kelly McCartney, The Boot and The Bluegrass Situation. The new tracks follow her three other singles released in 2020, “Ladybug,” “The Grid” and “Flame Color.”

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Photo - Anthony Harrison

Sea Fever - Crossed Wires.

Manchester outfit Sea Fever unveil the visuals for their recently released single ‘Crossed Wires’.

Directed by art director and photographer Ksenia Bilyk and director Emily Jade Hagan, the striking visuals perfectly depict the song’s lyrics by drawing up a vision of a dystopian world pulling on themes of lockdown and environmental destruction.

The video was shot over the course of two nights across several districts in Berlin during the current lockdown restrictions with a small crew; these conditions didn't limit the two creatives’ ambitious vision of a sci-fi world. Designer Nikolas Wunderlich; B41303 created the bespoke pieces worn by the actors, while graphic artist Sash Bobrov enhanced the dystopian world they sought to create by adding motion graphics.

Sea Fever is a five piece collective fronted by Iwan Gronow (Haven, Johnny Marr) on vocals and guitars, alongside singer Bethany Cassidy (Section 25), the collective also features New Order’s Tom Chapman and Phil Cunningham - with Tom on bass, guitars, synths and programming and Phil on guitars. Powering the band’s pulsing beats is Elliot Barlow, who is joined on the band’s debut by New Order’s drummer Stephen Morris.

Sea Fever explains that their coming together as a unit felt inevitable: “We’d wanted to work with each other for ages, so when we finally sat down in the studio, the band just seemed to come together naturally. It felt like we were really free to explore the kinds of music that have always inspired us, we dug right through the record crates of our minds to shape the sound of Sea Fever.”

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Emily Taylor Hudson - Hearts We Wanna Break.

Rock/pop singer/songwriter Emily Taylor Hudson picked up all the pieces with this, her latest single — “Hearts We Wanna Break."

This stand out cut off the LA-based artist’s debut EP, Love Is a Dirty Word, yearns with a grinding sorrow cast amongst velvet vocals and driving rock n’ roll.

“‘Hearts We Wanna Break’ was written about a friendship I thought would last a lifetime, and the brutal feeling of betrayal ripping apart the good between me and someone I loved,” she shares. “This song represents the moment I realized that love is a dirty word.”

Her talents were fostered from an early age, growing up in a creative family with her parents, Cindy Williams (Laverne & Shirley) and Bill Hudson (The Hudson Brothers), and her brother, musician, Zak Hudson.

As far as uber-talented features on the five-track release go, Hudson didn’t need to look far; she got her best friend, musician and lead guitarist, Billy Newsome, to help produce the sound she was going for, and her brother, Zak, to produce the rhythm section. She then called upon J.P. Hesser at Castaway 7 Studios for mixing; it was mastered at Golden Mastering.

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Mess Esque - Big Old Blue.

Mick Turner (Dirty Three) & Helen Franzmann (McKisko) announce their new collaboration 'Mess Esque' with their first single along with a video made by Denny Ryan and featuring Coco Barker-Bamber, Mick Turner and Helen Franzmann.

"Even though both Dirty Three and my solo output are instrumental, I was writing material that I felt needed lyrics. Being a below-average singer myself I was looking for a vocalist/lyricist to help turn these music ideas into songs.  I spoke about it with my friend, sound engineer/producer extraordinaire Nick Huggins. Nick introduced me (remotely) to Helen who he knew well, he had produced her last album (under the moniker McKisko) and said he thought she’d be interested in collaborating." - Mick Turner.

The release's first single, 'Big Old Blue', perfectly pairs Mick's gentle and warm guitar with Helen’s optimistic songwriting and sleepy tender whispers. Speaking about the single's intention, Helen reveals - “Big Old Blue is a nod to the natural world as a soothing salve. For me anyway. Also I watched Luc Bresson's 'The Big Blue' around the time of writing this song which may have influenced the name.”

The words came together as Helen was falling asleep one night and she was able to capture them on her phone, recording in the early hours of the morning after.

“My house is close to a noisy road so recording had to happen at 2am to catch vocals without traffic/street spill. All of the vocals for this album were done in my bedroom or bathroom at that time. I’d record, send and fall into bed without doing a whole lot of listening back.”

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Art Bergmann - Entropy.

Art Bergmann’s music is meant for our current times. As we struggle to make sense of world events and the conflicts they have spawned, Art’s songwriting – as it has consistently done for the past four decades – cuts through the bullshit and hypocrisy with unflinching focus with the aim of finding some remnants of humanity that will pull us through.

It’s what used to be called “punk rock” when Art first established his reputation in Vancouver during the late 1970s, even though he’s never been a fan of that term. Yet, his status as one of Canadian punk’s foundational artists remains unquestionable, to the extent that in late 2020 he became the first of his peers to receive the Order of Canada, an honour bestowed upon the country’s most revered cultural figures.

Art’s latest album, Late Stage Empire Dementia, will be released May 21, 2021 -- also Endangered Species Day -- on Toronto-based (weewerk), and pointedly demonstrates why he deserved the OC. On eight songs that sonically run the gamut from the jagged, speaker-shredding rock he’s long been known for, to the experimental, acoustic-based soundscapes he introduced on his 2016 Polaris Music Prize long-listed album The Apostate, he takes aim at political corruption, the dual unchecked epidemics of guns and drugs, and the plight of refugees yearning for a better life.

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