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| Photo - Alex Brüel Flagstad |
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Agnes Obel announces her new studio album due 18 September, a follow-up to the widely acclaimed Myopia (2020). The Meaning of Flowers is woven together from different strands of thought and inspiration by one of the most curious minds in contemporary music today. Through its 12 tracks, Obel explores the heightened sense of interconnection with all living things she experienced during pregnancy and, among other themes, the significance of birth, growth and metamorphosis in the natural world. Her new music draws on a broad range of sources, from the poetry of Enheduanna (the world’s first named author) and the ideas of philosophers Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, to the Danish pop scene of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Written, recorded, arranged and produced by Obel in her own studio in Berlin, The Meaning of Flowers features Agnes herself on vocals (some pitch-shifted), piano, keys, synths and samples. Guest musicians join her on violin, viola, cello, bass, lap steel, harmonium, flute, sax, percussion and backing vocals. The album comes out on Deutsche Grammophon – digitally, on CD and on vinyl – on September 18th 2026. As a taster, “Laymelli" is available to stream and download today.
Since recording Myopia, Obel has given birth to her first child. The Meaning of Flowers reflects the emotional impact of motherhood, Obel’s intellectual interest in the subject – notably Arendt’s concept of natality, “understood as the human capacity for new beginnings” – and the fact that the temporarily altered neuroplasticity of her brain took her thought and compositional processes in fresh directions.
“I wanted to see if I could get close to the feeling of a new beginning,” says Obel of the title track. “It shows itself in the experience of interconnectedness and a new expansive feeling of love that will never end. The point when the inner monologue becomes something interactive and expansive – beyond your own life – and opens your mind to a new and richer notion of life.”
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Brooklyn-based artist Rachel Bochner has built a reputation for sharp, emotionally charged indie-pop that cuts straight to the core. Since her debut, she’s carved out a space defined by candid lyricism and an unflinching willingness to explore the messier edges of love, identity, and self-discovery.
“Collar” is a precarious waltz around the questions you know you can’t (or shouldn’t) ask. With its steady build and crunchy guitars, the track sits in the tension of a palpable chemistry between the narrator and the muse. For anyone who has ever developed a complicated relationship with someone who is already spoken for, “Collar” is the perfect soundtrack to the unavoidable yearning, moral dilemma spiraling, and fantasizing of what might happen if the question was asked: Does he know what I do for you?
The single offers a glimpse into Bochner’s upcoming album, a body of work rooted in the aftermath of a long-term relationship and the complex process of self-redefinition that followed. The wider record navigates themes of grief, identity, and acceptance, shaped by the end of that relationship and the unraveling that followed. As a queer artist, Bochner’s experience sits at the center of that shift, disentangling years of love, guilt, and self-realization. “I didn’t realize I was queer until my mid 20s.
Despite my best efforts, the life I’d spent years building no longer felt like home--it became a hand-built prison” she says. “Accepting that meant facing I had no choice but to leave it behind,” a turning point that shapes the entire record that orbits her queer identity’s entanglement with insurmountable guilt, revelatory grief, and the start of complex acceptance. With "Collar," Rachel Bochner turns her attention to desire at its most complicated, capturing the space between knowing where the line is and wondering what might happen if you crossed it.
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London, ON-based folk artist Willem James Cowan shares “Not For You, Not For Us,” an upbeat yet introspective folk rock single that transforms the emotional uncertainty of a breakup into something unexpectedly hopeful. Driven by warm acoustic textures, subtle electronic flourishes, and Willem’s vivid storytelling, the track explores the complicated space between personal truth and emotional fiction, revealing how songwriting can sometimes tell a deeper truth by inventing its own story.
Written shortly after the end of a long-term relationship, “Not For You, Not For Us” began as Willem’s attempt to understand his own emotions while settling back into life at home. Rather than documenting the relationship itself, the song gradually drifted into imagined territory, constructing the aftermath of a fictional toxic relationship while drawing emotional inspiration from real experiences.
“I was trying to understand why I made the choices I made and explain myself through songwriting,” Willem shares. “Most of the relationship details in this song are fabricated. There are truths and parallels to my own life, but I made up a story to express my feelings through.”
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Oh Louise debut album ‘Everything On High’ has just been released. Since its surprise announcement just a week ago, the gripping introduction to 19-year-old songwriter Olive Siegel has gathered attention from tastemakers everywhere. The record, some of which Siegel wrote—astoundingly—in her freshman year of high school, is transportive and unflinchingly honest.
Crafted with inventive vocal layering, raw lyricism, and beguiling melodic turns, ‘Everything On High’ is an intimate exploration of love, heartbreak, betrayal, and all the uncertainty that accompanies youth.
Siegel was raised in Los Angeles. “I learned how to properly record myself during Covid, when schools were closed,” she explains. Much of her new material emerged straight from journals, which she then arranged on an open-tuned guitar in her bedroom, or on the civil war-era piano in the living room of her family home. Now based on the East Coast for college, Siegel recorded 'Everything On High' in Round Pond, Maine with producer Charles Van Kirk, cellist Nat Smith, and bassist John Stiratt of Wilco. Stirratt’s esteemed support and ongoing mentorship of Siegel are a testament to the project's promise.
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