Soft Loft - Alex Dupree - Allegories - Penny Lane Pickets - Marie Dahlstrom

Soft Loft - Wednesdays.

Soft Loft returns with their new single “Wednesdays,” an uplifting indie-folk anthem about learning to rely on yourself. Inspired by the iconic Mean Girls line “On Wednesdays we wear pink,” the Swiss collective flips the script: happiness doesn’t come from being chosen by others. 

Driven by warm acoustic guitars, catchy melodies and Jorina Stamm’s unmistakable voice, “Wednesdays” celebrates personal growth and finding comfort in your own company. The track is lifted off the band's forthcoming album Throw The Dice out September 4th via [PIAS] Recordings.

Wednesdays is about sitting with yourself and feeling real good about it. It's about trying to feel good without depending on others for validation or happiness. It's about buying yourself flowers, taking walks or simply telling yourself today is going to be okay. It's about a tension between isolation and comfort, between feeling unseen and learning how to sit with yourself and be okay there. 

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Photo - TJ Masters

Alex Dupree - I Can See Her In Your Eyes.

“I Can See Her In Your Eyes” is the final glimpse into Talking to the Dog before the full album arrives August 14 via Scissortail Records. The record was produced by Michael Krassner, and it’s an album I’ve really loved spending time with. For all of its thoughtful, layered lyricism, it never feels weighed down — it feels alive. Like a band in a room, discovering the songs together, following the energy, and capturing those moments when everything clicks. There’s a spontaneity and warmth running through it that makes the whole record feel immediate and human.

Quote from Alex: "I love country duets, they have so much narrative possibility. The initial spark for this song came while writing for a duet project with Whitney Mower (They/Live) called “Dawn & Dupree”. It’s two perspectives on the same relational dead-end — he’s still hung up on an old love, and she can tell. The fun comes from how the language works on both sides. 

Having Jolie Holland sing on this is a dream come true. She’s an absolute legend, and hearing her album 'Catalpa' in high school probably changed my life. At that time, I hadn’t heard anyone so tapped into the deep vein of American music. I didn’t know it was possible to still go there. Not as a genre thing, but as real, true embodiment. And she’s still doing it! Jolie is on another level."

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Allegories - They'll Never Suspect Us.

Experimental duo Allegories return with “They’ll Never Suspect Us,” a deceptively beautiful and unsettling new single that reframes the idea of the murder ballad as something colder, more detached, and strangely euphoric. Built on ethereal dream pop textures and gliding indie electronic production, the track pairs some of the duo’s most luminous instrumentation with some of their darkest lyrical content to date, collapsing beauty and brutality into the same breath. It’s the latest single from Allegories’ upcoming new album, By accident, On purpose, set for release on October 16th, 2026.

At its core, “They’ll Never Suspect Us” is an imagined scenario pushed to its most uncomfortable extreme: a gleeful, fictional descent into violence narrated with eerie confidence and emotional distance. “There’s a long tradition of murder ballads,” Adam Bentley explains. “But what about murder anthems? A song that gleefully imagines the act, while rubbing the victim’s face in the idea that no one will care about their demise.”

Rather than leaning into shock alone, the track uses its narrative extremity to interrogate perspective itself, folding humour, discomfort, and abstraction into a single unsettling lens. “It’s a morbid, bleak, and weirdly fun exercise in trying on the hat of a truly reprehensible sociopath,” Adam adds. “And setting it all over what might be the dreamiest instrumental on our entire record? That somehow makes it even more twisted. Sometimes imagining the worst can bring out your best.”

That contrast becomes the defining feature of the song. Sonically, “They’ll Never Suspect Us” drifts through hazy dream pop atmospheres and understated indie rock momentum, anchored by soft focus melodies that feel almost calming in isolation. But the emotional framing destabilizes that calm, turning the track into something quietly disorienting; a lullaby with intent hidden just beneath the surface.

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Penny Lane Pickets - Best Damn Time.

Following the high-octane sunshine of their debut, Santa Cruz’s Penny Lane Pickets are dialing in a heavy, street-level groove with their upcoming single, "Best Damn Time." Shifting gears into a mid-tempo 160 BPM stomp heavily inspired by the infectious energy of modern ska-punk icons like The Interrupters, this track is a raw, grounded anthem dedicated to the sacred, gritty spaces where we escape the daily grind.

Built on a foundation of dry, punchy production, "Best Damn Time" features sharp, rhythmic electric guitar upstrokes and a fluid, melodic walking bassline that drives the entire track forward. Right from the very first second, a powerhouse brass section kicks in, commanding the melody and carrying the song side-by-side with an unforgettable chorus. The raspy, honest delivery of the lead vocals is perfectly elevated by soaring, 3-part Beatles-esque harmonies, striking that perfect, unique balance between 60s pop hooks and raw punk-rock attitude.

Lyrically, the track captures the hazy, smoke-filled atmosphere of a local urban refuge. It’s an ode to those unplanned Tuesdays at 4 PM that somehow turn into the ultimate Friday night. It’s about peeling bathroom stickers, spilled drinks on tattered maps, and the comfort of familiar faces under an industrial sky, filling the gap between the work, the sleep, and the bills.  

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Photo - Lennon Gregory

Marie Dahlstrom - Night & Day.

Marie Dahlstrom today releases her new single 'Night & Day', the latest taste of her third full-length album 'Marie' due out 18th September via JFH Records. The Roskilde-born & London-based vocalist, songwriter and producer will mark the release of the new album with two headline shows in London (8th October) and Copenhagen (13 October).

The new single 'Night & Day' pairs playful talk-box flourishes with buoyant neo-soul grooves, capturing the everyday work of sustaining long-term love in what Marie Dahlstrom affectionately describes as “a couples’ make-up song”. Speaking on the release, Dahlstrom said: "Love and relationships have their ups and downs. We have to put in the work and stay intentional to make them last."

Her third album Marie arrives at a moment when life has become fuller, busier and infinitely more complex. Since her previous releases, Dahlstrom has become a mother of two while continuing to build a life between London and Copenhagen.

Written over the past two years between London, Copenhagen and Los Angeles, the self-titled record draws on deeper jazz influences, live instrumentation and a close-knit international cast of collaborators, including Corey Fonville of acclaimed Richmond jazz collective Butcher Brown, Los Angeles pianist and producer Elijah Fox, Cuban percussionist Eliel Lazo, and her longtime collaborator (and partner in life) DanDiggas, resulting in Dahlstrom's warmest and most personal work to date.

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Thin Lear - Carly King - The Sh-Booms - Ghalia Volt - Soft Loft - Benny Bleu

Photo - Anna Rhody

Thin Lear - A Cherished Man.

Thin Lear, begetter of elegant melancholia, opens his sophomore album (out April 24th) with a bridge falling and a brother’s death. What’s the reason for me seeing? / What’s the reason for anything? / Tell me angel, if you will / Do you think of me still? This tossing of hands to the sky, a dizzied surrender to the absurdity of existence, drives every song that follows. On album standout “A Cherished Man,” that loneliness manifests in three, distinctly curious characters. Andy drinks himself into public humiliation on a nightly basis; Annie pokes strangers with pins on crowded urban buses; Charlie consumes gargantuan sums of corks, stones, and live animals for performance. It’s a work of masterful poetry, and a poignant testament to the lengths humans will go in pursuit of connection. “I see myself in all of them,” Longo confesses. “They’re looking for love, they’re just not sure how to broker it.” With a delicate wail of despair—almost as though pricked—he sings: They say, you’re only whole / You’re only true / Long as someone dreams of you / And if you’re just set up to fall / You find a way to feel at all. It’s heartrending and conciliatory at once; Longo goes to the freak show, and sees only humans. 

Longo grew up writing short stories; that narrative instinct pervades his music. He tends towards tragedies—some true, some imagined, and some stuck in between. “I’ve always gravitated to bizarre tales to access my own grief and pain,” says Longo. From “The Mothman” event of 1960s West Virginia which inspired “Silver Bridge,” to the “Mad Gasser” mass  hysteria of 1940s Illinois that backdrops “Mattoon,” Longo collects peculiar lore and studies it for insights into humanity. 

He pairs odd plots with placating melodies, his voice as pure and holy as a bell. The effect is uncanny—lyrics like a nightmare delivered through a lullaby. “I need something supernatural to wrestle with, just to understand my own earthly troubles,” he says. “I write to access a feeling and get past it.” Longo may summon the ghosts to dispel them, but Thin Lear’s music remains vibrantly haunted, full of eerie figures loping along, human or otherwise, hoping to heal. Influenced on a fundamental level by the likes of David Bowie and Karen Dalton, Longo builds a kind of sonic bridge between the two—his emotive folk pop aches and articulates from a strange, starry place. 

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Carly King - Three Martinis.

The highly anticipated debut album from Carly King (Loving You Is Easy), has been recorded at Cloverdale Records with Shane Travis (Evan Honer), and is due out May 1 on First City Artists (Alexa Rose, Coco). 

Born in New Jersey, King lost her father at age 4 to the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Her family moved to Wyoming shortly after, where King grew up with a vivid sense of life's uncertainty and a profound desire to find its purpose. Now based in Nashville, she brings her insights on loss, love, and living freely to her first full-length. In her stark, sandy voice, King sings of dusty floors, school buses, and cowboy boots with the sparkling pop sensibility of Kacey Musgraves, the full hearted howl of Sierra Ferrell: Loving you is easy / It's the world that's hard.

With singles and EPs alone, King has independently amassed more than 20K monthly listeners, been named an American Songwriter Song Contest finalist, landed sponsorship from Gibson guitars, and conducted a merch campaign successful enough to fund her first full-length. King's fans aren't passive listeners but fervent, supportive members of a grassroots community, one she's built with warm and retable, folk country earworms.

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The Sh-Booms - This Is A Test.

Orlando soul-rock powerhouse The Sh-Booms return with the striking new music video for “This Is A Test,” the cinematic title track from their recently released EP This Is a Test, available now on all digital platforms.

Directed by John Taylor, the video expands the song’s cosmic narrative into a vivid, otherworldly visual experience — one that blends performance with a surreal journey through time, space, and survival.

“The concept kind of dances through themes of time and space travel, unexpected journeys that lead to discovery, strength in survival and love, all woven through a dynamic performance,” Taylor explains. “I envisioned an emergency evacuation back to Earth, perhaps at a different time or in an alternate universe of possibilities.”

Drawing inspiration from classic New Wave-era visuals — including the stylized performance energy of artists like INXS — as well as Taylor’s own upbringing during the final chapter of the space program in Cocoa Beach, Florida, the video captures both nostalgia and forward motion. The result is a visually immersive companion to one of the band’s most ambitious songs to date.

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Photo - Eric Johanson

Ghalia Volt - Ride. 

Ghalia Volt doesn’t waste time easing in. On “Ride,” the first single and video from her upcoming album Burn The House Down, due May 15th (Ruf Records,) she delivers a fierce, groove-heavy blast of blues-soaked rock & roll — gritty, immediate and unforgettable.

With Burn The House Down, produced by JD Simo and recorded in Nashville, Volt pushes that sound even further — capturing the immediacy of her live performances while expanding her sonic reach. Her first single “Ride,” is fierce, gritty and hip-shaking, a blast of blues-soaked rock & roll swagger that sets the tone for the album.

Recently featured on 60 Minutes alongside Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Volt was recognized as part of a new generation carrying blues music forward. It’s a role she’s grown into over the past decade, shaped in part by her move from Belgium to New Orleans in 2016 — a turning point that immersed her fully in American roots traditions while sharpening her raw, instinct-driven approach.

That same year, she released Have You Seen My Woman (2016), a breakthrough that introduced her stripped-down, streetwise sound. She followed with Let the Demons Out (2017), and Not long after, Volt embraced a fiercely independent path, developing her one-woman band setup — singing, playing guitar, and working percussion simultaneously — a format that became central to both her recordings and her reputation as a live performer.

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Soft Loft - Caught.

Soft Loft is a Switzerland-based collective fronted by singer/lyricist Jorina Stamm. From day one, their mission has been to create a space where vulnerability is like oxygen and connecting with another is summer breeze. Their sound is a sticky mixture of ecstasy and melancholy.

After a breakthrough year of headline tours, major festivals & tastemaker praise from BBC 6 to KEXP, Swiss indie collective Soft Loft return with Caught, a high-voltage anthem for twenty-somethings confronting the moment they played it safe instead of fearless. 

Suspended between nostalgia and “what if”, the track builds from introspection into a remarkable scream of release. Written & produced by the band, mixed by Grammy-winner Craig Silvey, it launches the road to an outstanding new album.

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Benny Bleu - When I Am a Fossil.

Pairing timely songwriting with his distinctive instrumental banjo work, When I Am a Fossil is the bold forthcoming album release (due June 5) from New York native Benny Bleu. Ten years in the making and informed by the artist’s prior decade working as a geologist, the project reflects a sustained exploration of humanity’s relationship with the Earth, expressed through original songs, carefully chosen covers, and meditative banjo instrumentals. Both a deeply personal statement and a collaborative studio achievement, When I Am a Fossil pushes at the boundaries of old time music and its intersections with jazz and global rhythms, bridging old time traditions with contemporary sonic exploration.

At its core, When I Am a Fossil is a concept album that draws on geological time. Framed through the lens of a train-traveling, smartphone-rejecting modern-day luddite contemplating reality in 2026, the record offers multiple perspectives on a singular theme: what it means to live on—and within—a changing planet. Geologic ages are defined by their fossils—the preserved evidence of life—and often marked by mass extinctions. Looking ahead, future geologists examining the Anthropocene—the present age defined by human impact—will likely identify another mass extinction event, one humanity both caused (“When I am A Fossil”) and endured (“I’ve Endured”). The album meditates on this paradox while offering shimmers of hope and wonderment in the wistful “Serenity Song” and “All I Want to Be.”

Ultimately, the record suggests that while economies are human inventions sustained by belief, climate change will march on whether we believe in it or not (“March of the Mollusk”). As environmental pressures intensify, future generations may be compelled to live simpler lives with less consumption and greater locality. In that simpler, more grounded world, the album proposes, folk music will not only persist—it will belong.

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Harry Foxton - Arborist - Soft Loft

Harry Foxton - One More Night.

Boorloo/Perth rocker Harry Foxton is delivering passion and soul in his latest single ‘One More Night’ out yesterday. Not a stranger to the stage, Joel Stevens who goes by the moniker Harry Foxton founded established rock outfit Foxton Kings. Branching out into his own solo project, Foxton found a new passion for music playing his own originals.

Infused in indie, rock and country, ‘One More Night’ is a reflection piece. Exploring themes of love, hurt and the possibilities of these, Foxton sings with hopeful tenderness. His lyricism in ‘One More Night’ tells a warmingly honest story.

‘One More Night’ is a modern heartland rock classic. The track boasts bright upbeat choruses, sleek vocals and flourishes Bruce Springsteen-inspired guitars. Capturing the excitement of a summer love, the song musically expresses the highs and lows of the unknowing possibilities of where love will take you.

Recently visiting Nashville to showcase his work at Americanafest and Tamworth Country Music Festival, Foxton has supported artists Boo Ray, James Carothers and Mike Miz. To add to the list, the country rock singer has supported world class acts including Lillie Mae, Golden Guitar nominees The Banks Brothers, and Portland’s Jenny Don’t and The Spurs on the NSW leg of their Australian Tour.

 
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Arborist - Alabaster Skin.

Alabaster Skin is the third and final single to be taken from Belfast artist ARBORIST’s forthcoming album An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeros released 21 April, Kirkinriola Records, which melds ARBORIST’s classic musicality with the more experimental hallmarks of producer Matthew E. White and the house band of Spacebomb Studio, Richmond, Virginia, where the album was recorded.

An intriguing and boundary pushing sound to file under John Cale, Bill Fay, Howe Gelb, Lee Hazelwood, Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born and The Go-Betweens.

The meditative and utterly mesmerising piano ballad Alabaster Skin was written during recent riots in Belfast, and at what ARBORIST calls “The older, bitter generation stroking hatred in the young, only to realise that they are not of the same mentality, their minds not as poisoned.” Its closing line “Honey, I’ve been dreaming of an awful rage. In another body, in another language” hints at the album’s dream state feel both sonically speaking and in its esoteric lyrics, with much of it written in the surrealist fugue of the last five years.

Alabaster Skin’s dreamy musicality comes curtesy of the lush strings of Trey Pollard (Faye Webster, The Waterboys, Nadia Reid) of the Spacebomb house band and Matthew E. White’s unique production. As ARBORIST expands on the song’s creation “I didn’t want any guitar on the track, however, after a few run-throughs it all felt a little naked and the piano a little exposed, so Matthew came-up with the idea of passing my piano signal to guitarist, Alan Parker’s, Microcosm Hologram pedal and allow Alan to tinker with it in real-time during the take.”

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Soft Loft - Is It Me (Including Live at Hotel Winkelried).

Jorina on their Debut-EP “The title of the EP comes from a song that we saved for the album. There’s a line on there that says, ‘and you give me Joni in case I still get lonely.’ Joni Mitchell’s music helped me through all sorts of stuff over the years, and I hope that this EP will do that for others. That’s why it was so important for us to be this candid while addressing these topics: heartbreak, dealing with anxiety, self-worth, loss of identity, depression, etc.”

The material was produced by grammy-nominated Gianluca Buccellati (Arlo Parks, Biig Piig, easy life, Lana Del Rey) and cut in a snowed-in studio in Engelberg. It was written in all sorts of "safe spaces" created by the band, one of which happens to be a cozy little house in Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Cut off from the outside world, often for days at a time, they would get lost in music and the bottomless well of late night conversations, and the magic would just happen.

Soft Loft is a safe haven, an attitude, a way of life. It’s where the broken and the imperfect are embraced and celebrated. Soft Loft is non-hierarchical. Soft Loft is where reality is transmuted into dreams and dreams back into reality. Judgement is suspended here. Because vulnerability is the gateway to connection. Anything goes, as long as it’s heartfelt and it flows. Soft Loft is a collective of musicians dedicated to creating safe spaces using sound. Soft Loft are: Jorina Stamm, Sarina Schmid, Lukas Kuprecht, Simon Boss and Marius Meier.

Soft Loft · Is It Me

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