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| Photo - Rachel Frichette |
Phantom Pink is the hauntingly tender alias of Los Angeles-based artist Brayton Walls, whose dark, cinematic strain of art-rock captures the beauty in emotional chaos. Blending jagged textures with dreamlike melodies, Phantom Pink’s sound is otherworldly, yet familiar.
Originally from Las Vegas, Walls began writing songs at 10 as a way to navigate his growing pains and identity. After years of shaping his voice in DIY scenes across the West Coast, Phantom Pink has emerged with a sound uniquely bruised and beautiful
In October, he released the first single “I’m at the right place at the right time” from his forthcoming full length album Gothika (due 2026). The song - mastered by Joe LaPorta (Beabadoobee, Laufey, Future Islands) - is loosely based on the cult classic thriller, Possession (1981). This year, he follows with “Czech New Wave” (out 1/16/26) inspired by the film movement of the same name, it’s a splash of color in a black and white world.
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Jasmin Wagner comes from Kerns in the Swiss canton of Obwalden and is releasing a catchy new single titled “Were You Happy Today.” The 23-year-old singer and songwriter didn’t just discover her love of country music today. In fact, this sound has accompanied Jasmin since childhood—alongside her second passion, besides music: flowers. How does she combine these two loves? Quite simply, as “The Singing Florist,” as she likes to call herself.
It’s therefore no surprise that ideas for songs often come to Jasmin when she’s out in nature. She loves being in the mountains and finds inspiration when moving through the fresh air amid the Alps.
Growing up with a guitar in her hand, Jasmin began performing at weddings, christenings, and celebrations at the age of 14—and for several years now, also in renowned Swiss clubs. Always with her Western guitar and her expressive voice, which truly shines in the country and folk repertoire.
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Special Friend have become the masters of weaving elegant and sophisticated pop musical webs while staying true to their DIY roots. The French/American duo (Guillaume on guitar and vocals, Erica on drums and vocals) manage to create a sound like no other band. When they play live, audiences marvel at the huge, intricate structures the band construct, while falling in love with the crystal-clear vocal melodies that are threaded in between the shards of guitar and the rattle of the drums. How can a duo achieve so much? UK audiences will be able to ponder this question in March: Special Friend are coming over from France to do a substantial tour of the UK.
The new album is more diverse that the last, with the high-tempo indiepop of first single ‘Breakfast’, the majestic, Yo La Tengo like dreampop of ‘Clipping’ and the country-ish, gentle, homesick melancholy of ‘Isolation’. Final track ‘OOO’ is a bold piece of Krautrock inspired experimentation; ‘Mold’ is a beautiful slice of slowcore and opener ‘Paint A Picture’ is modern pop at its catchiest and most direct.
‘Clipping’, the album title, refers to the discipline of pruning growth back, removing dead wood to create a perfectly shaped tree with abundant blossoms: an accurate description of the album, and of the songs that hang from its elegant branches. The album artwork is by Erica: Special Friend are in control of every aspect of this elegant artifact.
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| Photo - Noemi Kapusy |
Copenhagen trio Farveblind just announced their debut album 'Micro Pleasures', will be out 15th May. Produced by Farveblind and mixed by Swedish engineer Gustav Brunn (whose credits include work with Yung Lean and Viagra Boys), the album will feature a cast of contributors and guest vocalists including Django Django, k.flay, Elliphant, USERS, Foreign Air and Emmeline. With touchstones ranging from Battles and The Chemical Brothers to Underworld and Viagra Boys, Farveblind's hard-edged brand of electronic music collides breakbeats, acid-drenched techno, punk fury, and sweeping cinematic layers.
Their forthcoming debut album 'Micro Pleasures' pulls that punk volatility, industrial precision and widescreen electronic drama into the same gravitational field and is previewed now by new single 'Natural Behaviour', featuring London vocalist Emmeline. Built on a pulsing, subterranean groove, Emmeline’s vocal moves between shadow and clarity, circling the refrain “I’ve been waiting for a change in your natural behaviour” while the skittering instrumental tightens around her.
Speaking about the track, Emmeline says: “When the boys sent me the rough draft of this instrumental it was already so driving and epic. I wanted to write something equally dark but with a momentum and force to it that would move the song into something broadly philosophical and/or existential. The phrase ‘Natural Behaviour’ came to the fore pretty quickly, and I started to think about what that actually means. How much are we a product of the music around us? Of the people? Of the availability of light? Then I started thinking about someone waiting for someone’s natural behaviour to shift — and how that can be a pretty futile task. Maybe the song exists in a club at the ends of the earth, where we’re all questioning why the grass grows upwards, why the bassline hits harder when the beat drops, why we punish the earth for what it gives us — and how some patterns are hard to break.”
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Just released the new solo single and video So Very Little by indiepop legend and lifer Tammy Ealom of the band Dressy Bessy. It's been 6 years since the last Dressy Bessy album, but this time Tammy is back under a new name The Tammy Shine with an album she wrote, recorded, and mixed all herself. It doesn't stop there as she also shot all the promo photos, made the videos, and did all the album artwork and packaging. This was her first time in full control of an album from start to finish.
Set for release on February 20, 2026, Ok Shine Ok finds the perfect home on Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records (HHBTM), a label known for championing idiosyncratic and authentic indie pop. The album title itself serves as a mantra—an affirmation of positivity amidst the chaos, a nod to the "shine" Tammy has always brought to her visual art and stage persona.
Fans of Dressy Bessy will still find the undeniable hooks and melodic sensibilities that are Ealom’s trademark. However, they will also discover a new depth—a vulnerability that comes from the singular approach and the confidence of a woman who has lived through the changing tides of the music industry and emerged even stronger.
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| Jasmin Valcarcel Photography |
Son Little has announced ‘Cityfolk’, his fourth album and first since 2022. Although Little is often placed in the category of “roots musician”, ‘Cityfolk’ defies genre and lets the evocation of his storytelling pierce through. “The industry likes to keep artists in little boxes, and for Black artists it has meant being defined by your proximity to ‘urban,’” Little admits. “But my music has always had flashes of country, rock and folk, as well as hip-hop, blues and R&B. So I've always struggled as an artist who kind of, I think, lives in the spaces between genres.”
With today’s album announcement comes 'Be Better', a track that is perfectly apt for the start of a new year. A song about release, resilience, and the quiet power of self-belief, 'Be Better' sheds the weight of old stories and broken expectations, trading despair for movement and renewal; it’s a hymn for transformation, challenging anyone ready to leave the past behind to step forward, even when the road ahead is dark.
Now living outside of Atlanta, Livingston attributes the development of ‘Cityfolk’ to going even further south to record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in January 2025. It was there that Little connected with Ben Tanner, a two-time Grammy-winning musician, Alabama Shakes band member and producer of St. Paul & The Broken Bones, John Paul White, Foy Vance and more, to flesh out sketches of songs that he’d crafted through epiphanies about his family’s roots. Already having an understanding of his father’s side, Little views his maternal line as a “mystery unfolding,” but it was in Shoals that the stars aligned, both through retracing his history and formulating an organic chemistry with Tanner.
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