Taken from the new album “The Phantom of Canton”. Soft Hearted Scientists are a Cardiff based band who can loosely be described as psychedelic, in the sense that they create a technicolour sound using a huge variety of instruments and sound effects, whether guitars or vintage keyboards. The idea is to transport the listener to a better place, whether that’s on a 3-minute action packed single, or a 10-minute multi section epic.
Their influences include everything from The Beatles, Beach Boys and Kinks to The Beta Band, Super Furry Animals, 1940s big band music and electronic music. Nothing is out of bounds. It all gets thrown into the SHS blender. The band has had great press reviews and radio play on BBC 6 music shows such as Cerys Matthews, Gideon Coe, and Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone.
“Wonder Girl” A lovestruck song featuring half an album’s worth of hooks, Motown and surf guitars, celestial humming choirs, a sudden mood change middle section, and the whole thing bounces off the walls with energy.
There are shades of The Beach Boys, The Kinks, ancient Disney film songs, and circus and vaudeville music in this track as well as many obscure 1940s songs (singer Nathan falls asleep every night to such tunes so they must be having a subconscious effect). It crams 80 years of musical genres into just over 3 minutes 30 seconds. The Wonder Girl in question may be real, an ideal, a ghost from an old photograph, or she might just be a product of wishful thinking.
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Today August 29th, Cult New York-based band Frog announce ‘The Count,’ their seventh album, with the “BITTEN BY MY LOVE VAR. XI” single. The new record will be released on September 19th.
Following February’s ‘1000 Variations on the Same Song,’ Daniel Bateman and brother Steve (drums/percussion) offer another ten variations, locking into a style and sound, stretching its limitations and exploring the possibilities.
The eleven variations released six months ago brought Frog back to the Indie Rock and Alt Country sounds of previous albums like ‘Kind of Blah’ and ‘Count Bateman,’ earning them Stereogum’s Album of the Week, sessions for KEXP and WFMU, as well as praise from Pitchfork, FLOOD Magazine, KLOF Mag, and airplay from stations like KCRW, WFUV, WKDU, and WNYU, which saw them reach the top 30 of the NACC 200 chart, on top of national airplay in Europe from FM4, Kosmos, and the BBC.
However, ‘The Count’ takes a left turn from even Frog’s most idiosyncratic past material, with Bateman assuming the titular role of a mysterious New Yorker turned piano man for one impromptu and unforgettable performance. While Bateman’s skill for penning songs about love, loss, and lust remains unchanged, this is a Frog album like no other.
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After 25 years of existence, The Last Time, a Power Pop group from the island of Yeu, France, has finally recorded 4 compositions at the legendary Blackbox studio. The release date is September 20th, 2025 @ Truly Yours Records.
It's also the new band of Olivier Popincourt. (For the benefit of the uninitiated, Olivier Popincourt is a stylish French Mod, a musical Anglophile, an accomplished songwriter, and a big fan of Paul Weller - Acoustic Egg Box, 2020). Here is what Jean-William Thoury (lyricist notably for Bijou, Marie-France and Daniel Sani, sound producer, journalist and rock'n'roll critic) thinks of it:
"An arpeggio, a voice in the third, a roll on the toms between the different parts of the song and, abracadabra, the magic happens, you just have to know it and, above all, love it... The Last Time have always loved it. Verse, chorus, bridge, solo, nothing is missing from their songs which have the elegance of never reaching the fateful three-minute mark. Everything here breathes grace and sincerity. With a shared passion for so-called pop music in the Small Faces or The Jam meaning of the term, The Last Time is also one of the best songs of the Rolling Stones golden age period (1965). It also evokes a certain awareness, that of time passing. "Let's be brilliant before it's too late" is what Olivier Popincourt (vocals, guitar), Olivier Cha (guitar), Pierre Borny (bass) and Daniel Le Bris (drums), who have been playing together for 25 years, seem to have said to each other. But this is the first recording!”
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Coloured Paper Shapes is the genre-fusing project of South London-based artist-producer Richard James Jakubowski. Blending jangly guitars, rich storytelling, and subtle experimental touches, his sound finds a sweet spot between indie pop and alternative rock. Honest, human, and emotionally expansive.
Drawing on a lifelong reverence for David Bowie and the stylistic quirks of acts like Metronomy and Japanese Breakfast, Jakubowski crafts songs that speak to people caught somewhere between reflection and release—what he calls music for extrospective introverts. His writing delves deep into the quiet thoughts that live behind loud nights out, exploring the blurry intersections of identity, routine, and connection.
His current body of work forms part of a wider concept project titled Flamingos, a narrative-rich album that plays out like the soundtrack to an imaginary film or musical. Set against the backdrop of an all-night dive bar (based loosely on a real spot once frequented by Jakubowski and his friends), Flamingos follows a group of 30-something co-workers caught in the familiar loop of post-work drinks, blurry weekends, and existential stasis—until one of them starts to see the cycle for what it is.
His upcoming single “Playtime” began life as something separate from the Flamingos arc, originally inspired by a scene from Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. The artist shares, “I was watching The Florida Project, and there’s a scene where these kids are running around a motel parking lot, laughing and causing mayhem. That moment really stayed with me — the way the film captures innocence and joy even in tough circumstances.” He continues, “I wanted to write a song about that feeling of being able to let go — how, whether we’re kids or adults, we have certain people or places that let us tap back into that carefree sense of play.”
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| Photo - Logan White |
"Having a Ball" is the new love song from Grammy Award-winning songwriter Jesse Harris and features him in a duet with his longtime collaborator and friend Norah Jones. Wrapped in a lush orchestral arrangement by Brazilian composer Maycon Ananias, the song blends classic elegance with emotional intimacy. It’s the second glimpse into Harris’s forthcoming orchestral album, If You Believed In Me, out this fall: a sweeping, cinematic journey from one of today’s most quietly iconic songwriters from NYC.
"Since I first met Norah in 1998, she has always brought magic and energy to every song she sings. It had been years since we'd recorded together, and ‘Having a Ball’ seemed to cry out for her to harmonize with me. Once she got in the studio, her improvised ad libs and scats added so much, so I asked her to do two separate takes of it, which you can now hear throughout the song" says Jesse Harris.
If You Believed In Me began with an unexpected offer: “If you ever need an orchestra…” Jesse Harris’s friend and arranger Maycon Ananias had extra recording time with an Estonian orchestra and invited Harris to send a song. That first experiment, Dolores, sparked something new. Though Harris - a Grammy winner and longtime collaborator of Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, and Cat Power - had released over twenty albums, he had never recorded with an orchestra.
Inspired, Harris wrote eight more songs in five weeks, crafting intricate compositions designed for symphonic arrangement. Recorded between New York, Rio, and Tallinn, the album features guest appearances from Norah Jones, Brazilian guitarist Guilherme Monteiro, Jake Sherman, and Marine Quéméré of Nouvelle Vague.
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