Big Little Lions, continue to release monthly singles with 'My Home' released yesterday. July's song is a heartwarming tune about finding the person who makes everything feel like home.
Big Little Lions are an award winning duo who were born out of a collaboration that won them a JUNO Award in 2014. Since then they have been cranking out infectious folk pop songs that are jam-packed with emotion and tight harmonies that sound like the product of two people working side-by-side instead of living in different countries.
They have released 7 albums to date, which have garnered them awards and nominations including the CFMA Ensemble of the Year, Independent Music Awards Americana Sing of the Year and John Lennon Songwriting Competition Song of the Year. Their critically acclaimed music has appeared on the CBC’s Top 20 and featured on shows like q and Vinyl Cafe. The duo consists of Paul Otten and Helen Austin, both hugely prolific songwriters - their music has been placed in hundreds of movie trailers, ads, network TV shows.
Their live show is quite the spectacle with Paul playing drums, bass and keyboard all while singing lead vocals. Helen, who is no slacker either, sings, plays guitar and foot percussion. They use every limb, and then some, to make two people sound like a full band.
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| Photo - Shannon Marks |
Chicago songwriter & multi-instrumentalist V.V. Lightbody just shared "Practice Smiling" as she announces her new LP Period Piece (due Oct 9 Via Egghunt Records). We are told "I always imagined "Practice Smiling" opening up Period Piece because it so clearly hits one of the major themes of the album, which I like to describe as "loosening up the life corset". I started writing this song when I went to my first rock show in Chicago after things had opened back up in 2021. Everyone was remembering how to be together in a room again – it was exhilarating and stressful."
"Does my smile look okay? How do I order a drink? I felt stiff, but eager to settle in. I danced with abandon after the show and ended up throwing out my back when I took off my sweater. In that moment, I so clearly felt the passage of time and a surprising nervousness that had built up in my mind and body, forcing me to reassess my social confidence which I feel like I am still gaining back. This song also touches on a frustration I have with the current state of live music, where getting people to leave the comfort of their home and come to a show feels like an increasingly difficult task."
Notably, Period Piece also marks Lightbody’s debut as a lead producer on her own album – a dazzling and welcome emergence. With layers of perfectly tucked backing vocals, swirling guitars in harmony, chugging bass lines, and romantic, melodic flutes, Lightbody has crafted a playful and pristinely recorded collection of indie-folk songs, veering between 70s Brazilian samba and contemporary electro-pop. Think, Cate Le Bon strolling through an overgrown meadow. Dave Vettraino provided additional production and mixing support, and Lightbody called in a robust team of friends to contribute throughout, including Macie Stewart, Sam Cantor, Emma Hospelhorn, Jack Henry Lickerman, and Cassandra Jenkins.
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| Photo - makemade |
Memphis artist Kelly Hunt has announced a new album 'Requiem for a Sleepless Night,' out September 18 on Compass Records. Produced by Dirk Powell (Joan Baez, Rhiannon Giddens, Eric Clapton), Hunt's third full-length is largely inspired by the mental tangles of a fitful night. The songs radiate with a stunning fragility—cracked-open, tender, and swirling like an insomniac’s mind.
On her most modern work to date, Hunt lets an open-tuned guitar guide the sound, adorned with harmonies courtesy of Amelia Powell. Artfully bridging traditional and contemporary influences, ‘Requiem…’ calls eclectic comparisons to the likes of Gillian Welch, Anaïs Mitchell, and Laura Marling.
Kelly Hunt shares: "I crave long drives through the plains, the infinity of sky unfolding as far as eye can see. I do my best thinking on long, uncomplicated country roads where my mind has the chance to straighten out and run free. I wrote “Clouds” on one such dead-ahead drive through the Midwest—late summer afternoon, storm brewing. I’d been driving for hours, lost in thought, when my eyes suddenly focused on what looked like mountains rising in the distance. I quickly realized they were only clouds—a string of thunderheads weighing heavily on the horizon with all the seeming concreteness of a mountain range. The fleeting shock of this moment got me thinking about the power of illusions, how real illusory things can feel at times, and of our capacity to both create and dismantle stumbling blocks in our own minds."
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| Photo - Sander Randall |
Kate Prascher has released the third single from her highly anticipated sophomore album ‘Sunday Afternoon,’ out August 28 on First City Artists (Alexa Rose, Carly King). Described by Prascher as “an apocalyptic waltz,” it’s one of the album’s gentlest offerings. “It’s also about intimacy scaled up to include movement of the moon, the stars and the sun,” she continues, “with images of big endings and closeness to others, without much clarity on which one of those is bad and which is good.” Her musings on the sky sparkle over moving strings, the sound of submission to the uncanny experience of being alive: La da di da.
Kate Prascher was raised in Memphis, a childhood steeped in spiritual storytelling. “Where I’m from, it’s expected for the people in your life who’ve passed to show up again, one way or another,” she says. In adulthood, she carried that experience to New York City and embraced the lively vibrance of the city’s Bluegrass scene, taking mandolin lessons from Michael Daves and joining open sessions at staple venues like The Jalopy, Mona's, Sunny's. Prascher wrote about half the songs on ‘Sunday Afternoon’ while she was living in Brooklyn—the rest, after she left.
“I’m interested in how environment informs identity,” she shares. “Leaving New York was a reckoning for me. I moved there out of ambition. If I left, could I still consider myself ambitious?” Now based upstate, she’s grateful for the opportunity to answer that question. “My life is less about chasing one thing, and more about grounded rituals, the practices of work and creation. I can hear myself more clearly. I know what I want to say.”
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The new single, "I'm Wrecked", was released a week ago so Beehive Candy is doing a little catching up on this one, in our opinion it's worth sharing and it's taken from the forthcoming debut album Holy Dancing Girls, released on 26th September.
Tony Fox are difficult to categorise, which is one of the reasons we fell in love with them. Their music blends punk, psych and poetry into something raw, honest and entirely their own. "I'm Wrecked" is a song about grief and remembrance, but it's ultimately uplifting—a reminder that the people we lose remain part of us. It's emotionally direct without ever feeling overworked or sentimental.
Mark Perry (Alternative TV / Sniffin' Glue) perhaps described the band best: "Grooving like The Velvets, live in '69, with Patti on vocals." The album itself is a wonderfully DIY affair, made with heart rather than budget, where that spirit shines through every track.
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Toronto songwriter Brodie Christ shares “16 & 9 Lives,” an uplifting and defiant alternative Canadiana single that questions the stories we inherit, repeat, and use to define ourselves. Built around warm acoustic instrumentation, conversational lyricism, and a reflective country-tinged sound, the track explores memory, identity, and the freedom that comes from realizing we are not bound to the versions of ourselves we once believed were permanent.
At its core, “16 & 9 Lives” examines the unreliable narratives we create about our own past. The song reflects on how memories are shaped by the moments when we need them most, and how the stories we tell about who we were can become limiting if we allow them to define who we are now. “Your memories betray you,” Brodie explains. “You were not as kind, as cool, as embarrassing, as wild, or as ugly as you thought you were.”
The song found its meaning after an unexpected moment of reflection at Brodie’s high school reunion. Returning to a place filled with old stories and familiar faces, he found himself reconsidering how people hold onto the past.
“Stories were recounted to me over that weekend – some flattering, some embarrassing, some prideful,” he shares. “All of them were lies, or at best exaggerations. I decided I wasn’t interested in being defined by any of it, and it was incredibly liberating.”
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Ever since picking up a guitar at age 13, Victorian singer-songwriter, Jessica Lorraine, has displayed tenacity and hard work to follow her music dream. Her family has played a huge role in where her music has taken her. As a surprise, she wrote “The Passenger Seat”, as special thank you gift to these early champions.
“The Passenger Seat is a song I wanted to write for a long time, a dedication to my family who have always been my biggest support”, says Jessica. “I wanted to surprise my family with a song to thank them for all their support and guidance. I’ve come so far - not only in my music journey - but in my personal life too, and that has been thanks to my family”, she says. “We really don’t say ‘Thank you, I love you’ to the closest to us enough, this song is for them. Dedicated to the thousands of kilometres we’ve travelled together for my music, literally and metaphorically.”
Hailing from the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, Jessica showcases a rich, earthy and emotional intensity in her gorgeous vocals. Her introspective lyrics and warmth have a knack of drawing you into her orbit, offering a space for connection through story and song.
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