Showing posts with label Watashi Wa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Watashi Wa. Show all posts

Sunday, 7 June 2026

Eyre Llew - Asteroid Lily - Tyson Ray Borsboom - Liv Wade - Vox Umbra - Watashi Wa

Eyre Llew - Oban.

Nottingham trio Eyre Llew shared their new single 'Oban' a couple of days ago, the latest single from their upcoming album Bloom — due September 18th. Named after the unofficial capital of the West Highlands, ‘Oban’ is built around a feeling most people recognise but rarely articulate: the pull towards a place you've never lived but somehow already belong to. For Eyre Llew, that place is the Scottish west coast — white sand beaches, open lochs, a landscape that slows the pulse and sharpens the senses all at once. The lyric "my blood is blue" runs deeper still — part physical rush, part quiet reckoning with identity and the kind of belonging that doesn't need a postcode to be real. Simple, honest, and quietly devastating.

"'Oban' is about longing for a slower, quieter life — the feeling of belonging to a place you don't yet live, but already feel connected to," the band explain. "It's drawn from years of family holidays on the Scottish west coast, swims in lochs, time with loved ones in that landscape. At its core it's about imagining a future built on peace, family, and escape. A dream of one day living somewhere that feels like freedom, even before it's real. It's home — but one we don't know yet."

Beginning with quiet intimacy before building to something genuinely anthemic, 'Oban' showcases Eyre Llew at their most cinematic — a post-rock slow-burn that earns every moment of its crescendo. It's the kind of song that could only come from a band who've been somewhere and returned changed. EYRE LLEW spent years in relentless forward motion — touring over 20 countries, playing Glastonbury, fielding label interest at what felt like a breakthrough moment — before lockdown brought everything to an abrupt halt. 


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Asteroid Lily - You & I.

Asteroid Lily have shared their new single “You & I,” a dreamy electro-pop track that feels suspended in time. It sounds like late-night drives with nowhere to be. Like staring out the window convinced the world could still become something bigger. Synths shimmer beneath emotional vocals as the song drifts between nostalgia, devotion, and wide-eyed possibility. What begins as a love song slowly becomes something larger: a celebration of the people and moments that make life feel infinite.

At its heart, “You & I” is about trying to hold onto a feeling before it disappears: “I’ll never learn how to say goodbye - So don’t you dare even make me try”

There’s something bittersweet running through it. It's the rush of dreaming about escape, endless love, and all the adventures still waiting ahead, while quietly knowing nothing stays the same forever. The song moves between intimacy and imagination, turning ordinary moments into something cosmic. But this isn’t really a song about goodbye. It’s about the people who make life bigger, brighter, and more exciting while they’re there.


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Photo - Brayden Treble
Tyson Ray Borsboom - These Days (Album).

After previewing his latest album These Days over the past few weeks with several singles including the title track and "Let You Down, Vancouver-based singer/songwriter Tyson Ray Borsboom officially releases his new nine-song collection this weekend, marking his arrival as one of Canada's rising alt-country stars.

Tyson's work on These Days embraces the kind of country music that doesn’t shy away from hardship and loss, and everything else that makes us human. It’s been a steady evolution for the artist originally from Calgary, from releasing his debut EP in 2018 to building an audience across western Canada through shows with Field Guide, Kacy & Clayton and others, and more recently to packing venues both in Canada and the EU.

For These Days, Tyson teamed up with producer Phenix Warren (Wyatt C. Louis, The Dust Collectors) to make the album at Pocono House in Calgary with a band of seasoned vets who have also worked with Noeline Hofmann and Shred Kelly. Now able to reflect on the sessions, Tyson describes the final product as the seamless result of working with a dream team.

“I think Phenix really understands where I’m at as a songwriter. He heard how I was performing the songs live, and we talked a lot about how my favourite records sound. We pretty much recorded my vocals and guitar and then I let him run with it. He’d send me mixes, and apart from a few minor tweaks, they would be perfect.”


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Photo - Melanie Orr
Liv Wade - Fur Queen (EP).

After releasing the internationally acclaimed EP Radios And Buffalos in 2024, multi-talented Indigenous recording artist Liv Wade officially returns with a new five-song collection entitled Fur Queen. Overall, it displays Liv’s wide-ranging musical approach that blends traditional storytelling with soaring modern production.

Fur Queen's previously released singles, "Darkest Hour" and “Carolina,” explored similar theme of holding onto hope in challenging times, with the music a product of Liv’s longtime partnership with producer Winston Hauschild, who works out of The Treehouse Studio on Bowen Island, near Vancouver. Other tracks on Fur Queen, “Fall For You” and “Blue House Paint,” offer bold variations of modern pop that fans of Liv’s previous work will be familiar with, but the title track may come as a surprise—a rollicking, fiddle-driven country number that pays tribute to her family’s history in northern Manitoba.

Liv explains, “This song is a story of my birth mother and her life as a ‘Fur Queen,’ as part of the Northern Manitoba Trappers Festival. It was the first piece of information I gathered when I was legally able to search for my birth family. At that young age, I had no idea about the festival or what or who a ‘Fur Queen’ was. But because my birth mother was one, it pushed me to discover further information about my Metis heritage. I travelled to The Pas in my early twenties, and had the honour of attending a Trappers Festival, which was so much more than I ever imagined. So with this song, I hope to share some of what life is like for many in northern communities across Canada. And of course, my love for land and our connection to it.”

Absorbing the music of Canadian icons such as Leonard Cohen, Ron Sexsmith, Kathleen Edwards and Sarah Harmer from a young age, by her teens Liv was combining all of it with her Royal Conservatory of Music studies, which soon earned her residencies at the prestigious Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity and Manitoba’s Indigenous Music Program. Her debut studio record, and first collaboration with Hauschild, Resilience, was released in 2017, earning her a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2018 Indigenous Music Awards.


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Vox Umbra - Afterglow / The Train.

Vox Umbra returns with their two song maxi-single, "Afterglow" / "The Train", which pairs the duo's cinematic atmosphere and emotionally focused songwriting. Across these companion tracks, the release explores movement, uncertainty, devotion, distance, and the fragile clarity that can emerge when old certainties fall away. Darkly elegant and deeply human, "Afterglow" / "The Train" balances widescreen tension with intimate emotional stakes.

"Afterglow" / "The Train" is a cohesive two-song statement about how people carry each other through uncertainty, whether side by side or from afar. One song moves through pressure and fracture. One song lingers in grace and release. Together, they create a resonant emotional arc. For fans of thoughtful, atmospheric songwriting and listeners drawn to shadowed textures, lyrical depth and songs that stay with them after the final note, "Afterglow" / "The Train" offers two compelling new entries in the Vox Umbra catalog.

Vox Umbra is a darkwave duo formed in 2025, blending rich haunting melodies with cold atmospheric textures. Tiffany, based in Seattle, composes the music, drawing from the city's moody landscape and industrial influences, while Florian, located in northern France, provides evocative vocals that deepen the band's emotional impact. Their collaboration, despite the geographical distance, creates a unique sound that fuses introspective, melancholic rhythms with dark, cinematic arrangements. Together, they offer an immersive journey into the darker corners of the human experience, balancing shadow and light in perfect harmony.



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Photo - John Sontag
Watashi Wa - I Am.

Watashi Wa releases the first single from its forthcoming full-length album for Lost In Ohio. “I Am" is the band’s most focused statement in years. The title is deliberate: “Watashi Wa” literally translates from Japanese as “I am.” Bright, hook-driven, and unmistakably Seth Roberts, it carries the melodic confidence of The Love of Life while drawing on the band’s formative influences of the 1990s. It is the sound of a band that knows exactly who they are. 

Roberts had this to say about it: “I Am” is a song about God, and about the way truth calls us back to who we were made to be. We are made in the image of God, and the best parts of our lives carry pieces of that truth. We feel it in the songs that stop us mid-thought, the books that seem to know too much about us, the places that feel like home, the memories that still have some dirt on their shoes, the beauty we almost missed, and the people who remind us what actually matters.

But we all wander. It is one of our more reliable talents. We can know what is right and still drift from it. We can know what is true and beautiful and still trade it for foolishness, usually at a terrible exchange rate. We can leave the path that brings peace and go chasing after something smaller, shinier, and much less satisfying.

But truth has a way of finding us again. It does not usually kick the door down. It waits on the porch light. It calls us home. It helps us recalibrate. It reminds us of what we knew deep down all along, before we got distracted by our own cleverness. That is God. Even when we veer off course or sell ourselves short, it is always possible to return. To come back to what is true. To choose beauty again. To live with peace, purpose, and a heart that feels at home.


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Eyre Llew - Asteroid Lily - Tyson Ray Borsboom - Liv Wade - Vox Umbra - Watashi Wa

Eyre Llew - Oban. Nottingham trio Eyre Llew shared their new single 'Oban' a couple of days ago, the latest single from their upcom...