Teeniest - Alyssa Gengos - Gabrielle Metz - Buster Baer

Teeniest - A Hand to Hold Forever.

Beehive Candy are really fond of these two artists music whether together as Teeniest or apart in other ventures. This song is no exception as the (and we quote) "acoustic-guitar-based and thematically seems all warm & fuzzy, but the accompanying vibraphone and eerie science fiction/horror undertones create a rather unsettling vibe."

The video notes tell us: This music video for this song is inspired by the virtual reality game, Lone Echo 2, an emotional highlight of which is two friends holding hands. In this outer space adventure, the two friends are Captain Olivia Rhodes and her assistant robot, Jack.

Excellent writing and voice acting (Troy Baker and Alice Coulthard) really give Jack and Liv vitality and personality. Olivia has a fully-realized human character. Through banter, jokes, and working side by side, she becomes your friend -- this emotional connection is the real surprise in VR.

When she is in peril, you feel a visceral need to come to her aid. Of course you know it's all a digital illusion. But the magic of VR happens because the immersive illusion becomes "real.”  What fascinates me are multiple levels of perception, illusion, and meaning in VR, and the Lone Echo games raise interesting questions about consciousness, artificial intelligence, and human connections.

A hand to hold forever in this world
A hand to hold forever

A simple question: what do you want?
Shouldn't have to answer with excuses and caveats
I pursued everything and I felt no fear
At the end of the line everything is clear
All I really need is

A hand to hold forever in this world
A hand to hold forever

It was unexpected, out of the blue
Didn't fear rejection - you knew what was true
The world was no longer what it seemed to me
Just a simple gesture was everything to me
All I really need is

A hand to hold forever in this world
A hand to hold forever

The end is coming, I'm gonna disappear
Memories are flooding, some I hold so dear
One surpasses everything, stands outside of time
Feeling the warmth of your loving hand in mine.
Oh I think I found it

A hand to hold forever in this world
A hand to hold forever.

 

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Photo - Morgan Hamilton

Alyssa Gengos - Cheerleader of The Universe.

During this past year, when the stimuli from the outerworld ceased, Alyssa Gengos was having some weird-ass dreams. In one that stuck with her, she dreamt that an old school bully was being kind to her. “That was a very strange dream for me to have because I don't think about this person really ever,” she says. 

“But it reflected to me that I have this really deep desire to be liked.” So poignant was this realization that it makes two appearances on her debut full-length Mechanical Sweetness, which melds her dreams and personal nostalgia into a new-wavey indie rock homecoming album.

Quote from Alyssa: “Cheerleader of the Universe” is sort of surreal; it’s a bunch of associated phrases that form a comforting lullaby. I think of the Cheerleader as the fairy godmother inside my own head. My grandma was a cheerleader, and so was my mother, and I became one in high school as well. I never really wanted to do that as a kid – I just kinda fell into it because my friends and I decided we’d all do it together. 

Still, I felt like I was doing some service continuing this cheerleader mythology that my grandma had started. Now, facing the next chapter of my life, I call upon the Cheerleader of the Universe for guidance. The music video is dreamlike, matching the sentiment of the lyrics. In it, I frolic across a Southern California beach in a dress I sewed myself.

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Gabrielle Metz - More Hearts Than Mine.

Gabrielle Metz bares her vulnerable side in her cover of Ingrid Andress’ “More Hearts Than Mine”.  If there was ever a perfect cover song for Metz, this is it. Not only does this song showcase her beautiful range and vocal inflections, but it also conveniently brings to light her attention to the vocal details paired with her ability to transition into character in order to correctly convey the emotional experience of this song. 

She grabs the listener from her first note and keeps us mesmerized until the final note. Her sometimes gritty vocal combined with her emotional delivery is exceptional.  The deliberately honest lyrics are perfectly conveyed with the silvery vocals from Metz matched with a beautifully simplistic piano line (Damon Fichter, Nashville, TN and produced by George Alexander, Nashville, TN). 

If they were to break your heart, they’d be breaking a lot more hearts than just one. “The first time I listened to Ingrid’s song I was immediately transported into her world and felt a deep connection to the lyrics.  I typically do not record covers but I have been itching to record this song since 2019.”  - Gabrielle Metz

Gabrielle has been nominated for Alabama Music Awards Best Female Country in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. She has also been nominated for Alabama Music Awards Best New Artist in 2018 and 2019. Gabrielle is also on Country Sways 2021 Artist to Watch.

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Buster Baer - Sleepy Baby.

Indie-pop artist Buster Baer has just released a new song, “Sleepy Baby.” The track serves as a sweet little ode to the sleepiest of lovers with gentle, romantic lyrics, an upbeat melody, and a swinging beat. The tune matches Baer’s vintage style perfectly, creating an aural experience that will leave his audience moving and grooving to the warmth of his music. “Sleepy Baby” is a reminder from Buster Baer that it’s ok to not be ‘on’ all of the time and to get some sleep. The track is now available on digital music platforms worldwide.

“Sleepy Baby” is more than just a cute little diddy. Buster Baer describes his inspiration for the song: “Almost every single romantic partner I’ve had seems to have picked up some weird guilt about falling asleep while we’re hanging out. I don’t know who made them feel like they had to be a performing monkey, but having a person feel comfortable enough to sleep around you is an extremely intimate and beautiful thing.” Baer, who produced the track and played all the instruments himself, expands, “I just wanted to provide some evidence to the collective unconscious that there are lovers who won’t expect you to deny your biological necessities for their egos, and I did it by producing huge, glorious cascades of violins and trumpets, which I didn’t know how to play prior to recording."

Hailing from Hermosa Beach, CA, Buster Baer is a uniquely gifted multi-instrumentalist. Baer’s love of music first led him to the drums at age 12, but he did not get serious about music until years later. He moved to New York for college to pursue beat poetry, where he first learned the guitar, and later, the bass guitar. From there, his musical journey took him to New Orleans and San Francisco before landing back in LA. Inspired by Bootsy Collins and The Beatles, Buster Baer aims to push the boundaries of music and “give people a smile or a tear when they need one shaken loose.”

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Sweet Tempest - Faye

Photo - Tina Dubrovsky

Sweet Tempest - Modern Justice.

"This is our song about worldwide misery and we would love for you to dance to it” – Sweet Tempest

‘Modern Justice’ is the 2nd song in a trilogy of new tracks with accompanying videos directed by Matthew Thorne. It is a closer look into a series of gritty, grubby, thought-provoking vignettes filmed in Eastern Europe in stark but nonetheless nuanced contrast to the bright lights and sleek surfaces of the songs.

“This song is about the strange and almost perverse situation, wherein one is sat here in the center of Europe where things could be considerably worse, and reading, seeing or hearing about the immense amounts of injustice inflicted upon people around the world. Modern Justice’s’ original inspiration was a different kind of power imbalance: the demonstrations about democracy in Hong Kong and how screwed they seemed and, it turned out, were. Worst of all, the disheartening realisation that to some extent, you’re completely disconnected from it, sometimes even stimulated by it.” In close connection to the statement of the song the music video for ‘Modern Justice’ documents the lives of young Bulgarian bodybuilders who nonetheless remain powerless.

Drenched in 80s synths rewired for the 2020s, ‘Modern Justice’ is a bold statement of intent from Berlin-based duo Sweet Tempest. Musically recalling artists like Lykke Li, Little Dragon and La Roux, with Pet Shop Boys’ literate pop and Stevie Nicks’ otherworldliness among further crucial ingredients. The meaning of the song with the accompanying video is indicative of how Sweet Tempest never shy away from difficult topics, whether political, social, or indeed personal.

Contradictions surround Luna Kira and Julian Winding, originally formed in Copenhagen. Aside from that ambiguous moniker, there’s the fact they want people to dance to songs about inequality and prejudice, and the way those songs are sometimes superficially frigid yet always warm-hearted beneath. If you ask them who inspired them, too, they’re as likely to point to Tom Waits as Ace of Base (though only the latter’s first album. It’s important to make that distinction.) And then there’s their personal history, an ‘Are they? /Aren’t they?’ soap opera which went on for over a decade.

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Faye - Alexandria.

Indie Rock musician Faye has released her latest single “Alexandria.” The song is about being in love with someone you can’t have. In an age of heavy production, Faye embraces an authentic garage sound with a focus on lyrics and a raw vocal that blends with smooth electric guitars and drums as she sings of Alexandria, the girl we’ve all wanted to be at some point in our lives.

“This one night, I came back from hanging out with the guy who was in love with Alexandria. I was really sad, because he would tell me all of these things, compliment me, and basically lead me on, and then run right back to her,” says Faye. “But I sat down —  it was like, 1am, and this idea for a song popped into my head which was to not make it about me being sad or losing the guy but to revolve the story around her. I wrote it in about 15 mins. It’s definitely one of my more vulnerable songs.”

“Alexandra” was written and performed by Faye and produced by Jon Fintel at Relay Recording and features Jon Leonard on guitar, Jared Knutson on guitar and drums, and Jenna Jaworski  on bass.

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Yard Arms - Noir Disco - North Mississippi Allstars - Winter Grain

Yard Arms - Pirouettes.

After the successful release of their recent single ‘Hollow Ankles’, Bristol-based melancholic pop duo Yard Arms return with follow up single ‘Pirouettes’, released today.

Forming in 2018, their first year saw them release their hauntingly beautiful debut EP ‘Maiden’, soon followed up by their sophomore EP ‘A Glossary of Broken Humans & Beating Hearts’. Their third studio EP 'Sanctuary Lines', described by Atwood Magazine as a "heart-on-sleeve exhaust of emotion" was released in June of 2020.

Pirouettes - recorded, mixed and mastered with long-term collaborator and producer Josh Gallop (Phoxjaw) at Stage 2 Studios in Bath - is a playful insight around the concept of karma and the fragility of modern day brain health. ’They’re probably thinking this scene is senseless as well’ encapsulates the track’s theme and the idea that everyone is just as clued-in or perhaps as clueless as the next.

“It’s how we present this to one another that seems to be a great irony”, says frontman and lyricist Noah Villeneuve, who throughout this track, shows an unwavering ability to move between sugary-sweet power-anthem choruses and moments of lyrical tenderness.

Musically, Yard Arms are demonstrating what has become somewhat their signature ’sound’ in this track, evoking the classic 80s influence of The Cure and Echo & The Bunnymen with more present day indie acts such as The National, Bleachers and Death Cab For Cutie. A short two minutes-thirty burst of pulsating indie pop melancholia with synth laden, alt-romance-rock. The accompanying music video follows the band throughout their most recent UK run of dates alongside the likes of The Slowreaders Club, Phoxjaw, The Nightmares and The Inspiral Carpets’ Tom Hingley.

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Noir Disco - Settin' Sons.

The Chicago-based project of brothers, Nolan and Carter Dickson, Noir Disco, are today sharing the video for "Settin' Sons" alongside the release of their debut album, NOW! 2073 which is out now via Terrible Records (Hubert Lenoir, The Voidz). The new single which closes the album follows previous support from Brooklyn Vegan, Northern Transmissions, Clash, Pigeons and Planes and more. It further cements the trio's spellbinding take on punk, psych-rock, indie-rock and electronica forging a truly unique sound.

"Settin' Sons," which premiered via Under the Radar Magzine earlier today, opens with spangled acoustic guitar before erupting into something bigger introducing warbling electric guitar and programmed drum beats. It finds the trio leaning into their psych-rock-adjacent sounds more than anywhere else on the record, producing one of its more tender, introspective moments.

Speaking about the making of the new single, the band explains: "The song is Carter’s take on what NOW! 2073 opening track ‘workCHANGEchangeWORK’ means to him. Carter wrote "Settin' Sons" on his guitar and then began recording it with Henry, after which Nolan, who happened to take mushrooms about an hour before they started recording, stumbled upon the guitar takes and began to add every other instrument without thinking about it, to which Carter & Henry came home, looped the improvs then structured the song. Carter’s vocal recording process on Settin Sons was a special moment for the band because it was then we realized that Carter is Rocky, Nolan is Mick and Henry is Pauly, characters from the American classic movie series Rocky."

The brothers who sing and play alongside their friend, Henry Miller have developed something of a cult following over the year; NOW! 2073 marks their grandest project yet, signposting the band’s evolution into a new freeform way of creating. Taking direct inspiration from artists like David Bowie, Kate Bush and The Doors, the new music similarly submerges you in cartoonish art-pop landscapes (think “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” if it was made by Arcade Fire during their Reflektor era) that seem to evolve in real-time.

 

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Photo by Jason Thrasher

North Mississippi Allstars - See the Moon.

North Mississippi Allstars will release Set Sail on January 28th via New West Records. The 10-song set was produced by Luther and Cody Dickinson and follows their Grammy Award Nominated 2019 album Up and Rolling, which was met with wide critical acclaim. Set Sail features an appearance by Stax Records legend William Bell on the album standout “Never Want To Be Kissed” (which Bell also co-wrote and co-produced).

After 25 years, twelve albums, four Grammy Award nominations, and sold out shows everywhere, North Mississippi Allstars open up their world once again on Set Sail, welcoming other family into the fold. As sons of the legendary producer and musician Jim Dickinson, Luther and Cody Dickinson started the band in 1996 as a loose collective of like-minded second-generation musicians who shared a local repertoire and regional style. Over the years, the lineup has shifted by design, and with Set Sail, they mined the talents of Jesse Williams on bass and Lamar Williams, Jr., the son of Allman Brothers bassist Lamar Williams, Sr, on vocals. During the Allman Betts Band Family Revival, the Dickinsons first linked up with Lamar, becoming fast friends and collaborators, paving the way for Set Sail.

“The chemistry we have with this lineup is powerful,” observes Luther. “We are all second-generation musicians and share a telepathic, relaxed ease about creating and performing. I believe music is a form of communion with our loved ones and conjuring this vibe with members of musical families can be inspirational. Lamar and I are like-minded. I’ve never had the pleasure of working with a singing partner like Lamar. He has a true-blue quality in his musicality that will pull you in and break your heart. At the same time, Jesse grew up playing music with his brothers and his father—as did we. He plays like a sibling. I’m drawn to musical families, regardless of style. Playing with second- or third-generation players allows us an easy unspoken musical dialog. It’s not a big thing; it’s just what we do. We never had to figure out what it means and takes to be a musician. We all inherently know.” He continues, “Each generation has to reinvent itself and shed the skin of the elders. On Set Sail, we feel as if we’ve once again ‘broken the code,’ and know what we want and how to get it.”

Today, Holler premiered the video for the album highlight “See the Moon," saying "Like the timely arrival of superheroes. Just when you needed them most, North Mississippi Allstars return with a lively injection of positivity and uplifting roots funk to rescue us all." Of the song, Luther Dickinson says “The last verse was improvised in the studio, on the mic, and touches on our belief that music is a celebration of life. It’s a joy to sing with Lamar Williams, Jr. and Sharisse Norman.  We have been touring hard, and are so grateful to be back on the road. Music is essential and we are honored to serve." See the “See the Moon” video directed by Joshua Shoemaker.


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Winter Grain - Hollywood & Hard.

LA-based folk pop duo Winter Grain released their new EP, Hollywood & Hard, along with focus track "Pages." This marks the second project with Grammy award winning producer Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, Vance Joy, The Lumineers.) Winter Grain consists of married couple Kate and Secily Anderson, who found love with each other shortly after experiencing the chemistry between themselves as musicians/collaborators, and then as humans.

Hollywood & Hard was recorded at Seattle’s Bear Creek Studio in October 2020, with the help of musicians Elliott Klein (electric guitar,) Taylor Carroll (drums,) and Dune Butler (bass,) with guest features from Adam Neely (bass on “Pages”) and Ryan Hadlock (mellotron on “Pages.”) This marks the first release where Secily and Kate can finally call themselves a duo, confidently claiming Winter Grain for themselves. They felt that “In the past, we had both been set on letting a large group of collaborators define who we are and we finally found the time to come to terms that this project is mainly the two of our hearts.”

With influences ranging from Bonnie Raitt, Fleetwood Mac, The Milk Carton Kids, to First Aid Kit, Kate and Secily trade off vocals that weave together stories of nostalgia, growth, frustration, love and all the in-betweens. The anthemic single “Fists” is a timely call to action released in January of this year. Kate Anderson explains, “With all of the political turmoil and civil unrest, we both felt the growing importance to not only point out the tensions, but remark on how easy it is to let something good like a spark turn into something destructive. It became a song that tried to capture both our sadness and our hope.”

Using music as a cathartic outlet, Kate wrote the acoustic country ballad, “Passenger Seat” in remembrance of the 3 years her biological mom left her family from the pivotal ages of 9-12. Winter Grain comments that when they perform this song, it “captures both joy and sadness: joy of a mother who realized her kid wanted nothing more than to be with her mom, sadness of a kid whose mom took three years to turn the car around." While coming to terms with leftover emotions, Kate was able to find closure in the moment her mom told her the song had become one of her favorites. Her mom said that "she could really hear how badly I wanted to be in the passenger seat,” Kate explains. "I just cried in disbelief, as I had very intently meant to convey the sadness reflected in that empty seat."

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Massage - Blooms - Ziemba - Wilma Nea

Massage - I'm Going In A Field.

Just a few months after releasing their acclaimed second album Still Life, Los Angeles indie-pop band Massage returns with Lane Lines — a six-track EP out December 10 on Mt.St.Mtn. (Cindy, Flowertown, Blues Lawyer) that finds the quintet expanding on their Sarah-meets-Creation Records sound with new touches of soft psychedelia, Feelies-ish frenzy and Haçienda-era escapism.

The band didn’t plan to follow Still Lines so quickly. But after the pandemic further delayed that multi-year project, Alex Naidus (guitar, vocals, former Pains of Being Pure at Heart), Andrew Romano (guitar, vocals), Gabrielle Ferrer (keyboards, percussion, vocals), David Rager (bass) and Natalie de Almeida (drums) leapt at the chance to make music together again in real life and started gathering on random summer evenings in the tiny rehearsal-space studio of producer-composer Andrew Brassell (Susanna Hoffs) with no clear goal in mind.

Lane Lines is the surprise product of those informal sessions — a flash of pent-up creative energy that serves as both a companion piece to Still Life and an exploration of textures and influences that didn’t quite fit the full-length but have always been deeply embedded in the band’s DNA, with new echoes of 1980s artists that sought to refract the 1960s through their own skewed prisms: Flying Nun, the Paisley Underground, The Feelies covering The Beatles, “Second Summer of Love” New Order.

“The songs on Still Life and Lane Lines seem to straddle the line between indie and pop without exactly being ‘indie pop,’" Romano says. “To me they feel more like descendents of ‘college rock’ — a moment that lasted from about 1986 to 1991, right before the underground and the mainstream converged, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit.”

Mt.St.Mtn. · Massage - I'm Going In A Field

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Blooms - Focus.

Blooms first burst onto the scene in 2014 with her dark blend of electro-pop and debut EP, ‘If’. Since then the Irish born artist has won the acclaim of the likes of Wonderland Magazine, Noisey, Complex and Clash Magazine. Having honed her craft over the years, Blooms now returns with an ethereal new offering ‘Focus’. The dark indie-pop track incorporates hushed vocals and frosty synths which capture the emotion and longing behind the track’s meaning.

"It's about loving someone but not knowing if you're in love with them. It's about questioning why you can't focus on them or feel the love they have for you, about feeling guilty for not being grateful for what you have" - Blooms shares

The new release follows on from Blooms’ most recent offering ‘Text Me When You Get Home’, a haunting and poignant track that sought to raise awareness on the issue of women’s safety. The track highlighted the hard-hitting reality of all the actions that women and girls feel they must take themselves to try and stay safe in a culture of male harassment and violence against them.

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Photo - Ian Torres

Ziemba - Set In Ice.

El Paso-based artist, Ziemba – a moniker for songwriter, producer, vocalist and pianist, René Kladzyk – is today sharing a duo of singles, "Set in Ice" and a cover of the holiday favorite, "I'll Be Home For Christmas," the latter of which arrives with a technicolor video directed by Kladzyk. These two tracks follow on the heels of last month's release, "Fear" arriving as another installment of Kladzyk's forthcoming album, Unsubtle Magic which is due out next Friday, December 10 via Sister Polygon Records.

The holiday season is a horrible time to be grieving. Family gatherings and omnipresent nostalgia can amplify a loved one’s absence, becoming constant reminders of what is lost. René is acutely aware of that feeling. After Kladzyk’s father suffered a stroke in December 2019 and died on January 2, 2020, Christmas associations were radically and permanently transformed. Unsubtle Magic navigates the holiday season through the lens of grief; journeying “a year and a day” from the initial loss through the following Christmas, a grim anniversary.

"Set in Ice" and "I'll Be Home For Christmas" provide two crucial cornerstones to the record. The former is a reinterpretation of a song that her father wrote in December 1974 while he worked as a touring musician under the moniker Aurel Roy. 

When discussing "Set in Ice," René explains: "He [my father] wrote hundreds of songs during his 12-year music career, but when my mom got pregnant he quit music entirely and got a 9 to 5 job at an automobile manufacturing factory in rural Michigan. Growing up, he seldom talked about that chapter of his life -- as a kid I was always curious about it and would try to pry stories out of him. He mostly would just say he didn’t remember, or that it felt like another life. But when I started working as a touring musician he was so proud of me, something I think is a rarity for parents of broke musicians. He would comment on how difficult what I was doing was, and started to share more stories from that time in his life with me. Beyond being his kid, we formed a new bond around our shared trials as working musicians. He was a trusted (and sometimes brutal) advisor and a constant cheerleader. After he died, his songs and lyric notebooks became an important gateway for me to continue expanding my relationship with him. His version of "Set in Ice" was an unadorned piano ballad, but I reimagined it as a driving song, picturing him at the wheel on long solo road trips. It has an endless quality to it that I identify with: “get up every morning just to sing these songs.” Covering his songs feels like a form of magic, a way to bring him back for just a moment, or to catch a glimpse of a version of him I never knew in this life."

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Wilma Nea - Days Like This.

With her dynamic expression, shaped by influences from Fiona Apple, Ane Brun and Kate Bush, Wilma Nea debuted with the EP "Issues" in 2020 and quickly received a warm reception from a united group of critics, including The Line Of Best Fit, NBHAP, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. As Wilma gets ready to release her debut album "This Too Shall Pass" on March 4th, it's with an equal force. 

Now she releases the single "Days Like This" taken from the upcoming album with an accompanying music video in a moody 60's setting. In the video we see Wilma portraying entrapment and being stuck in old patterns.

"It was really fun to shoot all the scenes, especially the dancing. I love the world we built and I think all the scenes really speak. For example, at the end there's a little sequence where I control myself as a puppet with hand movements, which I think represents taking control in a cool way."

The video is directed, filmed and edited by Ebba G. Ågren, based on concepts from Wilma and Ebba. It was filmed in the summer of 2021 at Studio Stor in Malmö. The choreography is by Monica Malmén.

On the upcoming album "This Too Shall Pass", where Wilma also debuts as a producer, we hear an artist exploring stories about daring to communicate her needs, daring to let go and start breathing again. An honest, raw and naked portrait of relationships, the importance of self-respect and growing as a person.

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