After almost four years since Sad & Easy, Colyn is excited to be sharing a new album ‘Freehand’. While living in Vancouver, BC, the new material emerged within the paradoxical spaces of experimenting with dispersed and concentrated rhythms. He used the material to explore themes of technology, adventure, self-worth & love with mild nods to worldly trepidation.
The Album was again recorded mostly at home, with additional instrumentation from close collaborators Aiden Ayers and Josh Contant.
It has now been ten years since the release of Wake Owl’s first album. In the years since, Colyn has also composed original music for 2 feature films and numerous different independent projects, and formed new musical and broader artistic collaborations.
His enchanting new single “Stream” was inspired by algorithmic realities, such as near annual iPhone purchases and the screen time data Apple shares. The metaphor in the line “Well I've tried prototypes, but the fruit wasn’t ripe, I’ll pretend differently it’s a bad appetite” suggests that all tech progress is fruitful, but maybe isn’t always ready.
As we round the home stretch towards the release of Em Spel's debut album The Carillon Towers we celebrate the release of the third single "Golem" - a beautifully orchestrated track that meditates on the monkey's paw curse / wish of the Golem from Jewish Folklore.
Of the track Emma Hospelhorn states, "Have you ever loved the idea of someone rather than the real person? In this intimate, slow build of a song, the lush instrumentation is layered in gradually: An improvised noise layer swirls like the static of a person's thoughts over a gentle guitar line played by V.V. Lightbody. A singing violin line, played by Caitlin Edwards, starts out simply and then soars into shimmering counterpoint at the apex of the song, on the lyric "what if you said you'd become someone new?""
The Carillon Towers features luminaries from Chicago's thriving experimental and classical music scene including V.V. Lightbody, Katinka Kleijn, Eric Ridder and Matt Oliphant who work to bring these lushly orchestrated songs to life
A classically trained musician with a love for great songwriting, Roxi Copland’s innovative sound is forged at the crossroads of Americana, roots, and jazz. From her confessions that “the things I speak aloud might hurt the ones I love” to professing seductively “I prefer my arms with yours entwined,” the five songs that make up her I Come From Crazy EP reveal an artist unafraid to divulge her shortcomings, frustrations, and desires.
"It took a while for me to be self-confident enough to write a song without complex chords in it," she recalls, referencing her previous life as a singing pianist in jazz clubs. "I noticed that what I really loved as a kid were songs that told stories, and a lot of those were country and Americana … my songwriting started to have more of a tilt towards that direction." Throughout the EP, Copland’s sultry vocals are framed by country-tinged instrumentation from a stellar lineup of some of Austin’s finest—including Warren Hood on fiddle (Alejandro Escovedo, Joe Ely, The Waybacks), Adam Nurre on drums (David Ramirez, Jeremy Pinnell) James Bookert on banjo (Whiskey Shivers, Wild Child), Devin North on bass (Arielle), and Justin Douglas, who also engineered and co-produced the album with Copland, on pedal steel and guitar. The resulting sound is akin to a rowdier, rootsier Madeleine Peyroux or Melody Gardot.
Lead single "Daddy Don't Do Politics," which earned an accolade from the International Songwriting Competition (2020 Semi-Finalist, Folk/Singer-Songwriter category), might be the most timely of all the tracks on the EP. In just over two minutes, it offers up a succinct summation of that moment when a father gets a lesson in privilege from his more progressive daughter. “He didn’t appreciate me pointing out that he had a huge head start in life, and I didn’t appreciate him willfully ignoring a massive amount of privilege. So I got a little passive-aggressive and wrote this song and admittedly had a lot of fun while doing it,” Copland recalls.
Looking for an escape of sorts during the pandemic, Copland says she steered her efforts towards simply having fun with music, centering the storytelling, and looking internally to family dynamics for inspiration. “I was focusing on telling a story, whether it was funny, sarcastic, or getting a political dig in, and trying to write to that story rather than coming up with a song and then writing a story to fit.”
Wy are a band strongest at their most vulnerable. The Malmö indie duo, Ebba and Michel Gustafsson Ågren, have showcased their musical skills across three albums, 2017’s Okay, 2019’s Softie and 2021’s Marriage which gained them recognition from KEXP, Line of Best Fit, NBHAP, Tonspion, CLASH and more as well as tours in Germany, Scandinavia and the UK. But what makes them stand out as a band is the raw, brutal emotion they capture in their music. A Wy song at their best sounds like opening it all up, and letting the feelings flow where they will, letting the pain, anger, fear, hope and love steer the song. Those emotions are spun into the band’s skyscaping, cinematic sound, and turned into music that has a force behind it, a power that hits you, even when it's at its softest. Teeth is the first song from new EP Something Amazing which is out on all platforms and a limited CD including a six page booklet (which also includes Marriage) on June 17th.
First single Teeth is about “standing helpless on the sideline when someone close to you is struggling. About feeling desperate to help when there’s nothing you can do but to be by their side and wait for it all to pass. It feels extra relevant now that we have become parents. Suddenly there’s an abundance of things we cannot control, and there’s going to be a lot more of that in the future. It’s a hard thing to accept, but you can’t protect the ones you love from everything, even if you want to.”
Something Amazing picks up where Marriage left off, exploring dramatic life changes, including the experience of knowing that there soon will be a third person in the family. It is the second release since signing to Rama Lama Records (Melby, Steve Buscemi's Dreamy Eyes, Chez Ali etc.) and continues the path from last years Marriage, leaving the more produced style of second album Softie behind, it turns to the simpler sound of their earlier work for music that’s rawer and sharper.
The duo describes it as being about “the light at the end of the tunnel. About narrowing your circle and focusing your gaze on what is important - the people close to you. About a door, opening wide into a completely new life, with entirely new challenges and overwhelming beauty. ”
After building a following of over 220,000 people on TikTok who are itching for new music, Southern punk-rocker King Lazy Eye (Dylan Wilson) releases his single, “Slow Burn,” via brand-new Nashville independent record label Sky Daddy. “Slow Burn” is the first single to be released from his debut EP due out in August 2022.
Wilson delivers his crafty songwriting with southern Tennessee twang over upbeat acoustic guitar licks. Now that he’s set with a full band and label backing him, he’s ready to blaze his trail. Inspired by artists like Pinegrove, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and The Pixies, Wilson has honed in on his talents and delivers them via a well-tuned, heartfelt vehicle for himself and like-minded fans.
With repeating lyrics of “I feel like I’m just a slow burn” in a catchy rhythm that makes it easy to sing along, the song is nothing short of an anthem. The single is about getting clean from methamphetamine and alcohol and subsequently going to jail, as well as how the road to sobriety for everyone is different--the usual motivators like religion or corporal punishment can fail us just like any other system we're indoctrinated into. "Slow Burn" is also weighted with the physical exhaustion that comes from recovering from a five-year narcotics binge.
‘In Another Desert’ by New Zealand post-punk / indie-guitar band Vietnam is the third video and promo single to be lifted from their latest album, This Quiet Room. Vietnam’s first new record since 1985’s self-titled debut, This Quiet Room was released in New Zealand and Australia in January 2022. Met with an immediate and overwhelmingly warm reception from radio, reviewers, and record collectors alike, vinyl and CD copies of This Quiet Room have now gained wider release across Europe and the UK, through Netherlands distribution label Clear Spot.
Primarily written by co-founding member Peter Dransfield, ‘In Another Desert’ ranges from tumultuous, tension-building rhythms through to breezier moments of melodic release: showcasing Vietnam’s moody early eighties post-punk influences (often compared at the time to Joy Division, The Cure, The Church, or The Sound), blended with New Zealand influences in the tradition of The Pin Group, The Verlaines, or The Chills. The song’s dynamic contrast between light and shade is offset by the new video, capturing an energetic performance from the band, in stark monochrome.
‘In Another Desert’ is both the new album’s opening track, and one of the earliest unreleased songs from the band’s original 1980s repertoire. The song kicks off This Quiet Room with a stick count from original drummer Leon Reedijk (R.I.P.), sampled from the band’s 2017 live reunion show in Wellington, New Zealand. Sadly, Leon died of a sudden heart attack just a few months after that show.
Dublin-based singer songwriter Ellen Arthur Blyth unveiled her long-awaited debut album ‘Nine’ in April. The collection of Ellen’s unique jazz-pop sound follows the release of the single ‘Young Ones’ and title track ‘Nine’ which earned Ellen support from acclaimed publications such as Notion, Hotpress and Nialler9.
The album is now followed by the release of a stunning new music video
for ‘God Knows’, which expresses the themes of pain in the song with
visuals of a captivating ballerina. “It's about the time in my life when I had to finally stop drinking. It felt like a relationship was ending, one I'd had from the age of 14. I thought I couldn't live without it and felt heartbroken.” - Ellen shares the meaning behind ‘God Knows’
Born in Dublin, the youngest of nine, in a house where the one who shouted loudest ate most, Ellen learned early how to sing for her supper. Dragged out of bed, dusted down, slung into a polyester frock, her early forays into musical performance consisted of pitch perfect renditions of Any Dream Will Do to family friends. But as success followed the clan, friends turned to ambassadors, heads of state, Hollywood actors and other visiting dignitaries passing through.
Aged 9, she woke her father and told him she was going to be a famous singer and would buy him a racehorse. He told her to go back to bed. At 16 she made the live finals of Ireland’s ‘You’re a Star’ but lost her voice. Her early adult life was spent serenading drunk punters in a city buried in snow, before finally, she fell through a drunken crevasse. After reaching bottom, she started to climb back out and rediscover her voice.
She Said is a song about being a woman. The song unfolds from two perspectives – one being young, carefree and full of hope, but also feeling insecure and scared to make the wrong decisions. The other perspective is delivered from an older narrator, that has lived life – singing to her younger self, wanting to give advice, but not wanting to interfere, because she knows that life has to be lived and experienced, good or bad, wild and mundane. The track is a celebration of all women and a reminder to believe in oneself. Philip’s catchy vocals are supported by gritty drums, dynamic beats and sparse guitar.
Josephine Philip lives and works in Copenhagen. She is inspired by a wealth of artistic expression; choral works, contemporary art and performance, jazz standards, experimental music, film, literature and classical music, and uses this inspiration to tell her engaging tales and stories.
Philip released her debut single as a solo artist, Call My Name in May 2021 and her second The Clue in October 2021. Both songs have been in heavy rotation on Danish radio station P6 Beat and have been very warmly received on both Danish and foreign music media. In February 2022 she released her 3rd single No. 7 and in March 2022 her 4th single Little Boy.
“It’s a fragile, nocturnal piece of cinematic beauty, a track about love and longing, surrounded in an impressive musical setting. The anchor of this delicate tune remains Philip‘s stunning vocal performance which is equally strong and fragile”
The new album - We Get Lost And Found - is written and produced in collaboration with Copenhagen based producer and musician Lasse Martinussen and will be released on 20th May 2022. Josephine Philip was one half of the now defunct dynamic duo JaConfetti, was a founder of and served time in the all-female Ska outfit Favelachic and the dance floor popular sound system Dullen & Dyken.
As the opening and title track of Ben Talmi's upcoming record, this song really sets the tone for the tunes that follow. An ode to growing up in Western Mass, Ben takes us on a nostalgic journey through some of the most formative moments in his life. With a humorous and often self depracating tone, he describes "the night some friends and I paid tribute to The Ramones by hanging a giant “Rock 'n' Roll High School” banner above our beloved Pittsfield High School. No one saw it and the banner was taken down first thing the following morning." Other memories include going to a Smiths singalong party and feeling shame at not knowing any of the lyrics.
Musically, "Berkshires" introduces us to Ben's talent as an arranger, with a string quartet floating on top of his fingerpicked acoustic. It's as if you crossed Nick Drake with the twee pop of Belle and Sebastian or one of their 90s contemporaries. I love how simple the arrangement is, and the quartet never threatens to overwhelm the delicate stories being told.
As with the previous two singles "Ralph & Mary" and "Canoe Meadows," "Berkshires" epitomizes the kind of homespun nostalgia that jumped out at me upon first listen. Ben is singing about beloved memories from his past, and while we weren't there with him, we can feel the love and affection in his voice.
California-based trio Heavy Gus have announced their debut album Notions will release on August 5th through BMG Records. Led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Dorota Szuta, the band includes multi-instrumentalist Stelth Ulvang of The Lumineers and percussionist Ryan Dobrowski of Blind Pilot. The group also shared their new single “Weird Sad Symbol” along with the accompanying music video directed by maven Ben Fee. The video was shot in one take and shows Szuta singing through a montage of pesky hecklers as she revels in resilience and survival. Under the Radar premiered the video saying, “the track captures the trio’s propulsive energy with rollicking rhythms, infectious guitar parts, and impeccable melodic sensibilities一all of the foundations for great garage rock.”
“I wrote ‘Weird Sad Symbol’ as a joyous departure, while living in a damp garage in Santa Cruz, California,” Szuta told Under The Radar who debuted the video. “It's a song about living in chaos and just rolling with it. It's the second track off our debut album, Notions, which we're excited to announce will be released August 5th!”
Heavy Gus emerged last year with the psychedelic-tinged “Do We Have to Talk?”, a track about the intimacy in words unspoken and reaching out for the comfort of a physical connection. Earlier this year, they shared the long-distance-love-song “Dinner For Breakfast,” a droning, bittersweet, reverb-drenched reflection on longing and separation that ultimately finds a reason to hold on in even the darkest of moments.
The band took shape during the pandemic when songwriting couple Uvlang and Szuta (a marine scientist who also has a background in music playing with Laura Gibson and Gill Landry) took a socially distanced road trip to Nashville — picking up Dobrowski in Colorado along the way — to record at The Creative Workshop. The resulting collection of songs blur the lines between grungy garage band fare, hazy desert surf, and dreamy, sun-soaked indie rock. Their debut offering calls to mind everything from Meat Puppets and The Breeders to Yo La Tengo and Acetone in its artful balance of hope and fatalism, loneliness and desire, strength and vulnerability. And while all three bandmates came to Heavy Gus from very different worlds, they fit together like puzzle pieces here, bound by the kind of love and trust that can only grow from years of deep kinship. Notions was engineered and mixed by Parker Cason (Margo Price, All Them Witches, Coin) and mastered by Pete Lyman (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile).
Bergen, Norway based artist Bo Milli shares the video for debut track "At The Wheel". The latest signing to MADE Management (Sigrid, AURORA), "At The Wheel" was co-produced by Odd Martin Skålnes (Sigrid, Sløtface, AURORA).
With a predisposition to self-criticise and a talent for turning that into art, Bo Milli is an essential new voice in music. Through her diaristic lyrics, the super smart environmentalist writes hook after hook as she navigates her inner conflict. And indeed, in putting her own life into words, she has unknowingly narrated our collective existential angst. “Writing music is an emotional outlet, but it’s also a puzzle,” she says, reflecting on her craft. “Sentences come to me and I try to make the pieces fit together. And if just for a moment my music is a good thing in someone’s life, then I will take any opportunity to play it.”
Debut track “At The Wheel” is a Soccer Mommy-adjacent song about becoming an adult and suddenly finding yourself responsible for not just your own destiny but the future of the planet. “It’s embarrassingly earnest,” she says of the track, in which she questions “who’s at the wheel these days?” from a bed of idiosyncratic lyrics and melodies. “It’s about how the small things feel big, and how you try to relate to the big things but the everyday stuff takes up so much real estate. There are these flashes of ‘oh fuck!’ but then you’re like… ‘wait, where’re my keys?’” The feeling of powerlessness though, is all-too relatable.
Commenting on the track's accompanying video, Bo Milli said: "The video reflects the everyday-feel of the lyrics, leaning into the literal: I sing I'm waiting for the bus having a cigarette, there I am at the bus-stop doing just that. We wanted to capture the theme of aimlessness. I’m waiting for a bus that never comes, sitting in the backseat of a car that never arrives anywhere, and who’s driving anyways?"
Violent Vickie returns with Division Remixes LP just out on May 6, featuring remixes by Kontravoid, Fragrance, Blood Handsome, in3briant, Dimension 23, Maduro, Ben Arp (C/A/T), Barium Network, Solem Youth, Niet!, Di Auger, Torturetekk, At0shima 3rror, 40 Octaves Below, 20 Watt Dream, and Ms. Mynx vs. OsO. The remixes are a wide range of dark electronic genres from darkwave, synthpop, EBM, dark electro, darkrave/witchwave, electronic, industrial, and post-punk.
Violent Vickie is a Los Angeles based Dark Synth-Riot artist consisting of Vickie and co-producer/recording guitarist E. Vickie has toured with Hanin Elias of Atari Teenage Riot and has shared the stage with Pastel Ghost, Trans X, The Missing Persons, Them Are Us Too, Aimon and Jessie Evans (The Vanishing). She has toured the US, Mexico, Canada & Europe and played Insted Fest, Solidarity Fest, Shoutback Fest & Gay Prides and Ladyfests. Vickie’s tracks have been released by Crunch Pod, Emerald & Doreen Recordings (Berlin), Riot Grrrl Berlin, & LoveCraft Bar (PDX). Her track "The Wolf“ was featured in a National Organization for Women film and she was interviewed for the documentary “GRRRL”, part of the museum exhibit “Alien She”. Her LP "Monster Alley” was voted best album by KALX and her tracks have been remixed by 25+ artists. Violent Vickie's Division LP was released in September 2020, followed by a remix album of "Under The Gun" in February 2021 and a cover of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire in July 2021.
Upcoming Violent Vickie shows:
5/22 LA Macabre Fest @ The Offbeat Bar (LA) 5/27 New Orleans, LA @ Carnaval Lounge 6/11 Inland Empire, CA @ Dr Strange Records 10/8 Absolution Fest @ Crowbar (Tampa, FL)
Critically acclaimed Tel Aviv songstress Kama Vardi returns with a gorgeous new song ‘Bread & Wine’, the first single to be taken from her forthcoming Somewhere East EP which will follow in September 2022.
Written in a little shack in the rural part of north Israel during the harshest moments of the pandemic, ‘Bread & Wine’ is described by Vardi as “A sort of dialogue between two lovers, wanting to be together but disillusioned by the reality of their changing love.”
The imaginative and cinematic video tells the tale of an isolated woman who brings home a disembodied and abandoned suit from a laundromat, a suit that soon comes to life as the man of her dreams, before disappearing again into its old world. It conveys the subtle feelings of hope and loss present in the song, as Vardi expands “It’s like a rude awakening from a dream of perfect, evergreen love that never changes.”
‘Bread & Wine’ is indicative of Vardi’s dreamy and timeless sound where simple production and harmonies leave space for the songwriter’s lyrics to take centre-stage, often poignant life observations told through the lens of the curious characters brought to life in her songs and delivered in Vardi’s softly whispered vocal.
Kama Vardi has previously released a debut album Forgetmenot (2012), followed by the Satchel-Sof Ma’arav EP (2016), and most recently her 2020 long-player Moonticket. The latter was warmly received by the western media with coverage in Uncut, Financial Times and American Songwriter, whilst in her homelands of Israel the album’s singles had play from the biggest radio stations, including Glglz and 88fm, with the latter placing its first single ‘Whatever Will Be’ (2019) at no. 9 in their ‘Songs of the Year’ chart, with the track also featured on Shazam’s most searched for songs in Israel, and was included on both Apple Music’s ‘Israeli Essential Rock Song Of The 2010s’ and ‘100 Best Songs of 2019’ lists.
The Hamilton, Ontario-based trio, Ellevator have tjust released their Chris Walla-produced debut album, The Words You Spoke Still Move Me via Arts & Crafts. The record arrives alongside the video for the album track, "STAR" and comes following earlier tips from NPR, Consequence, The Needle Drop, Exclaim, FLOOD, The Line of Best Fit, Under the Radar, CBC and more. The band will support the release of the new record with Canadian dates this May with support coming from Pleasure Craft, Deanna Petcoff, Luvr, Emma Worley, Quinn Mills, Equal, Alicia Clara and Lastli across different dates – full run below.
The band, which is comprised of Nabi Sue Bersche, guitarist, Tyler Bersche and bassist/synth player, Elliott Gwynne, will deliver on the promise of their self-titled 2018 EP with their long-awaited debut album. The record was pieced together across numerous locations but primarily while living together at The Bathouse (a Kingston-area facility owned by Canadian alt-rock legends The Tragically Hip) and comes off the back of earlier dates with Amber Run, BANNERS, Cold War Kids, Arkells and Dear Rouge. Across 12 tracks, it inhabits an emotional landscape that is both breathtakingly intimate and impossibly vast, documenting various experiences to turn universal (existential longing, romantic power struggles, the neverending work of true self-discovery) and highly specific (e.g., frontwoman Nabi Sue Bersche’s journey in extracting herself from a cult) storytelling into a truly hypnotic body of work, giving rise to the kind of radiant open-heartedness that radically transforms our own perspective.
Ellevator poses a fantastic ability to sculpt these mammoth, melodramatic post-rock and indie-rock soundscapes, somewhat inspired by the late-aughts sounds of Spoon, Metric, Interpol and Arcade Fire, as well as the stadium-ready sounds of U2, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. "STAR" finds the band tapping into their knack for soaring guitar lines and driving percussion while commentating on the distorted image that social media can often present.
Speaking about the new single which arrives with a stunning visual directed by the band's frequent collaborator, Cam Veitch, Nabi says: "There are so many ways to disguise ourselves I don’t think we even notice we’re dressing up anymore. Good art has a human point of view, which is to say it’s nuanced, complicated. It often doesn’t have a clear agenda that’s easily distilled, packaged, and sold. Flattening that perspective into something that fits neatly between the clean lines of social media has been difficult for me. Learning how to do it has changed the way I see the world, brought out ugly instincts, and magnified my vanity and insecurity. The wildest part is that this sort of curation and performance is no longer reserved for people like me: artists who pay people lots of money to convince you to listen to our music. Any fourteen-year-old on TikTok has given at least as much careful attention to their brand as I have. But the neurochemical trick these platforms play is just the latest version of a very old phenomenon. We’ve always built our identities carefully: showing the world our good side is an intrinsic part of evolution, whether it’s holding our arms high to make the bear think we’re bigger than we are or an Instagram story of our eight-car-garage.
Steeped in unease and constructed in an unprecedented time, Keeper E.’s new collection of songs comprises a portrait of an anxious existence that’s as deeply worried as it is catchy against all odds.
thank u and please and don’t go is packed with a litany of one-line worries and shame spirals: “I’m always driving in somebody’s blind spot, thinking I’m going to crash”; “I never know expressions and I’m so embarrassing”; “Who will take care of me if I take care of you?” The stress reaches its apex on “What If We Lose Everything,” a mid-tempo climate-change lament scattered through with unsettling dissonant notes: “There’s no way to go back,” she concludes, with considerable disappointment.
Glittering with silvery vocals, playful synths and driving rhythms, Keeper E. invites us into a dreamlike world inside her mind, sharing pages of her journal combined with intriguing melodies. Her songs have a romanticized hopefulness, looking back on past loves, regrets, and fearfulness with gratitude and hope.
Speaking on the focus track, “My Favourite Song'', is about hoping that singing along to your favourite song will take away all the pain and suffering in the world. It’s kind of a joke, like obviously just listening to a song won’t solve anything, but also it’s been my experience that sometimes music is all that can help you out of a hard time. This song talks about personal hardships like not feeling satisfied and always expecting the worst, and it also talks about the unfair power balances in the world and how the life I have is built on these unfair societal structures. In the end, it feels like the anthem of the song convinces you in some way that singing along to your favourite song must in some way help to balance things out, and will always make you feel better.“
Keeper E. is proving herself one of the most exciting new pop acts from Atlantic Canada, with an official showcase at The Great Escape in Brighton and tour dates across Canada planned in support of the release of her sophomore EP, thank you and please and don’t go, which is set for release on May 6, 2022.
But for all the personal anxieties explored in these songs, Elwood’s music is at its most confident, deeply thoughtful and wise beyond its lived experience. Born in Nova Scotia, Elwood began playing the violin at three years old, moved onto piano by four, and found her own musical voice while in university studying classical piano. Though she claims to be a technological Luddite, her production skills rival any hitmaker, and she crafts the indie-pop base of Keeper E. in solitude, with little outside influence.
