Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Widowspeak Share Lush and Mesmerizing “No Driver”

New York-based indie outfit Widowspeak — Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas — are one of many bands to crop up in the busy local scene around the time I started this site, almost 16 years ago. They started out shuffling their gear between now, long-shuttered — and deeply beloved — venues like Glasslands, Cake Shop, 285 Kent, Death By Audio and a lengthy list of others, and their practice space at Monster Island Basement, which now is a Trader Joe’s. New York has fucking changed, y’all. Speaking of changes: the duo is now a married couple, working day jobs in their own off-season. Thomas is a carpenter, Hamilton a waitress.

Recently, the duo announced that their highly-anticipated seventh album, Roses will be released June 5, 2026 through Captured Tracks. Deeply informed by their respective day jobs, Roses isn’t populated with dramatic overtures, but with the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts. There’s the small observations before, during and after work: the ritual-like act of pouring water or coffee for customers, the bemusement and frustration of catching a cold on your only day off. Maybe you’re daydreaming about your life if you won the lottery — or maybe realizing that you already won.

The 10-song Roses was recorded last January at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek Island of Hydra, a studio located in an old house, tucked into the village’s steep hills. During the winter, without the rush of tourists, it’s quiet. Longtime touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews and Noah Bond were the session backing band.

The album’s material was then taken home and slowly, lightly tinkered with before being mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering.

Throughout the album, intimate spaces and stages of love are captured with a nostalgic, almost sepia-toned, vaseline coated lens. As always, the beating heart of their work is the interplay between Hamilton’s languid, dreamy and textured delivery and Hamilton’s bluesy, visceral guitar work.

Roses‘ will include the previously released “If You Change,” and the album’s second and latest single “No Driver.” “No Driver” is a lush, cinematic tune anchored around earnest, seemingly lived-in lyrics and the seemingly effortless craftsmanship that the band has long been known for. Of course, as always the stars of the show are Hamilton’s gorgeous, dreamily mesmerizing vocal and Thomas’ soulful, Crazy Horse-era Neil Young-like guitar work.

The song “is about knowing and loving people, who seem to thrive being on autopilot, at least for a while. It’s written from the perspective of trying to be supportive, and knowing it can be kind of magic when you’re in it, but also just waiting patiently for whenever they’re ready to move on from destructive behavior,” says Widowspeak’s Molly Hamilton. “I also kind of wrote it to my younger self. I’m 1000% on the other side of my wilder years (quit drinking almost seven years ago and now have a baby) but I definitely felt aimless for a long time. I care now, and caring about things and people and having a reason… is the whole point.”

“The video riffs on ‘Jesus take the wheel’; that’s it, that’s the concept,” Hamilton says of the accompanying video. “We have our friend Gary Canino from Dark Tea playing a Driver who’s kind of feeling the weight of the world, and Jesus (Johnathan Chriest) takes over as he goes about his night, dropping off the Mysterious Business Lady (Moira Spahić) and then picking up a couple other passengers. Kind of a ragtag group of people, Jesus driving them home.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hush Shares Lysergic “Funhouse”

Montréal-based trio Hush — Paige Barlow (vocals) and multi-instrumentalists Miles Dupire-Gagnon and Gabriel Lambert — are part of a new wave of Montréal-based acts actively reshaping psych pop. Each member of the band is an accomplished member of the local scene with the band featuring members of Hippie Hourrah, Elephant Stone, Anemone, and The Besnard Lakes. 

Citing an eclectic array of influences that includes Broadcast, The Velvet Underground, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Steve Lacy, Cocteau Twins and Ariel Pink, the Montréal-based psych pop trio create a sound that’s simultaneously nostalgic and forward-looking. Their music lives in the blurred light of perception — half memory, half hallucination — and is an invitation to lose yourself inside of their hall of mirrors-like dream world. 

The Montréal-based trio’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Phasing is slated for a May 22, 2026 release through Simone Records. The album will include the previously released “The Mirrors Were Right,” the album’s opening and title track, “Phasing” and the final pre-release single, “Funhouse.”

“Funhouse” is a lush, shape-shifting tune with elements of dream pop, house music, trip-house and komische musik that’s mesmerizing, cinematic — and perfect for a deeply contemplative, neon-tinged, late night drive. The result is a song that features , hook-driven grooves with lysergic textures that seem to dissolve in front of your eyes and reassemble elsewhere while Paige Barlow’s ethereal vocal seems to coquettishly dance around and within the song’s groove.

Recorded largely live with various elements re-amplified through a Leslie speaker to create a swirling, three-dimensional feel, “Funhouse” sees the trio balancing mathematical precision with a spaced-out, almost blissy vibe.

Lyrically, the song probes the faith placed in systems meant to explain the world — romance, religion, identity — long after their answers begin to thin. As Barlow puts it, it’s a “theatrically messy interpretation of romance – a sequel of love learned.”

“It’s about the confidence people place in systems that promise meaning,” she adds. “They can start to feel like answers from a Magic 8-Ball—you shake it, wait for clarity, and sometimes the answer is just: try again later.”

Directed and filmed by the band’s Barlow, the accompanying video features looped lyrics projected onto footage of irises, further emphasizing the song’s and the album’s overall themes of perception and distortion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Ed O’Brien!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien’s 58th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Truck Violence Shares Urgent and Bruising “New Jesus”

Acclaimed and rising Montréal-based experimental act Truck Violence — founding duo Karysn Henderson (vocals) and Paul Lecours (guitar, banjo, production), along with Chris Clegg (bass, banjo) and Thomas Hart (drums and slide guitar) — can trace their origins back to its founding duo’s childhood: Henderson and Lecours grew up in a small, French Canadian town of 600 people, graduating in a class of nine. By the time they both turned 15, they were running a local studio and radio station. There was no industry support, no infrastructure, no template for what they were trying to do, only the work itself — and the conviction that it was worth doing.

When the pair turned 17, they relocated to Montréal, where they met Chris Clegg and Thomas Hart, who hail from different corners of the country and began building their band from the ground up.

The Canadian quartet’s highly anticipated sophomore album, The weathervane is my body is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through San Francisco-based label The Flenser and Montréal-based Mothland. Their sophomore album is reportedly a product of the process of building the band from the ground up. The album’s creative and writing process, the recording, the mixing and visuals were all produced employing a fiercely DIY process. This isn’t done as an aesthetic choice or a marketing angel, it’s because for the band, it’s the only honest option album.

The album’s cover art was shot on film by the band on Montréal’s Avenue du Parc. A figure perches atop a small Québécois-style house, hand built from reclaimed materials, spine curved, legs pulled in, bare-backed against a skyline that dwarfs everything beneath it. A rural thing dropped into the grit of a big city, small and out of place yet refusing to disappear. The body is naked and defenseless, open to the environment and every stimuli the world can deliver upon it.

Thematically, the album is a continuation and expansion of the angry statement of purpose of their debut, 2024’s Violence. Rooted in noise rock and post-hardcore traditions, the album is uncompromising in its refusal to be anything other than what is: immediate, self-determined and built entirely by the hands that imagined it.

The weathervane is my body‘s latest single “New Jesus” is a bruising and furious howl of desperation and disgust that’s urgent and is meant to shake the listener out of the doldrums of apathy and indifference.

“New Jesus” is a rant about the blatant fascistic slide occurring both to the south of our border and on screen. It is loosely about the ABC—Trump settlement and the post-January 6th election fraud cases,” Truck Violence’s Karsyn Henderson explains. “The lack of any broader moral compulsions beyond centralizing power on the political right has led to a culture of post-truth, where there is no reward in accuracy unless it leads to an augmenting of one’s political capital, which it rarely does. This is as destructive in politics as it is in art. There is surprising apathy among young people in regards to this slide, who believe the acquisition of power and the subsequent lording over that occurs, is merely nature, essentially; what will happen, will happen. With these lines of thinking, you find more people sympathetic to this mode, if it is both natural and inevitable, why not acclimate and reap the rewards. Why not join the fascist grift, degenerate art through tiktok, etc…”

Directed by Kirill Sommer, the accompanying video for “New Jesus” is a surrealistic fever dream that’s seemingly one-part Samuel Beckett play, one-part psilocybin trip, one-part Ingmar Bergman film.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: CAVS Shares Gorgeous and Groove-Driven “First Light”

Best known for drumming with acclaimed JOVM mainstay King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Michael Cavanagh is the creative mastermind behind the solo instrumental project CAVS. Cavanagh’s sophomore CAVS album Sojourn is slated for an April 24, 2026 release through p(doom) records.

Unlike the fantasy and sci-fi driven storytelling found in much of his work with King Gizz, Sojourn‘s 10 compositions builds its world entirely through music, shaped by Cavanagh’s long-standing interest in spiritual jazz, prog rock and krautock while simultaneously moving beyond traditional genre boundaries. The album’s material follows an imagined journey, using shifting moods, textures and rhythmic structures to suggest exploration, confrontation and transformation.

The King Gizz drummer began developing Sojourn during the recording sessions of his solo debut, 2021’s CAVS, a percussion-only album. Determined to expand his musical palette, he took on the roles of composer, arranger and musical director for his sophomore album — despite not playing pitched instruments. Early demos were constructed from sampled bass, drums and synthesizers, which were expanded and further fleshed out through collaboration.

Cavangh’s key collaborators for Sojourn included Mildlife‘s Jim Rindfleish, who co-arranged the material, alongside a group of Melbourne musicians that included Adam Halliwell (flute, guitar), Siwei Wong (harp), Archibald Pommelhorse (sax), Selene Messinis (keys), Robbin Poppins (percussion) and his King Gizz bandmate Joey Walker (bass). Recording sessions combined structured takes with free-flowing improvisation, which were later edited and arranged to retain a cohesive, live-sounding feel.

Drawing from artists like Herbie Hancock, Alice Coltrane, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham and Harvey Mason, Sojourn‘s material emphasizes atmosphere and groove over technical prowess.

Sojourn’s second and latest single “First Light” evokes the woozy yet awe-inspiring moment of capturing a brilliant burst of dappled light across rippling water while sonically nodding at Midllife and 70s jazz fusion with the composition being anchored around a deep, funky groove.

“The first rays of a gentle sunrise touching a river’s glassy surface, painting the water in soft hues of gold and emerald,” Cavanagh says of the new single. “Slowly, your eyes flutter open — not to the velvet darkness of the night before, but to an unfamiliar brilliance that seems almost too vivid to believe.” 

“Two persons and a yowie got a room at a halfway house motel for the night with three beds but only one was ripped apart, the others left in tack [sic]. This is real footage, Cavs is now a Cavsquatch and this proof that sasquatches are real,” the video’s director Jackson Devereaux says of the accompanying video. “Sojourn is an odyssey of an album, and so we wanted to add another chapter to the story, building off the first music clip. In the video for ‘First Light,’ we follow Cavs transition to his new tree form, and his first stages of coping with this new reality. We found a literal halfway house and booked a room for him to tweak out.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 68th Birthday, Will Sergeant!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant’s 68th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: ssiv Shares Gorgeous, Painterly “all the time”

ssiv is an emerging Danish indie out that features three, individually accomplished musicians:

  • Stephen (bass, vocals), an American-born musician, who recorded and toured for over seven years as a member of Los Angeles-based psych rock band Triptides, an act that has made the run of the global festival circuit with sets at Desert Daze and LEVITATION France. He’s a founding member of experimental pop band Cosmo Gold. And he has a solo recording project Little Rituals.

  • Sasha (guitar, vocals) is a Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalist, who originally began her career in earnest as a jazz singer, before gradually moving towards writing her own original material, which saw her experimenting across genres and styles. Since then, the Danish-born and-based artist has become a local underground scene stalwart working in a number of different projects singing, playing bass, guitar and piano.

  • Sara (drums, vocals) is a Copenhagen-based drummer rooted in pop and indie music. She is drawn to what she describes as “the living improvisation between musicians — the presence and spontaneity that allow a song to expand beyond itself.” She has played in a number of Danish-based acts including Noras Have, Radiant Arcadia, Højkvist, Kara Moon, Gurli Octavia and Josa Barck. Currently she plays with Ameli Dot and Johanne.

ssiv can trace the origin back to when Sara and Stephen shared a rehearsal room and decided to jam. After some jam sessions, Sara invited her long-time collaborator and friend Sasha to join in. Their first session as a trio, which they recorded, became “a beautiful, 2-hour fluid improvisation,” as they described.

Listening back, they realized that they had many ideas already taking root. They counted meeting, developing fragments from those early recordings and occasionally writing lyrics together on-the-fly. Eventually, the trio decided to call it a band, although they didn’t originally intend to start one. As they explain, “we didn’t want to ruin the magic.”

The band’s name manages to reflect that carefree attitude. “It’s an ‘s’ for each of other names, it means nothing really — a ‘non-name’ for our ‘non-band.'”

Sonically, the trio work in a trust-based space between dream pop, psych pop and indie folk, rooted in collective improvisation and strict limitations with arrangements anchored around guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and drawing from the likes of Galaxie 500, Low, Yo La Tengo and Big Thief. They view their work as quietly human in a cultural moment increasingly defined by generative AI systems and perfectionism.

The Copenhagen-based trio’s debut EP, 2024’s ssiv 1 drew from their first jam session, while their sophomore effort, between 1 and 2, which was released earlier this year was “made from spontaneous improvisations from another gathering.”

Their latest single “all the time” is a gorgeous, painterly tune that seemingly channels Slowdive and Forever So-era Husky that feels both improvised and deliberately crafted while showcasing their equally gorgeous harmonies.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 86th Birthday, Herbie Hancock!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Herbie Hancock’s 86th birthday.