Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Txefas Shares Brooding “¿Cuánto tiempo llevo así?”

Txefas is the recording project of a mysterious and enigmatic Spanish singer/songwriter and musician, who specializes in music that sits between post-punk, darkwave and alternative rock paired with lyrics that thematically touched upon ordinary tensions — fitting in, keeping up appearances and the cost of not stopping to ask yourself questions.

Since releasing his debut single back in 2020, the mysterious and enigmatic Spanish artist has amassed over 35,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and has been featured on Spotify’s Novedades Viernes España, Rock 2026, Wire, Novedades Rock and Fresh Finds Espaňa playlists. Adding to a growing profile, he was selected as part of Spotify’s Fresh Finds Forward 2026 program.

His recently released full-length debut, the 11-song Dutch Revz-produced Regresión is a concept album that thematically explores the pressure of trying to fit in, the moment everything breaks, and the search for a moment honest way of looking at yourself. Sonically, the album sees the Spanish album further cementing a sound that blends post-punk, darkwave and alternative rock into dark, direct music in which the vocals and storytelling take centerstage.

Regresión‘s latest single “¿Cuánto tiempo llevo así?” (“How long have I been like this?”) features the Spanish artist’s icy delivery floating over a broodingly tense arrangement that recalls a hook-driven blend of Joy Division, Molchat Doma and Sei Still. The song is rooted in lived-in, embittering experience. Thematically, “¿Cuánto tiempo llevo así?” focuses on what happens when you realize you’ve spent too long living on autopilot, in a life you didn’t choose.

The Spanish artist says of the song, ““For years I did what was expected of me without stopping to think about it. This song is the moment I finally asked myself how long I had been living like that. It’s the question the whole album is built on, and I didn’t like the answer.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Alan Strong Shares Sultry, Summery “Summer Breeze”

Krasimir Dimitrov is a Bulgarian producer, DJ and founder of Savanah Records. Dimitriov’s solo recording project Alan Strong sees him exploring slower tempos, parting the measured pulse of downtempo electronica and lounge music with the atmospherics and textures of ambient music.

Dmitriov’s “Around The World” series features songs that take their cues from specific places: “Moonlit Greek Terrace” was inspired by the Greek Islands, while “Somewhere In The Wheat” evokes the last bit of daylight over open countryside. His latest single, “Summer Breeze” is a sultry, summery tune featuring a cooed female vocal sample ethereally floating over glistening and chiming synths and skittering beats. The song evokes summer afternoons and evenings by the coast.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Velatine Returns with Broodingly Cinematic “Tonight I am a Vampire”

Melbourne-based producer, songwriter and musician Loki Lockwood is the creative mastermind behind the JOVM mainstay darkwave/goth recording project Velatine. For much of the project’s history Lockwood collaborated with different vocalists while crafting a unique and fresh take on the darkwave/goth sound.

Over the past year, Lockwood collaborated with Holly Purnell as the project’s lead vocalist on four singles including “Oh See Me — The Siren,” “Whisper Park,”and “Playing With The Orbits” Since the release of Playing With The Orbits Dead Radio Remix EP, Purnell has left the project — and for Lockwood, it spurred the need to take up vocal duties.

“Tonight I am a Vampire” features shimmering and arpeggiated synths, industrial clang and clatter and skittering beats paired with Lockwood’s icy delivery and his uncanny knack for crafting a catchy hook. The result is a song that’s broodingly cinematic yet club friendly.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Basel’s Moonpools Shares Breakneck, Vulnerable “Fade In”

Formed back in 2016, Basel-baed shoegaze quintet Moonpools — Marcie Nyffeler (vocals/guitar), Jasper Nyffeler(drums), Francesco Vona (keyboard), Matthias Gusset (guitar) and David Blum (bass). — have released three EPs, 2019’s Turbulent Times, 2022’s Damaged Goods and 2024’s Hide and Seek that moves between dream pop, indie rock and shoegaze, featuring densely layered arrangements paired with Marcie Nyffeler’s earnest delivery and lyrics, which walk a tightrope between melodrama and kitsch, while tackling fear, growing up and self-doubt with an honest, and often self-deprecating eye.

The Swiss-based outfit’s latest single “Fade In” is a punchy burst of unbridled energy featuring a melancholy yet subtly hopeful synth line, a towering wall of buzzing and churning guitars and a breakneck motorik-like groove beneath Marcie Nyffeler’s vocal, which expresses vulnerability, conviction and resolve within a turn of a phrase. On one level, the song captures being stuck in your own insecurities to the point of being indecisive and anxious, but it also captures youthful vulnerability in a way that reminds me of my youth.

The anxious unrest of the song bleeds into the accompanying video directed by Mischa Nüesch, which was shot mostly in the band’s rehearsal room and then fed through analog glitching tools to create visual noise and glitch reminiscent of old VHS-styled tape.

“‘Fade In’ is the first song our guitarist and producer Matthias wrote for this upcoming release, about 3 years ago.” the band’s Marcie Nyffeler says. “It was rough, very distorted, and had a different lead synth melody. Like with all of his demos he sends over, I spent the next few days listening to it non-stop to come up with lyrics and a melody. The chorus that was initially a first draft, stayed the chorus for the next three years. But when it came to recording the tune, I realised I wasn’t fully convinced. It needed to be punchier. After seeing Militarie Gun play in January and shouting along to their whole concert, I wrote the new chorus with less words and syllables, something that’s easier to shout along to. The song’s about giving in to the feeling of being overwhelmed and anxious after trying and failing to overcome said feelings.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brittany Campbell Teams Up with Steph.fm on Atmospheric, Soulful “CRY BABY”

Brittany Campbell is a Flatbush, Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, animator, actor and activist. Raised by a Jamaican family, Campbell grew up on between dancehall sound systems, Metropolitan Opera rehearsals and an early obsession with atmosphere, emotion and performance. Years later, after moving through jazz circles, a pop deal with Sony, self-production, touring with Hamilton, and a relationship that would completely alter her creative life, Campbell emerged with a sound rooted in live soul, distorted longing, spiritual intimacy and late-night confession.

The Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter signed to Warner Chappell Music/Facet House, co-writing music for Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies alongside Justin Tranter, and collaborated with Billy Porter, Grace VanderWaal and Baby Tate. Her work has received praise from Billboard, NPR, Ladygunn and Bandcamp — with Ladygunn describing her sound and work as “the future of soul.”

Campbell’s sophomore album LMRNCE (an acronym for Love Me Right Now Completely Entirely) is slated for a January 7, 2027 release. LMRNCE is the follow-up to 2018’s Stay Gold and acts as a culmination of her creative endeavors of the past few years. Residing in alternative R&B, soul and “rockifled soul,” the album’s material journeys through the recurring patterns of love, heartbreak, loss, escapism and desire throughout Campbell’s life, identity the thread connecting them all as limerence. Rather than seeking resolution, the album sees Campbell reflecting on all the ways that love, fantasy, music and dreaming can become a means of escaping the harsh realities of our lives.

“It took me a long time to understand what this album was actually about,” Campbell explains. “For a while, I thought it was about heartbreak, or some configuration of the major loves of my life. But toward the end of writing it, I realized there was a pattern underneath all of it — the grief of losing my mother, breakups, loneliness, sex, obsession, devotion, resentment, escapism, and even the way I experience music and art. That pattern was limerence.”
 
She continues, “‘LMRNCE’ became less about resolving those things and more like a map of me recognizing the way I repeatedly use love, fantasy, music, and dreaming as a kind of deus ex machina — a place to disappear into when reality becomes unbearable.”

“LMRNCE is probably the most honest thing I’ve ever made,” Campbell says.“Ever since I first heard Joni Mitchell’s Blue’ I’ve wanted to make something that felt that emotionally exposed.” The result is an album specifically for lovers, weirdos, dreamers, people who feel too much, people who hold grudges, and people who keep chasing the dream even after they know better. So if you’re a hopeless romantic, this album may be for y’all.

The album’s latest single “CRY BABY” feat. Steph.fm is a lush tune, driven by a soulful R&B-meets-trap beat and Steph.fm’s atmospheric and expressive guitar beneath Campbell’s silky delivery. “CRY BABY” showcases Campbell’s earnest, lived-in lyricism while capturing the tension between desperately wanting to protect yourself from the seemingly inevitable heartbreak and struggling to care a bit less. Thematically, the song explores the complexities of falling for someone’s potential, only to face the disappointment of reality falling short.

“I’m a little embarrassed to talk about ‘CRY BABY’,” Campbell admits. “The whole album, LMRNCE, is about falling in love with fantasy and potential, and I wrote ‘CRY BABY’ at a moment when that bubble burst. All of a sudden, loving someone who felt out of reach wasn’t all that fun anymore.”
 
She continues, “I wrote it shortly after coming home from tour and feeling a lot of distance in my relationship. I was foolishly bouncing between anxious and avoidant attachment while desperately wishing I could just become emotionally untouchable. Sometimes I really wish I could be that girl who doesn’t care, but when I’m in love, it just doesn’t really work that way for me. ‘CRY BABY’ is me pouting about that.”
 
“It also took me a while to figure out what the song was missing. I tried different versions of a feature, but nothing really made sense until Steph.fm. She’s genuinely one of my favorite musicians and guitarists out right now, and I realized the song didn’t need any more words – it needed a feeling and an atmosphere. That’s exactly what Steph brought to it. I almost don’t think of her as just a featured artist on the song; she feels like my co-painter of the whole feeling.”

The official visualizer features Campbell’s gorgeous, line animation.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: J. Bernardt Returns with Soulful and Cathartic “Children”

Jinte Deprez is an acclaimed singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, programmer and producer, best known as being one-half of the songwriting duo behind the acclaimed Belgian JOVM mainstays Balthazar. Over the course of their two-plus decades together, the acclaimed […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Weird Nightmare Returns with Syrupy and Anthemic “Buzzing in My Head”

Earlier this year, longtime METZ frontman Alex Edkins released his Jim Eno co-produced sophomore Weird Nightmare effort, Hoopla through  Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada,

Hoopla sees the Toronto-based JOVM mainstay mixing and matching the wide ranging influences of his time slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university — namely 60s psych rock to 1990s DIY and beyond — in fun, unexpectedly exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while further cementing his unerring knack for crafting ridiculously catchy, and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Recorded at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album features album tracks “Forever Elsewhere,” the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There,” the punchy punk rock-like “Pay No Mind,” and the earnest and yearning “Where I Belong.” Today, Edkins shared the first bit of new material from Weird Nightmare since the release of Hoopla, the Graham Walsh-produced “Buzzing in My Head.” “Buzzing in My Head” is a syrupy sweet, hooky and rousingly anthemic power pop tune rooted in a unfussy, you-were-there-with-the-band-like production and Edkins earnest, seemingly lived-in lyrics. The track features a backing band of Loel Campbell (drums), Matthew Kuester (bass) continuing their ongoing collaboration, which included Hoopla.

Edkins says of the new single, “‘Buzzing in My Head’ is about that one person/place/thing/memory/experience that never really leaves your waking mind. It says with you to the point of distraction and overwhelms your ability to complete menial tasks.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: TEKE :: TEKE Shares Punchy and Expansive “Shura”

With the release of their 2021’s debut Shrirushi and 2023’s Hagata, Montréal-based Japanese psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays TEKE :: TEKE quickly cemented an explosive, genre-defying blend of psych rock, surf rock, experimental music and traditional Japanese instrumentation paired with the distinct vocals and visual artist of frontperson Maya Kuroki. The Canadian outfit’s adventurous compositions and electrify live performances have held to widespread international praise, including from The New Yorker, The Times and Billboard Canada.

Last year, TEKE :: TEKE expanded upon their international profile by contribution original compositions to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.

Recently, the Montréal-based band have teased studio sessions for their highly-anticipated third album while going through recent a lineup change: The band has gone from a septet to a sextet while featuring a new rhythm section of Camilly (bass) and Oli Bernachez (percussion). Their newest single “Shura,” which was part of those teased studio sessions was released today through Kill Rock Stars.

The endlessly shifting “Shura” continues their remarkable run of playfully adventurous and cinematic material, blending psych rock, film scores, post-punk and traditional Japanese folk instrumentation rooted in their distinct spirited and punchy moxie before closing out with a cacophonous crescendo.

Deriving its title from an abbreviated form of Ashura (or Asura), a divine figure, whose name appears across many cultures. Often associated with a relentless, almost reckless fighting nature, the figure also represents intense struggle and conflict, while continually transforming through those experiences.

Drawing from ancient mythology and Buddhist philosophy, “Shura” explores the beauty of struggle, transformation and perseverance with a deeply human reflection on the realities of fighting through life’s seemingly endless challenges — with your dignity most intact. The song opens with the band’s Maya Kuroki singing “Shogyo Mujo,” a Buddhist expression that translates into English as “the impermanence of all things,” and is famously echoed in the opening lines of the Japanese epic, The Tale of the Heike. But rather than just simply embracing the philosophical conceit that everything is temporary, “Shura” actively questions who gets the privilege of contemplating such ideas from a place of comfort and protection, while others are in the muck and grime of every day life, desperately fighting to stay afloat. And yet, there’s something beautiful, deeply human and extraordinary when one blooms with all of their strength.

“‘Shura’ was the first song idea we explored for new music,” the band’s Sei Nakauchi Pelletier explains. “The various musical elements that make up the song emerged over a fairly long period of time in the dead of winter and the song went through several versions before settling on this one. Unconsciously, as if to honor the song’s lyrics about changes and impermanence, the music, while raw and heavy like the figure that is ‘Ashura’, also took on a somewhat unpredictable form, with a sudden change of pace for the song’s instrumental build-up finale.”

Directed by the band’s Maya Kuroki, the accompanying video for “Shura” is a mind-bending journey through the beautiful and odd muck, slime and mess of human life.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 81st Birthday, Neil Young!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Neil Young’s 81st birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Twin Temple Shares Soulful and Yearning “Haunt Me”

Acclaimed Los Angeles-based duo Twin Temple — married couple Alexandra and Zachary James — released their Shooter Jennings-produced third album Doomed Lovers through their own Pentagrammation Records back in October.

Recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound‘s iconic Studio 3, Doomed Lovers marks the duo’s boldest chapter to date. Born from one of the darkest periods of their personal lives, Doomed Lovers is reportedly their most intimate and emotionally revealing work to date. Expanding upon the cinematic scope of the sound that has won them acclaim while remaining rooted in the timeless sound and traditions of early rock ‘n’ roll, the album is their most ambitious and fully realized artistic statement so far. The album continues the band’s commitment to analog recording while expanding upon their sound with lush orchestral arrangements performed by a 37-member orchestra. Yes, 37!

“We poured everything into this new record that we made with Shooter,” says the acclaimed and controversial duo. “We wanted to push ourselves creatively and expand the production further than we have before, drawing inspiration from the lush orchestral productions of Roy Orbison, The Ronettes, and The Shangri-Las, and added in some Countrypolitan flair. We brought in some incredible musicians like Matt Chamberlain and Jay Bellerose, and a 37-piece orchestra. We wanted to make something as beautiful as we possibly could – of course with our dark spin on things.”

The truth is, this album was made during one of the darkest periods of our lives. We had been struggling with grief, health issues, addiction, and depression. But day by day, going into Sunset Sound, making music with incredible people who believed in us, and being surrounded by that creativity slowly brought us back to life. We started smiling and laughing again. I was becoming alive again. It connected us to why we fell in love with music in the first place and became our most personal album yet.”

The album includes the breathtaking gorgeous, album title track “Doomed Lovers,” “Nothing Matters” and “Haunt Me.” “Haunt Me” is a decidedly twangy, Wall of Sound-meets-Sun Records-like tune with a subtle node to gospel that should remind the listener that country’s iconic period is heavily indebted to gospel, the blues and a early rock ‘n’ roll. That’s right, think of some of those early Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry albums — but rooted in a confusing, paradoxical mix of dread, jealousy, fear and longing that feels lived-in and deeply experienced. 

“‘Haunt Me’ is a gothic love song about fear, obsession, dread and jealousy with nods to classic American gospel, 1960s rock n roll and the blues,” the duo explain. “It romanticizes the terrifying nightmares your lover brings, and the paradox of never wanting them to stop haunting you.”

Featuring live footage of the band performing on hand-developed Super 8 film while the band was on tour back in September, the accompanying video for “Haunt Me” was shot, edited and directed by Dante Capone.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 73rd Birthday, Andy Partridge!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates XTC co-founder and primary songwriter Andy Partridge’s 73rd birthday.