Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: BRIXTONE Shares Glitchy and Slinky “Enter The Night”

BRIXTONE is an experimental music duo — half-brothers Paul and Pete Brixtone — that features members, who were raised in opposite musical worlds and yet drawn to the same aesthetic: One member works by instinct, noted in abrasiveness, aggression and noise. The other words with structure, discipline and an architectural melodic sensibility.

The duo’s debut Never Play To The Gallery was released earlier this year to positive reviews across music media with the album being describes as an “electro rock-post punk-jazz entity,” and a “restless, shape-shifting mass of sound pulled tight between decay and precision.”

Never Play To The Gallery includes “The Mirror Stars,” which I wrote about earlier this month and “Enter The Night.””Enter The Night” is a slinky bit of noise and glitch that sounds like a David Bowie-meets-goth-inspired transmission beamed in from Jupiter on an AM transistor radio while being a siren’s call into the void.

The accompanying video features a neon-masked woman dancing on old cathode ray tube televisions with VHS style glitch and noise that reveals the duo glaring to the viewer. Fittingly, it’s as creepy as the song it accompanies,

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Talks Shares Strutting and Defiant “People Pleaser”

Los Angeles-based trio Night Talks — Soraya Sebghati (vocals), Jacob Butler (guitar, synth, vocals) and Josh Arteaga (bass, synth, vocals) — features three lifelong friends, who wanted to start a band. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the three Angelenos are also filmmakers and film lovers, because Los Angeles, after all. Their music is sparkly alt-rock/indie rock that’s inspired as much by the films they’ve created and consumed, as much by LCD Soundsystem and Queens of the Stone Age. Fittingly, their work is centered around cinematic stories, dance floor friendly grooves and intricate layers of sound, meant to transport you to a dance floor anywhere you’re listening to their music.

The trio’s 2022 effort Same Time Tomorrow featured “On and On” KROQ’s #1 Locals Only song of the year. Written and produced during the pandemic, the band was able to create an entire visual world of music videos for each track of the album. As a result of both the album and its music videos, the Los Angeles-based trio received rapturous praise and coverage from GrimyGoods, Buzzbands LA and more, as well as airplay from KROQ’s Locals Only. Their songs have been featured on playlist like Fresh Finds, All New Rock and All New Alternative.

Building upon a growing profile, the band has opened for the likes of Couch, Circa Waves, Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner and Kississippi. Last year, the band returned to the studio with a fresh pop-forward approach to their songwriting for a new album. Those recording sessions resulted in the release of two singles, “Shadows On The Run” and “Targets” feat Grammy Award-nominated, genre-defying songwriter, producer and guitarist Cory Wong. The collaboration can trace its origins back to 2024, when Night Talks’ Soaya Segbhati appeared as a surprise guest at several shows on Wong’s 2024 tour.

This year, they did a Jam In The Van session and with a renewed energy and big plans ahead, they’re gearing up for a big year. The Los Angeles trio’s latest single, the Eric Palmquist co-written and produced “People Pleaser”features a disco and pop-leaning groove, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses and Segbhati’s soulful, powerhouse delivery. The song is a defiant celebration of a woman finally putting herself first, instead of bending over backwards to people people who aren’t remotely worth her time.

“‘People Pleaser’ is a celebratory song about overcoming your tendencies to put everyone else first, and not wasting time with a person who makes you bend for them constantly,” Night Talks’ Sebghati explains, “Lyrically, we wanted it to be vague whether it’s about a friend or a partner, since this kind of dynamic can apply to any relationship.”The band’s Jacob Butler adds, “We tried to create something more sparse than songs we’ve done before, with fewer layers that each serve to either be either funky or percussive; even the acoustic guitars feel more like shakers in the track.”

Directed by Logan Sage, the accompanying video for “People Pleaser” is a slick, feverish yet textured daydream that features the band’s Sebghati singing, dancing and vamping it up in a studio and various locations in and around Los Angeles. Shot at the band’s Night Talks HQ, Butler says, “We shot on three different cameras, one regular, one with an old TV zoom lens, and a VHS, so that gave the video a bit of a multimedia effect that added to the daydreaming angle.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, Jack Bruce!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 83rd anniversary of the birth of Cream’s Jack Bruce.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 57th Birthday, PMD!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates PMD’s 57th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Body Type Shares Languid and Shimmering “Mulberry”

Body Type’s highly-anticipated third album, Tally is slated for a July 24, 2026 release through King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s p(doom) records. Recorded at Los Angeles-based Velveteen Laboratory Studios with producer Stella Mozgawa, Tally reportedly marks a deliberate evolution for the quartet. While 2023’s Expired Candy arrived on a wave of post-pandemic momentum, their third album takes long to breathe — the material’s ambitions are quieter, its craft more considered. ‘

The album cones as the band celebrates their tenth anniversary together. Featuring a blend of big, jagged riffs, moody post-punk and 60s pop, Tally may arguably be their most self-assured and expansive batch of material to date, capturing band maturing and taking stock but while wit and playfulness still are supreme. Thematically, the album chronicles mundanity’s mystical implications, the deformations of romance and love’s confounding elasticity and more.

Tally’s latest single “Mulberry” is a languid, sun-dappled tune, featuring shimmering guitars, a relentlessly driving rhythm paired with the Aussie outfit’s uncanny sense of melodicism and catchy hooks. Sonically resembling a mix of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey, The Breeders and a bit of Marquee Moon-era Television, “Mulberry” is anchored around a mediation on self-dissolution with the song’s lyrics a rollicking bit of free-association with a narrator, who bites into a piece of purple fruit and ruminates on similarly colored phenomenon, the heavens, the changing of the seasons, and more.

Directed by Jack Saltmiras, the accompanying video for “Mulberry” follows each of the band’s members as they walk around a very busy Sydney, encountering city life.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Healing Power of Horses Share Slinky “i wait, i sink”

The Healing Power of Horses is a mysterious and emerging East Anglia, UK-based duo, who defy easy categorization, as they prefer. They’ve spent too much time in the attic making music and not enough time outside, and as a result, they’re pallid, bug-eyed, knock-kneed and on and on.

The duo caught the attention of Los Angeles-based section1, who signed the UK-based duo and released their debut single, “i wait, i sink.” “i wait, i sink” is a slinky and sultry bit of Garbage-like trip hop that rattles, shakes and stomps about the room before fading out into the ether. Their debut single showcases a remarkably self-assured outfit that can craft a brooding yet sexy tune with incredibly catchy hooks.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hot Garbage Returns with Woozy and Noisy “SPUN”

Toronto-based psych outfit Hot Garbage — Alex Carlevaris (lead vocals, guitar), Juliana Carlevaris (bass, vocals), Dylan Gamble (keys, synths) and Mark Henin (drums) — began 2026 with “Wewu,” the first bit of new material since their sophomore album, 2024’s Precious Dream.

The Canadian noise rock outfit’s second single of the year, the Graham Walsh-produced “SPUN.” “SPUN” is a woozy yet furious ear drum shattering assault anchored around a fuzzy bass line, cataclysmic and thunderous drumming, scorching Sonic Youth-like guitar and space age-like keys. Sonically, the song evokes the frenetic, churning tumult of our moment.

Directed by the band’s Dylan Gamble, the accompanying video for “SPUN” features Sook-Yin Lee as “The Bug.” Split between illustrations by Lee and footage shot in Gamble’s dark and trippy psychedelic style, the video follows a day and night in the life of “The Bug.” In the dead of winter, a hibernating bug ventures down a heating vent, only to find itself stuck outside on Toronto’s frozen streets. Crawling across icy cement and flying across a brutalist skyline, Lee’s bug explores a strange city with awe and fear. After a reflective moment in a park, it flies into the night, buzzing through the dark corridors of the Old City before making a startling and deadly encounter. “The buzzing harmonics of the guitar mirror the sketchy inner dialogue of the insect, while the lyrics remind it of the short time it has left.” the band says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, Stevie Wonder!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Stevie Wonder’s 76th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: POND Returns with Searching and Yearning “Through The Heather”

Perth-based JOVM mainstays POND — currently, Nicholas Allbrook (lead vocals, guitar, keys, bass, flute, slide guitar and drums); singer/songwriter and producer Jay Watson (vocals, guitar, keys, drums, synths and bass), who’s also the creative mastermind of acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit GUM and a touring member of acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated JOVM mainstays Tame Impala; Joe Ryan (vocals, guitar, bass, 12 string guitar, slide guitar); Jamie Terry (keys, bass, synths, organs, guitar); and Jamie Ireland (drums, keys) — will be releasing their 11th album Terrestrials on June 19, 2026 through their newly-minted Mangovision/Secretly Distribution. 

The writing and recording process for Terrestrials was subject to a simple set of rules: No fuzz pedal. No ballads. No “Pink Floyd shit.” Conceived from a place of deep reverence for a particular potent era of Oz rock, the JOVM mainstays’ 11th album reportedly mines the sound of open sky melancholia, heat haze sizzling on the plains and jangly pub backrooms that will hit an eternally poignant nerve for those familiar with the sound, time and place. And from there, the album evolved with the idea of “Goths at the pub” becoming the record’s stylistic north star — with 80s Australiana being acid-washed with the post-punk of Sisters Of Mercy, Magazine and the like. Throughout the album’s creative and recording process, they’d ask themselves “Would Goths like it? Could you have a beer to this?” If the answers were yes, it was thrust into the mix. 

Like much of their catalog, Terrestrials is a record of people and place, of exploring the identity of each, as well as where and how they intersect and interact. Thematically, the album touches upon extractive capitalism, power dynamics., inequality, Indigenous incarceration, eccentric outcasts, fire and water, diesel and dust, unity and division, blood and bauxite, unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays. And as a result, the album’s material twitches with the desperation of people and their planet on the brink, but while betting on the beauty of both to prevail. 

The album will feature the recently released, album title track “Terrestrials,” he Sisters of Mercy-meets-Diesel and Dust-era Midnight Oil-like “Two Hands,” and the album’s third and latest single “Through The Heather.” Anchored around a chintzy and shimmering Casio keyboard-like synth melody and driving rhythms, Terrestrials‘ third single may arguably be the album’s most searching and achingly yearning tune.

“Through the Heather” was initially conceived while Pond toured Europe last year. Drummer/Keyboardist Gin kept himself entertained by conjuring musical experiments on Ableton; a few a day until something stood out. “Then him and [multi-instrumentalist + founding member] Gum worked on it more in a hotel room while watching Ice Road Truckers or something equally shit,” frontman Nicholas Allbrook explains.

“Sometimes rock and roll is a glamorous game baby, but mainly it isn’t. Funny that such a beautiful, melancholic, searching song was born surrounded by chip packets and track pants in a van full of filthy pigs,” Allbrook continues. “We had so much fun making the spring reverb thunderclaps, giving the spring a cheeky little pinch to make it go BOOM, looking out over the Indian ocean from our porch/studio in Seabird while MasterChef played silently in the corner. Let that be a lesson to all you young rockers ok? Can’t get too inspiring ya know. Gotta keep a lid on it. Chucking on the telly or making a samwich or having a nap should do it.”

Animated by Albert Pritchard, the accompanying video for “Through The Heather” is a mind-bending visual that features heather growing near a medieval-styled castle, a bat flying through a lightning storm, an army of marching red-eyed spiders and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Widowspeak Returns with Swooning “Soft Cover”

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,” the lush and cinematic “No Driver,” and the album’s third and latest single, “Soft Cover.” “Soft Cover” is a shuffling driving and achingly gorgeous song anchored around featuring what may arguably the album’s most sweeping hooks and Hamilton’s swooning, heartfelt delivery. The song evokes both the sensation of daydreaming about someone, as you’re going about the mundane actions of your day — and the sensation of longing and hoping to see that special someone as soon as possible.

“Soft Cover” is about infatuation: wanting and daydreaming about someone as you’re going about your day… even if, and maybe especially if, you’ve been with them a long time,” says Hamilton. “We brought in a Rhodes for this one, so it came in a car from Athens, then took a boat, then a donkey carried it up to the studio,” Hamilton adds, describing the unique recording conditions they experienced at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek island Hydra.

Directed by Otium, the accompanying video features the band’s Molly Hamilton as a singing telegram girl, who daydreams of a idealized Shakespearean/Renaissance Faire man (Robert Earl Thomas) courting her with old-timey poetry as she reads from her pulp novel. “The video is the last in the world of the trilogy, where the Singing Telegram Girl is dreaming about an idealized Renaissance Faire Guy while waiting around, reading a pulpy novel,” Hamilton says. “Rob was incredibly enthusiastic about this one because he loves medieval history and we got to pick out some fun costumes from Adele’s of Hollywood. He’s a star!”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Alex Amen Returns with Homesick and Weary “California Blues”

Alex Amen is a rising, 26 year-old Texas-born, Los Angeles-based indie folk/country singer/songwriter. When he was four, he took up piano and studied with the same Houston-based jazz pianist through the end of high school. The rising, young country folk artist started playing guitar in his mid-teens after discovering Nirvana, Neil Young and the like. When he was 18, Amen relocated from Texas to California to study filmmaking — with the intention of making documentaries about rock climbing, one of his lifelong passions.

After one semester, he dropped out to focus on music full-time and moved to the Dittman Family Commune, an Anaheim-based commune with historic ties to the countercultural movements of the mid 1960s, where he started his first band, a psychedelic folk rock outfit named American Slang in 2017.“The commune was a crazy place to live—there were hippies and punks and skaters, all in this beautiful house that used to be on six acres of strawberry fields but now it’s surrounded by strip malls,” the Texan-born singer/songwriter says. ““The house was owned by a professor who’d bought it in the mid-’60s and still lived there with his family, so it had this fascinating history with the anti-war movement and renowned civil-rights/psychedelic activists from that time. We’d have these big communal meals every day and debate art and God and food and politics. It was a pretty amazing place to live for a while.”

The band broke up shortly after its formation. And Amen relocated yet again from Southern California to an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound. Over the course of the next three years, Amen spent n relative isolation, taking up interests in mycology, mountaineering, poetry and wooden boat building. But as the years began to pass, he felt an increasing need to return to California to pursue music. 

In January 2023, Amen self-produced his debut EP, last year’s The Zorthian Tapes in a self-built studio at Altadena, CA’s historic Zorthian Ranch. He now resides in Los Angeles, releasing music among the city’s growing folk/Americana/country scene and playing shows across North America and elsewhere. 

The past 18 months or so have been very busy: Last year he toured with Folk Bitch Trio, a tour that included a stop at Baby’s All Right. He has also made the rounds of the international festival circuit, playing Pitchfork Festival London and Pitchfork Festival Paris, Newport Folk Festival, Iceland Airwaves, Austin City Limits and Outside Lands. And he participated in the Americana Music Association‘s annual Grammy Eve concert at the Troubadour to honor the legendary Neil Young. 

The rising young singer/songwriter recently signed to ATO Records, who will be releasing his highly-anticipated debut Sun of Amen on June 12, 2026. The album will include “Cabin by the Sea,” which features some gorgeous and expressive pedal steel from Tommy de Bourbon and strutting bass from Grammy-nominated Billy Mohler, and the album’s second and latest single “California Blues.”

Subtly channeling a mix of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and the Laurel Canyon sound, “California Blues” features a homesick vagabond and wandering troubadour narrator, who illuminates an uneasy contrast between the quintessential California dream and its lived reality of heartbreaking isolation and desperation. “‘California Blues’ is a song I wrote years before I ever lived in California that somehow expressed the things I felt living there years later,” says Amen. “More than any other song made during my time in California it touched on the balance between excitement and isolation one can face when they chase their dreams out West.”

Amen is currently on tour. And along with the new single, he announces a summer run of tour dates that includes a July 29, 2026 stop at Elsewhere Rooftop. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 98th Birthday, Burt Bacharach!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 98th anniversary of the birth of Burt Bacharach.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 78th Birthday, Steve Winwood!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Steve Winwood’s 78th birthday.