Pastel Coast, led by Boulogne-sur-Mer, France-based creative mastermind Quentin Isidore (vocals, guitar) and featuring Benjamin Fiorini (drums), Ingrid Letourneau (keys), Marion Plouviez (guitar, vocals) and Renaud Retaux (bass) have received attention both nationally and internationally for breezy yet melancholic sound that’s indebted to the early 90s Manchester scene and to acclaimed French indie act Phoenix.
2019 was a break through year for the rising French act: their full-length debut Hovercraft landed on Dream Pop Magazine‘s Top 100. Continuing upon that momentum, Pastel Coast released their sophomore album, last year’s Sun, which featured five critically applauded singles:
The attention grabbing “Rendezvous”
“Dial” a breezy synthesis of New Order and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix-era Phoenix that evoked the swooning euphoria of new love.
“Sunset,” a glistening and breezy number that’s saw the band meshing New Zealand jangle pop and French pop focused on lovelorn folks racing against time to try to find love before sunset.
“Distance,” a synth-driven numbers featuring angular guitar bursts and a euphoria-inducing hook
“Funeral,” an achingly nostalgic song that wistfully yearned for simpler times and the “one that got away.”
“Helios,” is the first bit of new material from the French JOVM mainstays since the release of Sun. Centered around glistening synth arpeggios, Isidore’s plaintive vocals, a four-on-the-floor-led motorik groove, angular guitar bursts, “Helios” sonically — to my ears, at least — recalls fellow JOVM mainstays Yumi Zouma: a winning breezy melancholy that longs for bright sunny, Spring and Summer days, Spring and Summer crushes and flings and the like.
Directed by Robin Larroque and Quentin Sarda, the accompanying visual is a slick and stylish visual that features the members of the JOVM mainstay act performing the song in a studio in front of white walls. Each member of the band has a distinct shade of blue on, which explodes in front of the white background. The band also does some record cover art posing,. And at one point we see plastic balls dumped on top of individual band members. It’s a surreal and playful fever dream that eventually pulls out to see a behind-the-scenes view of the video.
Split between Indiana and Florida, dream pop/shoegaze outfit Whimsical — currently Krissy Vanderwoude (vocals) and Neil Burkdoll (guitar, production) — can trace their origins back to 1995 when Vanderwoude and Burkdoll met while attending high school in Indiana.
At the time, Burkdoll, along with Andy Muntean (drums) were members of a local band Mystified Thinking. Mystified Thinking split up when its members graduated from high school and gradually went their own ways. However, Burkdoll decided that he wanted to start a new band that was the complete opposite of what he had been writing with Mystified Thinking, which was primarily centered around depression and sadness.
Over the next handful of years, what eventually became Whimsical went through a few false starts and lineup changes before 1999 when the band settled upon their first lineup — Time Fogle (drums) and Joe Santelik (bass), along with Burkdoll and Vanderwoulde.
Their full-length debut, 2000’s Setting Suns Are Semi-Circles is considered a dream pop cult classic. The act went on to write their debut’s follow-up but they split up after that album was about 90% finished.
In 2015, Vanderwoulde and Burkdoll reunited to complete their long-anticipated sophomore album, the critically applauded Sleep to Dream, an effort that drew comparisons to Lush and The Cranberries, among others. Since the release of Sleep to Dream, the members of Whimsical have been busy: 2019 saw the release of the act’s third album, Bright Smiles and Broken Hearts. In between the release of Sleep to Dream and the writing sessions for their forth album, they also released a series of covers, featuring songs they’ve long wanted to cover including Motorhome’s “Sweet Valentine,” Smashing Pumpkins‘ “Snail,” and The Ocean Blue’s “Cerulean,” which reveals some of their influences.
And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of years, Krissy Vanderwoulde’s name may be familiar: she’s one half of the Transatlantic dream pop duo The Churchill Gardens.
Whimsical’s fourth album, the nine-song Melt is slated for an April 1st release through Shelflife Records here in the States and Through Love Records in Germany. Melt reportedly sees the duo pushing their sound in new directions while retaining the elements that their fans have expected and loved — namely, Burkdoll’s incandescent guitar and Vanderwoulde’s lilting and ethereal vocals.
Melt‘s third and latest single, the slow-burning and painterly “Quicksand” is a bit of a trip-hop take on dream pop with the song being centered around skittering beats, twinkling keys and sampled and manipulated guitars paired with Vanderwoulde’s lilting and ethereal vocals. The end result is a song that seems the duo nodding at Massive Attack, Cocteau Twins and A Storm in Heaven simultaneously.
“‘Quicksand’ is the ‘oddball’ on our new album Melt, but it’s also the song we are probably most excited about,” the duo say in press notes. “Sounding mostly electronic, Quicksand is made from our sampled guitars that have been manipulated and repurposed in a new and interesting way. We were able to expand our sonic palette and try new things with what makes up a Whimsical song. Initially we were worried that ‘Quicksand’ wouldn’t fit alongside our other songs, but once we realized that our melodies and Krissy’s heartfelt lyrics were in place, we knew that we had created something special and any concerns we had faded away. We’ve waited a long time for people to finally hear ‘Quicksand’ and we hope they are as excited about it as we are.”
Formed back in 2016, JOVM mainstays No Swoon — Tasha Abbott (vocals, guitar) and Zack Nestel-Patt (synths, baas) — have developed an established sound that sees the pair meshing elements of dream pop, shoegaze, post-punk and ethereal wave through two releases, 2018’s EP 1 and 2019’s ’s Jorge Elbrecht-produced, self-titled full-length debut.
Much like countless others across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic, threw the the lives and plans of the JOVM mainstays into disarray” their planned tour to support their full-length debut had to be scrapped entirely. After spending the past five years in Brooklyn, the duo relocated to Los Angeles. And understandably, spending over a year in quarantine-imposed isolation forced the pair to step back and think about their lives in new ways — and to examine the intricacies of going through life as we know it.
The duo managed fro released a couple of singles during the pandemic, including the Siamese Dream era Smashing Pumpkins meets Slowdive like Again,” a single that marked massive, life-altering transitions for the duo: their aforementioned return back West paired with a reworked sound and approach.
As the JOVM mainstays explained in press notes, “This song is about when days begin and end with no real definition. About being stuck in the loop of our life and we can’t get out. It may come to no surprise that this song was written early on in the Pandemic. Before everything shut down, I (Tasha) was constantly moving: work, music, sleep, etc., and being at stand-still all of a sudden was definitely strange (on top of the already terror and stress of the pandemic).”
Interestingly, “Again” will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Take Your Time. Slated for an April 8, 2022 release, the lion share of Take Your Time was recorded by the band in Western Massachusetts, amidst the isolation of pandemic related quarantine — with the band’s Nestel-Patt taking up engineering duties during the initial recording sessions. The album features guest spots from longtime collaborator Jon Smith (drums), along with Furrows‘ and Olden Yolk’s Peter Wagner (guitar). Jake Aaron contributed some additional production and Chris Coady mixed the album, pushing the material into something otherworldly.
Take Your Time‘s material was conceived and written during both personal and global transitions and turmoil — but while celebrating a joyful acceptance of the paths that have lead each of us to where we are right now. About the album’s themes, No Swoon’s Abbott contends, “We are so hard on ourselves for decisions we made years ago. I have plenty of regrets, but I also see it as a process, and it’s ok that I didn’t realize the hopes and dreams of 20-year old me. What did she know anyways?”
Last month, I wrote about Take Your Time‘s first official single “Besides.” Centered around Abbott’s plaintive and breathy falsetto, a propulsive rhythm section and intertwined buzzing power chords and twinkling, reverb-drenched synths, “Besides” sonically nods at Beach House, but as the band’s Tasha Abbott explains, the song was inspired by a wild, enigmatic dream she once had in which, while exploring a mysterious cavern, she stumbled upon a secret apparently blissful cult with ambiguous intentions.
“I have some really weird dreams,” Abbott said in press notes. “They are often these wide-ranging sci-fi stories. This song is part 2 of the same dream that inspired a song on our first record ‘Don’t wake up, wake up‘. That dream had ended with meandering into a cave that turned out to be the home to a cult where everyone looked the same and seemed very ‘happy.’ Though, obviously they were not very happy because it was a cult. I eventually got out.”
“Wait to See,” Take Your Time‘s brooding third and latest single is centered around a maelstrom of synths, driving percussion, blown out bass with Abbott’s ethereal vocals floating over the mix, to create a mesmerizing song that’s simultaneously bruising and dreamily introspective.
“This song is about growing up,” No Swoon’s Abbott says in press notes. “ We’re talking to our younger selves who had very specific dreams and ideas of how our lives would pan out. But as we all know, the hopes and dreams we had at 15 are usually not our realities when we grow up.. We could look back and be upset that we didn’t become who we had hoped to be, or we could relish the new ideas and new dreams, and be ok with where we are. This song is about how looking back now, you can see the path that led to where we are now and how we wish we could tell our younger selves to be kind to who we will grow up to be.”
Currently split between Florida and Berlin, emerging psych pop duo Dream Powder — Argentinian-born multi-instrumentalists and producers Karl Wunsche and Nico Leivo — was conceived as a virtual project as a result of the pandemic.
The Transatlantic psych pop act’s latest single, the Tame Impala-like “Theories” is centered around wobbling and glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line, stuttering and blown out boom bap-like beats, fuzzy guitars, Leivo’s achingly plaintive vocals paired with an enormous and infectious hook.
As the duo explain, the song reflects on two very disparate events that Dream Powder’s Nico Leivo experienced: A summer weekend in which he was forced to cope with and then deal with the relationship fears and insecurities expressed by a partner. And a contemplative stroll in his neighborhood under the influence of LSD. The song’s narrator nostalgically fantasizes about the two as though they were merged into one moment — a walk that finds the narrator reflecting on the new stresses of a romantic relationship and the desire to escape it through a pleasurable, mesmerizing and buzzy trip.
London-based dream pop act and JOVM mainstays Still Corners — vocalist and keyboardist Tessa Murray and multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Greg Hughes — have managed to bounce between chilly and atmospheric pop and shimmering guitar-driven, desert noir through the release of five albums: 2012’s Creatures of an Hour, 2013’s Strange Pleasures, 2016’s Dead Blue, 2018’s Slow Air and 2020’s The Last Exit.
The critically applauded The Last Exit continued where its immediate predecessor left off with 11 songs centered around shimmering and carefully crafted arrangements featuring organic instrumentation paired with Tessa Murray’s smoky crooning. Thematically, the album took the listener through a hypnotic and mesmerizing journey filled with dilapidated and long-abandoned towns, mysterious shapes appearing on the horizon and long trips that blur the lines between what’s there and not there.
The album’s material was brought into further focus as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns and quarantines. “There’s always something at the end of the road and for us it was this album. Our plans were put on hold – an album set for release, tours, video shoots, travel,” Tessa Murray explained in press notes for the album. “We’d been touring nonstop for years, but we were forced to pause everything. We thought the album was finished but with the crisis found new inspiration and started writing again.” Three of the album’s songs — “Crying,” “Static,” and “‘Till We Meet Again” were written during this period and they reflect upon the profound impact of isolation and the human need for social contact and intimacy.
Late last year, the JOVM mainstays released “Heavy Days,” a propulsive and uptempo bop featuring twinkling synth arpeggios, a chugging motorik groove, shimmering and reverb drenched guitars and a soaring hook paired with Murray’s smoky vocals. The end result twas a song that saw the duo retaining the beloved elements of their overall sound — but while seemingly drawing from 80s pop.
Despite the literal weight of it’s title “Heavy Days” may be the most optimistic and sunny song of the JOVM mainstays’ growing catalog. “Sometimes it all feels like too much, there’s a lot to take in reading the news all the time,” Still Corners’ Tessa Murray says in press notes. “We wanted to write a reminder to put the phone down now and again and get out there and live life to the fullest while you can.”
The JOVM mainstays start off the year with the expansive “Far Rider,” a track that sounds as though it could have been on both or either Slow Air or The Last Exit as its centered around shimmering, reverb-drenched guitars and a steady rhythm paired with Murray’s smoky crooning, which at one point are chopped up and distorted.
“This song is about leaving, lost love and finding yourself somewhere on the journey, really it’s about redemption,” Still Corners Tessa Murray explains. I recently drove 6000 miles across the southwest to feel the sun on my face and think. We used the dreamlike nature of the song to capture the landscape and a hypnotic feel to conjure up the long and lonely travel days.”
Still Corners will be embarking on a lengthy tour throughout 2022 that includes a June 16, 2022 stop at Le Poisson Rouge. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.
European Tour Dates
2nd April – Athens, Greece @ Gagarin 205 Tickets
4th April – Lille, France @ L’Aeronef Tickets
5th April – Paris, France @ La Maroquinerie Tickets
6th April – Sint-Niklaas, Belgium @ De Casino Tickets
7th April – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Q-Factory Tickets
8th April – Groningen, Netherlands @ Vera Tickets
10th April – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Hotel Cecil Tickets
11th April – Hamburg, Germany @ Grünspan Tickets
12th April – Köln, Germany @ Gebäude9 Tickets
13th April – Berlin, Germany @ Heimathafen Tickets
14th April – Leipzig, Germany @ UT Connwitz Tickets
15th April – Prague, Czech Republic @ Meetfactory Tickets
16th April – Vienna, Austria @ Flex Café Tickets
18th April – Zagreb, Croatia @ Boogaloo Tickets
19th April – Ljubljana, Slovenia @ Kino Šiška Tickets
20th April – Milan, Italy @ Magnolia Tickets
21st April – Bern, Switzerland @ Dachstock/Reitschule Tickets
22nd April – Metz, France @ La Chapelle des Trinitaires Tickets
25th April – Dublin, Ireland @ Pepper Canister Church Tickets
26th April – Glasgow, United Kingdom @ Stereo Tickets
27th April – Leeds, United Kingdom @ The Brudenell Social Club Tickets
28th April –Manchester, United Kingdom @ YES Tickets
29th April – London, United Kingdom @ EartH Theatre Tickets
US Tour Dates
18th May – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania @ Underground Arts Tickets
19th May – Vienna, Virginia @ Jammin Java Tickets
20th May – Durham, North Carolina @ Motorco Tickets
21st May – Atlanta, Georgia @ Aisle 5 Tickets
22nd May – Tampa, Florida @ Crowbar Tickets
26th May – Dallas, Texas @ Deep Ellum Arts Co Tickets
27th May – Austin, Texas @ The Parish Tickets
30th May – Phoenix, Arizona @ Rebel Lounge Tickets
31st May – San Diego, California @ Soda Bar Tickets
1st June – Santa Ana, California @ The Observatory Tickets
2nd June – Los Angeles, California @ Echoplex Tickets
3rd June – San Francisco, California @ Great Northern Tickets
5th June – Portland, Oregon @ Mississippi Studios Tickets
6th June – Seattle, Washington @ The Crocodile Tickets
8th June – Boise, Idaho @ Neurolux Tickets
9th June – Salt Lake City, Utah @ Urban Lounge Tickets
10th June – Fort Collins, Colorado @ The Coast Tickets
11th June – Denver, Colorado @ Globe Hall Tickets
14th June – Chicago, Illinois @ Lincoln Hall Tickets
16th June – New York, New York @ LPR Tickets
17th June – Hamden, Connecticut @ Space Ballroom Tickets
18th June – Allston, Massachusetts @ Brighton Music Hall Tickets
18th June – Allston, Massachusetts @ Brighton Music Hall Tickets
French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Charles de Villers is the creative mastermind behind solo recording project Charles Like The Prince. de Villers emerged onto the French scene with 2020’s “Estonia.”
Building upon the buzz that “Estonia” received, de Villers will be releasing his Charles Like The Prince debut EP this Spring. The EP’s first single “Cigarette” is a slow-burning pop confection centered around glistening guitars, atmospheric synths, de Villers achingly plaintive vocals, and reverb-drenched drum machine. The end result is an airy yet yearning song that subtly recalls early Beach House, Washed Out and others. The accompanying visual for “Cigarette” is shot through a nostalgic and cinematic haze, full of romantic yearning and of course, cigarettes.
Formed back in 2016, JOVM mainstays No Swoon — Tasha Abbott (vocals, guitar) and Zack Nestel-Patt (synths, baas) — have quickly established a blogosphere winning attention sound that meshes elements of dream pop, shoegaze, post-punk and ethereal wave with the release of 2018’s EP 1 and 2019’s ’s Jorge Elbrecht-produced, self-titled full-length debut.
Much like countless others across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic, the members of the JOVM mainstay act found their lives and plans thrown into disarray: their planned tour to support their full-length debut had to be scrapped. And after spending the past five years in Brooklyn, the duo relocated to Los Angeles. Understandably, spending over a year in quarantine-imposed isolation forced the pair to take a step back and think about their lives in new ways — and to examine the intricacies of going through life as we know it.
The band managed to release a couple of singles throughout the bulk of the pandemic, including “Again,” a single that marked massive, life-altering transitions for the duo: their aforementioned return back West. And along with their relocation, the band reworked their sound and approach. The Siamese Dream era Smashing Pumpkins meets Slowdive like “Again” was deeply inspired by life during the pandemic. As the JOVM mainstays explained in press notes, “This song is about when days begin and end with no real definition. About being stuck in the loop of our life and we can’t get out. It may come to no surprise that this song was written early on in the Pandemic. Before everything shut down, I (Tasha) was constantly moving: work, music, sleep, etc., and being at stand-still all of a sudden was definitely strange (on top of the already terror and stress of the pandemic).”
Interestingly, “Again” will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Take Your Time. Slated for an April 8, 2022 release, the lion share of Take Your Time was recorded by the band in Western Massachusetts, amidst the isolation of pandemic related quarantine — with the band’s Nestel-Patt taking up engineering duties during the initial recording sessions. The album features guest spots from longtime collaborator Jon Smith (drums), along with Furrows‘ and Olden Yolk’s Peter Wagner (guitar). Jake Aaron contributed some additional production and Chris Coady mixed the album, pushing the material into something otherworldly.
Take Your Time‘s material was conceived and written during both personal and global transitions and turmoil — but while celebrating a joyful acceptance of the paths that have lead each of us to where we are right now. About the album’s themes, No Swoon’s Abbott contends, “We are so hard on ourselves for decisions we made years ago. I have plenty of regrets, but I also see it as a process, and it’s ok that I didn’t realize the hopes and dreams of 20-year old me. What did she know anyways?”
The album’s first official single, the uptempo “Besides” is centered around Abbott’s plaintive and breathy falsetto, a propulsive rhythm section and intertwined buzzing power chords and twinkling, reverb-drenched synths. While sonically nodding at fellow JOVM mainstays Beach House, “Besides” as the band’s Abbott explains was inspired by a wild, enigmatic dream she once had in which, while exploring a mysterious cavern, she stumbled upon a secret, apparently blissful cult with ambiguous intentions.
“I have some really weird dreams,” Abbott says in press notes. “They are often these wide-ranging sci-fi stories. This song is part 2 of the same dream that inspired a song on our first record ‘Don’t wake up, wake up‘. That dream had ended with meandering into a cave that turned out to be the home to a cult where everyone looked the same and seemed very ‘happy.’ Though, obviously they were not very happy because it was a cult. I eventually got out.”
Shot and edited by the duo, the accompanying visual for “Beside” emphasizes the song’s dream-like air: The viewer is placed in a forest, where we see the duo walking towards us in a seemingly infinite loop.
Rising indie pop/dream pop act Morning Silk is led by creative mastermind and founder Frank Corr. The project can trace its origins back to when Corr was studying Architecture at The Rhode Island School of Design: Initially conceived as a creative side project, while school took up most of his time, Corr was inspired to seriously pursue music after listening to MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular and Congratulations.
Most of the early material was guitar based, but the projects sound and aesthetic gradually began to materialize with Corr linked up with Matthew Lancaster (bass, production). The ideas they started working on desperately needed drums, so the duo recruited Robert Norris (drums) to join the project. And as a trio, Morning Silk began playing across Rhode Island. Corr was simultaneously collecting gear, so they could build a studio in NYC.
Upon graduation, the trio relocated to New York and landed jobs in order to finance their studio and their creative work. Working with a collection of producers including the band’s Matthew Lancaster, Eamon Ford, Robert Norris and Caroline Sans, Morning Silk’s self-titled, full-length debut is slated for release this year.
So far, I’ve written about two of the album’s three previously released singles
“Don’t Try Hard Enough,” a dreamy, hook-driven MGMT and Tame Impala-like bop that’s a gentle reminder that it’s never too late to change the path and course of your life.
“So Fun,” a lush pop confection that’s mix of Summer Heart, Tame Impala and Washed Out with an infectious, two-step inducing hook and guest spots from Sur Black and Kolezanka
“Skin,” the full-length debut’s fourth and latest single continues a run of lush pop centered around glistening synths, Corr’s plaintive vocals, boom bap beats and woozy guitars that reveals the act’s uncanny knack for crafting anthemic hooks. And while being an upbeat anthem, “Skin” as the band’s Frank Corr explains “is our Indie Pop anthem about trying to chase your dreams and pay your rent.”
“I lost a lot of work due to Covid, so I started writing music again. We opened up songs from six years ago and finished one of them,” Corr continues. “This sort of set in motion a new sonic palette for us. For some reason, the words “pay the rent,” kept popping into my head. So with a simple melody, we put “pay the rent” over some heavy synth bass sounds. I wanted this bass line to sort of have an energy of its own, so Matt, Rob, and I listened to some DirtBike for inspiration.”
Formed back in 2016, Hamilton, Ontario-based dreamgaze outfit Basement Revolver — currently, Nimal Agalawatte (bass, keys), Chrisy Hurn (vocals, guitar), Jonathan Malström (guitar) and Levi Kertesz (drums) — can trace their origins back quite a bit earlier, to the longtime friendship between Hurn-Morrison and Agalawatte.
The band hit the ground running with the 2016 release of breakout single “Johnny Pt. 2,” which led to the band signing to British label Fear of Missing Out and later, Canadian label Sonic Unyon Records. The Canadian dreamgazers closed out that year with their self-titled EP. Over the next couple of years, Basement Revolver were remarkably prolific with the release of 2017’s Agatha EP, 2018’s full-length debut Heavy Eyes and 2019’s Wax and Digital EP. The band supported their recorded output with touring across Ontario, the States, the UK, and Germany.
2020 was a tumultuous year for much of the world — and unsurprisingly, it was tumultuous year for the Canadian quartet: They had written and recorded a bunch of songs. They had gone through a lineup change in which one member left and was replaced by another. But because of the pandemic and pandemic-related restrictions, they couldn’t rehearse or record in the way they had been long accustomed. And of course touring was completely off the table for much of 2020 and 2021.
The gap between their work and being alone, naturally resulted in serious introspection for the members of the band — including a reconsideration of who and what the band was. According to the band’s Agalawatte, the band had planned on making their sophomore album last year. But they wound up waiting and working out what to do, eventually making changes to what they had written. “The world was shifting around us – and there was some global trauma – with that, we decided we wanted to fully express ourselves. So far we had kind of held off sharing political views, but we were realizing that our silence was actually just violence. We realized that to be who we are fully and authentically, we needed to share our voice.”
For the band’s members, they felt the need to share things in public, that they had long held private: Agalawatte came out. Hurn came out. According to Hurn-Morrison, the pair came out against what she describes as homophobic and transphobic environments, much like Redeemer University, a private Calvinist university, which has been the birthplace of countless local acts.
Back in 2020, Redeemer University announced a policy that would discipline students for any sexual behavior outside heterosexual marriage. “While we were in the studio, the CBC released an article about Redeemer University, and their homophobic and transphobic policies. I realized then and there, I had to come out. I had to share my experience with being bi,” Hurn-Morrison explains.
Basment Revolver’s sophomore album Embody is slated for a February 18, 2022 release through Sonic Unyon Records. Thematically, the album sees the band wrestling with questions of identity, sexuality, faith and mental illness in an explicit, honest, and self-aware fashion. Sonically, the album’s material reveals a much deeper sound paired with a crisper production. And while arguably being the most personal album of their growing catalog to date, the album’s material is rooted in hope and hopeful waiting — to physically be with your friends, to tour and to engage with the world with this newfound understanding of yourself and your place within the world.
Embody‘s fourth and latest single “Circles” is a slow-burning and expansive bit of shoegazy dream pop featuring swirling layers of shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, atmospheric synths, Hurn’s achingly plaintive vocals and a driving rhythm section. And while sonically bearing a resemblance to A Storm in Heaven era The Verve and The Sundays, “Circles” is a deeply personal song in which it’s narrator openly struggles in the aftermath of being raped, and — sadly — informed by Hurn-Morrison’s personal experiences.
According to Chrisy Hurn, the song captures the feeling of “trying to do everything in your power to get better, but there is just that one thing that it always comes back to — knowing that it is a slow and long journey.
“As much as it is about this heavy, shitty thing that happened, I feel resilient. I feel a little bit stronger every time I hear it — a little bit more like I can stop hiding parts of myself.” Of course, while being cathartic for the band’s Hurn, she has the hope that it will help listeners, who may be going through similar experiences.
The recently released video is split between symbolic imagery of Hurn struggling with depression and anxiety — and seemingly gathering the courage to perform such a devastatingly honest song with her bandmates. The video’s color palette capture the brooding and serious nature of the song.
Featuring two married couples — Christina Carmona (vocals, bass) and Noe Carmona (guitar, keys) and Michelle Soto (guitar, vocals) and Jacob Soto (drums), the Austin-based dream pop/shoegazer outfit and JOVM mainstays Blushing can actually trace its roots back to El Paso, where Jacob Soto and Noe Carrmona grew up as lifelong friends and musical partners.
Jacob Soto and Noe Carmona relocated to Austin around 2009. Coincidentally, they both met their wives at The Side Bar and according to the band, “naturally all four of us became close friends.” As Michelle Soto was learning guitar, she also began writing material, creating guitar parts and vocal melodies in her bedroom. Christina Carmona, who is a classically trained vocalist, was recruited by Michelle Soto to contribute vocals; but Christina then taught herself bass and helped flesh out Michelle’s songs. Shortly after, Jacob and Noe began to notice how much potential the material had, and they joined in on a practice session to help further flesh out their arrangements. And from that point on, Blushing was a full-fledged band. Their natural simpatico and like-minded musical influences helped to solidify their ongoing creative process.
The members of the Austin-based shoegazer outfit spent the bulk of 2016 writing and refining material, which eventually led to their debut EP, 2017’s Tether. Tether was released to positive reviews across the blogosphere, including this site.
Building upon a growing profile in the shoegaze and dream pop scenes, the members of Blushing returned to the studio to write and record their sophomore EP, 2018’s Weak, an effort that saw them cementing a sound indebted to Lush, Cocteau Twins and The Sundays but while also being a subtle refinement. They ended that year with the Elliot Frazier-produced and mixed “The Truth”/”Sunshine” 7 inch, which featured what may arguably be the most muscular and direct song of their catalog to date. The Austin-based shoegazers supported their recorded output with several tours, sharing stages with Snail Mail, Sunflower Bean, La Luz, BRONCHO, Illuminati Hotties, JOVM mainstays Yumi Zouma and others.
2019 saw the release of their self-titled, full-length debut, which they supported with an extensive US tour with Ringo Deathstarr that included a stop at Saint Vitus Bar that November. Although touring was on an indefinite hiatus until the middle of last year, the Austin JOVM mainstays have been busy: they signed to Kanine Records, who will be releasing their highly anticipated Elliot Frazier-produced, sophomore album Possessions.
Slated for a February 18, 2022 release, Possessions is an album born out of incredible patience and perseverance: The earliest tracking sessions started in 2019 and continued in fits and starts through the quarantines, lockdowns and re-openings of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a break in production while Frazier welcomed his second child, and that was followed by the massive blackouts across Texas as a result of last February’s winter storm that wrecked havoc across the region.
When it was finally finished, the album revealed itself as being heavier at points and at other points much lighter. Thematically and lyrically, the album reportedly sees the band embracing the full and complicated spectrum of life and relationships but while recognizing the need for escape and whimsy. The album also sees the band collaborating with two shoegazer legends — Lush and Piroshka‘s Miki Berenyi, who contributes vocals on “Blame” and RIDE‘s Mark Gardener, who mastered the album at his OX4 Sound in the UK.
In the lead up to the album’s release next month, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:
“Blame,” which fittingly features Miki Berenyi is a lush, densely layered song featuring glistening and reverb drenched guitars, an enormous hook and some eerily spectral harmonies and counter melodies between Christina Carmona, Michelle Soto and Berenyi. But just under the shimmering surface is a subtle sense of menace, expressed by the refrain “Stick around and find out . . . “
“Sour Punch,” a woozy and seamless synthesis of 90s indie pop and grunge centered around reverb-drenched guitars, crunchy power chords, propulsive drumming and hazy yet ethereal vocals. But underneath the shimmering melody and power chords, “Sour Punch” as the band explains explores inequality and striving for independence in a relationship. You can feel the song’s narrator bristling from being hemmed in while desiring some space to herself, to be herself.
Possessions‘ third and final single “The Fires” may arguably be the darkest and most brooding track on the album. Featuring Michelle Soto’s chiming reverb-drenched guitars and a motorik groove built around Christina Carmona’s propulsive bass line and Jacob Soto’s metronomic four on the floor, “Fires” sees the JOVM mainstays pushing their sound into post-punk, goth and even coldwave territory while retaining their unerring knack for rousing hooks and ethereal harmonies.
The recently released video for “The Fires” also serves as a counterpoint to its brightly colored counterpart “Sour Punch” with the video featuring the band’s co-vocalists and the rest of the band in a brooding monochromatic color schemes.
Founded back in 1987, the Bristol, UK-based label Sarah Records had developed a reputation for being a defiantly indie label. And during its short lifetime, the label managed to create a whole scene surrounding itself that initially featured British bands, but expanded to Arizona, California and even Sydney, Australia.
The label shut its doors in 1995 and has long eschewed re-releases and re-issues. But interestingly enough, the label’s alumni have continued to actively create gorgeous and captivating pop music: in some cases, with the original bands that recorded on the label — and in others, with new bands that featured members of the from the label’s roster.
When Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey founded Skep Wax Records last year, they were heavily influenced by the many amazing indie labels they’d work with in previous projects like K, Elefant, Fortuna Pop!, Wiiija, Matinée, WIAIWYA and others. But Sarah Records was the one they admired most: the label operated in an ethical fashion, was completely independent and better organized than most majors. When Fletcher and Pursey started to look around, they were surprised to discover how many of their labelmates were still actively creating interesting, beautiful music.
Skep Wax recently put together a compilation album titled Under The Bridge. Slated for a March 18, 2022 digital and CD release and a July 2022 vinyl release, reintroduces several of the bands — and individual band members — who released records on Sarah Records, during the label’s storied history. However, instead of being a trip down the nostalgia road, as many compilations often do, Under The Radar spotlights the new music that these bands are making right now — with much of it being exclusive to the compilation.
Every track on Under The Bridge manages to continue Sarah Records’ reputation for crated pop. Some of the tracks are punk rock, some are indie pop, others are dream pop-like. Some are gentle, some are full of rage. But all of the tracks are defiantly sensitive, thoughtful, literate and fueled by DIY spirit.
The Luxembourg Signal — currently, Beth Arzy (vocals), Betsy Moyer (vocals), Johnny Joyner (guitar), Brian Espinoza (drums), Ginny Pitchford (keys), Daniel Kumiega (bass) and Kelly Davis (guitar) — features members split in London, Los Angeles and San Diego. And with the release of 2014’s self-titled debut through Shelflife Records, the trans-national shoegaze/dream pop outfit quickly attracted a loyal following while receiving overwhelmingly breathless praise for crating material centered around ethereal vocals and lush soundscapes, paired with a pop sensibility.
I’ve written a bit about The Luxembourg Signal over the past handful of years, and as you may recall, the band released their third album, the 10-song The Long Now was released back in 2020 through Shelflife Records and Spinout Nuggets. Although a couple of have passed since I’ve last written about them, the trans-national outfit contributes the slow-burning and gorgeous, compilation opener “Travel Through Midnight.”
Centered around a lush arrangement featuring glistening and reverb-drenched guitars, a supple bass line, gently padded drumming, and shimmering synths “Travel Through Midnight” is spacious enough for Arzy’s and Moyer’s gorgeous vocals to ethereally float over the mix. The song manages to evoke a gentle yet wintry melancholy.
Deriving their name from a French expression that gently mocks sappy lovers, the Paris-based indie rock duo Fleur bleu.e — Delphine and Vladimir — features two accomplished musicians, who have been performing and writing music since they were both children: Vladimir was a guitarist in French garage rock band Brats, an act that recorded and released a Yarol Popouard-produced album that was supported with touring across France with BB Brunes. Delphine began playing cello in classical orchestras before learning guitar and playing at alternative festivals across Paris with her first band Le Studio Jaune.
When the duo met in 2019, they bonded over a mutual love of The Smiths, Beach House, Françoise Hardy and Elli et Jacno among others, and a desire to craft music that was emotionally ambiguous while being fueled by their teenage myths. Seemingly influenced by dramas and nightmares, their artistic vision is to go beyond the prism of the gender binary and call upon the listener to express their fragility, celebrating one’s inner world and the beauty in imperfections.
The Parisian duo released “Horizon” to critical applause late last year. Building upon a buzz worthy profile in their native France, the Parisian duo released “STOLT 89” earlier this year, a track that brought Bloom-era Beach House to mind while being an emotionally ambiguous feminist manifesto. Both of those singles will appear on the duo’s Ben Ettter-produced full-length debut slated for release next year.
In the meantime, the forthcoming album’s third and latest single “sun” sees the members of Fluer bleu.e crafting an infectious yet beautiful song that adds elements of folk and jangle pop to their singular take on dream pop. The end result is a song that sounds like Beach House meets The Sundays. But underneath the song’s sunny instrumentation, the song is a bittersweet meditation on depression, the search for a soulmate embodied by the sun and the stifling nature of the gender binary.
Directed by Clémentine Chapron and shot on Super 8 during golden hours, the recently released video for “sun” evokes the heartbreak, loneliness and depression at the heart of the song. Throughout the video, there are subtle reminders that the sun is never far away — whether brooding in a small apartment or out on the streets.
Colatura — Jennica (bass, vocals), Digo (guitar, vocals) and Meredith (guitar, synth, vocals) is a rising Brooklyn-based indie trio that features multiple lead singers while establishing a sound that’s sometimes dreamy and sometimes heavy, centered around pop-leaning melodies and post-punk atmospherics. And as a result, some critics have described them as “Fleetwood Mac with shoegaze guitars.”
With the release of 2018’s debut EP Spring Drew Blood and a handful of singles last year, including “I Don’t Belong Here,” the Brooklyn-based indie outfit have begun to build up some buzz: They’ve been featured by The Deli and Oh My Rockness, and they’ve received breathless praise from Full Time Aesthetic, who covered a recent live show and wrote “the easiest way to describe Colatura is they’re like sunshine streaming out of an amplifier with its volume set at nine.” Adding to a growing profile locally, Colatura has played sets at Rough Trade, Baby’s All Right, Mercury Lounge and Elsewhere as well as house parties and DIY Brooklyn venues.
The Brooklyn-based trio’s full-length debut is slated for release next year. The album features lovingly crafted material that began to take shape as the trio passed demos back-and-forth to each other last year. The album’s creative process culminated in an upstate New York writing retreat before recording sessions across the Hudson Valley, Connecticut and the band’s own Manhattan-based Tessatura Studio.
In the lead-up to the album’s release, the Brooklyn-based trio have released two singles — “King Kalm,” and “The Met.” The album’s third and latest single, the slow-burning and subtly brooding “We Run On Empty” features Jennica and Meredith’s delicately interwoven vocals paired with a lushly textured soundscape consisting of jangling and reverb-drenched guitars, glistening synth arpeggios and a steady yet propulsive rhythm section. Sonically, “We Run On Empty” — to my ears, at least — will draw comparisons to early Beach House, A Storm in Heaven era The Verve, Alvvays and others while revealing the tiro’s uncanny ability to craft a soaring, memorable hook. Thematically, “We Run On Empty” focuses on the steady, almost imperceptible loss of identity that comes when one finds themselves in a toxic and abusive relationship.
Directed and shot by the band, the hazy, dream-like visual for “We Run On Empty” was filmed at a strikingly old-fashioned Upstate New York Air BNB. “We tried to find the weirdest one we could, and lucked out with one that had amazing and different grandmother-style wallpaper in each room,” Jennica explains. “We also bought a fog machine to add some extra ambiance, which was great until we set off the smoke alarm mid-take.”
Formed back in 2016, JOVM mainstays No Swoon — Tasha Abbott (vocals, guitar) and Zack Nestel-Patt (synths) — have received attention across the blogosphere for a sound and approach that meshes elements of dream pop, shoegaze, post-punk and ethereal wave.
2018’s EP 1 was written in Los Angeles during a self-imposed exile from the East Coast. For Abbott, a native of Ontario, CA, the idea was to get back to her geographic and musical roots: she spent a great deal of time driving around the suburbs listening to the goth and New Wave that her mom played in the car when Abbott was a little girl (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets,New Order) and the indie rock and punk rock of her teenage years (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes).
2019’s Jorge Elbrecht-produced, self-titled full-length debut saw the band firmly establishing their sound in an urgent and ambitious fashion. Drawing from the divisiveness of the 2016 election and its aftermath, the self-titled album featured incisive political commentary — often criticizing capitalism, unchecked power and greed, while touching upon the confusion, frustration and and uncertainty that so many of us have felt, and continue to feel.
Much like countless others across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic, the members of the JOVM mainstay act found their lives and plans thrown into disarray: their planned tour to support their full-length debut last year was indefinitely scrapped. And after spending the past five years in Brooklyn, the duo relocated to Los Angeles. Understandably, the past year spent in isolation has forced the duo to take a step back and think about their lives in new ways, as well as examine the intricacies of going through life. (This has been a period of profound reflection and reinvention — for all of us.)
The duo’s latest single “Again” marks a period of massive transitions for the band: the aforementioned move back West — and the band reworking their sound as a result. The slow-burning “Again” sees the JOVM mainstays pairing Abbott’s ethereal and plaintive vocals with a stormy backdrop of forceful and buzzing power chords, thunderous drumming by frequent collaborator Jon Smith, swirling bursts of twinkling keys and a enormous hook. Sonically, the song manages to evoke the seemingly unending doldrums of the earliest part of the pandemic, while being a sort of mix of Siamese Dream era Smashing Pumpkins and Slowdive.
“This song is about when days begin and end with no real definition. About being stuck in the loop of our life and we can’t get out. It may come to no surprise that this song was written early on in the Pandemic. Before everything shut down, I (Tasha) was constantly moving: work, music, sleep, etc., and being at stand-still all of a sudden was definitely strange (on top of the already terror and stress of the pandemic).”
Directed, shot and edited by the members of No Swoon, the recently released video for “Again” features the band’s Tasha Abbott by herself at night, shot in a series of super tight close-ups meant to evoke the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped by yourself with your own thoughts.
Formed back in 2018, the emerging Bangalore, India-based synth pop duo Us and I — Bidisha Kesh (vocals) and Guarav Govilkar (production) — features members who come from very different backgrounds, who bonded over the fact that they share similar musical sensibilities: As the story goes, when they started to work together, Kesh and Govlikar quickly realized that they shared a unique way of crafting songs with deeply personal lyrics paired with the melancholia of the orange and yellow colors leaking from the sounds of their synthesizers.
The duo spent the next two years developing and honing a sound that they believe will act as a bridge between the synth-driven work of Chromatics and the slow-burning, dream pop of Beach House — with subtle nods to darkwave and post-punk. Thematically, the duo’s material generally draws from everyday life and the relationships around them.
As a result of the pandemic, the Bangalore-based duo played a few online, live-at-home livestream sessions. which helped the band gain attention for their debut EP Loveless, which was released earlier this year. Thematically, Loveless focuses on a universal subject, love — in particularly, a past love and how the nostalgia and grief of that past love can hit us like waves. Now, as you may recall, I wrote about Loveless single “Fragile,” deliberately crafted, textured pop centered around glistening synth arpeggios, sinuous bass lines, thumping beats and Kesh’s gorgeous vocals in a song that reminded me quite a bit of Dead Blue-era Still Corners.
The EP’s latest single “First Love” is slow-burning ballad centered around an atmospheric arrangement of twinkling piano, glistening synth arpeggios and Kesh’s achingly plaintive vocals. While sonically “First Love” strikes me as being a bit like Still Corners meets Tales of Us era Goldfrapp, the song as the duo explains is about “the nostalgic longing to be near someone that is distant, or that has bene loved and then lost — ‘the love that remains.'”
Fittingly, the recently released video for “First Love” is nostalgic and brims with an aching and unresolved longing for a time, place, and situation that can’t be recovered. And as a result, ghosts linger and taunt throughout.
