Category: Indie Electro Pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Returns with Menacing “They’ll Never Suspect Us”

Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — will be releasing their newest album, By accident, On purpose on October 16, 2026.

The album will include the previously released, broodingly atmospheric and introspective “Honestly, that’s enough honesty” and the album’s latest single “They’ll Never Suspect Us.” Continuing with a gorgeous and broodingly atmospheric production, “They’ll Never Suspect Us” is underpinned by a gleeful and downright giddy sense of malice.

Arguably, one of their darker songs lyrically to date, “They’ll Never Suspect Us” reframe the classic murder ballad into something more detached, swaggering and unsettling with a narrator who imagines the act — and then rubs the prospective victim’s face in the fact that no one will care about their demise. It’s a song perfect for those true crime shows many of us love watching, including yours truly.

The accompanying video was shot on VHS tape and includes tape fuzz, wavering and undulating imagery and more.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Black Marble Returns with Propulsive “Anything”

Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Black Marble creative mastermind Chris Stewart will be releasing his fifth Black Marble album, Life in Small Spaces through Sacred Bones Records on August 21, 2026. The album, which is Stewart’s first full-length album since 2021’s Fast Idol, is an album of clear-eyed commentary and analysis of the music industry as a whole, a discussion of authenticity and a heartfelt letter to all the independent creatives out in the world.

“I always knew a lot of people in music struggled to make ends meet, but it surprised me to learn that the people you thought would be doing well often weren’t. For me, seeing the business from the inside like that changed how I looked at things,” Stewart says. “When I looked up to see a new artist on a billboard, I started to wonder, ‘will I one day have to pretend to be something I’m not, in order to succeed?’ The life of an artist goes on after your moment ends, you know? So who do you want to be in the end and how do you want to be seen by the people that know you? I made Life In Small Spaces while thinking about that, and for me, it serves as my own ideal for living an artistic life. I’m doing it as a vocation, not some last-ditch effort to escape to some other world. I made this record not only as a way of saying that, but as a way of saying it’s ok to feel that way. It’s ok for people to sacrifice some degree of creature comfort in order to live a life you believe in. And it doesn’t have to be an endless search for something just out of reach, it can be a permanent way of being and something that sustains you.”

Drawing from early American left-of-the-dial “college radio” staccato guitar lines and live drum samples, the album’s material sees Stewart eschewing his usual wall of synths-driven sound for a more live sound. 

The album will include the previously released “Jim Carol New Year,” a decidedly upbeat, 1980s New Wave-inspired track and its latest single, “Anything.” Anchored around an angular and propulsive rhythmic pulse and shimmering and squiggling bursts of guitar, “Anything” manages to channel early New Order and Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO! and Freedom of Choice-era DEVO but instead of frustrated carnal desires, the song has a decidedly domestic bent. It’s not exactly content, but it has a sense of humor about daily annoyances and irritations of friends and loved ones, the frustrations of constant stimulation and instant gratification when it seems you can’t find either. And at its core, the song points out it’s difficult to connect with people, when most folks are lookin to bail on people for the smallest possible thing.

“‘Anything’ is basically a bedroom pop version of ‘Satisfaction’ but it trades the carnal undertones for more of a domestic pastiche. With lyrics about leaving the bedroom window open, casual druggy friends popping by at all hours and other relationship annoyances, the center of the struggle is less about finding temporary satisfaction but that today’s glut of options and opportunities gives every relationship an expiration date, every encounter an easy off ramp and every minor annoyance a reason to move on,” Black Marble’s Chris Stewart says. “The sentiment is the same from those old days, lack of fulfillment, but it’s due to modern circumstances. It feels like we have every option at our fingertips but we’re somehow losing the ability to connect.”

Directed by Scott Kiernan, the accompanying video was shot at New York’s Various/Artists and captures the song’s themes of overstimulation by featuring a rapid-fire barrage of vibrant images with a meditative and occasionally bemused Stewart flickers throughout the visual noise and chaos.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Genesis Owusu Returns with Shimmering and Glitchy Surprise Single “HUMAN AGAIN”

Acclaimed multi-ARIA Award-winning Ghanian-born Canberra-based JOVM mainstay Genesis Owusu released his highly anticipated third album REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE earlier this year through OURNESS. 

REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE sees one of Australia’s most celebrated and visionary contemporary artists construct an exposed state-of-the-day record that’s experimental yet cohesive, desolate yet ecstatic, unflinching yet free. Duality is at the core of an album that sees the JOVM mainstay layering musings on an unsettled world with piercing reflections of his, and our own places within the world. Rich in lyricism and earnest in its message, REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE is a resolute effort that confronts a divisive era in which humanity and its institutions seem to be ripping apart at the seams and heeds a desperate need for unity. 

Sonically drawing from and meshing elements funk, neo-soul, Brit rock and alt pop the album’s overall sound feels both sprawling and deliberate. “The world hasn’t ended yet,” Owusu. says. “We’re still moving, we’re still jumping, we’re still living, and so we shall continue. Through rain, shine, exploitation and warfare. We, the people, will always stubbornly persist, and hopefully persist hand in hand.”

Today, the acclaimed JOVM mainstay shares “HUMAN AGAIN,” a surprise stand-alone single and video that comes on the heels of REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE and his Red Star Wu’s Pirate Radio Tour, which electrified crowds in Australia and included sold-out headline shows in London and Paris, and opening dates with IDLES. “HUMAN AGAIN exists in the same mindset as REDSTAR WU — emotionally raw and reflecting deeply on our divisive, mad times. Sonically, the new single features bubbling and warbling synth glitch and skittering beats beneath Owusu alternating between a ferocious, ODB-styled snarl for the song’s punchy verses and his imitable croon. His delivery evokes a man at conflict with himself, seeming propelled forward by the digitized world that surrounds us. And yet, the song’s narrator finds a hopeful resolve, resilience in community, and inspiration in the collective fight to hold on to our humanity.

Owusu says, “I wrote this song when I was thinking about apathy. Living in the digital age of misinformation is genuinely brain-frying sometimes. So much global gaslighting, so much to cry and scream about; it’s easier to just flip the switch off and sink into base hedonism to feel human again. But it’s really important to care. You can party too. Care about the rights and freedoms that let you party. Care about all the people around the world who wanna party just like you. Keep fighting, kicking and screaming so the party doesn’t die.”

Directed by Isaac Brown, the accompanying video is a baroque, Interview with the Vampire-styled fever dream of lust, decadence and violence that collides with modern-day European streets in a way that emphasizes the tensions at the core of the song in a visceral fashion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: I WANT POETRY Shares Shimmering and Upbeat “Future Selves”

German indie electro pop duo I WANT POETRY — Tine von Bergen (vocals) and Till Moritz Moll (keys) — released their highly-anticipated third album Future Selves last month. The hopeful and transformative album is inspired by a brief moment in time when the future still felt like a bright promise, channeling the spirit of past dreams of utopia and progress. And as a result, Future Selves offers a forward-thinking vision shaped by memory, imagination and the will to create what comes next.

Sonically, the German duo’s third album is an evolution from the more reflective tones of 2023’s Solace + Light, featuring layers of shimming synths and soaring melodies. 

The album includes “Mirrors Of The Sky,” the Michael Micheal Vanja, Ghian Wright and The EmU-co-produced “No Is a Full Sentence,” “Backyard Astronauts,” and the album’s latest single, album title track “Future Selves,” Built around glistening synths, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with von Bergen’s expressive, pop star-like delivery, “Future Selves” sounds a bit like it could have been part of a mid 80s movie soundtrack while pointing out to the listener that the future isn’t written yet; that it’s up to us to create that future. It’s a much-needed burst of upbeat optimism in very dark times.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Pain Gain Shares Atmospheric “Prizefighter”

Formed back in 2023, Pain Gain — Kilo‘s Chloe Kaul, SWIM’s Hamish Lefevre, and CRUSH3d’s Samuel Cooke — began as a deliberate left turn for its members. Shedding their established electronic identities, Kaul, Lefevre and Cooke retreated to the beachside forests of southern Australia with guitars, modular synths and a tape recorder. What they believed was a temporary and fun moment of escape, quickly evolved into something far more profound for the trio: a thorough recalibration of sound, process and purpose.

Despite each member’s distinct musical paths, Pain Gain is about a shared musical language discovered. Rooted in instinct and play, the project became an immersive, almost familial experience for its members. The result is their self-titled, full-length debut.

Slated for a July 17, 2026 release through Play It Again Sam/PIAS, the forthcoming album reportedly sees the trio trading velocity for gravity while moving fluidly between indie rock melodrama and expansive pop balladry, all while rejecting genre as a fixed idea.

Thematically, the ten-song album traces personal upheaval with unflinchingly honesty. Kaul’s sometimes excoriating lyrics are paired with tactile soundscapes shared by Lefevre and Cooke in which no single voice dominates. Working with an instinctive creative process, the trio embraced single takes, analog experimentation and the beauty of imperfection, allowing songs to emerge organically from their surroundings, Each room of their retreat became a makeshift studio; melodies frequently drifted through kitchen conversations, while lyrics were created from late-night exchanges by the fire.

“We went away together with only the intention of starting something new, we never expected that we would end up not only with an album, but one that feels as cohesive and collectively personal as this,” Pain Gain explains. “It’s a record that looks for beauty in friction, and finding a new start in the wreckage of something past”

The self-titled album’s latests single “Prizefighter,” is an atmospheric bit of synth pop paired with Kaul’s achingly tender delivery. The song which emerged from reversed and replayed tape experiments, sonically recalls ACES and others. But as the song slowly builds up to its crescendo, the song channels the growing exhaustion, frustrations and resentments of staying too long in something that won’t change.

As the trio explain, “‘Prizefighter’ is a centrepiece to the record. Conceptually it’s about being coaxed into a cycle that never breaks. It’s always the same fight.“

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Allegories Shares Broodingly Atmospheric and Introspective “Honesty, that’s enough honesty”

Since the release of 2022’s Endless, the Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays  Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — have released a growing collection of standalone singles. The duo’s forthcoming album, By accident, On purpose is slated for an October 16, 2026 release.

By accident, On purpose‘s first official single “Honestly, that’s enough honesty” is a broodingly atmospheric, slow-burning and introspective tune featuring shifting shoegazer-like textures. The song feels dreamily laid back yet uneasy and unsettled.

Thematically, “Honestly, that’s enough honesty” sees the JOVM mainstays questioning the very idea of authenticity. Written from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, the song reflects on how even our most honest expressions are shaped by distortion, memory and self-mythology. Fittingly, the song sees the leaning hard into contradiction: the idea that deception isn’t unavoidable, but foundational to how we move and operate through the world. “People often assume I’m a confessional songwriter,” Allegories’ Adam Bentley explains. “We’re all deceiving each other in the way we perform in public, and probably deceiving ourselves in private too,” the duo add. “Otherwise, how the hell would we keep living?”

“Honestly, that’s enough honestly” showcases the creative framework for the Canadian duo’s new album: Each track emerges from layered process of rewriting, reconstruction and transformation. What initially began as a simple sketch has been continually reshaped until it becomes something unanticipated yet instinctively right.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Black Marble Shares 80s New Wave-Inspired “Jim Carol New Year”

Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Black Marble creative mastermind Chris Stewart will be releasing his fifth Black Marble album, Life in Small Spaces through Sacred Bones Records on August 21, 2026. The album, which is Stewart’s first full-length album since 2021’s Fast Idol, is an album of clear-eyed commentary and analysis of the music industry as a whole, a discussion of authenticity and a heartfelt letter to all the independent creatives out in the world.

“I always knew a lot of people in music struggled to make ends meet, but it surprised me to learn that the people you thought would be doing well often weren’t. For me, seeing the business from the inside like that changed how I looked at things,” Stewart says. “When I looked up to see a new artist on a billboard, I started to wonder, ‘will I one day have to pretend to be something I’m not, in order to succeed?’ The life of an artist goes on after your moment ends, you know? So who do you want to be in the end and how do you want to be seen by the people that know you? I made Life In Small Spaces while thinking about that, and for me, it serves as my own ideal for living an artistic life. I’m doing it as a vocation, not some last-ditch effort to escape to some other world. I made this record not only as a way of saying that, but as a way of saying it’s ok to feel that way. It’s ok for people to sacrifice some degree of creature comfort in order to live a life you believe in. And it doesn’t have to be an endless search for something just out of reach, it can be a permanent way of being and something that sustains you.”

Drawing from early American left-of-the-dial “college radio” staccato guitar lines and live drum samples, the album’s material sees Stewart eschewing his usual wall of synths-driven sound for a more live sound.

Life in Small Spaces‘ first single “Jim Carol New Year” is a hooky, decidedly upbeat, 1980’s New Wave-inspired track featuring layers of glistening and shimmering synths and gated reverb-soaked, angular drum machine beats. Seemingly channeling Security and Peter Gabriel 3-era Peter Gabriel and New Order, the song’s title nods to the late New York-born and-based author, poet and musician Jim Carroll and holiday season carols, while casting a critical eye on modern life. Throughout, the song sees is narrator and protagonist rejecting false promises of religion, advice from so-called experts or easy answers in favor of self-validation and independent thinking. The song’s refrain of “I forgot my money” is meant to convey all the things the song’s protagonist isn’t buying. “If you want to be free,” Stewart says, “you have to watch out for some of life’s classic pitfalls.”

Directed by Clayton Hunt, the accompanying video for “Jim Carol New Year” follows two travelers — one of them is in a hazmat suit — being inexplicably drawn to a house in the distance. The two travelers wind up meeting each other and discovering they’re doppelgängers for each other.

“Chris had an idea of a house in the distance with two travelers being drawn toward it. We wanted each traveler to represent a different version of the journey,” Clayton Hunt explains. “One traveler struggled unprotected against the landscape, the other was cautious, outfitted in an orange hazmat – type suit. I decided to shoot 16mm and capture everything against the green landscape, creating a vibrant contrast. That imagery helped guide the production and inform the story.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Alewya Returns with Defiant, Dancehall-Inspired “Maktoub”

JOVM mainstay Alewya is an acclaimed London-based singer/songwriter, producer and visual artist. Her highly-anticipated full-length debut, ZERO is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through Because London Records. The album reportedly embodies years of artistic growth into an effort that’s both deeply personal and sonically expansive. But the album also marks a significant milestone, as it sees her boldly stepping into a new creative era, defined by fearless experimentation and cultural fluidity. 

ZERO will include the previously released “Night Drive,” feat. Dagmawit Ameha and “City of Symbols,” “Eshi,” the Busy Twist-produced “Selah” and its fifth and latest single “Maktoub.” Anchored around dancehall reggae riddims, skittering industrial trap triplets, “Maktoub” continues a remarkable run of genre-defying and sweaty global club music that’s expansive yet urgent, accessible yet forward-thinking and remarkably catchy. Over the song’s dancehall riddims, the JOVM mainstay’s reggae-influenced vocal sings lyrics that touch upon themes of resistance, destiny and self-determination that are fiercely feminist and defiantly pro-Black and pan-African.

“Sometimes songs take time to reveal themselves but ‘Maktoub’ felt immediate and effortless from day one,” notes Alewya. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lulla Shares Brooding and Atmospheric “Secret Garden”

Lulla is a Chinese Canadian illustrator, fashion designer, singer/songwriter and producer who currently splits her time between Toronto and NYC. As a musician, the Canadian-born artist is a classically trained pianist, who recently began to experiment with electronic music by blending dark synth pop, alternative pop and indie pop to build an immersive sonic world that’s intimate and otherworldly. Thematically, her self-produced and self-written work explores emotional turmoil, femininity and nostalgia through sci-fi and futurism.

Lullaverse is the Canadian artist’s ongoing sci-fi narrative music project in which each song functions as a standalone emotional world and as a chapter in a larger mythological universe. Her second single “Secret Garden” is a a brooding and atmospheric alt-pop song featuring reverb-soaked, skittering beats, bursts of twinkling keys. Lulla’s yearning vocal ethereally floats over a brooding production that sonically seems to channel early Beacon and others.

“The garden is not a place. It is a body. The heart is hidden inside it. The hidden shrine is a vault,” Lulla explain. “A place where everything real is kept, worshipped in private, never surfaced. Heaven would call it sin. The world would call it a waste. Does it matter? Whether the devotion is directed toward a warm body or something of higher meaning, the distinction is irrelevant. She disappeared beyond the atmosphere either way.

“You can hear ‘Secret Garden’ as a queer love story,” she continues. “You can hear it as an artist’s confession. Both readings are fully supported. Neither one is wrong, it is deliberate ambiguous.”

Directed by the artist, the accompanying video features the artist, dressed in white with ivy wrapped around her in a white studio, near a computer and microphone. At one point, we see a confused Lulla running towards a bathroom. For the artist, she’s inexplicably and dangerous drawn to music — at seemingly all costs.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Christian Sean Shares Woozy “Saint Loreto”

Montréal-based pop artist Christian Sean is a firm believer in the transformative power of pop music. As a kid, he was drawn to indie rock and left-field electroinca, part of a local scene that disavowed commerciality in favor of innovation and creativity. But as he got older, he surrounded to his true calling — making what he believes is the best music of his life, anchored around a unique blend of melodic sensibility and avant-garde experimentation.

Sean’s debut, last year’s Hallelujah Showers was the culmination of years toiling on the local scene as a producer and multi-instrumentalist and was released to praise internationally from the likes of Ones To Watch, The FADER, Earmilk, and others. He capped off a busy 2025 by opening for French alt pop artist Zaho de Sagazan on their Canadian tour and making a run of the Québecois festival circuit with sets at POP Montréal and Santa Teresa Festival.

Building upon a growing profile, the rising Montréal-based pop latest single “Saint Loreto” is a slickly produced, hook-driven bop featuring lived-in songwriter Sean’s achingly tender falsetto and a glitchy, forward-thinking production that’s both club and radio friendly. But under the slickly produced surface is a song anchored around a familiar, woozy internal battle between self-doubt, indecision and longing.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Super Plage Teams Up with Virginie B on Summery “POOL PARTY”

Jules Henry is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed, JOVM mainstay recording project and Super Plage. Founded back in 2019, Super Plage sees Henry crafting slickly produced, dance floor friendly electro pop that draws from house and nu-disco. He frequently collaborates with local French Canadian artists to create a playful, fun-loving and escapist universe, where it feels good to party.

Since 2019, Henry has released four albums, including 2023’s Magie á minuit, which received an ADISQ Félix Award-nomination for Electronic Album of the Year. Building upon a growing profile, Henry has made a run of both the provincial and international festival circuits, playing sets at Francos de Montréal, FME and Festival d’été de Québec, SXSW, Wide Days and others. He has opened for Miel de Montagne, Juilen Granel, Bon Entendeur, MYD and more.

Last year’s GROOSE MAISON featured a sleek and daring blend of house, disco and French touch anchored around catchy, downright funky grooves, much like on album single “Tip Top.”

The French Canadian JOVM mainstay’s latest single “POOL PARTY” continues his longtime collaboration with Virginie B. Sonically drawing from classic house music, “POOL PARTY” is a breezy and summery, dance floor friendly bop that showcases Henry’s unerring knack for sleek production and razor sharp, catchy hooks paired with a sultry, pop starlet performance from Virginie B. It’s a much-needed, early blast of summer.