Category: Indie Electro Pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Terciopelo Shares Brooding Yet Radio Friendly “Rise”

Terciopelo is the solo recording project of a mysterious and emerging Costa Rican-born and-based electronic music producer and artist, who blends diverse instrumental elements, trap beats, jazz and soulful melodies into a unique and moody sound that has been described as thought provoking.

The mysterious Costa Rican-born and-based electronic music producer and artist’s forthcoming full-length debut, The Breakaways sees him collaborating with a talented and diverse group of female vocalists. Thematically, the album focuses on women and their journeys through life — with each vocalist singing lyrics that detail the trials, tribulations and joys of their life through their perspective. The album’s material delves into the depths of passion, love and all of the various aspects of human life. 

“This album represents a significant chapter in my musical journey,” the Costa Rican producer and artist says. The Breakaways is not just a music album, it’s a celebration of life, love and the magnetic power of music. We poured our hearts into every note, and we hope it resonates with our audience on a profound level.”

Over the past handful of months, I’ve written about three of the album’s singles:

  • “Your Love . . .,” a brooding and slickly produced synthesis of Portishead-like trip hop, trap beats and contemporary electro pop paired with yearning vocals and evocative lyrics. The song thematically is a deep dive into the lives of women trapped in abusive romantic relationships. The song’s narrator paints a poignant and haunting picture of the internal and external struggles that domestic abuse victims face with a seemingly lived-in specificity. 

  • “Nothing Can Stop Me,” a slickly produced track that pairs contemporary pop with trap beats, shimmering acoustic guitar, bursts of twinkling Rhodes with a soulful vocal, pop starlet delivery. Much like its predecessor, the song captures the interior world of its narrator with an uncanny attention to psychological detail.

  • “Hey Boy,” a slick mix of strutting Brazilian and Latin jazz, featuring some fantastic solos paired with skittering trap beats and a coquettishly sultry vocal. The song — and in turn, the video — sees the woman boldly taking change, and shooting her shot.

The Breakaways‘ latest single “Rise” features a brooding Massive Attack-like trip hop inspired production and trap beats, bursts of Middle Eastern-styled instrumentation and electro pop to create a radio friendly bit of global-tinged pop anchored by a gorgeous, soulful vocal.

The song and the accompanying video tells the story of Anya Petrovna. Born into poverty in a small Eastern European village, Petrovna dreams of becoming a world-class ballerina. With no formal training and only an old pair of ballet slippers handed down from her grandmother, she teaches herself to dance by watching grainy videos on a borrowed phone. Every night, she practices in secret, her movements graceful yet raw, fueled by determination. Anya’s life changes when a traveling ballet instructor, Madame Kovalenko, visits her town and notices her extraordinary talent. Against all odds, Anya is given a scholarship to a prestigious ballet academy in the capital. There, she faces fierce competition, cultural barriers, and the ever-looming threat of failure. Struggling to keep up with wealthier, better-trained peers, she battles self-doubt and exhaustion. Yet Anya refuses to give up. With relentless perseverance, she wins over skeptics, perfecting her technique through sheer willpower and passion. When she is chosen to perform the lead at a world-renowned theater, she knows this is her moment to prove herself. On opening night, Anya dances as if the stage were the only world she’s ever known. Her performance captivates audiences and critics alike, placing her in an elite class of ballerinas of which only a handful exist. Yet her journey is not just about success—it is about resilience, sacrifice, and the unbreakable spirit of a girl who dared to dream beyond the limits of her world.

The accompanying visualizer features a dancer dancing in outer space with the celestial bodies behind her.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Psymon Spine Share Two Slick Remixes from “Heady Remix Collector”

Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays Psymon Spine released their third album, Head Body Connector last year. The album is a gritty, punchy, guitar-forward studio album from a band that’s long been obsessed with production. And perhaps more than its predecessors, their third album is explicitly informed and inspired by the band’s cathartic live show. “It’s more unhinged than anything we’ve made before,” Psymon Spine’s Noah Prebish says. “Throughout the writing process, we were always asking ourselves how we could make it really fun to play live.”  

Ironically, the album, though ready-made to be performed, was mostly written in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The band split their time between various home studios and friends’ back porches in Montauk, The Catskills, Boston and Brooklyn. It was fall and the crisp autumn air, and political uncertainty and disquietude looming in the background lended itself to an undeniable longing for companionship. “It felt like we had collectively jumped from one timeline to another, more bizarre one,” Prebish says. 

The central theme of time being fractured, chopped and screwed is integral to the album’s material and its album art, which was designed by New York-based artist Bucky Boudreau and appears in the form of alternative measurements of passing seconds, minutes, days, lifetimes, tally marks on a chalkboard and infinity signs made of camp bracelets on a cracked egg.“Head Body Connector is our response to a world even more chaotic than usual,” says Peter Spears, “and an exploration of the little joys, anxieties, and absurdities that world has to offer.” While being an ode to the dissonance of temporality in our current moment, it’s also an elastic tribute to friendship and harmony in the face of that dissonance. 

In the lead up to the album’s release, I wrote about:

“Boys,” a track that begins with a glistening New Wave-meets-post punk introduction before quickly morphing into a funky, synth-driven both with slashing guitars. The two seemingly disparate sections are held together with Sabine Holler’s dreamy delivery. But just under the infectious, danceable surface, is an introspective song that reveals a subtle sense of unease. 

The track was written after the band’s Sabine Holler relocated to Berlin, but she still lends her voice to the song. “By nature every Psymon Spine song must be a little cheeky to bypass our own self-criticism, but in reality ‘Boys’ is just a very earnest song about friendship,” the band notes. “Early on in the pandemic Sabine moved back to Germany and we weren’t sure what was going to happen, either to us as a unit or to the entire world. We went to Peter’s childhood home in Boston for a few days and fleshed out a demo that Michael had started a couple weeks earlier. We sent it to Sabine who almost immediately replied with the same vocal take you hear on the song today.” 

“Wizard Acid,” a woozy bit of disco funk built around a punchy bass line, glistening synth arpeggios and thumping beats paired with lyrics about coming apart at the seams — both literally and metaphorically. Consumed with cabin fever, the song’s narrator is slowly losing their mind. 

The band told the folks at Flood Magazine that the song is “part allegory, part nonsense, encapsulating elements of cabin fever, dread and humor. We melded one of Michael’s early demos with one of Peter’s, creating one unholy coupling which eventually took the form of a shapeshifting disco jam. It sat instrumental for a couple months until Peter sent over some lyrics detailing a narrator slowly consumed by their sentient house, or perhaps losing their mind (maybe both?).” 

The JOVM mainstays will be releasing Heady Remix Collector, a bold reimagining of the material off last year’s Head Body Connector. Slated for an April 4, 2025 release through their longtime label home Northern Spy, the album features remixes by some of their favorite artists and collaborators with the album’s tracks transformed into fresh, electrifying soundscapes that are perfect for both the dance floor and deep listening.

“We’re thrilled to share our most eclectic remix album yet: Heady Remix Collector. The name says it all,” the JOVM mainstays say. We asked 8 of our favorite artists to reinterpret songs on Head Body Connector and what we got back was a glimpse into how truly weird and brilliant our friends are.

We generally take a very hands-off approach to the remixes that we commission (the exception being “Love Injection’s Antimatter Kid Remix”, which Noah played guitar on); anytime we ask someone to remix something it’s because we love their work and want them to do their thing. We send out the stems, tell them to freak it, and in a couple months we find a bunch of alien babies on our doorstep.

“For the DJs, we’ve got club bangers from Sam O.B. and GIFT, as well as balearic slow burners from Love Injection and lovetempo. MGMT and Matt FX’s mixes are psychedelic, joyous, delirious. And both This is Lorelei and Disq’s remixes are a stroll through a funhouse, complete with trick mirrors and trap doors at every turn.”

The band shared the first peak of Heady Remix Collector, a double A-side single featuring MGMT’s remix of “Boys” and GIFT’s remix of “Wizard Acid.”

The MGMT remix of “Boys” pairs a chugging motorik-like groove, buzzing and crunchy guitars and twinkling synth oscillations with Holler’s dreamy delivery to create a dreamy and euphoric house music-meets-New Wave take on the original.

The GIFT remix of “Wizard Acid” turns the song into slick and glistening Echoes-era The Rapture/DFA Records dance punk-meets-house music banger with euphoric hooks.

If I were doing a DJ set, I’d play these bangers to get people moving — and if these tracks don’t get you moving, there’s something wrong with you.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares a Banger

Besides being an awesome band name, Total Fucking Darkness features:

The trio’s latest single “Desolation Boys” is a slick yet chaotic synthesis of Tweekend-era Crystal Method and Come With Us-era Chemical Brothers-like big beat, LCD Soundsystem and deep house with glistening synth arpeggios delivered with a nihilistic, tongue-in-cheek absurdity. And it slaps so fucking hard that it sounds like it could be played at clubs in Manchester and Berlin back in 1999-2006 or so.

Created in the final hours of a manic, 72-hour writing spree with McFall flying in London, “Desolation Boys” encapsulates the band’s volatile energy. The song is anchored around spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics and a raw vocal take where Campbell can be faintly heard yelling “go fuck yourself,” mid-chorus. Who is he yelling at? Himself, perhaps?

The song reflects the band’s ongoing exploration of themes like the futility of existence, the exciting pointlessness of class war and the rejection of everything that doesn’t BANG.

The accompanying video features edited footage of a concert somewhere in Berlin, pro Palestine protests and UCLA’s dance team, a country dance team, an old pun rock show and other pop detritus.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: Winter Jazzfest 2025: Lion Babe at Baby’s All Right 1/11/25

Live concert photography of Lion Babe performing at Baby’s All Right during Winter Jazzfest.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Super Plage Shares Breezy, Dance Floor Friendly Bop

Jules Henry is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Super Plage.  And if you’ve been following this site over the past couple of years, you’d recall that I’ve written about the acclaimed Montréal-based artist a bit over the past couple of years.

Last year, he released two singles:

  • “Ton chien,” a flirty bop anchored around a breezy and summery production featuring glistening synths and skittering beats as a lush bed for Henry and Parsian artist Sainte Nicole to trade ethereal and dreamily delivers verses. It’s the sort of song that’s perfect for hanging out in the park — or the beach — with the pretty someone, who’s got your heart skipping beats. 

  • A cover of  Jimmy Hunt‘s 2013 hit “Nos corps,” with longtime collaborator Virginie B and Nectar Palace that turns the disco-tinged yet atmospheric original into a New Wave-like tune that reminded me a bit of Blondie-meets-Soft to the Touch-era Jef Barbara with a Robyn-like disco groove, some squiggling funk guitar.

Henry’s fourth Super Plage album, GROSSE MAISON is slated for a May 16, 2025 release through Montréal-based label Lisbon Lux. The album’s second and latest single “Tip Top” continues a run of breezy, 80s-inspired dance floor friendly bops anchored around squiggling funk, glistening synths and a relentlessly infectious groove serving as a lush and woozy bed for Henry’s dreamy falsetto. “Tip Top” is a track that invites you to get up on that dance floor and shake your ass — while dreaming of the summer.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Jody Vukas Teams Up With Ariana Celaenio on Lush and Plaintive “Fade”

Since the late 90s, electronic music label head and artist Jody Vukas has been a mainstay in the American electronic music scene for a sound that features elements of tribal house, progressive house, tech house and techno.

Vukas’ begins 2025 with “Fade,” a lush, pop-leaning club and lounge friendly collaboration with Ariana Celaenio that pairs her plaintive and ethereal delivery with glistening synths, a driving groove and skittering beats.

As Vukas explains, the song tells a young woman’s story of the fallout from a ad relationship — and it’s done with a verisimilitude that feels as though it comes from lived-in experience.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Daniel Higley Shares Tense and Uneasy “Ultimatum”

Daniel Higley is an emerging, American-born, German-based artist. His latest single, the Brook Fraser-produced “UItimatum” Portishead-like track featuring a supple and propulsive bass line, eerie atmospheric synths that serves as a broodingly uneasy bed for British vocalist Gen’s Beth Gibbons-like delivery. The song manages to capture our exceedingly urgent and anxious zeitgeist with an uncannily lived-in precision.

Higley explains that “‘Ultimatum,’ was created with the sense of anxiety that all my friends have been going through. It seemed to be a common theme going around my circle. This moment in time seems very important, and pivotal. This is a call to action for those feelings of anxiety, and worry. This is life giving you an ultimatum. It’s saying you need to be focused, and not too extreme to get through it.

“The line ‘not too far left, not too far right’ is from the feelings after the US election, and the state of politics in the USA, and the world. Being on a side doesn’t allow one to see clearly. We’ve never seen so much tension, war, and mistrust in our lifetimes. So basically, the theme is this is something you can’t avoid, and you can either let it sweep you away, or you can use all theknowledge and training you’ve had to this point to get through. Be centered. Stay in the light and be present.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Davidé Shares Brooding and Cinematic “Nevrotik”

Davide Orsi is an Italian-born, French-based musician and producer, whose career started in earnest with a stint in Italian psych rock outfit Rubber Eggs. Orsi relocated to Grenoble, France, where he continued his musical career, eventually joining Bleu Tonnerre in 2019. And while with Bleu Tonnerre, he played alongside a collection of French artists including Izia and AARON.

Orsi also started his solo recording project Davidé in 2019. The project, which is inspired by Thom Yorke, Tears for Fears and others sees him blending futuristic and dreamy accents while exploring science fiction themes like dystopian worlds and altered realities.

Orsi’s sophomore Davidé EP, Plasticity, Pt. 2 was released a few months ago. The EP’s latest single “Nevrotik,” is a brooding and cinematic composition featuring glistening synth arpeggios and a relentless motorik groove that sounds as though it were inspired by John Carpenter soundtracks, Magic Sword, Umberto and others.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Miami’s Sara Diana Shares Brooding and Sultry “all up in my head”

Emerging 18 year-old, Miami-based singer/songwriter Sara Diana has quickly developed a reputation for introspective and poetic storytelling lyrics and soulful vocals paired with lush, atmospheric production.

Her debut EP, the Tracksion and Camilo Velandia-co-produced Can’t Be Fazed sees the emerging Miami-based artist blending heartfelt lyrics with mesmerizing melodies while exploring themes of love, growth, survival, invincibility and self-discovery. “The whole concept of not being ‘fazed’ is feeling as though nothing can hurt you anymore,” Sara Diana explains. “I’m sure many people have experienced a time in their lives where they feel they are dealing with so much that they can’t be fazed anymore. So this project is simply that. It’s about survival.”

Can’t Be Fazed‘s latest single “all up in my head” pairs a brooding, trip-hop meets alt-pop production with the young Miami-based artist’s yearning and soulful delivery describing the wooziness of love-crazed obsession that will probably result in the narrator’s own madness.

“all up in my head” reveals a remarkably self-assured artist, beyond her relative youth, and with an uncannily innate understanding of human nature and psychology.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Cape Town-Born, London-Based Sibling Duo Roi Turbo Share Two Funky Bops

Benjamin McCarthy and Conor McCarthy are Cape Town-born, London-based musicians, who have different musical backgrounds:

  • Benjamin McCarthy had more of background in electronic music

  • Connor McCarthy was in several alt-rock and alt-pop projects

Since the siblings were in high school, they wanted to collaborate on a musical project that was just the two of them. Their project together Roi Turbo sees the Cape Town-born, London-based musicians blending a mix of African and Western influences from the 70s, 80s an 90s, including Larry Levan, William Onyeabor, Air and Pino D’Angiò.

“We were listening to ‘70s and ‘80s African disco and funk records at the time, and the contrast between the synths and raw live elements of these records really inspired us,” the members of Roi Turbo explain. Over the years we bought as many synths, drums, guitars and microphones as we could get our hands on and would experiment for weeks on end until we got the sound we were going for. We wanted to create a project that encompassed all our niche tastes in music, fashion, automobiles and design, free of any pretentiousness, just quality music that gets you moving!”

Over the past month, the pair have released two singles:

  • “Dystopia,” features squiggling Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, glistening and fluttering synth arpeggio and a strutting bass line paired with a motorik-like groove.

  • “Bazooka” is anchored around some phaser-drenched synths and squiggling keytar and a sinuous 80s-styled, two-step inducing groove.

The two singes bring to mind a slick synthesis of Zazou Bikaye‘s Mr. Manager and Synthesize the Soul: Astro-Atlantic Hypnotica from Cape Verde Islands 1973-1988, 80s synth funk while revealing a duo with an uncanny knack for funky grooves and remarkably catchy hooks.