Category: Indie Pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Develour Shares a Breezy and Summery Jam

With the release of “La Part des Anges,” the mysterious and mischievous French artist Develour emerged into the scene. He describes himself as a mustachioed dandy that specializes in “French touch disco,” a sound that draws from chanson, soul, funk, disco and pop, and would compare favorably to the likes of JOVM mainstays L’impératice and Clara Luciani.

Develour’s second single “Un Matin” is a breezy and summery bop built around a swaggering and infectious 80s-inspired groove, glistening synths, Nile Rodgers-like guitar, an incredible catchy two-step inducing hook paired with the French artist’s cooed delivery. The result is a song that — to my ears, at least — reminds me a bit of L’impératice, L’Eclair and Viscardi & Il Duo Magnetico.

The video follows a stylish Develour who’s vibing out while a collection of acolytes act too cool school play chess, read and smoke cigarettes on a Parisian rooftop at sunrise.

“Les Part des Anges” and “Un Matin” will appear on the French artist’s debut EP Vert Galant, which will see an October 2023 release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ The Voxes Shares Funky Party Anthem “Midnight”

Los Angeles-based indie rock outfit The Voxes — Joseph Faundez (vocals), Adrian Jardines (guitar), Brian Lopez (guitar), Alec Pereda (bass) and John Toledo (drums) — formed back in 2013. And since their formation, the Los Angeles-based outfit have developed a sound that draws from 2000s indie rock and 2010s indie pop rock paired with energetic guitar melodies, lush harmonies and introspective lyrics.

Their full-length debut, 2021’s Closer Than Ever showcase the band’s growth as songwriters, with the album’s material featuring anthemic rock songs and introspective ballads.

The band’s follow-up EP is slated for release this summer, and it reportedly sees the Los Angeles-based outfit pushing the boundaries of their sound while staying true to their indie roots. The forthcoming EP’s first single, the Jose Cruz and Evan Lopez-produced “Midnight,” not only serves as a taste of what to expect from the new release; it’s also the first bit of new material from The Voxes since their full-length debut. Built around glistening synths, a sinuous bass line, angular bursts of guitar paired with yearning vocals and the band’s uncanny knack for catchy hooks. At its core, the song captures the sense of joy, good times, and possibility of something extraordinary happening just around midnight while hanging out with your friends. And the song does so while sounding as though it could have been released back in 1984.

“This song came to me out of the blue while sitting at the grand piano,” the band’s Brian Lopez explains. “Despite not being a proficient pianist, the chords flowed naturally. It came alive when John wrote that funky bass line.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: JOVM Mainstay Kendra Morris Shares a Swaggering Feminist Anthem

JOVM mainstay Kendra Morris is an acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician, and multi-disciplinary artist. As a singer/songwriter and musician, the acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based artist can trace the origins of her music career to discovering the joys of multi-tracking and harmonizing with herself on a karaoke machine in the closet of her childhood home.

Morris went on to play in cover bands in Florida before relocating to New York with her band, which played her original material. Her first band split up and she dealt with the aftermath by writing material alone on an 8-track recorder in her closet. Sometime after, she met longtime collaborator and producer Jeremy Page and signed to Wax Poetics, who released her full-length debut, 2012’s Banshee. 

The JOVM mainstay self-released her sophomore effort 2016’s Babble. She then went on to collaborate with DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, MF DOOM, Czarface, Ghostface Killah, Dennis Coffey and Dave Sitek among others. And while being a grizzled, New York scene vet, Morris’ work generally embodies a broader sense of American culture, drawing from a wide array of influences across music and film dating back to the mid 20th Century. 

Last year’s Nine Lives was the Florida-born, New York-based JOVM’s mainstay’s first full-length album in about a decade. The album represented a major turning point in her life both professionally and personally for Morris: The album heralds the beginning of a new chapter, an evolution to the next level of adulthood — and the first on her new label,  Karma Chief Records. Thematically, the album’s material encapsulates moments from what could easily be nine lifetimes lived over a chronological time period — or nine lives lived simultaneously in parallel and convergent realties in the multiverse.

While celebrating a recent birthday, Morris was shaken by the realization that old habits were holding her back from growth. Something needed to change — and fast. She began writing new songs and rethinking of her old ones. Less-than-perfect takes were tolerated. She put a moratorium on love songs. As Morris puts it: “I needed to scare myself into growth.” The result is the Florida-born, New York-based artist’s highly-anticipated, Torbitt Schwartz, a.k.a. Little Shalimar-prorudced fourth album I Am What I’m Waiting For.

Slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Karma Chief/Colemine Records, the forthcoming album is reportedly a a sophisticated, playful and joyful reinvention and an unfiltered expression of Morris’ weird universe that sees her delving deep into the little details. “How do you put yourself into a record?  I wanted to make it feel like you cracked open the ooze in my head,” Morris says. Fittingly, the album is an unvarnished self-portrait of Morris with all of life’s odd imperfections that captures the artist at the time of its creation.

The 11-song album pairs Morris’ towering and effortlessly soulful vocal with a sound that features elements of dusty funk, R&B and touches of indie rock. Thematically, the album at points touches upon the mundane conflicts of domesticity and cohabitation, the Butterfly Effect, her fear of flying and even an attempt to expand the birthday song canon among others.

I Am What I’m Waiting For‘s first single “What Are You Waiting For” is a seamless synthesis of Muscle Shoals soul, psych soul, and Spoon-like indie rock built around a gritty, swaggering groove and Morris’ sultry and effortlessly soulful delivery. The song is a bold and playfully defiant feminist anthem that champions self-reliance and realness above all.

The accompanying video for “What Are You Waiting For” was created from VHS footage shot by Morris’ friends Yvonne Ambrée and Leah Levitt, filmed in Morris’ neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Edited by Morris, the video is rooted in a familiar premise. “A lot of my life in New York is either getting from point A to B or just waiting around,” the JOVM mainstay explains. “New York is the city of Hurry Up and Wait.”  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Alex Nicol Shares Hauntingly Bittersweet “Hollywood”

Alex Nicol is a rising Montréal-based singer/songwriter, who spent five year period playing in a number of different projects, including Hoan, an act that released their critically applauded EP Modern Phase back in 2017.

Nicol stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with the release of his full-length debut 2020’s All For Nada. All For Nada featured “Trust,” a slow-burning and gauzy song built around the Montréal-based artist’s achingly plaintive falsetto, shimmering guitars, a supple bass line and a soaring hook. And while the song reminded me of Canadian freak folk outfit Loving, the song as Nicol explained in press notes “is about whatever meaning the listener finds in it. For me, it’s about doing laundry (appreciating mundane tasks), honouring old traditions, striving to be a more ecological person, the realities of climate change on everyday life. . . ”

All For Nada‘s long anticipated follow-up Been A Long Year Vol. 1 EP was released last month. The EP’s last single, the bittersweet sigh “Hollywood” is built around a haunting arrangement featuring strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling keys and gently padded drumming paired with the Canadian artist’s achingly tender falsetto expressing the tension of unrealized dreams and aspirations — and a begrudgingly uneasy acceptance of the present. Certainly, if you’re in a creative field you’ve felt this deeply and have acknowledged in your life. But there’s also a deeper — and infinitely more positive — acknowledgment at the core of the song: that the narrator has actually accomplished something and has come a very long way to do so.

“Lyrically, ‘Hollywood’ is a reflective song in which I begrudgingly accept that I have failed to find success yet, with Hollywood symbolizing the fame-in-youth narrative that, because I am no longer young, I will never be able to claim,” the Montréal-based singer/songwriter explains. “But if the verses are where I list all the things I will never do, in the choruses I remind myself of all that nourishes me at home, and how far I have come. I have always considered myself a late bloomer, and Hollywood ends optimistically: me and the great blue sky, and all the opportunity that it conveys. Hollywood is a signpost in my path as a musician, marking the end of my youth, in which I was ravaged by self-doubt, and the beginning of my next chapter, in which the sky’s the limit.”

Directed by Alexander Maxim Seltzer, the accompanying video for “Hollywood” is shot on grainy camcorder cassette tape, and follows Nicols at Niagara Falls imitating seagulls, then at a what appears to be a Montréal-based arcade — by himself. The video ends with Nicol going to a low-budget wax museum, where the celebrities don’t quite look right. The video ends with Nicol pretending to be interviewed by a wax figure Jimmy Fallon, which further emphasizes the feeling of unfulfilled dreams and aspirations.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kiwi Sibling Duo Clementine Valentine Share Lush and Spectral “Time and Tide”

Kiwi-based sibling duo Clementine and Valentine Nixon have had music and performing embedded in their lineage: Traveling musicians and performers go back hundreds of years on their maternal side — and was documented on recordings such as 1968’s The Traveling Stewarts. As children, the Nixon Sisters were taught to sing traditional balladry by their grandmother, the daughter of revered Traveller musician Davie Stewart, who was recorded by Alan Lomax.

Professionally, the sibling duo have made a career our of music that draws from that nomadic family heritage and conjures a series of contrasts: ancient and modern, beauty an brokenness, the ritual and the fleeting and more. Raised itinerantly between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the Kiwi-based sibling duo cut their teeth performing in renegade gallery spaces and rogue music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial section, eventually amassing both national and international attention with their acclaimed experimental noise and futuristic noise pop project Purple Pilgrims.

Their Purple Pilgrim material was frequently self-produced and through a series of labels including beloved Kiwi label Flying Nun Records. The sibling duo’s latest project Clementine Valentine, which sees them writing, recording and performing with a fusion of their birth names. The new project, sees the duo refining their craft into a more fully realized and sophisticated sound.

The Kiwi duo’s Randall Dunn-produced Clementine Valentine full-length debut The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor is slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Flying Nun Records, and reportedly marks a pivotal moment in the sibling duo’s creative evolution. The album sees the pair transposing their keyboard-and-guitar driven demos to cello, pedal steel, 12 string guitar and a a collection of vintage synthesizers. Matt Chamberlain, who has worked with David Bowie, Lana Del Rey and Fiona Apple contributed percussion. The result is material that’s lush, shimmering and softly orchestral while being an accumulation of songcraft that has stretched back centuries.

The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor‘s lush, lead single “Time and Tide” is built around the Kiwi sibling duo’s gorgeous and expressive vocal range paired with soaring hooks and chorus, dramatic percussion, strummed guitar and atmospheric synths. Sonically nodding at Kate Bush, “Time and Tide” aims for the celestial and the timeless, while being one of the more optimistic-leaning songs of their career to date.

“We thought we were only capable of writing sad songs — but found optimism creeping in during the writing of this album,” Clementine and Valentine Nixon explain. “Without ruining the mystery, ‘Time and Tide’ is about the release that comes in too brief moments of relinquishing overthinking, fret and regret. It’s coloured with melancholy, but cheerful by our measure.” 

Directed by Auckland-based photographer and filmmaker Greta van der Star, the accompanying video for “Time and Tide” has a painterly quality while nodding at 80s-era music videos, Romantic poetry and more. “We’re always inspired by [and identify with] outsiders,” the Kiwi sibling duo say. “For this video we were influenced by three in particular: the photography of Francesca Woodman, the cover image of Brett Smiley’s album [Breathlessly Brett], and Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’. Trapped in a tower, looking out over a pastoral scene, waiting for life to begin again (if you squint you’ll see Camelot in the distance). The idea of merging with four walls, or being suffocated by them (as felt in Woodman’s photos) resonated with us, and no doubt countless others, at the time this song was written.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Small Million Shares Slick and Trippy Visual for “Burnout”

Rooted in the collaboration of longtime creative partners Ryan Linder and Malachi Graham, Portland, OR-based indie pop outfit Small Million specializes in pairing deeply affecting sonic production informed by Linder’s background as a filmmaker with smart, lived-in lyrics about intuition and inhibition, losing control and ending up in unexpected places, being willing to fuck up, bodies being joyful, bodies being hurt and more. The end result is work that’s simultaneously intimate yet epic, delicate yet fierce. 

Since 2018’s Young Fools EP, years of experiencing chronic pain have led Small Million’s frontperson Malachi Graham to deep explorations of embodiment that have changed everything from her singing voice to her dance movies to her observations of human frailty. “There’s one side of chronic pain that leads you towards intuition, self-discovery, and listening closely to yourself. But it also means you end up sitting on the side of the room a lot, watching people and paying attention. Also you’re pissed,” Graham explains. 

Linder and Graham have been writing together as a duo but they recently expanded into a quartet, with the addition of Small Skies‘ Ben Tyler (drums) and Lo Pony‘s Kale Chesney (bass, backing vocals. Fittingly, their evolution into a quartet has resulted in the band’s sound and approach expanding to encompass more rock-based instrumentation and energy. 

The Portland-based outfit have been releasing new music throughout the course of the year, including their latest single “Burnout,” which will appear on their forthcoming album Passenger, slated for release through Tender Loving Empire. “Burnout” is a hook-driven bit of pop built around Graham’s ethereal vocal melody, glistening guitar lines, and a driving rhythm section. But underneath the infectiousness of the song is a sort of revenge fantasy about the feminine urge to destroy the male self-serving and flat vision of you, and dance in the rubble and flames. “My mom always told me to beware of being a ‘flattering mirror;’ to watch out for people who adore you because they love how you make them feel about themselves,” Small Million’s Malachi Graham explains.

Created and directed by Emma Josephson, the accompanying video for “Burnout” stars Sammy Rios as a woman struggling to burst out of being reduced to flattened, two-dimensional rendition of a person — while appearing as though she’s losing her own mind.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Finland’s JANELY Shares Cathartic Pop Anthem “I Won’t”

JANELY is an emerging Finnish-born singer/songwriter and pop artist, who grew up in a deeply musical home. Her grandfather was a musician, and she can trace much of the origins of her music career to being inspired by him to seriously pursue a music career back in 2007. Since 2008, the Finnish singer/songwriter and pop artist has taken her massive vocal range and her charismatic stage presence to stages of all sizes and live television appearances in her native Finland.

This year may arguably be the biggest year of her career to date: Earlier this year, she landed a live performance at New York Fashion Week this fall. She also released her first single of the year, “Crown” through Global Unique Music Group. The Finnish pop artist’s latest single “I Won’t” is a cathartically defiant anthem built around a contemporary pop production featuring skittering beats, atmospheric electronics, glistening synth arpeggios and rousingly anthemic choruses. The production is a slick and contemporary vehicle for JANELY’s earnest, lived-in lyrics and her enormous, superstar range.

“I Won’t” is an empowering metaphor for finding courage to never give up on your hopes, dreams and creative ideas, the Finnish-born artist explains in press notes.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: AURUS Shares Breathtakingly Beautiful “Strange Stone”

Bastien Picot is a rising Réunion Island-born singer/songwriter, producer and creative mastermind behind AURUS, a rising electronic music project that specializes in an orchestral-leaning take on electro pop that has drawn comparisons to Nakhane, Woodkid, Peter Gabriel and a list of others. 

With the release of 2019’s “The Abettors,” which featured Sandra Nkaké, Picot exploded into the French scene: The track thematically raised awareness of a system that exploited and took the living for granted. He started off 2020 with sets at  MaMA Festival and Bars en Trans Festival, opening for Vendredi sur Mer at L’Olympia, and being named a “revelation” of Chantier des Francos. 

2020 also saw the release of Picot’s AURUS self-titled debut EP. Building upon that momentum, 2021’s full-length debut, Chimera was conceived, written and recorded between Réunion Island and Paris. The album’s material is an intuitive and tribal journey in which, what may seem irreconcilable meets and merges. Sonically, the songs mesh brooding atmospheric textures, tribal beats, military rhythms, trance, pop ballads and more, while featuring lyrics sung in English and Reunion Island Creole.

I wrote about three of Chimera‘s singles:

  • The brooding and cinematic, Security-era Peter Gabriel-like “Momentum” The yearning, Amnesiac-era Radiohead meets contemporary alt pop-like “AWOL.”

  • “Horus,” a brooding yet mesmerizing and difficult to pigeonhole song built around Picot’s unerring knack for infectious hooks paired with devastatingly earnest lyricism

“Strange Stone” is the first bit of original material from the Reunion Island-born artist since Chimera, and it’s a decided sonic departure from his previously released work. Built around strummed acoustic guitar and atmospheric electronic textures, paired with Picot’s yearning falsetto, “Strange Stone” is a breathtakingly gorgeous song that stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it.

Much like his previously released work, the new single is rooted in deeply personal experience: Feeling as though his heart was slowly calcifying and on the verge of giving up, Picot returned to Reunion Island. The trip was profoundly restorative: He found the strength to awaken his own beating heart. “Strange Stone” is a tribute to “the strange, magical energy that pulsates through both AURUS and his homeland; a journey of self-discovery and inner healing where the strangest stones can awaken the deepest passions.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: LavBbe Shares A Sultry, Genre-Defying Banger

LavBbe is a rising Romanian-born, British-based artist, who can trace her passion for music and dance to her childhood growing up in a performing household: She received her first bellydancing costume as a special present from her grandmother — and she quickly began to show her talent to everyone around her. Her father was a singer, and she grew up surrounded by an eclectic array of music including rock, jazz and soul — with Amy Winehouse and Sade being major inspirations.

When she turned 16, LavBbe relocated from Romania to Newcastle to continue her studies. Inspired by some of the world’s great dancers and performers, she attended classes in contemporary dance, acting and singing for a year.

Upon graduation, she became a flight attendant at Virgin Atlantic. She wound up taking a break from her dancing routine but when the pandemic broke out back in 2020, she started to create dance videos on TikTok, dancing from morning to evening. In a few months, she quickly amassed over one million followers and became a highly sought-after influencer, with a deep love of Afrobeats. Her dance videos, which reveal effervescent dance moves went viral, and she has now amassed over 4.6 million followers on TikTok, and tens of millions of comments.

After the lockdown, she traveled to New York, Los Angeles and Nigeria for work, but her music career began in earnest a few months ago, when multiple Grammy-nominated, Romanian producer Costi Ionita discovered her on TikTok. “Lavbbe is talented, valuable and multilaterally developed, with a a great voice which impresses me”, Ionita says.

LavBbe’s second and latest single, the Ionita-produced, Ionita, LavBbe and Silviu Dimitriu-co-written “Pumping” seamlessly meshes elements of Afrobeats, reggaeton, Balkan, pop and dance music in slick, club friendly production that serves as the perfect vehicle for the Romanian-British artist’s sultry, self-assured delivery. I’m certain of one thing: this artist is a certified global star, and we’ll be hearing more about her in the future.

Directed by Alex Ceaușu, the accompanying video for “Pumping” follows the Romanian-British artist through a variety of brightly colored backdrops while revealing her playful yet self-assured and undeniable sex appeal.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed Inuk Artist Elisapie Shares Hauntingly Gorgeous Rendition of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven”

Acclaimed Montréal-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and activist Elisapie was born and raised in Salluit, a small village in Nunavik, Québec’s northernmost region. In this extremely remote community, accessible only by plane, she was raised by an extended, yet slightly dysfunctional adoptive family. Growing up in Salliut, she lived through the loss of cousins who ended their lives, experienced young love, danced the night away at the village’s community center and witnessed first hand, the effects of colonialism — i.e., poverty, hopelessness, alcoholism, suicide, and more. 

A teenaged Elisapie began performing on stage with her uncles, who were members of Sugluk (also known as Salliut Band), a famous and well-regarded Inuit rock band. She also worked at TNI, the village’s radio station, which broadcast across the region. And while working for the radio station, the teenaged Issac managed to secure an interview with Metallica. 

Much like countless bright and ambitious young people across the world, the Salliut-born artist moved to the big city — in this case, Montréal to study and, ultimately, pursue a career in music. Since then, her work whether within the confines of a band or as as solo artist constantly displays that her unconditional attachment to her native territory, its people, and to her language, Inuktitut is at the core of her work. Spoken for millennia, Inuktitut embodies the harshness of its environment and the wild yet breathtaking beauty of the Inuit territory. Thematically, her work frequently pairs Intuit themes and concerns with modern rock music, mixing tradition with modernity in a deft, seamless fashion. 

She won her first Juno Award as a member of Taima, and since then Issac’s work has received rapturous critical acclaim: 2018’s The Ballad of the Runaway Girl was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, and earned her a number of Association du disque, de l’industrie du spectacle Québeécois (ADISQ) Felix Awards and a Juno Award nod. She followed up with a performance with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal — at the invitation of Grammy Award-winning maestro Yannick Nézet Séguin — at Central Park SummerStage, a NPR Tiny Desk Session and headlining or festival sets both locally and internationally. 

In her native Canada, she is also known as an actor, starring in the TV series Motel Paradis and C.S. Roy’s experimental indie film VFC, which was released earlier this year. She has also graced the cover of a number of magazines including Châtelaine, Elle Québec and a long list of others. And as a devoted activist, she created and produced the first nation-wide broadcast TV show to celebrate National Indigenous People’s Day. 

Slated for a September 15, 2023 release through Bonsound, her fourth solo album Inuktiut features inventive re-imaginings of songs by Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Metallica and more. Each of the acts and artists covered have warmly given their blessing to receive the acclaimed Canadian artist’s unique treatment. Fittingly, each song is imbued with depth and purpose, as the album’s material is an act of cultural re-appropriation that reinvigorates the poetry of these beloved songs by placing them within Inuit traditions. Along with that, all of the album’s songs are linked to a loved one, to her community or is rooted to an intimate story that has shaped Issac as her a person and as an artist, giving the material a deeply personal touch.

Through the album’s 10 songs, the acclaimed Inuk tells her story and offers these songs as a loving gift to her community, making her language and culture resonate well beyond the borders of the Inuit territory. But the album is also a testament to the power and remarkable universality of pop music, a reminder of the universality of human life, and fittingly an ode to the experiences, memories, places and people, who have shaped us.

The album’s first single “Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass),” caught the attention of the legendary Debbie Harry. And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past handful of months, you might remember that I wrote about “Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time),” a gorgeous and fairly faithful Inuktiut adaptation of Cyndi Lauper‘s 1983 Rob Hyman co-written smash hit “Time After Time” that retains the familiar beloved melody of the original paired with a percussive yet atmospheric arrangement and Issac’s gorgeous, achingly tender delivery. 

Much like her previous single, “Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time)” was inspired by a childhood memory of Elisapie’s aunt Alasie and her cousin Susie:
 
“I was able to get through my pre-teen years, thanks to my Aunt Alasie, as my mother had neither the knowledge nor the experience to give me a crash course on puberty, fashion or social relationships,” Isaac recalls. “In addition to entering a new chapter in my life, we were in the midst of the 80’s and modernity was shaking up our traditional methods. My mother’s generation had lived in Igloos, and the cultural changes were too swift. 
 
“Despite her struggles, my aunt ensured I felt accepted and exposed me to new and modern things like TV, clothes, dancing, Kraft Dinner and make-up! 
 
Whenever I went to my aunt’s house, I was in awe of my older girl cousins. They were all so cool and stylish, and they loved pop music and the crazy makeup of the 80s and early 90s.  One of my favorite memories is listening to the radio with them and hearing Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ for the first time. It was like a lightning bolt, and I couldn’t separate the song or the artist from my older cousin Susie. For me, the song was all about her search for beauty, connection, love, and rising above pain.”

Inuktiut‘s third and latest single “Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)” is a hauntingly gorgeous, dream-like re-imagining of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” that retains the song’s familiar melody but featuring an arrangement of traditional drums and flute and acoustic guitar paired with Issac’s equally gorgeous, yearning delivery, some brooding synths and the incorporation of Inuktiut throat singing.

“Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)” finds the acclaimed Canadian artist paying tribute to the Inuit men of Salliut and nodding to the time she interviewed Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in the early 90s:

“When I was 14 years old, I applied for a job at TNI, the first Inuit TV-radio broadcaster, and I was thrilled when I was chosen for the position! Everyone at the station dreamed big, and they put in a request for an interview with Metallica. The band was so loved in Salluit that we had to give it a shot. Metallica accepted only two interviews on their Québec tour, and TNI was chosen. In my boys’ eyes, I was the coolest!
 
As a teenager, I only wanted to hang around the gang of boys in my village. We would all go to my cousin’s house and smoke weed while listening to Metallica. The band’s music allowed us to delve into the darkness of our broken souls and feel good there. Men’s roles in our territory had been challenged by colonization, and it had become confusing what life was supposed to look like for a man. My boys were seeking new roles, and subconsciously, I allowed them to be my bodyguards so they could feel strong. Looking back, I was trying to give them the strength to find their place.
 
“‘Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)’ incorporates throat singing, known as katajjaq in Inuktitut. It felt like katajjaq was so appropriate, says Elisapie. It is Inuit women who throat sing. Inuit women, mothers and grandmothers had to be the nurturing ones during the hard times, as men were struggling emotionally due to colonialism. Through this song, I wanted the feminine strength to balance the men’s challenges.”

Directed by Phillipe Léonard, the accompanying video for “Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)” was shot in Nunavik abroad a canoe, using a camera attached to end of a pole, much like a fishing rod. “The footage oscillates between the emerald seabed bursting with light and the deep blue sky, which makes the sensual silhouettes of the tundra mountains stand out,” explains the director.
 
The acclaimed Canadian artist will be playing an extensive series of tour dates to support the forthcoming album. Sadly, the tour doesn’t currently include any Stateside dates as of yet. But if you’re in Québec, you should catch her.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweden’s The Sweet Serenades Share Hopeful and Anthemic “Akhilia”

Martin Nordvall is a Swedish singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project The Sweet Serenades. And with The Sweet Serenades, the Swedish artist specializes in a sound that’s designed for both small clubs and late night car rides.

Nordvall’s work has been highly praised across the blogosphere, and as a result of his material appearing in TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Teen Wolf and The Fosters, the acclaimed Swedish artist has toured around the world.

His last album 2020’s City Lights featured a brooding sound built around dark synths and programmed beats. But his forthcoming fifth album, the Johannes Berglund-produced Everything Dies reportedly features a much more playful sound. “While writing and recording the new album I lost my father in [sic] a heart attack, I also became a father myself for the first time,” Nordvall says of the album., “The contrast between loss and happiness can be heard in the songs  – in the end it’s a hopeful album filled with energy – life is a cool thing.”

Everything Dies‘ second and latest single “Akhilia” features rumbling toms, insistent four-on-the-floor, a mischievous marimba melody, twinkling synths, and buzzing guitars paired with Nordvall’s penchant for enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses and his weary yet hopeful delivery. At its core, is a song with a simple yet profound and oft-heard message, that frequently needs to be repeated — all things pass in time.

“Rumbling toms, four on the floor, a contagious marimba melody mixed with 80s synths and distorted guitars. Could be the first time The Little Mermaid and New Order has something in common,” Nordvall says of the new single. “This is an ambitious song that wants to be heard. It wants to be a hit. Arena Indie.” 

The accompanying video features a young child in a silver mask dancing in a wooden area. The video captures and emphasizes the mischievousness and the resilience within the song.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dzasko Shares Breezy and Nostalgic “Take a Chance”

Diego Zevallos is Lima-born singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ who splits his time between his hometown and Los Angeles. Zevallos is also the creative mastermind behind the emerging recording project Dzasko. The Peruvian artist’s Dzasko debut EP 2021’s Letters from California was recorded between Los Angeles and Joshua Tree and saw him quickly establishing a retro-futuristic sound.

The Lima-born artist’s sophomore Dzasko EP Auguries of Innocence derives its name from William Blake’s famous poem “Auguries of Innocence,” a piece about corruption and the loss of innocence. Fittingly, the EP’s material sees the Lima-born artist reflecting on corruption and the loss of innocence, inspired and informed by the political turbulence in Lima last year. The EP’s latest single “Take A Chance” sees Zevallos crating an catchy and breezy blend of psych pop, indie rock and electro pop reminiscent of Tame Impala — but dreamier and full of aching nostalgia for a place and time that can’t ever be had again.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Diamond Day Shares Lush and Bittersweet “Noisemaker”

Montréal-based duo Diamond Day features two highly acclaimed musicians in their own right:

  • Vermont-born Béatrix Méthé was raised with the traditional music of rural Québec. Her family moved to Canada when she was baby, and she grew up acquiring Lanaudiere’s regional repertoire from her father, the founder of legendary folk-trad group Le Rêve du Diable. Her mother, a singer-songwriter and fine arts graduate versed in early digital media, inspired Méthé’s own aesthetic. After spending some time venturing deeper into visual art, Béthé moved to Montréal to study filmmaking, but wound up discovering indie and psychedelic folk music along the way. She cut her studies short in 2015 to pursue music full-time, fronting acclaimed outfit Rosier. Rosier’s unique fusion of Québécois folk and indie rock garnered multiple nominations and awards — and lead them to tour across 15 countries with stops at SXSW, NPR’s Mountain Stage and the BBC.

  • Western Canada-born Quinn Bachand grew up in a home where art was omnipresent and the family’s 40-year-old record collection was on an omnipresent loop. As the son of a luthier, Bachand began playing guitars handmade by his father and was touring internationally by the time he turned 12. After graduating from Berklee College of Music back in 2019 on a presidential scholarship, the Western Canadian-born multi-instrumentalist spent time in the Grammy-nominated band Kittel & Co. His involvement in the US folk scene prompted collaborations with a number of like-minded artists, including Chris Thile. In 2019, Bachand began collaborating with Méthé and Rosier, quickly establishing himself as an influential, genre-bending producer.

That initial successful collaboration together led to the duo’s forthcoming full-length debut as Diamond Day, Connect the Dots. Connect the Dots is slated for a Fall 2023 release and reportedly sees the Montréal-based duo crafting a sound that weaves elements of folk, indie rock, electronica, shoegaze and dream pop into a unique take on alt-pop.

Connect the Dots‘ first single, “Noisemaker” is built around tape-saturated organ echo, fluttering synths, blown out beats, a sinuous bass line and lush, painterly shoegazer textured guitars paired with Méthé’s gorgeous vocal. Sonically, the song reminds me a bit of a mix of Beach House and Souvlaki-era Slowdive with a subtle amount of glitchiness.

Directed by Natan B. Foisy, the accompanying video captures the angst, frustration and boredom of rural Québéc with an uncanny, lived-in specificity. “Our friend Natan B. Foisy directed the music video. He grew up in Joliette, Québec, close to me,” Diamond Day’s Béatrix Méthé says. “When we were teenagers, the ‘cool’ thing to do in the winter was ‘drifting’ – ‘faire de la drift’ we call it in French. Natan heard those floating synths and imagined cars drifting in a high school parking lot, at least the slightly trashy Québec version. . . ” Diamond Day’s Quinn Bachand adds “It’s actually illegal, so they had to be pretty low profile when filming it all.” “The video is based around that type of rural angst. And so is the song, in some ways,” Méthé adds. “It’s about detecting parts and patterns in yourself that are ‘not fine.'”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Portland’s Small Million Shares Anthemic Ballad “FOMO”

Rooted in the collaboration of longtime creative partners Ryan Linder and Malachi Graham, Portland, OR-based indie pop outfit Small Million specializes in pairing deeply affecting sonic production informed by Linder’s background as a filmmaker with smart, lived-in lyrics about intuition and inhibition, losing control and ending up in unexpected places, being willing to fuck up, bodies being joyful, bodies being hurt and more. The end result is work that’s simultaneously intimate yet epic, delicate yet fierce. 

Since 2018’s Young Fools EP, several years of experiencing chronic pain have led Small Million’s frontperson Malachi Graham to deep explorations of embodiment that have changed everything from her singing voice to her dance movies to her observations of human frailty. “There’s one side of chronic pain that leads you towards intuition, self-discovery, and listening closely to yourself. But it also means you end up sitting on the side of the room a lot, watching people and paying attention. Also you’re pissed,” Graham explains. 

Linder and Graham have been writing together as a duo but they recently expanded into a quartet, with the addition of Small Skies‘ Ben Tyler (drums) and Lo Pony‘s Kale Chesney (bass, backing vocals). Fittingly, their evolution into a quartet has resulted in the band’s sound and approach expanding to encompass more rock-based instrumentation and energy. 

Small Million have been releasing material throughout the course of the year, including “Burnout,” a hook-driven bit of pop built around Graham’s ethereal melody, glistening guitar lines and a driving rhythm section. But underneath the infectiousness of the song is a sort of revenge fantasy about the feminine urge to destroy the male self-serving and flat vision of you, and dance in the rubble and flames. “My mom always told me to beware of being a ‘flattering mirror;’ to watch out for people who adore you because they love how you make them feel about themselves,” Small Million’s Malachi Graham explains.

“FOMO,” the Portland-based outfit’s latest single is big, heart-worn-on-sleeve ballad built around Graham’s yearning delivery, glistening synths, reverb-soaked drums paired with enormous, shout along worthy hooks. At its core, “FOMO” is an earnest and swooning celebration of devotion — both platonic and romantic.

“This video is a love letter to the fast food napkins in your glove box, to the slice of pie behind hazy glass. It’s a reminder to leave cash tips, and make your friends run errands with you,” Kale Chesney, the accompanying video’s director says of the video. “Life is hard enough as it is, don’t forget to find beauty in the mundane. If I had to summarize Ryan and Malachi’s friendship from the back seat It would boil down to this simple gesture: during a drive, of any length of time, the two of them will constantly show each other songs they love and are inspired by. But every single time they press play, the end up turning the volume down 15 seconds into it because one of them is so genuinely interested to hear what the other is saying. I’ve never seen anything so sweet and and gently chaotic.”

Small Million’s forthcoming album Passenger will be released through Tender Loving Empire. Be on the lookout for it, y’all.