Category: New Single

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Florida’s Jbryan Shares Meditative “Roads Not Taken”

Jbryan is a Midwest-born, Florida-based self-taught singer/songwriter and musician, whose creative career started fairly humbly: He picked up the drums and guitar and started writing songs during the COVID-19 pandemic. He then started producing songs — mainly because he really enjoyed it.

Now, pursuing music as a career, the Florida-based singer/songwriter and musician describes his work as mixing creative yet relatable lyrics with fun, laid-back melodies meant to connect with a wide range of listeners.

Released earlier this year, “Roads Not Taken,” is a mid-tempo, reflective song that showcases a songwriter, who can pair earnest, lived-in lyricism with a remarkable ability to craft a catchy hook. While seemingly channeling SANDS‘ “When It Stars to Rain” and JOVM mainstays Ten Fé, “Roads Not Taken,” as the Florida-based artist explains is about the paths in life we didn’t take and the memories that stay with us. And as a result, the song is rooted in mix of regret, wonder and acceptance of where you are right now — and how those experiences shape you.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Juana Molina Shares Atmospheric “Siestas ahí”

Acclaimed Argentine-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician and JOVM mainstay Juana Molina‘s highly-anticipated and long-awaited eighth album, DOGA is also her first album of new material in eight years. The album took six years to complete.

As the Argentine-born and-based JOVM mainstay suggests, DOGA‘s creative process was much like preparing a meal for six but with enough ingredients to feed an army. The overwhelming amount of recordings had Molina paralyzed to the point that at one moment, she thought there was no way to make an album.

“Whenever I finish making an album there’s an inertia that makes me keep recording,” the Argentine-born and-based JOVM mainstay says. But the origin of DOGA‘s material can be traced back to 2019, during the preparation for a series of concerts called “Improviset,” which Molina performed with keyboardist Odin Schwartz.

“The idea was to play as if I were at home, that is, to improvise,” Molina says. “It was a duo mostly of analog synthesizers and sequencers. We recorded everything—so many hours—because there was no way to reproduce what we did; both rehearsals and shows were unique. Some of those ideas were later picked up again.”

As the world was about to ground to a halt as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the acclaimed JOVM mainstay was finishing a set at March 2020’s NRMAL Festival in Mexico City. That festival set wound up comprising her first ever live album, ANRMAL, a live set that featured material from 2013’s Wed 21, 2017’s Halo and 2019’s Forfun EP.

The end of the pandemic saw several new developments in Molina’s career: Along with her producer and current manager Mario Agustín de Jesús González, a.k.a. Marito, founded her own label, Sonamos, which released a handful of anniversary reissues such as 1971’s Musicasión 4 ½, a foundation Uruguayan candombe-beat album and Molina’s 2000 effort, Segundo, a key record in her own growing discography. She returned to performing in several different iterations, including solo sets, “Improviset,” which Ordin Schwartz or a duo with drummer Diego López de Arcuate across the States, Europe and Asia.

She also several contractual ties with the various record companies that had previously released her work in different regions across the globe. In doing so, Molina finally became her own artist — and on her own terms.

Simultaneously, she was busy writing new material and in spring 2022, the JOVM mainstay booked ten days at Córdoba, Argentina‘s Sonorámrica Studios. “We brought a preselection of the Improviset recordings, and there the ideas for new songs appeared more clearly,” she says.

Building upon the momentum of the Córdoba momentum, her home studio in the Buenos Aires suburbs became the home for long, sprawling recording sessions. By mid last year, five songs were sketched out. And there were a trove of recordings for Molina and her collaborator to dive into and try to work into an album. “After Sonorámica I spent two more years composing; I felt I had nothing,” Molina says. “Until one day Marito started organizing what I had and we saw we’d reached 30 hours of ideas. That sparked enthusiasm but at the same time it paralyzed me having to decide which direction to take, because there were very dissimilar things. We even fantasized about making a triple album, one of them instrumental.”

Early last year, Marito proposed the idea of working with an external producer, someone with fresh ears for the new material to help the acclaimed Argentine finish the album. Around that time, Emilio Haro, best known for his work on Carolo’s 2023 full-length debut was enlisted to produce the album. And as it turned out, Haro’s influence was decisive: “He got very excited from the start, and I could say he got more out of me than anyone before,” Molina recalls. “I would record a guitar and he’d tell me to record more—different sounds, different arrangements, different ideas. Then he would take the recordings and program things on his own; many of those elements ended up on the record. I like his overall sense of the songs, the aesthetic of the mixes. I’m more of a straightforward person; I don’t usually use post-recording effects, and I thought Emilio had great command for creating spaces around things.”

Slated for a November 5, 2025 release through Molina’s Sonamos Records, DOGA reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay concentrating all the qualities that have long defined her work while going a step further in her constant pursuit for the singular. The album amy arguably be among the most genuinely original and unlike anything else of her entire career. Sonically, the album’ material features unexpected melodies, ethereal, organic songs, minimalist and subtle gestures, austere seemingly static harmonies, lyrics as concentric layers while anchored around repetition.

DOGA‘s first single “Siestas ahí,” features Molina’s processed and distorted vocals ethereally floating earound a looping guitar figure and glitchy electronics. Simultaneously intimate and cinematic, “Siestas ahí,” showcases `the acclaimed JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting material that’s unflinchingly difficult to pigeonhole yet remarkably accessible.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Glimmer Returns with Bruising Yet Anthemic “Been Down”

Over the past couple of years New York-based grungegaze outfit and JOVM mainstays Glimmer — Jeff Moore (vocals, guitar), Jaye Moore (drums), Johnny Nicholls (guitar) and Kevin Dobbins (bass) — have released a handful of well-received singles have seen the quartet firmly establishing a sound that mixes elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop in a way that’s both nostalgia inducing and yet contemporary.

Building upon a growing profile, the band’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Get Weak is slated for an October 3, 2025 vinyl release through Philadelphia-based label, Abandon Everything. Recorded with Jeff Berner at Brooklyn-based Studio G and mastered by Will Yip, Get Weak reportedly sees the band pairing their more pop-leaning singles with heavy-hitting alt-rock anthems and softer, more ethereal material

The album’s latest and last pre-release single “Been Down” features big, crunchy, Dinosaur Jr.-like riffs with even bigger, remarkably catchy The Colour and The Shape-era Foo Fighters-like hooks and forcefully propulsive drumming serving as a lush yet remarkably catchy bed for Jeff Moore’s dreamily plaintive delivery. “Been Down” showcases the band’s unerring knack for pairing big hooks and arena rock-like bombast with earnest, nostalgia-including lyricism. And while clearly drawing from 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock, the new single continues a run of material that manages to sound incredibly contemporary.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Charles Mingus’ Tribute to Duke Ellington at Monterey Jazz Festival 1964

Charles Mingus was a towering giant of American music, known for his powerhouse sound and authoritative technique, irascible personality and most importantly, his original compositions, which featured a blend of jazz, European classic music, bebop, avant-garde, blues, gospel and more, a sound that he famously dubbed “Mingus Music.”

The legendary bassist and composer’s Sunday afternoon set at the seventh annual Monterey Jazz Festival in 1964 was met with breathless praise from the likes of the New York Herald, where legendary critic and Monterey Jazz Festival co-founder Ralph J. Gleason wrote, “Mingus erased the memory of any bass player in jazz” while the San Francisco Chronicle opened its review, “Monterey beyond to Charles Mingus this year. All the way.” Considering that year’s festival also featured sets from Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis that wasn’t an easy feat, y’all.

Initially released on Mingus’ own short-lived mail order Jazz Workshop label and out of print for more than 40 years, Mingus at Monterey captures the legend at the height of his creativity and musical prowess. Perhaps the most consistently requested reissue by Mingus fans across the world, Mingus at Monterey proved to be a sensation upon its sold-out limited edition run for Record Store Day 2025 earlier this year, ranking as Redeye Distribution’s top-selling Record Store Day release while reaching the Top 20 on Billboard‘s Traditional Jazz Albums and Jazz Albums charts, #82 on the overall Top Catalog Albums chart and #102 on the Independent Albums Chart.

Candid Records, in conjunction with Mingus’ Jazz Workshop, Inc. will celebrate the legend’s genius with the long-overdue and highly-anticipated reissue of Mingus at Monterey, which is slated for an October 10, 2025 release on CD, 2 LP vinyl and for the first time ever on all DSPs and streaming services.

The live album has been remastered by five-time Grammy Award-winning engineer Micheal Graves with vinyl mastering by renowned engineer Jeff Powell. The two LP vinyl set includes the album’s original gatefold jacket artwork, meticulously restored and reproduced.

The forthcoming wide release of Mingus at Monterey is heralded by a hard swinging, hard-charging rendition of the Billy Strayhorn-penned, Duke Ellington-performed jazz standard “Take the A Train,” that features some incredible solos from Charles McPherson (alto sax), Jaki Byard (piano), Lonnie Hilyer (trumpet), John Handy (tenor sax) and Dannie Richmond (drums) that’s performed as a medley dedicated to the legend’s musical hero, the equally legendary Duke Ellington.

Ellington was Mingus’ lodestar, the early influence, who showed the bassist and composer how music could simultaneously hold majesty, complexity and popular appeal. Mingus’ take on the classic, standard tune is deeply loving but in no means, straightforward. It seems to swing harder than the original, evoking the A train’s length run from 207th Street in Inwood to its final stop at Mott Avenue in Rockaway Beach — from its assorted characters and neighborhoods it passes through, to the pace of the train as it races between 125th Street and 59th Street. And while retaining the familiar melody, Mingus’ tribute to his hero is roomy enough to allow each member of the band to solo in a way that highlights their talents and sensibilities.

As Mingus said of the album at the time, “It’s taken me a long time to get to where I want musically. I just wish that I could give you that picture, that moment at Monterey along with this music. This is the sound that people heard at Monterey and the life of the music is there. That’s why I bring this record to the people. I give you the Monterey music as a token of love, as a memory.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Womack Sisters Share Soulful Ballad “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)”

Los Angeles-based soul and R&B trio The Womack Sisters — BG, Zeimani and Kucha — are proudly carrying on their family’s legendary musical legacy. The trio’s Daptone Records debut, “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)” is an old-school soul-styled ballad featuring a slow-burning Motown Records-meets-Staxx Records-like groove serving as a lush bed for Kucha and Zeimani’s plaintive vocals and BG’s soulful lead to effortlessly harmonize throughout the song.

At its core, the song tells a tale of someone coming to terms with the pain of being in love with Mr. Wrong when they know they deserve Mr. Right — and in order to get to Mr. Right, they’ll have to make an uneasy, life altering decision.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Automatic Shares Dreamy “Lazy”

Formed almost a decade ago, Los Angeles-based post punk outfit Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon Gaines (bass, vocals) — have released two albums: 

  • Their full-length debut, 2019’s Signals saw the trio quickly establishing their sound, which paired motorik grooves with icy atmospheres. 

  • Their sophomore effort, 2022’s Excess saw the band sonically riding an imaginary edge where the 70s underground met 80s corporate culture. 

After they finished touring to support their sophomore album, each member of the trio pursued their own interests: Glaudini honed her skills as a producer; Saxon Gaines enrolled in botany classes; and Dompé got married, moved out to the country and began caring for horses. 

With two albums under their collective belts, the trio wanted to do something different for their third album. Slated for a September 26, 2025 release through Stones Throw Records. Is It Now? sees the trio collaborating with producer Loren Humphrey to build upon the sound of their previous releases — minimalist yet danceable songs, which they describe as “deviant pop.”  Throughout the album’s recording process, Humphrey encouraged the band to play live and loose through long takes that allowed the rhythm section to breathe. The album’s material thematically demands the listener look at the world’s oppressive structures with a fresh urgency.

Is It Now? will feature album title track, “Is It Now?” and “Mercury,” which I’ve written about over the past couple of months.

The album’s third and latest single “Lazy” sees the band seamlessly blending elements of New Wave, post-punk and spaced-out trip-hop that continues to showcase the trio’s unerring knack for tight, focused grooves. Thematically, “Lazy” is a sort of ambivalent love song, delivered with a dark sense of humor.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Swedish Instrumental Outfit Automatism Shares Languorous Cover of Kraftwerk’s “Neon Lights”

Swedish instrumental psych rock outfit Automatism — Hans Hjelm (guitar), Gustav Nygren (guitar), Mikael Tuominen (bass) and Jonas Yrlid (drums) — will be releasing their long-awaited fourth album Sörmland Friday through German-based label Tonzonen Records.

Five years have passed since the release of 2020’s Immersion. The hiatus wasn’t completely voluntary, so when the band reconvened in September 2023 to begin the creative process for their fourth album, it felt like a special occasion for the band — much like a family reunion. Recorded in a former chapel in the Swedish rural county of Sörmland, the building’s high ceilings and open atmosphere helped set the overall tone of the soon-to-be-released album. As they were recording, they could see the verdant landscape from the building’s tall windows, which inspired them to name the album after the province.

Sörmland‘s latest single “Neon Lights” is an instrumental take on Kraftwerk‘s “Neon Lights.” Clocking in a roughly the same time as the original, which appeared on 1978’s The Man-Machine, the Automatism rendition slows both the tempo and melody down, giving the song a languorous and dreamy, psilocybin-fueled buzz.

“Another one of those occasions when the best stuff comes out when you stop trying,” the band’s Mikael Tuominen says. “We had been working on a version of ‘Neon Lights’ for a while, even played it live, that was much closer to the original in feel and tempo. We did a couple of recordings of that version and they were okay. Then, without deciding anything, we just fell into playing the theme really slowly and softly, and again, luckily enough I hit the red button. First it was almost as if we didn’t take it seriously, but soon we entered the zone, and listening to the versions back to back there was no question of which one to choose.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Swimming Pool Shares Hazy “Wednesday Kinda Weekend”

Split between The Hague and Zürich, Swimming Pool — Klyl Shifroni and Seraina Fässler — can trace their origins back to when the duo met while studying at the Institute of Sonology, where they bonded over a shared passion for songwriting, digital synthesis and code-based composition. The project’s name is derived from a photography series featuring hurricane-damaged backyard pools, which they saw a s a metaphor for the overlooked, the fractured, and the quiet beauty of ruin.

Their collaboration was born from late-night DJ sets in abandoned garages. Those sets saw their sound expanding from instinctive improvisation intoned a layered process sharped by bowed bass textures, processed vocals and subtle sampling techniques. Through a bend of ambient minimalism, lo-fi and punk, the pair blend experimental electronics and emotionally direct songwriting to not only evoke a world that is both carefully constructed and deeply vulnerable, but also allows them to balance intimacy with abstraction and warmth with fracture.

The duo’s recently released EP Line Cuts is a slow-burning exploration of the tension between clarity and distortion, closeness and distance. Rather than delivering catharsis, the EP’s material lingers in the uneasy spaces between feelings. focusing on longing, memory, repetition and collapse.

Line Cuts EP‘s latest single “Wednesday Kinda Weekend” is a slow-burning and hazy track that features glistening, reverb-soaked shoegazer-like textures, thumping beats, a supple bass line, thunderous drum cracks serving as a lush and vibey bed for reverb and distortion-drenched vocals. While seemingly channeling Beach House, the song evokes disorientation — a sense of ethereally floating without recognition or acknowledgement of space or time.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: TONNUP Shares Woozy and Euphoric “Dream of You”

Craig Ferguson is an electronic music producer and artist, best known as TONNUP. Over the past year, Ferguson has released a growing collection of club bangers. His latest single “Dream of You” is a club banger featuring a punchy bass line, tweeter and woofer rattling beats and glistening synths serving as a lush bed for a soulful and yearning vocal sample.

Arguably, one of the more summery, almost Ibiza-like tunes of Ferguson’s growing catalog, “Dream of You” is a fun song with a euphoric hook that manages to capture the woozy joy of thinking about a crush — and realizing that it’s mutual.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Tony Shamanski Shares a Slickly Produced and Soulful Banger

Tony Shamanski shares a slickly produced and soulful banger.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Windsor, ON’s Talking Violet Shares “120 Minutes”-era MTV like “In Your Mind”

Windsor, ON-based quartet Talking Violet — Jillian Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jayden Turnbull (guitar, vocals), Jeremie Brosseau (drums) and Dylan Iannicello (bass) — have quickly developed and established a sound that sees the Canadian outfit seamlessly blending elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop into what they’ve dubbed “dreamo.” Thematically, their work touches upon how we wrestle with the grief of personal change — especially in personal experiences.

Talking Violet’s latest single, the Justin Meli-produced, Will Yip-mastered “In Your Mind” is a breezy, 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem anchored around swirling shoegazer-like guitars, thunderous drumming and enormous hooks and choruses serving as a lush bed for Goyeau’s yearning delivery. Seemingly channeling The Sundays and Tallies, “In Your Mind” manages to capture a very specific sense of helplessness of loving someone through pain and uncertainty and not knowing what to do — or if you can do anything.

“I’ve had to learn over time that no matter how much you want to help people, so often it’s really out of your hands,” Talking Violet’s Goyeau says. “They have to be the ones to figure things out, but you can do what you can from a supporting line.” Interestingly, the new single continues upon the emotional thread of their recently released sophomore album Everything At Once, continuing to draw from the grief and complications of interpersonal change ,. “These tracks draw on a lot of grief of change, most specifically, the grief of relationship changes in our lives,” Goyeau explains. “I was going through changes that I now see as necessary but were incredibly painful at the time. It made me realize how much I had depended on my relationships with others for my identity. I had to slowly relearn who I was—and spent the next few years healing my people-pleasing baseline. It’s still something I work on every day.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dylan Shirley Shares a Gritty, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Dylan Shirley is an emerging singer/songwriter and musician, who over the past year has quickly established a sound and approach rooted in genre defying, restless experimentation. Shirley recently released his full-length debut, A Guy Named Dylan.

Clocking in at a little over 90- seconds, the 35-song effort’s latest single “Jan/12/2025 Silly Games” is a bruising and gritty mosh pit friendly ripper that seemingly channels Pantera and Helmet.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

DJ Rukhlove is a mysterious and emerging Spanish electronic music artist and producer, who has been busily and prolifically releasing material over the course of the past year or so. HIs latest single “Zara To Astra,” is a slickly produced, deep house banger that seemingly channels JOVM mainstay LutchamaK and Kraftwerk — in particular, Radioactivity-era and Tour de France-era Kraftwerk.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Friendship Commanders Share Two More Fierce, Earnest Anthems

Nashville-based duo and JOVM mainstays Friendship Commanders — Buick Audra (vocals, guitar) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) — will be releasing their fourth album BEAR on October 10 through their new label home Magnetic Eye Records. 

Co-produced by the duo and their longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou, who also tracked the instrumental performances and mixed the material, BEAR’s songs are unified in a theme that runs throughout in various ways: the ever-elusive idea of belonging, where it occurs and where it absolutely doesn’t. 

Written around the realization that she had essentially been kicked out of womanhood, Friendship Commanders’ Buick Audra wrote BEAR‘s material as a way to document her awarenesses while cataloging other areas of human connection: art, outsider culture, and dark rock venues — all places where empathy and creativity grow wild. She and her bandmate Jerry Roe arranged and performed the album specifically to have two sides to it musically: heavy and light. Salt and sugar. Fire and air. Lost and found. 

Last month, the JOVM mainstays excitedly shared two singles from the forthcoming album: “MELT,” a breakneck yet bold, heart-worn-on sleeve anthem that expresses the sense of betrayal, confusion and heartbreak in a sort of et tu Brute? moment. “KEEPING SCORE,” a defiant war cry of an adult, who has learned to parent and protect her childhood self — and an adult who is willing and able to defend young girls, who remind her of her younger self from the insults and ill-treatment she received when she was their age.

Building upon the momentum of the forthcoming album’s first two singles, the Nashville-based JOVM mainstays have shared two more singles: “X,” continues a remarkable run of bruising yet proudly heart worn on sleeve anthems, rooted in lived-in personal experiences. In the case of “X,” the song is built and informed by the bitter ache of unexpected and tragically unfair loss of a dear one, way too soon.

Written a few weeks after the sudden death of the band’s longtime friend and collaborator Steve Albini, Buick Audra says, ” I was grieving, but I was also watching a generation grieve in ways I’d observed my whole life—stoically, strongly, sentimentally, and somewhat individually. This song is a loving send-up to that lost generation. We wanted the track and visuals to honor some of the artists who raised us creatively, including Steve. The camera I’m holding in the second verse was his. Very moving to have and include it here. He was a young Boomer, but the absolute King of Gen X. Missed and loved.”

“MIDHEAVEN” is arguably one of the more widescreen songs of their growing catalog, a song loose enough that it lets the forceful and dexterous instrumentation and Audra’s powerhouse vocals breath while continuing to showcase the duo’s unerring knack for crafting arena rock hooks and choruses. “MIDHEAVEN goes wider; it gets into this idea of being born under a certain set of stars, and whether or not that has anything to do with who we are. As a person who feels like a lifelong misfit with a nature I can’t seem to change, I’m curious about where that starts. Is it written from the start? I’m willing to believe anything at this point. Some days, it’s tempting to blame it all on the sky.”

“I wanted the video for ‘X’ to have the vibe and look of those by our favorite bands from the Gen X/Grunge era while still being its own thing, so it’s lit, shot and performed in a way that honors that spirit without aping anything too closely (hopefully)! Everyone wanted to appear tough and cool while also not seeming to take what they were doing too seriously.” Friendship Commanders’ Jerry Roe says of the video for “X.” “There’s such a particular mood of the era that no one has captured since. It was the best time for the medium of music videos honestly, and it was a lot of fun to try and channel it. I find it moving to watch in a way that surprises me.”

“‘MIDHEAVEN’ stands out in our discography for being so instrumentally driven. The vocals and melody are just as integral a part of the song as any song in our repertoire, but large portions of this track are just the two of us ripping at each other and it’s an absolute blast to listen to and play.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: New Jersey’s Nuse Shares a Gritty, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Formed back in the ’90s, Hillsborough, NJ-based metal outfit NUSE — Mike LaMastro (vocals, guitar), Eric Mangual (bass), Bob Mangual (drums) and Mike Wilday (guitar) — exploded into the regional scene with the release of a handful of early EPs before, their full-length debut, 2022’s Hung Well, which was re-released in 2005 through No Joke Records.

Their sophomore album, 2008’s Forever Starts Today featured the underground smash “Beat to Death.” Building upon a growing profile, their third album, 2012’s All American Beat Down, which featured “Breath & Fluid,” “War Face,” and “Free Tattoos,” broke through nationally, charting in several key markets, including Kansas City (#5), NYC (#8), Philadelphia (#7) and Hawaii (#5) while receiving streams globally across Pandora, Spotify, iTunes and others.

2018’s The Pain Collection featured “Top Hat Man,” which broke into the Top 10 in NYC and Philadelphia while arguably being their most critically applauded album of their career to date. In 2020, the band, which had long been a trio added Ixion Lux‘ s and Spin Psykill‘s Mike Wilday, Jr., whose rich harmonies and intense leads helped the band’s sound evolve.

Nuse released the highly anticipated Evolution Vol 2 EP last month. The EP’s lead single “Malibu,” is a gritty mosh pit friendly friendly ripper that sounds as though it would fit in perfectly with the RidingEasy Records roster — but with a lovingly familiar, East Coast aggression. Play extremely loud, and open up that pit, folks!