Category: New Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Living Hour Shares Fuzzy and Simmering “Wheel”

Acclaimed Winnipeg-based indie quintet Living Hour — Sam Sarty (vocals, multi-instrumentalist), Gil Carroll (guitar), Adam Soloway (guitar, vocals), Brett Ticzon (bass, keys) and Issac Tate (drums) — will be releasing their Melina Duterte, a.k.a. Jay Som-produced fourth album Internal Drone Infinity through Keeled Scales and Paper Bag Records on October 17, 2025. Initially known for their lush fusion of dream pop and shoegaze, the Canadian quintet have continually evolved throughout their history, gradually merging folk-inflected slowcore, fuzzy indie pop and hazy noise rock into a sound that’s expansive and emotionally piercing.

Internal Drone Infinity was recorded during the stark, isolating cold of a Manitoba/Winnipeg November. Duterte flew in the day after performing on Saturday Night Live with Boygenius, and the energy of that whirlwind transition seeped into record’s intimate yet vast emotional core.

Drawing from Yo La Tengo, Magnolia Electric Co., The Weakerthans, Feeble Little Horse, Yuck and DIIV, Internal Drone Infinity sees Living Hour reportedly crafting a striking sonic atmosphere, full of icy, melodic vocals, grainy textures, twangy warmth, screeching distortion and immersive percussion. Thematically, the album explores the cyclical process of observation, documentation and projection. While being a raw, commanding expansion of their long-held dreamy sound, the album’s material also gives voice to the quiet strength and simmering rage of the overlooked.

Before I forget, drums on two album tracks, “Wheel” and “Texting” were recorded by The Weakerthans’ Jason Tait at his Winnipeg home studio.

The forthcoming album’s first single “Wheel” is angsty and fuzzy, 120 Minutes MTV-era alternative rock-like track, which features arguably some of the biggest and catchiest hooks and choruses they’ve written or recorded paired with the band’s unerring knack for breezy melodies. But just underneath the surface, the song is a tale of simmering and uneasy rage about being taken advantage of — and unnecessarily being put in danger.

“The story of ‘Wheel’ begins with buying a car off Facebook Marketplace in BC,” the band’s Sam Sarty explains. “Turns out the car was junk, but I had no choice but to drive it home to Winnipeg. It took 3 days. I was driving through the mountains, and the headlights were so dim, and for a stretch there was nowhere to turn off. It felt like a weird, horrific video game–navigating the road and dodging danger and trying not to die. I also felt so deeply betrayed by all the men involved in the whole thing.  

“These men feel like a series of characters now. I felt so powerless in this weird system that prioritizes men and their opinions. In this song, I was able to imagine an alternate reality where I’m a vengeful spectator in these men’s lives. What if I had died on the road, and what if I came back and plagued them all with my powerful essence that they so easily dismissed, contorted and took advantage of in order to sell me a fucked up car?”

“I fantasized about how it would feel to ‘fall off the wheel’ and lean into this witchy, monstered realm of existence where men are de-centered. One where I would have no hesitation to put those men in the same danger they put me in.”

Filmed by Leigh Lugosi, the accompanying video for “Wheel” was shot on VHS and features the band performing the song in the studio, doing band hang out/photo shoot kind of stuff, as well as goofing off. And fittingly, it feels like it could have aired on 120 Minutes back in the day.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: TTSSFU Shares Yearning and Propulsive “Call U Back”

Tasmin Nicole Stephens is a Wigan, UK-born, Manchester, UK-based producer, singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the emerging and rising DIY shoegaze solo recording project TTSSFU (pronounced phonetically as T-T-S-S-F-U). With her TTSSFU debut EP, last year’s Me, Jed and Andy, Stephens quickly established an enormous and atmospheric sound, which some said deftly combined the dreamy and eerie qualities of The Cure with the breakneck BPMs of bands like The Strokes and The Drums.

Me, Jed and Andy EP featured “I Hope You Die,” which amassed well over, one-million streams on YouTube and “Studio 54.” Adding to a growing profile across the UK and elsewhere, the rising Wigan-born, Manchester-based artist began making the rounds of the British festival circuit, playing sets at Green Man, Bristol Sounds and Manchester Psych Fest among others. She also landed opening slots for the legendary Kim Deal, acclaimed JOVM mainstay Soccer Mommy, Mannequin Pussy and  English Teacher.

The rising British artist closed out last year by signing with Partisan Records, who will release her highly-anticipated sophomore EP, the seven-song Blown on August 29, 2025. Having gone into the EP intending to “write some pop songs and something happy,” what came out was much more aligned with her songwriting approach. The result is a quasi-real-time document of Stephens’ life in all of its messy and uneasy contradictions. pierced together by her diverse musicality and a souped-up sonic palette.

Blown EP‘s first single, the Chris Ryan co-produced “Call U Back” opens with an eerie, squealing siren call-like burst of feedback that wails through the song before it quickly turns into a propulsive and broodingly atmospheric bed for Stephens’ yearning delivery. The new single continues to showcase an artist with an unerring knack for pairing remarkably catchy hooks with unvarnished, deeply lived-in lyricism and songwriting.

“‘Call U Back’ is a song about when you really like someone and you chase them around to try and make it work, but end up just making a fool of yourself by holding onto the slightest chance of it working,” Stephens explains. “When you listen to it, imagine you’re drunk on a night out at the point that things slowly start to just feel awful…”

Directed by Lewis Vorn, edited Desperate Pervert Graphics’ Shea McChrystal, the accompanying lyric video for “Call U Back” features the rising British artist an old-fashioned landline, shot in grainy and glitchy VHS-styled tape, desperately attempting to reach al love interest, who may not all that interesting. And throughout the video, we see her start to lose her mind — perhaps from the fact that she has wasted her time on someone who’s not worth it.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Friendship Commanders Share Two 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 band’s members and 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.

The JOVM mainstays have excitedly shared two album tracks from the forthcoming album: “MELT,” is a breakneck, yet bold, heart-worn-on-sleeve anthem that showcases the duo’s unerring knack for paring arena rock-like bombast, complete with enormous riffs and thunderous drumming, with earnest, deeply lived-in lyricism and songwriting. “MELT” features what may arguably be among the most syrupy sweet melodies they’ve recorded of their growing catalog while expressing a sense of betrayal, confusion and heartache, a sort of et tu Brute? moment for the song’s narrator.

Directed by the band’s Jerry Roe with cinematography by Roe and Jarad Clement, the accompanying video for “MELT” was shot at Nashville’s DRKMTTR, where the band has built their own community and features familiar faces and friends from their music scene. It captures the sweaty joy of going to a show and bonding with both new and old friends over your love of a band; of that shared sense of a band or a musician singing songs that seem to speak about you and your life, the things you’ve felt and the things you’ve seen.

“KEEPING SCORE,” will further cement the JOVM mainstays heart-worn-on-sleeve ethos but while being a breakneck and defiant, war cry of an adult, who has learned how to parent and protect her childhood self, and is willing and able to defend young girls, who remind her of herself when she was their age from the insults and ill-treatment she received.

The accompanying video for “KEEPING SCORE” was directed and edited by the band’s Jerry Roe and features cinematography from Roe and Jarad Clement. Shot at Franklin, TN-based Westlight Studios, the video features the duo performing the song in a cinematic black and white, with stylish lighting.

“‘KEEPING SCORE’ was the first song written for BEAR. I think of it as the mother of the album,” Audra says. “When I was a kid, the mother of my best friend, a boy, singled me out as a problem for her son and all the other boys in our skateboarding crew. She was afraid I was corrupting them somehow. She called around and spread non-truths about me to the other parents, some of whom I’d never met. It was devastating, humiliating beyond words. Years later, I realized women in my own generation were doing the same thing to little girls who knew their sons. Little girls! Age seven, eight! Being called ‘hussies’ by grown women! Color me horrified. Color me involved. Now that I can speak for myself, I will also speak for girls like me. Someone should. The propulsive riff on this song is my war cry.”

“‘MELT’ is about realizing I’ve never really fit with my own kind, something I’ve only come to terms with in the last two years or so,” the Friendship Commanders frontperson continues. “I’ve spent so much time and energy trying to be a woman among women, but at the end of the day, I’m just always over here being too loud. Too much. And yet, somehow also not enough. It’s a stunning paradox. Musically, the song has a sugary quality to it, which is also referenced in the line, ‘that’s how they punch you, sugar over fists.’ This track beats me up because it’s so painfully true, but it’s also a delight to play.”

“These songs were so exciting to hear when Buick played them for me for the first time – pretty unlike anything we’d ever done up to this point in terms of energy and propulsion,” the band’s Jerry Roe adds. “Our music has tended to move either fast or slow while somehow feeling heavy at all times, and these songs lean and move forward in a way that’s much brighter and quite joyful, even through the subject matter. To play them almost feels like being flown through the air towards a gigantic bullseye made of fiery confetti! I can’t wait to play this new album live.”

You can preorder the forthcoming album here.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dragon’s Kiss Shares Bruising Ripper “Road Warrior”

Portuguese sextet Dragon’s Kiss — Tiago “Bastard” Teixeira (vocals), Adam “Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlawa” Neal (vocals), Hugo “Rattlesnake” Conim (guitar), Dário “Tornado” Granadeiro (guitar), António “Thunder” Seixas (bass), Marco “Pain” Dores (drums) — exploded into the international metal scene with 2014’s Barbarians of the Wasteland.

The Portuguese’s long-anticipated, self-produced, sophomore album, The Return of the Wild Dogs is slated for a July 21, 2025 release through Firecum Records. The album will reportedly feature six, no-filler, all-killer, no-bullshit tracks that showcases what the band is about: blazingly fast riffs, razor-sharp solos, pummeling rhythms and a relentlessly raw energy. Unconcerned with trends and overproduction, the band has crafted pure, timeless heavy metal rooted in speed, attitude and grit.

The Return of the Wild Dogs‘ latest single “Road Warrior” is a bruising ripper that showcases the band’s dexterously played, blazing riffage, pummeling and propulsive rhythm section, and their knack for mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. While bringing the RidingEasy Records roster to mind, the song’s lyrics focus on a post apocalyptic world seemingly inspired by our desperate and uneasy moment and Mad Max.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: grandson Shares a Politically Charged and Anthemic Ripper

Jordan Benjamin is the Los Angeles-based creative mastermind behind the rising indie rock project grandson. Benjamin’s highly-anticipated sophomore grandson album, the Mike Crossey-produced INERTIA is slated for a September 5, 2025 release through XX Records/Create Music. The album reportedly marks an urgent, unfiltered chapter for Benjamin as an artist and songwriter, who’s operating on his own terms and speaking truth to power.

INERTIA‘s second and latest single “SELF IMMOLATION” is a Rage Against the Machine-meets-Incubus-era nu metal bruiser that sees Benjamin pairing a punchy and impassioned delivery with pummeling boom bap-like percussion, bursts of DJ scratching and a rousingly anthemic and mosh pit friendly, Tom Morello-like crunchy power chord-driven hook and chorus. Thematically, the song sees the rising Los Angeles-based artist unpacking what it means to have a cause to fight for — and to potentially die for.

“’Self Immolation’ was inspired by the Palestinian liberation movement across college campuses, inspired by the late Aaron Bushnell who gave his life in protest of the actions of the very military he served, inspired by the dead students of Kent State 1970, and written about what it means to have a cause to live for, to die for,” Benjamin explains. “I wrote it with my friends, each of us playing an instrument live together, in a stoned, free, creative place in Andrew’s studio one afternoon, and it was a feeling we locked into across the whole album. It was a blast to create, and we all felt a great deal of purpose and meaning in the session that day.” 

The accompanying video for “SELF IMMOLATION” is split between Benjamin and his backing band performing the song as two funereally-dressed women headbang and mosh behind him, edited footage from Kent State, protests, uprisings and fires.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Austin’s Die Spitz Shares a Bruising, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Rising Austin-based outfit Die Spitz — Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston and Kate Halter — can trace some of their origins back to when Schrobilgen and Livingston met in preschool. They befriended Halter in middle school. And they brought De St. Aubin into their friend group when they started the band back in 2022.

Initially, the quartet was looking to find reasons to hang out more often, and decided they should start a band after a late-night viewing of the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt. They settled on the name Die Spitz over a “brown bag of Fireball,” opting for the feminine German definite article in place of the English. “It reminds me of the Grim Reaper spitting,” Livingstone jokes.

Their first live shows saw them pairing originals with covers from some of their early inspirations including Black Sabbath, Pixies, Mudhoney, PJ Harvey and Nirvana. Unsurprisingly, they express their ideas and themselves through a shameless blend of classic punk, hardcore metal, alt rock and more. They’ve also become known for riotous live show, where dueling cartwheels, members climbing rafters and solos while crowdsurfing could happen at just about any moment.

The Texan quartet’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Will Yip-produced Something to Consume is slated for a September 12, 2025 release through Third Man Records. The album reportedly sees the members of Die Spitz combining their passion, friendship, identity and artistry to fight against the seemingly inescapable decay and chaos that surrounds modern life. “There’s a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming,” the band’s Ellie Livingston says.

As the band trades off instruments, swapping songwriting and vocal duties, and generating powerful songwriting on concussive bursts, they have managed to create their own little pocket of the world, where we can all stand on the edge together.

Something to Consume‘s 11 tracks reportedly contains multitudes and yet feels like a singular epicene, an expansive and expressive collection, unified in its camaraderie and freedom. “We depend on our freedom — freedom to do what we want, present the ideas we want, make the music we want,” Livingston says. “Whether it’s based in metal or something soft, no matter which of us wrote the song, we all contribute and work together. As a person, I don’t have a strong ego or voice, but within this band each one of us is capable of so much more.”

“Something to Consume is an album experience for everyone. Whether you’re craving a smack of lively metal or a melancholy wave of grungey violin, there’s a piece of all of us injected. Something to Consume is a call to the multitudes of ways we as humans allow consumption to enrapture our culture as well as ourselves.”

Though they’ve only been playing together for a few years, the album also shows a maturity and technical prowess wielded and wed to the service of their deep and abiding friendship — and a hope to inspire change. “Some people aren’t interested in being political activists via music, but it weighs on me heavily and I feel misaligned with my calling if I don’t,” Chloe De St. Aubin says. “The four of us are free spirits with multiple interests, and there’s no limit or power dynamic that can derail us.”

Something to Consume‘s first single, “Throw Yourself to the Sword” is a bruising, most pit friendly synthesis of Slayer and long-haired Metallica era thrash metal, The Sword-like stoner rock and punk anchored around some of the hardest and grimiest riffs I’ve heard in some time paired with punchily delivered verses and feral howls for the song’s hooks and choruses. Play loud and open up that fucking pit — right now!

“‘Throw Yourself to the Sword’ is a high-energy ode to what we want young people to feel. There’s a lot of existentialism and despair in other songs on the album that still sheath the same theme, but ‘Throw Yourself to the Sword’ is the raise of optimism. Despite living in a state of mundanity or hopelessness, you can still rise up and fight the unknown, as long as you’re willing to throw yourself to it,” Ellie Livingston explains.

Fittingly, the accompanying video directed by Emily Sanchez is set in and around a local laundromat, supermarket and farm with young women playing “Throw Yourself to the Sword,” as the band’s frontperson appears and inspires them to be mischievous and joyful as a form of resistance and when necessary to pick up the sword and fight.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sex Week Shares Brooding and Lynchian “Lone Wolf”

Brooklyn-based indie duo Sex Week — collaborative and romantic partners Richard Orofino and Pearl Amanda Dickson — can trace their origins back to 2022: Orofino, a prolific musician and producer since he was in grade school, feel in love with Dickson’s taste through a wildly eclectic playlist she made for his roommate. Orofino excelled at, “honing structural strangeness into something more recognizable,” as he put it. And Dickson’s precocious perspective and natural appetite for the stranger corners of music was an uncannily natural fit.

Their innate creative chemistry led to the whirlwind writing and recording of their self-titled, debut EP, which received praise from Rolling Stone, PAPER Magazine, Nylon Magazine, Paste Magazine, Consequence and a lengthy list of others.

The Brooklyn duo’s recently announced new EP Upper Mezzanine is slated for an August 1, 2025 release through Grand Jury Music. “The approach for Upper Mezzanine felt more inquisitive,” Sex Week’s Pearl Amanda Dickson says. Where the music of their debut felt like momentary glimpses of something scary and exciting, the EP reportedly feels far more visceral, each track a focused punch delivered directly from the gut. “I still want people to be singing along and taking the melodies away with them, but the darkness of the EP is obviously there,” Dickson says. “The world is scary right now. I’m scared in lots of ways, and I think that omnipresent feeling definitely snuck into Upper Mezzanine.” 

The duo’s DIY ethos sees them firmly dedicated to helming multiple aspects of each release, including designing the art and making music videos themselves. But the EP sees Dickson learning to use her novel songwriting approach as a sort of superpower. “It’s not second nature to me yet,” she says. “So I’m always wanting to do more and be more involved than I have the capability to. And somehow at the same time, I still have the gusto to say ‘no that’s not it’ or ‘yes, that’s it.'”

The EP also sees Orofino continuing to harness his ability to make the alien feel somehow universal. “I feel it stretched me out wide creating these songs with peal and it just made me feel excited and hopeful that things can be weird and also totally accessible if you allow yourself to just be open.”

Upper Mezzanine‘s latest single “Lone Wolf,” is a brooding and eerily atmospheric tune that simultaneously channels David Lynch soundtracks and Me Moan and Carnation-era Daughn Gibson with the song featuring swirling, spectral harmonies, reverb-soaked twangy guitar. The duo’s individual verses capture an uneasily tense relationship at the brink.

The duo explain that “‘Lone Wolf’ is about communication and testing the limits of a relationship.” The accompanying self-directed video for the new single is fittingly a Lynchian fever dream.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: bat zoo Returns with Aching “Lemon”

bat zoo is a rising American-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and producer, who has developed a reputation for boundless creativity — and for genre-agnostic work. 

As a child, the rising artist and producer was immersed in a melting pot of musical influences, as a result of his father’s eclectic record collection. He grew up listening to soul, R&B, hip-hop and much more — and it opened his young years to kaleidoscope of sounds and styles, which helped informed his genre-blurring sound and approach. 

He also brings his artistic vision to life by seamlessly blending his work with dynamic visuals. Embracing authentic and innovation, the American-born, Berlin-based artist continues to push boundaries as a jack-of-all-trades creative director of his solo recording project, a culmination of many years of trial and error. He’s extremely busy: while developing his own sound as a solo artist, he’s also a part of the acclaimed Berlin-based vocal ensemble A Song For You and one-half of R&B duo GOLDA. 

bat zoo’s forthcoming EP, The Upward Bird is slated for a July 22, 2025 release through Lekker Collective. And in the lead-up to the EP’s release in just a few weeks, I’ve written about “Frozen Milk,” and “Diamond Lane.”

The EP’s third and latest single “Lemon” is a classic soul-tinged ballad that seemingly channels contemporaries like Monophonics and Bobby Oroza while featuring warped guitar, a supple bass line, bursts of twinkling synths as a lush bed for bat zoo’s achingly tender falsetto, which expresses urgent, desperate yearning defiant pride within the turn of a phrase. But throughout the sense of yearning and pride simmer with an unresolved, uneasy tension that churns and shifts without resolution.

The accompanying video for “Lemon” sees the American-born, Berlin-based artist reflecting back on the bittersweet moments of a presumably recent breakup, seemingly focusing on the moments in which he should have done better, said more, worked for the relationship and so on — with the ache of regret and shame.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Paris’ Bliss My Heart and Cliff Estatof Team Up on Anthemic “Sinner Sinner”

With the release of their debut EP, 2020’s Morningstar, the Paris-based artist Bliss My Heart quickly developed a sound that draws from Bauhaus, Depeche Mode and Lana Del Rey. Thematically, the EP’s material touched upon love, travel, childhood and life.

The Parisian’s latest single, the Cliff Estatoff co-written and co-produced “Sinner Sinner” continues a run of material that channels Bauhaus and Depeche Mode while showcasing an artist with an uncanny knack for a catchy hook and a rousingly anthemic chorus.

Thematically, “Sinner Sinner” focuses on how you can take control of your life back through your choices and emotions — if you trust in yourself, your own energy and in your energy. “Everything is possible, just see it and believe it,” the Parisian artist says.

The accompanying video is shot in a cinematic yet subtly glitchy black and white, and features the Parisian artist and her collaborator, Cliff Estatoff singing and performing the song in a stylish series of closeups.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: L’Eclair Teams Up WIth girl named GOLDEN on Languorous and Glittering “THE GLITCH”

With recorded output that includes 2018’s full-length debut, Polymood, 2019’s Sauropoda, 2020’s Noshtta EP and 2021’s Confusions, the acclaimed Swiss-based group L’Eclair, founded and led by Bulgarian-born siblings Stef and Yavov Lilov firmly established themselves as masters of mind-bending, cosmic-leaning groove. 

Along with two live sessions for KEXP, which amassed over 900,000 views combined, the Swiss-based group have built up an international following, while landing on the playlists of adventurous listeners and DJs seeking deep grooves. 

Meticulously crafted over the past four years, the acclaimed JOVM mainstays, highly-anticipated and recently released fourth album Cloud Drifter is a decided and radical departure from the Belgian group’s long-held instrumental approach with the album’s material featuring vocals from a wide and eclectic array of frequent collaborations that they’ve worked with over the past few years, including including Pink Slifu, Girl Named GOLDEN, Gelli Haha, A Ghost Column, and more. 

Having toured with The Cinematic Orchestra and W.I.T.C.H. — including writing and recording W.I.T.C.H.’s 2023 effort Zango and The Cinematic Orchestra’s forthcoming album this year, as well as production work with Varnish La Piscine and Maston, the Lilov brothers have assembled a vast network of likeminded musicians. And across the entire album, they keenly curate a cohesive vision incorporating many disparate contributions. 

In the lead-up to Cloud Drifter‘s release, I’ve written about three of the album’s singles:

CLOUD DRIFTER’S latest single “The GLITCH” feat. girl named GOLDEN is anchored around a slow-burning, languorous disco groove that serves as a lush bed for girl named GOLDEN’s dreamily yearning cooing.

The accompanying video for “THE GLITCH” features kaleidoscopically edited super 8 filmed footage of girl named GOLDEN performing at The Sultan Room, life on tour and in the studio with the acclaimed Belgians.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Smut Shares Expansive and Anthemic “Waste Me”

After spending years in the Cincinnati DIY scene, Smut — currently Tay Roebuck (vocals), Andie Min (guitar), John Steiner (bass), Sam Ruschman (guitar) and Aidan O’Connor (drums) — caught the attention of Bayonet Records, who signed the band and released their sophomore album, 2022’s critically applauded How the Light Felt. The album brought the band to Chicago, a city with more room for their growing sound. 

But despite their early successes, they still faced the struggles of the modern working musician: instability, financial precarity, objectification and more. The band channeled a period of touring, personnel changes and personal upheavals into their third album, Tomorrow Comes Crashing. 

Officially dropping today, through Bayonet Records, Tomorrow Comes Crashing marks the band’s first recorded output with O’Connor and Steiner while seeing the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love.

The band specifically focused on capturing the big emotions that come with falling in love with music for the first time. The result is ten of what may arguably be their most intense, bombastic and focused songs to date.

The Chicago-based band recorded the album’s material “as live as they could,” alongside Momma‘s Aron Kobayashi Ritch in a Red Hook, Brooklyn-based studio over the course of a breakneck 10-day session. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married, with the rest of the band by their side. 

“We have so much energy right now,” Smut’s Roebuck says. The recording sessions were a true labor of love — driving from Chicago with all their equipment, returning from 12 hour studio days to sleep on friends’ couches and floors, Roebuck completely blowing her voice by the end. Fittingly, the album is culmination of the band’s long-held DIY spirit — with the band creating a record that encompasses the intensity, moodiness and emotions of their journey so far. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “Syd Sweeney,” a song inspired by and named after the actor that describes the profound strangeness to be a woman, and how easily as a woman it is to be constantly misunderstood and misconstrued.

  • “Touch & Go,” a full-throated, 120 Minutes MTV-era power ballad that showcases the band’s knack for pairing rousingly anthemic hooks with, big riffs and earnest, lived-in lyricism and songwriting.

Tomorrow Comes Crashing‘s latest single “Waste Me” continues a run of hooky and anthemic material that recalls 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock — but under the big power chords and arena rock swagger is a softness that’s feminine but also thoughtful, lived-in and deeply earnest while arguably being the most dynamic, expansive and The Cure-like song they’ve written and recorded to date.

“Waste Me” is inspired by Greek mythology. “I wanted to write about ego, about building people up in our minds to unreachable heights, and pride,” Smut’s Roebuck explains,. “The story of Icarus was really ripe to elaborate on so I just extended the story. What if Icarus lived? What if someone thought he was the answer to their prayers?”

The accompanying video by Michael Fanos features collage-styled animation loosely based on the song’s lyrics.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Besnard Lakes Share Woozy “In Hollywood”

Acclaimed and beloved Montréal-based shoegazers The Besnard Lakes — husband and wife Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, along with Kevin Laing, Gabriel Lambert and Sheenah Ko — recently announced their seventh album, The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation. “I feel like it’s a very formidable title, symbolic of the times,” the band’s Jace Lasek says. “It’s talking about the death of nations, the threat of Canada being the 51st state. There is the desire to be left alone, to let community be community, all of those things that feel like they might be under siege; that’s what the ghost nation is.”

Slated for an October 10, 2025 release through Full Time Hobby, The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation was recorded at Lost River Studios. During the course of the five-day session, the band experienced creative solitude in the woods with some of their family members accompanying them while the band experimenting and compiled the album’s material. The Besnard Lakes’ forthcoming seventh album reportedly sees them creating their most playful yet thoughtful and heartfelt songs to date.

The acclaimed Canadian shoegazers admit that this was partly in response to 2021’s The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings. “The last album was so heavy,” the band’s Jace Lasek explains. “There was so much weight and heavy themes, like my dad dying. It was just death everywhere on that record. This album doesn’t really seem to be that. To me, it seems very playful.”

The Besnard Lakes Are the Ghost Nation‘s first single “In Hollywood” is a slow-burning dirge anchored around woozy, reverb-drenched guitars, the Montréal-based band’s penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks paired with dreamy vocals and a twangy, psilocybin-tinged solo. Sonically, “In Hollywood” sounds a bit like a synthesis of 2010’s The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night and The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings but with a woozy, synth-driven coda.

As the band’s Olga Goreas explains, “The first cut lifted from the album ‘In Hollywood’ dates back to 2010 and…are the Roaring Night era. It’s a melody that was circulating in Jace’s mind for many years. Unable to let it go, Jace sat with it and finally brought it to light. Written in a dropped D tuning, ‘In Hollywood’ is atypical in the Besnard canon. Some very creative synth work from Sheenah in the outro. A beautifully bizarre guitar solo from Gabriel. This one shows off Jace’s vocal stylings and has an intriguing lyrical journey for the listener to discover.”

The accompanying video features edited, old-timey, Super 8 and black and white footage of Golden Era Hollywood that emphasizes the dreamy vibe of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Slow Crush Shares Stormy and Swooning “While You Dream Vividly”

After a frenetic and overwhelming touring schedule to support their first two albums, 2018’s Aurora and 2021’s Hush, the acclaimed Belgian shoegazers Slow Crush — Isa Holliday (vocals, bass), Frederik Meeuwis, Jelle Ronsmans (guitar) and Nic Placlé — took a couple years off from touring, which allowed the quartet the space to breathe and create new material.

Slow Crush’s highly-anticipated third album, Thirst is slated for an August 29, 2025 release through Pure Noise Records. Recorded at Southampton, UK-based The Ranch, the Lewis Johns-produced album reportedly sees the band’s dynamic textures, propulsive rhythms and gauzy riffs shimmer as brightly as ever — but the album sees the band adding a bit more grit and grime to their sound. The album features arguably the heaviest riffs they’ve ever recorded, as well as some of Holliday’s dreamiest and most vulnerable vocals to date. During the recording process, there were sons she couldn’t record without dissolving into tears.

Thirst‘s overacting theme is what Holliday describes as “the romance of being with a loved one.” Although being away from loved ones for long periods of time might put a strain on that relationship, the return can feel euphoric and the connection can be feel almost like it were brand new. Throughout the album, the members of Slow Crush set out to create the feeling of being tethered yet simultaneously weightless, absorbed in the beauty of quiet moments with that special someone.

“We want people to let themselves go and feel embraced by the music, so that they can experience it in 4D,.” Slow Crush’s Isa Holliday explains. “That’s what we hear a lot from people who come to see us live, or people who’ve listened to our previous albums, is that we take them to another dimension. I think that’s something that we miss in this day and age with everything that’s going on in the world, making us very aware of everything outside, but not allowing us to just be in the moment as much as you should. We want to let people take a moment for themselves and let the music take them wherever they would like to go.”

Thirst‘s first single “While You Dream Vividly” is a slow-burning and hypnotic tune anchored around swirling and painterly guitar textures, thunderous drumming that serve as a stormy bed for Holliday’s ethereal and yearning delivery singing “true blue” lyrics like an echoing promise. The result is to leave the listener swooning and desperately yearning — seemingly forever.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: STIMULUS Teams Up with K, Le Maestro on Brooding “sEMi”

STIMULUS is a rising Brooklyn-born, Berlin-based artist, DJ and event curator. And if you were frequenting this site earlier this year, you might recall that I wrote about “swiTCH,” a collaboration with Malik Work, Greg Paulus, Taylor Bense and Swim Good that to my ears sounded a bit like a synthesis of Stereo MCs and C+C Music Factory with Larry Levan — but with a modern, self-assured swagger. 

His latest single, the K, LE MAESTRO-produced “SeMi” is a woozy, genre-defying track that pairs the Brooklyn-born, Berlin-based emcee’s swaggering yet deeply introspective, heartbroken flow with an eerily brooding production featuring a looping and twinkling piano sample and skittering trap beats. The song sees STIMULUS completely turning the concept of “keeping it 100” on its head by exploring the beauty and truth in being “semi” — kind of messy, and yet fully human and proud of it.

 “Keeping things ONE HUNDRED is the new keeping it real,” the Brooklyn-born, Berlin-based artist says. “100 is also a popular emoji representing 100% authenticity and 100% certainty. In the song I admit all of the ways in which I am not 100%.”

STIMULUS continues, “sEMi” is about inner struggle, social alienation, and the pursuit of identity. “

The accompanying video is part of a short film associated with the music, which has already won 7 awards at film festivals around Europe. And as you tell is part of a dystopian, near future in which the film’s protagonist goes through a bizarre procedure that gives him odd super powers.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Automatic Shares Restless “Is It Now?”

Los Angeles-based post punk outfit Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon Gaines (bass, vocals) — formed nine years ago. And in that time, they’ve 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 there own interests: Glaudini honed her skills as a producer; Saxon Gaines enrolled in botany classiest; and Dompé got married, moved out to the country and began caring for horses.

With two albums under their collective belts, the Los Angeles-based trio wanted to do something different for their third album. Slated for a fall 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.”

Is It Now?‘s first single, album title track “Is It Now?” is a continuation of the sound that they established on their first two albums while simultaneously being a subtle yet noticeable refinement. “Is It Now?” features what may arguably be the tightest groove they’ve written to date paired with icy synths and a call-and-response chorus while showcasing their unerring knack for catchy hooks. But at its core is a modern sense of restlessness and unease that just feels — well, familiar.

The new single celebrates being authentically yourself. The call-and-response chorus vies between two points f view — a rebellious perspective and the manufactured, mass culture one. Automatica’s Izzy Glaudini explains that, increasingly, “the thing I think about the most on a day-to-day basis is: how do you have a sense of joy while the world seems to be collapsing, and you feel so powerless?” 

She adds, “I feel like, as American citizens, we have a responsibility to pull the levers to stop the machine. ‘Is It Now?’ is about trying to not feel like a victim in this environment. It’s important to still feel a sense of joy, even amongst all the horrible shit going on in the world.” 

Directed by Nicola and Juliana Giraffe, the accompanying video for “Is It Now” features the trio in an I Love Lucy-like scenario at a factory while they pack boxes and load them onto a truck while evoking the restlessness at the core of the song.