JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates the 59th anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s birth.
Category: Video
New Video: Magic Fig Shares Ethereal Fever Dream “Goblin”
San Francisco psych pop supergroup Magic Fig — Inna Showalter (vocals, mellotron), Jon Chaney (keys), Muzzy Moskowtiz (guitar), Matthew Ferrara (bass) and Taylor Giffin (drums) — features members of The Umbrellas, Healing Potpourri, Almond Joy, Whitney’s Playland and Blades of Joy.
The quintet’s full-length debut, Valerian Tea is slated for a Friday release through Exploding In Sound Records. The album reportedly feels like a deep-dive down the rabbit hole into a bold, new world that feels much more vivid and flamboyant. Valerian Tea‘s material touches upon themes of memory, myth and melancholy while seeing the quintet quickly establishing a swirling mass of exploratory songwriting built around arrangements featuring piano, synths, glockenspiel, organ, 12-string acoustic and electric guitar.
Already the album has earned praise from NPR’s Into Music, Tour Stories with Joe Plummer Podcast, AudioFuzz, Post-Trash, Punknews.org, New Commute and others.
Valerian Tea‘s final pre-release single “Goblin” is anchored around a gorgeous and ethereal, krautrock-meets-prog rock fever dream of an arrangement of twinkling piano and shimmering guitars that morphs into psilocybin-fueled Dark Side of the Moon-like psych rock territory for the song’s second half or so.
Magic Fig’s Inna Showalter describes the new single as being “about the fickleness of inspiration.” She continues, “It’s also a song about wearing disguises and not being authentic, which causes harm in the long run. The desire to be accepted and ‘good’ cannot always coexist with following your heart.”
The accompanying video by Playland Studio‘s Elyse Shrock encapsulates the song’s themes but with Monty Python and Yellow Submarine-styled animated visuals.
New Video: Night Teacher Shares Lived-In “Past Life”
Singer/songwriter and musician Lilly Bechtel is the creative mastermind behind the indie project Night Teacher, a project that derives its name from Bechtel’s day job — she has worked asa trauma-informed yoga instructor for the past 15 years — and perhaps more poignantly, to the nature of the lesson. As Bechtel says, “Pain can be a teacher. It can have some really important things to tell you — if you’re willing to listen.”
Along with producer and collaborator Matt Wyatt, Bechtel’s Night Teacher work feel like notes slipped under the door or knowing winks across a table, little hints and nods of solitary that acknowledge struggle without demanding explanation or solution. “Healing doesn’t have to be linear,” says Bechtel. “It’s usually not.” Sonically, Bechtel and Wyatt craft a gritty, propulsive and often off-kilter sonic world that has drawn comparisons to Margaret Glaspy, Thom Yorke and Cate Le Bon among others, which can be heart on Bechtel’s 2020 Night Teacher self-titled debut.
Bechtel’s sophomore Night Teacher, the recently released Year of the Snake refers to the Chinese Zodiac and to this year, which according to the Chinese Zodiac is The Year of the Snake — a time for transformation. The album’s material was written during a period of profound personal hardship, including family challenges, a bitter breakup, and a relapse after 12 years of sobriety, all intensified by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I kept asking myself, ‘Can I survive this?’” Bechtel says.
Year of the Snake‘s second and latest single “Past Life” is a gritty and lived-in fever dream of lingering heartache, regret, failure and old ghosts haunting its narrator — and in turn, listener — in the present. And if you have lived a full and messy life, as I have, the song should feel familiar, expressing thoughts, feelings and observations that you’ve felt and seen, but haven’t been able to put in words. At its core, is a deeply humanistic tale of stubborn survival, hope, and of the recognition that recovery and healing are often a slow, uneasy, painful and necessary process.
Directed by Cat Rider, Zap McConnell and Lilly Bechtel, the accompanying video for “Past Life” is a surreal fever dream of doppelgängers, being watched and watching, of past, present and future constantly and uncomfortably colliding.
Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, Ol’ Dirty Bastard!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 57th anniversary of the birth of Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
New Video: JOVM Mainstay Alewya Teams Up with Dagmawit Ameha on Sultry and Propulsive “Night Drive”
JOVM mainstay Alewya is an acclaimed London-based singer/songwriter, producer and visual artist. Born in Saudi Arabia to an Egyptian-Sudanese father and an Ethiopian mother, the acclaimed London-based artist has spent her life surrounded by diaspora immigrant communities: She grew up in West London and after a several year stint in New York, she returned to London. Upon her return home, the Saudi-British artist developed and honed her ear for music through the sounds of the Ethiopian and Arabic music of her parents and the ambient alternative rock album of her brother.
The Saudi-born, British artist is part of a generation of artists actively redefining global music: They’re generally rooted in heritage yet unbound by it. Describing herself as a partner, who makes music, Aleway approaches sound as texture and feeling, guided more by intuition than structure. Her sound and story widen the Black-British frame, bringing the oft-under-heard North/East African perspective into a much-needed focus.
Back in 2020, the JOVM mainstay burst into the scene with an attention grabbing feature on Little Simz‘s “where’s my lighter,” which caught the attention of Because Records, who signed the rising artist and released her critically applauded debut, 2021’s Panther In Mode EP, which featured:
- The Busy Twist-produced debut single “Sweating,” a forward-thinking Timbaland-like mesh of trap, reggae and electro pop.
- “Spirit_X,” which paired elements of Timbaland, trap and drum ‘n’ bass paired with the rising British artist alternating between spitting fiery bars and sultry crooning
- The sultry and defiantly feminist anthem “Play”
- “Channel High” a slick synthesis of grime, contemporary R&B, dancehall, electro pop and Afrobeats
The acclaimed JOVM mainstay’s latest single “Night Drive,” feat. Dagmawit Ameha is the first bit of new material in over three years. The new single sees the acclaimed Saudi-British artist boldly stepping forward into a new creative era and way of life.
“Night Drive,” is a lush, slickly produced, futuristic-leaning blend of 80s and 90s Detroit and Chicago house, minimalist beats, alt R&B, Ethiopian music, Afrobeats and komische musik with a playful and naughty nod to Grace Jones’ “Pull Up To The Bumper.”
Written and demoed by Alesha before being fleshed out and brought to live with long-time collaborators Craigie Dodds and Dean Barratt, “Night Drive” began as a minimal and intuitive feeling that evolved into an ode to Detroit house and the roots of Black electronic music.
Directed by Taichi Kimura, the accompanying video for “Night Drive” was shot during a recent, deeply influential trip to Japan, the video is a fever dream that follows the acclaimed JOVM mainstay through the heady, late night buzz of a neon-lit city, the backseat of a speeding cab and the sweaty pulse of a packed dance floor.
Throwback: Happy 61st Birthday, Rev. Run!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Rev Run’s 61st birthday.
New Video: GENA Shares Breezy and Sultry “CIRCLESZ”
Deriving its name from an acronym “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” and loosely inspired by the Gina from Martin, GENA is a new collaborative project featuring arguably two acclaimed and talented artists:
- Liv.e: In a short period of time, Dallas-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Liv.e has quickly established a reputation for restless experimentation with the release of her full-length debut, 2023’s Girl in The Half Pearl, an effort that received praise from Billboard, Rolling Stone, Vulture and more, and last year’s synthwave-driven PAST FUTURE.e. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the Dallas-born, Los Angeles-based made surprise appearances at last year’s Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, joining Earl Sweatshirt and Andre 3000 during their respective sets. She’s currently on Earl Sweatshirt’s Live. Laugh. Love. world tour, with Zeelooperz and Cletus Strap.
- Karriem Riggins: Over the course of his 35-year career in music, Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based Karriem Riggins has firmly cemented a reputation as one of the most respected drummers and beatmakers out there. He has played with and produced for an eclectic array of acclaimed and legendary artists including Common, Erykah Badu, KAYTRANADA, Steve Lacy, The Roots, Madlib, Paul McCartney and Norah Jones. Notably, he formed a close kinship with the beloved, fellow Detroiter J. Dilla. In 2017, Riggins won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and lyrics for his work with Common and Robert Glasper on “Letter to the Free,” which appeared on Ava Duvernay’s 13th. Recently, Riggins reunited with Common and collaborated with James Poyser to write and record “Victory,” the theme music for NBA on Prime for the 2025-2026 season and beyond.
The pair can trace the origins of the project to when they met through a mutual musical acquaintance and quickly recognized each other as kindred musical and creative spirits, who started playing shows as GENA earlier this year. GENA sees the Los Angeles-based duo channeling the instinctive musical prowess of both artists while seamlessly meshing their imitable style. The result is a playful and soul-driven improvisational work that captures Liv.e’s vision of reconstructing R&B her way paired with Riggins masterful percussion which spans improvisation and beatmaking alchemy.
GENA’s debut single “CIRCLESZ” is a remarkably breezy, jazz-tinged bit of neo-soul featuring an arrangement of precise, boom bap meets-bop jazz-like four-on-the-floor and glistening and arpeggiated Rhodes serving as a hook-driven, lush, dusty sample-like bed for Liv.e’s sultry delivery. While sonically nodding at Yasiin Bey‘s “Umi Says,” “CIRCLESZ” evokes the woozily intoxicating connection you can build with another person and the small moments that can color that romantic bond.
Shot with a grainy, analog quality, the accompanying video features the pair performing on a The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson-styled show and set, including an interview with the host.
New Video: JOVM Mainstay Sylvia Black Shares Brooding and Sultry “Talking in Tongues”
Los Angeles-based multifaceted producer, singer/songwriter, bassist, performer, restless performer and JOVM mainstay Sylvia Black has had a long-held reputation for being difficult to pin down. And since her first job singing and entertaining at a resort hotel in Northern Japan as a teen, music has been the JOVM mainstays lifeline.
Throughout her career, Black has steadily gained momentum as a writer and producer, consistently creating music on her own times, while simultaneously cementing her place in the post-punk and goth-romantic renaissance and been restlessly creative. Her lengthy credits reflect her eclectic tastes and wide-ranging abilities. She was the frontperson of the New York-based trio KUDU with Deantoni Parks (drums, production) and Nicci Kasper (keys, production) in the early 00s. Black also has writing and recording credits with Grammy Award-winning pop act Black Eyed Peas, Daphne Guinness and more. Her lengthy resume includes collaborations with legends like Tony Visconti, Lydia Lunch and Moby, as well as The Knocks, Armand Van Helden and French electro pop duo Telepopmusik. And last, but definitely not lease, her sultry rendition of ‘I Put A Spell On You” appeared on the hit Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
As a bassist, Black has played with The Brand New Heavies‘ N’Dea Davenport, Living Colour‘s Muzz Skillings and with Maya Rudolph’s Prince cover band Princess.
The JOVM mainstay’s newest album, the 11-song Shadowtime is slated for a January 16, 2026 release. The album sees Black continuing her long-held approach of songwriting from the bottom up. “I find a beat that I’m in love with and go forward,” Black says. “The bass provides the floor, but as a singer, I’m also coming in with the roof. If you can write a beautiful song with just those two elements, bass notes and the voice, that’s a job well done.”
Written, produced and performed primarily by the JOVM mainstay the album was crafted with support from longtime mix engineer and creative foil Ruddy Lee Cullers. The album’s material will reportedly be a haunting exploration of nostalgia and futurism, that sees Black pushing her sound in new directions by weaving hypnotic rhythms, cinematic layers and raw, visceral emotion, while moving effortlessly from dance floor anthems to atmospheric meditations on love, loss and transcendence. “This album is about finding beauty in ruins,” Black says. “About letting the shadows speak through me. Returning to California brought out the memory and soul of my goth days gone by.”
Shadowtime‘s first single “Talking in Tongues” is a brooding blend of goth, New Wave and shoegaze that seemingly nods at Suicide, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and others, featuring a relentless motorik groove and industrial-like thump serving as an atmospheric bed for Black’s sultry delivery.
Black says, “It’s about one who has lost their agency by letting outward elements control them and deceive them. Or, a drunk bitch.”
New Video: S.C.A.B. Shares Yearning and Nostalgic “LOVE”
Ridgewood, Queens-based indie band and JOVM mainstays S.C.A.B — currently Sean Carmago (vocals, guitar), Cory Best (guitar, backing vocals), Alec Alabado (bass, backing vocals), Evan Eubanks (drums, percussion), Jordan Rich (synth, piano, production) and Sean Brennan (cello) — will be releasing their third album, Somebody In New York Loves You! through Grind Select on November 21, 2025.
The soon-to-be released third album reportedly sees the Ridgewood-based band simultaneously turning inward and stretching wide with the album’s material leaning into vulnerability without retreating into abstraction, drawing from Carmago’s psychedelic-fueled realizations, intimate journal entries and moments of raw emotional rupture.
Much of the album’s material was written in a creative sure following a psychic reading that left Carmago feeling oddly affirmed and fantastical. And as a result, a sense of magical realism and sepia-tinged nostalgia is at the core of the album. At times, the band sounds like huge, like an arena rock band and others, eerily close, like a voice memo you weren’t meant to hear.
With Somebody In New York Loves You!, the Ridgewood-based outfit makes space for contradictions: songs that are personal but big, naive but knowing, imaginative but grounded. After a stretch of false starts, rain-soaked gigs and artistic doubt, the band emerges sounding both clear-headed and ready — while reminding the listener that yes, somebody here in this town does love you.
“LOVE,” Somebody In New York Loves You!‘s third and latest single is a mid-tempo 120 Minutes-era MTV-like sigh of gratitude anchored around shimmering guitars, Carmago’s expressive delivery and the band’s unerring knack for big, shout along worthy hooks and choruses. It’s arguably one of the more direct songs of the soon-to-be released album and of the band’s growing catalog, expressing gratitude for the complicated and odd place New York is, to family — whether biological or chosen, to being unafraid of finding a way to pick yourself up and start over.
“This song is a reminder to myself to get clearer on what I would like to see,” S.C.A.B.’s Sean Carmago says. “The roles we play. The illusion of truth. I had a tiny blue bird when I was young. You had a love, it hurt, now it’s done. Blood is your teacher now. Let go of duality.”
Directed by Sampson Dahl, the accompanying video was shot in his laundromat space on beta film and evokes a warm, nostalgia for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Gumby with the video being fantastical yet grounded in mundanity and handmade in a way in which you can see the stitching, seams and glue, but done so with a playful, knowing charm.
The Ridgewood-based band will be playing a record release show at 94 Bogart next week.
New Video: Endearments Share Yearning and Cinematic “Cannon”
Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and bassist Kevin Marksson has made a career out of wearing his heart on his sleeve, pouring years of diary entries into the music and lyrics of Endearments. On the project’s most recent EP, 2023’s self-released, Abe Seiferth-produced, It Can Be Like This, Marksson and his bandmates — Anjali Nair (guitar) and Will Haywood Smith (drums) — channel their frontman’s introspections into lush, reverb-soaked pop that evoke 4AD Records‘ heyday and Roxy Music.
The trio recently signed to Trash Casual, who released their latest single “Cannon.” Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Abe Seiferh, “Cannon” showcases a cinematic sound that features glistening synth oscillations, propulsive drumming and bursts of angular guitar paired with a rousingly anthemic hook and chorus serving as a lush, brooding bed for Marksson’s achingly yearning, melancholic delivery. The result is a song that simultaneously seems to nod at Simple Minds and Tears for Fears, as well as contemporaries like Nation of Language and others while anchored around deeply introspective, lived-in lyricism.
Directed by Gabriel Stanley, the accompanying video for “Cannon” employs a simple, bare-boned concept: Marksson singing and dancing to the song in a spotlight filled studio and gradually soaked by rain.
“‘Cannon’ is a song about apathy and addiction. It’s about living in a world where we see atrocities unfolding before our eyes, yet choose to willfully ignore or self-medicate because the pain we are witnessing is so overwhelming,” Endearments’ Kevin Marksson explains. “I knew we needed to keep the music video simple and focused on lyrics and movement. Even though I’m not a trained dancer, we worked with an amazing choreographer, Camilia Araque, who really helped me step out of my comfort zone and throw myself into the experience and emotion of the song.”
The Brooklyn-based trio is currently working on their Abe Seiferth-produced full-length debut, slated for an early 2026 release.
Throwback: Happy 81st Birthday, Booker T!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Booker T’s 81st birthday.
Throwback: Happy 80th Birthday, Neil Young!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Neil Young’s 80th birthday.
New Video: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Dreamily Meditative “All My Days Are Hanging”
Wildly prolific, Israeli-born, Costa Rican-based singer/songwriter, musician and JOVM mainstay MAGON recently released his third album of this year and 13th — yes, y’all, 13th! — album overall Zoe Rainbow Days.
Zoe Rainbow Days’ latest single “All My Days Are Hanging” continues a run or mediative and introspective material that seemingly draws from psych folk, Sea Change-era Beck and others. And at its core, is a dreamy and lovingly detailed depiction of domesticity that feels nostalgic yet somehow punctuated with a realization of how fleeting everything is.
The accompanying video features footage from Len Lye‘s 1936 short film, The Birth of the Robot. The footage is restored and re-imaged as a visual companion to the song.
Throwback: Happy 72nd Birthday, Andy Partridge!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates XTC founder and frontman Andy Partridge’s 72nd birthday.
Throwback: Happy 55th Birthday, Warren G.!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Warren G’s 55th birthday.