Category: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DVTR Returns with an Incisive Ripper Tackling Colorism and Racism

French Canadian JOVM mainstays DVTR —  Le Couleur‘s Laurence G-Do a.k.a. Demi Lune and Gazoline‘s,  Kandle‘s Xavier Caféine‘s and Gab Bouchard‘s JC Tellier, a.k.a. Jean Divorce — burnt up the Canadian indie scene with the release of their debut EP, 2023’s BONJOUR. The EP amassed a plethora of rapturous reviews, landed on a number of Best of 2023 lists and earned the duo the first batch of a growing number of awards in Québec.

Building upon that momentum of the previous year, the duo released an expanded edition of their debut EP BONJOUR (BIS), which featured a couple of bonus tracks.

The Montrealers supported the original and expanded editions of BONJOUR EP with a frenetic and whirlwind world tour over the past couple of years, which has featured sets across the club and festival circuit in Asia, Mexico, Germany and Québec. They’re currently in the middle of an extensive bit of touring across France.

During this remarkably busy period, the duo released a live album on VHS (!) and added more awards to their already crowded mantle — the 2025 Breakout Artist of the Year at the GAMIQ Gala earlier this year.

And they’ve still managed to release new material. They began this year with “Né pour flâner (Born to loiter),” a song that further cements the duo’s uncanny knack for mosh pit friendly, catchy hooks, punchily delivered vocals and furious synth and guitar riffage. 

Cementing their reputation for restless and frenetic creativity, the duo return with “Couleur peau (Your Next Token Asian Friend),” arguably one of the more defiant, feisty and perhaps somewhat straightforward punk songs of a growing catalog of breakneck rippers. The song sees the duo happily spitting on and trampling the outdated, ridiculous French concept of couleur peau (“skin color”), a term that according to the band only ever refers to white or beige skin. While calling out colorism, the song is also an incisive criticism of performative and wishy washy White liberals that sees the song’s narrator ready to cash in on White guilt. I’ll be your token Asian pal– if you ante up, the song says. But she’ll also call you out for it, as she’s cashing that check.

The accompanying video by Cedric Demers and Alexandre Normand feature DVTR’s frontperson insouciantly eating a buffet-style table of Chinese food while the song plays — with chopsticks and then a fork.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: CIVIC Shares Jangling and Nihilistic “The Fool”

Since their formation back in 2017, Melbourne-based punks CIVIC — Jim McCullough (vocals), Roland Hlvaka (bass), Lewis Hodgson (guitar) and their newest member Eli Sthapit (drums) — have developed a reputation for reimagining the reckless intensity of proto-punk for our era of seemingly unending and unceasing uncertainty and strife. 

The acclaimed Aussie outfit’s forthcoming third album, the Kirin J. Callinan-produced Chrome Dipped saw its official release today through ATO Records. Eager to step beyond the raw, unmistakably Australian punk rock sound of their first two albums, Chrome Dipped sees the band pushing into uncharted sonic terrain without scarfing the long-held fierce energy that has defined them. 

Thematically, the album touches upon loss and grief, following the death of Jim McCullough’s mother, as well as broader essentially reflection. In a larger sense, Chrome Dipped is about casting off old shells — both musically and emotionally — and finding meaning in the messiness of human life and evolution.

The band tapped Aussie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kirin J. Callinan to produce Chrome Dipped. It was his idea to spend a week recording at Hobart, Tasmania‘s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), a far cry from the outback house in which the band laid down 2023’s Taken By Force. “We’ve always done our records DIY,” CIVIC’s Jim McCullough says. “This time we wanted to step up and make it sound as big as we could.”

“We kind of stuck to the rules a little bit earlier on like, do Australian punk rock properly and all that,” CIVIC’s Lewis Hodgson says. “But after touring around the world and seeing what all these other bands are up to it’s like, you can really do whatever the fuck you want. And so it’s fun to just kind of let go.”  He continues, “I hope people feel a little confused at first. Then a bit angry, and then feel good, and then interested, and then they feel like, ‘Oh, this is sick.’ That process exactly. I hope it’s a bit challenging.”

CIVIC also brought on a filmmaker to capture behind-the-scenes and in-studio footage, with plans for a longer documentary in the works. The film explores the physical and emotional place that inspired Chrome Dipped,  following the band through their journey of making the album. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “The Hogg,” a song named for its “disgusting sounding riff.” Fittingly, the song is a bruising ripper, anchored around a grimy, chugging riff and thunderous drumming paired with McCullough’s punchy delivery. While continuing to channel the grime, filth and fury of their previous work, “The Hogg” showcases a band pairing delicate and dreamy lyrical imagery with sinister, deeply unpleasant overtones and a subtle yet slick, studio polish.

As the band explained to Flood Magazine, the song is about “staring into the abyss and seeing nothing but its pure beauty. Surface level pleasure with sinister undertones. A porcelain dancer draped in flesh, pirouetting to the infinite beat. ‘The Hogg’ is my reality. ‘The Hogg’ is my destiny.” 

“The Fool,” Chrome Dipped‘s final pre-release single is a jangling and metallic, cretinous stomp of song that showcases the band’s melodic sensibility while retaining the punchy and feisty punk quality they’ve been known for. The Aussie quartet say “‘The Fool’ is a nihilistic death march about dreamers and idiots. A jangley [sic] punk song meant to provoke the senses. It recalls the story of the fool and what’s behind the 1000-yard stare.

Directed by Conor Mercury, the accompanying video for “The Fool” is a lush yet brooding and cinematically shot visual that’s set in a world that’s both harsh yet surreal, as we see struggling and desperate folks with odd, somewhat unnecessary super powers.

CIVIC is currently in the middle of a North American tour that includes a June 13, 2025 stop at TV Eye before heading to the UK and European Union. Check out the rest of the tour dates below. Tickets are available here. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bee Blackwell Shares Yearning and Anthemic “CLAWS”

Bee Blackwell is a rising Austin-based singer/songwriter and musician, who back in 2023 began posting covers of her favorite emo and grunge song online, which helped to create a fanbase that revels in her brand of heartfelt and cathartic music. What began as covers, quickly accumulated into her debut EP, that year’s Calico, an effort that featured fan favorite “Blue.”

The past year or so have been very busy for Blackwell, she released three singles “Dumb,” “The Same” and “Signs.” She made her SXSW debut this past March, along with a handful of energetic live shows around Texas. And with a few months of free time, the rising Texan-based artist wrote and her recorded her highly-anticipated sophomore EP, Nine Lives. 

Slated for a June 30, 2025 release, Nine Lives EP reportedly serves as a sort of personal diary entry, exposing her struggles, emotional hardships and life goals. While seeing Blackwell at her most introspective and daring, taking creative risks while maintaining the vulnerability and honesty that has won her fans. Sonically, the EP’s material showcases her knack for clear and atmospheric guitar hooks, smooth calming grooves paired with her love of 90s grunge and 2000s emo. 

Earlier this month, I wrote about “LALALA.” Self-produced and recorded at Sonic Ranch Studio over a three-day, breakneck stint, the Austin-based artist’s latest single “LALALA” is a decidedly upbeat 120 Minutes-era MTV-like tune, anchored around fuzzy, distorted yet dreamy guitars, swelling synths, Blackwell’s ethereal delivery that builds up to perfectly 90s grunge inspired bridge. And at its core, the song showcases a songwriter, who seems to effortlessly pair catchy hooks with earnest, lived-in lyricism. 

“‘LALALA’ is a conversation between two people who haven’t spoken to each other in probably years, with all the weird boundaries and walls that have built up over the time lost,”  Blackwell says. “There’s a sense of familiarity, but you still don’t know if you can fully trust them, so you just make things up to fill silence or to seem interesting.”

The EP’s latest single “CLAWS” continues a run of 90s/120 Minutes MTV-inspired indie rock featuring fuzzy and distorted power chords paired with Blackwell’s yearning delivery and her unerring knack for big, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

“’CLAWS’ is the struggle of being caught between wanting connection and fearing vulnerability,” Blackwell explains. “Expressing emotion is hard, being a control freak is even harder.”

The accompanying video sees Blackwell and her backing band paying homage to a 1993 live performance from shoegazers Swirlies.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: heavy wild Shares TrIppy Visual for Brooding “Wasteland”

Led by Wolfgang Harte, rising London-based lo-fi outfit heavy wild just released their highly-anticipated Paolo Ruiu-produced debut EP Death Dreams. 

Sonically, the EP sees the London-based lo-fi outfit blending elements of alternative rock, post-punk, garage rock, shoegaze, indie rock, lo-fi and grunge — and is a culmination of the project’s output date, as Harte explains: “I think having a running theme through any body of work is always important. I tend to write subconsciously and never really with a specific idea in mind so looking back through all these tracks and identifying what they’re really about has been interesting, discovering the themes that underpin my writing. There’s a couple of well-loved tracks on there but I’m excited for people to hear some new stuff too and see the direction it’s moving in.”

The EP’s first single “Wasteland” is a brooding whirlwind of a tune featuring shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars and distorted synths and driving rhythm section paired with remarkably catchy hooks and choruses and fuzzed out yet plaintive vocals. Sonically recalling a woozy mix of Interpol, Crocodiles, Grave Babies and others, the song explores themes of fractured relationships, arrests and suicide.

“Ultimately, it’s an optimistic track. It’s about going through dark times and finding a way to keep on going,” Harte explains. “I had a bassline [sic] that I was just playing on loop and I started writing, and this montage of stuff that had happened over the years was flooding my mind, and the energy of that bassline [sic] just kept dragging more stuff up. I guess it’s me sort of processing some of those situations and reflecting on it all. It’s about standing in the wreckage of life and saying fuck it… just gotta keep going.”

Harte cites Wavves, Beach Fossils, Small Black, Girls and Crocodiles as a big influence on him — and on the track. “On this track, I think I was really going back to that stuff that I loved as a teenager when I was first making music and trying to capture that frenetic sort of energy. I wanted the song to sound like it could fall apart at any moment,” Harte says.

The accompanying video is a mix of analog tape fuzz, kaleidoscopic filters and footage of the band in studio shot and edited in a way that evokes our uneasy, near apocalyptic moment.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Slumbering Sun Returns with Swooning “Together Forever”

Formed back in 2022, Austin-based outfit AND JOVM mainstays  Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna‘s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light‘s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar) and Kelly “Penny” Turner, Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson, and Monte Luna’s and Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit (bass) — is a Texas underground metal scene All-Star outfit that specializes in “music for crazy romantics,” as they’ve dubbed it, a melodic doom metal that incorporates elements of Celtic folk, grunge, prog rock and shoegaze. 

The Austin-based quintet’s full-length debut, 2023’s The Ever-Living Fire debuted at #20 on the Doom Charts. The band played their first show at SXSW’s Stoner Jam, then embarked on a series of regional tours before capping off the year with a set at Ripple Fest.

The band spent the bulk of last year, writing and recording their highly-anticipated sophomore effort, Starmony, which saw its official DSP and limited vinyl release earlier this month.

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

  • “Midsommar Night’s Dream,” a track that begins with a gorgeous, pensive piano and string driven introduction, before quickly morphing into swooningly heartfelt and nostalgia-fueled dirge anchored around the sort of fuzzy power chords that would bring smiles to the faces of Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Neil Young, all while being arguably the most cinematic song they’ve released to date. 

  • “The Tower” a track that begins with a broodingly atmospheric introduction that quickly morphs into slow-burning, power chord-driven dirge with dexterous guitar solos. “The Tower” continues a run of material that’s soulful and cinematic while showcasing the band’s unerring knack for crafting a sound that recalls The Sword, Soundgarden and others. 

“Together Forever,” Starmony‘s latest single is a slow-burning ballad that sees the band pairing the swooning Romanticism of goth with the churning and fuzzy power chord-driven dirges of doom metal. The new single continues a run of material that’s perfectly suited for folks who love to hear anthemic songs with enormous power chords and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with beers raised in the air — but while also feeling something.

The accompanying video features footage shot over the past two years of touring across Texas and the rest of the Midwest, including the late night food food stops, the endless trees and white lines of the road, the small shows, and the pals you meet across the scene — with an uncanny precision.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jahnah Camille Shares Languorous “summer scorch”

Jahnah Camille (pronounced as “Hannah”) is a rising, 20 year-old Birmingham, AL-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician, who can  trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Overhearing her father’s guitar lessons, she first picked up a guitar when she was four, and by the time she turned 10, she was writing her own songs. 

Throughout her life, supportive coincidences have pushed Camille’s creative tenacity. Her mother encouraged an elementary school-aged Jahnah to perform for their apartment’s maintenance man, who then gifted her a red Gibson SG and an amplifier. At a hippie kids camp, she met a mentor, who helped to champion her early crowdfunded recordings. 

“My mom was always having me sing and play guitar for people,” says Jahnah. “I’ve always had people who believed in me, and I feel like I’ve internalized that. That’s been really beautiful.”

Later opportunities to open for acclaimed artists like Clairo and Soccer Mommy led to her burgeoning status as a keenly self-examining indie rock singer/songwriter in a Birmingham scene saturated with punk and hardcore bands — many of which she played with in her earliest DIY shows. 

“The first year after I graduated high school was kind of horrifying,” says Jahnah. “I had just basically broken up with most of my band. I wasn’t going to college. I was seeing how everyone else that I had known growing up, their lives were changing. I knew that whatever happened in my life, it wasn’t going to be that, and there wasn’t really any proof that things were going in a positive direction.”

The rising Birmingham-based artist’s sophomore EP, the Alex Farrar-produced My sunny oath! is slated for a June 13, 2025 release through Winspear. The EP comes on the heels of a run of tour dates with Blondshell and previous shows opening for TOPS,Soccer Mommy and Clairo — and the success of her debut EP, last year’s i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl. 

My sunny oath! is set in the pressure cooker of new adulthood and is reportedly features a defiant collection of alt-rock, lo-fi grit and sardonic grunge that channels Jahnah Camille’s influences, including The Sundays, Liz Phair, Minnie Ripperton and Japanese Breakfast among others. 

In the lead-up to the EP’s release, I’ve written about two of its previously released singles:

  • “what do you do,” a 90s/120 Minutes MTV-era indie rock inspired anthem, anchored around a classic grunge rock structure paired with the young artist’s remarkably self-assured vocal turn and uncanny knack for an enormous, well-placed hook. “I wrote this while trying to understand the feeling of losing control,” the rising Birmingham-based artist says, “I was paralyzed by a need to control how other people saw me and needed to write about it.” 

  • “sit with you (pain),” a song that begins with a lush and dreamy, singer/songwriter, acoustic guitar section with gently rumbling feedback that slowly builds up into a full-throated, bombastic, feedback and grungy power chord-driven anthem. While continuing to showcase a young songwriter, who can craft a big, rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, the song is anchored in deeply lived-in and earnest hurt. The song “is about cutting someone out of your life who you still care for deeply,” she explains. “All of your critiques and drawbacks are still secondary for the love that you have. I wanted to make a habit of doing things that were good for me even if they hurt.”

My sunny oath!‘s third and latest single, the slow-burning and languorous “summer scorch” sees the rising, young singer/songwriter pairing a dreamily yearning delivery with strummed guitar, a simple yet propulsive backbeat that builds up to a big string-driven bridge. While evoking the stickiness of a humid, deep South summer afternoon, the song is rooted in real, lived-in, self-doubt, fear of rejection and desperate hope.

“I wrote it about a crush that I never even talked to,” the rising young singer/songwriter explains. “I was just like, ‘Would I be able to keep myself? Can I be trusted with a romantic relationship?’”

The accompanying video by Harrison Shook, is a hazily shot visual that follows a brooding Jahnah Camille on and near a stool in front of suburban-styled house and what appears to be an abandoned warehouse. The visual also evokes a similar humid, haziness.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Moscow’s The Diasonics Shares Mind-Bending “Oriole”

Formed back in 2019, Moscow-based instrumental soul quintet The Diasonics — Daniel Lutsenko (guitar), Kamil Gazizov (keys), Maksim Brusov (bass), Anton Moskvin (drums) and newest member Alexander Shingaling (percussion) — quickly gained cult status through […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: SWOLL Shares a Swaggering Homage to DC’s Puff Pieces

Led by Baltimore-based singer/songwriter and musician Matt Dowling, who is best known for his work playing bass in The Effects, Deleted Scenes, and Paperhaus, SWOLL originally formed as a studio collaboration with BLIGHT. Records founder and producer Ben Schurr.

The project’s 2018 self-titled, full-length debut was released to critical praise while establishing a sound anchored around brooding bass lines, minimalist textures and Dowling’s falsetto. Since then SWOLL has evolved into a full-fledged live band, featuring multi-instrumentalist Erik Sleight (drums) and lighting design by Zak Forrest.

Live , the band creates an immersive live performance that combines atmospheric visuals with a thunderous, genre-defying, synth-driven soundscape while exploring vulnerability and the human condition. Adding to a growing profile, the band has shared stages with Gang of Four, Moderat and JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers.

SWOLL’s third album AVOID ATTACH is slated for a September 26, 2025 release. The album was tacked by Dan Angel and Ben Schurr in Philadelphia, mixed by Alex Tebeleff in Los Angeles and mastered by Sarah Register in Brooklyn. Sonically, AVOID ATTACH reportedly sees the band further cementing a sound that meshes elements of live rock with electronic music and trap beats.

“I wanted to turn the psychological condition of avoidant attachment style into a verb that feels relevant right now,” SWOLL’s Matt Dowling says of AVOID ATTACH‘s thematic concerns. “Avoidant attachment style is perhaps best described by Kevin Barnes’ Of Montreal lyric ‘I need you here, and not here too.’ It’s a particularly modern condition that’s simultaneously psychological and physical. It sort of sounds bad and unhealthy (it is on the clinical edge of a disorder), but things like social media and AI, which are simply wildly popular modern tools, are particularly good places to ‘avoid attach.’ I also think things sort of feel overall bad and unhealthy in the world right now, but that could just be a coincidence, or my own projection.”

AVOID ATTACH‘s lead single “SCAR” features glitchy electronic pulse, skittering boom bap and an angular Gang of Four-like bass line as a dreamy and uneasy bed for Dowling’s punchily urgent delivery. The song manages to be brooding and yet dance floor friendly while anchored around lyrics that offer incisive social critique that eerily captures our weird, deadly, fucked up moment. The song also is a loving homage to the now-defunct Washington, DC-based band Puff Pieces, a descendant project of Antelope, and the social commentary of their 2016 effort, Bland in D.C.

“I directly take lyrics from Puff Pieces in this song,” Dowling says. “The two lyrics, which are also their song titles, are ‘Pointless People’ and ‘Women and Men with Guns.’ I think I went there simply because I felt like I was really echoing Puff Pieces sonically while writing the song. So I figured ‘why not take it all the way and use some Puff Pieces lyrics, provided I can get prior approval?’ (which I did, don’t worry!). I wrote the song probably two years ago, and now that it’s coming out, I’m like ‘whoa, this is timely.’ Puff Pieces were astoundingly accurate at predicting the future while writing songs from 2013-2016. The current time is simply a labored continuation of what they were concerned about while creating those songs. So ‘Scar’ is basically an homage to Puff Pieces’ astute ability to cut right to the center of it all with simple, dancey punk rock music.”

The accompanying video for “Scar” follows the band’s Dowling on a glitchy and fuzzy, analog, security footage-styled late night walk and studio footage — with a world-beating swagger.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Wants Shares Brooding and Anthemic “Data Tumor”

Formed back in 2017, New York-based trio The Wants — currently, founding membes Madison Velding-VanDam and Jason Gates along with the band’s newest member NightNight‘s Yasmeen Night — quickly carved out their own niche in experimental music’s outer reaches with their full-length debut, 2020’s Container, which was released to critical applause while quickly establishing a sound that draws from an eclectic array of influences across decades and genres, including Alan Vega, Korn, Hildur Guǒnadóttir, Bauhaus, Throbbing Gristle, and experimentation techno among others.

Container‘s success led to the then-duo’s successful tour of the UK and Europe, which was cut short as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But after returning back to the States, the band enlisted NightNight’s Yasmeen Night whose deft synth work has helped add an additional electronic sensibility to their post-punk aesthetic.

The trio’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Bastard is slated for a June 13, 2025 release through STTT. The album thematically explore disconnection in an age of endless and unceasing connection, pulsing with the tension between Velding-VanDam’s Midwestern roots and his present in NYC. That duality is manifest through the album’s material — organic instrumentation wrestle with electronic ghosts, while traditional song structures are dismantled and reassembled.

The album is also deeply influenced by personal tragedy: Velding-VanDam began writing the album’s material after learning that his father had died in his Michigan trailer, eight days before he was found. The aftermath of this discovery — hoarded belongings, towers of empty liquor bottles and oxycodone containers, grime-covered childhood photos — became the emotional backdrop for the album’s creation.” Bastard, both as an album and an experience, is an emotional purge—a meditation on isolation and loss,” The Wants’ Velding-VanDam explains. “The story of my father’s life and death loomed large as a backdrop of the writing process. I explored the darkest periods of my life, and the reality that we can all spiral into our own personal voids.”

Bastard‘s second and latest single “Data Tumor” serves as a bridge between their debut and the forthcoming sophomore album. Sonically recalling a synthesis of She Wants Revenge, Interpol and Suicide, “Data Tumor” is a brooding and uneasy song, delivered with a Kasabian-like swaggering bombast while showcasing the band’s unerring knack for arena rock friendly hooks paired with forcefully, propulsive rhythms and Velding-VanDam’s eerie delivery.

“‘Data Tumor’ inhabits the psychological push and pull of trying to assert individuality in a world intent on commodifying and distorting it,” explains Velding-VanDam. “The faceless collective of information and stimuli incentivizes the surrender of personal agency. Choices have to be made or they are made for you.”

“Many songs on Bastard embody a character or voice that is meant to observe and reflect an experience, but not necessarily make a judgement about it,” the band adds. “The resulting tone oscillates between earnest and acerbic, not quite serious but not joking, either.”

The accompanying video, which employs flashing strobe light, touches upon horror movie and true crime themes while turning them on its head. Who is being chased? Who is the victim?

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Smut Shares a “120 Minutes”-era MTV-like Power Ballad

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. 

Slated for a June 27, 2025 release through Bayonet Records, Tomorrow Comes Crashing marks the band’s first album with O’Connor and Steiner and reportedly sees the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love. 

The members of the band focused on capturing the big emotions that come with falling in love with music for the first time. The result is ten of arguably 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 a breakneck 10-day session. Roebuck. 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. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “Syd Sweeney,” a track named for an inspired by the actor, that’s anchored around Siamese Dream-like power chords, rolling and propulsive drumming and enormous, beer-raised-high-in-the-air, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses paired with Roebuck’s rock goddess-like delivery before ending with a thrash metal-like coda that would make Billy Corgan smile. 

The song is about how profoundly strange it can be to be a woman, to be misunderstood by people, who don’t even know you — and probably will never know you. Roebuck says: “Women in entertainment are exceptionally talented, smart and beautiful, because they have to be. Sometimes they want to explore sexuality and vulnerability in their work. Then the pitchforks come out, how dare they be amazing AND sexual? You can only be one or the other! Why is talent and hard work seemingly erased once you’ve seen a woman naked?”

“It makes sense then to interpret it as a horror film, where we have the dividing tropes of final girls and sexy bimbos who die first for being too damn sexy,” Roebuck continues. “We put the sexy woman in the movie so we can see her be sexy and then kill her for it. It’s a lose-lose. Being a woman in art is to be objectified one way or the other. Success is the monster chasing you, waiting for you to be a little too sexy, knife ready.”

Tomorrow Comes Crashing‘s latest single “Touch & Go” is 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.

“‘Touch & Go’ is a broken fantasy that was pretty directly inspired by ‘Time to Pretend’ by MGMT,” Smut’s Tay Roebuck explains. “The pursuit of success and the daydreams we have of ‘making it’ are pretty easily shattered once you put that fantasy in the modern world. The song ends with the realization that the best part of music will always be the community you build with it.” In the song’s last moments she sings, “The basement flooded / The coffee burned / The van is broken down / We all take turns / Touch and go.” 

Fittingly, the accompanying video looks and feels as though it could have aired during 120 Minutes.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: bat zoo Shares Shimmering “Diamond Lane”

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. Last month, I wrote about the hauntingly minimalist, Nick Hakim-like “Frozen Milk,” which featured the rising Berlin-based accompanying himself on strummed acoustic guitar paired with swirling electronics and his achingly tender falsetto sining lyrics that thematically touched upon chaos and the brief and desperate search for balance amidst moments of self-destruction and connection.

bat zoo’s latest single, the sleek and slickly produced, The Weeknd-like “Diamond Lane” is anchored around swirling and glistening synths, skittering beats serving as a lush and dreamy soundscape for his yearning and heartbroken vocal turn. But just under the slick, dance floor friendly surface, the song is a bittersweet and melancholic reflection on a love affair that has slowly unraveled, fueled with the recognition that the narrator may be powerless to do anything to slow it down — or to stop it.

Lyrically abstract yet deeply intimate, the song simultaneously feels like a stream of consciousness pulled from the depths of the narrator’s memory and a conversation — or more likely a monologue — bitterly directed toward that someone, who once meant everything and now is leaving.

The accompanying video is a hazy, dream-like visual that feels like a regret-tinged tinged fever dream.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 75th Birthday, Mark Mothersbaugh!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates DEVO co-founder and frontman Mark Mothersbaugh’s 75th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dominique and the Diamonds Share Playful and Buoyant “Lovely Dream”

Led by Colombian-American frontwoman Dominque Gomez, Los Angeles-based country band Dominique and the Diamonds can trace their origins back to last year: the band came together on a whim, after Gomez was asked to perform a country set at the local summertime concert series, The Grand Ole Echo. 

Friends from cosmic country outfit Caravan 222 and rock band Triptides were asked to perform as a backing band for Gomez and over the course of the year gained buzz locally for a sound that seemingly channels Linda Ronstadt, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Townes Van Zandt and the Laurel Canyon sound — but with a contemporary feel. 

The Los Angeles-based country outfit’s Glenn Brigman-produced debut EP, For a Fool is slated for a June 13, 2025 release. Recorded using a mix of analog and digital equipment in Brigman’s Crestline, CA-based studio, For a Fool EP channels the golden age of classic country with the material touching upon tried-and-true themes of romance, lonesomeness, revenge, drunken playfulness while anchored around the old school song-as-story. And the material sees the band weaving the experiences of the contemporary world, too. 

“I write country music and love to sing country songs, but I’ve always associated myself with the Colombian half of my identity more than the white side. My Dad and his immediate family immigrated to the US from Colombia in 1966 and they’d endured so much struggle in the process,” Dominique and the Diamonds’ Dominque Gomez says. “Then, you have my Mom’s side who were small town farmers in Minnesota and Southern trailer park girls. When you look at me, you see a brown girl, and I fucking love that. And when I was younger, I felt like I was forced to fit into a category, but I was too white to be Latina and too Latina to be white. It’s a beautiful thing to have the wisdom now to embrace both and just be me.”

Last month, I wrote about “For a Fool,” a Patsy Cline-styled ballad of heartbreak, despair and uneasy acceptance anchored around some gorgeous pedal steel and Gomez’s Linda Ronstadt-like vocal. Inspired by the modern “situationship” phenomenon and Gomez’s experiences dating in Los Angeles, the song describes a bitterly common scenario: dealing with a love interest you really dig, who’s an unserious time waster that’s playing with your heart and emotions. And while the song’s narrator is heartbroken, she clearly recognizes her time and her worth, offering a bit of wisdom for anyone who encounters this sort of lover — leave that fool alone before you get played for a fool. 

For a Fool‘s second and latest single “Lovely Dream” is a playful, Hank WIlliams-like bit of honky tonk, anchored around an oompah-like groove and a gorgeous and expressive pedal steel solo that’s simultaneously lush and spacious enough for Gomez’s big, Linda Ronstadt-like delivery.

The song’s buoyant nature is deceptive, because at its core, is a narrator waxing nostalgically on the honeymoon phase of a relationship from the perspective of a heartbroken narrator looking back at the whole experience with some bittersweet — and perhaps just bitter — retrospect.

Sometimes the end of a relationship can make you feel as though you had been walking around with a mix of rose colored glasses, wool, blind hope and naiveté. The retrospect at the core of the song gives that heartache and the feeling of being a made a fool a proper sense of perspective, and hopefully the understanding that you won’t be fooled again.

“’Lovely Dream’ is a silly little love song that I had written for an ex back in 2018, so it’s been sitting in the archives for awhile [sic]. The words ‘lovely dream’ were just the best way to describe the beginning of that relationship,” Dominque and the Diamond’s Dominque Gomez explains. “Emphasis on the beginning… Ha! I was in my early to mid twenties at that time; young, naive and only saw through rose colored glasses. I tie nature into my songwriting at any chance I can get. The relationship to me, at the time, was as harmonious as a budding meadow in the springtime— full of new life, color and energy just waiting to be embraced by the sun.”

Directed by Hamilton Boyce, the accompanying video for “Lovely Dream” features Dominque Gomez in the brush and foothills, before sitting down for a makeup session to make her done up like an old-fashioned rodeo clown.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nation of Language Share Shimmering “Inept Apollo”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop act and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — have managed to amass a rapidly growing and devout national and international fanbase as a result of a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, post-punk and shoegaze. The JOVM mainstays three albums, 2020’s Introduction, Presence, 2021’s A Way Forward and 2023’s Strange Disciple have received coverage from Billboard, The New York Times, Document Journal, BrooklynVegan, MOJO, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum and more.

Adding to a rapidly rising profile, the band has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and recently “Weak In Your Light” was featured in the series finale of the Netflix hit show You. They’ve also become a mainstay on the international festival circuit, playing sets at Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Pukklepop, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and a growing list of others.

The acclaimed outfit recently signed to Sub Pop Records, who will release their new music globally in 2025 and beyond. The Brooklyn trio’s Sub Pop debut “Inept Apollo” continues a run of nostalgia-inducing, 80s New Wave-inspired material while further cementing reputation for crafting slickly produced dance floor friendly numbers anchored around earnest lyricism and songwriting.

“Work is a respite from pain. Whether it’s a paying job or just the thing you pour yourself into, having a direction to move in, finding a flow state, it can move focus away from the heaviness of the heart. So after life’s losses, in moments of despair, we resolve time and time again to dive headfirst into the work as best we can,” Devaney says of the new single. “But the artistic process also tends to be when imposter syndrome rears its ugly head – when I find my inner monologue spiraling: ‘this is the best coping mechanism I have at my disposal and I’m not even qualified to be doing it.’

He continues, “Accompanying the song is a killer music video by our friend and brother John MacKay: it is an homage to creative pursuits, and in some ways came to represent the feeling of living in a city as an artist. The video feels like walking through an old warehouse in Brooklyn, full of practice spaces and studios, each room occupied by artists striving to express and understand themselves and their place in the world. No matter how bizarre the act may seem or how much self-doubt or pain runs through the mind of the creator, the beautiful thing is the striving and continuing on, rather than the final product or any notion of ‘success.’ The power of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kilo Kish Shares Surreal Visual for Yearning, Club Banging “enough”

Kilo Kish is an acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, creator director and designer working in music, film, installation and writing. 2022’s AMERICAN GURL was released to praise from Pitchfork, NPR, Teen Vogue, NYLON and The New York Times, and helped lead to features in Vogue, Cultured and others.

AMERICAN GURL expanded into a curational project in collaboration with Womxn in Windows founder and creator Zehra Zehra, which has been displayed in galleries and museums like the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art, Hauser & Wirth and Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. She has collaborated with several brands including Bulgari, Levi’s, Rodarte and more.

Kish just wrapped up a residency with Womxn In Windows at MOCA, Los Angeles, which celebrated the launch of American Gurl: home-land, a presentation of six short films that negotiate themes on land, diaspora and displacement from Melvonna Ballenger, Shenny De Los Angeles, Ella Ezeike, Solange Knowles, Alima Lee and Cauleen Smith. Earlier this week Womxn In Windows announced their screening series at the Academy Museum, American Gurl: Seeking . . . guest programmer by Kish and Zehra. The films offer nuanced perspectives on how women of color navigate the complexities of systems and institutions. 

Her highly-anticipated EP Negotiations is slated for a Friday release through Independent Co. The six-song EP reportedly sees the acclaimed interdisciplinary artist further amplifying her forward-thinking and advanced creative mind with a poignant effort, that’s a deep and thought-provoking dive into the nuances of technology and the large role it has within creativity.

Thematically, the EP explores the intricate interplay between the human body, technology and nuances of emotional and cognitive processing in a rapidly evolving world. By framing the body as a machine, Kish intentionally invites a dialogue about the transactional nature of energy expenditure, suggesting that our existence is defined by a constant exchange in which every output necessitates an input, ultimately leading to both depletion and potential renewal.

At the core of the EP is the notion of error and glitch — a reflection of contemporary life marked by instability, chaos and uncertainty. And as a result, Kish delves into the scripts we write into ourselves, questioning their efficacy in an era seemingly defined by incessant, rapid-fire change. How we are programmed shapes our responses to these incessant, rapid-fire changes, illustrating that we all inevitably fall prey to our programming and thought patterns. That introspective observation should resonate deeply with our collective experience of navigating a landscape rife with digital and emotional noise, global systems failure and environmental collapse prompting a need for the sort of manual resets needed when you reprogram a malfunctioning device.

Sonically, the EP’s creative process utilized a finite set of sonic parameters and instruments that would reflect the overall thematic core. Drawing from early hip-hop and electronic music techniques like skipping, scratching, vocal processing, vocoders and modular synthesizers, the result is a sound that balances the synthetic with moments of humanity, creating a machine-like atmosphere.

Negotiations EP‘s latest single “enough” is a slickly produced, hypnotic track featuring glistening and percussive synth arpeggios, skittering beats, and chopped up vocodered and processed vocal samples serving as a lush, club friendly yet creepily uneasy bed for Kish’s yearning, validation seeking delivery.

“This song is kind of about throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and the fantasy that we play out on the internet, how things are not always as they seem,” Kish explains. “Wanting the affection and love of complete strangers, but not really knowing why. The need for viewership and adoration that’s become a mainstay in the way we live nowadays, not just as artists but as everyday people.”

Co-directed by Kish and David Laven and produced by Even/Odd, the accompanying video for “enough” is part of a suite of interconnected films accompanying the Negotiations EP shot and based within the same immersive world. Calling back to the EP’s first video “reprogram,” where Kish danced alone in a stark, gray office, the video for “enough” is set in the same setting — but this time, we see an older businessman type, whose life at that moment sees him vacillating between listening to “enough” on his laptop and hearing it as a part of his own internal dialogue.

Understandably, the businessman is confused, intrigued and then somehow, instinctually moved to sway and dance to the song in the office. As the video pans out a bit, we see a completely unfazed Kish sitting on the floor, observing and writing notes.