JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Lil’ Kim’s 52nd birthday.
Category: women who kick ass
New Video: sundayclub Shares Shimmering and Broodingly Conflicted “Corydon Ave (To Meet You)”
Winnipeg-based indie duo sundayclub — Courtney and Nikki — have quickly cemented a sound and approach that blends hazy indie pop and dreamy textures with unfiltered storytelling. The result is material that’s much like blurry photograph, grainy yet glowing, fleeting yet full of feeling and life.
The duo’s nine-song, self-titled, full-length debut saw its official release today through Paper Bag Records. Their debut is deeply informed by the stillness of rural Manitoba, where the duo started the band as a way of processing the very strange limbo of early adulthood — that feeling of being caught between who you once were and who you’re slowly becoming. Fittingly, the album is rooted in place: in a romanticized, re-examined Winnipeg with its hard edges softened in the way that memory often soften things. Thematically, the album touches upon growing up, growing apart and growing into your own skin.
The album includes the previously released “Camera Shy,” “Blue Wave,” and the album’s latest single “Corydon Ave (To Meet You).” “Corydon Ave (To Meet You)” is a shimmering tune that’s simultaneously brooding, tense, full of barely contained longing, and rousingly anthemic while capturing a narrator, who’s conflicted, guilt-ridden and obsessed with someone — and the narrator just can’t quite figure out what to do or if what they want from this person is even possible. You can sense the desire to tell the
“Corydon Ave (To Meet You)” can trace its origins to the neighborhood where the band’s Nikki grew up — Winnipeg’s Corydon, a culturally rich pocket of the city that Courtney came to know through him. Spending time there, she found herself unexpectedly and intensely struck by a new acquaintance, who happened to be from the same neighborhood.
“Along with being struck with the beauty of it, I became impossibly and unexpectedly struck by a new acquaintance who also happened to be from the area,” Courtney explains. “Realizing the intense feelings and infatuation that quickly developed, the song took a deeply personal turn. It became an opportunity to create this world in which the two of us could be together, despite it being so fragile in reality.”
At the time, Courtney was navigating her sexuality, and what followed was complicated, consuming guilt-ridden and heady. The song became a way to hold all of it. “I was starting to explore my sexuality around this time and so there were also a lot of confusing, guilt-ridden feelings that came with it as well,” Courtney adds. “The relationship felt almost hedonistic at times because it felt so forbidden and self-indulgent and yet felt like something I wasn’t supposed to want or enjoy. It was a constant gauging of mine and her physical and emotional boundaries and I found myself wrestling between wanting to preserve and yet cross them at the same time.”
The gorgeously shot visual captures the narrator’s feverish, barely contained desire for her love interest in the subtle and often confusing “did that mean what I desperately hope it means?” moments of our lives, when we love someone and aren’t sure if it’s reciprocated and are afraid to take a bold chance. And if you’re queer or exploring what your sexuality is, that moment can invite a crushing fear — of being outed against your will or worse.
Throwback: Happy 87th Birthday, Mavis Staples!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Mavis Staples’ 87th birthday.
New Video: London’s Eleanor Moss Shares Gorgeous and Intimate “The Way It Feels”
London-based singer/songwriter Eleanor Moss will be releasing her full-length debut, The Knife, The Needle on August 21, 2026 through Merge Records. The nine-song album concerns itself with the way relationships between people are transformed, complicated and troubled by love. It’s a devastating work and a feat of tight lyrical construction that is simultaneously patient and vulnerable, opulently rendered and keenly felt. But interestingly, The Knife, The Needle emerged from a place of restraint with Moss — staying in a cabin near her parents’ house in the Scottish Highlands after initially recording an entirely different version of the album in New York (“a bit rollicking,” she notes) — feeling the pangs of the album she hadn’t recorded — “quieter, weirder, more English.”
Recording an album with a new ensemble and producer/engineer Pete Miles was a risk, but for Moss, setting aside an already completed effort was worth it. With the quieter, weirder, more English sound, Moss attempts to capture something fleeting, ephemeral and honest about the moments in which love, for better or worse, irrevocably changes someone.
The album will feature the previously released “Sarah Waiting in the Car,” and its latests single, the breathtakingly gorgeous and timeless “The Way It Feels.” Moss’ achingly yearning and expressive vocal is accompanied by birdsong and her strummed acoustic, classical guitar — and the result is an intimate, timeless picture of a universe created in the bond between two people with the unvarnished humility and honesty of a narrator, who says “the more I learn, the less I understand.”
“This was the last song written for the album, and feels to me like it sums up the spirit of the record. The more I learn about love the less I know, the more I know about someone, the more I know I don’t know them,” Moss explains. “It feels like an appropriate last song for an album about paradoxes; love asks us to hold contradiction without giving in to its discomfort. A song about not turning away, but turning towards.”
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Matthew Thorne, the accompanying video for “The Way It Feels” was shot in the Greek Peloponnese on 16mm film with Director of Photography Tasos Chatzis — and fittingly is as gorgeous and mediative as the song.
New Audio: BelaBela’s Posthumously Released “Virgin Mary” Marks Launch of Bella Angel Fund
Bella Isabella Catherine Jhun was a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, dancer, visual artist and aspiring producer, best known as the creative mastermind behind the shoegaze project BelaBela. Jhun’s work explored themes of vulnerability, spirituality, heartbreak and […]
New Video: Sophia Bel Shares Atmospheric and World -Weary “Rat Race”
Montréal-based artist Sophia Bel exploded into the local and national scenes with her angsty full-length debut, 2022’s Anxious Avoidant, an effort released to praise from Le Devoir, Le Canal Auditif and EUPHORIA, and landed on the year-end lists of several media outlets, including RANGE Magazine, Exclaim! and CJLO.
Bel stepped away from the rat race to recuperate from tech fatigue and the relentless pressures of social media. After a few years away from the spotlight, the acclaimed Canadian artist will be releasing her highly-anticipated sophomore album, When The Cows Come Home on May 7, 2027 through Bonsound.
Drawn to the spaces between chaos and stillness, the Montréal-based singer/songwriter explores what it means to be human in an increasingly distracted, modern world. Pairing intimate songwriting with dreamy, organic soundscapes, Bel transforms seemingly mundane, everyday moments into quiet reflections on identity, connection and meaning. In a world driven by instant gratification, constant stimulation and productivity, her work is a gentle reminder that stillness, vulnerability and reflection are not indulgences — but are necessary to our humanity.
When The Cows Comes Home‘s first single “Rat Race” is a slow-burning tune that features an atmospheric arrangement of twinkling keys, gently padded drums and a supple bass line beneath Bel’s ethereal and world-weary delivery. And while subtly channeling A Storm in Heaven and No Come Down-era The Verve, “Rat Race” is anchored in an unvarnished honest, vulnerability, expressing a deep-seated exhaustion and a desperate desire to finally slow down.
Directed by Bel, the accompanying video for “Rat Race” follows the Montréal-based artist on top of what appears to be one of those double-decker tourist buses in a shirt, tie and trench coat through the city’s Central Business District –to my eyes, it looks like Boulevard Rene Levesque — with a briefcase and old-fashioned cell phone. But we see her get fed up with it all, throw the cell phone down, take the trench coat off and loosen her tie. Maybe some of us should do the same.
Throwback: Happy 81st Birthday, Debbie Harry!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the iconic Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry’s 81st birthday.
Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Evelyn “Champagne” King!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Evelyn “Champagne” King’s 66th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 55th Birthday, Missy Elliott!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrations Missy Elliott’s 55th birthday.
New Video: Lisa LeBlanc Shares Rollicking “Whole Lotta Talkin'”
Lisa LeBlanc is an acclaimed Rosaireville, NB-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist (banjo and guitar) and established Acadian icon, thanks to her sound, a unique blend of roots, rock, disco, funk and country. After achieving commercial success with 2012’s self-titled full-length debut, she switched from French to English for 2012’s Highways Heartaches and Time Well Wasted and 2017’s Why You Wanna Leave Runaway Queen, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist that year.
The Rosaireville-born, Montréal-based artist and her backing band toured relentlessly over a handful of years. But by 2019, she took a break from touring to write and travel, and also began to explore studio work, which led her to produce Édith Butler‘s 25th album, 2021’s Le tour du Grand Bois. This new creative path enabled LeBlanc to broaden her musical horizons while using her talents, creativity and passion in the service of others.
The new production skills she learned led to 2022’s Chiac Disco, a critically applauded effort that simultaneously drew from and paid tribute to Lee Hazlewood, disco and funk — simultaneously. LeBlanc supported the album with over 140 shows across North America, Europe and Japan. The album landed on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist — her second time earning the honor. And the album led to a Juno Award nomination. Since then her catalogue has amassed over 35 million streams across all DSPs.
2024’s Live avec l’Orchestre symphonique de Québec saw LeBlanc collaborating with 63 classical musicians to perform her material.
“Whole Lotta Talkin'” is the acclaimed Canadian artist’s first bit of new material since Chiac Disco — and it marks a return to English lyrics. Sonically, “Whole Lotta Talkin'” is a rollickingly fun, hooky tune featuring a classic, surf rock riff and shimmering 60s-styled organ that sounds a bit like a seamless blend of Dick Dale, Link Wray, The Castaways‘ “Liar Liar” and The B-52‘s while showcasing LeBlanc’s mischievous wit and humor. The song recalls a situation all of us have been in at some point: being cornered by someone who just won’t shut up, and doesn’t get the hint that you’re desperately trying to get away from them.
Directed by Alexandre Pelletier, the accompanying video follows the touring adventures of a dysfunctional rock band featuring LeBlanc and her puppet bandmates — two of which are irremediably thoughtless, lazy, womanizing partiers, who besides playing music aren’t holding their weight on anything else. “I wanted to tell this funny, absurd story with the utmost seriousness, as if we were watching an ultra-dramatic musical biopic,” Pelletier explains. But what starts off on a playful note ends with a double puppet murder and a shared bloody secret.
New Video: Earth Tongue Shares Blistering Ripper “Grave Pressure”
Currently-based in Berlin, the Kiwi-based psych duo Earth Tongue — Gussie Larkin (vocals, guitar) and Ezra Simons (drums, vocals) — released their third album Dungeon Vision through In The Red Records earlier this year. Dungeon Vision was written after a busy and extensive bit of touring across both Europe and the UK, and was recorded in Los Angeles with Ty Segall, a collaboration that be traced back to when the duo opened for him during his New Zealand and European tours. Dungeon Vision has already received critical acclaim and has lead to some non-stop international touring to support.
The rising psych duo will be supporting their latest album with a Stateside tour throughout August and September that includes sets at King Gizz’s Field of Vision Festival and Levitation, as well as a headlining and opening dates. The tour includes a September 3, 2026 stop at Elsewhere. You can check out the rest of the tour dates below.
In the meantime, Dungeon Vision single “Grave Pressure” is a blistering, mosh pit friendly ripper that channels Black Sabbath OSees, King Gizz and a lengthy list of others with the song anchored around fuzzy distorted pedaled power chords, thunderous drumming and punchy harmonized lyrics about death and the grave. Goths, metal heads and psych rockers unite!
Directed and produced by Caity Moloney and Tom Mannion, the video plays on 1990s alt rock motifs and features the Kiwi duo being prepared for their own funeral, performing in the funeral best and bursting from their own graves in a kitschy fashion reminiscent of Roger Corman‘s extensive collaboration with Vincent Price.
New Video: M. Woodroe Shares Tense, Bruising “Sweetness, Sweetness”
Brighton-based outfit M. Woodroe — Marcie Garwell (vocals, guitar), Ben Elwin (guitar), Jeorgie Pinder-Whiley (bass), Sam Sezarin (drums) — exploded out of their local DIY scene, quickly establishing themselves as one of the city’s most exciting, emerging acts. Their work pairs intricate, provocative and politically-charged lyrics that touch upon boundary-pushing explorations gender, sexuality and desire with angular, fuzzy and noisy post punk-inspired guitar work.
The emerging and rising Brighton-based have played shows alongside Mcluksy, Prostitute, and others, developing a reputation for an intense live show, while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing. And building upon a growing profile, the post-punk quartet recently signed to Venn Records, who will be releasing their highly-anticipated debut EP, The Treatment of Fractures on September 18, 2026.
The EP’s first single “Sweetness, Sweetness” is a bruising tune that captures an indecisive, neurotic narrator, who’s on the verge of exploding in a seething fury in every direction, fueled by self-flagellation and confusion. While sonically channeling the likes of JOVM mainstays Whispering Sons, the song as the band’s Marcie Garwell explains is “about many things — weakness, identity, acquiescence, confusion . . . the position you drink not to make a fuss. It’s a pipe bomb sent to order, hate mail addressed to compromise, yet it’s indecisive in all its threats and feelings – never sure of where it lies.
Directed by J. Taylor-Jones, the accompanying video for “Sweetness, Sweetness” is a feverish portrayal of discomfit, self-flagellation, dread and despair that feels particularly modern.