JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 94th anniversary of the birth of Johnny Cash.
Throwback: Happy Black History Month!/Happy 98th Birthday, Fats Domino!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and the 98th anniversary of the birth of the pioneering Fats Domino.
Throwback: Happy Black History Month!/Happy 55th Birthday, Erykah Badu!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and Erykah Badu’s 55th birthday.
New Audio: The Womack Sisters Share Defiant “You Went Away Too Long”
Rising Los Angeles-based soul trio The Womack Sisters — Kucha, Zeimani and BG — can trace the origins of their careers to their childhood: The trio were singing before they could even walk. They grew up on stages and in studios across the globe, singing behind their parents, as well as their legendary uncle, Bobby Womack. Adding to The Womack Sisters’ remarkable pedigree, their grandfather was the iconic Sam Cooke.
No matter where they called home at the time — London, Thailand, Amsterdam, Kenya, West Virginia, The Bahamas — music and family were always a constant at the center of their lives. Of course, fas the sisters grew up, each with their own respective journeys, experiences and heartaches, they managed to find their own voices and their own path.
Each member of the trio has their own individual vocal, but they playfully trade leads and effortlessly (and perfectly) blend their harmonies in a way that only siblings can.
Back in 2016, a mutual friend introduced The Womack Sisters to Daptone Records co-owner and producer Gabriel Roth, a.k.a. Bosco Mann, who heard them sing and feel quickly and deeply in love with their voices. Shortly after, they went met at Daptone’s Riverside, CA-based Penrose Studios to record their label debut, “If You Want Me“/”I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye).”
The trio’s latest single “You Went Away Too Long” opens with a broodingly cinematic introductory section featuring shimmering and quivering Rhodes, regal horns and orchestral chimes before quickly shifting to a tender, classic soul-inspired first verse showcasing an achingly melancholic longing of women, who just haven’t been able to forget or get over a lover, who did them wrong. But by the defiant chorus, it’s obvious that the women have the confidence to refuse to wait too long for their due. Life is short and you can’t delay on living the best life you can possibly live.
“This song holds a deep meaning that’s different for each of us,” the trio explains. “Imagine precious time stolen from your life, slipping away like sand through an hourglass, as your loved ones slowly forget the sound of your laughter. ‘You Went Away Too Long’ is a song about love and life interrupted.”
New Audio: Marie Dahlstrøm Shares Chilly and Longing “Frostbite”
Over the past handful of years, Roskilde-born, London-based singer/songwriter, producer and JOVM mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm has built a catalog of contemporary R&B rooted in neo-soul, jazz and understated groove that includes 2020’s Like Sand and 2023’s A Good Life, albums that have received applause from Billboard, NPR, Complex, COLORS, NYLON, The Line of Best Fit, Wonderland and a list of others. Dahlstrom has also received co-signs from BBC 1Xtra, The Joe Budden Podcast and others. Adding to a growing national and internationally recognized profile, she has collaborated with Odeal, Jay Prince, Kofi Stone and Braxton Cook.
Building upon a growing profile, the Danish-born JOVM mainstay will be releasing a highly-anticipated effort later this year. The new effort will mark a new chapter for the acclaimed and rising artist, and it will include her latest single, the Dan Diggas-produced “Frostbite.”
“Frostbite” is a lush mix of Quiet Storm-inspired neo-soul, hip-hop soul and broodingly chilly atmospherics featured twinkling keys paired with the JOVM mainstay’s effortlessly soulful and expressive delivery. While pushing her sound into an increasingly atmospheric direction, the song is rooted in the acclaimed artist’s knack for penning lyrics that are lived-in personal yet universal experience.
“‘Frostbite’ is a song about longing and about how the feeling lingers in the body. It’s drawn from many experiences in my life, all wrapped into this piece,” Dahlstrøm explains. “It was recorded on my old piano at my parents’ house in Roskilde, in my childhood bedroom. We tracked it with one small mic held close to the piano — nothing pro about it at all — but the instrument has this warm, muted tone that really captured the feeling. To me, this is what music is about.”
Throwback: Black History Month: Al Green
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and pays tribute to Al Green.
Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, George Harrison!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 82nd anniversary of the birth of George Harrison.
New Video: Sunglaciers Return with Shimmering “Only Love”
With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their sons are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms.
The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.
Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs reportedly captured fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation.
The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties.
Spiritual Content will include the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” and the album’s latest single “Only Love.” Seemingly channeling a synthesis of Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four, “Only Love” sees Resnik, Blanchard and company musing on the transformative and redemptive power of love — but it’s underpinned with the subtly bitter reality that nothing is forever, not even love.
Directed by Ethan Clark, the accompanying video features the band’s members at a packed house party but love — whether of someone else or self-love made the video’s protagonist change his life, perhaps for the better. We see this through a series of woozy flash backs and flash forwards, sometimes within the same scene.
“Only love can upend your lifestyle, change your patterns. You’re young, you’re out at parties all the time,” the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays explain. “Then something happens. Years pass in an instant. Maybe you found love, or self-love, or something else. Got healthy. Got busy. Where you used to go out, now you stay in. The party’s not over; it rages on in your memories. This video is kind of an illustration of those memories.
New Audio: ADULT. Returns with Incendiary “R U 4 $ALE”
Throughout the course of their 25-year history, Detroit-based industrial, synth punks ADULT. — Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller — have embodied steadfast frustration, distrust and apprehension. Typically for acts that have been together that long, the edges began to soften with time, but the duo isn’t interested or even remotely concerned about the comfort of legacy.
Kissing Luck Goodbye, the duo’s 10th album is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Dais Records. Reportedly, the album features music that may arguably be the most visceral, urgent, angry and uncompromising effort of their career to date. Built with upgraded gear and a whole new library of sounds, Kissing Luck Goodbye‘s material is crushingly dynamic, louder and much clearer with Kuperus’ commanding delivery being given much greater delivery in the mix, outlining an arsenal of vivid, caustic calls, chants and music. Laughter, whether in the lyrics or as possessed presence, serves as a leitmotif through the material that speaks to the menacing absurdity of our moment.
The album will include the previously released single “No One Is Coming,” a rousingly anthemic and urgent scorcher, and the album’s latest single “R U 4 $ALE.” Much like its immediate predecessor, “R U 4 $ALE” is a hypnotic, urgent and forceful banger that features one of Kuperus’ most dynamic and unhinged vocal performances to date, anchored around an incendiary mantra of our age “The chaos is what they want!”
The song doubles as a declaration of intent: to meet a burning and rotting world of greed, disarray and abuse with defiant, masterfully assembled chaos. “You have two choices in this hellscape we’re living in right now, which is either fight or be depressed,” ADULT.’s Adam Lee Miller says. “Either one is okay. But, you know, our choice to fight back was simple.”
New Video: Bibi Club Returns with incendiary “George Sand”
Deriving their name from their living room discotheque, where their “bibis” — or loved ones — come to dance, the Montréal-based duo Bibi Club — Adèle Trottier-Rivard (vocals, keys) and Nicolas Basque (guitar) — earned acclaim across both Québec and Europe with their debut album, 2022’s Le soleil et la mer, an album that won a Most Promising Award at that year’s GAMIQ Awards, a Discovery of the Year at that year’s ADISQ Awards and landed on the Polaris Music Prize long list.
Le soleil et la mer received praise by a number of French outfits including Les Inrocks, Magic Magazine, Libération and France Inter and landed on Le Devoir, Les Inrocks‘ and Tsugi’s Best Albums of 2022 lists. And adding to a rapidly growing international profile, the album received airplay from BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq.
Their sophomore album, 2024’s Feu de garde saw the band expanding upon their sound with darker textures and luminous synths. The album earned several nominations at that year’s ADISQ Awards and landed on the Polaris Music Prize short ling. The album was FNAC‘s album of the month for May and received praise from MOJO, Télérama, Record Collector, Uncut and many more.
Building upon a growing profile, the Montréal-based duo have begun making a run of the international festival circuit with sets at SXSW, The Great Escape, FOCUS Wales, MaMA Festival, Osheaga, The New Colossus Festival, as well as clubs in Brazil, Germany and Canada. They’ve also opened for Blonde Redhead, Circuit des Yuex and a list of others.
Bibi Club’s highly-anticipated third album Amaro is slated for a Friday release through Secret City Records. The album sees the acclaimed French Canadian duo inviting the listener to brave the dark beasts that shadow us beneath the surface, and to devote ourselves to the healing power of a fierce will to live. It explores the liminal spectrum between the here and beyond, pointing to love, nature and community as the deeply unifying purpose. The album’s material reportedly draw a detailed map of a world completely of its own, following the trajectory traced by the pair in recent years.
Now, out of the living room, we dance in a mental space overloaded with grief and fear in their most rawest forms. Following the death of two dear, loved ones in the last year, the mantra “I want to love, I want to live,” resonates intensely in each song’s melody, underlined by the belief that if the heart is a place that never dies, we must reach it as quickly as possible.
Inspired by their tours with Blonde Redhead and Circuit des Yeux and a collaboration with Calvin Johnson, the duo’s sound now incorporates elements of avant pop, electronic body music, dark wave and neo-folk while simultaneously borrowing from baroque sounds with harpsichord, trumpet and ritual chants. The album also features contributions from saxophonist Dimitri Milbrun and singer/songwriter Helena Deland, who help contribute to its overall sound.
Amaro will include “Washing Machine,” which I wrote about last month, and the album’s latest and last pre-release single “George Sand.” Much like its immediate predecessor, “George Sand” is a breakneck, motorik-like chug featuring Dimitri Milbrun’s incendiary saxophone playing paired with Trottier-Rivard’s dreamy cooing. One-part dream pop, one-part no wave, one-part post punk and one-part art school punk, “George Sand” The band explains that the song was inspired by the radical 19th century feminist writer’s forest manifesto — an ode to life and nature.
“The writer George Sand was not only a strong, feminist and radical person, she was also a renowned botanist. This song is inspired by her manifesto for the survival of the Fontainebleau forest, an ode to life and nature, to the plants and trees that guide us,” the Montréal-based duo explain. “A song full of thirst for life, about the force of nature and the therapeutic benefits it provides. Nico quickly programmed the bass and the 606 drum machine, then everything fell into place, like the song. It was evident that the song needed our friend, radical artist Dimitri Milbrun to add some incendiary saxophone. At the end of the song, the guitar and saxophone blend together to form a force that destroys everything in its path.”
Directed and edited by Anna Arrobas, the accompanying video features the acclaimed duo performing the song in front of fire-based projections and brooding lighting by Flavie Lemée.
Throwback: Happy Black History Month: Salt ‘N’ Pepa
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and pays tribute to Salt ‘N’ Pepa.
Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, George Thorogood!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates George Thorogood’s 76th birthday.
New Audio: A Place to Bury Strangers Share Menacing “Everyone’s The Same”
New York-based JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing a rarities album, Rare and Deadly through Dedstrange on April 3, 2026.
Following 2024’s Synthesizer, Rare and Deadly sees the band cracking open a decade-long vault of raw nerve and sonic chaos. Spanning 2015-2025, this collection of demos, B-sides, abandoned experiments and forgotten fragments reveals the band at their most unfiltered, frequently caught between breakthrough ideas and beautiful mistakes.
Pulled from Oliver Ackermann’s personal archive of late-night recordings, blown-out tapes and half-finished sessions, the collection’s tracks pulse with the unruly energy that ATPBS has long been known for, but more dangerous with more jagged edges — on purpose.
Countless bands have opened up their vaults to fans and others, but Rare and Deadly is truly unprecedented: Every format is different — and as a result, tells a different story. The CD, cassette, vinyl and digital editions each feature their own unique track listing. No single version features the “complete” album. Instead, each format is its own window into Ackermann’s archive, revealing alternate paths, missing links and parallel “what if” versions of the band’s inner life. It’s deliberately unstable with the album shifting depending on how you choose to hear it, mirroring the chaos of its creation.
Across the collection’s tracks, you can hear the evolution of Ackermann’s restlessly creative mind. Some pieces feel like prototypes for future chaos, seeds that later bloomed on studio albums. Others are dead ends — ideas too volatile, too strange or too personal to ever fit the frame of a proper release. The tracks feature riffs mutated by malfunctioning pedals, songs born from gear pushed past its limits, or delicate melodies overwhelmed by towering walls of feedback.
Rare and Deadly‘s first single “Everyone’s The Same” is anchored around a tense and menacing, motorik pulse and swirling, feedback-drenched guitar paired with Ackermann’s vocal, which manages to be simultaneously defiant, punchy and yearning.
“I had a dream where a man led me to a brook, peaceful and calm. When he turned his head slightly, I saw the most evil smile imaginable,” Ackermann says of the song. “But when I looked directly at him, it was just the back of his head again. Beauty and horror coexisting in the same space. It felt like hell leaking into something serene. Maybe that’s reality sometimes. And maybe pretending otherwise is a kind of survival.”
New Audio: Population II Shares Brooding “Magouilleux”
Last year’s 14-song Dominic Vanchesteing-produced Maintenant Jamais saw the acclaimed Montréal-based psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — saw the trio dating from their formative influences with a deep sense of sophistication.
The trio’s third album included “Le thé set prêt,” and “Mariano (Jamais je ne t’oublierai)” a krautrock/prog rock-like take on psych rock and the brooding organ and synth-driven “La Trippance.”
And just before they were about to head to Austin to play last year’s SXSW, the trio shared the Dominic Vanchesteing-directed live short film, Carillon — Population II in concert. Shot among the massive, brutalist-inspired concrete monoliths of the Monument québécois à la mémoire des héros du Long-Sault, the footage seemingly channels Pink Floyd‘s Live at Pompeii — but shot with a camera eye that languorously floats and circles around both the band and the enormous monoliths around then.
The JOVM mainstays supported the album with extensive touring across Europe, the US, Mexico and their native Canada.
Continuing upon that momentum, the Montréal-based trio will be releasing Maintenant Jamais‘ follow-up, Gimmicks EP through Bonsound on April 3, 2026. The vinyl edition will see an April 24, 2026 release and will include Serpent Échelle EP, which was previously only available digitally and on cassette on the B-side.
Featuring a blend of vocal and instrumental tracks, Gimmicks serves as a companion to Maintenant Jamais. “It’s an extension of the electronic sounds we explored on Maintenant Jamais, with tracks like “13 1 3 1” and “Poudreuse Blues”, the band’s Pierre-Luc Gratton explains. “Even though we added upright piano and fuzz bass to some of the songs, our number one rule for this project was: keyboards and synthesizers, first and foremost!” With the new material seeing the trio completely eschewing guitar, they continue to showcase their remarkable versatility.
The use of drum machine allowed the musicians to push their own boundaries while further exploring a synth-driven sound. “It made us rethink our rhythmic habits and add bursts of intensity by experimenting with timbres and sound dynamics,” the band says. The result is an EP of material that’s at times unsettling and other times dreamy but perfectly calibrated to the point where constraint gives way to ingenuity, freedom and friendship.
Gimmicks EP’s first single “Magouilleux” quickly unfolds with dreamy synth arpeggios and droning keys paired with buzzing synths and propulsive drumming. Gratton’s husky delivery effortlessly blends with the song’s brooding arrangement, which subtly conveys a sense of menace and unease. And as a result, the song showcases the band’s ability to be intense and forceful — but with a deliberate restraint.