Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Windsor, ON’s Talking Violet Shares “120 Minutes”-era MTV like “In Your Mind”

Windsor, ON-based quartet Talking Violet — Jillian Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jayden Turnbull (guitar, vocals), Jeremie Brosseau (drums) and Dylan Iannicello (bass) — have quickly developed and established a sound that sees the Canadian outfit seamlessly blending elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop into what they’ve dubbed “dreamo.” Thematically, their work touches upon how we wrestle with the grief of personal change — especially in personal experiences.

Talking Violet’s latest single, the Justin Meli-produced, Will Yip-mastered “In Your Mind” is a breezy, 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem anchored around swirling shoegazer-like guitars, thunderous drumming and enormous hooks and choruses serving as a lush bed for Goyeau’s yearning delivery. Seemingly channeling The Sundays and Tallies, “In Your Mind” manages to capture a very specific sense of helplessness of loving someone through pain and uncertainty and not knowing what to do — or if you can do anything.

“I’ve had to learn over time that no matter how much you want to help people, so often it’s really out of your hands,” Talking Violet’s Goyeau says. “They have to be the ones to figure things out, but you can do what you can from a supporting line.” Interestingly, the new single continues upon the emotional thread of their recently released sophomore album Everything At Once, continuing to draw from the grief and complications of interpersonal change ,. “These tracks draw on a lot of grief of change, most specifically, the grief of relationship changes in our lives,” Goyeau explains. “I was going through changes that I now see as necessary but were incredibly painful at the time. It made me realize how much I had depended on my relationships with others for my identity. I had to slowly relearn who I was—and spent the next few years healing my people-pleasing baseline. It’s still something I work on every day.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: grandson Returns with Bruising and Anthemic “GOD IS AN ANIMAL”

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

Earlier this summer, I wrote about INERTIA‘S second single, “SELF IMMOLATION,” an urgent and impassioned Rage Against the Machine-meets-Incubus-era nu metal bruiser that thematically saw the rising Los Angeles-based artist unpacking what it means to have a cause to fight –and potentially die for.

Inertia’s third and latest single “GOD IS AN ANIMAL” continues a run of urgent and impassioned, mosh pit friendly rippers that seemingly channels RATM while thematically questioning what it means to be truly civilized, essentially questioning how civilized our society really is — or isn’t. If you’re enraged by the overwhelming cruelty and brutality of the status quo, this song is for you.

“Years ago while on tour I had this idea for a musical based off of George Orwell’s 1984, where a farm animal realizes to run the farm it has to move like a human,” Jordan Benjamin says. “After a couple iterations of that, I decided to release the title track from it on INERTIA, and trust that if that project is meant to be, it’ll find its way to the light someday. It’s certainly a fitting concept for the present moment in time. After all, we live in a ruthless world, supposedly ‘civilized’, where the dominating nations and religions scrapped their way to the top through the savage rule of the animal kingdom. We’re ultimately just apes, too smart (or stupid) for our own good.”

Directed by Joe Weil, the accompanying video for “GOD IS AN ANIMAL” is shot in a lushly cinematic Black and White that features Benjamin and the two funereally dressed women from the “SELF IMMOLATION” video rocking out to the song. The women’s interpretive dance, mimics the extraordinarily ordinariness of animalistic violence in our world.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dylan Shirley Shares a Gritty, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Dylan Shirley is an emerging singer/songwriter and musician, who over the past year has quickly established a sound and approach rooted in genre defying, restless experimentation. Shirley recently released his full-length debut, A Guy Named Dylan.

Clocking in at a little over 90- seconds, the 35-song effort’s latest single “Jan/12/2025 Silly Games” is a bruising and gritty mosh pit friendly ripper that seemingly channels Pantera and Helmet.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

DJ Rukhlove is a mysterious and emerging Spanish electronic music artist and producer, who has been busily and prolifically releasing material over the course of the past year or so. HIs latest single “Zara To Astra,” is a slickly produced, deep house banger that seemingly channels JOVM mainstay LutchamaK and Kraftwerk — in particular, Radioactivity-era and Tour de France-era Kraftwerk.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Friendship Commanders Share Two More Fierce, Earnest Anthems

Nashville-based duo and JOVM mainstays Friendship Commanders — Buick Audra (vocals, guitar) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) — will be releasing their fourth album BEAR on October 10 through their new label home Magnetic Eye Records. 

Co-produced by the duo and their longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou, who also tracked the instrumental performances and mixed the material, BEAR’s songs are unified in a theme that runs throughout in various ways: the ever-elusive idea of belonging, where it occurs and where it absolutely doesn’t. 

Written around the realization that she had essentially been kicked out of womanhood, Friendship Commanders’ Buick Audra wrote BEAR‘s material as a way to document her awarenesses while cataloging other areas of human connection: art, outsider culture, and dark rock venues — all places where empathy and creativity grow wild. She and her bandmate Jerry Roe arranged and performed the album specifically to have two sides to it musically: heavy and light. Salt and sugar. Fire and air. Lost and found. 

Last month, the JOVM mainstays excitedly shared two singles from the forthcoming album: “MELT,” a breakneck yet bold, heart-worn-on sleeve anthem that expresses the sense of betrayal, confusion and heartbreak in a sort of et tu Brute? moment. “KEEPING SCORE,” a defiant war cry of an adult, who has learned to parent and protect her childhood self — and an adult who is willing and able to defend young girls, who remind her of her younger self from the insults and ill-treatment she received when she was their age.

Building upon the momentum of the forthcoming album’s first two singles, the Nashville-based JOVM mainstays have shared two more singles: “X,” continues a remarkable run of bruising yet proudly heart worn on sleeve anthems, rooted in lived-in personal experiences. In the case of “X,” the song is built and informed by the bitter ache of unexpected and tragically unfair loss of a dear one, way too soon.

Written a few weeks after the sudden death of the band’s longtime friend and collaborator Steve Albini, Buick Audra says, ” I was grieving, but I was also watching a generation grieve in ways I’d observed my whole life—stoically, strongly, sentimentally, and somewhat individually. This song is a loving send-up to that lost generation. We wanted the track and visuals to honor some of the artists who raised us creatively, including Steve. The camera I’m holding in the second verse was his. Very moving to have and include it here. He was a young Boomer, but the absolute King of Gen X. Missed and loved.”

“MIDHEAVEN” is arguably one of the more widescreen songs of their growing catalog, a song loose enough that it lets the forceful and dexterous instrumentation and Audra’s powerhouse vocals breath while continuing to showcase the duo’s unerring knack for crafting arena rock hooks and choruses. “MIDHEAVEN goes wider; it gets into this idea of being born under a certain set of stars, and whether or not that has anything to do with who we are. As a person who feels like a lifelong misfit with a nature I can’t seem to change, I’m curious about where that starts. Is it written from the start? I’m willing to believe anything at this point. Some days, it’s tempting to blame it all on the sky.”

“I wanted the video for ‘X’ to have the vibe and look of those by our favorite bands from the Gen X/Grunge era while still being its own thing, so it’s lit, shot and performed in a way that honors that spirit without aping anything too closely (hopefully)! Everyone wanted to appear tough and cool while also not seeming to take what they were doing too seriously.” Friendship Commanders’ Jerry Roe says of the video for “X.” “There’s such a particular mood of the era that no one has captured since. It was the best time for the medium of music videos honestly, and it was a lot of fun to try and channel it. I find it moving to watch in a way that surprises me.”

“‘MIDHEAVEN’ stands out in our discography for being so instrumentally driven. The vocals and melody are just as integral a part of the song as any song in our repertoire, but large portions of this track are just the two of us ripping at each other and it’s an absolute blast to listen to and play.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Winter Teams Up With Tanukichan on Woozy “Hide-A-Lullaby”

Currently, based here in New York, Samira Winter, best known as the mononymic Winter, is a Curitiba, Brazil-born, singer/songwriter, guitarist and bandleader, who cut her teeth playing in her first bands in Boston. Winter relocated to Los Angeles in 2013 and fell in love with the city. She quickly found a sense of belonging in its DIY rock community – the basement of her longtime Echo Park home was host to countless shows and even her first practices — and she grew attached to the city’s cosmic, inspiring aura. But at a certain point, the Brazilian-born artist craved a change of scenery to facilitate self-growth, a painful but necessary realization that inspired — and brought about — a move to NYC.

2022’s What Kind of Blue Are You? was in her words “a total reset” — a dark, healing and intensely personal effort. which firmly cemented the Brazilian-born artist’s unique musical language. As she was beginning to confront the end of her decade-plus long stint in Los Angeles, she was overcome by waves of memories and nostalgia, which helped to stir feelings of deep, pure-hearted reverence for her 20s — catching shows at The Echo, driving through Southern California, the seemingly never ending sun. . .

Winter’s highly-anticipated, Joo Joo Ashworth-produced Adult Romantix is slated for an August 22, 2025 release through her new label home Winspear. Instead of exorcising personal demons, the Brazilian-born artist visited the ghosts of heartfelt memories, which had spilled into her present reality. Chronically an emotional cross-country move, the album was written across a two year period in which she found herself in a transitory, almost nomadic state: frequently in between tours, in different cities and in various sublets. In many ways, the album is reportedly a farewell love letter to her time in Los Angeles — and perhaps to her 20s. Winter describes the album as a “tunneler of summers and memories” inspired by romantic-period books like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and 90s rom-coms, with the material indulging in heady melodrama and romantic and platonic longing — while embracing a lighthearted, youthful innocence.

Adult Romantix‘s final, pre-release single “Hide-A-Lullaby” feat. Tanukichan is a smoldering and woozy bit of dream pop that channels 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock, while seemingly evoking the dizzying giddiness of a summer love affair that you hope will last forever — even if you know, deep down, that nothing lasts forever.

“The song explores themes of the inner self-sabotager, the secrets hidden in the corners of the mind, and the dark forest as a symbol for the subconscious,” Winter explains. “It was amazing to have Hannah van Loon (Tanukichan) sing this one with me—her velvety, whispery voice perfectly complements the song’s haunted, mysterious romantic imagery.”

The accompanying video directed by David Milan Kelly features the band performing in the L.A. river, interspersed with narrative sections inspired by the album’s fictional story of an indie rock romance set during a lost L.A. summer. The second half of the video features documentary-styled interviews with Winter and local visual artists discussing their creative processes and inspirations.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ivy Shares Breezy, Motown-Inspired “Heartbreak”

Formed back in 1994, the acclaimed and beloved indie rock outfit Ivy featured Andy Chase, Dominque Durand and the late Adam Schlesinger. Understandably, Durand and Chase assumed that Ivy was in the rearview after Schlesinger […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Street Eaters Return with Doom-Tinged and Witchy “Spectres”

Oakland-based post punk outfit Street Eaters — co-founders Megan March (vocals, drums) and John No (bass, vocals), along with Joan Toledo (guitar) — will be releasing their long-awaited and highly-anticipated fifth album, Opaque on September 5, 2025 through Dirt Cult Records. The seven-song album reportedly sees the trio attempting to stitch up the bloody wounds of their past while being a meditation on birth, death, excavated trauma, and trying to find steadfast kinfolk in a world that’s increasingly splintered, fucked up and cruel. 

Much like all of us, Street Eaters have been through the wringer a bit since 2017’s The Envoy. 

The band’s guitarist Joan Toledo, left a transphobic family and government in her native Florida, eventually relocating to San Francisco, where they became an editor at Maximum Rocknroll Magazine and a radical union organizer at the world famous City Lights Books. 

The band’s front woman Megan March had a child. And while becoming a mother was, as she puts it, “an incredible joy and opportunity to rewire emotional pathways and deep wounds,” it was also a reminder of her own childhood: March’s mother was violently homophobic and eventually threw Megan and her teenage sister — both queer — from their childhood home. 

For March, childbirth was both a traumatizing and transformational experience. Ironically born on July 4, her baby immediately entered a world steeped in bureaucracy: The hospital was so understaffed that March was neglected until the last moment and was forced to endure an emerging C-section. “I was borderline dehumanized by the toxic, misogynistic nature of the American medical system and its focus on efficiency and profit before care,” she says. 

“Opaque is a record that gets deep into the stark and beautiful reality of growth and transition from trauma and loss,” Street Eaters’ March explains. “What does it mean to wake up one day and realize you are living the way you have always demanded to live  — yet with all those jagged piles of emotional, physical, and social/political baggage still slicing through the veil?” The album isn’t just confrontational; it’s complicated. It sees the band, much like the rest of us, groping towards identity, understanding, and a place in the world in the process of being curated. “It’s a transition into finding peace with the world — a resonant connection with community and chosen family, getting beyond a lot of the pain and hurt,” the band’s John No says. “We’re trying to suture up wounds at this point and create something that’s healthy.”

Last month, I wrote about Opaque‘s first single “Tempers,” a furious, adrenaline pumping ripper that as March explains is about “being in isolation and not being sure what the future is going to be like and how things will be when the storm is over.”  The album’s second and latest single “Spectres” is a doom-tinged, witchy incantation that’s deceptively belies its sweet and deeply loving core. The song’s narrator processes their complicated past while reflecting on healthy parenthood, striving to imbue love, caring and positive direction for their child — with the understanding that she also has to empower the child to be their own person. “I’m working to create a much better emotional landscape for my son o grow in — to find both understanding and healing from the breakage of cycles of abuse and isolation,” the band’s Megan March says.

Filmed by Joey Lusteman and John No, the accompanying video for “Spectres” is split between footage of the band performing in a small club and of March locking herself out in an industrial wasteland, trying to figure her way out.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Shares Broodingly Eerie “Stay Out Of The Basement”

Since the release of 2022’s Endless, the Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays  Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — have released a growing collection of standalone singles, including the first cover of their history, their take on Talk Talk’s 1984 smash-hit “It’s My Life” and “DREAMCRUSHER.“

The duo’s latest single “Stay Out Of The Basement” sees the duo mischievously blurring the lines between playful fantasy and broodingly eerie undertone, anchored around Bentley’s plaintive Thom Yorke-like delivery ethereally floating over a minimalist production featuring skittering beats and swirling. reverb-soaked, shoegazer-textured synths. The song evokes the simultaneous feeling of snuggling in a warm blanket — but then feeling something grab at your toes.

“‘Stay Out Of The Basement’ is the second in a series of songs that started on ukulele—but this one took a left turn. I wrote the original idea, dropped it into Pro Tools, and handed it off to Jordan. Usually, we keep parts of that first take—vocals, lyrics, melodies—but in this case, none of it made the cut.

The original version had solid ideas, but it didn’t fit the new direction. The vibe, the vocal phrasing—it just didn’t connect. So we started fresh. What you hear now is entirely built around Jordan’s instrumental, and the final vocal fits it naturally.

Each song in this series lands somewhere different. Some stay true to the original demo, others evolve into something completely new. ‘Stay Out Of The Basement’ is one of the rare ones that left the ukulele version behind entirely.”

The accompanying visual features the duo performing the song in studio, as reel-to-reel tape machines run. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, Mark Knopfler!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Dire Straits frontman and creative mastermind Mark Knopfler’s 76th birthday.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: R.I.P. Sheila Jordan

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of the legendary Sheila Jordan.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: New Jersey’s Nuse Shares a Gritty, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Formed back in the ’90s, Hillsborough, NJ-based metal outfit NUSE — Mike LaMastro (vocals, guitar), Eric Mangual (bass), Bob Mangual (drums) and Mike Wilday (guitar) — exploded into the regional scene with the release of a handful of early EPs before, their full-length debut, 2022’s Hung Well, which was re-released in 2005 through No Joke Records.

Their sophomore album, 2008’s Forever Starts Today featured the underground smash “Beat to Death.” Building upon a growing profile, their third album, 2012’s All American Beat Down, which featured “Breath & Fluid,” “War Face,” and “Free Tattoos,” broke through nationally, charting in several key markets, including Kansas City (#5), NYC (#8), Philadelphia (#7) and Hawaii (#5) while receiving streams globally across Pandora, Spotify, iTunes and others.

2018’s The Pain Collection featured “Top Hat Man,” which broke into the Top 10 in NYC and Philadelphia while arguably being their most critically applauded album of their career to date. In 2020, the band, which had long been a trio added Ixion Lux‘ s and Spin Psykill‘s Mike Wilday, Jr., whose rich harmonies and intense leads helped the band’s sound evolve.

Nuse released the highly anticipated Evolution Vol 2 EP last month. The EP’s lead single “Malibu,” is a gritty mosh pit friendly friendly ripper that sounds as though it would fit in perfectly with the RidingEasy Records roster — but with a lovingly familiar, East Coast aggression. Play extremely loud, and open up that pit, folks!