Tag: electro pop

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sarah Lake Shares Ernie Lake’s Nu-Disco Remix of “Soul Shaker”

Lake relocated to Nashville back in 2017. And since then she has released music that has been featured on Tidal, Apple Music and a variety of Spotify playlists. As a songwriter, the Canadian-born and now-Nashville-based artist has written songs for The Voice Season 13 finalist Moriah Formica, Ms. America Betty Cantrell — and Reba McEntire took her song “Amen” into the studio in 2018.

And although as a songwriter, she continues to write material across a range of formats and styles, as an artist, Lake’s work has firmly in the realm of Americana/folk.

Her latest songs “Devil in My Head” and Messy” have been featured on Nashville-based radio station Lightning 100. “Missing Home” has been added to several Apple Music playlists. And the video for “Wide Eyed Girl” was added to CMT online.

Released earlier this year, the Everette and Lake cowritten “Soul Shaker” is a hook-driven and anthemic bit of country pop — or perhaps pop country? — that captures the swooning sensation of love with a folksy and lived-in earnestness. Recently, Ernie Lake, who remixed Pink‘s “Get The Party Started” and Taylor Swift’s “Willow” among a lengthy list of others, remixed “Soul Shaker,” turning the track into a summery, Stevie Nicks “Stand Back”-meets disco heyday-like bop featuring wah-wah pedaled funk guitar, soaring and cinematic bursts of strings, conga, and a relentless funky groove — all of which seem to serve and emphasize Lake’s easy-going soulful delivery.

Lake hopes that the song will take listeners to a happy place and back to simpler times of roller skating rinks and dance floors.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sun Moon Sky Share Dance Floor Friendly “Work Eat Sleep Repeat”

Sun Moon Sky is a British-Swedish duo — Jenny (vocals) and Joe (production) — that can trace their history back some time: They’ve worked together for years with each other and in other projects, including a project that ended up on a label, touring and with material on soundtracks, while landing a Top 10 hit before calling it a day after the prototypical music industry complications and drama.

 For the British-Swedish duo, Sun Moon Sky is a creative reset, in which they craft music that they describe as sad-but-hopeful, cinematic-yet-intimate pop that’s a island of empathy and escapism for these complicated times — both for themselves and for listeners. Sonically, the duo creates epic soundscapes that sees them pairing analog synths, programmed arpeggios, live instrumentation, drum machines and Jenny’s blues-influenced vocals. They describe their sound as seemingly existing in the space between several different genres and styles, and note that some have dubbed their sound art pop, apocapop, alt rock, electronica, sci-fi blues and more. 

The duo begin 2024 with the slow-burning and dramatic “Into The Light.” Built around gated reverb-soaked drum beats, Jenny’s gently vocodered vocals, lush layers of atmospheric synths and bursts of bluesy guitar, “Into The Light,” continues a run of shimmering and cinematic material rooted in earnest, heart-worn-on-sleeve intimacy that recalls Kate Bush and others. 

Their latest single “Work Eat Sleep Repeat” is a Kate Bush-meets-Giorgio Moroder-like bit of synth pop featuring glittering synth oscillations, a relentless motorik grooves, skittering beats serving as lush, hook driven and dance floor friendly bed for Jenny’s expressive and yearning delivery — before the song ends with a brooding, minor key outré.

“‘Work Eat Sleep Repeat'” as the duo explain “is about the grand journey that we all go on, and the choices we make along the way.” The pixel art animated visual by Mexican artist Bruno Cortes follow the mundane drudgery of every day life with an uncanny attention to detail.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: South of France Teams up with BIg Samir and CRL CRRLL on Woozy and Swaggering “Something That You Said”

Led by Denver-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer Jeff Cormack,  South of France is an indie pop project that sees Cormack and his collaborators specializing in a groovy, beat-driven take on escapist, vacation pop.

South of France has had material featured in smash-hit TV shows like Bojack Horseman and Shameless — and they’ve received praise from American Songwriter, NPR, Rolling Stone and others. Adding to a growing profile, South of France has opened for a number of acclaimed acts including Portugal The Man, Young The Giant, Flaming Lips, Michigander and a lengthy list of others. 

Cormack’s latest South of France single “Something That You Said” is a lysergic and blissed out bit of pop featuring a supple and propulsive bass line, skittering hi-hat driven drum patterns, spaced out and atmospheric synths and electronics paired with incredibly catchy hooks. The production serves as a lush and woozy bed for Big Samir and CRL CRRLL to trade swaggering bars and dreamily soulful falsetto vocals.

While sounding like a mischievous take on Tame Impala, “Something That You Said” will appear on Cormack’s forthcoming album My Spirit Animal, My Baggage, an album that’s one part solo album, one part collaborative effort with a series of vocalists, emcees and more. “‘Something That You Said,” as Cormack says “is a great example of how fun these collaborations are getting. Everyone is really having fun with these songs and I’m really enjoying pushing the production into new places while keeping it fun and trying not to over complicate it.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Washed Out’s Eclipse Live Session Performance of “Waking Up”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. 

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments. 

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self-produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench. 

In the lead up to the album’s release later this month, I’ve written about two previously released singles:

“The Hardest Part,” a bit of classic Washed Out with subtle refinements. The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recent work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show. 

“Running Away,” a cinematic yet intimate and deeply vulnerable track anchored around an alternating quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse song structure paired with Greene’s unerring knack for soaring and catchy hooks paired with a lush arrangement of glistening and twinkling synths, skittering and thumping beats that furthers the album’s overall aesthetic.

The album’s third and latest single “Waking Up” features glistening and burbling synth arpeggios, dreamily strummed guitar, finger snap-driven percussion and skittering beats serving as a lush and cinematic bed for Greene’s intimately cooed delivery. Fittingly, the song evokes the sensation of waking up from a pleasant dream — and the wistful desire to go back to sleep to experience just a little bit longer.

After months of research and meticulous planning, the JOVM mainstay and director Jonah Haber collaborated to film a live performance of “Waking Up” in the path of totality of the solar eclipse — on location in Bandera, TX on April 8, 2024.

With a ton of risks and embarrassment involved and no guarantee of success, Haber and Greene have managed to create one of the more unique visuals I’ve seen in some time: Shot in a single take, we see Greene performing the bulk of the song during the four minutes and eight seconds of full totality — the moment the moon crossed in between the Sun and Earth, emulating nighttime.

For the viewer, the effect almost appears as if Greene is taking the stage inside a venue, with the spotlights just on him, as he plays and sings. While it’s a gorgeous and downright perfect moment, there was a lot of things out of their control, reminding the viewer that ultimately nature rules us all.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays KOKOKO! Shares Swaggering In-Your-Face “Motema Mabe”

The acclaimed Congolese collective and JOVM mainstays KOKOKO!’s highly-anticipated sophomore album BUTU is slated for a July 5, 2024 release through Transgressive Records. Their sophomore album sees the acclaimed Congolese JOVM mainstays continuing to pair a defiantly resistant punk-like energy, informed and inspired by the attitude and thought of a new generation of Congolese artists and young people with their neck-snapping, attention-grabbing block party alchemy — but pushed to new, global heights. 

Kinshasa’s after-dark buzz was one of the major inspirations behind BUTU, which means “the night” in Lingala, and the album dives deep into the heart of the chaotic, throbbing city, celebrating and championing the joyful and creative spirit of its inhabits. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Belgian producer Xavier Thomas, a.k.a. Débruit, the forthcoming album sees the collective led by Makara Bianko channeling a more electronic-driven, upbeat sound while replicating the frenetic feel of their hometown’s dynamic nightlife: equipment is pushed to its limits through saturated and distorted speakers and the sonic push-and-pull of nighttime sounds. 

The band employs field recordings, recorded from the city’s nighttime sounds and “ready-made percussion” like detergent bottles, which they fed through distortion to get closer to their city’s nighttime sounds. “Compared to Fongola, this album is intentionally way more intense, because it’s quite upbeat and quite full-on,” Xavier Thomas says. The album’s material also pulls from much wider influences and span across West Africa and South Africa, influenced by Bianko’s global travel, which introduced him to new types of alternative electronic music and punk. 

Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about the following singles: 

“Mokili” a house music inspired banger featuring glistening synth arpeggios, relentlessly skittering hi-hats and tweeter and woofer rattling thump serving as a slickly produced bed for Bianko’s crooning and impassioned shouts. Continuing a remarkable run of club friendly material with an in-your-face punk attitude and ethos, “Mokili” captures the frenetic and sweaty energy of their hometown and its nightlife scene with an uncanny, novelistic realism. But along with that, the song is a forceful and joyous reminder that Africa is the present and the future. 

“’Mokili’ is about moving the world so much that it’s going to tip over sort of,” the acclaimed Congolese collective explains. “This track was a track we were used to trying live in a more improvised way, we never got the chance to record till recently where we added the right touch for the studio. It was the last addition to our album BUTU and became the first single, so it’s really fresh. It has obviously influences from Kinshasa but also Kwaito and 90’s dance music.”

“Salaka Bien,” a euphoric, trance-inducing banger anchored around percussion created on heavy ceramic pots and pans, glistening house music synth stabs and skittering beats that helps to emphasize Bianko’s punchy and swaggering delivery singing lyrics full of winking sexual innuendo. If this track doesn’t fire you up and get you moving, you’re probably dead — literally and figuratively. 

“It’s a bass line driven track, with a lot of influences, like punk funk meeting old house stabs with a trance feeling!” The acclaimed Congolese collective explain. “When we play it live there are moments of overwhelming feeling building till it explodes and people let go totally. Do it, do it good, do it till you break it”.

“Bazo Bango,” a track that derives its title from a Lingala phrase that translates to English as “they are scared,” a chant sung by crowds as a way to vent frustration, the collective explains. Anchored around a looping and propulsive electric bass line, skittering electronic beats, twinkling and percussive polyrhythm and bursts of woozy synth arpeggios pared with chanted call and response vocals, “Bazo Bango” is a euphoric, riotous banger that captures Kinshasa’s chaotic, throbbing and irresistible energy with a mischievous aplomb. 

BUTU‘s fourth and latest single “Motema Mabe” continues a run of swaggering, neck snapping bangers. Anchored around a woozy and punchily menacing production featuring a looping twinkling and plunked string sample, buzzing bass synths and skittering military-styled beats and percussive percussive synth oscillations paired with Makara Bianko’s equally punchy delivery, “Motema Mabe” is an in-your-face challenge to any and all comers — whether on the mic, the dance floor or your fly style.

“Motema Mabe is a track about someone imitating, appropriating someone else’s creations, style or charisma – which happens a lot in Kinshasa!” The acclaimed JOVM mainstays explain. “It’s about karma getting back at people who can’t be original and claim things that they haven’t created. Make them pay!”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Beach Ready Teams Up with Boe Huntress on Breezy “RIde Your Horses”

Christopher Cordoba is a London-based instrumental solo artist, composer and session musician, whose career started in earnest as a member of Jack Adaptor and Vibrations of The Sun, two projects that featured The Family Cat’s Paul Frederick. As an instrumental solo artist, Cordoba has released a series of critically acclaimed, eclectic efforts that has seen him collaborating with a an equally eclectic array of artists and producers including Robert Wyatt David Watson, The Associates’ Billy Mackenzie, Phil Vinall, Propaganda’s Claudia Brucken, Robyn Hitchcock, Pascal Gabriel, PJ Harvey’s Terry Edwards, Audrey Riley, Alex Thomas, Charlie Winston and a list of others. 

Cordoba’s sophomore Beach Ready album, last year’s Archipelago was released through Snow in Water Records. The album’s material is darker in texture and more extreme than Cordoba’s self-titled Beach Ready debut while still being centered around Cordoba’s guitar work and penchant for atmospheric soundscapes. The album also sees Cordoba incorporating drone, glitch, Frippertronics, industrial, New Wave and New age to create a unique sound collage that imparts an urgent ambience. Fittingly, the album thematically focuses on destruction — an all too present theme in our seemingly pre-apocalyptic moment. 

Cordoba’s latest single “Ride Your Horses” is the third collaboration with labelmate Boe Huntress. The collaboration can trace its origins back to when the pair met while playing a David Bowie tribute show at London’s Union Chapel, where Huntress was the artist in residence. “Ride Your Horses” is features an elegiac and gorgeous vocal from Huntress paired with a percussive production anchored around gently twinkling pads, jazzy four-on-the-floor, bursts of reverb-soaked guitar. While being a breezy and summery bop, “Ride Your Horses” sonically brings Princess Century‘s 2021 effort s u r r en d e r and BRAIDS‘ 2013 effort Flourish//Perish to mind, thanks to a forward thinking yet accessible production.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Mzzltvv Shares Mind-Bending “Nonsense (Psalms My Guard)”

Mzzltvv is an emerging and mysterious pop artist and producer, whose mission is to create music that means something to her — with the hopes that it’ll meaning and life for others. Much like countless contemporary artists, Mzzltvv is genre agnostic, and enjoys jumping around genres and styles with a sense of exploration and curiosity. 

Last month, I wrote about “Burning Bones,” a slickly produced bit of synth pop built around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering thump and a blazing keytar solo, creating a lush, club friendly be for the emerging artist’s soulful vocal delivery. While sonically bringing The Weeknd and 80s synth pop. The mysterious artist explained that the song is part of a larger quest of self-discovery and strength in which every chord and beat is a step towards owning her truth.

The emerging artist’s latest single “Nonsense (Psalms My Guard)” is a slickly produced, mind-bending bit of pop that meshes elements of atmospheric alt pop, trap, contemporary Billboard Top 40 pop and R&B that’s anchored by her effortlessly soulful delivery.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Super Plage Teams Up with Sainte Nicole on Breezy and Flirty “Ton chien”

Jules Henry is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Super Plage. 

“Ton chien,” is the first bit of new material since the release of Henry’s fourth Super Plage album, last year’s Magie à minuit. The new single, which features Parisian artist Sainte Nicole is a breezy and flirty bop centered around glistening synth arpeggios and skittering beats. The atmospheric and summery production serves as a lush bed for the two artist to trade dreamily ethereal delivered verses. It’s the sort of song that’s perfect for hanging out in the park with that pretty someone, who’s got your heart skipping beats.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: L’Imperatrice Share Intergalactic Visual for Soulful and Luxuriant “Any Way” feat. Maggie Rogers

Acclaimed Paris-based electro pop sextet and JOVM mainstays L’Impératrice  will be releasing their highly-anticipated, self-produced third full-length album Pulsar through microqlima records in just about 90 minutes. Pulsar is an album, where the band — founder Charles de Boisseguin (keys), Hagni Gown (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), Tom Daveau (drums) and Flore Benguigui (vocals) — made every decision while capturing the band’s spirit both onstage and off. 

Fittingly, the album reportedly radiates with the energy and wisdom of an outfit that has helmed countless dance parties around the world on the way to find itself and its sound. Throughout the album’s material, the Parisian JOVM mainstays move freely and authoritatively among the sounds they love, bridging hip-hop, kosmiche and modern pop with their most unabashed embraces of French Touch and international house of their growing catalog. Pulsar is also the first album of their catalog to feature guest vocalists, including acclaimed folk/pop artist Maggie Rogers and rapper/producer Erick the Architect among a list of others. 

The album sees the acclaimed pop outfit trying a new creative approach: They split into two teams of ever-interchanging members to explore new ideas, led by the band’s founder Charles de Boisseguin. It was a way of incorporating every voice into the songwriting process like never before, pulling from idiosyncratic upbringings and enthusiasm. They then passed tracks to lead vocalist Flore Benguigui, a longtime jazz singer, who would sometimes write two-dozen vocal melodies for a song, just to see which one fit best. It was an arduous and exciting process that saw the band go from writing through recording in about nine months. For L’Impératrice, this was the sort of self-determination they’d longed for and now found. 

Throughout the album’s material, the band’s Benguigui boldly sings of self-empowerment, shirking beauty standards, ageism and drag normalcy throughout the album’s material. These are apt messages for incandescent anthems of experience, of fully being yourself, instead of anyone else’s version of it. 

Pulsar’s fourth single, and the album’s second English language single “Any Way” is a gorgeous cinematic, Quiet Storm soul-meets-French touch bop featuring shimmering strings, a supple and sinuous bass line, some Nile Rodgers-like guitar, some glistening sapce age synths and twinkling Rhodes serving as a lush and dreamy bed for Maggie Rogers soulful and yearning delivery.

Rogers was a fan of L’Imperatrice before they contacted her, having seen the band’s incredible show Stateside several times. She arrived to the studio, listened to the track, took notes and nailed her version in a few hours and as many takes. At its core, the song is a luxurious and earnest love song about savoring the moment rather than fretting the future at least too much — again, and maybe for better and worse, the American way.

“The French way is that we are pretty slow people,” the band’s Charles de Boisseguin says smiling. “We really take time to make things good. But Maggie Rogers showed up and showed us her skills and the American way. it was a magical moment.” Rogers adds, “L’Impératrice has been one of my favorite bands for a few years now, so when we started talking about working together on some music, I jumped at the opportunity to travel to Paris and create with them. The song came together really naturally and effortlessly in one afternoon and I really think it represents this perfect hybrid of what we both do. I’m so happy it’s out in the world.” 

Directed by Zite and Léo, the accompanying video is an intergalactic-meets-terrestrial adventure seemingly inspired by Superman, E.T., Starman and the like, with the band playing aliens stranded after their spaceship crash lands on Earth. The aliens, who try to understand human life, get a local mechanic to assist them with repairing their spaceship. And while their spaceship is being repaired, the band calls home and watches a broadcast of Maggie Rogers singing, which fills them with longing for home — and fittingly inspires them to play alongside the broadcast.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Brijean Shares Lush and Cinematic Lullaby “Euphoric Avenue”

Brijean is an acclaimed indie pop project that features: 

  • Brijean Murphy, a Los Angeles-born percussionist, who can trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Murphy’s father Patrick is a percussionist and engineer, who taught a young Brijean her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel pan drum legend Vince Charles. As a percussionist, the younger Murphy initially made a name for herself as a highly-sought after touring musician with stints in the touring bands of Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls Poolside, and several others.  

  • Doug Stuart, a jazz and pop session multi-instrumentalist and producer, who has worked with JOVM mainstays Bells Atlas, Meerna, Luke Temple, Jay Stone and others. 

2019’s debut EP WALKIE TALKIE was written and recorded in marathon sessions at their intimate home studio, during breaks in Murphy’s then-very busy touring schedule. The EP found the duo quickly establishing a unique sound that meshed Murphy’s Latin jazz and soul upbringing with Murphy’s 70s disco and 90s house-inspired production, along with psych pop. 

2021’s full-length debut, Feelings celebrated self-reflection while making sense of the worlds around and within through rhythm and lyricism. However, the months surrounding the album’s release rang extremely bittersweet with the sudden death of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents. In a haze of heartache and loss, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resettling in four cities in under two years. 

Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and the tracks they had started writing, along with Angelo, Murphy’s 1981 Toyota Celica became their few constants. 2022’s Angelo EP, which derived its title from Murphy’s beloved car, processed loss, informed by the duo’s own losses and the desire to move and start over. 

The acclaimed and accomplished duo’s highly anticipated sophomore full-length album Macro is slated for a July 12, 2024 release through Ghostly International. Reportedly seeing the duo at their most playful, the album’s material features the duo engaging different sides of themselves, confronting the gloriously weird paradox of being alive. They’ve leveled up to meet the complexities and harmonies of the human experience with what may arguably be their most dynamic songwriting to date. Colorful, collaborative, sophisticated and yet deeply fun, the album creates a world of macrocosm with characters moods and points of view rooted in the notion that no feeling is final — and the only way out is through.

The album’s song sequencing elicits an exploratory vibe with high-tempo peaks and breezy valleys in the psyche. The duo sees the record’s vast sonic spectrum in contrast to the expectations for their output — “we’re supposed to know the box that our art fits, in and then fully commit to it existing within that box,” Brijean’s Stuart says. Overall, the album is deeply anchored in the intention to just not just move through the ups and downs life presents you but to feel it all, and to know it intimately. 

Released earlier this year, the album’s first single “Working On It” is a funky and breezy bit of Larry Levan house-like bop anchored around a layered and strutting baseline and a loop of different percussion paired with twinkling keys serving as a lush and ebullient bed for Murphy’s mischievous crooning. The result is a song that finds the duo at arguably their most playfully light, with the song seeing Murphy riffing on self-improvement, the insomniac’s desire to finally get some sleep and life in the seeming end times in a way that’s halfway serious. 

The song started as al living room jam then as Murphy explains, “Doug played the two-layered basslines over a loop of bongos, congas an a dream machine and the rest felt like it happened in a dream.” Later Murphy asked fans to send voice memos in exchange for art, and some of those got peppered into the sound-bed. “That was a treat… Just getting to go through and hear all of these voices from around the world, an intimate and charming experience.” 

“Euphoric Avenue,” Macro‘s second and latest single is a Bossa nova and soul jazz-tinged lullaby featuring soaring and cinematic strings by Stephanie Yu, shuffling drumming by Kosta Galanopoulos, atmospheric keys, propulsive drum machine and some soulfully fluttering flute by Logan Hone serving as a lush and velvety bed for Murphy’s meditative vocal. While sonically seeming to nod at Heatwave’s “Always and Forever,” and the intro to “Boogie Nights,” “Euphoric Avenue” is a sort of psilocybin-fueled, somnambulant wander through a moonlit park, and observing everything with a sense of hyper-attentive awe.

“Being in this beautiful part of town nestled up against the Angeles National Forest played a big role in how comfortable we felt stretching out and trying to push our musical boundaries,” says Murphy. “Anytime we brought someone into the world to add their musical touch, it felt like a highlight.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Fen Doi Shares Upbeat and Anthemic “New Horizon”

Zurich-based producer, musician and singer/songwriter Neil Lauper is the creative mastermind behind the emerging indie electro pop recording project Fen Doi. And with Fen Doi, Lauper has crafted a sound that seamlessly blends elements of post-punk and darkwave with uptempo synth-driven electronica that also manages to be simultaneously retro and futuristic. As Lauper describes it, it’s music that “encourages you to dance into a brighter future.”

Previous releases have received support from several electronic dance music artists including Ellen Allien at Boiler Room Sydney, Curses, Perel and Rena among others. Adding to a growing profile, Lauper’s work has received airplay across Swiss National Radio.

Lauper’s full-length debut, New Horizon was released last week. The album is a nine-song, genre-bending journey of synths and infectious drum beats. The album’s latest single, album opening track and title track “New Horizon” is an incredibly upbeat bit of 80s-inspired synth pop anchored around glistening synth arpeggios, gated reverb-drenched beats, Lauper’s uncanny knack for big, catchy hooks and choruses paired with his reverb-soaked yet earnest delivery.

“New Horizon” was produced and recorded in Lauper’s home studio and initially started off as an organic piece created through improvisation on his keyboard. “‘’New Horizon’  tells a story of tender new beginnings in the aftermath of unexpected change and loss,” Lauper explains. “It is a story of maintaining an attitude of gratitude when much speaks against it.“

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bear Hands Shares Eurodance-like “Intrusive Thoughts”

Brooklyn-based dance punks Bear Hands — Dylan Tau (vocals, guitar), Val Loper (bass) and TJ Orscher (drums) — formed back in 2006. They gained early attention with 2010’s “What a Drag,” which led to the trio signing with Cantora Records, who released their full-length debut, that year’s Burning Bush Supper Club. 2014’s sophomore effort Distraction was a critical and commercial success with the album reaching #23 on Billboard‘s Heatseekers chart. The trio followed up with 2016’s You’ll Pay For This and 2019’s Fake Tunes.

The trio is making a highly anticipated return with the first bit of new music in over five years with their newest single “Intrusive Thoughts.” The track was recorded at a small Cherry Hill, NJ-based home studio and was co-produced by Elliott Kozel, Alex M and the band. Anchored around glistening synth stabs, a sinuous bass line and percussive and skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling thump paired with seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics, which accurately capture the irritation, confusion, self-doubt, self-flagellation and denial that intrusive thoughts so frequently create.

“’Intrusive Thoughts’ is the song that’s playing in my head all day and I can’t get it out,” Bear Hands’ Dylan Rau explains. “Not that I really want to. Well sometimes I do when I’m trying to do basic math or pick a restaurant to eat at with my girlfriend. I think I wrote it about being bored of everything and feeling dissatisfied with everyone and everything around me. Not that I’m super misanthropic in general but this song might make you that way if you get it stuck in your head so watch out.” 

Directed by Orson Oblowtiz and edited by Alex Russek, the accompanying video for “Intrusive Thoughts” follows a megalomanic motivational speaker/drummer, who does a chintzy anti-drug stage show that also includes McGruff the Crime Dog. It’s the sort of show and message that its intended audience would probably derisively roll their eyes at while watching.

“The video was deeply influenced by a motivational speaker/drummer who toured all the elementary schools in my home state with a massive 30+ piece drum kit and chintzy light show,” Rau explains. “He loved drums, hated drugs, and was easily identified as a crazed megalomaniac by at least one naive fifth grader (me). I think I remember him saying he could be touring with Bowie if he wanted but that it was more important to educate the youth. Ha!”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Jessie Berkshires is a Detroit-based singer/songwriter, musician, and visual artist. As a singer/songwriter and musician, Berkshire collaborates with her husband and producer, Nat Plane to craft sleek electronic soundscapes that serve as a fitting vehicle for her songs that tell stories of love, loss, pain and hope.

Released earlier this year, “Enough” is anchored around twinkling keys, oscillating and glistening synths, thumping beats and thumping beats. Berkshires’ plaintive vocal ethereally floats over the decidedly 80s inspired, hook-driven production that brings the likes of Kate Bush, Pet Shop Boys and others to mind.

As Berkshires explains, the song is an exploration of the sort of struggles we all experience with its lyrics delving deep into the weariness of conversing with oneself and the constant retrospective gaze that can leave one feeling trapped within the confines of their mind and self-talk. Throughout the song, the song’s narrator yearns to break free from their own internal struggles and doubts.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mzzltvv is an emerging and mysterious pop artist and producer, whose mission is to create music that means something to her — with the hopes that it’ll meaning and life for others. Much like countless contemporary artists, Mzzltvv is genre agnostic, and enjoys jumping around genres and styles with a sense of exploration and curiosity.

Their latest single “Burning Bones” is a slickly produced bit of synth pop built around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering thump and a blazing keytar solo that serves as a lush and club friendly bed for the artist’s soulful vocal delivery. While revealing an artist that seems to effortlessly craft a catchy hook, the song sonically recalls The Weeknd and 80s synth pop.

The song as she explains embodies both her personal battles and her inner fire to succeed and evolve — and as a result, the song is part of a larger quest of self-discovery and strength in which every chord and beat is a step towards owning her truth.