JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Bauhaus bassist David J’s 69th birthday.
Tag: goth
Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Robert Smith!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates The Cure frontman Robert Smith’s 67th birthday.
New Audio: Velatine Shares Forceful “Whisper Park”
Melbourne-based songwriter and producer Loki Lockwood is the creative mastermind behind the darkwave/goth recording project Velatine. For the bulk of Velatine’s history, Lockwood collaborated with different vocalists while crafting a unique and fresh take on the familiar and beloved darkwave/goth sound.
If you were frequenting this site over the course of last year, the Aussie producer and musician collaborated with Nocturna on “Till Death Do We Art” and Holly Purnell, who was discovered through an Instagram ad for “Oh See Me — The Siren.” While working on “Oh See Me — The Siren” Purnell joined Velatine as the project’s full-time vocalist.
Velatine’s latest single “Whisper Park” is a subtle change in sonic direction, seeing the band leaning more towards a forceful, goth and doom-like direction than their previously released material. Anchored around slashing, angular guitar attack and dramatic drumming, the cinematic “Whisper Park” channels contemporary fare like Bonnie Trash and others, while showcasing Purnell’s remarkable vocal.
Throwback: Happy Belated 39th Birthday, Tom Furse!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Tom Furse’s 39th birthday.
Throwback: Happy Belated 68th Birthday, Gary Numan!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Gary Numan’s 68th birthday.
New Video: London’s Mouth Ulcers Share Brooding “Prevail”
London-based outfit Mouth Ulcers — Zak Watson (vocals, guitar), Josephine Rose (guitar, vocals), Jamie Lee Culver (bass) and David Zbirka (drums) — are part of a new generation of dark post-punk that’s actively reshaping the genre into something urgent, youthful and intoxicating.
With the release of their two singles, last year’s “Western Horror Story” and “A Perfect End” the British quartet have quickly developed a sound that they’ve playfully dubbed as “music for vampires to dance to” — i.e. brooding, groove-driven and irresistibly cool.
The band recently made their live debut with sold-out shows in both the UK and The Netherlands. Building upon that momentum, the band recently signed to LAB Records, who will release their highly-anticipated debut EP — and they’re planning to announce some extensive summer tour dates.
But in the meantime, the band’s latest single “Prevail” is a brooding bit of post-punk featuring shimmering, reverb-soaked guitars, atmospheric synths and a motrik-like groove serving as a lush bed for Watson’s yearning baritone. Seemingly channeling Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure and others, “Prevail” showcases a remarkably self-assured new band and their ability to craft hook-driven anthems for vampires and goths.
“The meaning behind Prevail was inspired by the film Stalker by Tarkovsky,” the band explains. “The mental and physical struggle of surviving ‘The Zone’, a hostile and reality warping environment which threatens to erase one’s sanity.”
Directed and edited by the band, the accompanying video for “Prevail” playing the song in a cave-like basement and on an abandoned, seemingly haunted English farm. For me, it brings back memories of watching 120 Minutes.
New Audio: TRAITRS Return with Lush and Urgent “Dream Drowning”
With the release of their first three albums, 2017’s Rites and Rituals, 2018’s Butcher’s Coin and 2021’s Horses in the Abattoir, Toronto-based coldwave duo TRAITRS — longtime friends Sean Patrick Nolan and Shawn Tucker — have firmly established a sound that blends horror-based imagery with anthemic choruses and cinematic, atmospheric soundscapes. During that same period, the duo evolved from bedroom pop artists selling cassette tapes to amassing millions of streets globally and playing hand hundreds of shows internationally.
The Canadian duo’s highly anticipated Josh Korody-produced, Matt Colton-mastered fourth album Possessor is slated for a March 13, 2026 release. According to the band’s Shawn Tucker, Possessor is “the most personal record I have ever written.” The album was written during Toronto’s coldest winter months, informed by storm battered days and a heavy emotional landscape. The pair focused on capturing precise moods, with lyrics serving as the material’s driving force with the surrounding soundscapes grew to mirror the bleak beauty of the writing process.
Possessor will include the previously released “Burn In Heaven,” “i was ill, you were wrong,” and the album’s latest single “Dream Drowning.” Featuring eerily atmospheric and brooding synths, propulsive beats as a lush goth/horror-inspired bed for Shawn Tucker’s yearning delivery. Continuing a run of chilly yet achingly heartfelt, intimate material, “Dream Drowning” thematically delves into the subconscious, with the duo aiming to analyze the emotion and meanings behind their dreams. But at its core, is a deeply uneasy sense of one’s desires and motivations behind shrouded in mystery.
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New Audio: BLXCKFLAMINGO Tackles a Beloved Post-Punk Classic
BLXCKFLAMINGO is a Jersey City-based goth/darkwave duo, who over the course of the past year have released a handful of singles, which saw them quickly establish an urgent and intense sound featuring driving drum machines, thumping ass lines, ethereal shoegazer textures and pain-fueled riffs paired with an eerily cold and brooding baritone vocal.
The New Jersey-based duo begin 2026 with a goth/darkwave-tinged yet lovingly straightforward cover of Joy Division‘s 1980 signature tune, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” that maintains the song’s conflicted, heartache and remarkably catchy hook.
New Audio: Crá Croí Returns with Brooding and Anthemic “Feeding The Fear”
Deriving their name from the Gaelic word for “heartache,” “vexation of spirit,” County Cork-based duo Crá Croí — RG (songwriting, production, mixing and mastering) and CD (vocals and visuals) — have employed a fiercely DIY ethos while establishing a sound that meshes elements of 1980s New Wave, post-punk and goth, featuring melancholic synths, dark melodies, angular guitars and sharp, hook-driven vocals.
The Irish duo’s work explores themes of nihilism, love and destruction, dystopian collapsed and nuclear annihilation, often wrapped in irony and paired with post-apocalyptic metaphors.
The Cork-based duo’s self-produced, 12-song, full-length debut, Tá brón ormis slated for release during the second half of 2026. Deriving its title from the Irish phrase for “sadness” or “sorrow is on me,” the duo’s debut effort will feature the previously released “Radiation Romance,” and “Fires At Dawn,” as well as their third and latest single, “Feeding The Fear.”
Sonically seeming to channel a synthesis of Chain of Flowers and Interpol, “Feeding The Fear,” showcases the Irish duo’s knack for crafting broodingly cinematic, hook-driven material. The duo explain “Feeding The Fear” explores themes of fear, endurance and rising through uncertainty, which seems remarkably prescient and fitting for our current moment.
New Video: clubdrugs Return with Yearning, Club Friendly “Heart 2 Break”
clubdrugs are a Chicago-based, self-described goth pop duo that has developed a reputation and profile both locally and regionally for a genre-defying sound and for captivating live shows.
The duo begin 2026 with their latest single “Heart 2 Break,” an electro goth bop anchored around buzzing and wobbling bass synths, angular bursts of feedback-fueled guitars and thumping, industrial-like beats paired with the duo’s uncanny knack for catchy hooks. Maria dreamily yearning coos ethereally float over the brooding, club friendly production. Much like the previously released “Waiting,” “Heart 2 Break” is a dance song for the lovelorn, the heartbroken and the perpetually unrequited to dance to, in between their tears.
Directed by the Chicago-based duo, the accompanying video for “Heart 2 Break” is a hallucinogen-fueled dream that features the pair performing the song in a studio in front of trippy projections that manages to capture the yearning at the core of the song.
New Video: Sylvia Black Shares Broodingly Hypnotic “The Snake”
Los Angeles-based multifaceted producer, singer/songwriter, bassist, performer, restless performer and JOVM mainstay Sylvia Black will be releasing her long-awaited new album, the 11-song Shadowtime on Friday, January 16, 2026.
The album reportedly sees Black continuing her long-held approach of songwriting from the bottom up. “I find a beat that I’m in love with and go forward,” Black says. “The bass provides the floor, but as a singer, I’m also coming in with the roof. If you can write a beautiful song with just those two elements, bass notes and the voice, that’s a job well done.”
Written, produced and performed primarily by the JOVM mainstay, the album was crafted with support from longtime mix engineer and creative foil Ruddy Lee Cullers. The album’s material is a haunting exploration of nostalgia and futurism that also sees the Los Angeles-based artist body pushing her sound in new directions by weaving hypnotic rhythms, cinematic layers and raw, visceral emotion, while moving effortlessly from dance floor anthems to atmospheric meditations on love, loss and transcendence. “This album is about finding beauty in ruins,” Black says. “About letting the shadows speak through me. Returning to California brought out the memory and soul of my goth days gone by.”
Shadowtime will feature the album singles “Talking in Tongues,” and “Long Gone Gardens,” both of which were released last year. The JOVM mainstay begins 2026 with album opening track “The Snake,” a synth-driven song anchored around a motorik groove and industrial thump paired with Black’s beguiling vocal and hypnotic countermelodies. The result is song that sounds much like a sultry, club friendly take on the likes of Suicide that showcases Black’s unerring knack for razor sharp, remarkably catchy hooks.
“The album opens with the fall of mankind or the awakening and the struggle with the birth pangs to traverse into a new paradigm for better or worse. You decide,” Black explains. “Apparently it’s a choose your own adventure and this is the story of those and their choice.”
The accompanying video was shot and edited by Black, and features mind-bending animation that ties into the album’s overall themes and zeitgeist. “A deadline, no plan, a green sheet sloppily tacked to the side of a barn way out in Virginia, and some holiday time with my fussy old laptop,” Black says of the video.
New Video: Crá Croí Returns with Broodingly Eerie “Fires at Dawn”
Deriving their name from the Gaelic word for “heartache,” “vexation of spirit,” County Cork-based duo Crá Croí — RG (songwriting, production, mixing and mastering) and CD (vocals and visuals) — have employed a fiercely DIY ethos while establishing a sound that meshes elements of 1980s New Wave, post-punk and goth, featuring melancholic synths, dark melodies, angular guitars and sharp, hook-driven vocals.
The Irish duo’s work explores themes of nihilism, love and destruction, dystopian collapsed and nuclear annihilation, often wrapped in irony and paired with post-apocalyptic metaphors.
The Cork-based duo’s self-produced, 12-song, full-length debut, Tá brón orm is slated for release during the second half of 2026. Deriving its title from the Irish phrase for “sadness” or “sorrow is on me,” the duo’s debut effort will feature the previously released “Radiation Romance,” a track that seemingly channeled She Wants Revenge and Interpol, and “Fires At Dawn,” the album’s second and latest single.
Continuing a run of broodingly cinematic tunes, “Fires At Dawn” features CD’s Paul Banks–like vocal paired with eerily atmospheric synths, a relentless motor groove, bursts of squiggling and shimmering reverb-soaked guitars and a punchy yet anthemic hook and chorus. Sonically nodding at Joy Division and Antics-era Interpol, “Fires At Dawn” “captures the moment between ruin and renewal,” the duo explain. It’s “a hymn for the haunted and anthem for survival.” They add that the lyrics trace a world where “‘the poets of the chaos’ rise from the ashes, chasing embers just to feel the fire thrive.”
The accompanying video was created by the band’s RG using stock footage and iMovie, and features visuals of the sun in space, with its fires endlessly churning, the Aurora Borealis and flames, emphasizing the song’s themes of destruction, purity and renewal.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Sylvia Black Returns with “Long Gone Garden”
Los Angeles-based multifaceted producer, singer/songwriter, bassist, performer, restless performer and JOVM mainstay Sylvia Black has had a long-held reputation for being difficult to pin down. Since her first job singing and entertaining at a resort hotel in Northern Japan as teen, music has been her lifeline.
Throughout her career, Black has steadily gained momentum as a writer and producer, consistently creating music on her own terms, simultaneously cementing her place in the post-punk and goth-romantic renaissance, while being restlessly creative. Her lengthy credits reflect her eclectic tastes and wide-ranging abilities. She was the frontperson of the New York-based trio KUDU with Deantoni Parks (drums, production) and Nicci Kasper (keys, production) in the early 00s. Black also has writing and recording credits with Grammy Award-winning pop act Black Eyed Peas, Daphne Guinness and more. Her lengthy and impressive resume includes collaborations with legends like Tony Visconti, Lydia Lunch and Moby, as well as The Knocks, Armand Van Helden and French electro pop duo Telepopmusik. And last, but definitely not lease, her sultry rendition of ‘I Put A Spell On You” appeared on the hit Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
As a bassist, Black has played with The Brand New Heavies‘ N’Dea Davenport, Living Colour‘s Muzz Skillings and with Maya Rudolph’s Prince cover band Princess.
The JOVM mainstay’s long-awaited new album, the 11-song Shadowtime is slated for a January 16, 2026 release. The album rsees Black continuing her long-held approach of songwriting from the bottom up. “I find a beat that I’m in love with and go forward,” Black says. “The bass provides the floor, but as a singer, I’m also coming in with the roof. If you can write a beautiful song with just those two elements, bass notes and the voice, that’s a job well done.”
Written, produced and performed primarily by the JOVM mainstay, the album was crafted with support from longtime mix engineer and creative foil Ruddy Lee Cullers. The album’s material will reportedly be a haunting exploration of nostalgia and futurism, that sees Black pushing her sound in new directions by weaving hypnotic rhythms, cinematic layers and raw, visceral emotion, while moving effortlessly from dance floor anthems to atmospheric meditations on love, loss and transcendence. “This album is about finding beauty in ruins,” Black says. “About letting the shadows speak through me. Returning to California brought out the memory and soul of my goth days gone by.”
Shadowtime will feature the previously released “Talking in Tongues,” a brooding blend of goth, New Wave and shoegaze that seemed to nod at Suicide, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and others, while being the perfect, atmospheric bed for Black’s sultry delivery. The album will also feature, its second and latest single, “Long Gone Gardens.”
Anchored around a forceful and commanding bass line and bursts of shimmering, reverb-soaked guitars and twinkling keys, “Lone Gone Gardens” seemingly nods at Siouxsie and the Banshees — for example, think of “Hong Kong Garden,” and “Happy House” — while channeling Black’s childhood bond with the natural world, amidst the fruits and flora grown by her grandmother. But the song also subtly evokes the Biblical garden of Eden: You can almost picture Adam and Eve at the tree of knowledge, and what happens right as they eat the fruit . . .
“The track is a reflection about a choice that seemingly lets you lose everything but puts you on a new path to find salvation again in another form,” the JOVM mainstay explains.
New Video: Saint Avangeline’s Lovingly Cinematic and Ethereal Cover of Madonna’s “Frozen”
Saint Avangeline is a rising Atlanta-based artist, who over the course of two albums and a collection of singles has crafted a body of work that’s deeply rooted in her personal journey with mental health struggles, domestic and growing up queer in the South, while offering an unabashedly honest exploration of inner turmoil, rage, hope and resilience. “Most songs are like a diary for me,” the Atlanta-based artist explains. “Exploring my mental health struggles. Trauma, intense feelings. Like sucking the poison out.”
Over the course of the past few years, she has amassed a rabid fan base, while amassing almost 80 million streams on Spotify, 2.3 million monthly Spotify listeners and almost 5.5 billion streams on TikTok.
Earlier this year, the rising Atlanta-based artist shared “Limerence,” a slow-burning track that seemingly nodded at a cinematic, fever-dream-like take on Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush.
Saint Avangeline closes out 2025 with a meditative, ethereal and lovingly faithful take on Madonna‘s 1998’s hit “Frozen,” which also serves a reminder of how spellbinding and remarkably cinematic the original song is. The Saint Avangeline “Frozen” cover is accompanied by a cinematic visual, shot in the Mojave Desert, much like the original, that lovingly draws from and nods at the original.
“A classic from a legend! I think this is one of Madonna’s most gorgeous pieces, and I wanted to pay tribute to her and her monumental impact on the music industry,” Saint Avangeline says. “She has influenced so many artists of this generation, including myself. I had no idea that she would revisit this album only a few weeks after I recorded this! We shot the video in May 2025 in the Mojave Desert in the same location Madonna shot her original music video back in 1998!”