Tag: indie electro pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Alain Void Shares Brooding “Amo questa vita”

Alain Void is an Italian electronic music scene and producer, who first emerged into the synthwave and electro pop scenes in 2022 with his solo recording project Empty Essence, which saw him blending elements of post-punk, electro pop and darkwave paired with lyrics that frequently tackle philosophical themes.

Void eventually stepped out into the spotlight as solo artist, writing and recording under his own name. His work as a solo artist has largely been inspired by the nee to spread awareness and awaken consciousness through music.

The Italian artist’s latest single “Amo questa vita” continues a run of material that pairs Void’s remarkably Dave Gahan-like vocal with a brooding early era-meets-Violator-era Depeche Mode-inspired production featuring layers of glistening and shimmering synths, a motorik-like bass synth-driven groove and industrial beats. “Amo questa vita” thematically touches upon accepting oneself entirely — including their complicated history.

The accompanying video was shot in black and white and follows Void wandering through a wood area and in graffiti-strewn ruins — and in some way it reminds me of early era MTV videos.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul Share a Funky, Club Friendly Critique of Wellness Culture

Acclaimed Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul‘s sophomore album, the Stephen and David Dawæle co-produced Mainland Madinina is slated for a February 5, 2027 release through DEEWEE/Because Music. The highly-anticipated follow-up to their globally praised 2022 debut, Topical Dancer marks the duo’s first collaborative album in almost five years. More personal in its focus but no less ambition, the duo’s forthcoming sophomore album explores grief, parenthood, lineage and colonial history through their distinct blend of electro pop and dance punk, delivered with their signature sharp, irreverent humor.

The album reflects on family, belonging and the histories we carry, and is named for their respective places of origins — for Pupul, mainland China where his grandparents are from and Hong Kong where his mother is from; and Madinina, the Indigenous name for the Caribbean island of Martinique, where Adigéry’s mother is from. The album’s tile imagines a meeting point between two seemingly distant places, questioning the boundaries between mainland and island, while creating a shared space in which their stories can sit alongside one another.

Much like its predecessor, Mainland Madinina‘s material grew out of conversations between the two friends and collaborators as their lives changed. In the years since Topical Dancer was recorded, both have become parents, while Adigéry has also experienced the loss of her father to Alzheimer’ disease. Pupul’s solo album, 2024’s Letter to Yu, which was inspired by his journeys to his late mother’s homeland of Hong Kong, brought his own family history into focus. Together, these experiences led the duo to explore the parallels between their backgrounds coming together in Belgium — from Pupul’s grandparents’ Chinese restaurant in Aalst to Adigéry’s mother’s cocktail bar, Madinina, in Ghent.

Written in Ghent and Martinique, Mainland Madinina moves between deeply intimate songwriting and the duo’s long-held and familiar electronic intensity. The pair returned to songwriting fundamentals, working with little more than a guitar to creat songs that couldn’t hide between sleek production. The result is an album that makes space for vulnerability, while retaining the energy, wit and unpredictability that has defined their collaboration.

At its core, the acclaimed duo’s sophomore album is about what we inherit, what we choose to carry and how we find a sense of belonging. While Topical Dancer confronted the absurdities of contemporary life through privation and humor, the sophomore album turns inward, towards the duo’s own histories, finding connections between personal experience and wide questions of identity, memory and community. Yes, it’s an album shaped by life’s changes and by loss, but also the sustaining power of a deep and abiding friendship, and the possibility of making something new from the past.

Soulwax once again assisted as mentors/co-producers on the album, with Adigéry describing the duo’s contribution to Mainland Madinina as invaluable. “They’re people who can really inspire us when we get stuck – they invite us to go deeper, to really grasp the intention behind the song,” she says. Pupul adds, “They’re still the musical chiropractors – they really know where to push when stuck.” 

Mainland Madinina will feature the previously released “GOOGOO GAGA” and the album’s latest single “From Healer to Dealer.” Built around a strutting bass line, skittering, tweeter and woofer thumping beats and shimmering synths, “From Healer to Dealer” is a hilarious and incisive critique of spiritual materialism and heath culture that features a ridiculous phone conversation between “Grace” and “Ruben,” two wellness-obsessed manics that Adigéry and Puul use to explore the complex, often confused vernacular of health culture — while also pointing out its vapidity and self-absorption.

Directed by Lennert Madou, the accompanying video feature the duo doing a mix of pilates and yoga and in front of a wind machine — while seemingly reaching a higher plane of consciousness. But they look ridiculous while doing so.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Naomi Shares Euphoric “Tranquille”

2026 has been a busy year for Montréal-based JOVM mainstay Naomi: She has continued to be wildly prolific while entering a bold new era working with French producer Elior Chaudagne, who produced “Univers,” and “Hershey Kiss” feat. Anglophone Montréal-based emcee SLM (pronounced “SLIM”)

The French-Canadian artist’s latest single, the Naomi, Elior Chaudagne and John Adam co-written “Tranquille” is a breezy, remarkably catchy bit of pop anchored around a strutting, dance floor friendly bass line, glistening synths and Naomi’s sultry and soulful R&B-tinged pop star delivery. “Tranquille” is a euphoric, escapist fantasy, specifically meant for you to dance your frustrations and worries away.

Fittingly, the song is rooted in a familiar story for all of us: When a friend goes through a breakup, Naomi steps in to console her. And she comes up with a simple plan — get dressed up and head to the club to dance the night away and get her friend’s mind off things.

The Naomi and Wym Holmes co-directed video for “Tranquille” features dancers Miambi Kassé and Zanna Allepot performing choreography that Naomi developed in collaboration with Guillaume Michaud. The video follows the trio as they get ready for their night out. Gabriel Poirier handled the cinematography and editing for the clip.

Additionally, Naomi was recently named an ambassador for Maybelline Canada, further adding to her reputation as a fashion enthusiast.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Creature In The Woods Shares Dreamy and Propulsive “Just Go”

Northern California-born, Brooklyn-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Morrisette is the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Creature In The Woods. Since starting the project back in 2014, Morisette has developed a sound and approach that sees him built productions that blend elements of psych soul, downtempo electronica and surf rock, featuring bass, guitar, baritone ukulele and the Teenage Engineering OP-1. He’s also a founding member of the Brooklyn-trio Graffiti Royale, a project that blends alternative rock and indie hip-hop.

Since the beginning, collaboration has been part of Creature In The Woods with early releases featuring Elisa Coia, Emily Clibourn, J Lately, and July Quin, In 2021 Morrisette took up vocal duties for “Summertime Love,” a track that featured his band Graffiti Royale. The song was featured in the Disney series Saturdays and in the motion picture, In Spite of Ourselves. And since then, Morissette’s vocal has increasingly become a defining part of the Creature in the Woods sound.

Over the years, Creature in the Woods has played across the New York live circuit, playing sets at SOB’s, Mercury Lounge, DROM and The Shrine while receiving airplay from KCRW.

Morrisette is currently releasing a collection of songs inspired by his late mother, which include the recently released “Silver Moon” featuring Arc Iris‘ Ray Belli (drums) and “Halo.” His latest single in the collection “Just Go” is a simultaneously dreamy and propulsive song featuring Morissette’s yearning delivery ethereally floating over African-inspired percussion, skittering beats, a looping Flamenco-styled guitar figure and glistening synths. Nodding at LCD Soundsystem‘s 45:33, “Just Go” is kinetic enough to make the listener get up and start moving or running somewhere but is anchored in overwhelming grief and heartache.

“This song was born in the Oakland hills, on a portable synthesizer in the backseat of my car following a run,” Morrisette says. “After my mom’s passing, my grief was too overwhelming, too kinetic in my body to sit still. So I ran almost everyday. Sometimes away from my grief, sometimes towards my grief, sometimes with my grief. My mantra then was ‘just go.’ ‘Just get onto the trails and run.’ So I did. And it helped.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Trentemøller and The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner Team Up on Stormy “Your Love Walks Alone”

Anders Trentemøller’s self-titled eighth Trentemøller album is slated for a November 13, 2026 release through his In My Room Records. The self-titled album will include the previously released “Terrified” feat. Mew‘s Jonas Bjerre and the album’s latest single “Your Love Walks Alone” feat. The Raveonettes‘ Sune Rose Wagner.

“Your Love Walks Alone” is a stormy touch song featuring Wagner’s imitable delivery expressing despair, confusion, heartache and anger set to a brooding goth-inspired soundscape of scorching industrial-meets-shoegaze like fuzz, thunderclap-like beats. “A depiction of pure love slowly winding down and how it affects you in those moments where you realise you’re being ‘replaced,” Wagner says.

Trentemøller traces this collaboration back to an earlier collaboration: “Ever since Sune sang on my track ‘Deceive,’ we’d been talking about doing another song together. This time I had an instrumental that felt right for his voice, so I sent it over. He loved it, and pretty quickly came back with that great vocal that’s unmistakably Sune / The Raveonettes. With ‘Your Love Walks Alone,’ I feel like he hit the mood of the music perfectly. What I love is how the vocal melody is kind of ‘happy’ in a way, when the lyrics are actually pretty dark. It makes for a good contrast against the more brooding, insistent sound underneath. “

The accompanying video by DACU features brightly colored child-like, hand-drawn animation that captures the sentiment of the song while being simultaneously trippy and menacing.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Super Plage Shares Breezy “MINI CLUB”

Jules Henry is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed, JOVM mainstay recording project and Super Plage. Founded back in 2019, Super Plage sees Henry crafting slickly produced, dance floor friendly electro pop that draws from house and nu-disco. He frequently collaborates with local French Canadian artists to create a playful, fun-loving and escapist universe, where it feels good to party. 

Since 2019, Henry has released a handful of albums including 2023’s Magie á minuit, which received an ADISQ Félix Award-nomination for Electronic Album of the Year. Building upon a growing profile, Henry has made a run of both the provincial and international festival circuits, playing sets at Francos de Montréal, FME and Festival d’été de Québec, SXSW, Wide Days and others. He has opened for Miel de Montagne, Juilen Granel, Bon Entendeur, MYD and more. 

Last year’s GROSSE MAISON featured a sleek and daring blend of house, disco and French touch anchored around catchy, downright funky grooves, much like on album single “Tip Top.” 

The French Canadian JOVM mainstay’s fourth album MINI CLUB was just released today through his longtime label home, Lisbon Lux. MINI CLUB sees Henry solidifying his place within Québec’s electronic music scene while bridging the project’s multiple sonic identities throughout its history — the electro pop of MINI CLUB track “PARIS” the house music of last year’s GROSSE MAISON and a decided shift towards tech house of “SÉOUL” feat. Zéa Calla. Rooted in synth and digital driven textures, there is more than enough room for organic textures throughout — including everyday sounds recorded in the studio and on Montréal’s streets. The album’s material sonically is suited for both the club and chilling in the park, but lyrically, it’s rooted in observations and thoughts on everyday life.

MINI CLUB is arguably one of Henry’s most collaborative efforts to date — fellow JOVM mainstay Virignie B.; Zéa Calla, a childhood friend, who he reconnected with; and Hawa B have contributed both vocals and songwriting to the album.

The album includes the previously released “POOL PARTY” featuring longtime collaborator Virginie B. and the album’s latest single, album title track “MINI CLUB.” “MINI CLUB” is a club and lounge friendly that nods a bit at Larry Levan-era house with a looping whistled melody, twinkling and bubbling synths, wobbling bass and skittering beats beneath Henry’s ethereal cooing and crooning.

Directed by Henry, the recently released accompanying video follows Henry as he’s barbecuing in a Montréal park and lounging by a pool — all while playing the song. With fall in full effect in the Northern Hemisphere, the video and the song are a fond reminder of summer — and of summers to come.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Puma Blue Shares Hypnotic Lullaby “Whispering”

London-based producer, singer/songwriter and Puma Blue creative mastermind Jacob Allen released his sixth Puma Blue album, Croak Dreams earlier this year through Play It Again Sam. “A Croak Dream is a prophetic dream where you see a vision of how you die. Half the songs on this record allude to how you might decide to live, act, if you somehow knew your awaiting fate. Being daring, romantic… saying what you really mean.” Allen explains. 

Recorded straight to tape at Peter Gabriel‘s Real World Studios, Croak Dream sees Allen and co-producer and mixer Sam Petts-Davies expanding the project’s sonic world a well as to channel the project’s sultry, emotional and conceptual complexity with an instinct-led take on experimenting with Allen’s art to its most evocative form.

Additionally, longtime collaborator Harvey Grant contributed to the textual quality and identity of the album. “Later at Real World Studios, the band and I recorded tape loops over a small fragment of the demo, none of them heard the finished song, and when Sam and I came back to London we cut those improvisations into this Frankenstein’s monster type collage,” Allen says. “We were really leaning into a mutual love for CAN, Aphex Twin and Queens of the Stone Age.”

The album featured the broodingly cinematic and uneasy album title track “Croak Dream.”

Yesterday, Allen announced that the deluxe edition of Croak Dream, Croak Deluxe is slated for a November 13, 2026 release through Play It Again Sam. Croak Deluxe will include five previously unreleased tracks along with four live recordings. The result is an effort that expands upon the trip hop, dub and nocturnal crooning of the acclaimed, previously released Croak Dream.

Along with the album announcement, Allen shared the previously unreleased “Whispering” is a slow-burning, hypnotic trip-hop-tinged lullaby with twinkling keys and dusty, boom bap beats paired with Allen’s soulful, breathy croon.

“Anything left on the cutting room floor usually stays that way in my creative process,” Allen says. ““If a song doesn’t fit on an album, I either feel like I have unfinished business with it on the next one, or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. ‘Whispering’ is a curious song to me because sonically, thematically – it’s a sibling of the other songs on the record. It just wasn’t ready in time. It’s been a rare pleasure to see it through.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Mother Soki Shares Atmospheric “Mussel”

Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Annie Tammeru is the creative mastermind behind the rising dream pop/electro pop recording project Mother Soki. Tammeru’s Mother Soki project received attention with last year’s “Rivet Gun,” a track built around beguiling, otherworldly textures and production paired with the Minneapolis-based artist’s velvety vocals caught the attention of millions across social media platforms, amassing over 26 million streams on Spotify.

Quickly building upon the growing momentum, Tammeru closed out last year with her debut EP, Fantasy, which she supported with a fall tour opening for Towa Bird.

The Minneapolis-based artist’s sophomore EP, Act 2 is slated for a November 20, 2026 release through Mom + Pop. Working with producers Jack Pfeffer and Bradley Hale, Tammeru set out to make something “uncanny and uncomfortable, that’s also very beautiful and digestible.” She goes on to describe the EP as a list of mantras and counter-mantras tied to the same world,” with repeated thoughts that mirror a ruminating mind. Sonically, sterile, computer-recorded stems were run through a multitrack tape machine, with speed adjusted on the fly, to pick up analog artifacts — and to blur past and present. Her mood board for the EP included The Cocteau Twins, Prince and Joni Mitchell’s experimental 80s records to David Lynch and the puppetry of The Neverending Story and Labyrinth.

“I like to think of Act 2 as like a journal entry,” Tammearu says. “I think it really speaks to where I’m at right now — I’m sort of at a crossroads of becoming a person.”

The EP will include the previously released “The Rot” and “Thicken,” as well as the EP’s third and latest single “Mussel.” Sounding a bit like a Jorge Elbrecht-produced tune, “Mussel” is built around atmospheric downbeat synths, twinkling electronics and crackling and metallic beats beneath Tammeru’s delicate delivery singing the mantra “Nothing’s ever gonna change” until it stops sounding like a statement and stars sounding more like an incurable symptom.

Tammeru says of the new single “Everything is different. Everything is the same.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Return with Ethereal “Glorious Vanity”

Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — just released their newest album, By accident, On purpose on this past Friday.

The album includes ““Honestly, that’s enough honesty” “They’ll Never Suspect Us” “Pure Comedy” and the album’s latest single “Glorious Vanity.” Arguably, one of By accident, On Purpose‘s most minimalist and ethereal songs, “Glorious Vanity” serves as one of the more extreme examples of the JOVM mainstay’s experimental creative process with only the title remaining from the initial composition. The result is song that’s a hauntingly eerie, slow-burning, half-remembered dream rooted in palpable yearning.

The song captures the duo’s willingness to abandon a predetermined designation that largely came to define the album. Rather than ruthlessly potting their original idea, the duo allowed instinct and experimentation to dictate what the song needed to become, crafting a weightless entry point into the album.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares Yearning, Pop Gem “This Is The Last Time”

Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features: 

Over the past 18 months or so, the trio have released a handful of standalone singles, including “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy,” “Give Me Everything You Own” “Horizontal Rain” and “Beaten to Write.” Their latest single “This Is The Last Time” is glistening sophistipop-meets-80s New Wave-meets New Order-like tune anchored around what may arguably be the most melodic and the most earnest and achingly oversized yearning song of the trio’s growing catalog.

Sonically, “This Is The Last Time” sees the JOVM mainstays looking backward to move forward. Campbell, Ramsey and McFall have had a long-held obsession with late 1980s and early 1990s electronic music, and the new single pushes that fixation towards its biggest pop-leaning instincts. There aren’t software shortcuts hiding beneath the surface either. “No plug-ins, anywhere. This track is all analog, baby.”

When asked what inspired it, Total Fucking Darkness’ Stephen Ramsey offers a characteristically economic answer, “New Order.”

“This Is The Last Time” arrived with similarly little ceremony. Ramsay had barely made it through the instrumental once before Torquil Campbell had the lyrics ready. “It may as well be called ‘Real Time’ because Torq wrote this in real time,” Ramsay explains. “By the time I played him the instrumental once, he had written the lyrics.”

“‘This Is The Last Time” is about the point where letting go becomes forward motion, following whatever dream remains, committing to it completely, and accepting that the only sensible response to uncertainty is to set your heart on fire — and see what survives.

“Every band says their latest music is the best thing they’ve ever done,”the band’s Stephen Ramsay says. “It’s obviously cliché at this point and therefore categorically untrue in almost all cases, but I’m telling you, this is the best song we’ve written.”

The accompanying video features edited footage from some movie that follows two dogs, who are in love. It’s adorable.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Return with Atmospheric and Uneasy “Pure Comedy”

Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — will be releasing their newest album, By accident, On purpose on October 16, 2026. 

The new album will include “Honestly, that’s enough honesty” “They’ll Never Suspect Us” and the album’s latest single “Pure Comedy.” “Pure Comedy” shifts through dream pop, indie rock, ambient electronic music and electro pop with settling into any easily identifiable genre or style while restlessly vacillating between optimism and pessimism, intimacy and aggression, hope and resignation. And it’s all done in a way that feels grounded in the psychological realism of a world that’s gone as mad as ours.

By accident, On purpose‘s latest single evolved alongside the album, with the JOVM mainstay outfit working on the song throughout the years-long writing and recording process. Rather than discarding each previous incarnation as the track gradually changed shape, fragments survived, leaving different eras of the song’s creation embedded within the finished track.

“This is the song that I think best represents our new album,” Allegories’ Adam Bentley explains. ” “There are elements from many different iterations of the song still in there, and sonically, it feels like it touches on the kaleidoscope of sounds and genres that the record eventually became.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul Share a Shimmering, Uneasy and Confrontational Ode to Motherhood

Acclaimed Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul‘s latest single, the Pupul and Soulwax co-produced “GOOGOO GAGA” is the duo’s first release since 2022’s widely acclaimed full-length debut, Topical Dancer. Built around a restless, uneasy production that seemingly blends Timbaland’s classic and beloved 90s era, footwork, hyper pop and deep house featuring tweeter and woofer rattling thump and shimmering synths beneath Adigéry’s unique delivery which manages to be ironic and earnest within a turn of a phrase.

“GOOGOO GAGA” finds Adigéry giving voice to the relentless rhythms of caring for a young child: feeding and carrying, crying and sleeping, mess and repetition, guilt and uncertainty. Thematically, the song explores the largely invisible work of parenthood and of motherhood, the endless small acts of care alongside the much larger questions that accompanying them: How do you protect a child without allowing fear to dictate their life? How do you learn to be a parent while you are already parenting? And what happens to the idea that raising a child “takes a village” when so much of that responsibility is still experienced alone?

”It takes a village, and yet you’re doing it alone. This record was made as we both became parents: ‘Googoo Gaga’ is about feeling drained, the self-sacrifice, the overwhelm, yet embracing all of it,” the Belgian duo explain.

Directed by Lennert Madou, the accompanying video extends the song’s central questions of motherhood into a wider meditation of race, gender and their relationship to power — by referencing the Flemish folkloric figure De Mammelokker, a legend embedded into the folklore of the duo’s hometown of Ghent, and itself derived from the ancient story of Roman Charity. In the De Mammelokker tale, a prisoner condemned to starvation is kept alive when his daughter secretly breastfeeds him during her visits.

The video remains the tale with a Black woman (Adigéry) feeding an elderly white man, which transforms an image of nature into something uncomfortable and confrontational. In Madou and the Belgian duo’s interpretation, care is not synonymous with submission. And as a result, the video asks who is expected to nourish whom. whose labor sustains existing power structures and what happens when person who’s traditionally underestimated within that structure becomes a source of survival.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Locust Shares Yearning “Love Stays”

Mark Van Hoen is a London-born and based electronic music artist, who has written, recorded and released music with his best-known project Locust, with Autocreation and under his own name. Originally influenced by Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream and others, Van Horn’s music career started in earnest back in 1993 hen he signed with  Belgian-based label R&S. His initial releases as Locust saw him using vintage analog synthesizers and tape recorders. But as his sound moved towards an increasingly vocal orientated approach in the late 1990s, he also began releasing material under his own name. 

Van Hoen also collaborated with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead in Black Hearted Brother, a project that released their debut Stars Are Our Home in 2013. 

The London-born and-based electronic music artist’s latest Locust album. the 10-song, Spectral + was released last week through TODO Records. The album follows significant anticipation from fans of the project since Van Hoen assembled a new live band featuring musician and KCRW/NTS Radio DJ Olive Kimoto (vocals, keys), Derek Mabra (guitar) and Jaelyn Valero (drums). The Locust live band played their first shows last year, the project’s first live shows since opening for Massive Attack back in the 1990s. And since then, the project has fleshed out and road-tested the material, which would eventually comprise Spectral + – with some portions of the material developed further onstage. “We’re establishing this identity as a live band — we’ve really bonded, all really good friends, all rooting for it,” Locust creative mastermind Mark Van Hoen says. “People can see we’re a tight band, they’re not hired hands.”

The albums’s material moves between oceanic drone and pop songcraft, threading orchestral stings and understated guitars through Van Hoen’s signature synth work. The seems him working with the sound that helped create IDM in the 90s while finding new shapes to move in.  “This record contains a broad spectrum of songs that are an assimilation of my influences and my own earlier music,” Van Hoen says. ” It’s contemplative, sometimes melancholy, sometimes abrasive and pastoral.” The album’s tile reflects the sheer variation, the range of color across the album’s songs.

“Olive Kimoto (vocals, keyboards) instigated all this.,” Van Hoen says of his collaborations with Kimoto. “I was playing a solo show in September 2024, and she came to that – she had been running a club called Heaven or Los Angeles, a Cocteau Twins reference which I immediately liked. We met, and she said how much she liked my music. She did a two-hour radio special with me on my music, and we decided to collaborate.”

Spectral + includes the previously released “Long Distance Lover,” a collaboration with Slowdive‘s Neil Halstead and Natasha Morrow and the album’s latest single “Love Stays.” “Love Stays” features a seemingly Surrender-era The Chemical Brothers-like production of twinkling keys and skittering and chugging boom bap beneath guest vocalist Omotola’s soulful and yearning delivery singing lyrics about love and working things out.

The video by Locust’s Mark Van Hoen features Omotola as a spectral and technicolor siren, singing the song’s lyrics directly to the viewer.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Trentemøller and Mew’s Jonas Bjerre Team Up on Shimmering and Anthemic “Terrified”

Anders Trentemøller’s self-titled eighth Trentemøller album is slated for a November 13, 2026 release through his In My Room Records. The self-titled album’s latest single “Terrified” feat. Mew‘s Jonas Bjerre is a collaboration that finds the Danish artists crafting an anthemic bit of uplift that’s seamlessly blend of shoegaze and twinkling, hook-driven dream pop paired with stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

Throughout the song’s runtime, Bjerre sings lyrics that focus tackling the specter of fear head-on. “When the instrumental was done, I sent it to Jonas Bjerre with a few melody ideas, which he took further while adding new melodies of his own,” Trentemøller says. He then reshaped the track, explaining “‘Terrified’ is probably the poppiest song on the album. In its original form it sounded a bit more shoegazey, but I wanted it to be crisper and clearer, less washed out. So I went for synths that almost sound like human voices, with a magical, otherworldly quality to them.”

“I think sometimes when you dream about things that make you fearful and uneasy, it’s your mind trying to prepare you for any scenario, like you’re processing catastrophes that have not and may not ever happen,” Mew’s Jonas Bjerre says of the song’s themes.

Directed by Jonas Bjerre, the accompanying video for “Terrified” is a mind-bending blend of animation, live action footage and photography that turns the collaborators’ hometown of Copenhagen into a lysergic, brightly colored dream.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Black Marble Returns with Bouncy, New Order-like “It Always Comes To Me”

Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Black Marble creative mastermind Chris Stewart will be releasing his fifth Black Marble album, Life in Small Spaces through Sacred Bones Records on Friday. The album, which is Stewart’s first full-length album since 2021’s Fast Idol, is an album of clear-eyed commentary and analysis of the music industry as a whole, a discussion of authenticity and a heartfelt letter to all the independent creatives out in the world.

“I always knew a lot of people in music struggled to make ends meet, but it surprised me to learn that the people you thought would be doing well often weren’t. For me, seeing the business from the inside like that changed how I looked at things,” Stewart says. “When I looked up to see a new artist on a billboard, I started to wonder, ‘will I one day have to pretend to be something I’m not, in order to succeed?’ The life of an artist goes on after your moment ends, you know? So who do you want to be in the end and how do you want to be seen by the people that know you? I made Life In Small Spaces while thinking about that, and for me, it serves as my own ideal for living an artistic life. I’m doing it as a vocation, not some last-ditch effort to escape to some other world. I made this record not only as a way of saying that, but as a way of saying it’s ok to feel that way. It’s ok for people to sacrifice some degree of creature comfort in order to live a life you believe in. And it doesn’t have to be an endless search for something just out of reach, it can be a permanent way of being and something that sustains you.”

Drawing from early American left-of-the-dial “college radio” staccato guitar lines and live drum samples, the album’s material sees Stewart eschewing his usual wall of synths-driven sound for a more live sound. 

The album will include the previously released “Jim Carol New Year,” and “Anything,” and its last pre-album release single “It Always Comes To Me,” “It Always Comes To Me” continues a run of decidedly upbeat, hook-driven tunes while arguably being the most New Order-like songs I’ve heard so far. The song’s narrator is a roguish sort. who seemingly can get away with things others can’t through a mix of charm and deceit. But whether or not, the narrator is having fun with it all or is complaining about how easy it all is or has even acknowledged that at some point everyone’s luck runs out is ultimately up to the listener. And on some level, the song asks the listener, “if you can get away with it, would you?”