Tag: indie pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Angeline Saris Teams Up with Naté the Soulsanger and Sandra Pippins on a Slinky Feminist Anthem

Over the past decade, California-based bassist, songwriter and educator Angeline Saris has developed a reputation for being an in-demand touring and session bassist, who has worked with an acclaimed collection of musicians and producers including Grammy Award-winning producer Naranda Michael Walden, Ernest Ranglin, Zepparella, The Celebration of Bowie Tour with Todd Rundgren, Adrian Belew, Spacehog’s Royston Langdon and Fishbone‘s Angelo Moore. Saris has also shared the stage with Carlos Santana, Ronnie Spector, Dionne Warwick, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Richie Sambora, Orianthi, Steven Adler, Neal Schon and a lengthy list of others.

Saris showcased her talent as a songwriter with ANGELEX‘s 2018 debut Tight Lips, which received glowing praise from Bass Player Magazine, who wrote: “Her vibe on the album is that of a musician finally creating her own musical identity, after years of playing other people’s material–and it’s a sound that suits her well.”

“Come Undone,” sees Saris boldly stepping out into the spotlight as a solo artist, as it’s the first single she’s releasing under her own name. The track, which features soulful vocals from Naté The Soulsanger and Sandra Pippins is a slinky feminist anthem built around Saris’ dexterous and funky Patrice Rushen and Bootsy Collins-like bass lines, and a remarkably catchy hook. Inspired by Saris’ own experiences as a woman in the music industry, “Come Undone” is a kiss-off to misogyny — both external an internal — and the outdated ways that the world treats and perceives women that boldly says “Those old days ain’t coming back.”

Directed by Nino Fernandez, the accompanying video for “Come Undone” is slick and stylishly shot visual that showcases Saris, her incredible bass playing and her talented backing band.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Queens’ ANI Shares Flirty and Summery Bop “Miss U”

Ani Djirdjirian is an emerging, Queens-born and-based, queer Armenian-American singer/songwriter, best known as ANI. Despite her training as a classical musician and vocalist, the Queens-born and-based artist’s work sees her seamlessly meshing elements of soul, pop, R&B and electronic music paired with earnest lyricism informed by her studies in social work and her desire for her work to be a conduit for listeners to explore their own emotions, embark on journeys of healing and rise above the limitations imposed by archaic perspectives.

For the Queens-born and-based Djirdjirian, she hopes to break down barriers and redefine norms of self-expression and resilience within both the music industry and Middle Eastern culture.

Released last month, Djirdjirian’s debut single “Miss U” is a slickly produced bit of thoughtful and coquettish Quiet Storm-inspired pop built around glistening synths, finger snap-led percussion, a supple yet subtle bass line and bursts of funk guitar paired with the Queens-born artist’s yearning delivery and a remarkably catchy, two-step inducing hook. Simply put, it’s the perfect song to play when you want to tell that love interest of yours how you feel — without being cringey. The song also reveals a budding superstar talent with an effortlessly soulful and dynamic range.

Shot at Rockaway Beach during Golden Hour, the accompanying video begins with the Queens-born artist sitting in a chair on the shore. She’s reminiscing about someone she really digs, who can’t be there at that moment. Throughout, Djirdjirian embodies the song’s flirtatious yet earnest nature.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Diamond Day Shares Breezy “Fiction Feel”

Montréal-based duo Diamond Day features two highly acclaimed musicians in their own right:

  • Vermont-born Béatrix Méthé was raised with the traditional music of rural Québec. Her family moved to Canada when she was baby, and she grew up acquiring Lanaudiere’s regional repertoire from her father, the founder of legendary folk-trad group Le Rêve du Diable. Her mother, a singer-songwriter and fine arts graduate versed in early digital media, inspired Méthé’s own aesthetic. After spending some time venturing deeper into visual art, Béthé moved to Montréal to study filmmaking, but wound up discovering indie and psychedelic folk music along the way. She cut her studies short in 2015 to pursue music full-time, fronting acclaimed outfit Rosier, whose unique fusion of Québécois folk and indie rock garnered multiple nominations and awards — and lead them to tour across 15 countries with stops at SXSW, NPR’s Mountain Stage and the BBC. 

  • Western Canada-born Quinn Bachand grew up in a home where art was omnipresent and the family’s 40-year-old record collection was on an omnipresent loop. As the son of a luthier, Bachand began playing guitars handmade by his father and was touring internationally by the time he turned 12. After graduating from Berklee College of Music back in 2019 on a presidential scholarship, the Western Canadian-born multi-instrumentalist spent time in the Grammy-nominated band Kittel & Co. His involvement in the US folk scene prompted collaborations with a number of like-minded artists, including Chris Thile. In 2019, Bachand began collaborating with Méthé and Rosier, quickly establishing himself as an influential, genre-bending producer.

That initial successful collaboration with Rosier lead to the duo’s forthcoming full-length debut as Diamond Day, Connect the Dots Slated for a fall 2023 release, the Canadian duo’s full-length debut reportedly sees them crafting a sound that weaves elements of folk, indie rock, electronica, shoegaze and dream pop into a unique take on alt-pop.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Connect the Dots‘ first single “Noisemaker,” which was built around tape-saturated organ echo, fluttering synths, blown out beats, a sinuous bass line and lush, painterly sheogazer-like guitar textures paired with Méthé’s gorgeous vocals. The result — to my ears at least — reminded me of a mix of Beach House and Souvlaki-era Slowdive with a subtle amount of glitchiness.

The album’s second and latest single “Fiction Feel” is a breezy, summertime dream of a song built around a glitch pop soundscape featuring vintage tape recordings, glistening synths and a shuffling organ drum machine before quickly morphing into a lush New Wave/post-punk anthem that brings Cocteau Twins and Violens to mind.

Directed by Natan B. Foisy, the accompanying video is shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white an features a collection of Montréal area theater club teens in a school auditorium. We see the teens as they cycle through a series of different emotions in an oddly bipolar yet playful fashion.

“We recorded ‘Fiction Feel’ a few times over the past year or so. Initially, it was very ‘post-punk,'” Diamond Day’s Quinn Bachand explains in press notes. ” I had just watched Converse PURPLE video which featured ‘Cries and Whispers’ by New Order and I was getting into a lot of newer stuff in that vein, especially Cate le Bon’s latest album. Ultimately, we don’t sound anything like that, so the arrangement turned into a bit of a frankenstein. We re-wrote melodies, and added and muted stuff. Before we sent it out to get mixed by Elijah [Marrett-Hitch], we removed tons of unused tracks and weird outdated plugins that were constantly making Pro Tools crash.”

“The song ended up being a little glitchy. Lo-fi thrift store keyboards, cheap classical guitars, archived speech recordings and arena-rocky drums,” the duo’s Béatrix Méthé says.  

“One of our mix notes to Elijah was, ‘Make the drums a bit more douchey, like Eric Valentine,” Bachand adds.

“We wanted it to evolve from tiny and creepy like The Books to big and bombastic like Depeche Mode. But we wanted it to remain catchy and dancey,” Méthé says.

“We love how The Books use extremely edited found sounds to intensify emotional moments and create a really unique feel. There’s so much subtle information–both melodic and rhythmic–packed into speech and these dated home recordings have so much depth,” says Bachand.

“We’re both folk musicians. Slightly jaded ones… [when it comes to folk music] we really only listen to archives now–rare home recordings of musicians in rural areas. There are tons of old reel-to-reel and cassette recordings across the country with this material, anyone can find them, you just have to dig. Quinn and I have a lot of that digitized now. Listening to everything around the music, the stuff the interviewer or engineer didn’t mean to record; that’s the weird stuff,” Méthé explains. “Quinn and I heard an argument on one tape, there was so much tension and urge in their speech. It was perfect… we had to include it in ‘Fiction Feel.’ Connect the Dots (the full record) has a bunch of awkward little archive-chestnuts sprinkled in.”

“Natan B. Foisy also directed this visualizer. He and Béatrix (and most of the video team) are from a region north of Montreal called Lanaudière,” Bachand says of the video. “Last winter, we were able to utilize a local high school in the region for some video.”

“The song is a little nerdy and bipolar and Natan did a great job of capturing that in the visualizer. He got teenagers from the school to play with the camera, cycling through different emotions and expressions as the song develops. And it’s all in black & white to contrast those dynamics,” Méthé says of the video.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Clementine Valentine Shares Haunting “The Rope”

Kiwi-based sibling duo Clementine and Valentine Nixon have had music and performing embedded in their lineage: Traveling musicians and performers go back hundreds of years on their maternal side — and was documented on recordings such as 1968’s The Traveling Stewarts. As children, the Nixon Sisters were taught to sing traditional balladry by their grandmother, the daughter of revered Traveller musician Davie Stewart, who was recorded by Alan Lomax.

Professionally, the sibling duo have made a career our of music that draws from that nomadic family heritage and conjures a series of contrasts: ancient and modern, beauty and brokenness, the ritual and the fleeting and more. Raised itinerantly between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the Kiwi-based sibling duo cut their teeth performing in renegade gallery spaces and rogue music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial section, eventually amassing both national and international attention with their acclaimed experimental noise and futuristic noise pop project Purple Pilgrims.

Their Purple Pilgrim material was frequently self-produced and released through a series of labels including beloved Kiwi label Flying Nun Records. With their latest project Clementine Valentine, Clementine and Valentine Nixon write, record and perform with a fusion of their birth names. Sonically, the project sees the sibling duo refining their craft into a more fully realized and sophisticated sound than ever before.

Their Randall Dunn-produced Clementine Valentine full-length debut The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor is slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Flying Nun Records. The album reportedly marks a pivotal moment in the pair’s creative evolution: The material sees them transposing their keyboard-and-guitar driven demos to cello, pedal steel, 12 string guitar and a collection of vintage synthesizers. Matt Chamberlain, who has worked with David Bowie, Lana Del Rey and Fiona Apple contributed percussion for the recording sessions.

The result is material that’s lush, shimmering and softly orchestral while being an accumulation of songcraft that has stretched back generations within their family.

Last month, I wrote about album single “Time and Tide,” a single built around the duo’s gorgeous and expressive vocal range, soaring hooks and choruses, dramatic percussion, strummed guitar and atmospheric synths. Sonically nodding at Kate Bush, “Time and Tide” aims for the celestial and the timeless, while being one of the more optimistic-leaning songs of their career to date.

“We thought we were only capable of writing sad songs — but found optimism creeping in during the writing of this album,” Clementine and Valentine Nixon explain. “Without ruining the mystery, ‘Time and Tide’ is about the release that comes in too brief moments of relinquishing overthinking, fret and regret. It’s coloured with melancholy, but cheerful by our measure.” 

The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor‘s second and latest single “The Rope” is a haunting siren song that pulls the listener in, much like the old Greek myths — but whether it’s to safety or your demise is ultimately up to the listener. The Nixon’s sisters’ unncaily breathtaking harmonies ethereally float over a sparse arrangement of their vocals, strummed guitar and gentle percussion. Unlike it’s immediate predecessor, “The Rope” is clearly informed and inspired by a deep understanding and love of folk tradition.

“The rope acts as a motif to connect us to our ancestors – we wanted it to feel as though it could be both ancient and of now,” the Nixon Sisters explain. “A feeling we call ‘ancient futurism’ – something we’ve been chasing in our songs for years now. We were reaching for a feeling simultaneously sinister and comforting as, to us, so many ancient songs are.   

“We’ve always listened to a lot of new music, but the core of our creative expression has always come directly from our deep familial folk music traditions. This is something that has not always been easily identifiable, perhaps due to the fact that we’ve never been interested in making ‘folk revival music’ — there’s no finger picking on any of our family records. The folk element in our songs is on a DNA level, stretching back beyond the 1960s wave that folk music is commonly associated with.   

Having felt for a long time that pop, and (more importantly to us) lo-fi or bedroom produced music, to now be the true music of the people (accessible to all) — we finally decided we wanted to use more acoustic and ‘traditional’ instrumentation to express this feeling of modernising relics.   Although our personal tradition of using an excess of synthesizers is still very much present all over this album, ‘The Rope’ is very stripped back for us and tells the story of our family music in a way we never have before.”

Directed by PICTVRE — the directorial and creative duo of Veronica Crockford-Pound and Joseph Griffen — the gorgeously cinematic, black and white visual for “The Rope” is inspired by 1960s noveau vague film — in particular Jean-Luc Godard’s sci-fi/noir Alphaville and Ingmar Bergman’s psychological drama Persona.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Detroit’s Zilched Shares Yearning “Loveless”

23 year-old, Detroit-based singer/songwriter Chloe Drallos is the creative mastermind behind the rising pop recording project Zilched. Started back in 2017, Drallos exploded into the national scene with her full-length debut, 2020’s DOOMPOP, an effort, which saw the Detroit-based artist quickly establishing an eclectic, genre-defying take on pop.

Drallos’ highly-anticipated sophomore album, the Ian Ruhala and Ben Collins co-produced Earthly Delights is slated for an August 11, 2023 release through Young Heavy Souls. Reportedly a testament to the maturation of her uncompromising creative vision, Drallos’ sophomore album sees her adding grunge elements to her gothic pop-tinged take on art rock. While being a dazzling display of poetic lyricism that sees the Detroit-based artist weaving an intricate tapestry of Romantic imagery, metaphor and religious allegory that softens the blow of her brutal honesty, the album explores the purgatorial nature of bargaining with an indecisive lover and with oneself.

“Loveless,” Earthly Delights‘ latest single oscillates between shimmering and yearning Kate Bush-like verses and cathartic, rousingly anthemic choruses as the song’s narrator speaks of something that’s fairly universal: the frustration and annoyance of a lover that’s been withholding and indecisive. The song ends with its narrator essentially saying “make up your mind or I’ll make it up for you.” While “Loveless” is a display of slick and seemingly effortless craft, the song feels rooted in bitter, deeply lived-in experience.

“The song is like a conversation between lovers. Contemplating the purgatorial roller coaster that exists between freedom and unity,” Drallos says.

Directed by Chloe Drallos, the accompanying video for “Loveless” sees Drallos and her band performing in a bare studio in a lush swatch of red and blue lighting as a sparse crowd of mysterious onlookers dispassionately watch. “As for the video, I was inspired by disco TV performances and Giallo horror,” Drallos explains.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Tiphanie Doucet Shares a Synth Pop cover of Julien Doré

Tiphanie Doucet is a French-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who currently splits her time between New York and Los Angeles. Doucet can trace her love of performing to her childhood: She was a child actor, who appeared on French TV. After earning a merit scholarship, the French-born, Los Angeles-based artist, relocated to New York, where she studied acting and musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA).

Her music career started in earnest after appearing on The Voice Canada, where she gained a wide fanbase. Her full-length debut 2018’s Simon Felice and David Baron-produced Under My Sun and 2020’s Painted Blue were released to critical applause. The five-song Painted Blue EP showcased Doucet’s sultry vocal and sophisticated imagery and featured “You and I,” which received praise from Rolling Stone France.

The French-born artist has always played covers throughout her career, and 2020’s Re-Imagined EP feature covers that she re-arranged — and the EP’s material manages to reveal the breadth of her influences. The following year, she released a virtually unrecognizable David Baron-produced cover of Lenny Kravitz‘s “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over,” which was recorded at Sun Mountain Studio.

Last year, the French artist embraced the harp and started producing her own material, including “Joe le Taxi” and “Une Love Song,” which featured bilingual lyrics paired with a pop-folk-meets-electro pop sound.

Doucet’s latest single sees her turning Julien Doré‘s dreamy M83-meets-Air-like “Paris-Seychelles” into a glistening synth-driven bop that retains the yearning of the original while being a perfect vehicle for the French artist’s sultry and coquettish delivery.

“Paris-Seychelles” will appear on Doucet’s forthcoming second collection of re-imaging covers Re-Imagined 2 EP.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Develour Shares a Breezy and Summery Jam

With the release of “La Part des Anges,” the mysterious and mischievous French artist Develour emerged into the scene. He describes himself as a mustachioed dandy that specializes in “French touch disco,” a sound that draws from chanson, soul, funk, disco and pop, and would compare favorably to the likes of JOVM mainstays L’impératice and Clara Luciani.

Develour’s second single “Un Matin” is a breezy and summery bop built around a swaggering and infectious 80s-inspired groove, glistening synths, Nile Rodgers-like guitar, an incredible catchy two-step inducing hook paired with the French artist’s cooed delivery. The result is a song that — to my ears, at least — reminds me a bit of L’impératice, L’Eclair and Viscardi & Il Duo Magnetico.

The video follows a stylish Develour who’s vibing out while a collection of acolytes act too cool school play chess, read and smoke cigarettes on a Parisian rooftop at sunrise.

“Les Part des Anges” and “Un Matin” will appear on the French artist’s debut EP Vert Galant, which will see an October 2023 release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ The Voxes Shares Funky Party Anthem “Midnight”

Los Angeles-based indie rock outfit The Voxes — Joseph Faundez (vocals), Adrian Jardines (guitar), Brian Lopez (guitar), Alec Pereda (bass) and John Toledo (drums) — formed back in 2013. And since their formation, the Los Angeles-based outfit have developed a sound that draws from 2000s indie rock and 2010s indie pop rock paired with energetic guitar melodies, lush harmonies and introspective lyrics.

Their full-length debut, 2021’s Closer Than Ever showcase the band’s growth as songwriters, with the album’s material featuring anthemic rock songs and introspective ballads.

The band’s follow-up EP is slated for release this summer, and it reportedly sees the Los Angeles-based outfit pushing the boundaries of their sound while staying true to their indie roots. The forthcoming EP’s first single, the Jose Cruz and Evan Lopez-produced “Midnight,” not only serves as a taste of what to expect from the new release; it’s also the first bit of new material from The Voxes since their full-length debut. Built around glistening synths, a sinuous bass line, angular bursts of guitar paired with yearning vocals and the band’s uncanny knack for catchy hooks. At its core, the song captures the sense of joy, good times, and possibility of something extraordinary happening just around midnight while hanging out with your friends. And the song does so while sounding as though it could have been released back in 1984.

“This song came to me out of the blue while sitting at the grand piano,” the band’s Brian Lopez explains. “Despite not being a proficient pianist, the chords flowed naturally. It came alive when John wrote that funky bass line.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: JOVM Mainstay Kendra Morris Shares a Swaggering Feminist Anthem

JOVM mainstay Kendra Morris is an acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician, and multi-disciplinary artist. As a singer/songwriter and musician, the acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based artist can trace the origins of her music career to discovering the joys of multi-tracking and harmonizing with herself on a karaoke machine in the closet of her childhood home.

Morris went on to play in cover bands in Florida before relocating to New York with her band, which played her original material. Her first band split up and she dealt with the aftermath by writing material alone on an 8-track recorder in her closet. Sometime after, she met longtime collaborator and producer Jeremy Page and signed to Wax Poetics, who released her full-length debut, 2012’s Banshee. 

The JOVM mainstay self-released her sophomore effort 2016’s Babble. She then went on to collaborate with DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, MF DOOM, Czarface, Ghostface Killah, Dennis Coffey and Dave Sitek among others. And while being a grizzled, New York scene vet, Morris’ work generally embodies a broader sense of American culture, drawing from a wide array of influences across music and film dating back to the mid 20th Century. 

Last year’s Nine Lives was the Florida-born, New York-based JOVM’s mainstay’s first full-length album in about a decade. The album represented a major turning point in her life both professionally and personally for Morris: The album heralds the beginning of a new chapter, an evolution to the next level of adulthood — and the first on her new label,  Karma Chief Records. Thematically, the album’s material encapsulates moments from what could easily be nine lifetimes lived over a chronological time period — or nine lives lived simultaneously in parallel and convergent realties in the multiverse.

While celebrating a recent birthday, Morris was shaken by the realization that old habits were holding her back from growth. Something needed to change — and fast. She began writing new songs and rethinking of her old ones. Less-than-perfect takes were tolerated. She put a moratorium on love songs. As Morris puts it: “I needed to scare myself into growth.” The result is the Florida-born, New York-based artist’s highly-anticipated, Torbitt Schwartz, a.k.a. Little Shalimar-prorudced fourth album I Am What I’m Waiting For.

Slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Karma Chief/Colemine Records, the forthcoming album is reportedly a a sophisticated, playful and joyful reinvention and an unfiltered expression of Morris’ weird universe that sees her delving deep into the little details. “How do you put yourself into a record?  I wanted to make it feel like you cracked open the ooze in my head,” Morris says. Fittingly, the album is an unvarnished self-portrait of Morris with all of life’s odd imperfections that captures the artist at the time of its creation.

The 11-song album pairs Morris’ towering and effortlessly soulful vocal with a sound that features elements of dusty funk, R&B and touches of indie rock. Thematically, the album at points touches upon the mundane conflicts of domesticity and cohabitation, the Butterfly Effect, her fear of flying and even an attempt to expand the birthday song canon among others.

I Am What I’m Waiting For‘s first single “What Are You Waiting For” is a seamless synthesis of Muscle Shoals soul, psych soul, and Spoon-like indie rock built around a gritty, swaggering groove and Morris’ sultry and effortlessly soulful delivery. The song is a bold and playfully defiant feminist anthem that champions self-reliance and realness above all.

The accompanying video for “What Are You Waiting For” was created from VHS footage shot by Morris’ friends Yvonne Ambrée and Leah Levitt, filmed in Morris’ neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Edited by Morris, the video is rooted in a familiar premise. “A lot of my life in New York is either getting from point A to B or just waiting around,” the JOVM mainstay explains. “New York is the city of Hurry Up and Wait.”  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Alex Nicol Shares Hauntingly Bittersweet “Hollywood”

Alex Nicol is a rising Montréal-based singer/songwriter, who spent five year period playing in a number of different projects, including Hoan, an act that released their critically applauded EP Modern Phase back in 2017.

Nicol stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with the release of his full-length debut 2020’s All For Nada. All For Nada featured “Trust,” a slow-burning and gauzy song built around the Montréal-based artist’s achingly plaintive falsetto, shimmering guitars, a supple bass line and a soaring hook. And while the song reminded me of Canadian freak folk outfit Loving, the song as Nicol explained in press notes “is about whatever meaning the listener finds in it. For me, it’s about doing laundry (appreciating mundane tasks), honouring old traditions, striving to be a more ecological person, the realities of climate change on everyday life. . . ”

All For Nada‘s long anticipated follow-up Been A Long Year Vol. 1 EP was released last month. The EP’s last single, the bittersweet sigh “Hollywood” is built around a haunting arrangement featuring strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling keys and gently padded drumming paired with the Canadian artist’s achingly tender falsetto expressing the tension of unrealized dreams and aspirations — and a begrudgingly uneasy acceptance of the present. Certainly, if you’re in a creative field you’ve felt this deeply and have acknowledged in your life. But there’s also a deeper — and infinitely more positive — acknowledgment at the core of the song: that the narrator has actually accomplished something and has come a very long way to do so.

“Lyrically, ‘Hollywood’ is a reflective song in which I begrudgingly accept that I have failed to find success yet, with Hollywood symbolizing the fame-in-youth narrative that, because I am no longer young, I will never be able to claim,” the Montréal-based singer/songwriter explains. “But if the verses are where I list all the things I will never do, in the choruses I remind myself of all that nourishes me at home, and how far I have come. I have always considered myself a late bloomer, and Hollywood ends optimistically: me and the great blue sky, and all the opportunity that it conveys. Hollywood is a signpost in my path as a musician, marking the end of my youth, in which I was ravaged by self-doubt, and the beginning of my next chapter, in which the sky’s the limit.”

Directed by Alexander Maxim Seltzer, the accompanying video for “Hollywood” is shot on grainy camcorder cassette tape, and follows Nicols at Niagara Falls imitating seagulls, then at a what appears to be a Montréal-based arcade — by himself. The video ends with Nicol going to a low-budget wax museum, where the celebrities don’t quite look right. The video ends with Nicol pretending to be interviewed by a wax figure Jimmy Fallon, which further emphasizes the feeling of unfulfilled dreams and aspirations.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kiwi Sibling Duo Clementine Valentine Share Lush and Spectral “Time and Tide”

Kiwi-based sibling duo Clementine and Valentine Nixon have had music and performing embedded in their lineage: Traveling musicians and performers go back hundreds of years on their maternal side — and was documented on recordings such as 1968’s The Traveling Stewarts. As children, the Nixon Sisters were taught to sing traditional balladry by their grandmother, the daughter of revered Traveller musician Davie Stewart, who was recorded by Alan Lomax.

Professionally, the sibling duo have made a career our of music that draws from that nomadic family heritage and conjures a series of contrasts: ancient and modern, beauty an brokenness, the ritual and the fleeting and more. Raised itinerantly between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the Kiwi-based sibling duo cut their teeth performing in renegade gallery spaces and rogue music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial section, eventually amassing both national and international attention with their acclaimed experimental noise and futuristic noise pop project Purple Pilgrims.

Their Purple Pilgrim material was frequently self-produced and through a series of labels including beloved Kiwi label Flying Nun Records. The sibling duo’s latest project Clementine Valentine, which sees them writing, recording and performing with a fusion of their birth names. The new project, sees the duo refining their craft into a more fully realized and sophisticated sound.

The Kiwi duo’s Randall Dunn-produced Clementine Valentine full-length debut The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor is slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Flying Nun Records, and reportedly marks a pivotal moment in the sibling duo’s creative evolution. The album sees the pair transposing their keyboard-and-guitar driven demos to cello, pedal steel, 12 string guitar and a a collection of vintage synthesizers. Matt Chamberlain, who has worked with David Bowie, Lana Del Rey and Fiona Apple contributed percussion. The result is material that’s lush, shimmering and softly orchestral while being an accumulation of songcraft that has stretched back centuries.

The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor‘s lush, lead single “Time and Tide” is built around the Kiwi sibling duo’s gorgeous and expressive vocal range paired with soaring hooks and chorus, dramatic percussion, strummed guitar and atmospheric synths. Sonically nodding at Kate Bush, “Time and Tide” aims for the celestial and the timeless, while being one of the more optimistic-leaning songs of their career to date.

“We thought we were only capable of writing sad songs — but found optimism creeping in during the writing of this album,” Clementine and Valentine Nixon explain. “Without ruining the mystery, ‘Time and Tide’ is about the release that comes in too brief moments of relinquishing overthinking, fret and regret. It’s coloured with melancholy, but cheerful by our measure.” 

Directed by Auckland-based photographer and filmmaker Greta van der Star, the accompanying video for “Time and Tide” has a painterly quality while nodding at 80s-era music videos, Romantic poetry and more. “We’re always inspired by [and identify with] outsiders,” the Kiwi sibling duo say. “For this video we were influenced by three in particular: the photography of Francesca Woodman, the cover image of Brett Smiley’s album [Breathlessly Brett], and Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’. Trapped in a tower, looking out over a pastoral scene, waiting for life to begin again (if you squint you’ll see Camelot in the distance). The idea of merging with four walls, or being suffocated by them (as felt in Woodman’s photos) resonated with us, and no doubt countless others, at the time this song was written.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Small Million Shares Slick and Trippy Visual for “Burnout”

Rooted in the collaboration of longtime creative partners Ryan Linder and Malachi Graham, Portland, OR-based indie pop outfit Small Million specializes in pairing deeply affecting sonic production informed by Linder’s background as a filmmaker with smart, lived-in lyrics about intuition and inhibition, losing control and ending up in unexpected places, being willing to fuck up, bodies being joyful, bodies being hurt and more. The end result is work that’s simultaneously intimate yet epic, delicate yet fierce. 

Since 2018’s Young Fools EP, years of experiencing chronic pain have led Small Million’s frontperson Malachi Graham to deep explorations of embodiment that have changed everything from her singing voice to her dance movies to her observations of human frailty. “There’s one side of chronic pain that leads you towards intuition, self-discovery, and listening closely to yourself. But it also means you end up sitting on the side of the room a lot, watching people and paying attention. Also you’re pissed,” Graham explains. 

Linder and Graham have been writing together as a duo but they recently expanded into a quartet, with the addition of Small Skies‘ Ben Tyler (drums) and Lo Pony‘s Kale Chesney (bass, backing vocals. Fittingly, their evolution into a quartet has resulted in the band’s sound and approach expanding to encompass more rock-based instrumentation and energy. 

The Portland-based outfit have been releasing new music throughout the course of the year, including their latest single “Burnout,” which will appear on their forthcoming album Passenger, slated for release through Tender Loving Empire. “Burnout” is a hook-driven bit of pop built around Graham’s ethereal vocal melody, glistening guitar lines, and a driving rhythm section. But underneath the infectiousness of the song is a sort of revenge fantasy about the feminine urge to destroy the male self-serving and flat vision of you, and dance in the rubble and flames. “My mom always told me to beware of being a ‘flattering mirror;’ to watch out for people who adore you because they love how you make them feel about themselves,” Small Million’s Malachi Graham explains.

Created and directed by Emma Josephson, the accompanying video for “Burnout” stars Sammy Rios as a woman struggling to burst out of being reduced to flattened, two-dimensional rendition of a person — while appearing as though she’s losing her own mind.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Finland’s JANELY Shares Cathartic Pop Anthem “I Won’t”

JANELY is an emerging Finnish-born singer/songwriter and pop artist, who grew up in a deeply musical home. Her grandfather was a musician, and she can trace much of the origins of her music career to being inspired by him to seriously pursue a music career back in 2007. Since 2008, the Finnish singer/songwriter and pop artist has taken her massive vocal range and her charismatic stage presence to stages of all sizes and live television appearances in her native Finland.

This year may arguably be the biggest year of her career to date: Earlier this year, she landed a live performance at New York Fashion Week this fall. She also released her first single of the year, “Crown” through Global Unique Music Group. The Finnish pop artist’s latest single “I Won’t” is a cathartically defiant anthem built around a contemporary pop production featuring skittering beats, atmospheric electronics, glistening synth arpeggios and rousingly anthemic choruses. The production is a slick and contemporary vehicle for JANELY’s earnest, lived-in lyrics and her enormous, superstar range.

“I Won’t” is an empowering metaphor for finding courage to never give up on your hopes, dreams and creative ideas, the Finnish-born artist explains in press notes.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: AURUS Shares Breathtakingly Beautiful “Strange Stone”

Bastien Picot is a rising Réunion Island-born singer/songwriter, producer and creative mastermind behind AURUS, a rising electronic music project that specializes in an orchestral-leaning take on electro pop that has drawn comparisons to Nakhane, Woodkid, Peter Gabriel and a list of others. 

With the release of 2019’s “The Abettors,” which featured Sandra Nkaké, Picot exploded into the French scene: The track thematically raised awareness of a system that exploited and took the living for granted. He started off 2020 with sets at  MaMA Festival and Bars en Trans Festival, opening for Vendredi sur Mer at L’Olympia, and being named a “revelation” of Chantier des Francos. 

2020 also saw the release of Picot’s AURUS self-titled debut EP. Building upon that momentum, 2021’s full-length debut, Chimera was conceived, written and recorded between Réunion Island and Paris. The album’s material is an intuitive and tribal journey in which, what may seem irreconcilable meets and merges. Sonically, the songs mesh brooding atmospheric textures, tribal beats, military rhythms, trance, pop ballads and more, while featuring lyrics sung in English and Reunion Island Creole.

I wrote about three of Chimera‘s singles:

  • The brooding and cinematic, Security-era Peter Gabriel-like “Momentum” The yearning, Amnesiac-era Radiohead meets contemporary alt pop-like “AWOL.”

  • “Horus,” a brooding yet mesmerizing and difficult to pigeonhole song built around Picot’s unerring knack for infectious hooks paired with devastatingly earnest lyricism

“Strange Stone” is the first bit of original material from the Reunion Island-born artist since Chimera, and it’s a decided sonic departure from his previously released work. Built around strummed acoustic guitar and atmospheric electronic textures, paired with Picot’s yearning falsetto, “Strange Stone” is a breathtakingly gorgeous song that stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it.

Much like his previously released work, the new single is rooted in deeply personal experience: Feeling as though his heart was slowly calcifying and on the verge of giving up, Picot returned to Reunion Island. The trip was profoundly restorative: He found the strength to awaken his own beating heart. “Strange Stone” is a tribute to “the strange, magical energy that pulsates through both AURUS and his homeland; a journey of self-discovery and inner healing where the strangest stones can awaken the deepest passions.”