Tag: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Deep Sea Diver Teams Up with Madison Cunningham on Power Ballad “Let Me Go”

Led by Los Angeles-born, Seattle-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontperson Jessica Dobson, Seattle-based indie rock outfit Deep Sea Diver can trace its origins back to when Dobson was 19: Dobson, who has had stints  playing with a who’s who list of contemporary acts, including Beck, Conor Oberst, Spoon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Shins signed with Atlantic Records. While with Atlantic Records, Dobson wrote and recorded two albums that she wasn’t completely satisfied with. Atlantic shelved the material and ultimately dropped her. 

After being dropped from Atlantic, Dobson wrote and recorded her solo debut EP New Caves as Deep Sea Diver. The project became a full-fledged band with the addition of members John Raines (bass) Dobson’s spouse Peter Mansen (drums), Garrett Gue (bass), and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synth), who helped to flesh out the project’s sound. 

The Seattle-based band’s critically applauded third album, 2020’s Impossible Weightwas released through High Beam Records/ATO Records and followed a busy year of touring with Wilco and Joseph to support their second album, 2016’s Secrets. “We went into the studio pretty quickly after the tour ended, and I sort of hit a wall where I was feeling very detached from making music, and unable to find joy in it,” Dobson recalls in press notes. “I realized I had to try to rediscover my voice as a songwriter, and figure out the vocabulary for what I needed to say on this album.”

Stepping back from music and the studio, Dobson focused on dealing with the depression she had been struggling with, and soon started volunteering at Aurora Commons, a drop-in center for unhoused people, most whom are drug-dependent and frequently engage in street-survival-based sex work. “I spent a lot of time with the women who frequent the Commons, and it taught me a new depth of empathy,” she says. “They’re people who don’t have the luxury of going back to a home at the end of the day and hiding behind those four walls, so they’re sort of forced to be vulnerable with what their needs are. Talking with them and listening to them really freed me up to start writing about things I’d never written about before in my songs.”

Co-produced by Dobson and Andy D. Park and recorded at Seattle’s Studio X and The Hall of Justice, Impossible Weight found Dobson and her bandmates digging far deeper emotionally than they had ever before — and pairing that emotionality with a bigger, more grandiose sound. While showcasing Dobson’s dexterous and forceful guitar work, the album’s overall lush textures and mercurial arrangements allow room for Dobson to fully demonstrate her vocal range in a way that she hadn’t before. “’I’d never produced a record before and I started out with low expectations for myself, but at some point I realized, ‘I can do this,’” Dobson recalls. “I decided to completely trust my voice and make really bold decisions in all my production calls—just push everything to the absolute outer edges.”

For Dobson redefining the limits of her artistry went hand-in-hand with deeper identity issues that came up while Dobson and her bandmates were working on the album. “I was adopted and just recently met my birth mother, and found out that I’m half-Mexican and half-Jewish,” Deep Sea Diver’s frontperson explained in press notes. “Discovering my heritage and learning things about myself that I never knew before really fed into that question of ‘Where do I belong?’” Simultaneously, Dobson rediscovered the sense of possibility, adventure and joy that she first felt when she started out as a 19 year-old.  “I think being signed at such a young age messed me up in terms of the expectations I put on myself,” she says. “Somewhere along the way I lost confidence in my own vision, but after making this record I feel a much larger freedom to go in whatever direction I want with my music.”

With Impossible Weight, Dobson hopes that others might reclaim a similar sense of freedom in their emotional lives. “Especially right now when the world is in disarray and there’s so much fear, I want this record to give people room to feel whatever they need to feel,” she says. “I hope it helps them recognize that it’s okay to fall apart, and that they’re meant to let others in instead of trying to work through everything on their own. Because the point is that the impossible weight isn’t yours to carry alone—that’s why it’s impossible.”

Signing to ATO was a significant step up for a band that had self-released its first two albums. The surge of resources resulted in a massive wave of exposure, including a spot on the Billboard charts. 

The Seattle-based outfit’s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album, the 11-song, Dobson and Andy Park co-produced Billboard Heart is slated for a February 28, 2025 release through Sub Pop. The album reportedly puts the band– currently, Dobson, Mansen and Jackson — in the company of acts like St. Vincent, TV on the Radio,Flock of Dimes and others, that have found ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. 

The album features additional production from Adam Schatz and additional contributions from The Shins‘ Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose and Greg Leisz. It was mixed by Park and mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone. 

Some background is needed here: Back in July 2023 while recording in a Los Angeles-based studio, Dobson played a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just a few days earlier, her band played a series of semi-secret shows for fans at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles or so between Southern California and the Seattle-based home studio she shares with her spouse and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. 

On that first night of recording sessions, Dobson broke down, wondering what she was doing there and what her band could do to fix it. For the first time in their history, the band retreated and headed home without a completed album. Did they need to scrap the entire thing and start again with new material? 

As it turned out, no. Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After the Los Angeles hiccup a few months before, longtime collaborator and producer Andy Park asked Dobson how the new material was going over at an early fall dinner. She admitted that she needed help. And in that humbling confession, she seen found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate the band — and directly led to their fourth album. 

For Dobson, the album is a triumph over self-doubt in which what initially felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and even strength. 

As it turned out, Impossible Weight‘s massive success caused Dobson to doubt her impulses, and to begin thinking about what an idea’s impact or reception might be as much the strength of the idea itself. During this period of second-guessing, she and Mansen sat near the wide windows of their Seattle living room, with her on piano as he hammered a guitar nearby. Album track “See in the Dark” — a song about coveting your notions, despite the occasional sense they’re slipping away — emerged in that setting. 
 
That particular moment of domestic creation was essential for a number of reasons. Before Impossible Weight, Dobson and Mansen wrote many of Deep Sea Diver’s songs together; this was a return to that bond, which managed to carry over to more than half Billboard Heart‘s material. The pair began recording more at home, too. They borrowed microphones and a small batch of essential gear to record guitars and vocals in their basement. 

When discussions later began in earnest with Park, following the Los Angeles incident, Dobson began revisiting those earlier recordings, realizing that she had captured much of that ineffable spark at home, where the atmosphere was of her own design. Mansen and Park helped convince her that these wasn’t just good enough to use, but riveting in their realness. These early versions became templates to build upon and a frame, and a way for Dobson to believe again in the material, and most importantly, herself. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Shovel,” a Kate Bush-meets-St. Vincent-like tune anchored around buzzing and angular power chords, glistening synth arpeggios, relentless four-on-the-floor serving as a lush yet punchy bed for Dobson’s big, earnest vocal. Much like Impossible Weight, the new single sees the band crafting hook-driven arena rock friendly anthems informed by lived-in, personal yet somehow deeply universal experience. 

The album will feature the previous released album title track and “Let Me Go,”a slow-burning Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey-like anthemic ballad that sees the ballad collaboration with Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Madison Cunningham.

Directed by the band’s Dobson and Tyler Kalberg and inspired by French New Wave films, the accompanying video for “Let Me Go” was filmed in and around Los Angeles on January 5, 2025 and follows Deep Sea Diver’s Dobson and Cunningham through a day in the life, hanging out and goofing off.

“I’ve been wanting to collaborate with Madison for a long time, and I was over the moon when this song came in such an unexpected moment,” Dobson says. “We were just jamming in the studio and I started playing a guitar riff that I’ve had kicking around since high school that Madison started immediately winding around on her guitar. We looped a drum machine that my co-producer Andy Park started playing and a few hours later most of the song was finished. This song felt effortlessly cool from the start; It reminds me of some of my favorite PJ Harvey songs, full of grit & power. We shot the music video with the same spirit, and as two LA natives who both love the city—we wanted to explore our hometown.  Not knowing that it was two days before the LA fires, it has subsequently taken on a new meaning as a love letter to the city we both adore.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dead Vixens Share Arena Rock Friendly “Corroded Love”

Dead Vixens — Lucius Man (guitar), Sarah Weiss (drums), Tiffany Rivera (vocals) and Bruce Macchione (bass) — formed back in 2021. Initially formed as a trio featuring Man, Weiss and Rivera, who originally joined as the bassist, Rivera assumed vocal duties as a result of her background as a classically trained singer after about a year of writing material. In 2022, the band met Macchione and the band’s sound and thematic concerns evolved into the politically-driven, social punk band with distorted guitars, hard-hitting rhythms and powerhouse vocals they’re known for now.

The band’s debut EP DANGER! RESET! serves as an introduction to the band. Three of the EP’s songs were written by the band’s founding trio and represent the band’s early sound before Macchione joined the band, and that portion of the EP are much more prog rock influenced. Macchione brought in more punk-leaning influences which will reportedly be reflected in future releases, including their forthcoming full-length debut. But in the meantime, DANGER! RESET!‘s latest single “Corroded Love” is a swaggering, arena rock ripper that recalls Foo Fighters, Tigercub and Amyl and The Sniffers, among a lengthy list of others, delivered with an effortless self-assuredness.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Freewheeling “Tales of a Mountain Child”

Wildly prolific Israeli-born, Costa Rican-based singer/songwriter, musician and JOVM mainstay MAGON will be releasing his 11th album in March.

The forthcoming album’s first single “Tales of a Mountain Child” possesses a freewheeling restless nature reminiscent of early Bob Dylan, Harvest-era Neil Young and Inner Journey Out-era Psychic Ills with the song being anchored around a lo-fi motorik-like pulse, shimmering guitars, bursts of mellotron and the JOVM mainstay’s uncanny knack for catchy hooks. The song’s arrangement serves a lush and dreamy bed for MAGON’s equally dreamy delivery. And at its core, the song captures a familiar feeling for me — the seemingly irresistible push and pull of a life on the road.

The accompanying video follows a real life mountain child — Magon’s friend and neighbor José — riding the streets and mountain roads of the town they live in, free, untethered and chasing the horizon. The song manages to further emphasize the song’s freewheeling, restless nature.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Denver’s Dead Pioneers Share a Much-Needed Politically Charged Ripper

Denver-based punk outfit Dead Pioneers — Josh Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar), Shane Zweygardt (drums), Algiers’ Lee Tesche (bass) and acclaimed indigenous visual and performance artist and activist Gregg Deal (vocals) — will be releasing their sophomore album PO$T AMERICAN on April 11, 2025 through Hassle Records.

Deal, who is a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is a visual and performance artist and activist, whose work frequently includes exhaustive and detailed critiques of American colonialism, society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals and performance art, Deal critically examines issues within Indian Country such as decolonization, stereotypes and appropriation among others. His work has been exhibited at cultural centers nationally and internationally including at the Smithsonian Institution and the Venice Biennale.

After a 17 year stint living in the Washington, DC area, Deal and his family relocated to Colorado, coinciding with his time as Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum. Dead Pioneers can trace their origins from a 2020 performance piece The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy, a deeply personal one-man show that explored themes of music, personal experiences and meaningful connections. A grant allowed Deal to expand upon the project, incorporating original music written specifically for the performance.

The Denver-based punks pair a DIY ethos with a mission to champion the rights of marginalized communities, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, Asian, LGBTQ+ folks, as well as workers’ rights. The band’s work sees them boldly and unapologetically confronting the social, political and cultural issues in the United States — a focus that’s central to their identity.

The Denver-based outfit self-released their self-titled full-length debut last fall. Clocking in at 22 minutes, with only one of the album’s 12 songs exceeding three minutes, the album’s material may be a breakneck and furious roar, but it covers a huge amount of ground. The album caught the attention of Hassle Records, who signed the band and then re-released the album.

So now that we got the background down, let’s get back to the sophomore album: The album’s material was written last February and recorded last July. The album’s material forecasts the turmoil of last year’s Presidential Election while reflecting on the fears and disillusionments of modern life. “The title PO$T AMERICAN reflects a collective disillusionment with the so-called American Dream,” Dead Pioneers’ Gregg Deal explains. “It critiques capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy while imagining a path toward unity beyond those oppressive systems.”

The album’s material sees the band balancing minute-long punk rock explosions, impassioned explorations of modern-day America and spoken word interludes with the shifts in form and tone not distracting from its central themes. Sonically, the album draws from Rage Against the Machine, Chuck D, Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, IDLES, Black Flag, Rollins Band and Dead Kennedys among others.

Because of its creation last year, the album manages to presage the mood and state of our country — right at this moment: The fear, uncertainty, the bitter divisiveness, the racist scapegoating, the gaslighting, the gross incompetence, the oppression, bullshit and buffoonery we’re facing every single day — perhaps for the next four years or more.

“What we wrote was relevant politically and socially. We felt good about it, and moved forward in that confidence,” the band says. “It’s sad that scathing statements about fascism, white supremacy and racism in the American political landscape are somehow more relevant just because of an election, but here we are.”

And yet, the overall feeling is one of cautious optimism. “Although we didn’t expect the political relevance to become more relevant, we have no illusions to the American dream, or to where we seem to be going. But we have hope that we can get to a better place for people to have what they need. It is an album that speaks to and for this precise time and place; that perhaps could not exist at any other time. It is an album for now.”

PO$T AMERICAN‘s second and latest single, album title track “PO$T AMERICAN” is a bruising ripper that sonically and thematically recalls Pearl Jam‘s “WMA” and “Push Me Pull Me” anchored around righteously furious critiques of America and American politics. If you’re a member of a marginalized community — and I guarantee that most of you readers actually are — the song should capture the distress, anger, insult and the bitterness that you feel right this second and will continue to feel for some time. We’re in hell, y’all.

“We, like many people in our communities, are incensed by the overt and jarring political and social moves of United States Politics,” Deal says. “From the current administration to the administrations before it, there has been a trajectory in this country that has brought us to the critical moment we are all looking at. Our hope in this song is maybe, just maybe, we are saying something you feel too.” He continues, “I wrote this song on White people’s day of Independence, July 4, 2024. I wrote it sitting next to my oldest son while watching fireworks and having a discussion on what this day was supposed to mean. It went into a discussion of everything that was happening at that moment. Little did I know at the exact moment, that the relevant things would escalate, and become more stark. This was written to be scathing, honest, saying the quiet thing out loud. As we look upon the United States political landscape, this is very much how we feel.”

The accompanying video for “PO$T AMERICAN” is rooted in the hypocrisy, bullshit, racism, consumerism at the core of this country’s history while also drawing from Rage Against the Machine and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sierra Spirit Shares Anthemic “American Pie”

Sierra Spirit Kihega is Tulsa-born, Connecticut-based Native American singer/songwriter, musician and creative mastermind behind the rapidly rising solo recording project Sierra Spirit. Storytelling is in Kihega’s blood. Growing up as a member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe and the Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, she spent afternoons and weekends driving around with her grandmother and visiting family on the reservation. With a black coffee in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, Kihega’s grandmother imparted life lessons through ancestral stories. “A central part of our culture is storytelling, and my grandmother turned everything into a beautiful story, big or small,” Kihega says. “I wouldn’t be the writer I am today if it weren’t for listening to her.”

Though she now currently resides in Connecticut, her music dwells with the red dirt of Oklahoma, where she was raised. “I’d always been a writer, but I started writing songs when I became very homesick,” she says. She missed long drives across flat stretches of arid landscape, the “insane sunsets,” and the proximity to family and community.

When she began sharing music online, she quickly found a community of fans, many of whom are fellow Indigenous creatives, who found kinship and understanding in the stories Kihega told. “There are things I need to heal from and it’s important to share, because I want other people who have experienced similar things to feel less alone,” she says. Before she signed to Giant Music, she had already earned both a growing fanbase and a critical acclaimed with the self-release of her first two singles “ghost” and “televangelic,” both of which appear on her debut EP. Those songs caught the attention of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, who awarded her a BMI Abe Olman Scholarship, which is given in the interest of encouraging and supporting the careers of young songwriters. 

Kihega’s debut EP coin toss was released late last year. With the EP, the Oklahoman-born artist renders a self-portrait in intimate detail, touching on themes of loss, addiction and mental illness. Inspired by artists like Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, Spirit’s lyrics are frank vignettes. Although the collection of songs are deeply personal, she stressed that the struggles she and her family have faced aren’t uncommon in Native communities. 

“As a kid, I didn’t see an Indigenous experience reflected back at me in the media. Native people were always these outdated constructs in westerns,” Spirit says. “I want to be a voice for my community, amplifying that we’re still here. The culture is moving.”  

Kihega writes to memorialize people and experiences, but she also writes to overcome a history of mental illness. As a child, she was quiet and reserved, which made her fear she came across as unapproachable. “I had such intense anxiety that I spent my younger years keeping to myself out of fear of being misunderstood,” she says. Years have passed since, but Spirit still fixates on those lonely formative years when she felt like a self-described “pushover” and “kicked puppy” around her peers.

Last year, I wrote about EP single “bleed you,” a remarkably catchy tune that brought  Soccer Mommy and others to mind featuring bursts of banjo and slide guitar, which nod to the country music she grew up with. And at its core is a nostalgic portrait of the Oklahoma of her youth, and of a dangerously obsessive, heartsick kind of love.

Kihega begins 2025 with her latest single “American Pie.” The new single sees the rising and acclaimed artist, leaning into her rootsier/Americana/country side while still being decidedly pop orientated with an arrangement that features driving percussion, violin, plucked guitar and enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

“‘American Pie’ is a reflection on the American dream and the uncertainty of this point in time,” the rising Tulsa-born, Connecticut-based artist explains. “We all want our own little slice of it but we take what we can get and we take it as it is.”

Directed by Pierce Pyrzenski, the accompanying video for “American Pie” employs a video within a video motif, in which we see the filming of the video and some of the behind the scenes, suggesting that the dream isn’t necessarily the reality.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunflower Bean Shares an Arena Rock Friendly Ripper

Formed back in 2013, while they were still teenagers, New York-based trio Sunflower Bean — Julia Cumming (vocals, bass) Nick Kivlen (guitar, vocals) and Olive Faber (drums) — are arguably one of the New York metropolitan area’s most acclaimed and commercially successful indie bands. Since their formation, the New York-based trio have released three critically acclaimed albums, 2016’s Human Ceremony, 2018’s Twentytwo in Blue and 2022’s Headful of Sugar, which featured several chart-topping singles.

The band has supported those albums with sold-out tour dates as headliners and as openers for the Beck, The Strokes, Cage the Elephant, Interpol, Courtney Barnett, The Pixies, The Kills, DIIV, Wolf Alice and more. They’ve also made the rounds of the international festival circuit with stops at Glastonbury, Governor’s Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival and others. And famously, they opened for Bernie Sanders during primary campaign rallies. 

Adding to a growing profile, the band’s Julia Cumming had a guest spot on Yves Tumor‘s 2020 effort Heaven to a Tortured Mind. Nick Kivlen and Olive Faber collaborated with Frost Children on “SERPENT,” which appears on 2023’s Speed Run. 

Late last year, the band returned with the Shake EP. The self-produced and self-recorded effort featured some of the band’s heaviest, most immediate and loudest material they’ve written and recorded to date. Influenced by the doom-laden, riff-driven sound of Black Sabbath and others, the EP is an embrace of rock tropes and excess, while nodding to the band’s first two albums. 

“SHAKE was inspired by our first years as a DIY band, the spirit that birthed us and gave us the chance to have this enduring journey together,” the band says of the EP. “We wrote, recorded, engineered, and produced these songs so nothing was filtered through anyone else’s idea of us. We always felt like rock and roll was a feeling, not a sound. But sometimes there is no subverting it or explaining it. We’re now offering it exactly as it occurred to us.” 

The JOVM mainstays highly-anticipated fourth album Mortal Primetime is slated for an April 25, 2025 through Lucky Number. In the three years since their last album Headful of Sugar, the members of the band drifted from one another as they pursued new projects and confronted personal challenges, tragedies and transformations. The album reportedly finds the members of the band with a renewed sense of purpose after nearly losing everything they’ve built together. “You get to decide what your prime is, and you fight for it,” the band’s Julia Cumming says. “This is ours, and that can’t be taken away by circumstance. We can’t take it away from each other. This moment, where we are now, is what we’ve always fought for.”

Mortal Primetime‘s material was inspired by alternative rock and psychedelia and rooted in arena-sized ambition, which results in a sound that’s not just undeniably theirs, but also sees the band celebrating their history while boldly pushing into the future.

Mortal Primetime‘s first single “Champagne Taste” is a nod to the band’s long-time alias when performing secret shows to test out new material, Anchored around scuzzy riffs, arena rock friendly, power chord-driven hooks and choruses paired with Cumming’s sultry, The Idiot-era Iggy Pop-styled croon, “Champagne Taste” sees the band simultaneously channeling a synthesis of 80s glam rock and 90s riot grrl alt rock and punk. But at its core, is a fierce, almost feral determination.

“This song came after a period that felt like rock bottom for the band. It is about feeling beaten down but still driving forward, to keep faith, to grow and to continue to create on our own terms, our Mortal Primetime,” the band explains.

The Issac Roberts-directed video for “Champagne Taste” is a slick, super stylized visual that recalls 90s MTV.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe Shares Meditative “Drop”

Tunde Adebimpe, the frontman of the critically acclaimed Brooklyn-based band TV On The Radio recently announced his long-awaited solo debut Thee Black Boltz.

Slated for an April 18, 2025 release through Sub Pop Records, the Adebimpe and Zoby Wilder co-produced album features additional production and contributions from TV On The Radio’s Jaleel Bunton and Japhet Landis and more. The album’s material will not only showcase Adebimpe imitable voice and visionary soundscapes, but is a nod to his propensity to write and sing about the human condition — in all its form, under all its stressor, both big and small.

Thee Black Boltz isn’t a TV On The Radio album. But for Adebimpe, in a lot of ways, the excitement of doing something on his own for the first time ignited a similar creative spark as during the early TVOTR days. The songwriting process is the same, he says, but with his bandmates, Adebimpe always knew that have didn’t have to complete his musical ideas. “I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”

The album’s title is Adebimpe’s response to the macro unease of a post-pandemic world careening towards violent authoritarianism and the immense grief that has come from deeply personal losses, specifically the sudden passing of his younger sister while making it. In many way, Thee Black Boltz is the TVOTR frontman’s desperate grasping of small moments of joy amidst the dissonance, chaos and sadness in any way he could. And understandably, the album was a way of processing everything in his life. “It was my way of building a rock or a platform for myself in the middle of this fucking ocean,” he says.

As he writes in his notebook, “The sparks of inspiration/motivation / hope that flash up in the midst of (and sometimes as a result of) deep grief, depression or despair. Sort of like electrons building up in storm clouds clashing until they fire off lightning and illuminate a way out, if only for a second.”

“Also,” he adds. “it’s a good name for a cool metal band, and I think that most people would describe me as akin to a very cool metal band.” 

Thee Black Boltz‘s second single, the Jahpet Landis-produced “Drop” is a meditative and deeply introspective song featuring looped beatboxing, shimmering and strummed bursts of guitar, whistling and skittering beats serving as a dreamy and subtly uneasy bed for Adebimpe’s plaintive delivery questioning the purpose of it all, when things seem so brutally nonsensical. The song is accompanied by a vividly colored, animated visualizer.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Jett Jenkins Shares Meditative “Springsteen”

Jett Jenkins is an emerging Brooklyn-based indie pop singer/songwriter. Influenced by Suki Waterhouse, Fiona Apple, Clairo and Blondie, Jenkins’ work typically balances etheral sounds with profound themes.

The Brooklyn-based artist cites a Clairo show as inspiring her to dedicate herself to music, developing her guitar skills and getting involved in musical theater.

Her debut EP, last year’s Through My Eyes received praise for its relatable and emotionally rich lyrics. She supposed the album with a tour across Southern California that included stops in Los Angeles‘ iconic The Whisky A Go Go and Tea Leaf Green. The tour helped informed her forthcoming full-length debut Tender Love Like a Criminal, which is slated for release later this year.

Tender Love Like a Criminal‘s second and latest single “Springsteen” is a slow-burning and meditative track that reminds me of Soccer Mommy, Nat Vazer and San Mei among a lengthy list of others while anchored around Jenkins’ expressive delivery, shimmering guitars and a rousingly anthemic, sing-a-long worthy hook and chorus.

Jenkins explains that “Springsteen” is a deeply personal song that tells an emotional journey, capturing nostalgia, heartbreak and the bittersweet beauty of everyday moments. “My goal with this track was to create an intimate connection with listeners, something that stays with them long after the music ends. To make this release even more special, I’ve paired it with something unique: my own signature fragrance, “Springsteen” Eau De Parfum.

Together, the music and scent create a multisensory experience, evoking memories of growing pains and raw vulnerability. It’s a way to bring my audience into the world of “Springsteen” on a whole new level.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Pure Orchids Share 90s Alt Rock-Inspired “Flood Gates”

Pure Orchids — founding members Bruce Macchione (guitar) and Ian Yori (bass), along with Bella Ashton (vocals) — is an indie rock studio project that can trace some of their origins back to when Macchione and Yori met playing together in a New Jersey-based hardcore band in which they realized they had an instant creative chemistry. Some time later, the pair joined forces in the studio, working on a couple of jams that had a raw and retro feel to them.

Macchione met Ashton at a watercolor painting class at their university, and they quickly bonded over their shared passion for creativity. Macchione gave Ashton the opportunity to sing for the band based off a demo track that he and Yori had been working on. That track would eventually become their first official single, “Flood Gates,” which Ashton’s gorgeous and expressive vocals, angular and shimmering guitars paired with a supple bass line, a simple yet propulsive backbeat and an anthemic hook and chorus.

Sonically, “Flood Gates” is a seamless synthesis of 90s/120 Minutes-era alt rock, post punk and goth that’s nostalgic — but while anchored in a lived-in earnestness.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: HotWax Shares Driving “One More Reason”

With the release of their first two critically applauded EPs, last year’s A Thousand Times and Invite me, kindly, the Hastings, UK-based indie rock trio HotWax — Tallulah Sim-Savage, Lola Sam, and Alfie Sayers — exploded into the national and international scenes. The trio played over 150 shows over the the past 18-19 months or so, including packed headlining shows in New York and Los Angeles, a North American tour with Royal Blood and showcases at last year’s SXSW. Building upon a growing profile. the trio have made the rounds of the European festival circuit, playing sets at Reading and Leeds Festivals and Mad Cool.

The rising British trio’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Hot Shock is slated for a March 7, 2025 release through Marathon Artists. Co-produced by Catherine Marks, Steph Marziano and Warpaint‘s Stella Mozgawa, the 10-song album features blistering, adrenaline-jolted anthems that were meant to be played live to a crowd, loudly and with abandon. Described by the band’s Lola Sim as “an explosion of color,” the album’s material is visceral and immediately gets under the skin.

Lyrically, the material draws from Fontaines D.C., Autolux and Sonic Youth while reportedly anchored around a bold, groove-based sound with rich arrangements. In a “complete experiment,” as the band’s Alfie Sayers says, “the band recorded songs live in front of a crowd at London‘s RAK Studios, capturing the energy of a HotWax set. 

Thematically, Hot Shock sees the band tackling a broad range of challenging topics — selfhood, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and more — while allowing for reach band member’s personality to shine. While the album’s material may traverse the unsettling terrain of entering adulthood, the album’s material has an underlying playfulness rooted in the band’s desire to nurture and sustain their personal and creative partnerships: The band’s Sim-Savage and Sam are childhood friends, who have been writing songs together since they were 12. Sim-Savage later met Sayers at music college five years later. Sim-Savage says. “We know how each other’s brains work so well. We couldn’t do any of this without each other.” 

Late last year, I wrote about “Wanna Be a Doll,” a rousingly anthemic ripper that brings 90s grunge and riot grrl punk to mind, but underpinned with a raw urgency and vulnerable pulse. “This is the first song we wrote for the album and we re-wrote it in so many different ways,” HotWax’s Sim-Savage says. “And it ended up pretty similar to the first version, which seems to be how it goes. It’s a song where I am writing about myself from someone else’s point of view, being self aware of my bad, sometimes destructive, traits.”

Hot Shock’s latest single “One More Reason” is a desert rock-meets-festival rock track anchored around a relentless and hypnotic motorik bass line-driven groove, thunderous drumming, slashing guitars and an expressive guitar solo paired with punchily delivered vocals. Resembling JOVM mainstays Dream Wife and others, “One More Reason” was recorded with Mogzawa in Joshua Tree, CA and as the band’s Sim-Savage says “We wanted it to feel like the opening song at a festival set, we wanted it to be relentless and addictive. It’s about loving someone so much you kinda hate it, which is relentless and addictive.” 

Directed by longtime collaborator Josh Quinton, the accompanying video features a collaged punk catwalk starring underground legend Princess Julia and the members of the band in clothes designed and styled by Greta.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: youbet Shares a Grunge-Inspired Ripper

Led by Nick Llobet, New York-based indie outfit youbet‘s latest album, last year’s Way To Be and its singles received coverage from Stereogum, Consequence, Paste‘s “Best New Songs” and Post Trash. Album singles landed on playlists by Ones to Watch, Pitchfork “Selects,” The Alternative, The Line of Best Fit, Dork and a list of others.

The band supported the album through tours with Mary Timony, Palehound, Ratboys, Sour Widows, Truth Club, Coco, June McDoom and others. Their latest single “Deny” was released through Hardly Art, and the track is a decided sonic and stylistic left turn with the track being grunge-inspired ripper anchored around fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming, big mosh pit friendly hooks paired with Llobet’s dreamy falsetto. Play loud — and open up that pit!

“Normally, youbet songs start on the nylon string, but this time I was inspired to write on the electric guitar,” Nick Llobet says. “While driving around last spring we listened to a ton of Polvo, Autolux, and Boris, just to name a few. ‘Deny’ was written last April after we got home from supporting Mary Timony on tour. I was inspired to create a song that captured the energy of that time. In this way, touring is such a great learning experience. Getting in front of new audiences last year helped us develop a new sound. We fed off of the energy. I would say this song is an experiment –trying to explore some new stylistic terrain. A lot of the new songs we’re writing live in this world – ‘Deny’ is a bridge.”