Tag: indie rock

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

Albums of the Year 2025

JOVM turns 16 this year. And for first handful of years, my Best of List was an annual tradition until about 2014 or so. Between 2014 and 2020, it became sporadic and then it stopped. I haven’t done one of these in several years. There was a part of me that wondered if it really mattered much. And then life happened. 

So here we are in 2026. And with the year starting in earnest, let’s check out my best of 2025. 

  1. Big Fish Fyra liter stoft
  2. Tan Cologne Unknown Beyond
  3. Moondaddy Dove Tapes
  4. Sessa Pequena Vertigem de Amor
  5. Preservation Brass & Preservation Hall Jazz Band For Fat Man
  6. Silk Daisys S/T
  7. The Circling Sun Orbits
  8. Gabriel da Rosa Cacofonia
  9. Yoo Doo Right, Population II & Nolan Potter Yoo II avec Nolan Potter
  10. bat zoo The Upward Bird EP
  11. Public Circuit Modern Church
  12. L’Eclair Cloud Drifter
  13. Gloin All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry)
  14. CIVIC Chrome Dipped
  15. Population II Maintenant Jamais
  16. White Birches A New Reign
  17. Anish Kumar and Hagop Tchaparian Kino EP
  18. Friendship Commanders BEAR 
  19. The Besnard Lakes The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation
  20. SHOLTO The Sirens
  21. S.C.A.B. Somebody In New York Loves You!
  22. Pierpont & Hegeleson Of Time
  23. RORO and snapir Colors Left
  24. St. Panther Strange World 
  25. Nation of Language Dance Called Memory
  26. Quad90 S/T
  27. Slumbering Sun Starmony
  28. Tunde Adebimpe Thee Black Boltz 
  29. Quad90 S/T
  30. Die Spitz Something To Consume
  31. debdepan LOVERS & OTHERS EP

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Club 8 Returns with Nostalgia-Inducing “Daydreams”

Last year, Stockholm-based JOVM mainstays Club 8 — Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and electronic music producer, artist and Labrador Records founder and label boss Johan Angergård — released their 11th album, A Year With Club 8. Since then, the the duo have been busy, releasing a single or so a month over the course of the year, including the previously released “ooo,” “None Of This Will Matter When You’re Dead,” “Staying Alive,” “Born The Wrong Time,” and “Sneaky Feelings.”  

The Swedish JOVM mainstays’ latest single “Daydreams” continues a remarkable run of breezy, hook-driven and nostalgia-inducing material anchored around Komstedt’s ethereal and yearning vocal, expressive and shimmering bursts of guitars and a motorik groove. The song evokes a pleasant reverie — but with the bittersweet realization that it like all things won’t last forever.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Howling Bells Shares 120 Minutes MTV-like “Chimera”

Since their beginnings, London-based, Aussie trio Howling Bells — siblings Juanita Stein (vocals, guitar) and Joel Stein (guitar) and Glenn Moule (drums) — have been a bit of anomaly: They relocated to the UK to pursue their dreams of making it. And then, they broke through a British indie scene of three and four dudes wearing skinny jeans wearing bands with their acclaimed, self-titled 2006 full-length debut.

Those dreams of making it big became real: They played an NME Tour and then in stadiums opening for a Coldplay, while winning acclaim from the UK music press.

Throughout their nearly two decade history, the band has gone through a series of lineup changes but some things have remained the same: the core trio’s deep, unbreakable bond and their hypnotic sound, influenced by Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Fleetwood Mac and Björk.

Howling Bells’ fifth album, Strange Life is slated for a February 13, 2026 release through Nude Records. The long-awaited album is the band’s first album of new material in over 12 years and was recorded with their longtime friend and collaborator Ben Hillier at Agricultural Audio Studios. The new album is reportedly both a vibrant document of and an exploratory testament to the alchemical magic between its core members.

Strange Life‘s latest single, “Chimera” showcases Juanita Stein’s gorgeous and expressive vocal and the band’s knack for big, hooks and choruses paired with an arrangement anchored round chiming guitars, a supple bass line and hi-hat driven drum patterns. If you’re of the 120 Minutes-era MTV age, as I am, “Chimera” will remind you quite a bit of The Sundays and Heaven or Las Vegas-era Cocteau Twins.

“Chimera is a strange word. It means a few different and curious things; in this context, however, I’m using it to mean something of an absurd nature, unattainable, a fantasy,” Howling Bells’ Juanita Stein explains. “Such is the relationship we have with music at times. This song speaks to my experience as a musician, surviving the perpetual ups and downs of the game. But if you’re lucky enough, you have someone who can cut through the noise and help you realise that the fantasy is half the joy. That the longing is part of the journey and that our achievements along the way are deeply meaningful. At its core, ‘Chimera’ is a song about hope and relinquishing control.”

Fittingly, the accompanying video for “Chimera” also further emphasizes the 120 Minutes MTV vibe by featuring trippy, superimposed imagery of the band performing on top of a sunset, flowers and the sea, flowers and rain splattered windows and the like.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mute Swan Teams Up with Citrus Clouds on Cocteau Twins-like “Cocteau Swan”

With the release of their debut EP, 2016’s Ultraviolet and their full-length debut, 2021’s Only Ever, Tucson-based shoegaze/dream pop outfit Mute Swan — currently, Mike Barnett (guitar/vocals), Prabjit Virdee (bass, vocals), and Gilbert Flores (drums) — quickly established a swirling, densely layered take on psych rock that some critics and others have compared to Of Montreal and Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips. 

2021’s Only Ever was released to praise from The FADER, Merry-Go-Round Magazine and several others, as well as airplay on KEXP.

Earlier this year, the band signed to Hit The North Records/Wooden Tooth Records, who released “Hypnosis Tapes,” the first bit of new material from the band since their debut — and part of a batch of material that will be posthumously released after the tragic death of founding member Thomas Sloane. 

“Hypnosis Tapes” came on the heels of the Tucson-based outfit playing opening slots for Horse Jumper of Love, Wednesday, Tanukichanand Peel Dream Magazine, as well as a set at this year’s Levitation Festival.

Mute Swan closes out 2025 with “Cocteau Swan,” which features Citrus Clouds‘ Stacie Huttleson. Anchored around fluttering synths and swirling, reverb-soaked guitar textures paired with boom bap-inspired drum patterns, “Cocteau Swan” features Mute Swan’s Mike Barnett and Huttleson’s uncanny harmonies ethereally floating over the Cocteau Twins-inspired soundscape.
 
“This song is an homage to one of our favorite bands, Cocteau Twins,” Mute Swan’s Mike Barnett explains. “We were very lucky to have our friend Stacie Huttleston from Citrus Clouds sing the backing vocal part, which we recorded at their practice space in Phoenix.”

Directed by Mike Barnett, the accompanying video for “Cocteau Swan” sees the surviving band members paying a loving tribute to their dearly departed friend — by sharing pictures of their friend and the band while on tour, in the fullness and vitality of life.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ulrika Spacek Returns with Labyrinthine and Ethereal “Square Root of None”

Formed back in 2014, London-based art rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Ulrika Spacek — founding members Rhys Edwards (vocals, guitar) and Rhys Williams (guitar) , alongside Joseph Stone (guitar, keys), Callum Brown (drums), Syd Kemp (bass) — can trace their origins back to a night the band’s founding duo spent in Berlin, where the pair conceptualized the project around their mutually held passions and influences — in particular, Television, Pavement, Sonic Youth and krautrock. 

Upon the duo’s return to the UK, they began working on the material that would eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2016’s The Album Paranoia, which featured album tracks “She’s A Cult,” and “Strawberry Glue.”

Since then, the project which started out as a duo, expanded to quintet with the addition of Stone, Callum, Brown and Kemp – and then released 2017’s critically applauded sophomore album, Modern English Decoration, an album that saw the band pushing their sound into a more textured territory. Their third and latest album, last year’s Compact Trauma channeled the anxiety and dislocation of the modernize age through a prismatic haze of guitars, loops and elliptical lyrics. 

The British art rock outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album EXPO is slated for a February 6, 2026 release through Full Time Hobby. Unlike its predecessors, which looked within, EXPO reportedly holds a mirror up to the world and captures a warped reflection. The material was deeply informed by the band’s most recent American tour and was written while the band’s Rhys Edwards was awaiting the birth of his daughter, and started to wonder what kind of future world she’d inherit. 

Although their foundations have long been in art rock, they’ve been increasingly drawing from electronic elements. But as a band, they’re interested in the glitchy space that exists between the two. And as a result, their most recent work reckons with human warmth and digital isolation, while being welcoming and alienating, exploring the uneasy tension of modern life as we know it. “Our music has always been a collage – a bit patchwork, sonically – but what makes this album a landmark for us is that we went one step further and made our own sound bank and essentially sampled ourselves,” the band says. 

The band creates their own doppelgängers in a world of almost-real, where the band appears as if they’re in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Digital drums are sampled and layered over real drums and the like, creating an eerie, spectral vibe. Sonically, album’s material grapples with the organic and the digital while dancing across musical languages. 

The album will feature the previously released, “Build a Box, Then Break It,” a track that serves as a de-facto album mission statement that sees the JOVM mainstays actively pushing their sound into a new liminal space, while seemingly channeling Geoff Barrow‘s work with Portishead and Beak>, Radiohead‘s Amnesiac and The Orielles‘ The Goyt Method EP.

EXPO’s second and latest single “Square Root of None,” is an expansive, labyrinthine track that twists, turns and morphs in weird, prismatic directions seemingly at will. Featuring a looping and shimming guitar figure, bursts squealing feedback and a krautrock-like rhythm section, anchored around angular percussive attack, “Square Root of None” further establishes the album’s overall aesthetic while lyrically drawing from the language of math and coding, giving the entire affair a chilly, clinical vibe. The track, as the band says is about “throwing ideas at a wall” during a particularly cold Stockholm winter; one of the rare opportunities that the members of the band were in the same room together.

Directed by Katya Ganfeld, the accompanying video for “Square Root of None,” features the band performing in a studio with computer code, mathematical equations and computer screens superimposed on and around them.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 47th Birthday, Karen O.!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontperson Karen O’s 47th birthday.

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Live Concert Photography: Bonnie Trash with Clone and The Acute at The Wood Shop 11/13/25

Live concert photography of Bonnie Trash with Clone and The Acute at The Wood Shop earlier this month.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: thistle. Shares a Breakneck, Grungy Ripper

Rising British indie rock outfit thistle. — Cameron Godfrey (vocals, guitar), Carey Judwynn Rushton (bass, backing vocals) and Lewis O’Grady (drums) released there debut EP, it’s nice to see you, stranger earlier back in July. The EP, which explores themes of isolation, the trials and tribulations of adulthood and ennui was released to praise on both sides of the Atlantic, including Stereogum, Dork Magazine, Clash Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, Rolling Stone UK and So Young — and received airplay from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and Radio X personalties Steve Lamacq, Deb Grant and Nathan Shepherd.

The band has played stages across the UK and Europe alongside Westside Cowboy, Upchuck, Witch Post, Cryogeyser and Man/Woman/Chainsaw and are currently opening for Humour on their UK headlining tour. The British trio will be announcing 2026 tour dates and festival appearances shortly. But in the meantime, building upon a growing profile, thistle. recently signed to REX RECS, who released their latest single, “tied,” which sees them collaborating with REX RECS founder, producer, songwriter and musician Macks Faulkron.

Clocking in at a little over 90 seconds, “tied” is able to blistering and breakneck grungy ripper that simultaneously channels 120 Minutes MTV-era grunge/alt-rock and emo, as well as contemporaries like Glimmer and others. The song evokes the uneasy push-and-pull of balancing the grind of 9-5 life, and creative ambitions — especially when they seem wildly incompatible.

“’tied’ is a tribute to the emotional hardcore bands that we grew up on. The lyrics explore the relentless grind of 9-5 work,” the band explains. “It flips between optimism and a feeling of defeat… something we’re always looking for in our music.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Silk Daisys Share Swooning “honeymilk”

Atlanta-based dream pop/post-punk duo Silk Daisys — James Abercrombie and romantic partner Karla Jean Davis — have been making music together for some time, but their Silk Daisys and Damon Moon co-produced debut will be their first, official release. Interestingly, the Silk Daisys name has been around even further, with Abercrombie using the name on Soundcloud for about a decade to upload random covers and the occasional original song. 

“We recorded our album over two weeks with Damon Moon (Bathe Alone, Sleepers Club) at this studio Standard Electric Recorders in Atlanta. Damon was awesome to work with,” the duo says. “We spent a ton of time just talking about music the three of us love and sharing songs back and forth. We’d name some obscure part of a song as a reference and he’d get it immediately, and dial in the tones perfectly. Damon also played drums and percussion on the album. The three of us produced it together, and it was all really collaborative and fun.”` 

The Atlanta-based duo’s full-length debut is slated for a December 5, 2025 release and will feature the previously released Halloween-themed “Haunted House,” a track that seemingly channels Pygmalion and Souvlaki-era Slowdive, and the album’s final pre-release single “honeymilk.”

One-part early 90s shoegaze fuzz, one-part 60s bubble gum pop, complete with boy-girl harmonies, “honeymilk” is simultaneously a contented sigh, full of the recognition of your dearest, beloved one is right by your side, and the fluttering swoon of being madly, obsessively in love.

“This one is about pure infatuation. That feeling when you’re awake but the love of your life is asleep beside you, and you’re in disbelief that you get to be next to this beautiful person,” the Atlanta-based duo explain. “Musically, this one has so many influences, and influences that were influenced by other influences, that it’s almost cannibalistic to talk about it, but I’ll try. I tried to think of this one as if we were a band in the ‘90s covering a ‘60s song. Equal parts shimmer and fuzz. I wanted it to have a doo-wop vibe, almost like ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ by the Flamingos, but also the album version of ‘Crimson and Clover’ by Tommy James and The Shondells is one my favorite tunes of all time, so I wanted to give it this super fuzzed out solo. Damon put a lot of Space Echo on it, which helped give it even more ‘60s vibe.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Teacher Shares Lived-In “Past Life”

Singer/songwriter and musician Lilly Bechtel is the creative mastermind behind the indie project Night Teacher, a project that derives its name from Bechtel’s day job — she has worked asa trauma-informed yoga instructor for the past 15 years — and perhaps more poignantly, to the nature of the lesson. As Bechtel says, “Pain can be a teacher. It can have some really important things to tell you — if you’re willing to listen.”

Along with producer and collaborator Matt Wyatt, Bechtel’s Night Teacher work feel like notes slipped under the door or knowing winks across a table, little hints and nods of solitary that acknowledge struggle without demanding explanation or solution. “Healing doesn’t have to be linear,” says Bechtel. “It’s usually not.” Sonically, Bechtel and Wyatt craft a gritty, propulsive and often off-kilter sonic world that has drawn comparisons to Margaret Glaspy, Thom Yorke and Cate Le Bon among others, which can be heart on Bechtel’s 2020 Night Teacher self-titled debut.

Bechtel’s sophomore Night Teacher, the recently released Year of the Snake refers to the Chinese Zodiac and to this year, which according to the Chinese Zodiac is The Year of the Snake — a time for transformation. The album’s material was written during a period of profound personal hardship, including family challenges, a bitter breakup, and a relapse after 12 years of sobriety, all intensified by the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I kept asking myself, ‘Can I survive this?’” Bechtel says.

Year of the Snake‘s second and latest single “Past Life” is a gritty and lived-in fever dream of lingering heartache, regret, failure and old ghosts haunting its narrator — and in turn, listener — in the present. And if you have lived a full and messy life, as I have, the song should feel familiar, expressing thoughts, feelings and observations that you’ve felt and seen, but haven’t been able to put in words. At its core, is a deeply humanistic tale of stubborn survival, hope, and of the recognition that recovery and healing are often a slow, uneasy, painful and necessary process.

Directed by Cat Rider, Zap McConnell and Lilly Bechtel, the accompanying video for “Past Life” is a surreal fever dream of doppelgängers, being watched and watching, of past, present and future constantly and uncomfortably colliding.