Tag: indie rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Club 8 Returns With Slow-Burning “There Is A Light That Seems To Go Out”

Since the release of 2024’s A Year With Club 8, Stockholm-based JOVM mainstays Club 8 — Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and electronic music producer, artist and Labrador Records founder and label boss Johan Angergård — the duo spent last year releasing a single a month over the course of last year, including tunes like “ooo,” “None Of This Will Matter When You’re Dead,” “Staying Alive,” “Born The Wrong Time,” “Sneaky Feelings” and “Daydreams.” 

Earlier this year, the duo released “Echoes Of Our Time,” a nostalgia-inducing bop that channeled classic New Order and 80s pop. And late last month, the duo released their latest single “There Is A Light That Seems To Go Out,” a slow-burning and shimmering ballad that nods a bit at The Smiths, anchored around a familiar heartache over broken promises and things left unfulfilled and unresolved.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Returns with Rousingly Anthemic and Earnest “Where I Belong”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. 

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There,” the punchy punk rock-like “Pay No Mind,” and the album’s third single “Where I Belong.” “Where I Belong” continues to showcase Edkins’ long-held penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with some of the most introspective and deeply honest songwriting of the JOVM mainstay’s career. The song captures a narrator who’s recognizing that he’s getting older, that the road ain’t what it always is cracked up to be — especially since he has a family. The self-doubt and confusion at the core of the song are real and deeply lived in yet they feel universal and familiar to anyone, who’s inching into middle age.

Directed by boy wonder, the accompanying video for “Where I Belong” features Edkins in a thrift shop, playing his guitar and singing while trying on different outfits and personalties.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers Share Swaggering “BATH WATER”

Currently split between Ngunnawal/Canberra and Naarm/Melbourne, the rising Aussie outfit Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers — Anna Ryan they/she, vocals, guitar), Scarlett McKahey (she/her, guitar, vocals), Jaida Stephenson (she/her, bass) and Neve van Boxsel (she/her, drums) — broke out into the national and international scene with 2022’s Pretty Good For A Girl Band EP, which received praise from The Guardian and Teen Vogue, as well as airplay from triple j. 

Pretty Good For a Girl Band EP‘s lead single “Girl Sports” landed at #55 on the triple j Hottest 100 list. Building upon a growing profile, their full-length debut, 2023’s I Love You debuted at #6 on the ARIA Albums Chart and included “I Used To Be Fun,” which landed at #52 on the Hottest 100. Capping off a big year, they opened for Foo Fighters — and were named one of Spotify’s New Noise Artists to Watch for 2024. 

“I Used To Be Fun” earned the band a J Award-nominations for Australian Album of the Year and Song of the Year for “I Used To Be Fun,” an APRA Award-nomination for Emerging Songwriter of the Year and Rolling Stone Australia Award-nominations for Best New Artist and Best New Single. And they won an AIR Award for Best Independent Rock Album or EP, a MusicACT Award for Artist of the Year and the Michael Gudinski Breakthrough Artist ARIA Award. 

2024’s deluxe album, I Love You Too featured standout collaborations with Softcult on “Dull” and the rapidly rising The Linda Lindas on “Please Me.”

While developing a reputation as one of the Australia’s most exciting contemporary acts, the band has also received attention for their political concerns, including advocating for Green Music’s No Music on a Dead Planet, contributing to an Aussie Parliamentary inquiry into live music and being outspoken supporters of AAM’s Michael’s Rule. The rising Aussie outfit has found ways to channel their passion for music and social change into everything that they do. 

Their sophomore album, last year’s Catherine Marks-produced GLORY, which included “BALCONY” debuted at #9 on the ARIA Albums Chart and #2 on the Australian Albums Chart. The album also was a triple jump Feature Album, while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 1, The Needle Drop and SiriusXM while receiving coverage from The Guardian, 10 Magazine Australia, Rolling Stone, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Sydney Morning Herald, frankie, Ones to Watch and Billboard. They were also a Spotify RADAR artist, with their image on billboards in Melbourne, London, Seoul and New York, as well as cover places on the DSP’s major playlists in multiple countries, including All New Rock, Marrow, Rock Out and New Music Friday. And lastly, “Balcony” landed at #61 on the Hottest 100.

GLORY was an exploration of confidence, disgust, inflation and power set against widescreen indie rock that you can strut to, while showcasing the band’s embrace of a lived-in, messy — and often very fun — era.

Slated for an April 24, 2026 release through Mom + Pop Music, GLORY deluxe is an an extended version of their critically acclaimed sophomore album with two new, previously unreleased songs, “BATH WATER” and “GO WASTE MY TIME,” along with stripped back reworkings of four fan favorites, “TALKING,” “DAYLIGHT,” “MINE,” and “WONDERFUL.”

GLORY deluxe’s latest single “BATH WATER” is a a pub rock-meets-arena rock anthem that showcases the band’s unerring knack for big, catchy hooks and even catchier, shout along worthy choruses delivered with a defiantly swaggering strut. But the song is anchored around a mischievously smirking irony.

“BATH WATER’ is a slutty, drivey, fun song about coming home from a night out,” the rising Aussie band explains. “It’s about when you leave a bar and are actually really excited to hang out by yourself and enjoy your own company, in a Ke$ha way, though.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Miki Berenyi Trio Shares Breezy “Island of One”

Miki Berenyi Trio features an acclaimed and accomplished group of British artists:

  • Miki Berenyi (vocals/ guitar), a founding member, frontperson and rhythm guitarist of acclaimed and iconic shoegazer outfit Lush — and the founder and frontperson of acclaimed outfit Piroshka

  • Kevin “Moose” McKillop (guitar), a founding member of acclaimed shoegazers Moose, Berenyi’s spouse and Piroshka bandmate 

  • Oliver Cherer (bass)

The band is named after its lead singer — a direct way to convey the presence of former Lush frontperson Miki Berenyi, one of the most beloved figures and recognizable faces of 1990s alternative rock and shoeegaze.

The trio’s full-length debut, last year’s Tripla derives its name from the Hungarian word for “triple,” acknowledging the band’s songwriting is entirely a three-way collaboration. The album sonically was a rich, lushly layered, imaginative and uniquely slanted take on dream pop that features at points euphoric and other points melancholy guitars and electronics paired with Berenyi’s imitative vocal. The album’s material is anchored around a worldview that vacillates between profound, yearning and abrasive — seemingly informed by their lived-in experiences and hard-won wisdom,

Although the album’s material features a sophisticated sound, Berenyi, McKillop and Cherer have done so with a focus on the basics, not only recording at home, but driving around in a car packed with their gear, loading in and out of venues themselves, much like they did when they first started out. “There is something very ‘grass roots’ about what we’re doing,” Miki Berenyi Trio’s Miki Berenyi says.  “There’s no point following the ‘announce the album, then tour, then record the next album’ route – we just want to wring as much enjoyment out of this as we can, and hope that it resonates somewhere!”

Since the release of Tripla, the trio have released a limited edition 7 inch single of “Doldrum Days“/”Touché,” which sold out during their October 2025 Stateside tour. Yesterday, the band shared the standalone single “Island of One.” Released through Bella Union, “Island of One” is anchored around a flamenco-meets yé-yé-inspired rhythm and a remarkably catchy hook, making it arguably one of the breeziest songs of their lengthy individual catalogs — and of their growing, collective catalog.

“’Island of One’ took shape because I became quite obsessed with the track ‘Just A Western’ by Nilüfer Yanya last year, and the Latin-y beat got me inspired”, Miki Berenyi says. “But I wanted a lively, catchy song to add to our live set, so it ended up less laidback and more 60s-breezy with some driving, scratchy guitars – once all three MB3 members pile in on the embellishments, a song ends up a fair distance from where it started! As ever, recording and production took place in our various home-studio set-ups, and the song was mixed by our brilliant Bella Union labelmate, Paul Gregory.” 

Berenyi adds, “Lyrically, I’m at the age where a lot of my friends have elderly parents who are increasingly reliant on their help. It’s a new phase in a life relationship and can throw up a lot of emotions. But the words apply as much to all manner of family break-ups and the fraying of long-standing friendships. When you’re young, it’s much easier to justify walking away, but I’m acutely aware, as I get older, of how important even a thread of connection with people who have shared our lives can be, however difficult those relationships can be to maintain!”

The accompanying live performance-based video for “Island of One” was shot in Northwest London by longtime visual collaborator Sébastian Faits-Divers.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Kathryn Mohr Shares Brooding PJ Harvey-like “Doorway”

Oakland-based artist Kathryn Mohr creates music that exists in a liminal space of auditory dissociation. Drawing inspiration from lost items washing up on the shores of San Francisco Bay, Mohr’s work thematically touches upon the ephemeral nature of humanity, the warping of memory and how one’s trauma changes one’s experience of the world.

Mohr’s sophomore album Carve is slated for an April 17, 2026 release through The Flenser. The album was written over the course of five years and recorded over several weeks in a single wide in the Mojave Desert. The Oakland-based artist explains that her sophomore album explores how memory exists outside the body, embedded in places and landscapes.

The album’s material is shaped by her first return to the Southwest since a childhood road trip when she was five — and by the experience of moving through terrain that holds deep emotional weight, long after its origins faded. Thematically Carve considers how intimacy feels after years of isolation and what it takes to carve out a life that allows for trust, presence and feeling than mere survival.

Some of the album’s songs were written much earlier, during a prolonged period marked by emotional distance and apathy. During a four year period, Mohr was working through unprocessed childhood memories and trauma, and their long-term impact on her ability to connect with others. While the work was slow and difficult, it involved a fundamental reshaping of how she related to herself and to the outside world.

Mohr explains that the album took form after a difficult tour that ended in Joshua Tree. She pointed her car into the desert and drove alone, crisscrossing the Mojave Desert on dirt roads. Months later, she returned to record the album, working along with an acoustic guitar, a field recorder and limited supplies.

Following that period, she began to allow for intimacy and connection. The time she spent working on Carve didn’t create isolation, as much as mirror it. Working alone, out of an old, western-themed jail AirBnB, the physical enclosure reflected the emotional conditions under which much of the album had been written — distance, restraint and long stretches of stillness. For the Oakland-based artist, love wasn’t experienced as an escape or as a respite, but something inseparable from impermanence and the awareness of loss. The tension felt between connection and inevitability sits at the core of the album’s material.

Carve‘s third and latest single “Doorway” is a remarkably PJ Harvey-like tune that sees Mohr’s accompanying her crooned, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics with buzzing and chiming guitar. The result is a song that captures the inner world and thoughts of its narrator with a woozy, uneasy and desperate precision that feels deeply lived-in.

“Doorway” was written in a Mojave Desert single wide, and as Mohr says, the song “…wrote itself really. The riffs came to me one after another and the lyrics were originally a stream of consciousness and me randomly reading from my notebook.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Minneapolis’ Solid Gold Shares Shimmering, Politically Charged “Government Grade”

Minneapolis-based electro rock trio Solid Gold — Zachary Coulter, Adam Hurlbut and Matthew Locher — have released two critically applauded albums to date, 2008’s Ryan Olcott-produced Bodies of Water and 2012’s BJ Burton-produced Eat Your Young, as well as a handful of singles. The trio have supported all of their recorded output with a busy international touring schedule.

The trio are currently working on their long-awaited third album. Recorded at Cannon Falls, MN-based Pachyderm Studios, their new album reportedly showcases a dramatic shift in sound and approach: According to the band, the new songs are “maximalist psychedelic dreamscapes filled with shimmering synthesizers and pop vocal hooks.” They add that the album’s “sound is a reflection of the modern world, beautiful, but with an underlying essence of tragedy.”

Solid Gold’s latest single “Government Grade” is a a remarkably crafted and meditative song anchored around a shimmering psych pop arrangement, some incredibly catchy, well-placed hooks and a gorgeous melody. The song as the band explains is a direct response to the ongoing, violent occupation of Minnesota by ICE. And as a result, the song is a forcefully urgent documentation of our moment — one of many, of course — that also feels timeless and absolutely fucking necessary.

The band will be donating all proceeds from the sale of the song on Bandcamp to Minnesota Mutual Aid groups to support the good, resilient. diverse and deeply proud folks of the Twin Cities.

The Bandcamp link to purchase is here: https://solidgold.bandcamp.com/track/government-grade

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 39th Birthday, Tom Furse!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Tom Furse’s 39th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: EYRE LLEW Shares Painterly “Miningsby”

Initially conceived as a studio project back in 2014, Nottingham, UK-based trio EYRE LLEW — Sam Heaton (vocals, guitar), Jack Clark (drums, piano) and Jack Bennett (guitar, piano) — have developed and honed a sound that meshes elements of shoegaze, post rock and dream pop and channels influences like Sigur Rós, Frightened Rabbit, Bon Iver and The National into cinematic, emotionally overwhelming soundscapes.

2017’s debut album, Atelo was released to widespread critical acclaim with the album landing at #25 on Drowned in Sound‘s Top 100 Albums List of 2017.

And during that same period, the Nottingham-based trio have also established themselves as a compelling live act, playing over 300 independently booked shows across 23 countries, including sold-out shows across the UK, Europe, The Baltics (Latvia and Lithuania) and the Far East. The trio have also made the rounds of both the national and international festival circuit, playing sets at Glastonbury‘s John Peel Stage, The Great Escape, Dot to Dot, FOCUS Wales, Y Not Festival, Ritual Union, Rockaway Beach, Alternative Escape, Handmade, Glastonbury’s Shagrai La, Icebreaker, Perth Music Expo, 110 Above, Beat The Streets, Splendour, Riverside, On The Waterfront, Farm Fest, A Carefully Planned, Hockley Hustle, and others. Internationally, they’ve played sets at Singapore’s Music Matters, Taiwan’s Beastie Rock, South Korea’s Zandari Festa, Germany’s Umsonst Und Dresden, France’s FIMU, Belgium’s Fifty Lab, Sweden’s Future Echoes, Lithuania’s Zagare Fringe Festival and What’s Next In Music, Hungary’s HOTS Outbreakers Lab, Latvia’s Riga Music Week, Estonia’s POFF Shorts, Poland’s Seazone Music Festival and Conference and SpaceFest.

Building upon a growing profile, EYRE LLEW’s highly anticipated sophomore album Bloom is deeply informed and influenced by pandemic-enforced lockdowns. For the bulk of their history, the band defined themselves by seemingly constant motion: Cities blurred into one another. Border crossings were routine. Their lives revolved around airports, late night drives, ferry ports, backstage rooms, festival fields, hotel corridors and long-distance journeys.

As a touring band, success, such as it existed, was often measured in miles traveled, crowd size and momentum developed and sustained. The band kept moving because that’s just how it always was. Slowing down would mean — on some level, at least — slowed momentum. Stopping would mean accepting failure, when “making it” was just a little bit out of reach.

Like countless touring acts, the pandemic managed to dismantle their trajectory. That relentless forward motion that shaped their identity for the better part of a decade just suddenly stopped. Tours vanished. Plans dissolved. The result was an uneasy silence. Understandably, for the trio, it all felt devastating.

But in the stillness, something else emerged for the band — space: The space to rest, reflect, recover, feel and importantly, to make different choices. The band made a quieter, more human recalibration, shifting away from survival to towards sustainability. Rather than constantly feeling that they had to prove something, they moved towards building something — and choosing meaning over the endless chase of momentum.

The result was Bloom. Written during lockdown and the subsequent years, the album is about several things simultaneously: presence, the love that feels like home, stillness as strength, devotion without spectacle, grief without melodrama, healing without performative optimism, growth that happens slowly, privately and honestly.

Wher eas previously released material was frequently defined by scale and endurance, Bloom‘s material is defined by intimacy and grounding. Its songs are built from small moments rather than big, grand statements. It’s about choosing to stay. Not just in relationships but in places, in moments, in emotions and in identity.

The shift in the band’s approach, fittingly lead to a shift in their sound. While the album’s material continues to carry the vastness they’re known for, it lives alongside of a sense fragility and restraint. Instead of actively attempting to overwhelm the listener, the band is trying to meet the listener where they are right now.

The album’s first single “Miningsby” is a slow-burning and atmospheric tune that’s simultaneously cinematic and intimate, while evoking a loving, patient calmness. The track is about something that’s somehow both difficult and easy — being present when your loved one is struggling with anxiety, depression or something else.

“Rather than trying to dramatise that experience, ‘Miningsby’ is about something quieter and harder: staying, listening, and offering warmth,” the band explains. “It’s a love letter to emotional endurance, grounded in small moments and the hope of better days ahead.”

The song’s title came from a bit of serendipitous happenstance. When the original demo files were saved in an old, rural Lincolnshire studio, they were geolocated to Miningsby, a tiny nearby village. For the band, the title — and in turn, the town’s name — became an unintended marker for a place and time that no longer exists, but continues to resonate through the music, much like the fleeting yet beautiful moments the song memorializes.

The song’s origins manage to mirror its themes. The song was recorded on a baby grand piano that the band no longer owns, in a studio they’ve since left behind. The song captures something gone yet the feeling of being held through it all.

The song sees the band framing love through tangible, physical moments and sensations — breath, warm, light. But along with that, there’s a sense of calm, loving patience and the belief that things can get better with love and through time.

The accompanying video, shot in black and white features the band performing the song in studio.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Orielles Share Angular “Wasp”

Acclaimed, Manchester, UK-based JOVM mainstays The Orielles — Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals), Sidonie Dee Hand-Halford (drums, vocals) and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) — will be releasing their highly anticipated fourth album, the Joel Anthony Patchett-produced Only You Left through Heavenly Recordings on Friday.

Recorded last summer in two locations — the Greek Island of Hydra and Hamburg — the 11-song Only You Left reportedly sees the band consolidating the bold experimentation of 2022’s Tableau with the more stripped-back, song-driven approach of their earlier releases, channeling a return to the familiar. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. 

The JOVM mainstays, who originally started out in Halifax first gained attention both nationally and internationally with the release of their full-length debut, 2018’s Silver Dollar Moment, which recently celebrated its eighth birthday. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people,” the band says. 

As for the foundations of the forthcoming album, the band’s Henry Carlyle Wade says “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums.” “It comes naturally, the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford adds, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Interestingly through this process of creative renewal, the JOVM mainstays have managed to weather a pandemic, the fickleness of a trend-driven music industry and somehow emerge with something that’s familiar yet completely different. 

According to Wade, the first ideas for the new album can be traced back to May 2023: Esmé Hand-Halford had purchased a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar. These heavy drones would later form the background of album tracks “Wasp” and “Three Halves.” 

In breaks between tours, the band began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analyzing the voice notes with a granular attention to detail. “We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry Carlyle Wade. “We went so deep into what each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”

While the Tableau sessions were semi-improvisational and partially written in the recording studio, Only You Left was fleshed out through a series of intense writing sessions between May 2023 and last summer. Each of the album’s 11 songs were meticulously refined and became its own distinctive work. “It almost felt really novel for us to be writing as a three-piece and really, really crafting these songs,” the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford recalls. “But Tableau gave us that confidence to know we could go into a studio and pull things together in that setting under the time pressure.”

Producer and engineer Joel Anthony Patchett, whom Esmé Hand-Halford dubs the honorary fourth member of the band, has had a massive influence on the album’s sound and approach. “Joel brings an extra level of interpretation and deep listening,” Henry Carlyle Wade says, “and it’s always exciting to explore that.” Sidonie Hand-Halford adds, “He’s constantly talking us through every step of what he’s doing and getting really, really involved with that process as well. And we’re just kind of learning together and making these mistakes and discovering things together.” 

Only You Left will include the previously released “Three Halves,” the double single “You Are Eating Part of Yourself”/”To Undo the World Itself,”Tears Are,” and the album’s latest single “Wasp.”

Anchored around a looping, buzzing and droning guitar line, an angular and propulsive bass line and skittering, off-kilter drumming and percussion, “Wasp” subtly channels In Rainbows while simultaneously evoking a wasp flying in figure 8s and circles higher and higher.

“Taking on another shift in perspective, the lyrics follow a [sic] miniscule wasp as it reaches the height of a mountain, one of nature’s grandest settings,” the band explains. “Inspired by the film Black Narcissus I wanted to capture this feeling of questioning faith, purpose and the self when confronted by such vastness, using a wasp to exaggerate this magnitude even further. In seeing through its perspective maybe we can relate to the plight of the wasp, but the real sting in the tale (hah!) is that ultimately it is nature itself that conditions the wasp to hurt us.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sun Spots Shares Anthemic “Rocket”

Pacific Northwest-based indie rock outfit Sun Spots features members of essential regional punk and hardcore acts, including Criminal Code, Nudes and Bricklayer. With the release of their debut EP, 2022’s Loosey, Sun Spots quickly established a songwriting process that they’ve jokingly dubbed pop songs for hardcore fans — or hardcore songs for pop fans, depending on your perspective.

The Pacific Northwest-based outfit’s sophomore EP, Dog Is Calling is slated for a Friday release through Seattle-based indie label Den Tapes. Engineered and mixed in Seattle by Cameron Heck and mastered by Greg Obis, the EP features four upbeat and driving songs that sees the band pairing thick, crunchy guitar riffs with buoyant melodies, showcasing their love of the Big Muff pedal and big, catchy hooks.

Dog Is Calling‘s lead single “Rocket” will bring back warm and hazily nostalgic memories of 120 Minutes MTV-era grunge for all of you fellow olds as the song showcases the band’s penchant for pairing big, crunchy riffs with even bigger hooks with saccharine sweet, pop melodies. And of course, this is placed with a classic grunge song structure — alternating quiet verses and loud choruses. Play loud.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Punchy “Pay No Mind”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. 

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” and the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There.”

Hoopla‘s third and latest single “Pay No Mind” is a punchy, downright punk rock-like take on power pop, anchored around Edkins’ unerring knack for ridiculously catchy hooks and big riffs paired with what may arguably be his most socially aware, thoughtful lyrics of his growing catalog.

“We had a blast making this video with director Ryan Faist,” the Weird Nightmare creative mastermind says,. “It was a nod to the Elvis Costello and the Attractions ‘Pump it Up‘ video and some early footage of the Buzzcocks on cable access TV. 
 
“The lyric was lifted from an Atlantic City tourism t-shirt. ‘I’m so broke, I can’t even pay attention‘ struck me as a particularly accurate comment on modern life. Obviously, the shirt is meant to be funny, but it felt quite dark to me. Due to the overwhelming onslaught of information and emotional baggage that comes with it, I think there is a tendency for people’s lives to become quite myopic. As a coping mechanism, we become more and more insular, ignoring the world around us.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Steve Wynn!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Steve Wynn’s 66th birthday.