Tag: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jahnah Camille Shares Languorous “summer scorch”

Jahnah Camille (pronounced as “Hannah”) is a rising, 20 year-old Birmingham, AL-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician, who can  trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Overhearing her father’s guitar lessons, she first picked up a guitar when she was four, and by the time she turned 10, she was writing her own songs. 

Throughout her life, supportive coincidences have pushed Camille’s creative tenacity. Her mother encouraged an elementary school-aged Jahnah to perform for their apartment’s maintenance man, who then gifted her a red Gibson SG and an amplifier. At a hippie kids camp, she met a mentor, who helped to champion her early crowdfunded recordings. 

“My mom was always having me sing and play guitar for people,” says Jahnah. “I’ve always had people who believed in me, and I feel like I’ve internalized that. That’s been really beautiful.”

Later opportunities to open for acclaimed artists like Clairo and Soccer Mommy led to her burgeoning status as a keenly self-examining indie rock singer/songwriter in a Birmingham scene saturated with punk and hardcore bands — many of which she played with in her earliest DIY shows. 

“The first year after I graduated high school was kind of horrifying,” says Jahnah. “I had just basically broken up with most of my band. I wasn’t going to college. I was seeing how everyone else that I had known growing up, their lives were changing. I knew that whatever happened in my life, it wasn’t going to be that, and there wasn’t really any proof that things were going in a positive direction.”

The rising Birmingham-based artist’s sophomore EP, the Alex Farrar-produced My sunny oath! is slated for a June 13, 2025 release through Winspear. The EP comes on the heels of a run of tour dates with Blondshell and previous shows opening for TOPS,Soccer Mommy and Clairo — and the success of her debut EP, last year’s i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl. 

My sunny oath! is set in the pressure cooker of new adulthood and is reportedly features a defiant collection of alt-rock, lo-fi grit and sardonic grunge that channels Jahnah Camille’s influences, including The Sundays, Liz Phair, Minnie Ripperton and Japanese Breakfast among others. 

In the lead-up to the EP’s release, I’ve written about two of its previously released singles:

  • “what do you do,” a 90s/120 Minutes MTV-era indie rock inspired anthem, anchored around a classic grunge rock structure paired with the young artist’s remarkably self-assured vocal turn and uncanny knack for an enormous, well-placed hook. “I wrote this while trying to understand the feeling of losing control,” the rising Birmingham-based artist says, “I was paralyzed by a need to control how other people saw me and needed to write about it.” 

  • “sit with you (pain),” a song that begins with a lush and dreamy, singer/songwriter, acoustic guitar section with gently rumbling feedback that slowly builds up into a full-throated, bombastic, feedback and grungy power chord-driven anthem. While continuing to showcase a young songwriter, who can craft a big, rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, the song is anchored in deeply lived-in and earnest hurt. The song “is about cutting someone out of your life who you still care for deeply,” she explains. “All of your critiques and drawbacks are still secondary for the love that you have. I wanted to make a habit of doing things that were good for me even if they hurt.”

My sunny oath!‘s third and latest single, the slow-burning and languorous “summer scorch” sees the rising, young singer/songwriter pairing a dreamily yearning delivery with strummed guitar, a simple yet propulsive backbeat that builds up to a big string-driven bridge. While evoking the stickiness of a humid, deep South summer afternoon, the song is rooted in real, lived-in, self-doubt, fear of rejection and desperate hope.

“I wrote it about a crush that I never even talked to,” the rising young singer/songwriter explains. “I was just like, ‘Would I be able to keep myself? Can I be trusted with a romantic relationship?’”

The accompanying video by Harrison Shook, is a hazily shot visual that follows a brooding Jahnah Camille on and near a stool in front of suburban-styled house and what appears to be an abandoned warehouse. The visual also evokes a similar humid, haziness.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dublin’s Martina and the Moons Share Shimmering and Yearning “Baby Turtle”

Led by Spanish-Scottish frontperson Martina Moon, the rising Dublin-based indie outfit Martina and the Moons can trace their origins back to when Moon relocated to Dublin to study at BIMM University. During her studies, Moon met and quickly connected with her then-future bandmates, Ruby Levins (bass), Zahira Ellis (drums) and Sarah Morgan (guitar). The Dublin-based quartet quickly got out of the game, establishing a sound that blends elements of post punk, indie rock, 90s Britpop and the 60s and 70s Laurel Canyon sound paired with gorgeous melodies and a youthful aggression and angst.

Moon, who cites Paul Simon, Lady Gaga, Catatonia, Radiohead, Bruno Mars and a lengthy list of others influences, pens lyrics that touch on themes of alienation, being misunderstood, being an outsider and yearning with a deeply, lived-in earnestness.

So far, the band has played opening slots for Porridge Radio and Thumper. The quartet played Whelan’s Main Stage at Ones to Watch. And adding to a growing regional profile, they played this past year’s The Great Escape Festival, receiving mentions from BBC Introducing and praise from Golden Plec and from Hotpress, who named them one of their Hot for 25′ acts.

Building upon the growing buzz surrounding them, the members of Martina and the Moon recently signed to Dublin-based artist developmental label Rubarb Music, who released their latest single, the Ruadhrí Cushnan-produced “Baby Turtle.”

Recorded at Camden Recording Studios, “Baby Turtle” is a slow-burning, meditative tune featuring a shimmering and jangling guitar melody, a brooding bass line and dramatic, angular drum patterns serving as a lush bed for Moon’s breathtakingly gorgeous and achingly yearning vocal. Still drawing from post punk, “Baby Turtle” is anchored around a decidedly cinematic and dream pop leaning and a deep-seated yearning to be truly understood.

“‘Baby Turtle’ is a song about many things, and I have found that looking at it from different moments in my life since I wrote it has changed the way I perceive it,” Martina and the Moon’s Martina Moon explains. “It was originally meant to be just about baby turtles hatching and crawling down to the sea, Once I started researching turtles more I found that a very small percentage of the turtles who hatch make it to adulthood. They are such beautiful little creatures. I then look at it from where I am at the moment, just striving for self-fulfillment and trying to make a living far from my home and family, Maybe I am the baby turtle in the end. I made the choice of trying to pursue my music career, which was so hard to get people in my life to come to terms with. I feel like that’s an issue most people in the creative industry face at some point in their lives, especially when they don’t come from a wealthy background that allows them to fail at something without consequences. But when you love something so fiercly it lingers within your core. The narrator of the song is someone who wishes the best for that person who they love and is leaving, That person is my mum, that person is my best friend María from home, my teachers in high school or my younger self. I hope my potential isn’t wasted, but I am living my truest life.”

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Smut Shares a “120 Minutes”-era MTV-like Power Ballad

After spending years in the Cincinnati DIY scene, Smut — currently Tay Roebuck (vocals), Andie Min (guitar), John Steiner (bass), Sam Ruschman (guitar) and Aidan O’Connor (drums) — caught the attention of Bayonet Records, who signed the band and released their sophomore album, 2022’s critically applauded How the Light Felt. The album brought the band to Chicago, a city with more room for their growing sound. 

But despite their early successes, they still faced the struggles of the modern working musician: instability, financial precarity, objectification and more. The band channeled a period of touring, personnel changes and personal upheavals into their third album, Tomorrow Comes Crashing. 

Slated for a June 27, 2025 release through Bayonet Records, Tomorrow Comes Crashing marks the band’s first album with O’Connor and Steiner and reportedly sees the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love. 

The members of the band focused on capturing the big emotions that come with falling in love with music for the first time. The result is ten of arguably their most intense, bombastic and focused songs to date. 

The Chicago-based band recorded the album’s material “as live as they could,” alongside Momma‘s Aron Kobayashi Ritch in a Red Hook, Brooklyn-based studio over a breakneck 10-day session. Roebuck. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married, with the rest of the band by their side. 

“We have so much energy right now,” Smut’s Roebuck says. The recording sessions were a true labor of love — driving from Chicago with all their equipment, returning from 12 hour studio days to sleep on friends’ couches and floors, Roebuck completely blowing her voice by the end. Fittingly, the album is culmination of the band’s long-held DIY spirit — with the band creating a record that encompasses the intensity, moodiness and emotions of their journey so far. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “Syd Sweeney,” a track named for an inspired by the actor, that’s anchored around Siamese Dream-like power chords, rolling and propulsive drumming and enormous, beer-raised-high-in-the-air, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses paired with Roebuck’s rock goddess-like delivery before ending with a thrash metal-like coda that would make Billy Corgan smile. 

The song is about how profoundly strange it can be to be a woman, to be misunderstood by people, who don’t even know you — and probably will never know you. Roebuck says: “Women in entertainment are exceptionally talented, smart and beautiful, because they have to be. Sometimes they want to explore sexuality and vulnerability in their work. Then the pitchforks come out, how dare they be amazing AND sexual? You can only be one or the other! Why is talent and hard work seemingly erased once you’ve seen a woman naked?”

“It makes sense then to interpret it as a horror film, where we have the dividing tropes of final girls and sexy bimbos who die first for being too damn sexy,” Roebuck continues. “We put the sexy woman in the movie so we can see her be sexy and then kill her for it. It’s a lose-lose. Being a woman in art is to be objectified one way or the other. Success is the monster chasing you, waiting for you to be a little too sexy, knife ready.”

Tomorrow Comes Crashing‘s latest single “Touch & Go” is a full-throated, 120 Minutes MTV-era power ballad that showcases the band’s knack for pairing rousingly anthemic hooks with, big riffs and earnest, lived-in lyricism and songwriting.

“‘Touch & Go’ is a broken fantasy that was pretty directly inspired by ‘Time to Pretend’ by MGMT,” Smut’s Tay Roebuck explains. “The pursuit of success and the daydreams we have of ‘making it’ are pretty easily shattered once you put that fantasy in the modern world. The song ends with the realization that the best part of music will always be the community you build with it.” In the song’s last moments she sings, “The basement flooded / The coffee burned / The van is broken down / We all take turns / Touch and go.” 

Fittingly, the accompanying video looks and feels as though it could have aired during 120 Minutes.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ John The Solomon Shares an Anthemic Rocker

John The Solomon is the recording project of an mysterious and emerging, Los Angeles-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who has developed a reputation for crafting high-energy, guitar driven songs packed with riffs, big` hooks, and feel-good vibes.

The project’s latest single “Come Back For Me” continues a run of crafted, big riff and big hook-driven numbers that seemingly recalls The Smithereens and Hüsker Dü — but with a modern sensibility.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Wickham Falls Shares Hooky and Anthemic “Fallout”

New York-based indie outfit Wickham Falls — Brooke Nilson (vocals, guitar), Nigel Acard (guitar), Conor Larsen (bass) and Joey Gadonniex (drums) –features four friends, who are also music lovers and extremely talented musicians, with an uncanny and innate creative chemistry.

The New York-based quartet’s latest single “Fallout” is big, hook driven anthem that showcases some remarkably tight musicianship and playfully inventive songwriting while recalling 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock.

women who kick ass by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: The New Colossus Festival 2025: Day 6: 3/9/25: Closing Party at Baker Fall’s feat. Whisper Doll

Live concert photography of Whisper Doll playing New Colossus Festival’s Closing Party at Baker Falls.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Club 8 Shares Breezy and Nostalgia Inducing “Staying Alive”

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, which featured the Joy Division/New Order-meets-The Raveonettes-like “Something’s Wrong With My Head,” a woozily blissful and escapist song that continued a run of material dabbling in 80s New Wave nostalgia. 

The duo have been busy, releasing a single every month throughout the course of this year.

  • The Swedish JOVM mainstays began the year with “ooo,” which continued where A Year With Club 8 left off — breezy and escapist, New Wave-inspired pop featuring shimmering guitars and driving grooves paired with ethereal yet expressive vocals. 

  • February saw the release of “None Of This Will Matter When You’re Dead.” Clocking in at 83 seconds, “None Of This . . .” is a breakneck bit of Smiths-inspired guitar pop, anchored around shimmering guitars, a motorik groove, big catchy hook and choruses paired with Komstedt’s ethereal delivery expressing swooning heartbreak and defiance simultaneously.

The duo’s fifth single of the year, the hooky “Staying Alive” continues a remarkable run of nostalgia inducing, breakneck guitar pop that channels a synthesis of New Order and The Smiths while serving as a lush bed for Komstedt’s ethereal and yearning delivery.