Tag: Kanine Records

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Diary Shares Madchester-like “Keep Comin’ Up”

Brooklyn-based quintet Diary — longtime friends and co-founders Kevin Bendis (vocals) and Chris Croarkin (guitar), along with Adam Sachs (drums), High Waisted‘s Jessica Dye (vocals, guitar), and Two Man Giant Squid‘s Yan Kogan (bass) — have released two critically applauded EPs, 2024’s Speedboat and 2022’s The Cutting Garden and a list of singles, which they’ve supported with touring on both sides of the pond.

The local outfit’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Spiral Bound is slated for a September 4, 2026 release through their longtime label home, Kanine Records. The album’s overall sound sees the quintet incorporating elements of jangle pop, psychedelia, dream pop and Brit Pop to firmly establish a hook and groove-driven, genre-defying sound.

Spiral Bound‘s first single, the Ben Hozie-produced “Keep Comin’ Up” draws from Happy Mondays-era Madchester scene, late 80s and early 90s shoegaze and 60s psych rock, while showcasing the band’s unerring knack for mind-bending, euphoric grooves and catchy hooks.

Directed by Sam Blieden, the accompanying video for “Keep Comin’ Up” draws from the 1960s art scene — and in particular, nods to Andy Warhol‘s Silver Factory and footage of The Velvet Underground. It captures a scene of folks, who are simply put, cooler and more interesting than you are.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lucid Express Shares Dreamy and Yearning “Promise Me”

Hong Kong-based shoegazers and JOVM mainstays Lucid Express just released their long-awaited and highly anticipated sophomore album Instant Comfort today through Kanine Records. 

Mixed by Kurt Feldman during marathon overnight, transpacific sessions on Discord, Instant Comfort reportedly captures the unsettling stillness of the nighttime hours. The album’s material sonically sees the Hong Kong-based JOVM mainstays pairing ethereal melodies with towering walls of jangling guitars and hazy, swirling feedback while being more clear-eyed, complex and layered than anything they’ve released to date. 

The album includes the previously released “Something Blue,” and “Faux Sweetness,“as well as the album’s latest single “Promise Me.” Featuring towering layers of shimmering and churning guitars, thundering hi-hat driven drumming serving as a lush and eerily uneasy bed for Kim Ho’s ethereal and yearning vocal.

Directed and filmed by fellow Hong Kong native Neo Yeung, the accompanying video is a mix of live performance-styled footage and candid footage shot over the course of a day-long shoot.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Lucid Express Return with Lush, Brooding “Faux Sweetness”

Hong Kong-based shoegazers and JOVM mainstays Lucid Express will be releasing their long-awaited and highly-anticipated sophomore album Instant Comfort on February 20, 2026 through Kanine Records. 

Mixed by Kurt Feldman during marathon overnight, transpacific sessions on Discord, Instant Comfort reportedly captures the unsettling stillness of the nighttime hours. The album’s material sonically sees the Hong Kong-based JOVM mainstays pairing ethereal melodies with towering walls of jangling guitars and hazy, swirling feedback while being more clear-eyed, complex and layered than anything they’ve released to date. 

The album will feature the previously released “Something Blue,” a woozy and uneasy tune, anchored around a classic grunge and shoegaze structure, and the album’s second and latest single “Faux Sweetness.” Arguably one of the more Cocteau Twins-like tunes they’ve written and released to date, “Faux Sweetness” opens with a droning theremin passage before bursting into a densely layered, subtly brooding soundscape in which each instrument is seamlessly interwoven into a lush and dreamy bed for Kim Ho’s ethereal cooing.

Lucid Express’ Kim Ho says, “on ‘Faux Sweetness’ we return to some of our earliest indie pop influences while also mixing in some of the darker sounds we’ve picked up over years of experimenting in our studio space. It kind of led us to make something that is both heavier and more delicate than anything we’d written up to that point.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lucid Express Shares Woozy “Something Blue”

Hong Kong-based shoegazers and JOVM mainstays Lucid Express will be releasing their long-awaited and highly-anticipated sophomore album Instant Comfort on February 20, 2026 through Kanine Records.

Mixed by Kurt Feldman during marathon overnight, transpacific sessions on Discord, Instant Comfort reportedly captures the unsettling stillness of the nighttime hours. The album’s material sonically sees the Hong Kong-based outfit pairing ethereal melodies with towering walls of jangling guitars and hazy, swirling feedback while being more clear-eyed, complex and layered than anything they’ve released to date.

Instant Comfort‘s first single “Something Blue” is anchored around a classic grunge and shoegaze song structure — shimmering and dreamily meditative soundscape-driven verses and stormy walls of churning and fuzzy power chords for the song’s enormous hooks and choruses. The song’s woozy and uneasy nature, helps to further emphasize the band’s Kim Ho’s ethereal delivery exploring the sense of creeping dead and melancholy that comes from uncertain relationships/situationships.

The accompanying video for “Something Blue” features the band in front of projections of footage submitted by fans and friends from across the globe.

Now, as you may know, since the release of 2021’s self-titled full-length debut, the band has amassed praise from fans and critics across the globe, toured internationally and made a run of the international festival circuit with stops at Slide Away and LEVITATION. They will return to North America next year for a sting of Stateside dates, including a return to play New Colossus Festival in March. More details on that to come.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Singapore’s Blush Shares Deceptively Upbeat “X My Heart”

Slated for an August 1, 2025 release through Kanine Records, rising Singapore-based indie outfit Blush‘s sophomore album Beauty Fades, Pain Lasts Forever sees the band with a revamped lineup featuring Soffi Peters (vocals), Daniel Pei (bass), Sobs‘ Darrell Laser (guitar) and Forests‘ Jared Lim (guitar, production).

Continuing the “tangled family tree” collaboration of the contemporary Singaporean indie scene, the album features songwriting contributions from Peters, Laser and Lim with the material showcasing subtle influences from the latter two bands. The album reportedly finds the members of Blush attempting to create pristine pop that simultaneously explores life’s bittersweet moments while featuring intricately crafted arrangements that swirl between dreamscapes and noise.

Yesterday, the band announced their signing to Kanine Records while sharing Beauty Fades, Pain Lasts Forever‘s latest single “X My Heart.” “X My Heart” is an undeniably sunny yet ironically deceptive bit of pop that sees the band pairing jangling guitar and a catchy hook and chorus with a deeply melancholy and heartbroken lyrics.

Shot, directed and produced by Goh Koon How, the accompanying video for “X My Heart” is viral visual that sees its protagonist take spiral from wistful lovesickness into murderous and obsessive delusion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: High. Returns with Swooning and Anthemic “Flowers”

Boonton, NJ-based shoegazers High. can trace their origins back to 2021 when Christian Castan (vocals, guitar) and Bridget Bakie (bass, vocals) met while playing across the Garden State’s DIY and college circuit. During that time, Bakie built and developed a reputation as “The Queen of The Quarter Note,” and Casten as an unforgettable guitarist. After the pair had a stint playing in another band together, they longed for a project that would be their sole creative focus and could tour as far as wide as possible.

A couple of weeks after adding Jack Miller (drums) and Danny Zavala (guitar), the newly-minted quartet made their live debut at Saint Vitus Bar. They followed up with shows across the Tristate DIY circuit.

The New Jersey-based quartet’s highly-anticipated Matthew Molnar-produced sophomore EP Come Back Down officially dropped today. The EP’s first sessions started in June 2023 when the band, along with Molnar went to Chairlift‘s Patrick Wimberly‘s Greenpoint studio to test new material with engineer Sam Darwish. They also brought tracks to Shane Furst and his Cloud Factory Recording to review their recent work and begin the next stages of completion. 

Come Back Down marks the beginning of the band’s partnership with Kanine Records — and a key period in the band’s development. With a greater expression of sonic range, the EP sees the band offering more noise, more hooks, more heaviness and much more emotion: The sad is much sadder and the love is more swooningly in love. There are more song about loss and being lost. For the band, it’s the culmination of their growth after the release of their well-received debut EP Bomber, which was released through Julia’s War and Suburban Creep.

Last fall, the band took a break from the sessions to do a week-long tour with Austin-based outfit STAB, as well as opening slots for DIIV, Glare, Lowertown, A Place To Bury Strangers, as well as a Midwest run with Chicago’s Smut. After touring across the nation, the band finished the EP with Jeff Ziegler at his Philadelphia-based Uniform Recording. Zeigler’s work on Nothing.’s Guilty of Everything has been a major inspiration for the New Jersey-based group. 

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

  • “In A Hole,” a decidedly 120 Minutes MTV-era take on shoegaze anchored around a towering wall of stormy guitars, thunderous drumming and ethereal boy-girl harmonies. The song’s brooding soundscape evokes the stormy emotions, trauma and unease that inspired it — but also the comfort of finding friendship and a community that truly understands where you’re coming from. “’In A Hole’ is inspired by meeting our group of friends,” High.’s Christian Castan explains. “It’s about being depressed and the people close to you dragging you out of it. It’s about the peace and belonging I used to dream about during childhood trauma and finally finding it. There’s a lyric – ‘These are the new stars, they burst alive.’  It’s about living life at its best and never wanting that feeling to end.”

  • “Catcher” which continued a run of 120 Minutes MTV-like shoegaze, much like its immediate predecessor while featuring remarkably blissed out choruses and hooks. Arguably one of the most swoon worthy songs of the New Jersey shoegazers growing catalog, “Catcher” is anchored around deeply introspective lyrics tackling grief with a wisdom that belies their relative youth. “I came to the band with the structure chords and bassline of this song, I am very attached to the music personally. Then, Christian wrote lyrics over it that have massive significance to him,” the band’s Bridget Bakie says. “’Catcher’ explores the depths of grief and the unwavering hope that binds us to those we’ve lost,” the band’s Castan adds.

To celebrate the release of their sophomore EP, the New Jersey-based shogazers shared videos for EP singles “Flowers” and “Dead,” directed by Luke Carr. Right now, I’m going to talk about “Flowers,” an urgent and swooning song featuring swirling, feedback-driven guitar textures, a propulsive rhythm section, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses serving as a lush yet subtly stormy bed for Casten’s yearning delivery.

The accompanying video follows the band, presumably on tour, heading down to Atlantic City to gamble and party with a collection of friends, followed by a contemplative late night hang on the beach until sunrise.