Tag: Mothland

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Yoo Doo Right Shares Cinematic “Sofort Si Fort”

Since their formation back in 2016, Montréal-based experiential rock outfit Yoo Doo Right — currently Justin Cober (guitar, bass, VI, synthesizer, piano, tape recordings and vocals) and John Talbot (drums, percussion) — have over the course of three full-length albums, three EPs, a handful of collaborations and singles and extensive touring across Europe, the UK and North America have firmly established a unique sound where “towering monoliths of roaring riffs crash against swarms of restless rhythms,” PopMatters once wrote.

The Canadian duo’s fourth album, the Ky Brooks co-produced Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light is slated for a November 6, 2026 release through Mothland. The album’s material ranges from eardrum shatteringly loud forays into post-rock and krautock, highly-tempered, effects-landed pieces seemingly drawing from ambient, noise and drone, and more. Eschewing genre strictures and boundaries, the album sees the duo opting for a symbolic approach to creation, with each of its different pieces free to unfold in a myriad of ways upon each listen.

From its creators’ point of view, Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light chronicles the hardships of artistic resolve, acknowledging the daily grind required to keep the momentum while embracing the shared joy of the creative process. Throughout the album’s runtime, there’s an underlying tribute to the communities that foster art: “Industriestraße 9” pays homage to a defunct Luzerne squat where they used to play. Symbolism seeps through song titles like Tortue”, “Sofort, Si fort,” and “To Be a Lambskin (Or to Be the Whole Flock)”, which offer enigmatic glimpses into creative vision. Co-producer Ky Brooks contributes a spoken word poem to album track “Neighbours Report Their Neighboours.” Timothy Aaron Brynan, who recently joined the duo on tour was invited to play bass on “Doldrums, Doldrums, Eviler Than the Devil,” a song that has quickly become a live set staple. Additionally Jessica Moss (violin) and Francis Leduc-Bélanger (trumpet, flugelhorn) make vital contributions to the album.

The Ky Brooks co-produced album was recorded at Montréal’s Hotel2Tango and Studio Error 403. Seth Manchester mixed the album at Providence’s Machine with Magnets. Amal Lal mixed the album at Oakland’s Macro Sound. The album’s cover art is a photo taken in Ovronanz, Switzerland by Julia Bender.

“There is a lot of joy and laughter in this album. For the first time in a while, we were feeling enriched and energized by what we were creating, the instruments we were using, and what was coming out,” the band says in a lengthy statement. “The record is us looking at our place in the world and deciding we were still committed to making music together. Boldly doing so with as much joy as we can drag out of the dried roots of modern day life. Rather than the anxiety-inducing white knuckle ‘when is it going to break’ energy we have worked with in the past, this record is optimistic but pensive. It holds onto the idea of transcendental musical themes and is deeply rooted in repetition and a clear momentum. A momentum we hope moves people, whether it is in thought or the physical.

“The title—Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light—highlights the main themes and motifs of the record as it stands. Rest and build, and rest and build, and rest and build… What else is there in our stories? Everyday is caring for ourselves and then doing everything in your power to care for those around us. A heroic journey is nothing but helping set camp up every night and making sure everyone is fed. A person’s ‘shepherd’ is defined by themselves, whether it’s music, their friends and families, their companion animals, or the very equipment they use to create! In each of our lives, we have the potential to draw strength and find rest in what is around us, build and rest by the shepherd’s light.

“Half the record came fully-formed, the other half was born of improvisational jamming. Originally made as pieces of music to help his partner sleep, Justin created ‘Industriestraße 9’ and ‘Neighbours Report Their Neighbours’ while isolated in a cabin over the Winter. ‘Doldrums, Doldrums, Eviler Than the Devil,’ ‘Tortue,’ and ‘Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light’ were us just having lots of fun in the studio, being excited by new ideas and sounds, challenging ourselves to dive deeply into new grooves and styles. The rest were either old ideas born anew or fully conceptualized pieces brought to life. While quite exploratory in its sonic landscape, we see the record as one cohesive story. A cinematic exercise that we hope people listen to in full.

We recorded with co-producer Ky Brooks. They are one of our favourite artists and a dear friend so the choice to have them hop on was an easy and exciting one. We booked studio time with no intention of finishing a record. The goal was to lay down some new ideas and get in the mindset of recording. Hotel2Tango is an incredibly warm and creatively conductive place for us. For four days straight, we put in 12-14 hour days and routinely got lost in the haze of creative fervor. Timothy joined us to record “Doldrums […]”. Jessica, Ezra, and Francis’ instruments, as well as Ky’s vocals, were recorded at Error 403. Having finished recording, we of course turned to Seth (mixing) at Machines with Magnets and Amar (mastering) at Macro Sound  to elevate the album.”

Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light will include the album’s first single “Doldrums, Doldrums Eviler Than the Devil,” and its second and latest single “Sofort Si Fort.” Sonically, “Sofort Si Fort” is a meditative, cinematic composition that hints at a mystical tale of a mysterious hero’s journey as told by a balladeer or a Spaghetti Western soundtrack, thanks to reverb-laden melodic guitars, supple bass VI lines and a driving, mid-tempo bass groove.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Yoo Doo Right Shares Dreamy, Lysergic “Doldrums, Doldrums, Eviler Than the Devil”

Since their formation back in 2016, Montréal-based experiential rock outfit Yoo Doo Right — currently Justin Cober (guitar, bass, VI, synthesizer, piano, tape recordings and vocals) and John Talbot (drums, percussion) — have over the course of three full-length albums, three EPs, a handful of collaborations and singles and extensive touring across Europe, the UK and North America have firmly established a unique sound where “towering monoliths of roaring riffs crash against swarms of restless rhythms,” Pop Matters once wrote.

The Canadian duo’s fourth album, the Ky Brooks co-produced Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light is slated for a November 6, 2026 release through Mothland. The album’s material ranges from eardrum shatteringly loud forays into post-rock and krautock, highly-tempered, effects-landed pieces seemingly drawing from ambient, noise and drone, and more. Eschewing genre strictures and boundaries, the album sees the duo opting for a symbolic approach to creation, with each of its different pieces free to unfold in a myriad of ways upon each listen.

From its creators’ point of view, Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light chronicles the hardships of artistic resolve, acknowledging the daily grind required to keep the momentum while embracing the shared joy of the creative process. Throughout the album’s runtime, there’s an underlying tribute to the communities that foster art: “Industriestraße 9” pays homage to a defunct Luzerne squat where they used to play. Whereas symbolism seeps through song titles like Tortue”, “Sofort, Si fort,” and “To Be a Lambskin (Or to Be the Whole Flock)”, which offer enigmatic glimpses into creative vision. Co-producer Ky Brooks contributes a spoken word poem to album track “Neighbours Report Their Neighboours.” Timothy Aaron Brynan, who recently joined the duo on tour was invited to play bass on “Doldrums, Doldrums, Eviler Than the Devil,” a song that has quickly become a live set staple. Additionally Jessica Moss (violin) and Francis Leduc-Bélanger (trumpet, flugelhorn) make vital contributions to the album.

The Ky Brooks co-produced album was recorded at Montréal’s Hotel2Tango and Studio Error 403. Seth Manchester mixed the album at Providence’s Machine with Magnets. Amal Lal mixed the album at Oakland’s Macro Sound. The album’s cover art is a photo taken in Ovronanz, Switzerland by Julia Bender.

“There is a lot of joy and laughter in this album. For the first time in a while, we were feeling enriched and energized by what we were creating, the instruments we were using, and what was coming out,” the band says in a lengthy statement. “The record is us looking at our place in the world and deciding we were still committed to making music together. Boldly doing so with as much joy as we can drag out of the dried roots of modern day life. Rather than the anxiety-inducing white knuckle ‘when is it going to break’ energy we have worked with in the past, this record is optimistic but pensive. It holds onto the idea of transcendental musical themes and is deeply rooted in repetition and a clear momentum. A momentum we hope moves people, whether it is in thought or the physical.

“The title—Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light—highlights the main themes and motifs of the record as it stands. Rest and build, and rest and build, and rest and build… What else is there in our stories? Everyday is caring for ourselves and then doing everything in your power to care for those around us. A heroic journey is nothing but helping set camp up every night and making sure everyone is fed. A person’s ‘shepherd’ is defined by themselves, whether it’s music, their friends and families, their companion animals, or the very equipment they use to create! In each of our lives, we have the potential to draw strength and find rest in what is around us, build and rest by the shepherd’s light.

“Half the record came fully-formed, the other half was born of improvisational jamming. Originally made as pieces of music to help his partner sleep, Justin created ‘Industriestraße 9’ and ‘Neighbours Report Their Neighbours’ while isolated in a cabin over the Winter. ‘Doldrums, Doldrums, Eviler Than the Devil,’ ‘Tortue,’ and ‘Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light’ were us just having lots of fun in the studio, being excited by new ideas and sounds, challenging ourselves to dive deeply into new grooves and styles. The rest were either old ideas born anew or fully conceptualized pieces brought to life. While quite exploratory in its sonic landscape, we see the record as one cohesive story. A cinematic exercise that we hope people listen to in full.

We recorded with co-producer Ky Brooks. They are one of our favourite artists and a dear friend so the choice to have them hop on was an easy and exciting one. We booked studio time with no intention of finishing a record. The goal was to lay down some new ideas and get in the mindset of recording. Hotel2Tango is an incredibly warm and creatively conductive place for us. For four days straight, we put in 12-14 hour days and routinely got lost in the haze of creative fervor. Timothy joined us to record “Doldrums […]”. Jessica, Ezra, and Francis’ instruments, as well as Ky’s vocals, were recorded at Error 403. Having finished recording, we of course turned to Seth (mixing) at Machines with Magnets and Amar (mastering) at Macro Sound  to elevate the album.”

Clocking in a little over six minutes, Build and Rest by the Shepherd’s Light‘s first single “Doldrums, Doldrums Eviler Than the Devil” begins with a five-beat mantra-like guitar intro before subtly morphing into a four-beat motorik rhythm paired with the sort of intricately textured post rock and krautock arrangement the Montréal-based outfit is known for. Vocals delivered with a languid, narcoleptic-like drone dart in and out of the song’s arrangement — but the lyrics are up to the listener’s interpretation. The song manages to evoke a vivid yet hazily lysergic-tinged dream.

“I think I’ll spend my entire life circling the question: ‘What makes a film…a film?’ I also make narrative work, so part of what I’m circling with this film is whether meaning can exist without relying on narrative or literal representation. I think it’s important to explore the edges of what film can be, because that’s how I figure out what the centre of my practice is,” the video’s director Stacy Lee explains. “For me, the shape a film takes begins with intention. Why was this thing made? What are we trying to say? I always start here, and work outward. I don’t want to be boxed in by my own visual language, and blindly apply a visual style to a project. I want the visual language to come from the ideas already inside the work.

“It’s been a pleasure to continue being part of Yoo Doo Right’s world-building. Their music already has such a strong sense of atmosphere. It feels meditative and psychedelic to me, which gives me a door to enter. They’ve also given me the freedom and trust to explore without needing to know exactly where the process will lead. That space has allowed my practice, and each film we make together, to evolve naturally.

“Our previous video together, ‘Eager Glacier,‘ was the beginning of my cameraless exploration. At the time, I was still scared that the audience would lose interest if the work became completely abstract. I felt like I needed to give them something recognizable. Since then, I’ve had the chance to explore and develop my own techniques. In the same way that this album is a response to From the Heights of Our Pastureland, this film became a response to “Eager Glacier”. It comes out of the same world, but a bit further along the path. Brighter, bolder, and perhaps more beautiful. This time around, I felt more courageous.

The entire film is paint on film. There is no narrative, and there are no images that correlate to the song in a literal way. It’s carried by colour, texture, rhythm, and repetition alone. In the same way, the song builds its own meaning through repetition and accumulation. I wanted the film to respond in kind and take on a similar shape. It felt like the only form that honoured the intention of the work.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Berlin’s Lemongrab Shares Strutting and Insouciant “Yoko”

Originally founded in Montréal, Lemomgrab — currently founding duo Gaëlle Cordeau (vocals) and Léonie Dishaw (guitar, vocals), along with Fritz Ali Hansen (bass) and Joris Bo Monty (drums) –quickly established their unique brand of punk-tinged garage rock with 2016’s self-released The Ones with the Brooms EP, 2019’s self-released, full-length debut It Doesn’t Sound Good But It Feels Awesome. In their early days, they played house shows, now-defunct DIY spaces, deep dives across Canada and later touring the US with Broncho back in 2019. The duo relocated to Berlin in 2020.

Following their move to Germany, the duo self-released 2021’s six-song, The Wet Album, which saw them further embracing a punk ethos. Their sophomore full-length 2024’s I Spy with My Little Eye was released through German label U-Bac Records and received praise from Vancouver’s Range Magazine and others. Since relocating to Berlin, they do have sharpened their sound amidst the European underground circuit, making a quick yet lasting impression in the international punk scene. Adding to a growing international profile, the band has made a run of the international festival circuit, paying sets at Berlin’s Synästhesie Fest; Paris’ Supersonic Block Party; Friedland, Germany’s Jenseits von Millionen; Calgary’s Sled Island; and Pop Montréal. They’ve also shared stages with L.A. Witch, BODEGA, Meatbodies, Das Beat, Cumgirl8 and Shame. And while in Berlin, the band expanded from a duo to a quartet with the addition of Fritz Ali Hansen (bass) and Joris Bo Monty (drums).

The Berlin-based outfit’s new 7-inch, Another Kind of Freedom is slated for a September 11, 22026 release through Mothalnd and Chrüsimüsi Records. The new effort reportedly sees the German-based quartet further cementing a sound that draws from an eclectic array of influences including The Stooges, The Clean, Pylon and Bikini Kill while being a cranky yet uplifting patchwork of songs. While each song is stylistically diverse, the material questions belief systems rooted in existential angst and witty social commentary informed by our dystopian hellscape.

Another Kind of Freedom‘s latest single “Yoko” is built around a insouciant and downright nonchalant, strutting groove and squiggling burts of guitar. Sonically seeming to channel Talking Heads: 77 and More Songs About Building and Food-era Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground and The Jim Carroll Band‘s Catholic Boy, “Yoko” is one-part school punk, one-part mutant disco that pays homage to Yoko Ono while calling out misogyny and criticizing the superficiality of the male gaze. The song points out that Yoko Ono was not just misunderstood as an artist and person, but that she was has long been incorrectly blamed for The Beatles breakup.

“‘Yoko’ came from a discussion about how we repeatedly had this annoying conversation with men who hate Yoko Ono and say she’s just ruining everything, laughing about her ‘screaming’ over Chuck Berry, Lemongrab’s Cordeau and Dishaw explain. “‘Yoko’ is a song that decenters the male ego as the measure of experience and plays with the notion of who holds the narrative. It’s not anymore about if someone is Paul or John, but Yoko or John, putting them both on equal terms. Inspiration came from late 70s post-punk music like Delta 5 and Au Pairs and we riffed on this idea which all came together when Fritz found the perfect bass groove.”

Filmed by Gaëlle Cordeau and Léonie Dishaw, the accompanying video for “Yoko” follows the pair as they set out on an adventure to visit the grave of German singer/songwriter, actor and model Christa Päffgen, a.k.a. Nico.

The German-based outfit will be embarking on a European Union tour to close out 2026. Check out the tour dates below.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: La Sécurité Returns with Breakneck and Defiant “Nah Nah”

Acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstay collective La Sécurité — Éliane Viens (vocals, synths, percussion and drums), Félix Bélisle (bass, synths, percussion, piano and production), Kenny Smith (drum, guitar), Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné (guitar, percussion, vocals) and Melissa Di Menna (guitar, synths, vocals, percussion and artwork) — just released their highly-anticipated Emmanuel Éthier and Félix Bélisle co-produced sophomore album Bingo! today through Mothland in Canada and the States, and Bella Union for the rest of the world.

Bingo! sees the band continuing to meander in and around the fringes of punk, New Wave, krautock and dance punk while mischievously floating stylistic form every chance they get. Interestingly. while anchored around their usage of polyrhythm, counterintuitive chord changes and subtle melodic and harmonic dissonance, the album’s material sees the band incorporating more New Wave, no wave, noise rock and even shoegaze elements of the sound that has quickly won them international acclaim.

Recorded with the band playing live off-the-floor, using rare ribbon microphones and vintage compresses, the album’s recording sessions added to the material’s free-flowing feel and vibe. Many of the album’s hooks were improvised through jazz-tinged musical flights during recording sessions. And much like its critically applauded predecessor, many of the Bingo’s! songs saw the group improvising lyrics in the studio, effectively catching lightning in a bottle. 

The album’s songs tackle knotty themes like mental health, the the autonomization of women, and dysfunctional relationships with their custom moxie. Other songs playfully muse about food or address everyday mundanity with sarcasm and irony. There’s a song that celebrates unsung heroes, like the elderly.

Bingo! features the previously released  “Detour,” “Ketchup,” album title track “Bingo,” “Snack City,” “‘Deny,” and it’s latest single “Nah Nah.” “Nah Nah” is a breakneck and defiant DEVO-like punk ripper with French lyrics spelling out boundary etiquette for the less perceptive folk out there with a “don’t-fuck-with-me” attitude. Their sophomore effort’s latest single continues to showcase the band’s unerring knack for crafting catchy, unforgettable hooks, the song sees the band playfully implementing a switcherroo with Charest-Gagné taking on lead vocal duties while Viens bashes the living shit out of the drums and Smith contributes slashing guitar attack.

The band explains, “On ‘Nah Nah,’ Éliane played the drums and Kenny the guitar. The lyrics are by Félix and Laurence Anne, dealing with the feeling of wanting to be left alone while communicating a certain madness. Meanwhile, Éliane—with a joint in her mouth—and Melissa were writing ‘Snack City,’ as the band was finalizing the demos for the album.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Truck Violence Returns with Bruising, Self-Aware “Your name, it’s walking”

Acclaimed and rising Montréal-based experimental act Truck Violence — founding duo Karysn Henderson (vocals) and Paul Lecours (guitar, banjo, production), along with Chris Clegg (bass, banjo) and Thomas Hart (drums and slide guitar) — can trace their origins back to its founding duo’s childhood: Henderson and Lecours grew up in a small, French Canadian town of 600 people, graduating in a class of nine. By the time they both turned 15, they were running a local studio and radio station. There was no industry support, no infrastructure, no template for what they were trying to do, only the work itself — and the conviction that it was worth doing. 

When the pair turned 17, they relocated to Montréal, where they met Chris Clegg and Thomas Hart, who hail from different corners of the country and began building their band from the ground up. 

The Canadian quartet’s highly anticipated sophomore album, The weathervane is my body is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through San Francisco-based label The Flenser and Montréal-based Mothland. Their sophomore album is reportedly a product of the process of building the band from the ground up. The album’s creative and writing process, the recording, the mixing and visuals were all produced employing a fiercely DIY process. This isn’t done as an aesthetic choice or a marketing angle, it’s because for the band, it’s the only honest option album. 

The album’s cover art was shot on film by the band on Montréal’s Avenue du Parc. A figure perches atop a small Québécois-style house, hand built from reclaimed materials, spine curved, legs pulled in, bare-backed against a skyline that dwarfs everything beneath it. A rural thing dropped into the grit of a big city, small and out of place yet refusing to disappear. The body is naked and defenseless, open to the environment and every stimuli the world can deliver upon it.

Thematically, the album is a continuation and expansion of the angry statement of purpose of their debut, 2024’s Violence. Rooted in noise rock and post-hardcore traditions, the album is uncompromising in its refusal to be anything other than what is: immediate, self-determined and built entirely by the hands that imagined it. 

The weathervane is my body will feature the previously released “New Jesus” and the album’s second and latest single, “Your name, it’s walking.” The album’s new single is a furious ripper that’s captures the brutally hurtful self-talk of a troubled young person maneuvering their relationship with themselves and a brutally cruel world. Much like its immediate predecessor, the new single is an urgent, desperate howl — with some gorgeous, meditative, banjo-driven sections.

“This song is a sort of compilation of thoughts; my relationship with my birth name after having a precarious journey with gender and identity in my early teens, my feelings of inadequacy and alienation growing up with intense ADHD and anxiety from an early age, my desires for anchorage in an uncertain future,” Truck Violence’s Karsyn Henderson explains. “The hook of the song always comes off as extremely cliche to me, maybe I am hitting the nail too precisely, with too blunt a face, but perhaps that is necessary, perhaps it reflects well the thoughts of myself as I was.

Directed by Kirill Sommer, the accompanying video for “Your name, it’s walking” is a surreal fever dream that captures the mundanity and boredom of rural life, while being one-part Samuel Beckett play, one-part psilocybin trip, one-part Ingmar Bergman film.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: La Sécurité Shares Punchy, Dance Punk Anthem “Deny”

Acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstay collective La Sécurité — Éliane Viens (vocals, synths, percussion and drums), Félix Bélisle (bass, synths, percussion, piano and production), Kenny Smith (drum, guitar), Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné (guitar, percussion, vocals) and Melissa Di Menna (guitar, synths, vocals, percussion and artwork) — specialize in a brand of art punk that’s equal parts jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks run through an insomniac filter that’s the result of excessive exposure to the city’s neon-lit late night scene. 

The Canadian art punk collective’s music is about living dangerously and is prefect for being blasted at deafening levels on dance floors. But lyrically, the material is deeply inspired by and shares the ethos of the Riot Grrl movement, celebrating and defiantly advocating for the autonomization of women, friendship and benevolence. 

Since the release of 2023’s full-length debut, Stay Safe!, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize long-list, the Montréal-based art punks have released 2024’s Stay Safe! REMIXED and last year’s “Detour” and “Ketchup.” Along with receiving critical praise both nationally and internationally, the outfit has made the run of the intentional festival circuit, playing sets at M for Montréal, New Colossus Festival, SXSW, End of the Road, The Great Escape, Reeperbahn and Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. They’ve toured as an opener for The Go! Team and The Rapture. And they’ve shared stages with Mauskovic Dance Band and JOVM mainstays Automatic and Death Valley Girls. During that whirlwind period, they also signed with Simon Raymonde‘s label Bella Union. 

The JOVM mainstay act’s highly-anticipated, Emmanuel Éthier and Félix Bélisle co-produced sophomore album Bingo! is slated for a June 12, 2026 release through Mothland in Canada and the States, and Bella Union for the rest of the world. The new album reportedly sees the band continuing to meander in and around the fringes of punk, new wave krautrock and dance punk, while mischievously flouting stylistic form every change they get. While continuing to implement polyrhythm, counterintuitive chord changes and subtle melodic and harmonic dissonance, the album reportedly sees them introducing more New Wave, no wave, noise rock and shoegaze elements to the sound that has won them intentional acclaim. 

The album’s material features songs that tackles knotty themes like mental health, the autonomization of women, dysfunctional relationships with their custom moxie. Other songs playfully muse about food or address everyday mundanity with sarcasm and irony. There’s a song that celebrates unsung heroes, like the elderly. Much like its predecessor, many of the album’s tracks saw the group improvising lyrics in the studio, effectively catching lightning in a bottle. 

The album was recorded with the band playing live off-the-floor, using rare ribbon microphones and vintage compressors. Adding to the overall free-flowing feel and vibe to the album’s material, many of the song’s hooks were improvised through jazz-tinged musical flights during recording sessions. The album was mixed by Bélisle and Étheir before being mastered by Robin Schmidt. 

The result is an album that harnesses the Montréal-based art punks’ natural sound, a sound that fuses calculated musical chaos and musicality with high decibels. 

Bingo! will feature the previously released “Detour” “Ketchup,” album title track “Bingo,” “Snack City,” and the album’s last pre-release single “Deny.” “Deny” is arguably Bingo!‘s most dance floor friendly song, anchored around a driving four-to-the-floor rhythm, funky polyrhythmic bass lines, slashing guitar volleys, squiggling synth blasts paired with the occasionally complex yet groovy drum fill paired with a punchy yet stern vocal exposing a noxious, dysfunctional relationship before bolting from it.

“Initially written in French and translated to English, the song deals with dysfunctional relationships and getting rid of burdens in your life. Standing up for yourself. This doesn’t work for me; I’m out,” the band explains. “The bass hook was stolen from Standard Emmanuel, Félix’s solo project…”

Directed by Béatrice Cuierrier-Legualt, the accompanying video showcases the uniqueness of each band member — with a playful nod at Tumblr and other digital creation methods. “I wanted to visually create tableaus for each character, based on different homogeneous æsthetics, centered around the concept of denial,” Cuierrier-Legault explains. “It was by delving into the band’s intimacy and consulting their personal archives that five characters were born, each representing a member and their unique traits. I wanted each character to embody elements from their real lives amidst the alter ego.Since La Sécurité is mainly composed of millennials, I wanted to highlight 90s and post-punk influences, but also the arrival of the internet and new digital creation methods.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atsuko Chiba Returns with Two New Singles Off Just Released Fourth Album

Montréal-based outfit Atsuko Chiba — Karim Lakhdar (vocals, guitar, synths), Kevin McDonald (synths, guitar), Eric Schafhauser (guitar, synths), David Palumbo (bass, bass VI, vocals) and Anthony Piazza (drums, electronic drums, percussion) — have firmly established a sound that’s a cohesive and hypnotic blend of post-rock, prog and krautock paired with offbeat songwriting through the release of 2013’s Jinn, 2019’s Trace and 2023’s Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing.

The Montréal-based quintet’s self-titled fourth album was released last Friday through Mothland. The album sees the band rethinking their sound and approach, drawing inspiration from Mark Lanegan, Beak>, Talk Talk, Can and Portishead, all while retaining elements of their long-established post-punk fueled psychedelia. 

Though the band has been introducing more vocals and lyrics with every subsequent release, their fourth album sees the band further wielding vocals and lyrics as a well to delve deeper into their intrinsic meta. The result is an album that’s one-part gritty post-rock and one-part intimate hymn to self-reflection with its moodiness amplifying a communal desire to eschew recurrent patterns for the sake of comfort, approval and longevity. 

The band decided upon a freeform creative process, which could only be achieved by pursuing a hands-on approach, and with each member sharing the roles of engineer and producer, 

“Overall, Atsuko Chiba is an exercise in patience and restraint. The mood of the album is melancholic, at times feeling optimistic, while other times feeling almost hopeless—there’s a sense of loss and disconnect, but also a glimmer of hope,” the band explains. “It is the most vulnerable and stripped down music we have ever made. It is a departure from the aggressive and distorted guitar sound we’ve relied on over the years. We also chose to make it a self-titled record which is something we battled with. We went with Atsuko Chiba because its overarching themes relate to us in a deep way. The material on this album presents itself as a mosaic of our interests and experiences as a band. We let the music guide us every step of the way, never forcing our will upon it, instead paying attention to what it was telling us and what we could do to further support it.

At first, we would come into the studio without a plan, just playing and recording the entire time, with no pressure as to a specific outcome: free jams during which we were just generating grooves, parts, and moments that felt good to us. We also put limitations, cutting out certain instruments from session to session, opening us to new options and pathways, generating new sound palettes. A lot of attention was put into creating space and holding back from always going for big epic moments. We focussed on keeping things simple and using dynamics to create exciting moments instead of relying on loud guitars to get us there. This album features a lot of auxiliary percussion, synthesizers, and keyboards, and places a strong emphasis on vocals. We explored acoustic guitars and created many custom percussive sounds by layering two or three sources together, also programming rhythms using samplers and drum machines.”

The album includes the previous released album opening track “Retention” “Torn” and its two latest single “Pretense” and “Future Ways,” which sequentially follow each other on the new album. “Pretense” is a brooding yet lush and melodic mediation on loss and grief, seemingly rooted in the lived-in experience of losing someone dear. Anchored around a motorik groove, “Future Ways” is a mind-bending, krautrock-inspired bit of psych rock that feels both uneasy and urgent simultaneously. “Future Ways” is meant to evoke invasive thoughts racing through one’s mind, as they attempt to make sense of foreseen tragedy. Impassioned vocals dance and dart around fuzzy and distortion pedaled guitars and glistening synth arpeggios, leading to the song’s coda and uplifting mantra: Go wild/Stay Forward/Going up . .

“’Pretense’ confronts loss and my perspective on an impossible situation with someone deeply close to me. It traces a profound depression, a daily struggle to remain alive, shaped by the belief that something inside was irrevocably broken, beyond diagnosis or repair,” Atsuko Chiba’s Karim Lakhdar explains. “‘Wanted out, couldn’t wait‘ echoes his constant proximity to the idea of ending it. Life felt unbearably tense, with no center to return to. He had a brilliant mind, always in motion—always an answer, always a reason—yet never at rest. In the end, I am left standing before the grave, realizing this is not something you move on from. It stays with you. I am not okay… I’m only learning new ways to carry it. That day, I lost someone irreplaceable: a friend, a brother, a mentor, a fellow cosmonaut.

“’Future Ways’ is intrinsically linked to ‘Pretense,'” Lakhdar continues. “They were initially conceived as a single piece. The title feels inevitable: this is life after death. It asks how we continue, how we carry what has already happened. ‘This light, it grows in spite of you‘ speaks to taking what I learned from him and using it as forward motion. In this sense, he never fully disappears, he continues through me. I learned how to listen, how to see, how to approach life and music from shifting vantage points, to question, to push beyond what is given. The second verse reflects how, even in moments of profound despair, he remained deeply charismatic, silver-tongued to the point that I believed everything he said. He predicted what would happen, how he would be seen, how people would respond. There was a rare coexistence of hysteria and startling clarity, and through it all I am left confused, powerless, unable to intervene. In the third verse, a mantra repeats as a way of keeping spirits up. It’s a commitment to forward motion. It becomes a reminder that life is still here, still unfolding, and that I must remain an active participant in it, careful not to disappear into the weight of what was lost.”

The accompanying visual features footage of the band in the studio goofing during the writing and recording process and during candid moments while on tour and outside of beloved local venue L’Esco.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Truck Violence Shares Urgent and Bruising “New Jesus”

Acclaimed and rising Montréal-based experimental act Truck Violence — founding duo Karysn Henderson (vocals) and Paul Lecours (guitar, banjo, production), along with Chris Clegg (bass, banjo) and Thomas Hart (drums and slide guitar) — can trace their origins back to its founding duo’s childhood: Henderson and Lecours grew up in a small, French Canadian town of 600 people, graduating in a class of nine. By the time they both turned 15, they were running a local studio and radio station. There was no industry support, no infrastructure, no template for what they were trying to do, only the work itself — and the conviction that it was worth doing.

When the pair turned 17, they relocated to Montréal, where they met Chris Clegg and Thomas Hart, who hail from different corners of the country and began building their band from the ground up.

The Canadian quartet’s highly anticipated sophomore album, The weathervane is my body is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through San Francisco-based label The Flenser and Montréal-based Mothland. Their sophomore album is reportedly a product of the process of building the band from the ground up. The album’s creative and writing process, the recording, the mixing and visuals were all produced employing a fiercely DIY process. This isn’t done as an aesthetic choice or a marketing angel, it’s because for the band, it’s the only honest option album.

The album’s cover art was shot on film by the band on Montréal’s Avenue du Parc. A figure perches atop a small Québécois-style house, hand built from reclaimed materials, spine curved, legs pulled in, bare-backed against a skyline that dwarfs everything beneath it. A rural thing dropped into the grit of a big city, small and out of place yet refusing to disappear. The body is naked and defenseless, open to the environment and every stimuli the world can deliver upon it.

Thematically, the album is a continuation and expansion of the angry statement of purpose of their debut, 2024’s Violence. Rooted in noise rock and post-hardcore traditions, the album is uncompromising in its refusal to be anything other than what is: immediate, self-determined and built entirely by the hands that imagined it.

The weathervane is my body‘s latest single “New Jesus” is a bruising and furious howl of desperation and disgust that’s urgent and is meant to shake the listener out of the doldrums of apathy and indifference.

“New Jesus” is a rant about the blatant fascistic slide occurring both to the south of our border and on screen. It is loosely about the ABC—Trump settlement and the post-January 6th election fraud cases,” Truck Violence’s Karsyn Henderson explains. “The lack of any broader moral compulsions beyond centralizing power on the political right has led to a culture of post-truth, where there is no reward in accuracy unless it leads to an augmenting of one’s political capital, which it rarely does. This is as destructive in politics as it is in art. There is surprising apathy among young people in regards to this slide, who believe the acquisition of power and the subsequent lording over that occurs, is merely nature, essentially; what will happen, will happen. With these lines of thinking, you find more people sympathetic to this mode, if it is both natural and inevitable, why not acclimate and reap the rewards. Why not join the fascist grift, degenerate art through tiktok, etc…”

Directed by Kirill Sommer, the accompanying video for “New Jesus” is a surrealistic fever dream that’s seemingly one-part Samuel Beckett play, one-part psilocybin trip, one-part Ingmar Bergman film.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: La Sécurité Returns with a Breakneck Ode to Food

Acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstay collective La Sécurité — Éliane Viens (vocals, synths, percussion and drums), Félix Bélisle (bass, synths, percussion, piano and production), Kenny Smith (drum, guitar), Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné (guitar, percussion, vocals) and Melissa Di Menna (guitar, synths, vocals, percussion and artwork) — specialize in a brand of art punk that’s equal parts jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks run through an insomniac filter that’s the result of excessive exposure to the city’s neon-lit late night scene. 

The Canadian art punk collective’s music is about living dangerously and is prefect for being blasted at deafening levels on dance floors. But lyrically, the material is deeply inspired by and shares the ethos of the Riot Grrl movement, celebrating and defiantly advocating for the autonomization of women, friendship and benevolence. 

Since the release of 2023’s full-length debut, Stay Safe!, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize long-list, the Montréal-based art punks have released 2024’s Stay Safe! REMIXED and last year’s “Detour” and “Ketchup.” Along with receiving critical praise both nationally and internationally, the outfit has made the run of the intentional festival circuit, playing sets at M for Montréal, New Colossus Festival, SXSW, End of the Road, The Great Escape, Reeperbahn and Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. They’ve toured as an opener for The Go! Team and The Rapture. And they’ve shared stages with Mauskovic Dance Band and JOVM mainstays Automatic and Death Valley Girls. During that whirlwind period, they also signed with Simon Raymonde‘s label Bella Union. 

The JOVM mainstay act’s highly-anticipated, Emmanuel Éthier and Félix Bélisle co-produced sophomore album Bingo! is slated for a June 12, 2026 release through Mothland in Canada and the States, and Bella Union for the rest of the world. The new album reportedly sees the band continuing to meander in and around the fringes of punk, new wave krautrock and dance punk, while mischievously flouting stylistic form every change they get. While continuing to implement polyrhythm, counterintuitive chord changes and subtle melodic and harmonic dissonance, the album reportedly sees them introducing more New Wave, no wave, noise rock and shoegaze elements to the sound that has won them intentional acclaim. 

The album’s material features songs that tackles knotty themes like mental health, the autonomization of women, dysfunctional relationships with their custom moxie. Other songs playfully muse about food or address everyday mundanity with sarcasm and irony. There’s a song that celebrates unsung heroes, like the elderly. Much like its predecessor, many of the album’s tracks saw the group improvising lyrics in the studio, effectively catching lightning in a bottle. 

The album was recorded with the band playing life off-the-floor, using rare ribbon microphones and vintage compressors. Adding to the overall free-flowing feel and vibe to the album’s material, many of the song’s hooks were improvised through jazz-tinged musical flights during recording sessions. The album was mixed by Bélisle and Étheir before being mastered by Robin Schmidt. 

The result is an album that harnesses the Montréal-based art punks’ natural sound, a sound that fuses calculated musical chaos and musicality with high decibels. 

Bingo! will feature the previously released “Detour” “Ketchup,” and the title track “Bingo,” which was released earlier this year, as well as the album’s latest single “Snack City.” “Snack City” is a breakneck mix of punk rock and post punk with overt nods to Freedom of Choice-era Devo. The result is a mischievously absurdist and fidgety tune about primal, downright glutinous needs and desires.

“We wrote the song when we were hungry,” the band explains. “The segment ‘J’ai faim, j’ai faim, […],’ which translates to: ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, […]’ was the basis of the scat singing that remained. We had fun with food anecdotes, food-related puns, etcetera.”

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with director Phillipe Beauséjour, the accompanying video for “Snack City” is inspired by snacking and past era cookbooks and features collage animation spliced with imagery and footage of the band on tour — sometimes eating or snacking.  “The band wanted a music video with images taken from their cellphones, including photos and videos from their tours. I found the challenge very fun, considering that the most interesting content was already done,” Beauséjour explains. “So, I created a universe inspired by scrapbooking, using what I could find in my multiple 60s and 90s cookbooks. I still wanted to bring a touch of animation, by constructing Éliane’s face several times with food. A little inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s ‘Summer.’”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Shares Meditative “Ballad for Eddy”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their songs are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms. 

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content just dropped today through Mothland. The album sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs capture fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation. 

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties. 

Spiritual Content includes the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” the  Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four-like “Only Love” and the album’s latest single “Ballad for Eddy.”

“Ballad for Eddy” is a meditative sway of a tune, featuring brooding, undulating drum and percussion, gently buzzing synth bass and bursts of twinkling keys serving as a lush bed for Resnik’s dreamy and ethereal melody. Written to pay tribute to the legendary Eddy Grant, “Ballad for Eddy” lyrically touch upon youthful idealism, the search for connection and meaning amidst difficulty and strife. The result leaves the listener to wonder what role — if any — music can play in overcoming adversity.

Featuring footage shot and edited by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video captures life in the studio and on the road as a DIY band. And at the core of the video is a sweet nostalgia over going on a series of adventures that you and your friends/bandmates can only really understand. It’s a unique, difficult to explain relationship that becomes one of the most important of your life.

“I was struggling to come up with a concept for the video for ‘Ballad for Eddy’ and I came across these old tour clips,” the bands Evan Resnik explains. “We’ve been doing bigger cross-country trips around the US and UK in the last few years so there was a lot of footage. Most of it I forgot I had! It got me a little sentimental, reliving all these great experiences and moments that we’ve shared as a band. It reminded me that all the hard work is worth it for the friendship and camaraderie. 

‘The song is inspired by Eddy Grant—who wrote ‘Electric Avenue’—and how tireless and dedicated to music he was. Sure, being in a band booking DIY tours, recording albums, and sleeping on couches and floors is hard. But we’re also really lucky for the opportunity, and the memories that come out the other side are priceless. I’m even more inspired by Eddy Grant when I think about how much harder it all was for him as a young person of colour in a foreign land. His life story is really interesting, you should check it out!”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atsuko Chiba Shares Hypnotic “Torn”

With the release of 2013’s Jinn, 2019’s Trace and 2023’s Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing, 2016’s Figure and Ground EP and The Memory Empire EP, as well as a handful of singles, all which were self-produced and recorded at their Room 11 Studio, Montréal-based outfit Atsuko Chiba — Karim Lakhdar (vocals, guitar, synths), Kevin McDonald (synths, guitar), Eric Schafhauser (guitar, synths), David Palumbo (bass, bass VI, vocals) and Anthony Piazza (drums, electronic drums, percussion) — have firmly established a sound that’s a cohesive and hypnotic blend of post-rock, prog and krautock paired with offbeat songwriting.

The Montréal-based quintet’s self-titled fourth album is slated for an April 24, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band rethinking their sound and approach, drawing inspiration from the likes of Mark Lanegan, Beak>, Talk Talk, Can and Portishead, all while retaining elements of their long-established post-punk fueled psychedelia.

Though the band has been introducing more vocals and lyrics with every subsequent release, their fourth album sees the band further wielding vocals and lyrics as a well to delve deeper into their intrinsic meta. The result is an album that’s one-part gritty post-rock and one-part intimate hymn to self-reflection with its moodiness amplifying a communal desire to eschew recurrent patterns for the sake of comfort, approval and longevity. 

The band decided upon a freeform creative process, which could only be achieved by pursuing a hands-on approach, and with each member sharing the roles of engineer and producer, 

“Overall, Atsuko Chiba is an exercise in patience and restraint. The mood of the album is melancholic, at times feeling optimistic, while other times feeling almost hopeless—there’s a sense of loss and disconnect, but also a glimmer of hope,” the band explains. “It is the most vulnerable and stripped down music we have ever made. It is a departure from the aggressive and distorted guitar sound we’ve relied on over the years. We also chose to make it a self-titled record which is something we battled with. We went with Atsuko Chiba because its overarching themes relate to us in a deep way. The material on this album presents itself as a mosaic of our interests and experiences as a band. We let the music guide us every step of the way, never forcing our will upon it, instead paying attention to what it was telling us and what we could do to further support it.

At first, we would come into the studio without a plan, just playing and recording the entire time, with no pressure as to a specific outcome: free jams during which we were just generating grooves, parts, and moments that felt good to us. We also put limitations, cutting out certain instruments from session to session, opening us to new options and pathways, generating new sound palettes. A lot of attention was put into creating space and holding back from always going for big epic moments. We focussed on keeping things simple and using dynamics to create exciting moments instead of relying on loud guitars to get us there. This album features a lot of auxiliary percussion, synthesizers, and keyboards, and places a strong emphasis on vocals. We explored acoustic guitars and created many custom percussive sounds by layering two or three sources together, also programming rhythms using samplers and drum machines.”

Atsuko Chiba will include the previously released, album opening track “Retention” and the album’s second and latest single “Torn.” “Torn” is a hypnotic, brooding tune anchored around a looping synth and guitar melody paired with reverb-drenched vocals. The song manages to be expansive yet introspective, while conveying a sense of unease and distrust.

“‘Torn’ explores the struggle with anxiety through the lens of overconfidence, transforming imposter syndrome from a state of paralysis into propulsion. By constructing a false reality, the protagonist earns the trust of those around him through promises he can not keep,” the band explains. “He embarks on a quest to control the world around him, while gradually losing himself in the deception of others—and his own. Eventually, he stares into the mirror and no longer recognizes the person looking back. Over time, he becomes a composite of the characters and narratives he has invented, dissolving into his own fiction. The game becomes indistinguishable from reality, breeding a deep and growing unease. Panic attacks and episodes of depersonalization follow, each one pushing him further, eroding sleep, stretching time, tightening the tension in his chest. At the edge of a cliff—unsure how long he has been awake—he searches for release as the pressure becomes unbearable. This release is marked by the shift at the end of the song. What happens next remains unresolved: does he jump, or does an old photograph—himself beside his father—surface from his wallet, pulling him back toward the memory of who he once was? We don’t know. . . “

The visualizer for “Torn” features footage of the band shot by the band and edited by the band’s Anthony Piazza that captures the band in the studio, working on the new album and traveling snow-covered roads.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Return with Shimmering “Only Love”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their sons are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms. 

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs reportedly captured fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation. 

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties. 

Spiritual Content will include the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” and the album’s latest single “Only Love.” Seemingly channeling a synthesis of Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four, “Only Love” sees Resnik, Blanchard and company musing on the transformative and redemptive power of love — but it’s underpinned with the subtly bitter reality that nothing is forever, not even love.

Directed by Ethan Clark, the accompanying video features the band’s members at a packed house party but love — whether of someone else or self-love made the video’s protagonist change his life, perhaps for the better. We see this through a series of woozy flash backs and flash forwards, sometimes within the same scene.

“Only love can upend your lifestyle, change your patterns. You’re young, you’re out at parties all the time,” the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays explain. “Then something happens. Years pass in an instant. Maybe you found love, or self-love, or something else. Got healthy. Got busy. Where you used to go out, now you stay in. The party’s not over; it rages on in your memories. This video is kind of an illustration of those memories.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: La Sécurité Share Punchy “Bingo!”

Acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstay collective La Sécurité — Éliane Viens (vocals, synths, percussion and drums), Félix Bélisle (bass, synths, percussion, piano and production), Kenny Smith (drum, guitar), Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné (guitar, percussion, vocals) and Melissa Di Menna (guitar, synths, vocals, percussion and artwork) — specialize in a brand of art punk that’s equal parts jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks run through an insomniac filter that’s the result of excessive exposure to the city’s neon-lit late night scene.

The Canadian art punk collective’s music is about living dangerously and is prefect for being blasted at deafening levels on dance floors. But lyrically, the material is deeply inspired by and shares the ethos of the Riot Grrl movement, celebrating and defiantly advocating for the autonomization of women, friendship and benevolence.

Since the release of 2023’s full-length debut, Stay Safe!, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize long-list, the Montréal-based art punks have released 2024’s Stay Safe! REMIXED and last year’s “Detour” and “Ketchup.” Along with receiving critical praise both nationally and internationally, the outfit has made the run of the intentional festival circuit, playing sets at M for Montréal, New Colossus Festival, SXSW, End of the Road, The Great Escape, Reeperbahn and Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. They’ve toured as an opener for The Go! Team and The Rapture. And they’ve shared stages with Mauskovic Dance Band and JOVM mainstays Automatic and Death Valley Girls. During that whirlwind period, they also signed with Simon Raymonde‘s label Bella Union.

The JOVM mainstay act’s highly-anticipated, Emmanuel Éthier and Félix Bélisle co-produced sophomore album Bingo! is slated for a June 12, 2026 release through Mothland in Canada and the States, and Bella Union for the rest of the world. The new album reportedly sees the band continuing to meander in and around the fringes of punk, new wave krautrock and dance punk, while mischievously flouting stylistic form every change they get. While continuing to implement polyrhythm, counterintuitive chord changes and subtle melodic and harmonic dissonance, the album reportedly sees them introducing more no wave, no wave, noise rock and shoegaze elements to the sound that has won them intentional acclaim.

The album’s material features songs that tackles knotty themes like mental health, the autonomization of women, dysfunctional relationships with their custom moxie. Other songs playfully muse about food or address everyday mundanity with sarcasm and irony. There’s a song that celebrates unsung heroes, like the elderly. Much like its predecessor, many of the album’s tracks saw the group improvising lyrics in the studio, effectively catching lightning in a bottle.

The album was recorded with the band playing life off-the-floor, using rare ribbon microphones and vintage compressors. Adding to the overall free-flowing feel and vibe to the album’s material, many of the song’s hooks were improvised through jazz-tinged musical flights during recording sessions. The album was mixed by Bélisle and Étheir before being mastered by Robin Schmidt.

The result is an album that harnesses the Montréal-based art punks’ natural sound, a sound that fuses calculated musical chaos and musicality with high decibels.

Bingo! will feature the previously released “Detour” and “Ketchup,” and the album’s title track “Bingo.” “Bingo” is a sleek blend of DFA Records dance punk, Devo-inspired New Wave-like synths, fuzzy and angular guitar attack and a muscular, Gang of Four-like bass line paired with Viens’ mischievously punchy delivery.

The song is about embracing inspiration as it comes with lyrics informed by a filename of an early voice-demoed version of the song. “‘Bingo’ was a working title Melissa used to save the demo when we were working on the song,” the band explains. “The lyrics came later following a suggestion from Félix to describe a game of Bingo, to put into words the social life from an old folks home—elderly people that are young at heart, hence the references to Orange Crush, little hats, etcetera. The bass line and its tone are a tribute to Death From Above 1979.”

Directed by Philip Beauséjour, the accompanying video is a high-energy collage full of explosive, bright colors that accurately captures the song’s propulsive energy. Beauséjour says the the track’s energy “inspired in me the anxiety of the players leaving the hall with a big sum. It’s like a light social activity evening that can turn into a frenetic obsession with combinations of letters and numbers, stimulated by repetitive movements, sugary drinks, and cigarettes. The numbered cards become calculated abstractions, and every word from the hosts, a prayer.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atsuko Chiba Shares Slow-Burning, Brooding “Retention”

Through the release of three full-length albums, 2013’s Jinn, 2019’s Trace and 2023’s Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing, two EP’s, 2016’s Figure and Ground and The Memory Empire, as well as a handful of singles, all which were self-produced and recorded at their own Room 11 Studio, Montréal-based outfit Atsuko Chiba — Karim Lakhdar (vocals, guitar, synths), Kevin McDonald (synths, guitar), Eric Schafhauser (guitar, synths), David Palumbo (bass, bass VI, vocals) and Anthony Piazza (drums, electronic drums, percussion) — have firmly established a genre-defying sound that sees them crating a cohesive and hypnotic blend of post-rock, prog rock and krautrock paired with offbeat songwriting.

The Montréal-based quintet’s self-titled fourth album is slated for an April 24, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band rethinking their sound and approach, drawing inspiration from the likes of Mark Lanegan, Beak>, Talk Talk, Can and Portishead, along with their previously established post-punk fueled psychedelia.

Though the band has been introducing more vocals and lyrics with every subsequent release, their fourth album sees the band further wielding vocals and lyrics as a well to delve deeper into their intrinsic meta. The result is an album that’s one-part gritty post-rock and one-part intimate hymn to self-reflection with its moodiness amplifying a communal desire to eschew recurrent patterns for the sake of comfort, approval and longevity.

The band decided upon a freeform creative process, which could only be achieved by pursuing a hands-on approach, and with each member sharing the roles of engineer and producer,

“Overall, Atsuko Chiba is an exercise in patience and restraint. The mood of the album is melancholic, at times feeling optimistic, while other times feeling almost hopeless—there’s a sense of loss and disconnect, but also a glimmer of hope,” the band explains. “It is the most vulnerable and stripped down music we have ever made. It is a departure from the aggressive and distorted guitar sound we’ve relied on over the years. We also chose to make it a self-titled record which is something we battled with. We went with Atsuko Chiba because its overarching themes relate to us in a deep way. The material on this album presents itself as a mosaic of our interests and experiences as a band. We let the music guide us every step of the way, never forcing our will upon it, instead paying attention to what it was telling us and what we could do to further support it.

At first, we would come into the studio without a plan, just playing and recording the entire time, with no pressure as to a specific outcome: free jams during which we were just generating grooves, parts, and moments that felt good to us. We also put limitations, cutting out certain instruments from session to session, opening us to new options and pathways, generating new sound palettes. A lot of attention was put into creating space and holding back from always going for big epic moments. We focussed on keeping things simple and using dynamics to create exciting moments instead of relying on loud guitars to get us there. This album features a lot of auxiliary percussion, synthesizers, and keyboards, and places a strong emphasis on vocals. We explored acoustic guitars and created many custom percussive sounds by layering two or three sources together, also programming rhythms using samplers and drum machines.”

The self-titled album’s latest single, album opening track “Retention” is a slow-burning, almost bluesy shuffle featuring eerily atmospheric synths, a melodic bass line, dancing guitars paired with driving percussion and sprechgesang-like vocals that become increasingly melodic, turning the song into a sort of hazy, dream-like ritualistic vibe. In fact, lyrically, the song recounts a tale of rituals, spirits and effigies from a parallel universe.

“’Retention’ takes place in a world not quite our own—half dream, half memory—where every shadow holds a story and every breath carries the weight of what once was,” the band’s Karim Lakhdar explains. “At its center is a young boy who lives in a village haunted by the quiet, persistent ghosts of the past. They linger in doorframes, whisper through the trees, and stare back from every surface like reflections. There is only one way to free himself: the boy must meet the spirits face to face. He gathers what remains of them—fragments of memory, pieces of lives unfinished—and shapes them into effigies. One by one, he sets them aflame. This ritual, both tender and terrifying, invites the spirits to release their hold and return to whatever lies beyond. With each burning figure, a thread is severed, a burden lifted, a soul allowed to rest. Yet the question remains—when all the effigies have turned to ash, will the boy finally be free, or will he always carry the guilt of the past.”

The accompanying video for “Retention” features footage shot by the band and edited by the band’s Anthony Piazza. The footage captures the band in the studio, presumably while recording their new album and on the road. The result balances a sense of seriousness and playfulness.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Share Punchy and Breakneck “Eye to Eye”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their sons are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms.

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs reportedly captured fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation.

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties.

Spiritual Content‘s first single “Eye to Eye” is a Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired motorik ripper featuring woozy synths, skittering and booming drums, squiggling guitars paired with Resnik’s punchy, almost California punk rock-like delivery before shifting into a towering cacophonous storm of feedback and a gentle, seemingly exhausted fade out.

“The song is about how we all have more in common with each other than we think, and how the small differences between us have been magnified to stoke division through social media and media in general,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik explains. “I used a lot of old footage/movies/propaganda to showcase both our creative and destructive capabilities. There’s a lot of sped up footage, reversed sequences, and pretty flower timelapses. Sometimes it feels like we’re racing to our inevitable demise; we have to slow down and take a step back. There’s still time to recover and progress together, but it’s getting a bit late in the game, you know?”