Tag: New Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Activity Shares Brooding and Uneasy “In Another Way”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based post punk outfit Activity — currently, Grooms‘ Travis Johnson (vocals, guitar), Bri DiGiola (bass), Russian Baths‘ Jess Rees and their newest member The Pains of Being Pure at Heart‘s and Peel Dream Magazine‘s Brian Alvarez — will be releasing their third album, the Jeff Berner-produced A Thousand Years In Another Way on June 6, 2025 through Western Vinyl.

A friend asked why the album captured the strange, heavy feeling of being alive right now better than anything else. “Evil is very real and having its way, and love is also real and hasn’t lost yet,” Activity’s Travis Johnson told the friend — describing the album’s overall tone. The album doesn’t try to explain the strange time we’re living in; it simply feels like it. it’s a mix of violence, alienation, and tenderness, reflecting the surreal, dreamlike — and often nightmarish– rhythm of our daily lives.

The ten-song album sees the Brooklyn-based outfit crafting a blend of experimental rock, electronics and found sounds with a sense of paranoia, desperate flickers of hope and a warped reality. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Berner, the band manipulated sounds and played with room acoustics to create a feeling that’s disorientating and uneasy — like the air is thick and the walls are listening.

Coming out of a period of increased uncertainty, the Brooklyn-based quartet — then Johnson, Rees and former drummer Steven Levine — pieced the album together from various fragments, including clipped samples, looping guitar lines and spectral melodies. Johnson, Rees and DiGioia share vocal and writing duties, shaping material that feels both deeply personal and strangely alien. Throughout the album, there’s a sense that things could shift or fall apart at any second — nothing says one thing for long.

A Thousand Years In Another Way‘s first single, album opening track “In Another Way” is a brooding and uneasy track that captures the captures an alienated and painfully lonely narrator’s desperate desire to connect with someone while struggling with the chaos and uncertainty within and without.

According to the band’s Johnson, the album’s first single is “a way of letting off a bunch of aggression, rage and resentment at things not being the way they hold be, both personal and global (wishing things were ‘another way’), and feeling completely important about it, except when playing the song.”

Directed by the band’s former dummer Steven Levine, the accompanying video for “In Another Way” is brooding, uneasy, mysterious and deeply indebted to cinema.

The band’s Johnson says of the video “It was shot in a neighborhood hangout, Film Noir Cinema. The owner is a big obscure movie and music guy, and it seemed perfect. Also, one of my favorite movies is Mulholland Drive, and it seemed fun to do a reference to the Club Silencio scene as a nod to David Lynch following his passing.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Heaven Shares Rousingly Anthemic “Dream Aloud”

New York-based shoegazers Heaven was founded in the wake of its founding members Matt Sumrow (vocals, guitar) and Mikey Jones (drums) touring and recording with Dean and Britta, Swervedriver, Ambulance LTD, Caveman, The Comas, The Lemonheads and a lengthy list of others. With the addition of their newest member, Sonia Manalili, the shoegazer trio’s third album Dream Aloud officially released today through Little Cloud Records.

The band’s third album is the trio’s most somnambulistic effort to date. Recorded here in NYC with Jonathan Krienik, the album features guest spots from Longwave’s and Wah Together‘s Steve Schlitz. 

“The record was conceived in the dark depths of the pandemic, when all we could do was stay at home and work on projects and watch the end of the world on TV,” Heaven’s Matt Sumrow explains. “It was created as a vision of hope and dreams, an escape from the reality we were in. It’s also a deliberate move back to a DIY way of making music. Realizing that facing the apocalypse, you have to rely on yourself to make things happen, make art happen, conjure your love and dreams.”

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

  • “I Need You More Somehow,” a hook-driven, slick synthesis of Heroes-era Bowie, New Zealand jangle pop paired with bursts of feedback and Sumrow’s longing vocal. “Both at home on the beach in California or a seedy underground nightclub in Glasgow or Berlin, the song layers two worlds,” Heaven’s Matt Sumrow says. “The lyrics are purposefully ambiguous, needing more of someone and longing for more connection, but also sounding content and blissful with the present situation at the same time.”

  • “The Fire You Know,” a brooding and melancholy song that reminds me a bit of Ocean Rain-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Psychedelic Furs with a lush string arrangement from cellist Megan LaMarca and propulsive drumming that drives the song from its fever dream-like verses to a chugging hook and dreamy coda. Thematically, the song touches upon deeply held secrets, fated beliefs and madness which, fittingly emphasize the song’s swooningly Romantic vibe. 

Dream Aloud’s latest single, album title track “Dream Aloud” is a dreamy mix of jangle pop, 90s alt rock and shoegaze, anchored around Sumrow’s uncanny knack for crafting rousingly anthemic hooks with earnest, nostalgia-inducing lyricism. “I wrote this song in the wee hours of the morning, recording it into my phone,” Sumrow recalls. “Honestly, I don’t even remember writing it. I found it amongst a bunch of other song sketches. It was a hushed lullaby at first, but we turned it into a rocker. I guess if I was trying to explain it, lyrically it’s a Tibetan sand mandala, building something beautiful then destroying it.”

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with director Jeska Sand, the accompanying video for “Dream Aloud” stars Jacqueline Valenti as lone, angel wing-wearing figure wandering around the bars and streets of East Village before heading off to Coney Island as the sun rises. The video captures moments of loneliness, discovery, reflection and dreamlike observation through the city’s shift between neon and daylight.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Anika Shares Tense and Uneasy “Oxygen”

Acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and musician Annika Henderson, best known as Anika will be releasing her fourth album Abyss through Sacred Bones on Friday. 

Abyss was born out of the frustration, anger and confusion Henderson feels from existing in our contemporary world. Reportedly much heavier than 2021’s Change, the 10-song album is raw, urgent and fueled by strong emotions, the album’s material takes the acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist on a new sonic journey. 

The soon-to-be released album was recorded live to tape at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios. Recording live and with minimal overdubs was an important decision, Henderson stresses, in order to capture the raw immediacy of the album. Much like previously released material, she wrote the songs herself before fleshing them out with Exploded View‘s Martin Thulin, and then assembled a live band to join the pair in the studio that included Andrea Belfi (drums), Mueran Humanos‘ Tomas Nochteff (bass) and The Pleasure Majenta‘s Lawrence Goodwin (guitar). Studio engineering was done by Nanni Johansson and Frida Claeson Johansson. “I always work with people I respect and admire,” Henderson says. “It’s very genuine in that way.” 

The acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist consciously sought to make an album that was inherently physical — one that would take the listener out of their heads and back into their body. The physicality of the album and its material is further emphasized by its album cover, which features androgynous bodies from a drawing by a teenage friend of Anika’s. Fittingly, teenage angst plays a part in the album. “These days it feels like you have to have very catered opinions – like language has gone out the window,” Henderson says. “It makes you feel very much like a restricted child again.” 

With Abyss, the acclaimed British-born, Berlin-based artist was determined to break free from holding back genuine emotions — even if they might seem uncomfortable or too much. “It’s like I’m doing all the things that I never allowed myself to do,” she says. She hopes this pure emotion will position the listener to fully immerse themselves in the album. “There needs to be room for people to put themselves in this album, and put their own narratives on it,” she says. “This is a space for you.”

“There’s so much going on in the world, and you have to sit there and watch it through a screen that you’ve allowed into your home, like a vampire who had been preying at your door, then immediately digest it, have an opinion, and publicly comment on it,” Henderson continues. “The state of the world just feels like an abyss right now.” With this new album, she wants to create a place where people can feel safe to be themselves, and to unite in their diversity. “Abyss is like a call to action,” she says. “To come and figure it out together.”

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

  • Album opening track “Hearsay,” a gritty Joy Division– meets-PJ Harvey-like tune, anchored around an angular and driving bass line, stuttering four-on-the-floor and slashing guitars paired with Henderson’s melodic, Nico-like croon. The song hones in on the extreme divisions between the left and right in contemporary society with Anika explaining that “this song is about media moguls – about the power of the media, whether social, tv or beyond – we are as much under its spell as we ever were and some nasties are exploiting it for their own gains. Parasites feeding off the blood of the public — PJ Harvey inspired for sure.” 

  • “Walk Away,” a surprisingly upbeat 90s alt rock-influenced track that sounds a bit like a synthesis of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey and Hole/Courtney Love paired with the most unflinchingly honest lyrics of the British-born, German-based artist’s career. The song reveals an artist, who is no longer concerned with how others may think or feel about what she feels she has to say. It’s zero-fucks mode, informed by a world that’s gone to completely to hell anyway. “This song is saying all the things I want to say but am too scared to say or that society doesn’t accept me to say. It is dealing with mental health – the state of poor mental health in these fucked up, divided, isolated, social media, war, pest, rise of the right times,” Anika explains. “It is the deconstruction of the feminine – of topics considered to be private realm.” Henderson cites “the reckless nature of 90s/2000s Hole/Courtney Love records — of not giving a shit — telling it how it is, not scared to offend, not scared to be cancelled. We have also lost the space for healthy debate, for difference of opinion, shutting down those we don’t agree with, removing them from our social networks.”

Abyss‘ third and latest single “Oxygen” continues a run of hook-drivenJoy Division-like post-punk, anchored around Henderson’s haunting, Nico-like croon. Bur unlike its predecessors, “Oxygen” evokes the sensation of being restricted against one’s will and struggling to free themselves; of having one’s rights constantly fucked with and never knowing if your rights will be upheld from day to day or month to month.

“’Oxygen’ is about feeling trapped in your own body, in your own narrative, in your own society, within the norms and expected behaviours of this claustrophobic socially constructed world,” Henderson explains. “It wants to break out of this cage, it wants to breathe, it wants to be in tune with its true self, its true feelings, sensations and desires – without restriction.” 

Sonically, the track was “inspired by Breeders and Pixies, the way it creeps in slowly and then crashes with this weird chorus/part that only comes in once,” She adds. “I didn’t want to write things too rigidly, or by the book, more let them flow as they wished.”

The accompanying video continues Anika’s ongoing collaboration with Laura Martinova, who contributes a feverish and at times deeply unsettling visual with a remarkable panache.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Floral Image Shares Mind-Bending Visual for “Burning 305”

Norwich, UK-based psych outfit Floral Image — Fergus Nolan (vocals, guitar), Jack Warner (vocals, keys), Matt Kennedy (bass guitar), Mitch Forsyth (drums, visuals), and Phil Whitton (guitar, visuals) — will be releasing their highly-anticipated full-length debut Gone Down Meadowland on April 25, 2025 through Fuzz Club.

After an extensive touring schedule throughout the course of 2023, the rising British quintet spent the following winter looking both inward and outward to the wide-skied rural landscape of their immediate environs with the aim of distilling their wide pool of influences. As it turned out, once the gigs started to expand outside of Norwich, a fear of musical inertia had left the band asking themselves what their own sound even was. The long nights of their touring break were used to reassess and reconnect with a sense of play that had disappeared while spending hours driving around in a tour van.

During Friday night jam sessions, with the band wrapped in coats and warmed by homemade cocktails, Phil Whitton’s freezing living room wound up providing the cultivation for the begging of a new musical shape for the band — a sound not just intending to be big and formidable live, but one that provides a softer, more subtle recorded companion for drunken hijinks with pals and unleashed self-introspection.

More than ever, the quintet wanted to produce a brand of East Coast psychedelia that reflected the lushness of their natural surroundings and the solitude of their immediate surroundings. Over 30 songs were written, considered and arranged before the band whittled that down to 10 songs that they felt truly epitomized what they do best — vivid hued colors and harnessed live energy and power woven together with fluid, lyrical harmonies inspired by Woods, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Stereolab and others.

Written and recorded over across a string of at-home recording sessions during a six week period of last summer, Gone Down Meadowland‘s material is anchored around a sense of mischief and dreaminess, informed by the band member’s own playful and loving friendship. Sonically, the material bends, grows and shifts between light, dark, malaise and excitement. There are moments of head-down ferocity, punctuated by moments of pulsing awe and wonder.

“Barns, basements and boxrooms across Norfolk were all utilised to unearth the songs from the soil of our collective minds. We practically lived with each other and buried ourselves in the music for what was almost a whole half year,” Floral Image explains. “We would cook for each other, learn from each other and laugh like we never could elsewhere. Even ‘that’ tricky period of cutting songs off went by with all of us in complete faith that the album’s needs seemed greater than our own. If it wasn’t for the fact that recording had almost become secondary to getting actually quite good at Frisbee, we might have been able to release a double LP.”

“A lot of themes are anti-establishment commentaries on the state of the modern world,” the band adds. It can feel isolating being bystanders of global concern in sleepy Norfolk, even though it’s easy to slip into a false comfort when you’re surrounded by vast space, natural beauty and friendly folks down the market. Gone Down Meadowland is that egoless escapist fantasy that still can’t escape the world caving in on itself; Norfolk isolationism.”

“Burning 305,” Gone Down Meadowland‘s latest single is a is a trippy and hook-driven mesh of 60s and 70s psych rock, krautrock and shoegaze, featuring a relentless motorik groove, swirling and painterly guitar textures paired with dreamy falsetto melodies and an arena rock friendly sense of bombast.

Directed and featuring animation by M. Forsyth and live-action camera operation from Alistair Nicholls, the accompanying video for “Burning 305” follows a bored janitor, listening to music on his phone while on the late night shift, when he encounters a discarded virtual reality headset. Once he puts the headset on, he’s transported to a mind-bending, surrealistic, psilocybin-fueled virtual reality world that’s first bright and sunny before quickly turning hellish.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jahnah Camille Shares Anthemic “what do you do?”

Rising, 20 year-old, Birmingham, AL-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician Jahnah Camille (pronounced as “Hannah”) 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 after 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.

“what do you do?,” My sunny oath EP‘s latest single is 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.” 

Directed by Harrison Shook with assistance from Polycarpe Ancelet and Ava Cavasos, the accompanying video for “what do you do?” follows a series of actors auditioning for various roles in a Broadway-styled show.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lonnie Holley Shares Meditative “A Change Is Gonna Come”

Lonnie Holley is an acclaimed, Birmingham, AL-born and-based multi-disciplinary artist, art educator and musician, who has had a profoundly difficult, well-documented life: As a child, he was taken away from his family by a burlesque dancer, who then left him in the care of the proprietors of a whiskey house on the state fairgrounds.

Holley then wound up living in several foster homes, before spending time at the notorious Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, where he suffered terrible abuse.

From the time he was a small boy — around five or so — Holley worked a variety of menial and/or backbreaking jobs: He picked up trash at a drive-in movie theater, washed dishes and picked cotton. He even has had stints as a chef and even a gravedigger.

His creative and artistic life began in earnest in 1979: Heartbroken by the death of his sister’s two children, who tragically died in a house fire, he carved tombstones out of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting, which he found discarded by a foundry near his sister’s house. Holley firmly believes that divine intervention led him to the material — and in turn, inspired his art.

He went on to make over carvings and began assembling them in his yard with various found objects. Locally, he began to occasionally be known as The Sand Man.

In 1981, Holley brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Richard Murray, the then-director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. Murray was so impressed that the museum displayed some of those pieces immediately.  

Murray then introduced Holley to the organization of that year’s “More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This lead to Holley’s work being acquired by several renowned institutions including New York’s American Folk Art Museum, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and others — and he has had his work displayed at The White House. 

By the mid 1980s, Holley’s work had expanded to include paintings and recycled and found-object sculptures. His yard and the adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment, that was highly celebrated by the larger art world. Unfortunately, that art environment was frequently threatened by scrap metal scavengers. Worse yet, his work was tragically torn down as a result of the expansion of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. 

Holley sued and eventually won a settlement against the airport authority. The airport authority paid him $165,700 to move his family and his work to a larger property in Harpersville, AL.

From 2003-2004, Holley created a sprawling, sculptural environment at the Birmingham Museum of Art’s lower sculpture garden as part of their “Perspective” series of site-specific installations. The creation of the installation was documented in Arthur Crenshaw’s film, The Sandman’s Garden and by photographer Alice Faye “Sister” Love. 

He also installed sculptural work for the exhibition  Groundstory: Tales from the shade of the South at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, which ran from September 28, 2012 to November 17, 2012. 

2012 was a very busy year for Holley: He released his full-length debut album Just Before Music that year. He quickly followed up with his sophomore effort, 2013’s Keeping a Record of It. He signed to  Jagjaguwar Records, who released his third album, 2018’s MITH, an afford that featured a sound and approach informed and inspired by the blues, soul, avant-garde jazz and spirituals.

Holley’s fourth album, 2023’s Jacknife Lee-produced Oh Me, Oh My was a sharpening and refinement of MITH. Stirring in one moment and a balm the next, Oh Me, Oh My details histories both global and personal. The album featured an acclaimed collection of collaborators including R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Otten, Moor Mother, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Rokia Koné, who serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, assisting in giving Holley’s message flight, while reaffirming the man as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force.

The album also saw the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each writing and recording session, Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song they were working on, and then attempt to distill Holley’s words to their most immediate and earnest center.

During each session Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song and distill the acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist’s word to their most immediate and earnest center.

His recently released fourth album Tonky derives its name from a childhood nickname given to him when he lived a portion of his childhood in a honky tonk. Holley has long been an incredibly gifted storyteller with a commitment to the oral tradition and Tonky puts this on full display. The album is as expansive in sound as it is in making a place for a wide range of featured artists to come through the door of the record and feel at home, no matter how they spend the time they get on a song.

The album sees Holley and his collaborators delighting in finding a sound and pressing it against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they’re awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it’s washing over you. The album’s sound is the result of decades of endlessly evolving and experimentation, informed by Holley’s life.

Last Friday, Holley shared Tonky‘s latest single, album closing track “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Anchored around instrumental contributions from Jacknife Lee, Jordan Katz, Marlon Patton and Steve Dress, the slow-burning and meditative “Change Is Gonna Come” features twinkling keys, mournful horns, bursts of 808s and some soulful gospel-like background vocal wailing serving as a lush bed for the acclaimed Birmingham-born and-based artist’s soulful and expressive delivery.

Arguably, one of the more emotionally ambivalent songs of Holley’s growing catalog, “A Change Is Gonna Come” is about renewal and the limits of hope and faith that sees Holley asking the listener “Are we truly ready and prepared for that change?”

Directed by Matt Arnett and Ethan Payne, the accompanying video for “A Change Is Gonna Come” features Holley on presumably his property with a variety of America-themed tchotchkes, family heirlooms and broken statues. Throughout the video, we may be reminded that Holley is a survivor, but that he has a deep sense of kindness, fairness and an unwavering dignity.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Gerina Shares Defiant, Feminist Anthem “Arrepentido”

Gerina is a BMI Award-winning songwriter, who recently stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist, releasing her own original material. Her multicultural upbringing in both Venezuela and the United States, as well as being multi-lingual — she’s fluent in Spanish, Italian and English — helps to inform her songs with heart and passion, while being anchored in unique storytelling.

Her latest single, the Gerina and Tim Mitchell co-written “Arrepentido,” is a passionate and winning synthesis of classic flamenco rhythms with hook-driven contemporary pop that immediately brings Shakira to mind — but while bursting out of the gate with a defiant, feminist self-assuredness.

Gerina explains that “‘Arrepentido” is a passionate and empowering flamenco anthem that urges women to free themselves from the chains of toxic relationships.” She adds “. . . it serves as a call to women everywhere to rise up, reclaim, and never look back.”

The accompanying video seems inspired by films like Desperado and Kill Bill and features Gerina and a collection of ninja-dressed dancers performing martial arts-inspired dance moves in the desert.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 54th Birthday, Method Man!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Method Man’s 54th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Porto, Portugal’s Verbian Shares Hard-Hitting “Marcha do Vulto”

Since their founding back in 2015, Porto, Portugal outfit Verbian — currently Vasco Reis (guitar, keys, vocals), Alexandre Silva (bass, keys, vocals) and the band’s newest member Guilherme Gonçalves (drums, percussion) — has firmly cemented a reputation for crafting a sound that fuses elements of metal, rock, electronic music with experimental percussion. For the band, evolution is essential to creating heavy music. And that a commitment to revealing profound commitment to revealing profound emotions and letting artistic expression and your muses take you and your music wherever you dare to go.

The Portuguese trio’s self-released debut, 2019’s JAEZ was followed by their sophomore album, 2021’s Irrupçao was released through Italian label Antigony Records. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the band managed to support the album with shows at Porto’s Hard Club and stops in cities across the Iberian Peninsula like Braga, Viana do Castelo, Santiago de Compostela and Aveiro. When Guilherme Gonçalves joined the band in 2022, the band played Toulouse, Clermont-Ferrand, Santander and at Gouveia‘s Romaria Cultural. They closed out the year with an Iberian tour alongside Catalan band Siberia that featured stops in Vigo, Porto and Coruña.

Verbian’s third album Casarder was just released through Lost Future Records. The Daniel Valente and Verbian co-produced effort was recorded with a different approach from the band’s previously released material: The trio did all of the preproduction in the studio, live. “We then built a tempo map and after that we did overdubs,” the band explains. “But the biggest difference was that these were the first songs we wrote with Guilherme on the drums and we believe that is why it’s so different from the previous albums. He brought a new and fresh groove to our music, maintaining the heaviness.”

Casarder sees the band pummeling listeners with hard-hitting riff after riff. But the material never wears out its welcome, and pulls listeners along on a sonic journey through Dali-esque landscapes of rock forms, pulled apart and reconfigured into something mesmerizing and completely new.

The mostly instrumental material sees the band never lingering on a part too long and never wasting a note. And at its core, the compositions are angry, driving and layered without sounding overly technical or indulgent. Interestingly, the distorted, anxious and surrealistic visual style of the album’s cover art, painted by Madelena Pinta, manages to speak to the album’s direct albeit melted psychedelic, electronic post-metal style.

“Casarder speaks a little about the insecurities of artistic expression and personal exposure when it comes to fearing being judged for something that is somewhat outside of what is done in each artist’s niche,” the band explains. “This was the theme that also inspired the album cover.”

Casarder‘s latest single “Marcha do Vulto” is an expansive and bruising composition with elements of post-metal, post rock, stoner rock and No Wave that pummels listeners eardrums while showcasing the band’s and their cast of collaborators, Ivo Magalhães’ (percussion), Pedro Sequeira’s (trumpet), Igor Cavaz’s(saxophone) and Rodrigo Santos’ (trombone) remarkably soulful, technical prowess.

The accompanying live footage features the Portuguese band and their collaborators performing the song in studio.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Fotoform Shares Lush and Woozy “Grief is a Garden”

Deriving their name from a mid-century, avant-garde photography movement, Seattle-based post punk outfit Fotoform — longtime collaborators and married couple Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar), along with  Death Cab for Cutie‘s and The Long Winters‘ Michael Schorr (drums) — can trace their origins back to the formation of a previous project,  the goth-adjacent dream pop act C’est la Mort, which formed shortly after House and Cox married. 

Specializing in what they dubbed “pointy-shoegaze,” C’est la Mort released their full-length debut through their own Dismal Nitch label, as well as various compilation tracks, including a limited split 7 inch with Stars for American Laundromat‘s The Smiths‘ tribute Please Please Please. After a series of lineup changes, House and Cox re-emerged as Fotoform in late 2016. 

House and Cox released their Fotoform self-titled debut in 2017. Supported with tours of the West Coast and Europe, the album received airplay and praise both locally and nationally: Album single “I Know You’re Charming” was featured as a KEXP Song of The Day. The self-titled album was voted as one of KEXP Listeners’ Top 90.3 Albums of 2017 and it landed on several year-end lists, including The Big Takeover and Part-Time Punks. 

Building upon a growing profile, the band followed up with 2018’s Part-Time Punks EP, which was selected as one of The Big Takeover’s EPs of 2018. Schorr joined the band back in 2019 and by the following year, they released two benefit singles as a newly minted trio “Yves Klein Blue,” which was recored for voter outreach and the Christmas-themed “They Say It’s Always Lonely” to benefit local food banks. Both singles found the trio expanding upon their sound with the addition of synths. 

In early 2020, the trio went into the studio with Evan Foster to record the material for their sophomore album, Horizons. Recording sessions were interrupted as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-enforced quarantines and restrictions and continued a year later with Foster and Matt Bayles recording drum parts. The album saw the band pivoting from the towering wall of guitars-driven sound of their previously released work and towards a much more nuanced sound that drew equally from shoegaze, dream pop and post-punk with the band continuing to pair synths with layers of guitars and driving bass lines.

The Seattle-based trio’s third album Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) is slated for an April 18, 2025 release. The album reportedly sees the band’s evolving yet again, with the band further refining their long-held crystalline sound into a lush and introspective soundscape that blends the emotional weight of post-punk with the ethereal beauty of shoegaze with the album’s material increasingly drawing from classic 4AD heyday artists like This Moral Coil, Pale Saints and Lush.

The album’s material thematically touches upon loss, change, heartache, pain and transformation, while tackling the big existential questions. The album, also features some of the band’s most vulnerable and disarmingly honest lyrics of their growing catalog.

Album title track “Grief is a Garden,’ is a brooding slow-burning tune anchored around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, Kim House’s yearning and ethereal delivery paired with a soaring hook and chorus. Sounding a bit like Garlands-era Cocteau Twins and 4AD Records classic heyday period, “Grief is a Garden” sees the band thematically into delving deeply into personal themes of grief, loss, and in time, gradual acceptance.

“The title track to our upcoming album, ‘Grief is a Garden’ reflects on the enduring, ever-evolving nature of grief and how it changes over time,” Fotoform’s Kim House explains. “Grief blooms, decays and nourishes itself, embodying love, beauty, pain and transformation. As we move through life, we accumulate grief, and the song contemplates the evolving nature of our relationship to loss and love, as grief becomes a part of us, forever changing us and informing our new selves as we continue with life after loss.

“My brother Jeff passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of February, right after we released our first single. I am still trying to absorb the devastating reality that he is gone. I never could have imagined I would lose another brother just as we are starting to release songs off our album, which is centered around grief, loss, resilience and healing. The lyric ‘Waves keep crashing, unforeseen, losing someone is never what it seems‘ has been swirling around me as I feel blindsided by the loss of my brother. We’d been planning on talking about grief with the new record, but it’s another thing to suddenly find yourself newly grieving again. 

“The longing for answers to life’s unknowable questions is palpable throughout this song, as I’ve wrestled with existential doubts since childhood, questioning everything from the stories I was raised with to the mysteries of life and death itself. ‘Into the ether, we all call out‘ is a reference to the unknowable place we enter when we die – an acknowledgement and a cry for connection.

Loved ones who touch our souls meld with our spirit and never leave us. Tethers to those we’ve lost surround us when we open our hearts. We often feel these connections after we lose someone: a certain song comes on the radio or a shared symbol appears at the most poignant time. Heightened awareness of these synchronicities tethers us to those we’ve lost.

“Grief, so deeply personal yet also universal, is hanging heavy for so many of us these days. We all find ourselves in mourning, whether for loved ones, the erosion of societal values, social injustice, dismantling of democracy, upheaval from natural disasters and the intensifying climate crisis, loss of relationships, former versions of ourselves after injury and disability and anticipatory grief of what’s to come – the list is endless.

Creating this album was a ritual in reflecting on grief, sitting with it, metabolizing, and letting it sink into all the cracks and crevices, fully absorbing grief to understand – and eventually release – some of its tight hold / energy. As I return to this familiar and tender state of fresh sorrow and loss, I take comfort in the knowledge that with time, grief will soften around the edges and the warmth of love will reclaim its position in the foreground.”

Directed by Erik Foster, the accompanying video for “Grief is a Garden” is a lush and woozy fever dream shot in a verdant garden that would have been perfect in an Edgar Allan Poe short story or in a Mary Shelley novel.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pelican Shares Swaggering and Expansive “Indelible”

Flickering Resonance is the Chicago-based outfit Pelican‘s first full-length album in six years. Slated for a May 16, 2025 release through Run for Cover, the album sees the return of founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, who makes his first appearance on a Pelican album since 2009’s What We All Come To Need.

The forthcoming eight-song album also reportedly taps into the spirit of the band’s formative era when Schroder-Lebec along with Trevor Shelley de Brauw (guitar) and siblings Bryan (bass) and Larry Herweg (drums) played shows during the heyday of Chicago’s all-ages club Fireside Bowl.

Fireside Bowl’s booking would often result in post-hardcore, space rock, indie, metal and emo bands sharing bills, which also unwittingly provided a vast array of influences for the then-young band. “A lot of people didn’t hear it at first,” says Schroeder-Lebec of the band’s roots in a panoply of punk-related subgenres. “I was like, well, I guess the metal world is where we fit. But now we’re more willing to acknowledge all the suits we’re wearing.”

Recorded by longtime collaborator Sanford Parker, Flickering Resonance sees the band’s long-known thick sonic backbone remaining intact, but while demonstrating a more humanistic side for the band. 

“When Laurent left and we were able to carry it through, there became a real sense of gratitude for the fact we still have this artistic outlet and a community of people who want to support it,” the band’s Shelley de Brauw says of Schroeder-Lebec’s ten year sabbatical from the group. Fittingly, that feeling of deep, grounded appreciation doesn’t just reside within the band’s members, it’s expressed on every track of the album. 

Last month, I wrote about “Cascading Crescent,” a forceful, cinematic yet soulful ripper that recalls The Sword and others, while anchored around some scorching riffage and thunderous drumming. 

“Indelible,” Flickering Resonance‘s latest single continues a run of expansive, cinematic rippers that seemingly draws from desert and stoner rock, psych rock, Hawkwind and others, anchored around forcefully scorching and swaggering riffage paired with thunderous drumming and big hooks and choruses.

Much like its predecessor, “Indelible” is accompanying with a mind-bending psychedelic visual by multidisciplinary artist Joshua Ford that features geometric shapes and seemingly supernatural and natural phenomena.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Beats Shares Slinky “Behind The Green Door”

As the creative mastermind of Night Beats, Texas-born Danny Lee Blackwell has spent the past 15 years exploring a nexus of vintage rhythm and blues, after-midnight soul and sun-scorched psychedelia.

Slated for an April 11, 2025 release through Suicide Squeeze, the “Behind The Green Door”/”Behind The Green Door (Rah John Version)” 7″ sees Blackwell presenting two markedly different renditions of “Behind The Green Door.” The A-side single “Behind The Green Door” is a slinky, late night psych soul/psych blues number that sounds like the soundtrack to dimly lit, smokey bars and dance halls filled with drunken revelers swaying to the beat in unison; sultry, late night drives in which you’re hypnotized by brush and trees and white lines on hot blacktop, lost in thought or memory.

“This song started as a lone star instrumental, something I pieced together in my studio in 2024,” Blackwell explains. “I imagined dusty roads and dimly lit dance halls. I wanted the guitars to shimmer like heat waves on an openroad. The rhythm to pull like footsteps across a wooden floor, soaked in smoke and neon. The lyrics followed, drawn from past and present—unwavering love, transcendence. The ‘green door’ is that threshold between devotion and disillusionment. The story lives not just in the words, but in the tones and textures, if uncovered.”

Directed by Blackwell, the moody and hallucinatory accompanying video for “Behind The Green Door” is heavily inspired by giallo films.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Welsh Artist Mali Hâf Shares Boldly Feminist “HWFM”

With the release of her debut EP, 2023’s Jig-So, 24 year-old Cardiff, Wales, UK-based Celtic Soul singer/songwriter Mali Hâf quickly established a bold and remarkably modern yet anachronistic sound that sees her pairing traditional Welsh folk melodies with experimental electronic production. The result is an innovative approach on what contemporary Welsh music could be and sound like this century.

The rising Welsh artist is currently working on her highly-anticipated full-length debut, which is slated for an early 2026 release. The forthcoming album’s first single “HWFM,” is short for “Hen Wlad Mamau,” a boldly feminist reimagining of the Welsh National Anthem “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadhau” (Old Land of My Fathers).”

The song sees the Welsh artist flipping the song’s original perspective to celebrate and honor the contributions of women to the country’s history and culture, actively reframing Wales as the “Old Land of My Mothers.” Anchored around a hook-driven and brooding, Portishead meets Paramore-like production, “HWFM” sees the Welsh-based artist adopting a playfully cheeky and defiantly in-your-face delivery.

But underneath the cheekiness, Hâf expresses a deep, heartfelt longing for Wales — and all nations — to be places of true equality, to be safe havens for women and nurturing spaces for everyone. The song also challenges listeners to think beyond traditional gender roles and stereotypes, openly calling for empathy, care and compassion as a nation’s defining values.

“I wrote this song out of frustration – seeing women still unsafe inside and outside their homes, hearing the same stories about abusive behaviour on the news, and remembering my own experiences. These are highly painful personal experiences where the hurt will last a long time but now is not the time to mention details,” the Welsh artist says.

 “Wales may be small, but why can’t we lead the way?” She continues. “This song really isn’t just about women; it’s about creating a Wales where everyone, all genders and LGBTQ can feel emotionally and physically safe to be themselves. It’s cheeky and playful, with an unapologetic attitude and grit, but mainly Hopeful. I love Wales, our anthem, and our traditions, but it doesn’t help to sugarcoat things. So parts of the anthem, Land of my Fathers are name checked in the song.  If we call ourselves a land of poets, singers, and creatives, are we really listening to all the voices? Let’s ride the wave, the wave of change where diversity is welcomed and room is made for all, and make sure we are doing what ‘officially’ we say we’re doing. It should be obvious to all that respecting diversity and women’s rights are under real threat right now in most countries on this planet – not just the obvious example of the USA. Change starts somewhere – why not here in this country that we are so proud of”. 

Directed by Trigger Happy, the accompanying video features Mali Hâf as a mischievous and rebellious Harley Quinn-like character with her backing band. It captures the cheekiness of the song, as well as the bond she has with her band.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bedridden Shares Roaring “Chainsaw”

Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and musician Jack Riley can trace the origins of his music career to when he was five and making music on a thrift-store emblazoned with Kurt Cobain‘s name. Riley moved to New Orleans for college, […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Maz Shares Breezy “Too Bad”

22 year-old, Marley “Maz” Guevara is a rising Logan, UT-born, Salt Lake City-based singer/songwriter. She first adopted the Maz moniker as a child, insisting ti was meant to be her middle name. As she dug into indie rock as a teenager, it took an added meaning for its connection to Mazzy Star, with the rising Utah-based artist’s earliest explorations aiming for their ethereal dreaminess. Now, the name has come to signify the development of her sound and world, something that’s indebted to and nostalgically honors the past, but while building something new.

Her debut EP, NPC is slated for an April 4, 2025 release through Winspear. “I grew up on early 2000s alternative music, and NPC reaches for that raw, cool, nostalgic sound,” she says. “These songs turn my day-to-day into something badass—a mix of vulnerability and strength.” 

Temporal back and forth is echoed in the material’s creation. Guevara started writing the EP’s songs at her Salt Lake City apartment while attending community college and working full-time. But she had to return to Logan after the death of her grandfather. “I found myself back in Logan, writing songs in my grandmother’s basement when my grandpa died,” she says “during that time I found a lot of solace in music—it gave me freedom to reflect and unpack everything I was feeling. And it made me appreciate the people around me and the opportunities and art I have in store for me in the future. It felt like a refresh button.”

Guevara’s return to Salt Lake City months later was bittersweet, but bolstered by her deepened connection to her family roots, she tapped into a vibrant, roiling, modern energy in her approach to music, and NPC began to take form.

The six-song NPC reportedly find the Utahn playfully picking apart growing up, relationships and self-empowerment. Drawing from Blondie, Santigold and Daft Punk among others, the EP’s material builds upon the buzz she has quickly amassed over the course of a brief, attention-grabbing run of singles.

Bobbing and Cole Williams, members of Still Woozy‘s production crew, build crisp sonic environments for Guevara for flex, explore and play across. The EP’s latest single “Too Bad” comes on the heels of her successful live debut opening for Wallice on a run of West Coast dates.

“Too Bad” is a breezy, hook-driven bop featuring reverb-soaked, squiggling post-punk like guitar stabs, relentless four-on-the-four and a twangy, Western-styled guitar solo serving as a lush bed for Guevara’s hushed Debby Harry-inspired cooing. “Too Bad” reveals a young singer/songwriter with an uncanny knack for crafting a catchy hook — and a self-assuredness that belies her relative youth.

“While writing this song, I was inspired by Blondie and Grimes,” Guevara explains “Vocally, I wanted to give off an ethereal vibe mixed with early, surfy Blondie. The meaning is just about faith and also shedding ego-driven desires.”

Directed by Enzo Peltz, the accompanying playful video for “Too Bad” follows the rising young artist through churches and the beach on a glorious sunny day.