JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Boyz II Men’s Wanya Morris’ 53rd birthday.
Tag: R&B
New Video: Love Spells Returns with Flirty “Don’t Touch”
Sir Teagan Harris is the Houston-born creative mastermind behind the rising, solo recording project Love Spells. At 18, Harris poured his passion for love into music, manifesting a career out of ambition and drive, while battling homelessness for years. Eventually, he wound up in California, where he lived with a friend he met online, traveling to different music studios everyday to perfect his sound. After six months, he returned to Houston and received a call from Kevin Abstract, who invited him to work on his most recent album, last year’s Bluish.
Working on Kevin Abstract’s Blush connected Harris to his now frequent collaborators Dominic Fike and Deb Never. That life changing experience pushed Harris to return to Los Angeles and work on his highly-anticipated Love Spells debut, LOVE IS THE LAW. Released this past Friday through RCA Records, the rising Houston-based artist’s debut album seems him working with a talented cast of collaborators including Danny Parra, Boy Deco, Brad Hale, Rodaidh McDonald, Alex Craig, and Rick Nowels to create material that recalled his nights at Numbers, a beloved Houston area dance club and safe heaven for alternative communities.
While spending time at Numbers, Harris frequently danced to 70s, 80s and New Wave, and he specifically wanted to inject that particular genre-blurring feeling into his work, seeking out similar spaces in Los Angeles and leaning heavily on those eras in the studio. Movies like Dirty Dancing and Footlose were also sources of inspiration, helping the Houston-based artist and his collaborators craft a “theatrical yet authentic” feeling.
Our lives revolve around love, it governs nearly every aspect of human life,” Harris says of the record. “LOVE IS THE LAW is a grand declaration, it’s in your face and there’s nothing to hide. The album title means exactly what it says – to hold love above everything else. That message is something I’ll declare for the rest of my life.”
LOVE IS THE LAW will include the previously released “Crutch,” “Keep It To Yourself,““Maybe I Still Love You” and the album’s latest single “Don’t Touch.” “Don’t Touch” is sultry and seductive bit of honky tonk-inspired pop built around a strutting and twangy acoustic guitar and shimmering pedeal steel beneath Harris’ aching falsetto. Lyrically nodding at Prince‘s “Raspberry Beret” and The Georgia Satellites‘ “Keep Your Hands To Yourself,” “Don’t Touch” features a narrator, who tells a story of a meet cute with a mysterious stranger, who knows the art of seduction — and gets what she wants.
Directed and choreographed by Shay Latukolan, the accompanying video for “Don’t Touch” is set in a half-filled Texas honky tonk and features dance and movement as a form of seduction between the video’s incredibly attractive central couple.
Throwback: Happy 85th Birthday, Darlene Love!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the legendary Darlene Love’s 85th birthday.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm Shares Woozy and Soulful “Night & Day”
Over the past handful of years, Roskilde-born, London-based singer/songwriter, producer and JOVM mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm has built a catalog of contemporary R&B rooted in neo-soul, jazz and understated groove that includes 2020’s Like Sand and 2023’s A Good Life, albums that have received applause from Billboard, NPR, Complex, COLORS, NYLON, The Line of Best Fit, Wonderland and a list of others. Dahlstrom has also received co-signs from BBC 1Xtra, The Joe Budden Podcast and
others.
Adding to a growing profile both nationally and internationally, she has collaborated with Odeal, Jay Prince, Kofi Stone and Braxton Cook.
The JOVM mainstay’s highly-anticipated third album MARIE is slated for a September 18, 2026 release through her own JFH Records. The album also arrives at a moment when life for the JOVM has become much fuller, busier and infinitely more complex. Since the release of 2020’s debut, Like Sand and 2023’s A Good Life, Dahlstrøm has become a mother of two, while continuing to a build a life between London and Copenhagen.
Written over the previous two years between London, Copenhagen and Los Angeles, the Danish-born artist’s third album draws on deeper jazz influences, live instrumentation and a close-knit international cast of collaborators including Butcher Brown’s Corey Fonville, Los Angeles-based pianist and producer Elijah Fox, Cuban percussionist Eliel Lazo and her longtime collaborator and romantic partner Dan Diggas. The result is reportedly one one of the JOVM mainstay’s warmest and most personal work to date.
MARIE will feature the previously released “Frostbite” and the album’s latest single “Night & Day.” Built around an atmospheric and woozy production featuring skittering beats, a supple bass line, vocodered warbling synth beneath Dahlstrøm’s easy-going yet soulful delivery, “Night & Day” speaks of love and romantic relationship in a lived-in, realistic fashion, admitting that relationships require work and intention to make them last. But that work is often worth it.
New Audio: Hayley Law Shares Self-Assured, Hook-Driven “Circle Back”
Hayley Law is a Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based actor, singer/songwriter and producer, who initially wrote, produced and recorded under the moniker Hayleau. She has since retired the moniker and project, saying “Hayleau was a version of me that I really love. Softer, shyer, and still trying to figure herself out through everyone else’s voices. I think that name became a little too shaped by perception, expectation, and who people thought i should be. Coming back to Hayley Law felt like reclaiming myself and deciding I don’t want anyone else molding who I am anymore.”
Performing under her own name, the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist has crafted a sound and approach that sees her blending pop, R&B and pop rock with diaristic storytelling. Her work lives between vulnerability and control in a way that’s intimate, nostalgic and quietly disarming, pulling listeners into moments that feel as impulsive as they are intentional.
As a completely independent artist, Law has built her career on her own times while amassing over four million streams across the DSPs through purely organic growth and without chasing trends or traditional industry pathways.
Alongside her music career, Law has played roles in globally distributed Netflix projects and studio films, including Riverdale, Altered Carbon and more. She’s set to star in Jackie! Zhou’s FLYOVER.
Building upon a growing profile, the rising artist’s highly-anticipated Law, Jesse Boykins III and Melo-X co-produced Last Summer is slated for an August 14, 2026 release. The album sonically is a blend of sensual alternative R&B-influenced diaristic songwriting and early 2000s pop punk, creating an album of material that’s intimate, emotionally unguarded yet cinematic. Across the album’s run-time, Law effortlessly moves between softness and control, exploring desire, performance, heartbreak, ego, femininity and the versions of ourselves we create to be loved. But the star of the show is Law and her voice: vulnerable without being self-pitying, confident without false armor and deeply self-aware of the contradiction of wanting intimacy while trying to remain in control.
The album will include the previously released album title and opening track “Last Summer” and the album’s second and latest single “Circle Back.” Subtly channeling hook-driven, late 1990s and early 000s R&B — think Brandy, Monica and the like — “Circle Back” is built around an atmospheric production twinkling keys, a soaring string sample, skittering beats and glitchy, DJ scratches beneath Law’s self-assured, self-aware delivery. The song’s narrator spends the song’s runtime recognizing that this love interest is probably just a fling — and that fling needs to back off a bit and just enjoy things for what they are.
“Have you ever had a fling that just moves sooo fast? By the time you come up for air, you realize you’ve spent 3 days with the person and aren’t even sure you see it going anywhere,” the Canadian-born artist explains. “That is ‘Circle Back.’ I wear my heart on my sleeve and fall quickly and this song is my reminder to check in with yourself. Not every fling turns into a relationship. And having two/three weeks of something HOT is awesome.”
Throwback: Happy 85th Birthday, Martha Reeves!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Martha Reeves’ 85th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Evelyn “Champagne” King!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Evelyn “Champagne” King’s 66th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 55th Birthday, Missy Elliott!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrations Missy Elliott’s 55th birthday.
New Video: Love Spells Shares Atmospheric and Yearning “Maybe I Still Love You”
Sir Teagan Harris is the Houston-born creative mastermind behind the rising, solo recording project Love Spells. At 18, Harris poured his passion for love into music, manifesting a career out of ambition and drive, while battling homelessness for years. Eventually, he wound up in California, where h lived with a friend he met online, traveling to different music studios everyday to perfect his sound. After six months, he returned to Houston and received a call from Kevin Abstract, who invited I’m to work on his most recent album, last year’s Bluish.
Working on Kevin Abstract’s Blush connected Harris to his now frequent collaborator Dominic Fike and Deb Never. That life changing experience pushed Harris to return to Los Angeles and work on his highly-anticipated Love Spells debut, LOVE IS THE LAW. Slated for a July 24, 2026 release through RCA Records, LOVE IS THE LAW found the Houston-born artist working with Danny Parra, Boy Deco, Brad Hale, Rodaidh McDonald, Alex Craig, and Rick Nowels to create material that recalled his nights at Numbers, a beloved Houston-based dance club and safe heaven for alternative communities. While at Numbers, Harris danced to 70s, 80s and New Wave, and he specifically wanted to inject that feeling into his work, seeking out similar spaces in Los Angeles and leaning on those eras in the studio. Movies like Dirty Dancing and Footlose were also sources of inspiration, helping the Houston-based artist and his collaborators craft a “theatrical yet authentic” feeling.
LOVE IS THE LAW will include the previously released “Crutch,” “Keep It To Yourself” and the album’s latest single “Maybe I Still Love You.” “Maybe I Still Love You” is a slow-burning and atmospheric bit of Quiet Storm-meets-Bill Withers-inspired R&B that features Harris’ achingly tender and yearning falsetto dancing alongside a sparse arrangement of twinkling piano, bursts of shimmering and soulful guitar, a simple backbeat, a supple bass line. The song’s narrator finds closure and freedom in recognizing the true depths of his emotions.
“‘Maybe I Still Love You’ is for anyone still fighting with feelings they can’t ignore, that moment of coming to terms with the fact that you still care and want to keep caring,” Harris explains. “Because above all, you have to believe in love for love to be seen.”
Directed by Colt Grice, the accompanying video for “Maybe I Still Love You” features a couple doing a simple two-step slow dance together while embracing. The couple’s story is up to interpretation but there’s palpable sense of love, the sort of love that at times is demanding and difficult yet worth fighting for.
Throwback: Happy 63rd Birthday, George Michael!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 63rd anniversary of the birth of George Michael.
New Audio: Magi Merlin Shares Shimmering and Defiant “pixxie”
Rising Montréal-based JOVM mainstay Magi (pronounced Mahd-j-eye) Merlin makes music for fellow obsessives. There’s no soft lunch. She sings directly to the listener, face pressed up against the other side of the screen’s glass. With a propulsive, avant-garde inspired take on pop and what she dubs as “broken R&B,” the Canadian artist’s work sees her exploring life’s deep existential truths.
Now, if y’all have been frequenting this site over the past handful of years, Merlin has collaborated with co-writer and producer Funkywhat, building a shared musical language through the release of 2022’s Gone Girl EP, which led to touring with Noga Erez and an electric set opening for Omar Apollo in Mexico City — and last year’s A Weird Little Dog, which helped her establish “broken R&B,” an honest account of how she works, her artistic direction and visual world. The JOVM mainstay supported that effort opening for Nubya Garcia across the US and with festival appearances at Osheaga and Festival d’été de Québec, where she opened for Ty Dolla $ign, And recently, she opened for Yaya Bey during their European tour.
Outside of music, she made her acting debut this year in Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks alongside Barbie Ferreira, Devon Bostick and Juliette Gariépy. The film screened at this year’s SXSW and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The Montréal-based JOVM mainstay’s highly anticipated full-length debut POWER HOUSE is slated for a July 10, 2026 release through Bonsound. The 12-song album is reportedly a slickly produced, infectious and high-energy effort that conceptually is an exploration of the internal architecture we all inhabit, housing the conflicting rooms of anger, fear, vanity, and ultimately, a reclaimed sense of power. The album is very much an ode to the realization that inner work is the only true outer work.
The album also serves as a realist’s manifesto, written from Merlin’s perspective as a bisexual/ENM woman. Throughout the album, the Montréal-based artist’s narrators explores the uneasy contradictions of seeking validation in both platonic and romantic relationships. She deconstructs the plastic confidence used as modern armor, the performative standards of the beauty industry, and the systemic pressures that force women to navigate their lives with hyper-caution.
POWER HOUSE includes the previously released “POPSTAR,” SpiceKick,” and “So Smart,” which have receive attention across a number of international media outlets including Clash Magazine, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Wonderland Magazine, Libération, Exclaim! and RANGE, as well as airplay from BBC 6 Music, France Inter, FIP, CBC and Radio Canada. The album’s latest single “pixxie” continues a run of slickly produced synth pop, anchored around the rising Canadian artist’s self-assured and soulful, pop star delivery and her unerring knack for catchy hooks.
Thematically, the track focuses on the liberation of women from the male gaze but written and sung ironically from the perspective of the manic pixie dream girl, breaking out from a reductive caricature — at all costs.
“Female characters in film are often reduced to this trope, simply a device used to further the plot of the male protagonist,” Magi explains. “This is a role and, at its worst, an expectation many men in real life will cast onto their female counterparts. The only function of women in their eyes is being a sexual object or a tool to aid them in their growth.”
Throwback: Happy 53rd Birthday, Faith Evans!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Faith Evans’ 53rd birthday.
Throwback: Happy 68th Birthday, Prince!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 68th anniversary of the birth of Prince.
Throwback: R.I.P. Peabo Bryson
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of Peabo Bryson.