Tag: Single Review: Heaven

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Anchorage’s dreamcat Shares Breezy “Heaven”

Anchorage-based indie electro pop duo dreamcat — couple Em Glaves and Colton Ciufo — can trace a portion of their origins back to when they were children: Glaves and Ciufo grew up in the same small town, and for them music has always been their escape.

The Alaskan duo specialize in homemade, heartfelt, positive indie synth pop that draws from M83, Chromeo and others. Last year, the pair gained recognition regionally by playing at two of Alaska’s biggest music festivals — Sundown Festival and Girdwood Forest Fair.

Over the past 12-18 months, the duo have built upon a growing profile across Alaska, with at the release of a handful of standalone singles and their debut EP joie de vivre earlier this year.

Glaves and Ciufro close out 2025 with “Heaven,” a breezy bit of synth pop that seemingly channels BRIJEAN, M83 and Oracular Spectacular-era MGMT while showcasing the duo’s ability to craft a remarkably catchy hook. But underneath the track’s breezy hookiness, the song, as the duo explain is about addiction.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Funky French League is a label and collective of multi-generational DJs, producers and musicians led by Groove Deluxe’s Uncle T that also includes Young Pulse, Chaps, Malka Family‘s Woody Braun, Générations FM and Radio FG‘s mOnsieur Willy, Radio Nova and Générations FM’s DJ Asko.

As a collective and label, Funky French League has two missions:

  • promote and advance the entire disco, dance music and funk spectrum through parties, remixes, edits, radio shows and even their original material
  • to encourage and promote partying — with good taste, in which good people can hang out and listen to dope music with funky grooves

Over the past couple of years, the French collective have been busy: 2020 saw their debut effort, Disconauts, Vol. 1. They released a critically acclaimed series of remixes of French superstars off the Warner music back catalog, which included remixes of Françoise Hardy, Sheila, Veronique Sanson, and others. They then released a collection of reworks of three Latin American disco tracks initially released in 1980 — Irakere‘s “Baila Mi Ritmo,” written by Chucho Valdes; “Dance, Dance, Dance,” by Orquesta Novel; and “La Cotorra Criolla,” by Perucho Conde, one of the first Spanish rap songs, inspired by The Sugarhill Gang’s iconic “Rapper’s Delight.”

This year, the French collective released the Baule Vice EP. The EP’s first single, EP opening track “Heaven” is a synth-driven, disco-inspired banger centered around a relentless, two-step inducing groove, glistening synth arpeggios paired with soulful vocals and and an irresistible hook. It’s a fun song that sounds as though it draws from Nile Rodgers and Chic, Cameo, The Dazz Band, The Gap Band and others — but with a sleek modern feel and production.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Ninety’s Story “Heaven” Live from Groover Obsessions

Childhood friends Guillaume Adamo and Florian Deyz are the creative masterminds behind the rising Nice-based indie act Ninety’s Story. With the release of their debut single “KIKUKYU” which was quickly followed up with their debut EP, the French duo firmly established a sound and approach that was fittingly inspired by the French Riviera and by acclaimed French acts Phoenix, Daft Punk and Air.

The duo, along with their backing band have opened for Archive, Morcheeba, Pale Waves and Puggy and others. Adding to a growing profile. the duo wrote the music for a Citroën C4 Aircross ad campaign that aired in China —  with the band representing the company at the Paris and Hangzhou Motor Shows. Since then the band has been busy releasing a handful of singles including the breezy and anthemic “APO” and the sultry, R&B-inflluenced “Home.” 

Earlier this year, the duo along with their live band played a Groover Obsessions‘ Les Capsules sessions at La Marbrerie that featured two songs:

  • “Heaven,” a slow-burning and brooding song that reminds me a bit of JOVM mainstays Ten Fe and Palace Winter: a deliberately crafted, anthemic song centered around expressive and bluesy guitars, shimmering synths, plaintive vocals and lived-in lyrics. 
  • “Ride,” a strutting bit of pop rock that — to my ears, at least — brings a slick synthesis of Steely Dan and Radiohead to mind. 

The rising French duo recently released the Groover Obsessions session as a mini EP. The mini EP’s first single happens to be my favorite track from the session, the aforementioned “Heaven.” With their unerring knack for crafting earnest material with anthemic hooks, I have a sense that they’ll be stars — and very soon.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Now, throughout the course of this site’s eight year history, I’ve written quite a bit about Gold Coast, Australia-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Emily Hamilton and her acclaimed recording project San Mei, which began as a bedroom recording project but quickly received attention from this site and a number of major media outlets including NME, Indie Shuffle, NYLON and Triple J. Her San Mei debut EP Necessary found the Gold Coast, Australia-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist decidedly moving away from the bedroom recorded synth pop that first caught the attention of the blogosphere and towards organic instrumentation and a sound that immediately brings Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Cat Power, Feist and others to mind.

Hamilton met songwriter, producer and musical phenom Oscar Dawson, who has worked with Holy Holy, Alex Lahey, Ali Barter, British India, Robbie Miller and Joyride at BIGSOUND last year, and the pair immediately hit it off. According to Hamilton, taking Dawson on as a producer and collaborator found the duo refining ideas, exploring different soundscapes and laying down the foundation for her — and in turn, San Mei’s — sonic progression. As Hamilton explains in press notes “[Dawson and I] hit it off straight away and it seemed like he understood where I was coming from, even if I had trouble conveying certain ideas in the demos I made at home.”

“Wonder” was the first single since the release of Necessary. Coincidentally “Wonder” was the first single off her forthcoming Heaven EP, which is slated for a November 2 release and interestingly, the single managed to be a subtle refinement of Hamilton’s sound and songwriting that found her creating radio friendly and arena rock friendly tracks, centered around a razor hooks, fuzzy shoegazer rock-like power chords and propulsive drumming — all while being incredibly earnest. “Heaven,” the EP title track is also the second and latest single of the EP, and its centered around layers of power chord-based guitar lines, four-on-the-floor drumming, Hamilton’s lush yet ethereal vocals, and shimmering synth lines.  And while the new track continues a run of arena rock friendly singles, it may arguably be the most shoegazer/dream pop-like track she’s written and released but underneath the song bristles with a bitter sense of frustration and dissatisfaction. In fact, as Hamilton says of the song, “This song is about when love is blind and it feels like heaven, but if you step back you can see things for what they really are. It’s about waking up to reality and letting go of something that’s going to end up causing harm, even if at first it felt like a dream.”

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Featuring Chuck Bronson, Brodie Conley, Nicolas Hyatt and David Lacalamita, the members of Canadian indie rock quartet Future States is a band with members based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, making the band a long distance affair, reportedly held together by the band member’s long-time friendship — and the Greyhound bus. Since their formation, the band has developed a reputation for crafting material that straddle the line between accessible, radio friendly pop and experimental pop based around arrangements of keys, guitar, sampled sounds and propulsive rhythms paired with pop melodies and reverb-drenched harmonies. And while, their latest single “Heaven” will further cement their reputation for crafting propulsive, left field (and incredibly breezy) pop reminiscent of Talking Heads and others, it also reportedly finds the band experimenting with new sounds and refining their overall production as the song is centered around a tight, propulsive rhythm, and a deceptively simple chord progression and verses; however, the song features an irony-tinged skepticism — of whether heaven exists, if it would be how it’s described and if the song’s narrator would even want to go there.