Tag: Single Review

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Frankie and the Witch Fingers Return with a Grimy, Blistering Ripper

Slated for a June 6, 2025 release through Greenway Records and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, Frankie and the Witch Fingers‘ eighth album, the Maryam Qudus-produced Trash Classic reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay happily plunging into a sewer-slick fusion of proto punk venom, fractured New Wave and industrial grime. Sonically brimming with wiry synths, angular melodies and squirming and biting grooves, the material is delivered with a sly, playful balance between smirk and sneer. The band layers playful unease while exploring themes of escapism, decay and overindulgence. 

The songs were born in the grime of Vernon, Los Angeles — a wasteland littered with gutted RVs and rusting machinery, where the air tastes like asphalt and dog food. But the alchemy happed during recording sessions at Oakland‘s Tiny Telephone Studio, where producer Maryam Qudus helped transmute the tracks into the final forms with unhinged tones, unconventional recording experiments and wild sonic detours. 

Each day of the recording sessions began with cartoons blaring at full volume — a Looney Tunes ritual that turned the madness of the recording process into something childlike. Late night, sugar-fueled candy binges kept the energy spiking, pushing the sessions into a fever dream of jittery, spastic playfulness. The end result is a raw, twisted monument to rot and excess — and to toxic glamour and nihilistic salvation.

So far I’ve written about three of the album’s previously released singles: 

  • “Economy,” which offered a glimpse of what to expect from the album: grimy synth pulse right at the front, alongside angular guitar fuzz and muscular yet mathematically precise drumming paired with punchily delivered vocals and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, the result is a scuzzier and grimier take on Freedom of Choice-era DEVO — with a similar, tongue-in-cheek sensibility. 

  • “Total Reset,” a sweaty ripper that sees the band pairing angular guitar fuzz with squiggling synth pulse, mathematically precise drumming and Sizemore’s punchy delivery with the band’s penchant for mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, “Total Reset” strikes me as a being a synthesis of King Gizzard and Devo — but with a mischievous sense of menace and unease. 

  • “Dead Silence,” a track continues a run of grimy and mischievous DEVO-meets-garage rock rippers, anchored around the band’s unerring knack for rousing, mosh pit friendly hooks paired with Sizemore’s punchy delivery singing lyrics about existential dread and death. Oh, how fitting for our fucked up, dire time! 

“Gutter Priestess,” Trash Classic‘s fourth and latest single sees the band continuing with the addition of a DEVO-like sheen to the punchy, garage punk aesthetic that has won them acclaim globally. And while arguably being the grimiest, nastiest song on the album to date, “Gutter Priestess” may also be the most danceable.

“‘Gutter Priestess’ felt filthy from the get,” the band’s Dylan Sizemore says. “I was hooked up to Burroughs and his junk-sick energy, romanticizing my own bad decisions and dark thoughts, cutting up lyrics, letting meaning rearrange itself. The whole thing turned into a brown, sharded nightmare but with a seductive dancey pulse.

When we went to record it, everyone leaned into the crust. The parts feel barbed and sharp – like they crawled out of a drainpipe with glass in their gums. Hopefully the lighter synth lines in the chorus add a sugary sweetness to all the rot and decay.”

Instead of a music video, the JOVM mainstays partnered with FolksPatMedia to release a fully-playable “Gutter Priestess” video. The creators of the free-to-play browser game have contributed to beloved games like Alien: Rogue Incursion, Creed: Rise to Glory VR, Dead by Daylight, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and more. You can check it out here.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Music 4 Diana Shares Heartfelt Ballad “Mil Años”

Diana Jiminez is a Colombian-American, New Jersey-based singer/songwriter and creative mastermind behind the emerging recording project Music 4 Diana. Jiminez’s latest Music4Diana single “Mil Años” is a slow-burning ballad that showcases Jiminez’s gorgeous vocal and deeply heartfelt lyrics.

The emerging New Jersey-based artist explains that the song was written to pay tribute to her father. And as a result, it captures a sense of gratitude while being anchored around a message about love, legacy and the eternal bond between a daughter and her father.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ John The Solomon Shares an Anthemic Rocker

John The Solomon is the recording project of an mysterious and emerging, Los Angeles-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who has developed a reputation for crafting high-energy, guitar driven songs packed with riffs, big` hooks, and feel-good vibes.

The project’s latest single “Come Back For Me” continues a run of crafted, big riff and big hook-driven numbers that seemingly recalls The Smithereens and Hüsker Dü — but with a modern sensibility.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Wickham Falls Shares Hooky and Anthemic “Fallout”

New York-based indie outfit Wickham Falls — Brooke Nilson (vocals, guitar), Nigel Acard (guitar), Conor Larsen (bass) and Joey Gadonniex (drums) –features four friends, who are also music lovers and extremely talented musicians, with an uncanny and innate creative chemistry.

The New York-based quartet’s latest single “Fallout” is big, hook driven anthem that showcases some remarkably tight musicianship and playfully inventive songwriting while recalling 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Glasgow’s Cwfn Shares Stormy and Brooding “Bodies”

Over the course of the past 18 months Glasgow-based outfit Cwfn (pronounced coven) — Agnes Alder (vocals, rhythm guitar), Guy DeNuit (backing vocals, lead guitar), Rös Ranquinn (drums) and Mary Thomas Baker (bass) — have quickly built up a reputation as one of the region’s hottest, emerging doom bands. Their debut single, last October’s “Reliks” won over fans and critics, with the song landing on Kerrang‘s release of the week playlist.

Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the Scottish quartet’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Kevin Hare and band co-produced Sorrows is slated for a May 30, 2025 release. Recorded at Deep Storm Productions, Sorrows reportedly lives in the space around doom, where the weight of the materials riffs are matched by the weight in your chest — and with material where the lyrics and songwriting as equally as important as the music. The band intend to write material that’s big on riffs but even bigger on feeling; to create songs that you carry with you throughout your life. The album sees Cwfn’s Alder bearing her (proverbial) claws one minute, whispering and pleading the next while she and her bandmates craft a sound that’s like a brewing storm front.

“We never set out to write an album. We were just four friends making music we wanted to hear. But then Sorrows emerged, and when it did, it pulled us into its orbit. We couldn’t ignore it,” Cwfn’s Agnes Alder says.  “When we stopped trying to fit into any one space, what came out was this beautiful mix of dark and light. Something visceral and cathartic.”

The album will also feature long-anticipated reworkings of “Embers” and “Bodies,” their two self-recorded demos that are also fan favorites — and helped catapult them into the national and international scenes.

Sorrows latest single “Bodies” is a brewing and uneasy storm of a track, that features Alder’s guttural, almost crypt keeper-like delivery floating around swirling, churning and sludgy power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and the band’s knack for enormous hooks. And at its core, the song expresses a deep-seated, seething rage that has built up to an all-consuming conflagration.

“Bodies was one of the first songs I’d written for Cwfen. I’d gone through a period of significant change in my life and had burned out to the point of caring a lot less about things that had previously been important to me when I was younger,” the band’s Alder explains. “As I was writing, I’d imagined this sort of vast, feminine cosmic horror. Sort of the opposite of what women are supposed to be. And I had this thought: what if, instead of being told to stay small and keep producing, a woman took up the biggest space possible and just… consumed? Almost a black-hole-sized matriarch hoovering up everything until there was nothing left. It was fun to think about this sort of monstrous feminine presence that can’t be stopped. So the song was sort of an exploration of those feelings, a catharsis of sorts. And permission to be terrifying.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Moon Construction Kit Shares Breezy “Long John Silver”

Olivier Cornu is a Swiss-based singer/songwriter, musician, producer and creative mastermind behind Moon Construction Kit, a project that sees him drawing from indie pop, psych pop, synth pop, late 60s pop and cinematic textures.

Cornu released his self-tiled Moon Construction Kit debut EP back in 2022. His latest single “Long John Silver” is languorous, lullaby of a tune featuring twinkling keys, shimmering synths, booming drums paired with the Swiss artist’s dreamy delivery and an incredibly catchy hook. The result is a song that feels breezily effortless yet carefully crafted.

Sonically, “Long John Silver” is anchored around a nostalgia inducing, retro-futuristic production that feels simultaneously intimate and cinematic, while delving into — and evoking — the narrator’s shifting and complicated nature.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Club 8 Shares Breezy and Nostalgia Inducing “Staying Alive”

Last year, Stockholm-based JOVM mainstays Club 8 — Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and electronic music producer, artist and Labrador Records founder and label boss Johan Angergård — released their 11th album, A Year With Club 8, which featured the Joy Division/New Order-meets-The Raveonettes-like “Something’s Wrong With My Head,” a woozily blissful and escapist song that continued a run of material dabbling in 80s New Wave nostalgia. 

The duo have been busy, releasing a single every month throughout the course of this year.

  • The Swedish JOVM mainstays began the year with “ooo,” which continued where A Year With Club 8 left off — breezy and escapist, New Wave-inspired pop featuring shimmering guitars and driving grooves paired with ethereal yet expressive vocals. 

  • February saw the release of “None Of This Will Matter When You’re Dead.” Clocking in at 83 seconds, “None Of This . . .” is a breakneck bit of Smiths-inspired guitar pop, anchored around shimmering guitars, a motorik groove, big catchy hook and choruses paired with Komstedt’s ethereal delivery expressing swooning heartbreak and defiance simultaneously.

The duo’s fifth single of the year, the hooky “Staying Alive” continues a remarkable run of nostalgia inducing, breakneck guitar pop that channels a synthesis of New Order and The Smiths while serving as a lush bed for Komstedt’s ethereal and yearning delivery.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: San Francisco’s Rich-Bout-It Teams Up with Guce on Bruising “F.A.F.O.”

Rich-Bout-It is a San Francisco-based emcee, who has developed a reputation for boldly delivering unapologetic and gritty bars and pairing raw street wisdom with modern West Coast hip-hop energy. His work frequently reflects loyalty, pressure and survival — crafted for those who have lived it and are about it.

The San Francisco-based emcee’s latest single “F.A.F.O.” is a collaboration with acclaimed Bay Area emcee Guce that sees the pair trading swaggering and fiery bars over a bruising production featuring eerily menacing synths and skittering boom bap that recalls Too $hort’s “Blow the Whistle” but punchier and grittier. Let this track be a reminder that real hip-hop featuring dope emcees spitting fire over hard-hitting producers is still out there — and absolutely necessary.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Bee Blackwell Shares Earnest, “120 Minutes”-Era MTV-Like “LALALA”

Bee Blackwell is a rising Austin-based singer/songwriter and musician, who back in 2023 began posting covers of her favorite emo and grunge song online, which helped to create a fanbase that revels in her brand of heartfelt and cathartic music. What began as covers, quickly accumulated into her debut EP, that year’s Calico, an effort that featured fan favorite “Blue.”

The past year or so have been very busy for Blackwell, she released three singles “Dumb,” “The Same” and “Signs.” She made her SXSW debut this past March, along with a handful of energetic live shows around Texas. And with a few months of free time, the rising Texan-based artist wrote and her recorded her highly-anticipated sophomore EP, Nine Lives.

Slated for a June 30, 2025 release, Nine Lives EP reportedly serves as a sort of personal diary entry, exposing her struggles, emotional hardships and life goals. While seeing Blackwell at her most introspective and daring, taking creative risks while maintaining the vulnerability and honesty that has won her fans. Sonically, the EP’s material showcases her knack for clear and atmospheric guitar hooks, smooth calming grooves paired with her love of 90s grunge and 2000s emo.

Self-produced and recorded at Sonic Ranch Studio over a three-day, breakneck stint, the Austin-based artist’s latest single “LALALA” is a decidedly upbeat 120 Minutes-era MTV-like tune, anchored around fuzzy, distorted yet dreamy guitars, swelling synths, Blackwell’s ethereal delivery that builds up to perfectly 90s grunge inspired bridge. And at its core, the song showcases a songwriter, who seems to effortlessly pair catchy hooks with earnest, lived-in lyricism.

“‘LALALA’ is a conversation between two people who haven’t spoken to each other in probably years, with all the weird boundaries and walls that have built up over the time lost,”  Blackwell says. “There’s a sense of familiarity, but you still don’t know if you can fully trust them, so you just make things up to fill silence or to seem interesting.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Berlin’s Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys Share Brooding “Reaching”

Over the course of six studio albums, Berlin-based art rock outfit Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys — South African-born Lucy Kruger (vocals, guitar), Liú Mottes (guitar), Jean-Louise Parker (viola, vocals), Sally Whitton (bass) and Gidon Carmel (drums) — has firmly established a sound that blends elements of art pop, ambient noise and dark folk, while drawing comparisons to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey and Aldous Harding.

Recipients of the Europavox Spotlight Prize back in June 2023, the band has built up a profile across the European Union and elsewhere with sets across the global festival circuit, including Orange Blossom Special, InMusic, Roadburn, Grauzone, Reeperbahn, MENT, Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Fusion Festival, Left of The Dial, Synästhesie, The New Colossus Festival and SXSW.

Outside of her work with Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys, Kruger has contributed vocals to songs by Swans and Underground Youth. And she was selected for the Keychange Initiative, which seeks to promote gender equality in the global music scene.

The Berlin-based outfit’s latest single “Reaching” is the first bit of new material from the band since the band’s critically applauded six album, last year’s A Human Home. “Reaching” is a brooding and tense tune that alternates between slinky and atmospheric verses built around a woozy waltz-like tempo and a bruising and noisy chorus and hook featuring slashing and churning power chords.

The song thematically explores the tension between communication and disconnection, presence and absence, silence and noise. And its core, the song is raw, evocative and probing, while rooted in deeply empathetic observation of human character and nature. “I think the song tries to capture how cacophonic the quiet can feel.” Kruger says.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Cozy Shares A Catchy and Summery Bop

Cozy is an emerging American-born, world pop artist, whose desire is to make the listener listen to him and view him as a spaceman/explorer type, who goes deep into the unknown and returns with deep truths.

His latest single “Glory” is the second single off his debut EP, Little Star. “Glory” is a summery, lounge and club friendly, Afrobeats-tinged bop featuring bursts of glistening synth arpeggios, skittering trap-inspired triplets paired with remarkably catchy hooks serving as a lush bed for Cozy’s yearning patois.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: ASAMAASAMA Shares Woozy and Fierce “123”

Mount Asama, Japan-based alt-rock/art rock duo ASAMASAMA features two acclaimed Japanese artists — singer/songwriter Rie Fu and producer Hikaru Ishizaki. After stints with anime theme songs and J-pop production, the pair have decided to break the mold and create a rebellious, hybrid sound that crosses musical and geographical boundaries while blending sharp wit, bold satire and a twisted love for Japanese culture.

The Japanese duo’s latest single “123” is a fiercely feminist anthem that features glitchy electronics, boom bap-like beats and bursts of slashing power chord-driven guitars serving as a woozy bed for Fiu’s unhinged delivery, which sees her alternating between spoken word/sing-songy passes and bratty, J-pop-meets-Fever to Tell-era Karen O-like crooning. Interestingly, “123” showcases the duo’s ability to craft a mischievous, forward-thinking sound and approach anchored around remarkably catchy hooks.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Glasgow’s Akkiles82 Shares Cinematic “Streets of Neo-Yokohama”

Nick Thomson is a Glasgow-based electronic music producer and the creative mastermind of the solo recording project Akkiles82. Akkiles82 sees Thompson creating a sound that draws from cyberpunk, retrowave, and his history both playing bands and as an electronic music/dance music producer.

The Scottish-based producer’s Akkiles82 full-length debut, CybernNation will be released in two parts over the course of the next year. The album reportedly will tell a story of desperate survival, after an unknown cataclysm causes destruction in a futuristic cyberpunk-like city. The album’s track range from classic synthwave and EDM through breakbeat — with health doses of 80s cartoon and TV themes influences.

CyberNation‘s second and latest single “Streets of Neo-Yokohama,” is a slickly produced cinematic track that recalls a synthesis of Fragile-era Nine Inch Nails, John Carpenter soundtracks and 80s TV themes, anchored around dense layers of glistening, arpeggiated synths and tweeter and woofer rattling thump. A new Knight Rider, Transformers or Voltron theme perhaps?

“This track was inspired by the towering skyscrapers and street racing scenes of Tokyo and Yokohama, painting a picture of neon and rain soaked streets,” Thompson says.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Slumbering Sun Shares Bruising Dirge “The Tower”

Formed back in 2022, Austin-based outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna‘s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light‘s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar) and Kelly “Penny” Turner, Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson, and Monte Luna’s and Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit (bass) — is a Texas underground metal scene All-Star outfit that specializes in “music for crazy romantics,” as they’ve dubbed it, a melodic doom metal that incorporates elements of Celtic folk, grunge, prog rock and shoegaze. 

The Austin-based quintet’s full-length debut, 2023’s The Ever-Living Fire debuted at #20 on the Doom Charts. The band played their first show at SXSW’s Stoner Jam, then embarked on a series of regional tours before capping off the year with a set at Ripple Fest.

The band spent the bulk of last year, writing and recording their highly-anticipated sophomore effort, Starmony, which is slated for a digital and limited vinyl edition release on May 9, 2025.

Earlier this month, I wrote about “Midsommar Night’s Dream,” a track that begins with a gorgeous, pensive piano and string driven introduction, before quickly morphing into swooningly heartfelt and nostalgia-fueled dirge anchored around the sort of fuzzy pose chords that would bring smiles to the faces of Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Neil Young, all while being arguably the most cinematic song they’ve released to date. 

Starmony‘s latest single “The Tower” begins with a broodingly atmospheric introduction that quickly morphs into slow-burning, power chord-driven dirge with dexterous guitar solos. And much like its immediate predecessor, “The Tower” continues a run of material that’s simultaneously soulful and cinematic, while showcasing a band with a penchant for crafting material that recalls The Sword, Soundgarden and others.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Jahnah Camille Shares Rousingly Anthemic and Cathartic “sit with you (pain)”

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. 

Last month, I wrote about EP single “what do you do,” a 90/120 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.” 

My sunny oath!‘s latest single “sit with you (pain)” begins with a lush and dreamy, singer/songwriter, acoustic guitar section with gently rumbling feedback that slowly builds up into a full-throated, bombastic, feedback and grungy power chord-driven anthem. While continuing to showcase a young songwriter, who can craft a big, rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, the song is anchored in deeply lived-in and earnest hurt.

The song “is about cutting someone out of your life who you still care for deeply,” she explains. “All of your critiques and drawbacks are still secondary for the love that you have. I wanted to make a habit of doing things that were good for me even if they hurt.”