Tag: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sirintip Shares Dizzying, Introspective “Lotus”

New York-based Thai-Swedish producer, composer and singer/songwriter Sirintip creates work that sits at the intersection of avant-garde pop, jazz, electronic music and interdisciplinary art. Raised in Thailand by her recently departed father, Sirintip spent her teenaged years in Sweden, before relocating to the States to pursue her music and artistic career. Through her multilingual identity, she has learned to communicate in countless ways, with the understanding that expression is expression, and deeply human, no matter the context. Her musical work is ethereal yet impassioned, with her voice moving across sophisticated harmony, dense electronics and rhythmic experimentation, shaped by her musical roots, which span across jazz, pop, traditional Thai music and European classical music.

The Thai-Swedish artist has released two acclaimed albums, 2018’s Michael League-produced Tribus, which features Mark Guiliana and 2022’s Carbon, which landed on DownBeat‘s Best Albums of 2022 list. She’s a highly-sought after collaborator, who has contributed to over 50 recordings, as well as composed the score for the 1925 silent film, The Lost World.

Sirintip has toured internationally as a bandleader and as an opener for Snarky Puppy and Sungazer, performing at SJFAZZ, The Nobel Museum, Wonderfruit and Winter Jazzfest.

Her broader artistic practice spans scientific collaboration, orchestral composition and sustainability, including solar-powered concerts and bioplastic vinyl, driven by a desire to uncover connections between cultures, ecosystems, disciples and people. The Thai-Swedish artist’s interdisciplinary project Mycelium transforms scientific research on fungi and plankton through music, data signification, projections and dance.

The acclaimed New York-based artist’s Elliot Moss co-produced White Lilies EP is slated for an October 30, 2026 release through Birdwatcher Records. The six-song EP may arguably be some of her most personal songwriting to date. Thematically, the EP’s material engages with grief through place and memory with the EP being a transmission of vulnerability through music. The EP and its creative process helped Sirintip process the loss of both her father and her childhood home back in Bangkok, while connecting with listeners on the universality of memory and identity.

Rather than bring external research and scientific inquiry, White Liilies reportedly sees the acclaimed artist turning inward. Each of the EP’s songs captures the breadth of her creativity: Pop song forms are blended with electronic textures, deep grooves and elevated, often dissonant harmonies. This all emerged organically, almost unconsciously. “I was trying to write very intuitively,” she says.

For the EP, Sirintip assembled a backing band of musicians and artists, whose versatility served her vision: Kengchakaj (piano, effects), Nolan Byrd (drums), Ben Wendel (tenor sax, effects) with the acclaimed New York-based artist on vocals, vocal effects, programming and various production elements. As co-producer, Elliot Moss helped her achieve an open-minded “pop perspective” for the overall production and sound. “I’m really, really, really happy with the production,” she says.

Commissioned by Greenwich House Music School, White Lilies sees Sirintip extending its creative expression even further, moving from musical gesture to sense-memory experience. The release includes biodegradable vinyl pressings, the acclaimed artist’s original photography, album artwork from Nitcha Tothong and a scent activations.

“Lotus,” White Lilies EP‘s dizzying second and latest single features dusty, trip hop-meets-hip hop breakbeat with twinkling keys, a Thai choral vocal sample, oscillating synths and a Quiet Storm-like groove beneath Sirintip’s expressive, jazz-meets-pop delivery. “Lotus” references a famous Thích Nhất Hạnh saying “No mud, no lotus,” while thematically touching on complicated parent-child relationship and celebrating breaking traumatic cycles.

“‘Lotus’ was inspired by Thích Nhất Hạnh’s idea of ‘no mud, no lotus.’ It’s about recognizing how our families, cultures, and the things we inherit shape who we become, while still choosing for ourselves what we want to carry forward,” the New York-based artist explains. “I think we can honor where we come from without repeating every pattern we inherited. The lotus is beautiful, but without the mud, it never would have grown into the flower it is.”

The accompanying video was shot in the artist’s native Bangkok and follows her as she dances and vibes out to the song in various locales, along with the titular lotus. While offering a slice of her birthplace’s breathtaking beauty, the video is punctuated by the memories of people and places that have gone, and those people are places still with us, and the uneasy push forward of our lives.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Always You Share Woozy, Bittersweet “1994”

Los Angeles-based duo Always You — twin brothers Christoph and Anton Hochheim — have managed to forge their own path while working alongside a hive mind-like collection of musician friends, including Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, MGMT, Jerry Paper, The Depreciation Guild and a lengthy list of others, which has helped shaped the siblings sonic identity along the way. Formerly known as Ablebody, the Hochheim Brothers have spent their careers exploring lo fi hypnagogic laptop pop, sophisticated synth pop informed by 80s UK and Japanese New Wave, as well as kitsch-en sink lounge ballads inspired by the great chansons.

The Los Angeles-based duo’s third album, the Jack Tatum-produced Against The World is slated for a November 13, 2026 release through Hit The North Records. With Jack Tatum at helm guiding production and mixing, he tirelessly broke down and then reconstructed all the elements of the material with the twins, pushing the album’s overall sonics to the absolute breaking point while still retaining their signature sophtisipop sheen. Throughout the album’s run time, heavy guitars and bending sheets of white noise clash over frenzied hi-hats and The Prodigy-like sub bass. Abrupt starts and stops seemingly crash down with the weight of the world. Drum ‘n’ bass and house beats thump over soaring melodies and chopped up vocal samples. The ballads seemingly sparkle with more heart and tension than anything in their previously released work.

Thematically speaking, Against The World is a statement for and against the times: a manic manifesto drawing a line in the sand, pointing out that love is the only resistance against the forces manufacturing distance and endless dissent between us. It’s a rallying cry pushing for something better, a staunch refusal of the status quo, fueled by the belief that we all deserve much better. The album’s material is rooted in the deep sense of longing for something, hell, anything else than this — a different reality, an alternate timeline, anything. Increasingly divorced from the world around us, the false promises of a new lover, a new leader, a quick and seemingly effortless salutation or a new savior become impossible to resist. That fantasy leads us further and further underground, leaving miles of rubble in its wake and keeping us all just out of reach.

Against The World’s second and latest single “1994” is a bittersweet meditation on time’s inexorable march forward, aging, lost youth and lost opportunities and the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia pushing us to dream of a simpler world that never really existed. But when the world is seemingly running down, there’s a strange comfort in looking backwards isn’t there? Sonically and thematically, “1994” seemingly channels Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979” sounding as though it could have been released in — well, 1994 while underpinned by some old school craftsmanship.

“‘1994’ is a song about clinging to specific times and seeking refuge in them, often to moments that never really existed,” the Los Angeles-based sibling duo explain. “We live in a world that deals nostalgia as currency, where the past is constantly viewed through rose tinted lenses, with our youth put on a pedestal and the continual quest to return to that version of ourselves always just out of reach. We long to return to the simpler times before life pulled us from each other and ourselves, before our hardships and tragedies calloused us to the world, back to a time that only ever existed in our minds.”

Directed by Otium, the accompanying video for “1994” is a woozy and panoramic visual that touches on the song’s overall themes of rose-tinted nostalgia for at time before everything seemingly went bonkers — even if it was kind of bullshit to begin with.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Gurriers Shares Bruising, Arena Rock Friendly and Politically Charged “Waiting For Fisher”

Rising Dublin-based post punk outfit Gurriers — Dan Hoff (vocals), Ben O’Neill (guitar, backing vocals), Mark MacCormack (guitar), Charlie McCarthy (bass) and Pierce O’Callaghan (drums) — formed during the pandemic and they’ve built a reputation […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: STACEY Shares Lush, Kaleidoscopic “Upside Down Merry Go Round”

STACEY is a Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and musician, whose retro-tinged psych pop draws from the sounds and pop culture of the 1960s and 1970s has received critical praise from SPIN, LadyGunn, American Songwriter, Clash Magazine, Wonderland, Refinery29 and a lengthy list of others while receiving airplay from Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson, KCRW’s and School Night’s Chris Douridas, CBC’s Errol Nazareth, BBC 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne and more.

The Canadian-born artist’s 2021 full-length debut, Saturn Return is part of a catalog that has amassed over eight million streams on Spotify, along with this year’s “These Days,” 2023’s “Christmas in California,” as well as 2013’s STACEY EP, 2015’s STACEY (Reconstruction) EP and 2017’s First Move EP.

Her compositions have been part of the soundtracks for more than 15 TV series and films including Netflix’s Spinning Out, Disney+’s Hollywood Stargirl, Lucifer, Pretty Little Liars Original Sin, Orphan Black and Degrassi. She has also shared stages with Charlotte Day Wilson, Tamino, Vinyl Williams and Tame Impala’s Cameron Avery. And adding to a growing profile, she has appeared on CTV‘s Your Morning and Global News’ The Morning Show and the Royal Ontario Museum‘s 75th Anniversary of Christian Dior Exhibit.

The STACEY and Dillon Casey co-produced, STACEY and Suzanne May a.k.a. Fonteyn co-written “Upside Down Merry Go Round” is STACEY’s first original release in five years and features Loren Humphrey (drums) and Tim McNalley (bass). Built around shimmering Wurlitzer, “Upside Down Merry Go Round” is lush, dreamy and subtly uneasy tune that sounds a bit like a seamless blend of Carole King‘s Tapestry, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd paired with a modern songwriting and lyrical approach. Thematically, the song captures the anxieties and emotional whiplash of existing in a modern, dystopian timeline: You’re trying to pay bills, join Zoom calls, chase dreams and carry on with your life, while the world unravels around you.

“I wanted to encapsulate the disorienting juxtaposition of day-to-day existence against the backdrop of worldly chaos, not only through the lyrics but also through the songwriting and production,” explains STACEY. “The drop to half-time in the choruses mirrors the relentless highs and lows of doom-scrolling. The song also has this feel-good quality that sits in contrast with the lyrics — ‘like a rainbow-coloured panic attack.’”

Directed by STACEY, the accompanying video for “Upside Down Merry Go Round” was filmed on 16mm film by Gus Bendinelli and is set a meticulously handmade surrealist dreamscape straight out of 1975 or so with psychedelic imagery and a miniature merry go round. To create the edible horses, which appear in the video. the Canadian born artist 3D-scanned the merry-go-round — a Facebook Marketplace find — and 3D-printed a miniature replicate of one of its horses. Longtime collaborator and makeup artist Christina Spina then created a mold, which the Los Angeles-based artist used to pour and then hand-painted the colored chocolate horses. “Aesthetically, I was loosely going for a 1970s Jodorowsky meets The Love Witch vibe with a sprinkle of Cher, but always myself — mostly letting my Facebook Marketplace prop finds and fashion choices guide the way,” STACEY says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Julia Jacklin Shares Introspective “If I Had The Hand of God”

Acclaimed Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and musician Julia Jacklin will be releasing her highly-anticipated fourth album, the Robert Muiños and Jacklin co-produced, 10-song album  The Gem through 4AD Records digitally and on CD, cassette and vinyl on September 25, 2026. Exclusive color vinyl editions with retailers will include turquoise, green opal, ruby and rose quartz. Pre-order information can be found here.

The album will include the previously released “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You),” the album’s closing track ” “I Wish” feat, Aussie folk sibling duo The Maes, “The Hardest Thing,” and the album’s latest single “If I Had The Hand of God,” a jangling that’s one-part song-as-story bit of country and one-part indie rock anthem. Written about a surreal trip to Nashville, “If I Had The Hand of God” is a lived-in, introspective meditation on the life of a touring musician and the importance — or unimportance — of legacy that’s both earnest and drenched in a bit of irony.

Directed by Nick Mcck, the accompanying video for “If I Had The Hand of God” begins with Jacklin making a call in a hotel room, before allowing the acclaimed Aussie wandering around Las Vegas with equal parts awe, exhaustion, bemusement and confusion. Oh and there’s a feathered showgirl hat at some point that looks incredibly heavy.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Return with Atmospheric and Uneasy “Pure Comedy”

Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — will be releasing their newest album, By accident, On purpose on October 16, 2026. 

The new album will include “Honestly, that’s enough honesty” “They’ll Never Suspect Us” and the album’s latest single “Pure Comedy.” “Pure Comedy” shifts through dream pop, indie rock, ambient electronic music and electro pop with settling into any easily identifiable genre or style while restlessly vacillating between optimism and pessimism, intimacy and aggression, hope and resignation. And it’s all done in a way that feels grounded in the psychological realism of a world that’s gone as mad as ours.

By accident, On purpose‘s latest single evolved alongside the album, with the JOVM mainstay outfit working on the song throughout the years-long writing and recording process. Rather than discarding each previous incarnation as the track gradually changed shape, fragments survived, leaving different eras of the song’s creation embedded within the finished track.

“This is the song that I think best represents our new album,” Allegories’ Adam Bentley explains. ” “There are elements from many different iterations of the song still in there, and sonically, it feels like it touches on the kaleidoscope of sounds and genres that the record eventually became.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul Share a Shimmering, Uneasy and Confrontational Ode to Motherhood

Acclaimed Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul‘s latest single, the Pupul and Soulwax co-produced “GOOGOO GAGA” is the duo’s first release since 2022’s widely acclaimed full-length debut, Topical Dancer. Built around a restless, uneasy production that seemingly blends Timbaland’s classic and beloved 90s era, footwork, hyper pop and deep house featuring tweeter and woofer rattling thump and shimmering synths beneath Adigéry’s unique delivery which manages to be ironic and earnest within a turn of a phrase.

“GOOGOO GAGA” finds Adigéry giving voice to the relentless rhythms of caring for a young child: feeding and carrying, crying and sleeping, mess and repetition, guilt and uncertainty. Thematically, the song explores the largely invisible work of parenthood and of motherhood, the endless small acts of care alongside the much larger questions that accompanying them: How do you protect a child without allowing fear to dictate their life? How do you learn to be a parent while you are already parenting? And what happens to the idea that raising a child “takes a village” when so much of that responsibility is still experienced alone?

”It takes a village, and yet you’re doing it alone. This record was made as we both became parents: ‘Googoo Gaga’ is about feeling drained, the self-sacrifice, the overwhelm, yet embracing all of it,” the Belgian duo explain.

Directed by Lennert Madou, the accompanying video extends the song’s central questions of motherhood into a wider meditation of race, gender and their relationship to power — by referencing the Flemish folkloric figure De Mammelokker, a legend embedded into the folklore of the duo’s hometown of Ghent, and itself derived from the ancient story of Roman Charity. In the De Mammelokker tale, a prisoner condemned to starvation is kept alive when his daughter secretly breastfeeds him during her visits.

The video remains the tale with a Black woman (Adigéry) feeding an elderly white man, which transforms an image of nature into something uncomfortable and confrontational. In Madou and the Belgian duo’s interpretation, care is not synonymous with submission. And as a result, the video asks who is expected to nourish whom. whose labor sustains existing power structures and what happens when person who’s traditionally underestimated within that structure becomes a source of survival.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bodywash Shares Dreamy, 90s Alt-Rock Inspired “Lapsang”

Montréal-based JOVM mainstays Bodywash — Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter — will be releasing their third album, Laughing at Noise on November 20, 2026 through Light Organ. The album reportedly finds the duo taking stock of the ambivalent feelings that have gathered behind them over the past decade of their professional music careers: Steward and Long Decter, who started playing together in a dorm room practice space while at university are now in their early 30s. And in that time, the city that nurtured their creative expressive has become a decidedly harsher place. Rents rise as abounded properties known locally as brownfields are transformed into new developments and pricey real estate; DIY spaces wither in structural shadow; summer is hazier and heavier.

Laughing at Noise doesn’t indulge in nostalgia or cynicism — rather, it sees the duo sorting through what it means to grow older and keep on with both wariness and wisdom 2023’s I Held The Shape While I Could was swirling, elegant and elastic, but as they began writing new material, the duo found themselves pulled towards a more stripped-back approach. Steward was enamored with acoustic guitar and Long Decor was writing on guitar and bass rather than on keys.

The songs that would eventually comprise their third album are much more playful and worn-in, and the overall sound of the album follows. It’s a bit rougher around the edges, seeing the JOVM mainstays trading an adherence to fidelity for a looser, nosier sound that gradually developed over months of experimentation.

The duo produced the album over the course of a year at Autoland Audio in Montréal’s Parc-Ex neighborhood and enlisted Asher Gould-Murtagh for mixing duties. Sonically, the album further cements their unique blend of shoegaze and dream pop but with a scrappier 80s indie rock sensibility in tone and point of view, seemingly nodding at the likes of Elliott Smith and Kim Gordon, complete with a dialing up of distortion and fuzziness.

But the album is rooted in a Montréal perspective — a point of view, along with its melodic sensibilities that buoys it all from being overly world-weary. Long Decter says that she might call Laughing at Noise, the band’s “Montréal album.” The album embodies the perceptive on home that can only come with time. Steward adds, ” “The longer you stay somewhere, the more you become the yardstick against which everything is measured.”

Laughing at Noise’s first single “Lapsang” is a seamless — and downright effortless — blend of dream pop, indie folk and 90s alt rock featuring swirling synths, strummed acoustic, glitchy feedback beneath Steward’s dreamy delivery and their uncanny melodic and harmonic sensibility. At one point Steward sings “I took the bus down the bike lane” — a snow globe-like image of the city’s uniquely charming and unruly frustrations — before reflecting “I’ve lived around here for a long time.”

Steward explainss, “‘Lapsang’ is an ode to Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood and the years I spent there, waiting for the 55 bus. It’s named after my favourite, impossibly smokey blend of tea, which has the most sing-song of names: Lapsang Souchong. The riff and verse were written during an ice storm, where the resulting power outage forced me to write most of the song without a computer. The frozen tree tendrils looked a lot like the leaves of the tea I was brewing, prompting a working title that would never be changed. Later, Rosie and I would record separate melodies for the chorus in the studio, only to realise they could be woven together seamlessly.”

Directed by Evangelos Desborough, the accompanying video for “Lapsung” follows an Elvis impersonator as he amps himself for a gig at a community center/VFW. But throughout the gig, he seems woefully out of place with the guests not paying much attention to him. We then see the Elvis impersonator on the Montréal Métro, walking home and lost in his own melancholy. Some of the locations are familiar, including one that looks like Rue Sherbrooke near I think Rue St. Denis.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: GIFT Shares Rousingly Anthemic, Arena Rock Friendly “Hand To The Flame”

Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays GIFT — TJ Freda (vocals, guitar, production), Jessica Gurewitz (synths, vocals, guitar), Kallan Campbell (bass), Justin Hrabovsky (synths, guitar) and Gabe Camarano (drums) — will be releasing their third album, the TJ Freda and Teddy Mars co-produced Frenzy For The Thill on January 15, 2027 through Captured Tracks.

The JOVM mainstays began in earnest during the pandemic with the band’s Freda holed up in Brooklyn building the lush layers of what would become the band’s 2022 full-length debut, Momentary Presence. Both Momentary Presence and it’s follow-up, 2024’s Illuminator saw the band blending various strains of psychedelic music — krautrock, New Wave, electronic music and shoegaze — while cataloging Freda’s ongoing battles with panic attacks, frequently seeking to counter anxiety with transcendence. However, before the creation of GIFT’s third album, TJ Freda found that particular metaphorical drug wasn’t working.

The tours to support Illuminator had left Freda ragged and burned out. When a friend offered to let him stay at their Los Angeles home for two months, it seemed — at the time — to be a perfect way to decompress, to take time and write songs for other artists, and to put GIFT to the side for a bit. However, Freda arrived in Los Angeles as firefighters put out the final fires of early last year, to a house full of ash and not much else than the instruments he brought him. Moved by the renewal and resilience he saw in Angelenos coming together in the wake of the wildfires, the GIFT frontman suddenly felt a creative outpouring.

New GIFT songs arrived much more angst-ridden than in the past, yet not within their own sense of release. For the GIFT frontman, the songs were vehicles to ask the big, existential questions: Now, in his 30s, had watched friends settle down, but he found he was not doing searching. “Making Frenzy For The Thrill was partially about exploring the balance of living as an artist without disappearing into it,” Freda explains. From despondence, Freda emerged with a revitalized sense of creative purpose and direction.

Freda found himself gravitation towards grittier, angstier inspirations including 90s alt-rock, grunge and brasher iterations of electronic music. Combined with the band having become a tight, deeply connected unit honed by rigorous touring. Freda wanted to create something more visceral and collaborative. And as a result, Frenzy For The Thrill may arguably be the most-band orientated album of their catalog to date, anchored around the sound of five musicians diving into the madness together with an “one-for-all, all-for-one” sort of approach.

While adopting much of the ethos and structure of dance music, the album reportedly harnesses the energy the immediate energy the band cultivated onstage, while also incorporating more of their individual personalities and instincts in the overall arrangements and songwriting, Frenzy For The Thrill is anchored in far-seeing melodies and synth textures the band has become known for, while paired with what may be the most muscular performances to date.

Lessons are learned by the end of the album, including a soft of hard-won self-acceptance on the other side of the album’s violence, a healthier, more balanced life after staring into the void. “We’re always looking for resolutions, but life isn’t like that,” Freda concludes. “Frenzy For The Thrill is about still being in love with the chase knowing we might not find answers on the other side. This is the sound of us crashing headlong into the unknown.” 

Frenzy For The Thrill’s first single “Hand To The Flame'” is a seamless blend of fuzzy grunge and shoegaze-inspired riffs, dance punk and post-punk-like four-on-the-floor and glistening synth arpeggios paired with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. Seemingly nodding at Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness-era Smashing Pumpkins, “Hand To The Flame” may arguably be the JOVM mainstay outfit’s most ambitious, most arena rock friendly songs they’ve written and released to date.

Taking some inspiration from the hubris parable of the story of Icarus, fire became a crucial organizing image for the GIFT frontman as he considered the border between ambition and ego, the pitfalls of obsession and the idea of cleansing one’s past by letting it all go up in smoke. “‘Hand To The Flame’ is holding onto passion, and what makes us human while the world falls apart. Desperately chasing passion in a passionless world,” Freda explains. “Like charging full speed towards something you know will eventually hurt you. Repeatedly putting your hand in the flame with the same outcome, knowing it will always be the same outcome but hoping it will be different.  There’s romance in the chase, regardless of whether or not its going to hurt when you get to the end.”

Directed by Sydney VillacortaBuer, the accompanying video for “Hand To The Flame” is decidedly 90s inspired — and perhaps takes cues from Hole’s Celebrity Skin album art: The video is split between the band wandering around the smokey embers of a smoldering fire and dancing around an enormous bonfire, conjuring something ancient and primitive.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Locust Shares Yearning “Love Stays”

Mark Van Hoen is a London-born and based electronic music artist, who has written, recorded and released music with his best-known project Locust, with Autocreation and under his own name. Originally influenced by Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream and others, Van Horn’s music career started in earnest back in 1993 hen he signed with  Belgian-based label R&S. His initial releases as Locust saw him using vintage analog synthesizers and tape recorders. But as his sound moved towards an increasingly vocal orientated approach in the late 1990s, he also began releasing material under his own name. 

Van Hoen also collaborated with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead in Black Hearted Brother, a project that released their debut Stars Are Our Home in 2013. 

The London-born and-based electronic music artist’s latest Locust album. the 10-song, Spectral + was released last week through TODO Records. The album follows significant anticipation from fans of the project since Van Hoen assembled a new live band featuring musician and KCRW/NTS Radio DJ Olive Kimoto (vocals, keys), Derek Mabra (guitar) and Jaelyn Valero (drums). The Locust live band played their first shows last year, the project’s first live shows since opening for Massive Attack back in the 1990s. And since then, the project has fleshed out and road-tested the material, which would eventually comprise Spectral + – with some portions of the material developed further onstage. “We’re establishing this identity as a live band — we’ve really bonded, all really good friends, all rooting for it,” Locust creative mastermind Mark Van Hoen says. “People can see we’re a tight band, they’re not hired hands.”

The albums’s material moves between oceanic drone and pop songcraft, threading orchestral stings and understated guitars through Van Hoen’s signature synth work. The seems him working with the sound that helped create IDM in the 90s while finding new shapes to move in.  “This record contains a broad spectrum of songs that are an assimilation of my influences and my own earlier music,” Van Hoen says. ” It’s contemplative, sometimes melancholy, sometimes abrasive and pastoral.” The album’s tile reflects the sheer variation, the range of color across the album’s songs.

“Olive Kimoto (vocals, keyboards) instigated all this.,” Van Hoen says of his collaborations with Kimoto. “I was playing a solo show in September 2024, and she came to that – she had been running a club called Heaven or Los Angeles, a Cocteau Twins reference which I immediately liked. We met, and she said how much she liked my music. She did a two-hour radio special with me on my music, and we decided to collaborate.”

Spectral + includes the previously released “Long Distance Lover,” a collaboration with Slowdive‘s Neil Halstead and Natasha Morrow and the album’s latest single “Love Stays.” “Love Stays” features a seemingly Surrender-era The Chemical Brothers-like production of twinkling keys and skittering and chugging boom bap beneath guest vocalist Omotola’s soulful and yearning delivery singing lyrics about love and working things out.

The video by Locust’s Mark Van Hoen features Omotola as a spectral and technicolor siren, singing the song’s lyrics directly to the viewer.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: EL Drez Teams Up with Jessmine and Lavien on Breezy “We Outside”

Marphus L. Drez Stewart, is a Buchanan, Liberia-born and-based Afro pop/R&B singer/songwriter, best known as EL Drez. The emerging Liberian artist can trace his passion for music and the origins of his music career to his upbringing: As a teenager, he was the choir director for his church.

Since then, Stewart caught the attention of Relumae Liberia, who signed him, and have released a handful of singles over the past 17-18 months or so, including sleek, hook-driven, KrisBeatz-proudced “Hosanna” and his latest single, the Masterkraft-produced “We Outside” feat. Jassmine and Lavien.

“We Outside” is breezy and hooky blend of dancehall, Afrobeats and hip-hop that’s simultaneously club, lounge and radio friendly. The song manages to capture the effortless, playful simpatico between each collaborator while being remarkably accessible — and just a much-needed bit of joy. Each collaborator gets their moment to strut and shine creatively; but at its core, “We Outside” is the sort of song meant to get you to the dance floor, dance away your worries and to live a little bit.

The accompanying video is a gorgeous, stylishly shot visual that’s meant to bring the party — directly to you and your home.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Virginie B. Shares Euphoric “Chamaille”

JOVM mainstay Virginie B is a rising, Montréal-based self-taught singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and self-described “extravagant mess” has long been influenced by a wide range of music, including experimental electronic music, classical, old-timey jazz, 90s R&B, art pop, art rock and more. 

Her full-length debut, 2022’s INSULA was released to praise from ICI Première, Le Devoir, La Presse, Montreal Rocks!, and PAN M 360. The album also earned a GAMIQ. Pop Album of the Year nomination. And adding to a growing profile, the French Canadian artist has made a run of the provincial festival circuit, playing sets at Francofoiles de Montréal, Coup de Cœur Francophone, Le Phoque OFF, Santa Teresa Festival, Taverne Tour, 2022’s M for Montréal. She also played at SXSW back in 2023.

2024’s Astral 2000, which featured album opener and title track “Astral 2000” saw the Montréal-based artist releasing what may arguably be the province’s first hyper pop album. Since then she’s been busy collaborating with fellow JOVM mainstay Super Plage and a list of others.

Produced by long-time collaborator Louis Jeay-Beaulieau, “Chamaille,” the acclaimed JOVM mainstay’s first bit of new material since Astral 2000 is a high-octane bop that has become a staple of her live shows since she first played it on stage over a year ago. Live, the new single is often paired with her techno cover of “Lost Woods,” the iconic Koji Kondo-composed theme, which appears on the soundtrack of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. She typically blends both tunes seamlessly into one another during he live sets, culminating into one of her set’s most exhilarating moments.

Originally written on piano with French pop artist Mylène Farmer in mind, the new single may arguably be the most dance floor friendly and euphoric tunes of her growing catalog to date. Reportedly, the new single is a transitional track that’s meant to bridge the gap between 2024’s sophomore album and the next chapter of her career. Built around production featuring glistening synths and skittering beats, “Chamaille” is a hooky, club banger that seemingly blends elements of footwork and Euordance beneath the JOVM mainstay’s yearning delivery.

“I was thinking about those long, late nights spent sitting on the sidewalk outside the bar, confiding in strangers. Sharing the intensity of life—even in half-spoken words, even when it’s late, even if we’re hurting ourselves a little in the process—and pouring ourselves into the other person to forget the immensity of the surrounding chaos. Finding comfort in the now, courage in sharing, to face the next day—is it really so bad if it makes us feel better, even just a little?” The acclaimed Montréal-based artist says of the new song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: THIEF Shares Bruising, Expansive “Moon and Kill”

Starting his career as a member of San Francisco-based experimental black metal outfit BOTANIST, contributing hammered dulcimer and bass for their acclaimed 2017’s Collective: The Shape of He to Come, the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dylan Neal initially split his time with BOTANIST and his solo recording project THIEF, with which he has released 2016’s Thieves Hymn in D Minor, 2019’s Map of Lost Keys, 2021’s The 16 Deaths of My Master and the Cicatrix/Diamond Brush split album with BOTANIST and 2024’s Bleed Memory.

Neal’s fifth THIEF album, Sermons from the Pit is slated for a November 27. 2026 release through Prophecy Productions. Reportedly, Neal’s most ambitious and uncompromising effort to date, Sermons from the Pit socially pairs the project’s manipulated liturgical choirs with his self-described and self-developed “Cathedral Clipping” production technique, in which reverberant sounds are reportedly overdriven through successive gain stages to produce dense, harmonic distortion, feedback and cavernous textures. Sonically, Sermons from the Pit is THEIF as its most visceral and forceful: ethereal choirs are paired with pummeling rhythms and towering walls of sound. The result is something both intimate and unsettling. Neal describes the album as “transmissions from an unspeakable place”—a descent beneath the surface of consciousness into the murkiness of the subconscious and where belief takes shape.

Sermons from the Pit’s first single “Moon and Kill” is a bruising and anthemic blend of industrial, goth, trap and New Wave featuring skittering tweeter and roofer rattling beats, scorching synths and guitars paired with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. The song moves through furious mosh pit-inducing rage, melancholy and meditative introspection and acceptance throughout its expansive structure.

“Sermons from the Pit moves through stages of frenetic energy which are tempered by sullen, meditative moments of respite. “’Moon and Kill’ is a microcosm of that, encapsulating the album’s broader thematic movement from rage to despair and acceptance,” THEIF creative mastermind Dylan Neal says. “The ending is one of my favorite moments on the album, where the vocals are just kind of cooing over a time-stretched organ and choral sample. The track’s voice oscillates between executioner and victim. At the risk of stealing the listener’s meaning away, I’ll speak of the track by saying that when love and trust collapse, the same anger and disbelief experienced by murderers and saints alike are experienced. Which implement do you choose? Weapon or forgiveness?”

The accompanying video was shot, edited and features visual effects by Dylan Neal and is fittingly haunted, while depicting what appears to be an execution before its eerie coda.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Trentemøller and Mew’s Jonas Bjerre Team Up on Shimmering and Anthemic “Terrified”

Anders Trentemøller’s self-titled eighth Trentemøller album is slated for a November 13, 2026 release through his In My Room Records. The self-titled album’s latest single “Terrified” feat. Mew‘s Jonas Bjerre is a collaboration that finds the Danish artists crafting an anthemic bit of uplift that’s seamlessly blend of shoegaze and twinkling, hook-driven dream pop paired with stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

Throughout the song’s runtime, Bjerre sings lyrics that focus tackling the specter of fear head-on. “When the instrumental was done, I sent it to Jonas Bjerre with a few melody ideas, which he took further while adding new melodies of his own,” Trentemøller says. He then reshaped the track, explaining “‘Terrified’ is probably the poppiest song on the album. In its original form it sounded a bit more shoegazey, but I wanted it to be crisper and clearer, less washed out. So I went for synths that almost sound like human voices, with a magical, otherworldly quality to them.”

“I think sometimes when you dream about things that make you fearful and uneasy, it’s your mind trying to prepare you for any scenario, like you’re processing catastrophes that have not and may not ever happen,” Mew’s Jonas Bjerre says of the song’s themes.

Directed by Jonas Bjerre, the accompanying video for “Terrified” is a mind-bending blend of animation, live action footage and photography that turns the collaborators’ hometown of Copenhagen into a lysergic, brightly colored dream.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Erykah Badu and The Alchemist Team Up on Woozy and Mind-Bending “Witch Doctor”

In the 11 years since her last release and 16 since her last studio album, Erykah Badu has been busy, gathering not conclusions but rather, a series of existential insights through whirlwind touring, teaching, motherhood, doula work and the sort of deep reflection informed by living and raising children in a rapidly changing, increasingly dystopian world. During that same period, her cultural influence has only expanded: The five-time Grammy Award-winner with 20 nominations appeared on the cover of Vogue back in 2023. received the CDFA Fashion Icon Award in 2024 and Billboard‘s Icon Award last year. And she has done this while continuing to collaboration across generations with the like software Janelle Monáe, Tyler, the Creator, Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper, Teyana Taylor, Rapsody, and a lengthy list o others.

The Alchemist has firmly established a reputation for being one of hip-hop’s most prolific producers, releasing multiple efforts a year including, last year’s Alfredo 2 with Freddie Gibbs, the sequel to their Grammy Award 2020 album Alfredo; last year’s Life Is Beautiful with Larry June and 2 Chainz; this year’s Spiral Staircases with Larry June and Curren$y and LIQUID FORM. Continuing a remarkably prolific and productive period, The Alchemist and Erykah Badu teamed up for Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment.

Abi is Badu. Alan is The Alchemist. Released today through Control Freaq Records /YOUNG, the acclaimed duo’s collaboration finds Badu contemplating which parts of ourselves and our stories — love, innocence, dreams, memories, womanhood — are worth protecting before the world breaks apart and fragments. Meditative and fluid, the album’s material unfolds across four movements, charting the progression of the self through the prisms of of love, art and identity while inviting the listener to sit with difficult and complex feelings. Throughout the album’s runtime, passion blurs with desire, hope with grief — with each song revealing another facet of Badu’s universe. Or shall we call it the Baduverse?

The collaboration between the two acclaimed artist can trace its origins back to roughly 2023: Badu told her longtime creative partner Cold Cris that she always wanted to rap over Mobb Deep’s “The Realest,” a gritty, thumping yet soulful Alchemist production. The Alchemist — who had quietly been hoping to work with Badu for years — was introduced soon after, and their conversations grew into a full-fledged collaborative effort. The duo’s first studio session together in Los Angeles yielded the previously released “Next to You.” which laid the foundation for what would become an entirely new sonic language. Later, The Alchemist sent Baud a collection of instrumental beats, which she deconstructed and sculpted into tracks that felt uniquely hers, embellishing his warm, punchy samples with kalimba, immersive chord structures and drums. The’s album material sonically moves fluidly and effortlessly between soul, blues, funk, jazz and underground hip-hop and yet somehow belongs entirely to none of them.

Between 2024-2025, Badu and The Alchemist road-tested the album’s material live, performing in intimate, phone-free settings with Badu’s digital collective The Cannabinoids and The Alchemist on the MPC, fine tuning tracks along the way. The result is quite possibly the most forward-thinking batch of material of either artist’s career, an album that’s meant to live and evolve with you through space and time while inviting the lister to continually explore themselves, to have one more kiss, one more hit, one more dance, one more joke, all before the world blows.

“Witch Doctor,” Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment‘s latest single is a woozy and strutting blend of neo soul, soul jazz, hip-hop, voodoo and experimental pop within an expansive, endlessly mothering, kaleidoscopic production branch Badu’s imitable, jazz-like croon. Throughout the song Badu referencing witches having a deeper, more mystical connection with both their universe and their surroundings — unlike those cornball TV witches.

Directed by and starring Erykah Badu with a brief cameo by The Alchemist, with cinematography by Ayinde Anderson, the accompanying video for “Watch Doctor” is both a companion piece and a sort of continuing of the Dallas-born artists 2010 short film “Window Seat.” 16 years later, Badu returns to the same Dallas neighborhood with a new perspective, exploring what remains after the world as taken everything it can from an artist, and pointing towards the one thing it can never manufacture, characterize or possess: the very source itself.