Tag: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Punchy “Pay No Mind”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. 

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” and the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There.”

Hoopla‘s third and latest single “Pay No Mind” is a punchy, downright punk rock-like take on power pop, anchored around Edkins’ unerring knack for ridiculously catchy hooks and big riffs paired with what may arguably be his most socially aware, thoughtful lyrics of his growing catalog.

“We had a blast making this video with director Ryan Faist,” the Weird Nightmare creative mastermind says,. “It was a nod to the Elvis Costello and the Attractions ‘Pump it Up‘ video and some early footage of the Buzzcocks on cable access TV. 
 
“The lyric was lifted from an Atlantic City tourism t-shirt. ‘I’m so broke, I can’t even pay attention‘ struck me as a particularly accurate comment on modern life. Obviously, the shirt is meant to be funny, but it felt quite dark to me. Due to the overwhelming onslaught of information and emotional baggage that comes with it, I think there is a tendency for people’s lives to become quite myopic. As a coping mechanism, we become more and more insular, ignoring the world around us.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A Place to Bury Strangers Returns with Pulsing “Acid Rain”

New York-based JOVM mainstays  A Place to Bury Strangers — currently Oliver Ackermann (vocals, guitar), John Fedowitz (bass) and Sandra Fedowitz (drums) — will be releasing a rarities album, Rare and Deadly through Dedstrange on April 3, 2026. 

Following 2024’s Synthesizer, Rare and Deadly sees the band cracking open a decade-long vault of raw nerve and sonic chaos. Spanning 2015-2025, this collection of demos, B-sides, abandoned experiments and forgotten fragments reveals the band at their most unfiltered, frequently caught between breakthrough ideas and beautiful mistakes. 

Pulled from Oliver Ackermann’s personal archive of late-night recordings, blown-out tapes and half-finished sessions, the collection’s tracks pulse with the unruly energy that ATPBS has long been known for, but more dangerous with more jagged edges — on purpose. 

Countless bands have opened up their vaults to fans and others, but Rare and Deadly is truly unprecedented: Every format is different — and as a result, tells a different story. The CD, cassette, vinyl and digital editions each feature their own unique track listing. No single version features the “complete” album. Instead, each format is its own window into Ackermann’s archive, revealing alternate paths, missing links and parallel “what if” versions of the band’s inner life. It’s deliberately unstable with the album shifting depending on how you choose to hear it, mirroring the chaos of its creation. 

Across the collection’s tracks, you can hear the evolution of Ackermann’s restlessly creative mind. Some pieces feel like prototypes for future chaos, seeds that later bloomed on studio albums. Others are dead ends — ideas too volatile, too strange or too personal to ever fit the frame of a proper release. The tracks feature riffs mutated by malfunctioning pedals, songs born from gear pushed past its limits, or delicate melodies overwhelmed by towering walls of feedback. 

Rare and Deadly will include the previously released, tense and menacing “Everyone’s The Same,” and the album’s second and latest single, “Acid Rain.” “Acid Rain” is a frustrated howl of a song, anchored around a relentlessly breakneck, motorik pulse, buzzing guitars, wild bursts of scorching feedback paired with Ackermann’s vocals, which are also fed through effects pedals.

“Acid Rain” was informed by the first Trump presidency. “Cruelty felt not just normalized, but weaponized. Watching people in power openly coerce others into silence, compliance, and violence was horrifying, and still is,” APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann explains. “What shook me most was how casual it all felt, how easily people turned their heads while others were being crushed.”

“The chanting at the beginning was recorded during the George Floyd protests in Manhattan and Brooklyn, real voices, real streets, real fear mixed with hope,” Ackermann adds. “For a moment, it felt like maybe people would finally wake up and refuse this racist machinery. But here we are, still watching detention centers, modern slavery, and countless other atrocities continue under different names. ‘Acid Rain’ is rage, grief, and disbelief all colliding at once, the sound of watching history repeat itself while knowing exactly how wrong it is.”

Directed by Gerson Vargas, the accompanying video was shot on January 16, 2026. The video follows the band as they get on the last car of a Manhattan-bound M train at Marcy Avenue, turning the subway car into a moving stage for a raucous live rendition of “Acid Rain” during the length of the Williamsburg Bridge into the Lower East Side. The guerilla-styled footage wasn’t scripted. There’s no script. And as a result, it perfectly captures the relentless pulse of the song and the city.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hush Returns with Shimmering and Woozy “Phasing”

Montréal-based trio Hush — Paige Barlow (vocals) and multi-instrumentalists Miles Dupire-Gagnon and Gabriel Lambert — are part of a new wave of Montréal-based acts actively reshaping psych pop. And each member is an accomplished member of the local scene, with the band featuring members of Hippie Houraah, Elephant Stone, Anemone, and The Besnard Lakes.

Citing an eclectic array of influences that includes Broadcast, The Velvet Underground, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Steve Lacy, Cocteau Twins and Ariel Pink, the Montréal-based psych pop trio create a sound that’s simultaneously nostalgic and forward-looking. Their music lives in the blurred light of perception — half memory, half hallucination — and is an invitation to lose yourself inside of their hall of mirrors-like dream world. 

Late last year, I wrote about the Canadian trio’s debut single, the Bibi Club-like “The Mirrors Were Right,” which also serves as the first single from their full-length debut, slated for a 2026 release through Simone Records. Their debut album’s second and latest single, album opener “Phasing” is a shimmering and ethereal blend of 60s psych pop, trip-hop and dream pop with Barlow’s radiant delivery darting and dancing around the dreamy accompanying arrangement and production.

The song thematically explores the uneasy ebb, shift and flow of feeling and perception, at points questioning the reciprocity and durability of our relationships with a seemingly lived-in quality.

Conceived by the band’s Paige Barlow and Aabid Youssef further emphasizes the song’s woozy and mind-bending blur: We see blurry images of local scenes projected both behind and in front of the band. The band also blurs in and out throughout.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TOMORA Shares Euphoric “SOMEWHERE ELSE”

TOMORA is a new collaborative project featuring:

  • The Chemical Brothers‘ Tom Rowlands: As one-half of The Chemical Brothers, Rowlands has produced and recorded six widely acclaimed UK #1 albums and won six Grammy Awards.

  • Norwegian artist AURORA: AURORA has released four studio albums and has quickly become one of Norway’s most influential and globally recognized contemporary artists. Her single “Runaway” has amassed over one-billion Spotify streams to date.

TOMORA builds upon a creative relationship that can be traced to the recording sessions for The Chemical Brothers’ 2019 album No Geography. AURORA contributed vocals to three tracks, including “Eve of Destruction.” Rowlands then went on to contribute to AURORA’s 2024 effort, What Happened to the Heart?, which landed on the UK Top 10.

Initially, speculation was rife as to who — or what — the then-mysterious TOMORA was or could be, after the name appeared on Coachella’s 2026 Festival lineup post without any additional information last year. Last December, the duo released their debut single “Ring The Alarm,” which received praise from Spin, BrooklynVegan, Stereogum and DJ Mag. “Ring The Alarm” also received DJ support from Erol Alkan, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U and a long list of others.

The duo’s TOMORA debut single was then released on a very limited and collectible white label vinyl, alongside B-side “The Thing,” which showcase a glimpse of the tender and hauntingly beautiful downtempo tracks that will appear on the duo’s full-length debut, COME CLOSER.

Slated for an April 17, 2026 release through Capitol Records, COME CLOSER was written and produced jointly by Rowlands and AURORA. The 12-song album sees the duo pairing the Norwegian artist’s distinctive vocal with the acclaimed British producer’s unparalleled studio expertise. While the album sees the duo creating their own unique space, somewhere they can produce the kind of magic that comes from flicking through a perfect record collection, flowing from wigged-out 1960s psychedelia to the hyper-futurism of sounds imagined for the 2060s. 

Ultimately though, the album is less about two separate and distinct artists finding a fertile middle ground and more the sound of two tenacious individuals connecting in the studio and hitting massive creative peaks together. 

“This is our album COME CLOSER, it is everything we dreamt of. We made it without obligation or expectation, just a joy in creation,” the duo says. “It’s the sound where we meet, the landing zone of our musical escape pods. It is a special place to us. We hope you dig it as much as we do.”

Last month, I wrote about album the hauntingly mesmerizing album title track “COME CLOSER.” Building upon the attention and momentum of the album’s previously released singles, COME CLOSER‘s latest single begins with AURORA’s otherworldly and ethereal melody and pairs it with a blissed out, relentlessly driving, hyper-futuristic production. The result is a song that sounds as though it could have been beamed from a futuristic interplanetary civilization in the year 4239 while simultaneously intimate, yearning and rousingly anthemic.

“’SOMEWHERE ELSE’ is one of the first songs we ever wrote, as TOMORA. And it opened up a big door for us, into our world,” AURORA says. Tom Rowland adds, “Ever since AURORA sang that melody to me it’s been running around my head brightening my day. We played an early version of the song at Glastonbury Festival and it felt like magic. Now we get to share it, it’s a total joy.”

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Adam Smith and S T A R T !, the accompanying video for “SOMEWHERE ELSE” begins with AURORA waking up under the pier of a beach, not quite sure how she got there with one shoe missing. The rest of the video we see the Norwegian artist on an afternoon at the amusement park, wandering through a town and other adventures, potentially tripping and/or appearing like a humanoid alien trying to figure out human life.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: BRDN Shares Woozy and Brooding “Unparalleled”

German electronic outfit BRDN (pronounced as “burden”) has quickly established a sound that sees them pair powerful synth structures with smooth vocal sequences and driving rhythms. Their work takes listeners to the more brooding side of introspection with his work thematically touching upon self-doubt and the desperate search for purpose. The result is a fever dream, ripe for interpretation and analysis.

The German outfit’s sophomore EP Maybe in another life is slated for release in June. The EP’s first single, “Unparalleled” is an eerily minimalist tune, featuring glistening synths and skittering beats serving as an uneasy and brooding bed for BRDN’s yearning delivery. Sonically, recalling The Ways We Separate and Escapements-era Beacon, “Unparalleled,” conveys a woozy sense of regret-fueled self-doubt.

Shot at dusk and at night, the accompanying video follows two lonely souls, full of brooding self-doubt and regret.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Fantôme Paradis Shares CInematic “Ámes sœurs”

Fantôme Paradis is the synth wave/darkwave recording projecting of a mysterious and emerging French producer. The mysterious French producer’s latest single “Âmes sœurs” features glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling thump as a lush bed for a yearning, female French vocal.

Sonically nodding at a synthesis of The Weeknd and John Carpenter soundtracks, “Âmes sœurs” according to the mysterious French producer explores a relationship in crisis, caught in an uneasy conflict between devotion and hatred.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: she’s green Shares Stormy and Anthemic “mettle”

Minneapolis-based outfit she’s green — Zofia Smith (vocals), Liam Armstrong (guitar), Raimes Lucas (guitar), Teddy Nordvold (guitar) and Kevin Seeback (drums) — specialize in crafting dreamy soundscapes that transport the listener to scenes of soft summer rain and fields of swaying wheat, infused with raw emotional intensity. 

With their earliest singles “river” and “smile again,” the Minneapolis-based quintet quickly became a staple within the Midwestern alternative scene, while earning praise from Complex, Star Tribune and The Current. Their debut EP, 2023’s Wisteria saw the band establishing an honest and exploratory songwriting process and a reputation for being a force in the world of sonic surrealism. Adding to a growing profile, the rising Minnesotans have supported their material with tours throughout the Midwest and East Coast with the likes of Hotline TNT, Friko, JOVM mainstays Glixen and a list of others. 

Last year, the Minneapolis-based quartet signed to New York-based Photo Finish Records, who released their Henry Stoehr-produced sophomore EP Chrysalis. The EP included  the Souvlaki-era Slowdive-like “Graze,” and the Sundays-meets-A Storm In Heaven-like “Willow.”

Building upon a growing national profile, the band shares their latest single “mettle.” Continuing a remarkable run of 120 Minutes-era MTV-like shoegaze and dream pop, “mettle” features Zofia Smith’s powerhouse yet tender vocal ethereally floating over a stormy soundscape of hazy reverb-drenched guitars, sculpted and abrasive riffs and thunderous, driving drums. The song manages to be simultaneously oceanic yet intimate, rooted in personal experiences that are all too familiar and universal.

“‘mettle’ channels the frustration and discomfort that stem from what often feels like constant bad news, while also being an anthem of resilience and the courage to take action and bring about positive change,” the band’s Zofia Smith explains.

Directed by Jaxon Whittington, the accompanying 120 Minutes-era MTV-like video begins with the band’s Smith walking through an eerie forest scene similar to horror movies and is split between horror movie-like vibes and the band playing in the same forest.

The band will have a very busy 2026: Earlier this month, they announced that they’d be opening for Chapterhouse on select dates on that band’s first North American tour in 16 years. During the spring they’ll also open for Bad Suns and Slow Crush with some headlining sets and appearances at Nothing.’s touring Slide Away Festival. The festival will have a stop at the Brooklyn Paramount.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: London’s Mouth Ulcers Share Brooding “Prevail”

London-based outfit Mouth Ulcers — Zak Watson (vocals, guitar), Josephine Rose (guitar, vocals), Jamie Lee Culver (bass) and David Zbirka (drums) — are part of a new generation of dark post-punk that’s actively reshaping the genre into something urgent, youthful and intoxicating.

With the release of their two singles, last year’s “Western Horror Story” and “A Perfect End” the British quartet have quickly developed a sound that they’ve playfully dubbed as “music for vampires to dance to” — i.e. brooding, groove-driven and irresistibly cool.

The band recently made their live debut with sold-out shows in both the UK and The Netherlands. Building upon that momentum, the band recently signed to LAB Records, who will release their highly-anticipated debut EP — and they’re planning to announce some extensive summer tour dates.

But in the meantime, the band’s latest single “Prevail” is a brooding bit of post-punk featuring shimmering, reverb-soaked guitars, atmospheric synths and a motrik-like groove serving as a lush bed for Watson’s yearning baritone. Seemingly channeling Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure and others, “Prevail” showcases a remarkably self-assured new band and their ability to craft hook-driven anthems for vampires and goths.

“The meaning behind Prevail was inspired by the film Stalker by Tarkovsky,” the band explains. “The mental and physical struggle of surviving ‘The Zone’, a hostile and reality warping environment which threatens to erase one’s sanity.”

Directed and edited by the band, the accompanying video for “Prevail” playing the song in a cave-like basement and on an abandoned, seemingly haunted English farm. For me, it brings back memories of watching 120 Minutes.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Return with Shimmering “Only Love”

With the release of 2019’s Foreign Bodies, 2022’s Subterranea and 2024’s Regular Nature, Calgary-based JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers — founding duo Evan Resnik (vocals, guitar, synths, piano, sampling) and Mathieu Blanchard (drums, percussion, production) along with Nyssa Brown (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Crough (bass) — have firmly cemented a sound that blurs the boundaries between polished melodicism and opaque experimentation, auspicious romanticism and unbridled descent. Though anchored in the strange realties of our time, their sons are laced with a certain optimism through well-placed and well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms. 

The Calgary-based outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Spiritual Content is slated for a March 27, 2026 release through Mothland. The album reportedly sees the band further exploring the chiaroscuro depths of post-punk while simultaneously setting out to redefine their sound. Thematically, the album explores modern day life through allegorical songwriting, elevated by genuinely catchy melodies, resolute arrangements and stylish production.

Over the course of its breakneck 35-minute run, the album’s indie rock-meets-post-punk-tinged, nine songs reportedly captured fleeting yet endearing moments in time, their narrative bent, twisted and distorted into expansive and highly evocative soundscapes. The album is meant to layout like a psychedelic sequence where grooves dance and wiggle in and out, awaking feelings of wonder and awe, while also trigging emotions like bewilderment, fear and alienation. 

The album sees Resnik and Blanchard turning to their bandmates Brown and Brougham along with acclaimed producer and multi-instrumentalist Chad VanGaalen (synths, vibraphone, electric piano and additional production) to flesh out the album’s material. The band also continued their collaborations with mixing/mastering engineer Mark Lawson and former Besnard Lakes‘ Richard White, who took on vinyl mastering duties. 

Spiritual Content will include the Freedom of Choice-era Devo-inspired “Eye to Eye” and the album’s latest single “Only Love.” Seemingly channeling a synthesis of Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, early The Cure and Gang of Four, “Only Love” sees Resnik, Blanchard and company musing on the transformative and redemptive power of love — but it’s underpinned with the subtly bitter reality that nothing is forever, not even love.

Directed by Ethan Clark, the accompanying video features the band’s members at a packed house party but love — whether of someone else or self-love made the video’s protagonist change his life, perhaps for the better. We see this through a series of woozy flash backs and flash forwards, sometimes within the same scene.

“Only love can upend your lifestyle, change your patterns. You’re young, you’re out at parties all the time,” the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays explain. “Then something happens. Years pass in an instant. Maybe you found love, or self-love, or something else. Got healthy. Got busy. Where you used to go out, now you stay in. The party’s not over; it rages on in your memories. This video is kind of an illustration of those memories.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bibi Club Returns with incendiary “George Sand”

Deriving their name from their living room discotheque, where their “bibis” — or loved ones — come to dance, the Montréal-based duo Bibi Club — Adèle Trottier-Rivard (vocals, keys) and Nicolas Basque (guitar) — earned acclaim across both Québec and Europe with their debut album, 2022’s Le soleil et la mer, an album that won a Most Promising Award at that year’s GAMIQ Awards, a Discovery of the Year at that year’s ADISQ Awards and landed on the Polaris Music Prize long list. 

Le soleil et la mer received praise by a number of French outfits including Les Inrocks, Magic Magazine, Libération and France Inter and landed on Le Devoir, Les Inrocks‘ and Tsugi’s Best Albums of 2022 lists. And adding to a rapidly growing international profile, the album received airplay from BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq. 

Their sophomore album, 2024’s Feu de garde saw the band expanding upon their sound with darker textures and luminous synths. The album earned several nominations at that year’s ADISQ Awards and landed on the Polaris Music Prize short ling. The album was FNAC‘s album of the month for May and received praise from MOJO, Télérama, Record Collector, Uncut and many more.

Building upon a growing profile, the Montréal-based duo have begun making a run of the international festival circuit with sets at SXSW, The Great Escape, FOCUS Wales, MaMA Festival, Osheaga, The New Colossus Festival, as well as clubs in Brazil, Germany and Canada. They’ve also opened for Blonde Redhead, Circuit des Yuex and a list of others.

Bibi Club’s highly-anticipated third album Amaro is slated for a Friday release through Secret City Records. The album sees the acclaimed French Canadian duo inviting the listener to brave the dark beasts that shadow us beneath the surface, and to devote ourselves to the healing power of a fierce will to live. It explores the liminal spectrum between the here and beyond, pointing to love, nature and community as the deeply unifying purpose. The album’s material reportedly draw a detailed map of a world completely of its own, following the trajectory traced by the pair in recent years.

Now, out of the living room, we dance in a mental space overloaded with grief and fear in their most rawest forms. Following the death of two dear, loved ones in the last year, the mantra “I want to love, I want to live,” resonates intensely in each song’s melody, underlined by the belief that if the heart is a place that never dies, we must reach it as quickly as possible. 

Inspired by their tours with Blonde Redhead and Circuit des Yeux and a collaboration with Calvin Johnson, the duo’s sound now incorporates elements of avant pop, electronic body music, dark wave and neo-folk while simultaneously borrowing from baroque sounds with harpsichord, trumpet and ritual chants. The album also features contributions from saxophonist Dimitri Milbrun and singer/songwriter Helena Deland, who help contribute to its overall sound.

Amaro will include “Washing Machine,” which I wrote about last month, and the album’s latest and last pre-release single “George Sand.” Much like its immediate predecessor, “George Sand” is a breakneck, motorik-like chug featuring Dimitri Milbrun’s incendiary saxophone playing paired with Trottier-Rivard’s dreamy cooing. One-part dream pop, one-part no wave, one-part post punk and one-part art school punk, “George Sand” The band explains that the song was inspired by the radical 19th century feminist writer’s forest manifesto — an ode to life and nature.

“The writer George Sand was not only a strong, feminist and radical person, she was also a renowned botanist. This song is inspired by her manifesto for the survival of the Fontainebleau forest, an ode to life and nature, to the plants and trees that guide us,” the Montréal-based duo explain. “A song full of thirst for life, about the force of nature and the therapeutic benefits it provides. Nico quickly programmed the bass and the 606 drum machine, then everything fell into place, like the song. It was evident that the song needed our friend, radical artist Dimitri Milbrun to add some incendiary saxophone. At the end of the song, the guitar and saxophone blend together to form a force that destroys everything in its path.”

Directed and edited by Anna Arrobas, the accompanying video features the acclaimed duo performing the song in front of fire-based projections and brooding lighting by Flavie Lemée.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bella Litsa Shares Cinematic “Tied Together By a Silver Thread”

Isabella Komodromos is a classically trained pianist, who as a child split her time between Massachusetts and her father’s native Cyprus. Komodromos started piano lessons when she was six and quickly found herself gravitating towards minor keys and rewriting the lyrics in songbooks to be more macabre.

By the time she turned 13, she started vocal training, eventually attending Berklee College of Music, where she majored in songwriting and film scoring. Komodromos relocated to New York in 2020. Inspired by the city’s abrasiveness, she plunged into a musical and personal intensity to find her voice. The result is her solo art pop project Bella Litsa.

The bulk of her recently released full-length, studio album Drasticism was written between December of 2022 and February 2024 with much of her songwriting process occurring during periods of frenzied inspiration. “The choices I was making weren’t always good choices. I just was searching out all this extremity, like extreme love and extreme loss and to feel this crazy spectrum of things,” the Bella Litsa creative mastermind says. “The album is mostly asking: Why would I do that? But how could I not do that?”

Komodromos writes to cull her intense emotions and this personal excavation is part of her larger pursuit of the beautiful and divine. She cites her interests in astrophysics, synchronicities, Jungian psychoanalysis, the Book of Job, the Greek Orthodox church she attends, Andrei Tarkovsky and film scores for inspiration. Her work is rooted in a deeply-held belief that everything is beautiful and because every beautiful thing will end, everything is inherently sad. And in turn, songwriting is a relief, a way to preserve beauty. Similar to the drastic way she lives, she gravitates towards the extreme when it comes to her writing.

Bella Litsa writes to cull her intense emotions, and this personal excavation is part of her larger pursuit of the beautiful and divine. She taps her interest in astrophysics, synchronicities, Jungian psychoanalysis, the Book of Job, the Greek Orthodox church she attends, Andrei Tarkovsky, and film scores for inspiration. Because for Bella Litsa, everything is beautiful, and because every beautiful thing will end, everything is sad. Songwriting is a relief, a way to preserve beauty. And similar to her drastic way of living, she gravitates towards the extremes in her writing practice.

One spring day back in 2023, Komodromos came home in a strange, emotional state. She dat down at her desk, and eight hours later, she created the demo for “My Blue Eyes.” The next day she tried it again. After 12 hours, she had written “Tied Together by a Silver Thread,: a tragic epic inspired by the movements of classical music with three distinct sections. “It was probably the most inspired I was ever in my life,” she says. “I listen to it now and it just feels like my heart’s about to explode.”

That all-consuming feeling is what it feels like for the rising artist to dig deep into the core of her humanity. “I tell my psychoanalyst when we talk about songwriting: It’s like there’s a rope and I’m pulling on this rope, and the more I pull, the more the song is coming to me. But the song already existed. I’m slowly uncovering what was always there.” 

For Komodromos, her propensity towards the extremes is ultimately about a desire to connect, not only with herself but with others. “I get to say all these things that I keep in and then all of a sudden people are listening to you, and they’re witnessing the breaking down,” she says. “I feel like I get so tortured, especially singing live. I think being witnessed is the most powerful feeling you can have.”

Her work is intimate and emotionally potent material that echo with a dreamlike intensity. Her sound sees her blending vintage romance with experimental textures, a sort of haunted Americana-meeting-minimalist futurism, has helped her draw comparisons to Lana Del Rey, Fiona Apple and Weyes Blood — while being a vessel for connection and cantharis. “Bella Litsa is my sadness personified. It feels like the closest I can get to my shadow, consciously,” Komodromos says. 

Drasticism includes the previously released, “Angelica,” “Passion Plug,” “Never Ending Movie,” the Tori Amos and Lonny-like “1117” and the album’s latest “Tied Together By a Silver Thread.” Continuing a run of dramatic, remarkably cinematic yet deeply intimate material, “Tied Together By a Silver Thread” is a hauntingly gorgeous, lushly arranged song that features a mesh of elements of old-school balladry, rock, film scores and classical music. The rising artist’s equally gorgeous and expressive vocal dances and floats over the song’s arrangement. And much like its predecessor, the song evokes a sense of almost unreconcilable inner conflict.

Directed by Dylan Gee whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The FADER, Stereogum, NYLON and more, was shot entirely on form and thermal camera in Southern California’s Frazier Park. Fittingly, the cinematic visual evokes the swooning heart at the core of the song.

 The rising artist will be playing a record release show at Night Club 101 on February 27.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lucid Express Shares Dreamy and Yearning “Promise Me”

Hong Kong-based shoegazers and JOVM mainstays Lucid Express just released their long-awaited and highly anticipated sophomore album Instant Comfort today through Kanine Records. 

Mixed by Kurt Feldman during marathon overnight, transpacific sessions on Discord, Instant Comfort reportedly captures the unsettling stillness of the nighttime hours. The album’s material sonically sees the Hong Kong-based JOVM mainstays pairing ethereal melodies with towering walls of jangling guitars and hazy, swirling feedback while being more clear-eyed, complex and layered than anything they’ve released to date. 

The album includes the previously released “Something Blue,” and “Faux Sweetness,“as well as the album’s latest single “Promise Me.” Featuring towering layers of shimmering and churning guitars, thundering hi-hat driven drumming serving as a lush and eerily uneasy bed for Kim Ho’s ethereal and yearning vocal.

Directed and filmed by fellow Hong Kong native Neo Yeung, the accompanying video is a mix of live performance-styled footage and candid footage shot over the course of a day-long shoot.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Chicago’s Snowcuffs Shares Hazy and Anthemic “Burst”

Formed back in 2022, Chicago-based dream pop outfit Snowcuffs features members of Lightfoils and Astrobrite, Their debut EP, last year’s Sink Down saw the band quickly establishing a sound that balanced shimmering textures and memorable hooks. Inspired by Alvvays, Beach House and Mazzy Star, their work frequently drifts between nostalgic haze and fuzz-driven intensity while thematically touching upon longing, reflection and fleeting beauty.

The band has shared stages with Cold Gawd, Seashine and Cigarettes for Breakfast, and played a standout set at Kalamashoegazer, the country’s longest-running shoegaze festival.

Building upon a growing profile in the national shoegaze and dream pop scenes, the Chicago-based outfit’s sophomore EP Sweet Gravity is slated for a March 5, 2026 release. Engineered by Sanford Parker at Hypercube Studios, mixed by Robert Cheek and mastered by Baseline Audio Labs’ Chris Goosman, Sweet Gravity EP reportedly sees the band showcasing refined songwriting and a much more expansive sound that pushes the boundaries of dream pop without losing its heart and soul.

Sweet Gravity EP‘s latest single “Burst” sees the band pairing shimmering and swirling guitar textures, a forcefully driving rhythm section and remarkably catchy, rousingly anthemic hooks with ethereal vocals. Sonically, “Burst” seemingly nods at 120 Minutes-era MTV shoegaze and alternative rock — but with a decidedly modern sensibility. And at its core is a song and a narrator struggling with crippling ambivalence and self-doubt.

The band explains that “‘Burst’ is about the struggle of trying to be everything at once, and what happens when inaction, ambivalence, and self-doubt slowly erode your options in life.

I wait and see
Stare at the tree
Will it die of thirst
And fall down on me?

Ambivalence isn’t neutral, it’s destructive.”

Directed by Dave Rentaukas, the accompanying video for “Burst” is split between footage of the band’s lead singer in a Chicago area park as the sun begins to set and the rest of the band performing in a studio in front brooding yet trippy projections.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Genesis Owusu Shares Breakneck “STAMPEDE”

Last year, the acclaimed multi-ARIA Award-winning Ghanian-born Canberra-based JOVM mainstay Genesis Owusu released two singles “PIRATE RADIO,” and “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE,” the first bit of new material since the release of 2023’s acclaimed STRUGGLER.

The JOVM mainstay’s first single of 2026, “STAMPEDE” is anchored around the acclaimed Ghanian-Australian artist’s punchy punk rock-meets-hip-hop delivery and a breakneck production featuring menacing, reverb-drenched synth subs, skittering and relentless military-like motorik pulse. The song conveys the desperate urgency of our moment while being a rallying cry to prioritize community and unity as a way out of our techno-feudalist/Christo-fascist hellscape.

“Left side to the right side, front side to the back,” he says in his latest offering, “we’re all in this together. And there’s a real problem. There are people who have expansive amounts of money, who are intentionally acting to separate us so they can keep getting richer at the expense of general human wellbeing. We’re all under that same thumb and we need to realise that.”

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Isaac Brown, the accompanying video for “STAMPEDE” was filmed in the streets and surroundings of Accra and turns Owusu’s worlds to life: an army of rebels mobilize on motorcycles and horseback around him.

“This whole project is about humanity and community, not just in Australia where I live, but globally. It felt nourishing to go back to my home country (Ghana) for the first time in 11 years and showcase a bit of the culture there; the youth and the deep subcultures, far beyond the perceptions a lot of people may have of Africa,” says Owusu.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Endearments Return with Shimmering and Anthemic “Marianne”

Brooklyn-based indie outfit Endearments — Kevin Marksson (vocals, bass), Anjali Nair (guitar) and Will Haywood Smith (drums) — closed out last year by signing with Trash Casual, who will be releasing their Abe Seiferth–produced, full-length debut An Always Open Door. 

Slated for a March 6, 2026 release, the nine-song An Always Open Door will include “Real Deal,” “Summersun” and “Marianne,” the album’s third and final pre-release single. “Marianne” is a rousingly anthemic ballad that sees the band balancing introspective, heart worn on sleeve-driven lyrics and a cinematic sound. Seemingly nodding at some of the great 80s movie soundtrack tunes, like Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Think About Me” and Psychedelic Furs’ “Pretty In Pink,” An Always Open Door‘s latest single contends with long-distance longing, mixed messages and the possibility that your feelings and investment may be unfulfilled — or worse, unrequited.

“‘Marianne’ is about the uncertain and vulnerable moments at the beginning of a new relationship,” the band’s Marksson explains. “It’s a song about longing for someone who is far away, physically and emotionally, and what it takes to break down those barriers. We wanted the music video to emphasize that metaphor, with the band playing in a liminal place, bright and surreal, before the mirrors that are reflecting us literally shatter.”

The accompanying video continues their ongoing collaboration with director Paul Desilva.