Tag: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lisa LeBlanc Shares Rollicking “Whole Lotta Talkin'”

Lisa LeBlanc is an acclaimed Rosaireville, NB-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist (banjo and guitar) and established Acadian icon, thanks to her sound, a unique blend of roots, rock, disco, funk and country. After achieving commercial success with 2012’s self-titled full-length debut, she switched from French to English for 2012’s Highways Heartaches and Time Well Wasted and 2017’s Why You Wanna Leave Runaway Queen, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist that year.

The Rosaireville-born, Montréal-based artist and her backing band toured relentlessly over a handful of years. But by 2019, she took a break from touring to write and travel, and also began to explore studio work, which led her to produce Édith Butler‘s 25th album, 2021’s Le tour du Grand Bois. This new creative path enabled LeBlanc to broaden her musical horizons while using her talents, creativity and passion in the service of others.

The new production skills she learned led to 2022’s Chiac Disco, a critically applauded effort that simultaneously drew from and paid tribute to Lee Hazlewood, disco and funk — simultaneously. LeBlanc supported the album with over 140 shows across North America, Europe and Japan. The album landed on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist — her second time earning the honor. And the album led to a Juno Award nomination. Since then her catalogue has amassed over 35 million streams across all DSPs.

2024’s Live avec l’Orchestre symphonique de Québec saw LeBlanc collaborating with 63 classical musicians to perform her material.

“Whole Lotta Talkin'” is the acclaimed Canadian artist’s first bit of new material since Chiac Disco — and it marks a return to English lyrics. Sonically, “Whole Lotta Talkin'” is a rollickingly fun, hooky tune featuring a classic, surf rock riff and shimmering 60s-styled organ that sounds a bit like a seamless blend of Dick Dale, Link Wray, The Castaways‘ “Liar Liar” and The B-52‘s while showcasing LeBlanc’s mischievous wit and humor. The song recalls a situation all of us have been in at some point: being cornered by someone who just won’t shut up, and doesn’t get the hint that you’re desperately trying to get away from them.

Directed by Alexandre Pelletier, the accompanying video follows the touring adventures of a dysfunctional rock band featuring LeBlanc and her puppet bandmates — two of which are irremediably thoughtless, lazy, womanizing partiers, who besides playing music aren’t holding their weight on anything else. “I wanted to tell this funny, absurd story with the utmost seriousness, as if we were watching an ultra-dramatic musical biopic,” Pelletier explains. But what starts off on a playful note ends with a double puppet murder and a shared bloody secret.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Earth Tongue Shares Blistering Ripper “Grave Pressure”

Currently-based in Berlin, the Kiwi-based psych duo Earth Tongue — Gussie Larkin (vocals, guitar) and Ezra Simons (drums, vocals) — released their third album Dungeon Vision through In The Red Records earlier this year. Dungeon Vision was written after a busy and extensive bit of touring across both Europe and the UK, and was recorded in Los Angeles with Ty Segall, a collaboration that be traced back to when the duo opened for him during his New Zealand and European tours. Dungeon Vision has already received critical acclaim and has lead to some non-stop international touring to support.

The rising psych duo will be supporting their latest album with a Stateside tour throughout August and September that includes sets at King Gizz’s Field of Vision Festival and Levitation, as well as a headlining and opening dates. The tour includes a September 3, 2026 stop at Elsewhere. You can check out the rest of the tour dates below.

In the meantime, Dungeon Vision single “Grave Pressure” is a blistering, mosh pit friendly ripper that channels Black Sabbath OSees, King Gizz and a lengthy list of others with the song anchored around fuzzy distorted pedaled power chords, thunderous drumming and punchy harmonized lyrics about death and the grave. Goths, metal heads and psych rockers unite!

Directed and produced by Caity Moloney and Tom Mannion, the video plays on 1990s alt rock motifs and features the Kiwi duo being prepared for their own funeral, performing in the funeral best and bursting from their own graves in a kitschy fashion reminiscent of Roger Corman‘s extensive collaboration with Vincent Price.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: M. Woodroe Shares Tense, Bruising “Sweetness, Sweetness”

Brighton-based outfit M. Woodroe — Marcie Garwell (vocals, guitar), Ben Elwin (guitar), Jeorgie Pinder-Whiley (bass), Sam Sezarin (drums) — exploded out of their local DIY scene, quickly establishing themselves as one of the city’s most exciting, emerging acts. Their work pairs intricate, provocative and politically-charged lyrics that touch upon boundary-pushing explorations gender, sexuality and desire with angular, fuzzy and noisy post punk-inspired guitar work.

The emerging and rising Brighton-based have played shows alongside Mcluksy, Prostitute, and others, developing a reputation for an intense live show, while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing. And building upon a growing profile, the post-punk quartet recently signed to Venn Records, who will be releasing their highly-anticipated debut EP, The Treatment of Fractures on September 18, 2026.

The EP’s first single “Sweetness, Sweetness” is a bruising tune that captures an indecisive, neurotic narrator, who’s on the verge of exploding in a seething fury in every direction, fueled by self-flagellation and confusion. While sonically channeling the likes of JOVM mainstays Whispering Sons, the song as the band’s Marcie Garwell explains is “about many things — weakness, identity, acquiescence, confusion . . . the position you drink not to make a fuss. It’s a pipe bomb sent to order, hate mail addressed to compromise, yet it’s indecisive in all its threats and feelings – never sure of where it lies.

Directed by J. Taylor-Jones, the accompanying video for “Sweetness, Sweetness” is a feverish portrayal of discomfit, self-flagellation, dread and despair that feels particularly modern.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Abbie Ozard Shares Soaring and Cathartic “Baby I’m Your Star”

Released to critical applause from the likes of The Times, The Independent, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, Clash Magazine, The Fader, Notion, Hunger and more, 2024’s full-length debut, everything still worries me saw British artist Abbie Ozard explode into the national scene.

Ozard built upon a growing profile with a number of headlining UK shows, a European Union tour opening slot for Briston Maroey and a run of the regional festival circuit that included her debut at Glastonbury.

everything still worries me‘s highly-anticipated follow-up, Baby I’m Your Star EP is slated for an August 21. 2026 release. The EP will include the perviously released “Backbone,” which continues a run of material that has received airplay on Jack Saunders‘ and Huw Stephens’ BBC 1 Radio shows, as well as BBC Introducing Track of the Week, and Abbie McCarthy‘s and Chris Hawkins’ BBC Radio 6 shows.

“Baby I’m Your Star,” the EP’s title track and latest single is a rousingly anthemic tune that sees Ozard pairing open-armed, earnest lyricism and her soaring vocal with swirling and chiming guitar textures and her unerring knack for bombastic, festival friendly hooks and choruses. But underneath the rousingly bombastic catharsis is song that touches upon the sensation of faking-it-’til-you-make-it and wanting to be heard and understood. I guarantee most of us have been there at some point or another — including right now.

“‘Baby I’m Your Star’ is about trying to convince yourself you’re as confident as you want everyone else to think you are,” Ozard explains. “On the surface it’s cocky and playful, but underneath it comes from wanting to be heard and believed in. The song plays with the tension between ego and self-doubt, and the idea that sometimes confidence is something you have to perform before you fully believe it. It feels like a defiant moment for me, but there’s still plenty of vulnerability hiding underneath.”

Directed by Jack Hartley, the accompanying, mischievous video for “Baby I’m Your Star” features an aging guy out in the countryside, trying to stargaze — during the day, eventually coming upon Ozard, strolling through the countryside.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Love Spells Shares Atmospheric and Yearning “Maybe I Still Love You”

Sir Teagan Harris is the Houston-born creative mastermind behind the rising, solo recording project Love Spells. At 18, Harris poured his passion for love into music, manifesting a career out of ambition and drive, while battling homelessness for years. Eventually, he wound up in California, where h lived with a friend he met online, traveling to different music studios everyday to perfect his sound. After six months, he returned to Houston and received a call from Kevin Abstract, who invited I’m to work on his most recent album, last year’s Bluish.

Working on Kevin Abstract’s Blush connected Harris to his now frequent collaborator Dominic Fike and Deb Never. That life changing experience pushed Harris to return to Los Angeles and work on his highly-anticipated Love Spells debut, LOVE IS THE LAW. Slated for a July 24, 2026 release through RCA Records, LOVE IS THE LAW found the Houston-born artist working with Danny Parra, Boy Deco, Brad Hale, Rodaidh McDonald, Alex Craig, and Rick Nowels to create material that recalled his nights at Numbers, a beloved Houston-based dance club and safe heaven for alternative communities. While at Numbers, Harris danced to 70s, 80s and New Wave, and he specifically wanted to inject that feeling into his work, seeking out similar spaces in Los Angeles and leaning on those eras in the studio. Movies like Dirty Dancing and Footlose were also sources of inspiration, helping the Houston-based artist and his collaborators craft a “theatrical yet authentic” feeling.

LOVE IS THE LAW will include the previously released “Crutch,” “Keep It To Yourself” and the album’s latest single “Maybe I Still Love You.” “Maybe I Still Love You” is a slow-burning and atmospheric bit of Quiet Storm-meets-Bill Withers-inspired R&B that features Harris’ achingly tender and yearning falsetto dancing alongside a sparse arrangement of twinkling piano, bursts of shimmering and soulful guitar, a simple backbeat, a supple bass line. The song’s narrator finds closure and freedom in recognizing the true depths of his emotions.

“‘Maybe I Still Love You’ is for anyone still fighting with feelings they can’t ignore, that moment of coming to terms with the fact that you still care and want to keep caring,” Harris explains. “Because above all, you have to believe in love for love to be seen.”

Directed by Colt Grice, the accompanying video for “Maybe I Still Love You” features a couple doing a simple two-step slow dance together while embracing. The couple’s story is up to interpretation but there’s palpable sense of love, the sort of love that at times is demanding and difficult yet worth fighting for.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: King Black Acid Shares Trippy and Groovy “Dialing 911”

Daniel Riddle is Portland, OR-based is a singer/songwriter and musician, who has written and recorded music under the moniker King Black Acid since the late 1980s, while spending time as a member of industrial outfit Hitting Birth. Since the early 90s, Riddle has led a number of different collectives and projects that have toured and shared stages with Elliott Smith, Nirvana, Low, Moby, Sonic Youth, The Dandy Warhols, Faith No More, Dead Moon, Menomena, The Fugees, Arctic Monkeys, Spacemen 3, Danzig, Nine Inch Nails and more. 

Throughout his career, Riddle’s music has been featured on CSI: Miami, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, The Mothman Prophecies, Witchblade, Dream With Fishes, Do Me a Favor and CNN Sports, as well as ad campaigns for Nike, Reebok, Tiger Woods Golf, CNN, Coca-Cola, Abercrombie and Fitch, Gap and The Olympics. 

Riddle’s latest King Black Acid effort, Telling Secrets in a Crowded Room is slated for an August 21, 2026 release through Cavity Search Records/Mazinga Records. The album reportedly features 10 cinematic and anthemic songs that “embrace total and subversive emotional anarchy.”

Telling Secrets in a Crowded Room‘s latest single “Dialing 911” is a sleek and mind-bending synthesis of Madchester-era sound, Evil Heat-era Primal Scream and Echoes-era The Rapture dance punk that showcases the collaborators uncanny ability to craft a remarkably catchy hook.

“Fierce stoner pop that explores the fragile human psyche in the modern digital thought prison,” the band says of the new single.

KThe accompanying music video by Kat Perkins and Daniel Riddle features a mix of collage-driven animation reminiscent of The Beatles‘ Yellow Submarine and the intro to Monty Python with strobe lit, monochrome footage of Riddle and dancing and instrument playing humanoid rabbits. Trippy, indeed.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Diary Shares Madchester-like “Keep Comin’ Up”

Brooklyn-based quintet Diary — longtime friends and co-founders Kevin Bendis (vocals) and Chris Croarkin (guitar), along with Adam Sachs (drums), High Waisted‘s Jessica Dye (vocals, guitar), and Two Man Giant Squid‘s Yan Kogan (bass) — have released two critically applauded EPs, 2024’s Speedboat and 2022’s The Cutting Garden and a list of singles, which they’ve supported with touring on both sides of the pond.

The local outfit’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Spiral Bound is slated for a September 4, 2026 release through their longtime label home, Kanine Records. The album’s overall sound sees the quintet incorporating elements of jangle pop, psychedelia, dream pop and Brit Pop to firmly establish a hook and groove-driven, genre-defying sound.

Spiral Bound‘s first single, the Ben Hozie-produced “Keep Comin’ Up” draws from Happy Mondays-era Madchester scene, late 80s and early 90s shoegaze and 60s psych rock, while showcasing the band’s unerring knack for mind-bending, euphoric grooves and catchy hooks.

Directed by Sam Blieden, the accompanying video for “Keep Comin’ Up” draws from the 1960s art scene — and in particular, nods to Andy Warhol‘s Silver Factory and footage of The Velvet Underground. It captures a scene of folks, who are simply put, cooler and more interesting than you are.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: POND Returns with Bombastic, Anthemic “Skyworks”

Perth-based JOVM mainstays POND — currently, Nicholas Allbrook (lead vocals, guitar, keys, bass, flute, slide guitar and drums); singer/songwriter and producer Jay Watson (vocals, guitar, keys, drums, synths and bass), who’s also the creative mastermind of acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit GUM and a touring member of acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated JOVM mainstays Tame Impala; Joe Ryan (vocals, guitar, bass, 12 string guitar, slide guitar); Jamie Terry (keys, bass, synths, organs, guitar); and Jamie Ireland (drums, keys) — will be releasing their 11th album Terrestrials on Friday through their newly-minted Mangovision/Secretly Distribution. 

The writing and recording process for Terrestrials was subject to a simple set of rules: No fuzz pedal. No ballads. No “Pink Floyd shit.” Conceived from a place of deep reverence for a particular potent era of Oz rock, the JOVM mainstays’ 11th album reportedly mines the sound of open sky melancholia, heat haze sizzling on the plains and jangly pub backrooms that will hit an eternally poignant nerve for those familiar with the sound, time and place. And from there, the album evolved with the idea of “Goths at the pub” becoming the record’s stylistic north star — with 80s Australiana being acid-washed with the post-punk of Sisters Of Mercy, Magazine and the like. Throughout the album’s creative and recording process, they’d ask themselves “Would Goths like it? Could you have a beer to this?” If the answers were yes, it was thrust into the mix. 

Like much of their catalog, Terrestrials is a record of people and place, of exploring the identity of each, as well as where and how they intersect and interact. Thematically, the album touches upon extractive capitalism, power dynamics., inequality, Indigenous incarceration, eccentric outcasts, fire and water, diesel and dust, unity and division, blood and bauxite, unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays. And as a result, the album’s material twitches with the desperation of people and their planet on the brink, but while betting on the beauty of both to prevail. 

The album will feature the prevoouisly released, album title track “Terrestrials,” the Sisters of Mercy-meets-Diesel and Dust-era Midnight Oil-like “Two Hands,” the achingly yaerning “Through The Heather,” and the album’s latest single, album opener “Skyworks.” “Skyworks” feautres what may argaubly be Terrestrials‘ most rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses within a song that channels a syntheis of Diesel and Dust-era Midnight Oil, pub rock and post punk.

The song explores the complicated and uneasy history of Australia Day and the juxtaposition of public celebrations against the brural and painful history behind the day — and in turn, the country’s — origins. “The skyworks happen every year on the day Australia was invaded and claimed by the crown. They explode over the river in a gaudy display of drunkenness and patriotism, sponsored by the Lotto,” Nick Allbrook explains. “We love a flutter. The river is bejewelled with magical glittering lights, and loud bangs that remind some of canons and muskets. The river is ablaze, magic, filthy, like a Hieronymus Bosch picture, strewn with bottles and shit in the morning. It’s a confusing time for a confused people. Joe Ryan wrote the main chord progression for this one and then it grew in weird ways”

Directed by Stephanie Senior the accompanying video for “Skyworks” is a syltishly shot visual that employs the same colorful silhouettes reminiscent of the early iPod ad campaigns.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Elephant Stone Share Bruising “Fascists Killed Yer Rock ‘N’ Roll”

Brossard, QC-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rishi Dihr has spent the past two decades blurring the lines between Western pysch pop and Indian classical tradition. What began back in 2006 as a quest for trasncendental sound has evolved into a singlar, self-contained vision. Operating out of his Montréal home studio, Sacred Sounds Dihr has estalbihed himself as studio autuer, producing, engineering and mixing his band Elephant Stone‘s increasingly complex and cineamtic output.

The JOVM mainstays — Dihr (vocals, bass and sitar), along with longtime members Miles Dupire (drums), Robbie MacArthur (guitar) and Jason Kent (keys, guitar) – will be releasing their 10th albun, ASHA on August 28, 2026 through Elephants On Parade. Limited edition signed and hand-numbered vinyl is avaialble for pre-order through Little Cloud Records. Named after the Elphant Stone frontman’s late mother, Asha translates to “hope” in Sanskirt — and is meditation on grief, hope, and the friction between sorrow and the darkness of our time.

While the band’s reputation has long-been built on airtight pop craftsmanship and spiritual exploration, their most recent work psoesses a new, raw intensity forged through Dihr’s lengthy history collaborating with The Black Angels, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beck and hte psych rock supergroup MIEN.

lephant Stone remains at the forefront of the modern movement, constantly deconstructing the paevst to find something visceral, haunting, and undeniably human in the present.

ASHA includes the previously released “Everything Evil,” and its second and latest single “Fascists Killed Yer Rock ‘N’ Roll.” Arguably, one of the crunchier, heavy metal-like songs of the Canadian JOVM mainstays lengthy catalog with the song anchored around Black Sabbath-like fuzz, motorik groove and bursts of wah wah pedalled guitar and shimmering sitar woven through sseveral tempo shifts.

Lyrically, the song is written in a protest-song-ike rage and addresses the global rise of fascism with both the unflinching authority of history and a cold, clear-eyed reckoning with our tempestous moment that seems to say to lisener “Let’s not beat around the bushes and bullshit ourselves. This moment is desperately urgent.”

“You’d have to be living under a rock to ignore what’s happening,” Elephant Stone’s Rishi Dihr says. “I don’t claim to have the answers; this song is about giving the threat a name. It’s a reminder that we’ve seen this script before… and we’ve overcome it before.” That defiance is embedded in tthe song’s bridge: “All you fascists, you’ve all come and gone / We know yer game, we’ve all heard that song.”

The accompanying vidoe feautres repurposed and edited footage from One Got Fatm a 1863 public domain bicycle safety film, with deeply unsettling imagery of masked children being a disturbing and fitting backdrop for the song’s tehmes of conformity, power, control and historical repetition.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweeping Promises Share Forcefully Urgent “Cocoon”

Lawrence, KS-based duo Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production) — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Meticiuluosly controlling every aspect of their craft, from the frist note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to mastering, each song is a testament to their long-held dynamic chemistry as musicians and artists.

Their full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

2023’s sophmore self-produced album Good Living Is Coming For You was released across North America through Feel It Records and globally through Sub Pop. Produced and recorded in the duo’s Lawrence-based home studio, Good Livng Is Coming For You was a decided cahnge in direction and appraoch: They eschewed the brutalist ambienace of their former Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Kansas studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touched upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

The band’s third album, You Say I Romanticize is slated for an August 14, 2026 release globally through Sub Pop. Recorded over an 18-month period, You Say I Romanticize is a tribute to the chaos of creation and collaboration under shifting circmstances. Mondal and Schung found and tested themselves in their combination tour house and recording studio annually working on dozens of albums by other bands, hosting tour stops, planning shows and the like. After an immerseive process of traking adn whittling down YSIR demos and carving out an idiosyncratic chamber recording member for the album’s deliberate and international wall-of-sound appraoch, the duo brought in touring drummer Spenser Gralla to play the album’s matreial as the band would on stage.

The album’s frenzied and passionate sound shines most in Modal’s vocal perforamnce. Where you might have heard a growl here and there on certain previously releserd Sweeping Promises trcks, the band’s frontwoman shouts, roars, hits tricky notes all over teh place and shreds her thraot throhgout the album’s run time.

You Say I Romanticize takes the art-by-any-means-necessary ethos that Mondal and Schung have firmly established throhgout their careers and turns the prompt upside down, landing on a perosnality epidemic that manifests across the album’s ten songs.

The album’s second single “Coccon” is a forcefully urgent and angular post-punk ripper, anchored around some of the most impassioned and musuclar recorded performances I’ve yet to personally heard from the band — especially from Mondal, who showcases a punchy attack for the song’s verses and a forceful growl for the song’s choruses and hooks.

“We wrote ‘Cocoon’ years ago to extend our live set back when we only knew the ten songs from our first album,” the band says. “

It has become a staple of our live set over the years and has undergone several metamorphoses in our home studio, as we wanted to develop this track in a disarming and dead-simple way for the ‘live sound’ mentality of YSIR. The music video intercuts homegrown live footage of the band playing shows in the Kansas community with the sculptural and psychogeographic idea of the cocoon, which entices and finally envelops our singer, Lira Mondal.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Body Type Returns with Vulnerable and Introspective “Sick Bag”

Over the course of their decade long history together, Aussie punk outfit Body Type — Sophie McComish (vocals, guitar), Annabel Blackman (vocals, guitar), Cecil Coleman (drums) and Georgia Wilkinson-Derums (vocals, bass) have received coverage from internationally recognized media outlets like Billboard, Rolling Stone, NME, The FADER, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and more, as well as airplay from Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson and BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, and a list of others. Adding to a growing profile, the Aussie quartet have extensively toured across the globe, sharing stages with Foo Fighters, Sleater-Kinney, Warpaint, Pixies, Fontaines D.C., Big Thief, Cate Le Bon, POND, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Frankie Cosmos, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Wolf Alice, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, DZ Deathrays, and many moire. 

Body Type’s highly-anticipated third album, Tally is slated for a July 24, 2026 release through King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s p(doom) records. Recorded at Los Angeles-based Velveteen Laboratory Studios with producer Stella Mozgawa, Tally reportedly marks a deliberate evolution for the quartet. While 2023’s Expired Candy arrived on a wave of post-pandemic momentum, their third album takes long to breathe — the material’s ambitions are quieter, its craft more considered. ‘

The album cones as the band celebrates their tenth anniversary together. Featuring a blend of big, jagged riffs, moody post-punk and 60s pop, Tally may arguably be their most self-assured and expansive batch of material to date, capturing band maturing and taking stock but while wit and playfulness still are supreme. Thematically, the album chronicles mundanity’s mystical implications, the deformations of romance and love’s confounding elasticity and more. 

The album will include the previously released “Mulberry,“ and the album’s latest single “Sick Bag.” Continuing a run of material that seemingly channels a mix of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey, The Breeders and a bit of Marquee Moon-era Television,”‘Sick Bag” may arguably be the most vulnerable, broken heart worn on sleeve song on the album. Thematically, the song examines the very fine line between generosity and self-erasure.

“Our first ever song to feature a mellotron — a true Stella moment,” the band’s Sophie McComish says, “”This one just poured out of me like ink in a broken biro.” Written during a relationship that felt increasingly one-sided, “Sick Bang” emerged after a conversation McComish had with bandmate Annabel Blackman, who pointed out the unusual patience McComish was showing someone, who just couldn’t meet her halfway.

Directed by Madeline Purdy, the accompanying video for “Sick Bag” is a surreal, fantastical and darkly comedic visual that seems inspired by Igmar Berman while pointing out the mundanity, boredom and exhaustion of being a worker bee.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Cowards Share Bruising “Fear of Fear”

Italian noise rock/shoegaze/post-punk trio Cowards — currently founding members Luca Piccinni (vocals, guitar) and Guilia Tanoni (vocals, bass) and the band’s newest member Michele Prosperi (drums) — formed back in 2019 and quickly established a sound deeply rooted in 1990s aesthetics featuring a blend of abrasive, feedback and noise-driven guitar textures and elements of dream pop and grunge.

Following the tragic and untimely death of their previous drummer Pepe Carella in 2021, the band found renewed momentum with the addition of Michele Prosperi. The band released their full-length debut, last year’s God Hates Cowards through Bloody Sound. They supposed the album with extensive touring of the Italian club scene, as well as a run of the Italian festival circuit.

Building upon a steadily growing profile, the Italian trio will be releasing their sophomore album Can You Hear Me through Bloody Sound on Friday, June, 19, 2026. Can You Hear Me? reportedly sees the Italian trio further cementing a sound rooted in noise, post-punk and shoegaze while being more nuanced and texturally layered. While still featuring the abrasive guitars they’re known for, there are more atmospheric passages, a more forceful and driving rhythm section and it’s all underpinned by urgent, unflinching vocals.

Whereas God Hates Cowards thematically was intensely introspective, Can You Hear Me? sees the band turning their gaze outward. Personal unrest and unease is merged with a much wider narrative, in which individual emotional collapse reflects a broader systemic breakdown.

Can You Hear Me?‘s first single “Fear of Fear” is a bruising and bombastic, 90s alt rock-meets-METZ mosh pit friendly ripper that thematically channels John Cale’s “Fear is a Man’s Best Friend.” “Fear feeds on itself, limiting and controlling us — yet it can be faced and dismantled,” the band explains.

The animated video for “Fear of Fear” channels Edvard Munch’s The Scream while capturing paralyzing fear — of the thing just around the corner; that will relentlessly chase you down and so on.

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Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Julia Jacklin Shares Jangling “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You)”

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.

When Jacklin first moved to Melbourne from Sydney back in 2017, she discovered a little bar on a back street in Collingwood, a suburb just outside of downtown, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. She didn’t know anyone in town, but knew she wanted to make the city home, so she started hanging out there, facing herself out of her comfort zone. That pub was named The Gem.

Eight years later, Jacklin had released three acclaimed albums, 2016’s Don’t Let The Kids Win, 2019’s Crushing and 2022’s PRE PLEASURE — and was looking to write and record her fourth. Her contract with her previous label had ended. She was searching for a manager. And with time on her hands, she decided that she would make her fourth album in Melbourne, something she’d never done before.

She called up an old drinking buddy Robert Muiños, owner of Rat Shack Studios, which is just above The Gem and brought in her friends Jacob Diamond (guitar), Mimi Gilbert (bass) and Jess Elwood (drums). Recording happened in close quarter, in converted hotel room accommodation upstairs at the pub. Because The Gem was in a residential neighborhood, they couldn’t record late into the night for fear of bothering neighbors and sound bleed for a glorious constant: foot traffic to the hairdressers and lotto parlor next door and loud music from the bands and the kitchen staff downstairs. But if anyone needed a break during the sessions, they would head downstairs and watch a local band play. Jacklin and her friends even played two unannounced shows there to try out the album’s material before recording them.

They thought they’d be able to finish the album in two weeks, like she’d always done previously, but this time that wasn’t the case. In fact, it took nearly a year of tinkering to arrive at something Jacklin could get behind, “The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was doing it almost in the dark, just trusting I was going to find something,” Jacklin says. While conjuring images of excavation, of reinvention, of trusting your instincts and surrounding yourself with the people and things that make life worthwhile, the album documents the songwriter’s journey back to herself.

“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” says Jacklin. That theme underpins the album’s material.

The Gem‘s first single, “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You)” is mischievously charming and hooky bit of 80s inspired jangle pop that captures the neurotic yet yearning push and pull of a narrator, who can’t quite figure out yet how to be free and be loved simultaneously. And while informed by the songwriter’s own-lived in experience, the song is rooted in something that’s both universal and youthful.

The video created by Jacklin reimagines the album’s cover art with images of Jacklin singing and strumming her guitar, and gems on other instruments.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dublin’s THEATRE Shares Shimmering “Gaudete”

Originally formed in Limerick and currently based in Dublin, the rising Irish quintet THEATRE — Maeve O’Shea (vocals), Oscar Halpin (guitar), Dara Gooney (guitar), Gerry Sheil (bass) and Sean Storan (drums) — have received rapturous praise internationally from Stereogum, NME, The Line of Best Fit, Dork, Clash Magazine and Wonderland, as well as airplay;ay from BBC 1 Radio‘s Sian Eleri and Alyx Holcombe, BBC Radio 2‘s Jo Whiley, BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, Huw Stephens, Deb Grant and Nathan Shepherd, Apple Music‘s Matt Wilkinson, Radio X‘s John Kennedy, as well as others.

The rising Irish outfit’s debut EP Incarnate was released yesterday through BMG/Echo. And as the band’s Maeve O’Shea explains, “Incarnate as a body of work feels like the physical embodiment of what our band has been for us over the past few years. These are some of the first songs that we wrote together, but they have gone through an evolution of their own after touring them for so long. They follow a theme of a changing-like person, someone who has two sides to them, but as a whole this EP is a presentation of our work finally in the flesh, real and ready. We’ve waited a long time to bring them out to the world in their truest form.” Much of the EP’s material is an ode to Limerick and its people, and how it shaped the band through often very dark, uneasy times.

The EP’s latest single “Gaudete” is a shimmering bit of 80s inspired post punk that subtly references Irish folk and brings early U2, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the like to mind while showcasing O’Shea’s breathtakingly gorgeous, yearning vocal and the band’s knack for rousingly anthemic and cathartic hooks and choruses.

“‘Gaudete’ was written in the early days of the band,” O’Shea says. “At the time I was listening to a lot of English and Irish folk music, and Steeleye Span was one of the most prominent inspirations. In their album Below the Salt they recorded a rendition of ‘Gaudete,’ a 16th century Christmas hymn – I heard the melody entangled in a guitar melody that Dara brought to a rehearsal and was determined that the two could be married together. The result was an original song that references the choral aspects of the ancient ‘Gaudete’ and plays with a dark lyrical theme to contrast the Latin meaning behind the word, rejoice or be joyful.”

Directed by Flo Webb, the accompanying video for “Gaudete” is a decidedly early 80s MTV-inspired yet cinematically shot visual that also showcases the breathtaking beauty of Ireland.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: J. Bernardt Shares Shimmering and Euphoric “Four In The Morning”

Jinte Deprez is an acclaimed singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger, programmer and producer, best known as being one-half of the songwriting duo behind the acclaimed Belgian JOVM mainstays Balthazar. Over the course of their two-plus decade run together, the acclaimed Belgian outfit has played across the global festival circuit with sets at All Points East, British Summer Time, and others — while selling over 600,000 albums globally. And during that same period of time, Deprez has firmly cemented a reputation for being a wildly talented generalist: Along with his songwriting partner and bandmate Maarten Devoldere, Deprez has co-produced three of Balthazar’s five albums to date.

Deprez is also the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed solo recording project J. Bernardt, With J. Bernardt, Deprez has released two albums, 2016’s self-produced Running Days and 2024’s Tobie Speleman and Deprez co-produced Contigo. Recorded in Los Angeles-based 64 Sound Studio, the Paul Butler-produced “Four In The Morning” is a hazily euphoric and mischievously playful tune featuring sprawling and shimmering synths, driving and pulsing drums serving as a lush bed for the JOVM mainstay’s sultry delivery. But the euphoria and playfulness is a bit deceptive, and at its core, the song’s narrator has started to finding a moment of clarity about themselves and their lives. Whether they were drunk or sober isn’t said — and probably isn’t necessary.

To me it’s a summery song that evokes late nights, coming home and singing and dancing to your favorite song by yourself — often with no one watching. And if anyone was, you didn’t care.

The song reflects the evolution of J. Bernardt into a fully-fledged artistic universe with its own trajectory and ambitions. Deprez worked far away from familiar and long-held routines. Butler’s free-flowing approach in the studio encouraged spontaneity and led to Deprez’s most liberated and carefree vocal performance to date.

“The song caught my attention very quickly because it’s not the kind of song I would normally write,” Deprez explains, “It has this manic urge that made me think: ‘Is something calling out your name, man?’ So I went for it, probably because of the sense of rebirth it gave me. Why not? I wanted to feel reborn. And that’s how it happened: a dancer in his finest suit wandering through LA at four in the morning. I hope it ends well for him.”