Tag: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Glasgow’s Cwfen Shares Broodingly Atmospheric and Cathartic “Whispers”

Glasgow-based quartet Cwfen (pronounced coven) — Agnes Alder (vocals, rhythm guitar), Guy DeNuit (backing vocals, lead guitar), Rös Ranquinn (drums) and Mary Thomas Baker (bass) — quickly built up a reputation as one of the UK’s hottest, emerging doom bands with 2024’s “Reliks,” which won over fans and critics and landed on Kerrang‘s release of the week playlist.

Building upon a growing profile, the Scottish outfit released their Kevin Hare and band co-produced debut Sorrows last year. Recorded at Deep Storm Productions, the album’s material lives in the space around doom, where the weight of its riffs are matched by the weight in your chest, and where the lyrics and songwriting as equally as important as the music. The band specifically intends to write songs that are big on riffs but even bigger on feeling; to create songs that speak to the listener and are carried throughout their lives. Sonically, the band sees Cwfen’s Agnes Alder bearing her (proverbial) claws one minute and howling, whispering and pleading the next one, all while her and her bandmates craft arrangements that evoke a brewing storm front on the horizon, looming larger as you approach.

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

The album which included long-anticipated and long-desired reworkings of “Embers” and “Bodies,” two self-recorded demos and long-time fan favorites, received unexpected and widespread acclaim from the heavy metal music press, landing on several Best of Lists last year. Since the album’s release, the Glasgow-based quartet have toured extensively with Paradise Lost and Faetooth and they’ve made runs of the UK and European festival circuit, building a growing international presence through their live performances of Sorrows‘ material.

To celebrate a breakthrough year and the anniversary of the album’s release, the rapidly rising Scottish band have released a video for “Whispers,”a broodingly atmospheric song that’s one-part A Storm in Heaven and Souvlaki-era shoegaze, one-part doom metal and showcases Alder’s remarkable vocal range, which goes from a sultry croon to a feral howl. While cathartic, the song comes from a deeply personal place, capturing a narrator in the midst of an all-consuming mix of despair and rage.

“It’s taken a while to feel comfortable releasing ‘Whispers’ as its own thing. The song itself, lyrically, came from a very personal place, in contrast to the broader themes elsewhere on the record,” Cwfen’s Alder says. “This, for me, is a song that cuts right to the bone; it might not be too obvious in the lyrics themselves, but it’s taken a year of seeing the fans respond to it, watching it become one of their favourites, to really have the courage and the confidence to give it some of the love it deserves.

“The screams weren’t planned. They weren’t on the first version, but when we went back into the studio after a few weeks, that’s what had to come out, so what you hear in this song is the depth of that feeling,” Alder adds. “It’s one of the most cathartic, tender, and ultimately visceral songs on the album, and deciding to release it now feels like the acceptance of a direction in my songwriting that I feel ready to explore on the next record.”

Filmed and edited by Amy Greenbank, the accompanying video for “Whispers” is shot in a gorgeously cinematic black and white, and juxtaposes footage of the band playing shows across Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland to wrapt audiences with haunting wintry landscapes across Northern Europe, the band doing promo shoots and behind the scenes tour footage.

“We were so lucky that our Creative Scotland funding allowed us to take this tour and to bring Amy Greenbank with us,” Cwfen’s Alder says of the tour and video,. “We got to work with an incredibly talented videographer, and we made a friend for life. She’s someone who will always be part of the Cwfen family. We made incredible memories on this tour and it’s so lovely to see some of them here.’”

“Following an unexpectedly busy and wonderful 12 months since the release of Sorrows, we’re proud to share our new video for ‘Whispers,'” Cfwen’s Guy DeNuit adds. “This song has become a live favourite with the band and audiences, and we are so fortunate to have had this documented and beautifully presented by our videographer and dear friend, Amy Greenbank.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: sundayclub Shares Anthemic “Blue Wave”

Winnipeg-based indie duo sundayclub — Courtney and Nikki — have quickly cemented a sound and approach that blends hazy indie pop and dreamy textures with unfiltered storytelling. The result is material that’s much like blurry photograph, grainy yet glowing, fleeting yet full of feeling and life. 

The duo’s nine-song, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a July 10, 2026 release through Paper Bag Records. Their debut is deeply informed by the stillness of rural Manitoba, where the duo started the band as a way of processing the very strange limbo of early adulthood — that feeling of being caught between who you once were and who you’re slowly becoming. Fittingly, the album is rooted in place: in a romanticized, re-examined Winnipeg with its hard edges softened in the way that memory often soften things. Thematically, the album touches upon growing up, growing apart and growing into your own skin. 

The album includes the previously released “Camera Shy,” and the album’s latest single “Blue Wave.” Built around a motorik pulse, fuzzy guitars and a euphoric, sing-along worthy hook and chorus, “Blue Wave” is an uptempo rousingly anthemic layered with three drum kits — and the product of over 170 vocal takes. Much like its predecessor, there’s a hauntingly bittersweet undertone to the song with the single leaning into the feeling of “pre-nostalgia,” which happens when you experience nostalgia in real time and began to feel as though you might miss the current moment before it’s passed. The song also references Courtney’s first car, a 2009 blue Pontiac Wave, lovingly named Trudy after its previous owner, and the memories Courtney and Nikki associated with the car — and with a specific period of their lives. So, in some way, the car was a bit of a time machine, and a way to explore the fuzzy and hazy spacers between the past and present.

“This song reminisces on the early days of a relationship in the midst of inner turmoil and uncertainty over what the future might hold,” Carmichael explains. “It’s about wanting to be a different, better, and more evolved version of yourself despite not being there yet, and seeking escapism in the past as a way to find solace. I felt impossibly restless at the time of writing the song and was just generally tired: tired of feeling like I wasn’t progressing, tired of being patient with the record we were making, tired of feeling vulnerable and overlooked. By looking back into the past, I could escape into a feeling of wistfulness to distract myself from how frustrated I was in the present.”

Directed by Qran Zhu, the accompanying video for “Blue Wave” was shot in Toronto and follows a young couple in love, who decided to steal two old bikes and go for a joyride. But what originally was young and mischievous whimsy turns into something much more dangerous and eventually tragic.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lukka Returns with Summer of Love-like “Blue Ocean Eyes”

New York-based indie trio Lukka — Berlin-born, New York-based creative mastermind Franzi Szymkowiak (guitar, vocals), Ashley Gonzalez (bass) and Simon “SiFi” Fishburn (drums) — have long operated at the crossroads of space rock, neo-psychedelia and synth-driven indie pop. The band’s sound is anchored around hypnotic grooves, immersive textures and melody-driven songwriting, frequently blending repetition with expansive, atmospheric arrangements featuring driving bass lines, propulsive rhythms, delay pedaled guitars and layered analogy synths, and equally atmospheric production.

Syzmkowiak has travelled across the globe, seeking a musical home that felt right. She had stints living in Australia, New Zealand and Argentina before settling in New York. “New York City felt like the right place to meet like-minded people,” she says. “The reason I make music is that it serves as an escape from everyday reality and the problems of daily life. Songwriting helps me process what is happening around me. Music, and especially synthesizer sounds, takes me to another realm where I can feel at peace and experience emotions I have not felt elsewhere. Creating music almost feels like a religious act. Having a band and being an artist in this city has allowed me to meet so many other interesting people. Through these relationships, I feel that I am part of a larger creative community, which creates a strong and meaningful sense of connectedness.”

The trio’s third album, the Abe Seiferth-produced Wendekind is slated for a June 5, 2026 release. The band’s Syzmkowiak was born around the fall of the Berlin Wall. She explains that children, who were born in East Germany at that time were called wendekinder, a generation born into a new, free world. Her mom would always call her a wendekind. “It felt like the perfect title for the album,” she says. 

Recorded at Brooklyn-based Transmitter Park Studios, Wendekind reportedly sees the band expanding upon the sound of 2022’s Something Human while pushing further into much more immersive, synth-driven territory. 

Thematically, Wendekind sees the New York diving deeper into the metaphysical, tracing loss and memory, while questioning one’s place in an infinite and seemingly indifferent universe. For Syzmkowiak, the album is a deeply personal and reflective effort, moving between memories of the past, and hopes for the future while touring on space, time, chance and self-discovery. 

“Over the past three years, a series of events pushed me to look inward and question what had been driving my choices and behavior,” Syzmkowiak says. “The album became a deeply personal and spiritual journey, leading me back to my roots and to memories of where I came from.”

The soon-to-be released third album will include the meditative and slow-burning “Fabric of the Cosmos” and its latest single, album opener “Blue Ocean Eyes.” “Blue Ocean Eyes” may arguably be the most Summer of Love-inspired tune of the album to date, with a modern sensibility. Seemingly channeling contemporaries like JOVM mainstays Elephant Stone, the album’s latest single showcases Szymkowiak and company’s unerring knack for pairing earnest lyricism with catchy hooks and shimmering and jangling guitars.

Directed by Jen Meller, the accompanying video for “Blue Ocean Eyes” is split between footage of the band playing in front of psychedelic projections and footage of Szymkowiak wandering around a room strewn with trippy art and lights.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lulla Shares Brooding and Atmospheric “Secret Garden”

Lulla is a Chinese Canadian illustrator, fashion designer, singer/songwriter and producer who currently splits her time between Toronto and NYC. As a musician, the Canadian-born artist is a classically trained pianist, who recently began to experiment with electronic music by blending dark synth pop, alternative pop and indie pop to build an immersive sonic world that’s intimate and otherworldly. Thematically, her self-produced and self-written work explores emotional turmoil, femininity and nostalgia through sci-fi and futurism.

Lullaverse is the Canadian artist’s ongoing sci-fi narrative music project in which each song functions as a standalone emotional world and as a chapter in a larger mythological universe. Her second single “Secret Garden” is a a brooding and atmospheric alt-pop song featuring reverb-soaked, skittering beats, bursts of twinkling keys. Lulla’s yearning vocal ethereally floats over a brooding production that sonically seems to channel early Beacon and others.

“The garden is not a place. It is a body. The heart is hidden inside it. The hidden shrine is a vault,” Lulla explain. “A place where everything real is kept, worshipped in private, never surfaced. Heaven would call it sin. The world would call it a waste. Does it matter? Whether the devotion is directed toward a warm body or something of higher meaning, the distinction is irrelevant. She disappeared beyond the atmosphere either way.

“You can hear ‘Secret Garden’ as a queer love story,” she continues. “You can hear it as an artist’s confession. Both readings are fully supported. Neither one is wrong, it is deliberate ambiguous.”

Directed by the artist, the accompanying video features the artist, dressed in white with ivy wrapped around her in a white studio, near a computer and microphone. At one point, we see a confused Lulla running towards a bathroom. For the artist, she’s inexplicably and dangerous drawn to music — at seemingly all costs.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dead Pioneers Team Up with Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson on Brooding, Post Punk-Inspired “The Worst Among Us”

Denver-based punk outfit Dead Pioneers — Josh Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar), Shane Zweygardt (drums), Algiers’ Lee Tesche (bass) and acclaimed indigenous visual and performance artist and activist Gregg Deal (vocals) — will be releasing their third album Wagon Burner on June 26, 2026 through Hassle Records.

Wagon Burner as the band’s Gregg Deal says is “more collaborative,” while being heavier, harder and much more accessible with a focus on mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. The album features guest spots Cheap Perfume, The Interrupters  and Sleaford Mods.  The album’s material acknowledges that things are bleak but the band rises up to our miserable occasion, casting an empowering light deep into the gloom.

The Denver-based outfit’s third album will include, the previously released “No Kings” and the album’s latest single “The Worst Among Us,” which features a guest spot from Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson. Arguably one of the most post-punk leaning songs of the album so far, “The Worst Among Us” is anchored around a brooding and shimmering krautrock pulse as Deal and Williamson trade spoken word-like vocal turns detailing the rot, brutality, theft, exploitation and evil of colonialism, racism, classism and more, rooted in bitter, lived-in personal experience. Resembling The Jim Carroll Band’s classic 1980 self-titled album, “The Worse Among Us” is a bold step in a new sonic direction while retaining elements of the Denver-based outfit’s sound and creative approach.

“While it’s easy for me to say I’m proud of every song on Wagon Burner, I’d be remiss by not admitting this one is one of my favorites,” admits frontman Gregg Deal. “The way it came together with (bassist) Lee at the helm of this one. This song feels like a level up for us, a piece that brings together elements that are 100% Dead Pioneers with some other elements that are new. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, but we really are about the art of this work. ‘The Worst Among Us’ is in this camp, recognizing that we sometimes will find lightening in a bottle more than once while on the Dead Pioneers path.”

“I wish I could express how excited I am to have Jason on this track with us,” Deal continues. “Lee introduced me to Sleaford Mods in 2021 when we met and pulled together ‘Bad Indian.’ In the space of the original idea of Dead Pioneers being ‘spoken word with punk riffs,’ Lee pointed me to Sleaford Mods and their then new album Spare Rib. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’ve been proper obsessed with Sleaford Mods since. This feels like another full circle moment for Wagon Burner, and I am sincerely humbled to share space with the likes of Jason Williamson.

“Colonialism, imperialism, theft, murdering, oppressing and death? All the things a song needs, capped off by the unmistakable cadence and voice of Jason Williamson. This song was an important one lyrically, in presenting some personal experiences while acknowledging the more general grievances of colonialism and imperialism. This moment in the world’s history is more poignant than most for a song like this. Saying the things that need to be said on a political, social and cultural level is wildly important right now,” Deal says.

“’Nabbing lands, traditions or symbols with cunning chicanery or beady eyed brute force.’ How could I not be on a tune with lyrics like these?” Sleaford Mods’ John Williamson says. ” ‘The Worst Among Us’ is the kind of song that revitalises the idea of Punk within the listener. Wrapped up in some weird Cure/Sisters Of Mercy vibe to boot. Very honoured to be included.”

Directed by Lee Tesche, the accompanying video for “The Worst Among Us” is a remarkably cinematic visual that features Nouveau Vague-styled split screens, brooding silhouettes, and footage of Dead Pioneers’ Deal in his art studio and with some indigenous friends and family, as well as Sleaford Mods’ Williamson in abandoned, damp tunnels and abandoned train tracks.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Winnipeg’s sundayclub Shares Wistful, Bittersweet “Camera Shy”

Winnipeg-based indie duo sundayclub — Courtney and Nikki — have quickly cemented a sound and approach that blends hazy indie pop and dreamy textures with unfiltered storytelling. The result is material that’s much like blurry photograph, grainy yet glowing, fleeting yet full of feeling and life.

The duo’s nine-song, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a July 10, 2026 release through Paper Bag Records. Their debut is deeply informed by the stillness of rural Manitoba, where the duo started the band as a way of processing the very strange limbo of early adulthood — that feeling of being caught between who you once were and who you’re slowly becoming. Fittingly, the album is rooted in place: in a romanticized, re-examined Winnipeg with its hard edges softened in the way that memory often soften things. Thematically, the album touches upon growing up, growing apart and growing into your own skin.

The forthcoming album’s latest single “Camera Shy” is a superficially euphoric tune that actually expresses an underlying bittersweet ache, featuring Courtney’s wistful yet dreamy delivery ethereally floating over swirling shoegazer textures and atmospheric synths. The result is a song that’s simultaneously cinematic and deeply personal — with the song describing a hazy New Year’s Eve that starts off full of promise but somehow spirals out of control, and ends somewhere you and others never intended or even wanted. The song also orbits around a tension the band knows intimately: the compulsion to document and be documents versus the desire to simply disappear into a moment. There’s an acknowledgment that being seen, and being photographed, filmed, captured comes with the territory, even when you’re not quite feeling up to it.

The band add: “It’s about a good night gone very wrong — one of those back and forth, hazy NYE nights bound for absolute disaster. It references our obsession with the ‘moment’ and ever-present FOMO, but also introduces Court’s complicated feelings towards being photographed or ‘captured,’ as it’s referred to in the song. It can get really overwhelming and all-consuming when so much of your energy is put into your physical looks, especially when you just don’t feel like being in the spotlight.”

Directed by Qran Zhu, the accompanying video for “Camera Shy” captures a young couple in love, celebrating New Year’s Eve — with all the bright hopes and dreams of the upcoming year and future before the night spirals out of control with a drunken confrontation during a sundayclub show that leaves one of our protagonists by themselves just before midnight.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Locust Teams Up with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead and Natasha Morrow on Yearning “Long Distance Lover”

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, as well as with Autocreation and under his own name. Originally influenced by Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream and others, Van Hoen’s music career started in earnest back in 1993 when 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 English electronic music artist’s latest Locust single “Long Distance” features Neil Halstead on guitar and vocals from Irish musician Natasha Morrow. The lush and dream-like collaboration came together over the past few years and features shimmering and pulsating, Giorgio Moroder-like synths, Halstead’s reverb drenched shoegazer textured riffs meticulously draped and sculpted over the synths while Morrow’s yearning delivery expresses a longing for intimacy despite a physical distance.

“The music was recorded back in 2020 originally as a collab between Neil Halstead and I,” Van Hoen recalls. “It sat around for a few years, and I had the idea to send it to Natasha to see if it inspired anything vocally. She came up with the idea of long-distance phone calls between lovers. It struck a chord with me as I had experienced a couple of relationships like that. The idea of repeating these expressions of desire and longing over and over, because you are aching to be together. I had actually never met Natasha, and generally, I find that remote collabs don’t work because there’s a connection missing somehow. But in Natasha’s case, I had several long phone calls with her, and I think we connected that way. Not in any romantic sense, but as musical collaborators, which has its own particular need for a personal connection and understanding. I found it interesting that it related to the song’s lyrics in that she and I established a different kind of personal bond over the phone.”

The accompanying video by Mark Van Hoen features the song’s collaborators in silhouette dipping in and out of the frame, which helps further accentuate the distance, longing and ephemeral nature of the song’s central relationship.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Truck Violence Returns with Bruising, Self-Aware “Your name, it’s walking”

Acclaimed and rising Montréal-based experimental act Truck Violence — founding duo Karysn Henderson (vocals) and Paul Lecours (guitar, banjo, production), along with Chris Clegg (bass, banjo) and Thomas Hart (drums and slide guitar) — can trace their origins back to its founding duo’s childhood: Henderson and Lecours grew up in a small, French Canadian town of 600 people, graduating in a class of nine. By the time they both turned 15, they were running a local studio and radio station. There was no industry support, no infrastructure, no template for what they were trying to do, only the work itself — and the conviction that it was worth doing. 

When the pair turned 17, they relocated to Montréal, where they met Chris Clegg and Thomas Hart, who hail from different corners of the country and began building their band from the ground up. 

The Canadian quartet’s highly anticipated sophomore album, The weathervane is my body is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through San Francisco-based label The Flenser and Montréal-based Mothland. Their sophomore album is reportedly a product of the process of building the band from the ground up. The album’s creative and writing process, the recording, the mixing and visuals were all produced employing a fiercely DIY process. This isn’t done as an aesthetic choice or a marketing angle, it’s because for the band, it’s the only honest option album. 

The album’s cover art was shot on film by the band on Montréal’s Avenue du Parc. A figure perches atop a small Québécois-style house, hand built from reclaimed materials, spine curved, legs pulled in, bare-backed against a skyline that dwarfs everything beneath it. A rural thing dropped into the grit of a big city, small and out of place yet refusing to disappear. The body is naked and defenseless, open to the environment and every stimuli the world can deliver upon it.

Thematically, the album is a continuation and expansion of the angry statement of purpose of their debut, 2024’s Violence. Rooted in noise rock and post-hardcore traditions, the album is uncompromising in its refusal to be anything other than what is: immediate, self-determined and built entirely by the hands that imagined it. 

The weathervane is my body will feature the previously released “New Jesus” and the album’s second and latest single, “Your name, it’s walking.” The album’s new single is a furious ripper that’s captures the brutally hurtful self-talk of a troubled young person maneuvering their relationship with themselves and a brutally cruel world. Much like its immediate predecessor, the new single is an urgent, desperate howl — with some gorgeous, meditative, banjo-driven sections.

“This song is a sort of compilation of thoughts; my relationship with my birth name after having a precarious journey with gender and identity in my early teens, my feelings of inadequacy and alienation growing up with intense ADHD and anxiety from an early age, my desires for anchorage in an uncertain future,” Truck Violence’s Karsyn Henderson explains. “The hook of the song always comes off as extremely cliche to me, maybe I am hitting the nail too precisely, with too blunt a face, but perhaps that is necessary, perhaps it reflects well the thoughts of myself as I was.

Directed by Kirill Sommer, the accompanying video for “Your name, it’s walking” is a surreal fever dream that captures the mundanity and boredom of rural life, while being one-part Samuel Beckett play, one-part psilocybin trip, one-part Ingmar Bergman film.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lunar Twin Shares Broodingly Cinematic “Disappear into the Earth”

Lunar Twin — Bryce Boudreau and Chris Murphy — is a critically acclaimed duo and a JOVM mainstay act, who have established a sound that fuses dream pop and darkwave with atmospheric rock, electronic textures […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Talks Shares Strutting and Defiant “People Pleaser”

Los Angeles-based trio Night Talks — Soraya Sebghati (vocals), Jacob Butler (guitar, synth, vocals) and Josh Arteaga (bass, synth, vocals) — features three lifelong friends, who wanted to start a band. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the three Angelenos are also filmmakers and film lovers, because Los Angeles, after all. Their music is sparkly alt-rock/indie rock that’s inspired as much by the films they’ve created and consumed, as much by LCD Soundsystem and Queens of the Stone Age. Fittingly, their work is centered around cinematic stories, dance floor friendly grooves and intricate layers of sound, meant to transport you to a dance floor anywhere you’re listening to their music.

The trio’s 2022 effort Same Time Tomorrow featured “On and On” KROQ’s #1 Locals Only song of the year. Written and produced during the pandemic, the band was able to create an entire visual world of music videos for each track of the album. As a result of both the album and its music videos, the Los Angeles-based trio received rapturous praise and coverage from GrimyGoods, Buzzbands LA and more, as well as airplay from KROQ’s Locals Only. Their songs have been featured on playlist like Fresh Finds, All New Rock and All New Alternative.

Building upon a growing profile, the band has opened for the likes of Couch, Circa Waves, Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner and Kississippi. Last year, the band returned to the studio with a fresh pop-forward approach to their songwriting for a new album. Those recording sessions resulted in the release of two singles, “Shadows On The Run” and “Targets” feat Grammy Award-nominated, genre-defying songwriter, producer and guitarist Cory Wong. The collaboration can trace its origins back to 2024, when Night Talks’ Soaya Segbhati appeared as a surprise guest at several shows on Wong’s 2024 tour.

This year, they did a Jam In The Van session and with a renewed energy and big plans ahead, they’re gearing up for a big year. The Los Angeles trio’s latest single, the Eric Palmquist co-written and produced “People Pleaser”features a disco and pop-leaning groove, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses and Segbhati’s soulful, powerhouse delivery. The song is a defiant celebration of a woman finally putting herself first, instead of bending over backwards to people people who aren’t remotely worth her time.

“‘People Pleaser’ is a celebratory song about overcoming your tendencies to put everyone else first, and not wasting time with a person who makes you bend for them constantly,” Night Talks’ Sebghati explains, “Lyrically, we wanted it to be vague whether it’s about a friend or a partner, since this kind of dynamic can apply to any relationship.”The band’s Jacob Butler adds, “We tried to create something more sparse than songs we’ve done before, with fewer layers that each serve to either be either funky or percussive; even the acoustic guitars feel more like shakers in the track.”

Directed by Logan Sage, the accompanying video for “People Pleaser” is a slick, feverish yet textured daydream that features the band’s Sebghati singing, dancing and vamping it up in a studio and various locations in and around Los Angeles. Shot at the band’s Night Talks HQ, Butler says, “We shot on three different cameras, one regular, one with an old TV zoom lens, and a VHS, so that gave the video a bit of a multimedia effect that added to the daydreaming angle.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Body Type Shares Languid and Shimmering “Mulberry”

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.

Tally’s latest single “Mulberry” is a languid, sun-dappled tune, featuring shimmering guitars, a relentlessly driving rhythm paired with the Aussie outfit’s uncanny sense of melodicism and catchy hooks. Sonically resembling a mix of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey, The Breeders and a bit of Marquee Moon-era Television, “Mulberry” is anchored around a mediation on self-dissolution with the song’s lyrics a rollicking bit of free-association with a narrator, who bites into a piece of purple fruit and ruminates on similarly colored phenomenon, the heavens, the changing of the seasons, and more.

Directed by Jack Saltmiras, the accompanying video for “Mulberry” follows each of the band’s members as they walk around a very busy Sydney, encountering city life.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hot Garbage Returns with Woozy and Noisy “SPUN”

Toronto-based psych outfit Hot Garbage — Alex Carlevaris (lead vocals, guitar), Juliana Carlevaris (bass, vocals), Dylan Gamble (keys, synths) and Mark Henin (drums) — began 2026 with “Wewu,” the first bit of new material since their sophomore album, 2024’s Precious Dream.

The Canadian noise rock outfit’s second single of the year, the Graham Walsh-produced “SPUN.” “SPUN” is a woozy yet furious ear drum shattering assault anchored around a fuzzy bass line, cataclysmic and thunderous drumming, scorching Sonic Youth-like guitar and space age-like keys. Sonically, the song evokes the frenetic, churning tumult of our moment.

Directed by the band’s Dylan Gamble, the accompanying video for “SPUN” features Sook-Yin Lee as “The Bug.” Split between illustrations by Lee and footage shot in Gamble’s dark and trippy psychedelic style, the video follows a day and night in the life of “The Bug.” In the dead of winter, a hibernating bug ventures down a heating vent, only to find itself stuck outside on Toronto’s frozen streets. Crawling across icy cement and flying across a brutalist skyline, Lee’s bug explores a strange city with awe and fear. After a reflective moment in a park, it flies into the night, buzzing through the dark corridors of the Old City before making a startling and deadly encounter. “The buzzing harmonics of the guitar mirror the sketchy inner dialogue of the insect, while the lyrics remind it of the short time it has left.” the band says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: POND Returns with Searching and Yearning “Through The Heather”

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 June 19, 2026 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 recently released, album title track “Terrestrials,” he Sisters of Mercy-meets-Diesel and Dust-era Midnight Oil-like “Two Hands,” and the album’s third and latest single “Through The Heather.” Anchored around a chintzy and shimmering Casio keyboard-like synth melody and driving rhythms, Terrestrials‘ third single may arguably be the album’s most searching and achingly yearning tune.

“Through the Heather” was initially conceived while Pond toured Europe last year. Drummer/Keyboardist Gin kept himself entertained by conjuring musical experiments on Ableton; a few a day until something stood out. “Then him and [multi-instrumentalist + founding member] Gum worked on it more in a hotel room while watching Ice Road Truckers or something equally shit,” frontman Nicholas Allbrook explains.

“Sometimes rock and roll is a glamorous game baby, but mainly it isn’t. Funny that such a beautiful, melancholic, searching song was born surrounded by chip packets and track pants in a van full of filthy pigs,” Allbrook continues. “We had so much fun making the spring reverb thunderclaps, giving the spring a cheeky little pinch to make it go BOOM, looking out over the Indian ocean from our porch/studio in Seabird while MasterChef played silently in the corner. Let that be a lesson to all you young rockers ok? Can’t get too inspiring ya know. Gotta keep a lid on it. Chucking on the telly or making a samwich or having a nap should do it.”

Animated by Albert Pritchard, the accompanying video for “Through The Heather” is a mind-bending visual that features heather growing near a medieval-styled castle, a bat flying through a lightning storm, an army of marching red-eyed spiders and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Widowspeak Returns with Swooning “Soft Cover”

New York-based indie outfit Widowspeak — Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas— are one of many bands to crop up in the busy local scene around the time I started this site, almost 16 years ago. They started out shuffling their gear between now, long-shuttered — and deeply beloved — venues like Glasslands, Cake Shop, 285 Kent, Death By Audio and a lengthy list of others, and their practice space at Monster Island Basement, which now is a Trader Joe’s. New York has fucking changed, y’all. Speaking of changes: the duo is now a married couple, working day jobs in their own off-season. Thomas is a carpenter, Hamilton a waitress. 

Recently, the duo announced that their highly-anticipated seventh album, Roses will be released June 5, 2026 through Captured Tracks. Deeply informed by their respective day jobs, Roses isn’t populated with dramatic overtures, but with the backdrop of the minutiae and repetition of daily acts. There’s the small observations before, during and after work: the ritual-like act of pouring water or coffee for customers, the bemusement and frustration of catching a cold on your only day off. Maybe you’re daydreaming about your life if you won the lottery — or maybe realizing that you already won. 

The 10-song Roses was recorded last January at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek Island of Hydra, a studio located in an old house, tucked into the village’s steep hills. During the winter, without the rush of tourists, it’s quiet. Longtime touring members Willy Muse, John Andrews and Noah Bond were the session backing band. 

The album’s material was then taken home and slowly, lightly tinkered with before being mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering. 

Throughout the album, intimate spaces and stages of love are captured with a nostalgic, almost sepia-toned, vaseline coated lens. As always, the beating heart of their work is the interplay between Hamilton’s languid, dreamy and textured delivery and Hamilton’s bluesy, visceral guitar work. 

Roses‘ will include the previously released “If You Change,” the lush and cinematic “No Driver,” and the album’s third and latest single, “Soft Cover.” “Soft Cover” is a shuffling driving and achingly gorgeous song anchored around featuring what may arguably the album’s most sweeping hooks and Hamilton’s swooning, heartfelt delivery. The song evokes both the sensation of daydreaming about someone, as you’re going about the mundane actions of your day — and the sensation of longing and hoping to see that special someone as soon as possible.

“Soft Cover” is about infatuation: wanting and daydreaming about someone as you’re going about your day… even if, and maybe especially if, you’ve been with them a long time,” says Hamilton. “We brought in a Rhodes for this one, so it came in a car from Athens, then took a boat, then a donkey carried it up to the studio,” Hamilton adds, describing the unique recording conditions they experienced at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek island Hydra.

Directed by Otium, the accompanying video features the band’s Molly Hamilton as a singing telegram girl, who daydreams of a idealized Shakespearean/Renaissance Faire man (Robert Earl Thomas) courting her with old-timey poetry as she reads from her pulp novel. “The video is the last in the world of the trilogy, where the Singing Telegram Girl is dreaming about an idealized Renaissance Faire Guy while waiting around, reading a pulpy novel,” Hamilton says. “Rob was incredibly enthusiastic about this one because he loves medieval history and we got to pick out some fun costumes from Adele’s of Hollywood. He’s a star!”