Tag: women who kick ass

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Full Flower Moon Band Shares Uneasy, Brooding “Endless Summer”

Led by its creative mastermind, Aussie singer/songwriter and guitarist Kate “Babyshakes” Dillon, rock outfit Full Flower Moon Band initially started out as a bedroom project. Since expanding to a formidable, full-fledged band, Full Flower Moon Band has become one of Oz’s fastest growing bands. Anhocred around Dillon’s songwriting and singular stage presence, the project blends heavy riffle, psych rock/desert rock swagger with sharp, often darkly comic lyricism.

2024’s third album, Megaflower was their breakthrough effort: Megaflower debuted at #1 on the ARIA Australian Album Charts and #6 on the ARIA Vinyl Charts, selling out its initial vinyl pressing in a week. “Roadie” and “Illegal Things” received airplay on Iggy Pop’s BBC radio show. “Man Hands” appeared in Made In Chelsea. “Trainspotting’ was featured in the Netflix series, Heartbreak High. The album also landed at #66 on KEXP‘s album chart. And a collection of performance clips went viral, amassing millions of views while receiving attention from Fred Durst, Jack Black, Cage The Elephant, and Daniel Johns.

Adding to a growing wave of momentum surrounding the Aussie band, they’ll be opening for Foo Fighters on two dates of that band’s Aussie tour — November 5, 2026 at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium and November 7, 2026 at Townsville’s Queensland County Bank Stadium. And hot on the heels of that announcement, “Endless Summer” is their first bit of new music of 2026. Anchored around a snarling dessert rock-meets-doom metal guitar line, “Endless Summer” to my ears sounds a bit like a swaggering, blend of Songs For The Deaf-era Queens of the Stone Age and Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey. But just underneath the sunny and optimist dream of never-ending summer, the song i underpinned by the shaky conviction of a manic episode, giving the song an uneasily desperate undertone.

The new single was written by Dillion during a month-long stint in New York, after receiving the Grant McLennan Fellowship, experience that pushed her outside the familiarity of Brisbane — and into a period of intense writing, isolation and creative uncertainty.

“A much darker anthem than the title suggests — ‘Endless Summer’ is the voice of a manic episode. This hopeless, frantic optimism is summarised in the chorus lyric, ‘you can have an endless summer, anytime the sun comes out’. What began as a simple instrumental track is now an unnerving battle cry,” Dillon explains.

The accompanying video for “Endless Summer” is split between stylishly shot performance footage, homemade footage of Dillon as a child playing air guitar and of brooding and serious Dillon in New York — on the subway and in several different locations in town. The video manages to capture the creeping unease at the core of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 78th Birthday, Olivia Newton-John!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 78th anniversary of the birth of Olivia Newton-John.

Video by William Ruben Helms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Niia Shares Two Previously Unreleased Tracks off “V (Goth Jazz Edition)”

Born Niia Bertino, Niia is a Needham, MA-born, Los Angeles-based classically trained composer, pianist and vocalist. Deeply rooted in jazz, her work blends elegance, edge and a timeless voice with razor-sharp, seemingly lived-in songwriting. Her fifth album, last year’s Spencer Zahn co-produced V was the culmination of years spent experimenting at the intersection of tradition and reinvention.

Existing in the tension between control and collapse, V saw the acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist seamlessly blending the electronic textures of contemporary, experimental pop with the interplay of live, jazz-rooted instrumentation and musicianship. The album’s arrangements stretch — sometimes restrained, sometimes theatrical– but always with intention. As a classically trained musician, who grew up watching Italian cinema, Bertino explains, “I pulled from the harmonic language of jazz pianists like Bill Evans and from the psychological atmosphere of film scores.” 

Arguably, one of Bertino’s most personal albums to date, V thematically explores the full spectrum of the self — self-harm, self-delusion, self-awareness and in rare moments, self-love. “Not in a moralizing way, but in a very human one,” she adds. “The good and bad live side by side, often in the same verse. One minute I’m performing heartbreak like it’s a role I’ve rehearsed, the next I’m quietly admitting I caused the whole thing. That contradiction is the truth.”

The album featured “Pianos and Great Danes,” which I wrote about on this site.

Last week, Bertino released V (Goth Jazz Edition), a deluxe edition of her acclaimed fifth album through Candid Records. V (Goth Jazz Edition) features three bonus tracks, a cover of Chet Baker‘s “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes) and two, previously unreleased tracks “Been A Long Night” and Show Me Love.” “There were a few directions on the album that I still wanted to explore a little deeper, and these new songs felt so connected to the world of V that they really wouldn’t have made sense anywhere else,” Niia says of the deluxe edition of V.

“Been A Long Night” features an intricate, jazz-driven arrangement of broodingly cinematic piano and a supple yet propulsive bass line with skittering drum ‘n bass-meets footwork-styled beats beneath the acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist’s yearning delivery. While being both club and lounge friendly, “Been A Long Night” is rooted in a late-night longing and desire that’s simultaneously fun and a little dangerous.

“Show Me Love” is a slow-burning, gorgeous, Quiet Storm-like tune that showcases Niia’s effortlessly soulful, pop star vocal confessing a desire to wholly accept and love while asking her lover to show some much-needed vulnerability. “Show Me Love” may arguably be the deluxe edition’s most straightforward yet earnest tune.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Elena Pinderhughes Teams Up with Immanuel Wilkins on Ethereal and Soulful Debut Single “life goes on”

Raised in the Bay Area’s progressive cultural landscape, Elena Pinderhughes is a groundbreaking composer, flutist and vocalist, who has become known for expanding jazz’s emotional range by crafting music that’s tender and sensual, mysterious and direct and grounded in a feminine creative vision without apology. Her work channels an unguarded, deeply personal voice that few in the genre have dared to show.

Informed by shaping the music of her collaborators, Pinderhughes’ work sees her seamlessly weaving R&B and neo-soul while being rooted in the jazz tradition.

Pinderhughes debut single as a solo artist “life goes on” feat. Immanuel Wilkins follows a decade of being one of the most sought-after collaborators across genres and styles: She has toured with Herbie Hancock and Chief Xian aTunde Audah, played at Coachella with Future and Metro Boomin — and sh has appeared on tracks by Giveon, Victoria Monét, Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper, Esperanza Spalding, Common and a lengthy list of others.

While marking Pinderhughes’ bold step forward into the spotlight as a solo artist, “life goes on” features two of jazz’s most distinct young voices playing off one another as they trade and weave lyrical flute and saxophone lines over a harmonic piano and a propulsive rhythm section and bursts of Kid A and Amnesiac-like-glitchy electronics. The result is a composition that’s ethereal yet soulful, cinematic yet deeply introspective while effortlessly pushing the boundaries of contemporary jazz.

“I’ve been playing the flute for almost my entire life, and for so much of that time I was searching…learning everything I could, trying different things, and figuring out what actually sounded like me,” Pinderhughes says. “Somewhere along the way, I started to hear a voice emerge that felt like my own. That’s what feels different now. I’m not searching in the same way anymore. I feel like I have a sound I believe in and something of my own to say with this instrument. And now I want to show you what the flute can do. I want people to hear how powerful, beautiful, intimate and alive it can be. ‘life goes on’ feels like the beginning of a much bigger story I want to tell about what the flute can be.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: TOMORA Shares Dazzling and Euphoric “Celebration”

TOMORA is a 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.

Released earlier this year through Capitol Records, the duo’s full-length debut, 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. 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. 

The critically applauded album includes the previously released singles “COME CLOSER” “SOMEWHERE ELSE” and “I DRINK THE LIGHT.”

After two wildly successful tour runs that included festival sets at Coachella, Fuji Rock and others, the duo went to Rowlands’ Sussex, UK-based Rowlands Audio Research Studio to record COME CLOSER‘s highly-anticipated follow-up, the five-song CELEBRATION EP. Slated for an October 16, 2026 digital release and a November 27, 2026 physical release through Capital Records. The physical release will include a standard 12″ black vinyl, a special marbled vinyl and CD formats. You can pre-order the EP here.

The acclaimed duo say of the EP: “Celebration is a privilege. Celebration is a person. Celebration is a funeral and celebration is a ritual. It’s human nature. And it’s a human need. We should all be celebrated, as real human beings.”

The new EP will include the expanded, ten-minute version of album track, “IN A MINUTE,” and EP title track “Celebration.” “Celebration” features a dazzlingly hypnotic production anchored around motorik-like electronic pulse and club rocking, thumping beats beneath AURORA’s imitable, ethereal and yearning delivery. The result is a track that feels simultaneously immediate and expansive, introspective yet outward-looking, and yearning for ecstatic release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Zachhae’us Paul Teams Up with donSMITH, Safa and Milena Casado on Down To Mars-Produced, Quiet Storm-like “STAY”

Atlanta-born and based producer, singe/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Zacchae’us Paul will be releasing his highly-anticipated sophomore album JAZZ MONEY VOL. 2: SWINGIN’ R&B on October 16, 2026 through Candid Records. Sonically, the album sees the rising […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 68th Birthday, Joan Jett!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Joan Jett’s 68th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dummy Shares Double Single “April Limousine”/”Alluvial Fan”

Los Angeles-based outfit Dummy — Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, Joe Trainor and Lance Umble — will be releasing their fourth studio album, do you love the color of the sky on October 16, 2026 through Polyvinyl. If 2024’s Free Energy and its subsequent remix album evoked the spirit of Manchester and the optimism of the rave, do you love the color of the sky is reportedly rooted in a lyrical skepticism inspired by the post-rock and drone of Seefeel, Windy & Carl and Disco Inferno while playfully adorned in the jubilant pop hues of early Björk, The Sundays and Ray of Light-era Madonna. The album is essentially an anti-zeitgeist effort, freezing the listener into their incorporeal moment of time, freed from the rat race and trends, embracing insularity to the point that it somehow becomes the future.

And yet despite the allusions to futurism, the Los Angeles-based outfit are a band in the classic sense, grounded in work ethic and commitment to the music. As Joe Trainor says of their time since the release of Free Energy, “We toured a lot, around 150 days, and played approximately 113 shows” which included several tours of the US and two of Europe, “. . . and on larger stages than ever before.” Alex Ewell adds “Touring has had huge impact on us and our music.”

“Making music shouldn’t be fun,” the band jokingly asserts. But it also comes from earnestness and a love for the game so deep that they don’t want to cheat it. The blood, sweat and tears of “putting in the work” is at the heart of do you love the color of the sky? — a byproduct of shedding skins through live performance. Sonically, the album is a bold, creative and downright effortless leap forward for the Los Angeles-based quartet that finds them at their most creatively in-tune.

Thematically, the album may arguably be their most politically trenchant and yet simultaneously, their most inviting. Breakbeats and keyboardist Emma Maatman’s vocals belie a mischievous and purposeful sleight of hand — the listener may become entranced by the band’s hypnotic grooves, but they’ve also subconsciously accrued a vision of a new, radical politic, informed by our increasingly dystopian hellscape.

do you love the color of the sky will include the previously released “Full Spectrum Dominance” and the double single “April Limousine”/”Alluvial Fan.” “April Limousine” serves as the literal introduction to the album and inlaces references to every other song, including demos that didn’t make the cut. Featuring skittering breakbeats, glistening synths beneath Manama’s dreamy delivery, “April Limousine” reminds me a little bit of Earthling-era David Bowie — in particular “Little Wonder” — with a little bit of 90s and early 2000s big beat. “It leaves you with the thesis statement and the question, ‘do you love the color of the sky?’ … among others,” Dummy’s Emma Maatman says. “The video is supposed to show a dichotomy of the beauty of nature and the chaos of impending technological advancement, which leads us into the next song, ‘Alluvial Fan.’ In the video, Nathan is drawn by a mysterious force to the wires around him.”

“Alluvial Fan” on the other hand features glistening reverb-soaked synth stabs, boom bap-like breakbeats beneath Nathan O’Dell’s dreamily delivered lead vocal and the melodic toplines of the band’s Maatman, Alex Ewell and O’Dell. Sonically, recalling a bit of New Order, Electronic, The Horrors, and Absolutely Free, “Alluvial Fan” may arguably be the most atmospheric and downright trippy tune of the released singles off the album. “The lyrics are a hybrid of two ideas,” the band’s Nathan O’Dell says. “The first being based on imagery from a certain 2000’s anime where the goal of mass digital connection blurs the lines of our human reality and a sense of self. One can’t help but follow the humming wires further and further until they are completely lost in the ‘Wired’ web. The other idea is the phenomenon of Alluvial Fans. They’re sick… check them out. This song also features some silky smooth vocals from Allyson and Paul from New Issue.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: AN_NA Shares a Seething, Industrial Club Banger

French-born, Montréal-based married couple and electronic music duo AN_NA formed over three decades ago. And over the course of their lengthy careers, they’ve used their experiences within electronic music, industrial and experimental music scenes to create a […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Baltimore’s Little Lungs Share Gorgeous, Introspective “Strangest Thing”

Baltimore-based indie rock outfit Little Lungs — Leena Rhodes (vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, synth), Brendan Russell (bass). Ricky Schwarzenberg (guitar) and Eli Simms (drums) — combine intimate and sincere lyricism with intricate guitar melodies and pulsating rhythms to create a sound that blends elements of folk and indie rock. Never shying away from vulnerability, the Baltimore-based quintet’s work dives into the obscure, difficult to explain emotions, like the innate feeling of absence, the flux of infatuation, the beauty of intoxication.

Recorded at Charm City’s The Watermelon Room last spring, the Ricky Schwarzenberg-produced sophomore album The Heat was released earlier this year. Arguably, their most cathartic effort to date, The Heat examines the love, loss and rebirth left in the wake of a tumultuous and volatile relationship — with vivid imagery and decisive storytelling.

“Strangest Thing,” The Heat‘s latest single is a breathtakingly gorgeous and soulful blend of folk, country and dream pop built around strummed acoustic guitar, jangling electric guitar and bursts of shimmering pedal steel with Rhodes’ introspective lyricism, big hooks and choruses and Rhodes’ equally gorgeous delivery.

The song is full of small, novelistic details and observations, which gives the song a deeply lived-in feel, while the narrator confesses a seemingly undying devotion to their lover.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Soccer Mommy Shares Yearning “Rings of Saturn”

Nashville-based singer/songwriter and musician Sophie Allison, the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed project Soccer Mommy, has made a name for herself over the past decade as one of indie rock’s most beloved and distinct voices. Her latest single, the Eliott Kozel-produced “Rings of Saturn” is the first bit of new material from the JOVM mainstay since 2024’s Evergreen. and it comes on the heels of the Allison opening for her heroes Liz Phair and Sleater-Kinney on their tour.

Featuring an introduction that has Allison accompanying her yearning vocal with strummed acoustic guitar that serves as the backbone of the song. the song quickly showcases her penchant for rousingly anthemic choruses featuring glitchy boom bap breakbeats and fuzzy guitars and twinkling keys. But at its core is a relatable narrator, who’s lost and desperately looking for hope from anywhere. They’re trying to hold on but they don’t know if they could hold on — or for how long.

“This song is about feeling lost and looking for hope from anywhere,” Allison explains. “I wrote it during a difficult time when I would often take my telescope out into the yard to look at the moon or at planets. There’s something about feeling small that can kind of take the weight off.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

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

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

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

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

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

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

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Carolina Oliveros Teams up with Orquesta Akokán on Disco-Tinged “RAYO”

Colombian-born, New York-based singer/songwriter Carolina Oliveros is best known for being the frontperson of acclaimed act Combo Chimbita. Oliveros will be stepping out into the spotlight with her solo debut Ya Rompimos el Silencio, which is slated for a November 6, 2026 release through Chulo Records.

Inspired by her journey of healing from childhood trauma, Ya Rompimos el Silencio is an act of reclaiming voice, body and memory. The album’s material follows the path forward towards truth, resilience, queer love, collective healing and liberation. Each song is both a personal testimony and an invitation for others to break their own silences.

Sonically, the album reflects Oliveros lifelong dialogue between worlds. Anchored in the Afro-Indigenous musical traditions of Colombia and the Caribbean, vocal harmonies serve as connective tissue marrying bullerengue, cumbia, tambora, rumba, bolero, dembo, salve and other ancestral rhythms with adventurous contemporary production. The result if a sound that’s simultaneously intimate and expansive, ritualistic and contemporary — and honors tradition while boldly pushing it forward. Throughout the album’s runtime, its songs move effortlessly between ceremony and celebration, contemplation and the dance floor, revealing that healing can be a defiant, joyful act.

While showcasing another dimension of Oliveros’ artistry, Ya Rompimos el Silencio is rooted in the belief that music carries memory across generations, that telling the truth can be liberating and transformative, and breaking silence is not an ending, it’s a decision to choose a freer way of living.

The album will include the previously released “Oye Camina” and the album’s second single, “RAYO” feat. Orquesta Akokán. “RAYO” features a Santeria chant delivered by Oliveros and the members of Orquestra Akokán in unison and in call-and-response over a disco groove, Afro-Caribbean/Afro-Colombian percussion and dusty, old-school breakbeats. Sonically, the song continues a run of material that feels simultaneously ancient and remarkably contemporary while bridging the Latin American world.

The song celebrates the possibility of reconciling the opposing forces that live within all of us. It’s also a reminder that even in heart of a storm, there is a harmony between the fire that ignites change and the water that sustains it. “Together, we pay tribute to two of the most revered Orishas of the Yorùbá pantheon: Shangó and Oshún,” Oliveros says.