Lyric Video: deary Shares Shimmering and Urgent “Smile”
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New Video: she’s green Returns with Slow-Burning and Delicate “paper thin”
Minneapolis-based outfit she’s green — Zofia Smith (vocals), Liam Armstrong (guitar), Raimes Lucas (guitar), Teddy Nordvold (guitar) and Kevin Seeback (drums) — specialize in crafting dreamy soundscapes that transport the listener to scenes of soft summer rain and fields of swaying wheat, infused with raw emotional intensity.
With their earliest singles “river” and “smile again,” the Minneapolis-based quintet quickly became a staple within the Midwestern alternative scene, while earning praise from Complex, Star Tribune and The Current. Their debut EP, 2023’s Wisteria saw the band establishing an honest and exploratory songwriting process, as well as reputation for being a force in the world of sonic surrealism. They supported their material with tours across the Midwest and East Coast with Hotline TNT, Friko, JOVM mainstays Glixen and a list of others.
Last year, the Minneapolis-based quartet signed to New York-based Photo Finish Records, who released their Henry Stoehr-produced sophomore EP Chrysalis. The EP included the Souvlaki-era Slowdive-like “Graze,” and the Sundays-meets-A Storm In Heaven-like “Willow.”
Building upon a growing national profile, the Minneapolis-based outfit will be releasing their newest effort, swallowtail EP on July 10, 2026 through Photo Finish Records. The EP will feature the previously released “mettle,” a decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV-like bit of shoegaze and dream pop and the EP’s latest single “paper thin.”
the slow-burning “paper thin” features swirling, gauzy shoegazer guitar textures that seem to be so fragile that they’re breaking apart as soon as they’re played, paired with Smith’s achingly melancholy vocal. The song captures the feeling of love slipping away right before your eyes — and the realization that there’s nothing you can do to stop it. At the core of the song is a bitter heartache, rooted in the familiar “what if’s” and “what would have beens” of every relationship.
The painterly shot, subtly surrealist video for “paper thin” that follows a night out that spirals out of control with a couple on the verge of a breakup, emphasizes the heartache at the core of the song.
New Audio: Club 8 Returns With Slow-Burning “There Is A Light That Seems To Go Out”
Since the release of 2024’s A Year With Club 8, Stockholm-based JOVM mainstays Club 8 — Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and electronic music producer, artist and Labrador Records founder and label boss Johan Angergård — the duo spent last year releasing a single a month over the course of last year, including tunes like “ooo,” “None Of This Will Matter When You’re Dead,” “Staying Alive,” “Born The Wrong Time,” “Sneaky Feelings” and “Daydreams.”
Earlier this year, the duo released “Echoes Of Our Time,” a nostalgia-inducing bop that channeled classic New Order and 80s pop. And late last month, the duo released their latest single “There Is A Light That Seems To Go Out,” a slow-burning and shimmering ballad that nods a bit at The Smiths, anchored around a familiar heartache over broken promises and things left unfulfilled and unresolved.
New Video: JOVM Mainstay Alewya Shares Broodingly Cinematic “Eshi”
JOVM mainstay Alewya is an acclaimed London-based singer/songwriter, producer and visual artist. Born in Saudi Arabia to an Egyptian-Sudanese father and an Ethiopian mother, the acclaimed London-based artist has spent her life surrounded by diaspora immigrant communities: She grew up in West London and after a several year stint in New York, she returned to London. Upon her return home, the Saudi-British artist developed and honed her ear for music through the sounds of the Ethiopian and Arabic music of her parents and the ambient and alternative rock albums of her brother.
She’s part of a generation of artists actively redefining global music, a generation that’s generally rooted in heritage, yet unbound by it. Describing herself as a painter, who makes music, Alewya approaches sound as texture and feeling, guided more by intuition than structure. Her sound and story help to widen the Black British frame, bringing the often under heard North and East African perspective into a much-needed focus.
Back in 2020, the JOVM mainstay burst into the scene with an attention grabbing feature on Little Simz‘s “where’s my lighter,” which caught the attention of Because Records, who signed the rising artist and released her critically applauded debut, 2021’s Panther In Mode EP.
Alewya’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, ZERO is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through Because London Records. The album reportedly embodies years of artistic growth into an effort that’s both deeply personal and sonically expansive. But the album also marks a significant milestone, as it sees her boldly stepping into a new creative era, defined by fearless experimentation and cultural fluidity.
ZERO will include the previously released “Night Drive,” feat. Dagmawit Ameha and “City of Symbols,” along with the album’s third and latest single “Eshi.” “Eshi” weaves broodingly atmospheric electronics, shimmering keys thumping beats and gnawa-like percussion with a looping figure played on an Eritrean and Ethiopian instrument, masenqo, a single-stringed bowed lute that features a diamond-shaped resonator. Alewya’s expressive delivery ethereally floats over the song’s widescreen production and instrumentation as it builds up and intensifies to a chant-driven crescendo. The result is a song that feels woozily anachronistic, in the sense that it draws from ancient traditions and pairs them with contemporary, Western/pop-influenced sounds and production techniques. “Eshi is rooted in tradition but unbound by it too, which is one of the pillars of ZERO,” Alewya explains.
The accompanying video was co-directed and co-produced by Yonas Tadesse, Frehiwot Berhane, Tedos Teffera and Alewya, and was shot in Lalibela, Ethiopia, during the celebration of Gena, Ethiopian Orthodox Christmas. The gorgeous, cinematically shot video captures and reinforces a strong sense of community and culture, both of which are central and defining forces in the JOVM mainstay’s work.
New Audio: Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers Share Swaggering “BATH WATER”
Currently split between Ngunnawal/Canberra and Naarm/Melbourne, the rising Aussie outfit Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers — Anna Ryan they/she, vocals, guitar), Scarlett McKahey (she/her, guitar, vocals), Jaida Stephenson (she/her, bass) and Neve van Boxsel (she/her, drums) — broke out into the national and international scene with 2022’s Pretty Good For A Girl Band EP, which received praise from The Guardian and Teen Vogue, as well as airplay from triple j.
Pretty Good For a Girl Band EP‘s lead single “Girl Sports” landed at #55 on the triple j Hottest 100 list. Building upon a growing profile, their full-length debut, 2023’s I Love You debuted at #6 on the ARIA Albums Chart and included “I Used To Be Fun,” which landed at #52 on the Hottest 100. Capping off a big year, they opened for Foo Fighters — and were named one of Spotify’s New Noise Artists to Watch for 2024.
“I Used To Be Fun” earned the band a J Award-nominations for Australian Album of the Year and Song of the Year for “I Used To Be Fun,” an APRA Award-nomination for Emerging Songwriter of the Year and Rolling Stone Australia Award-nominations for Best New Artist and Best New Single. And they won an AIR Award for Best Independent Rock Album or EP, a MusicACT Award for Artist of the Year and the Michael Gudinski Breakthrough Artist ARIA Award.
2024’s deluxe album, I Love You Too featured standout collaborations with Softcult on “Dull” and the rapidly rising The Linda Lindas on “Please Me.”
While developing a reputation as one of the Australia’s most exciting contemporary acts, the band has also received attention for their political concerns, including advocating for Green Music’s No Music on a Dead Planet, contributing to an Aussie Parliamentary inquiry into live music and being outspoken supporters of AAM’s Michael’s Rule. The rising Aussie outfit has found ways to channel their passion for music and social change into everything that they do.
Their sophomore album, last year’s Catherine Marks-produced GLORY, which included “BALCONY” debuted at #9 on the ARIA Albums Chart and #2 on the Australian Albums Chart. The album also was a triple jump Feature Album, while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 1, The Needle Drop and SiriusXM while receiving coverage from The Guardian, 10 Magazine Australia, Rolling Stone, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Sydney Morning Herald, frankie, Ones to Watch and Billboard. They were also a Spotify RADAR artist, with their image on billboards in Melbourne, London, Seoul and New York, as well as cover places on the DSP’s major playlists in multiple countries, including All New Rock, Marrow, Rock Out and New Music Friday. And lastly, “Balcony” landed at #61 on the Hottest 100.
GLORY was an exploration of confidence, disgust, inflation and power set against widescreen indie rock that you can strut to, while showcasing the band’s embrace of a lived-in, messy — and often very fun — era.
Slated for an April 24, 2026 release through Mom + Pop Music, GLORY deluxe is an an extended version of their critically acclaimed sophomore album with two new, previously unreleased songs, “BATH WATER” and “GO WASTE MY TIME,” along with stripped back reworkings of four fan favorites, “TALKING,” “DAYLIGHT,” “MINE,” and “WONDERFUL.”
GLORY deluxe’s latest single “BATH WATER” is a a pub rock-meets-arena rock anthem that showcases the band’s unerring knack for big, catchy hooks and even catchier, shout along worthy choruses delivered with a defiantly swaggering strut. But the song is anchored around a mischievously smirking irony.
“BATH WATER’ is a slutty, drivey, fun song about coming home from a night out,” the rising Aussie band explains. “It’s about when you leave a bar and are actually really excited to hang out by yourself and enjoy your own company, in a Ke$ha way, though.”
New Audio: La Sécurité Returns with a Breakneck Ode to Food
Acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstay collective La Sécurité — Éliane Viens (vocals, synths, percussion and drums), Félix Bélisle (bass, synths, percussion, piano and production), Kenny Smith (drum, guitar), Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné (guitar, percussion, vocals) and Melissa Di Menna (guitar, synths, vocals, percussion and artwork) — specialize in a brand of art punk that’s equal parts jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks run through an insomniac filter that’s the result of excessive exposure to the city’s neon-lit late night scene.
The Canadian art punk collective’s music is about living dangerously and is prefect for being blasted at deafening levels on dance floors. But lyrically, the material is deeply inspired by and shares the ethos of the Riot Grrl movement, celebrating and defiantly advocating for the autonomization of women, friendship and benevolence.
Since the release of 2023’s full-length debut, Stay Safe!, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize long-list, the Montréal-based art punks have released 2024’s Stay Safe! REMIXED and last year’s “Detour” and “Ketchup.” Along with receiving critical praise both nationally and internationally, the outfit has made the run of the intentional festival circuit, playing sets at M for Montréal, New Colossus Festival, SXSW, End of the Road, The Great Escape, Reeperbahn and Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. They’ve toured as an opener for The Go! Team and The Rapture. And they’ve shared stages with Mauskovic Dance Band and JOVM mainstays Automatic and Death Valley Girls. During that whirlwind period, they also signed with Simon Raymonde‘s label Bella Union.
The JOVM mainstay act’s highly-anticipated, Emmanuel Éthier and Félix Bélisle co-produced sophomore album Bingo! is slated for a June 12, 2026 release through Mothland in Canada and the States, and Bella Union for the rest of the world. The new album reportedly sees the band continuing to meander in and around the fringes of punk, new wave krautrock and dance punk, while mischievously flouting stylistic form every change they get. While continuing to implement polyrhythm, counterintuitive chord changes and subtle melodic and harmonic dissonance, the album reportedly sees them introducing more New Wave, no wave, noise rock and shoegaze elements to the sound that has won them intentional acclaim.
The album’s material features songs that tackles knotty themes like mental health, the autonomization of women, dysfunctional relationships with their custom moxie. Other songs playfully muse about food or address everyday mundanity with sarcasm and irony. There’s a song that celebrates unsung heroes, like the elderly. Much like its predecessor, many of the album’s tracks saw the group improvising lyrics in the studio, effectively catching lightning in a bottle.
The album was recorded with the band playing life off-the-floor, using rare ribbon microphones and vintage compressors. Adding to the overall free-flowing feel and vibe to the album’s material, many of the song’s hooks were improvised through jazz-tinged musical flights during recording sessions. The album was mixed by Bélisle and Étheir before being mastered by Robin Schmidt.
The result is an album that harnesses the Montréal-based art punks’ natural sound, a sound that fuses calculated musical chaos and musicality with high decibels.
Bingo! will feature the previously released “Detour” “Ketchup,” and the title track “Bingo,” which was released earlier this year, as well as the album’s latest single “Snack City.” “Snack City” is a breakneck mix of punk rock and post punk with overt nods to Freedom of Choice-era Devo. The result is a mischievously absurdist and fidgety tune about primal, downright glutinous needs and desires.
“We wrote the song when we were hungry,” the band explains. “The segment ‘J’ai faim, j’ai faim, […],’ which translates to: ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, […]’ was the basis of the scat singing that remained. We had fun with food anecdotes, food-related puns, etcetera.”
Continuing their ongoing collaboration with director Phillipe Beauséjour, the accompanying video for “Snack City” is inspired by snacking and past era cookbooks and features collage animation spliced with imagery and footage of the band on tour — sometimes eating or snacking. “The band wanted a music video with images taken from their cellphones, including photos and videos from their tours. I found the challenge very fun, considering that the most interesting content was already done,” Beauséjour explains. “So, I created a universe inspired by scrapbooking, using what I could find in my multiple 60s and 90s cookbooks. I still wanted to bring a touch of animation, by constructing Éliane’s face several times with food. A little inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s ‘Summer.’”
Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Celine Dion!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Celine Dion’s 58th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 62nd Birthday, Tracy Chapman!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Tracy Chapman’s 62nd birthday.
New Audio: Rising Aussie Artist Tullara Shares a Lush, Feminist Anthem
Tullara is a Ramornie, Australia-born, Grafton, Australia-based indie pop and folk/roots rocker, whose 2017 debut EP, Better Hold On went on to win a Best EP Award at the 2017 Australian Roots Music Awards. Since then, the rising Aussie artist, who proudly adheres to a DIY ethos, which includes being self-managed, has amassed over 1,700,000 streams on Spotify.
She has opened for acclaimed and beloved Aussie acts like Xavier Rudd, The Waifs, Ocean Alley, Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey, Cold Chisel‘s Ian Moss, INXS‘ Andrew Farriss, The Dreggs, Jeff Lang, Troy Cassar-Daley and a lengthy list of others. She has also opened for international acts like Donavon Frankenreiter, Wallis Bird, The East Pointers and a list of others during their respective Australian tours. And adding to a growing profile, the rising Aussie artist has made a run of the global festival circuit, playing sets at Woodford Folk Festival, Queenscliff Music Festival, Goolaholla Festival, Artswell Festival, Robson Valley Music Festival, Cur LeCheile Festival, Umefolk, Floating Castle Festival and a growing list of others.
Building upon a growing national and international profile, Tullara will be releasing her highly anticipated full-length debut, Rebound this year. Recorded and produced in Vancouver, Rebound reportedly showcases a bold, genre-defying evolution of her sound that embraces modern pop and rock, while blending her introspective lyricism with catchy melodies and cutting, world-class, modern production.
Released earlier this year, the forthcoming album’s first single “I Don’t Believe in Giving Up” features looping, reverb-soaked electric banjo paired with lush electronics serving as a supple bed for the Aussie artist’s expressive delivery singing lyrics about self-value and self-determination. Drawing from Celtic folk and contemporary pop, the new single sonically brings rootsier Dido to mind while being a feminist anthem.
Throwback: Happy 71st Birthday, Reba McEntire!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Reba McEntire’s 71st birthday.
Throwback: Happy 60th Birthday, Salt!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Cheryl “Salt’ James’ 60th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, Mariah Carey!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Mariah Carey’s 57th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 82nd Birthday, Diana Ross!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Diana Ross’ 82nd birthday.
New Video: Miki Berenyi Trio Shares Breezy “Island of One”
Miki Berenyi Trio features an acclaimed and accomplished group of British artists:
- Miki Berenyi (vocals/ guitar), a founding member, frontperson and rhythm guitarist of acclaimed and iconic shoegazer outfit Lush — and the founder and frontperson of acclaimed outfit Piroshka
- Kevin “Moose” McKillop (guitar), a founding member of acclaimed shoegazers Moose, Berenyi’s spouse and Piroshka bandmate
- Oliver Cherer (bass)
The band is named after its lead singer — a direct way to convey the presence of former Lush frontperson Miki Berenyi, one of the most beloved figures and recognizable faces of 1990s alternative rock and shoeegaze.
The trio’s full-length debut, last year’s Tripla derives its name from the Hungarian word for “triple,” acknowledging the band’s songwriting is entirely a three-way collaboration. The album sonically was a rich, lushly layered, imaginative and uniquely slanted take on dream pop that features at points euphoric and other points melancholy guitars and electronics paired with Berenyi’s imitative vocal. The album’s material is anchored around a worldview that vacillates between profound, yearning and abrasive — seemingly informed by their lived-in experiences and hard-won wisdom,
Although the album’s material features a sophisticated sound, Berenyi, McKillop and Cherer have done so with a focus on the basics, not only recording at home, but driving around in a car packed with their gear, loading in and out of venues themselves, much like they did when they first started out. “There is something very ‘grass roots’ about what we’re doing,” Miki Berenyi Trio’s Miki Berenyi says. “There’s no point following the ‘announce the album, then tour, then record the next album’ route – we just want to wring as much enjoyment out of this as we can, and hope that it resonates somewhere!”
Since the release of Tripla, the trio have released a limited edition 7 inch single of “Doldrum Days“/”Touché,” which sold out during their October 2025 Stateside tour. Yesterday, the band shared the standalone single “Island of One.” Released through Bella Union, “Island of One” is anchored around a flamenco-meets yé-yé-inspired rhythm and a remarkably catchy hook, making it arguably one of the breeziest songs of their lengthy individual catalogs — and of their growing, collective catalog.
“’Island of One’ took shape because I became quite obsessed with the track ‘Just A Western’ by Nilüfer Yanya last year, and the Latin-y beat got me inspired”, Miki Berenyi says. “But I wanted a lively, catchy song to add to our live set, so it ended up less laidback and more 60s-breezy with some driving, scratchy guitars – once all three MB3 members pile in on the embellishments, a song ends up a fair distance from where it started! As ever, recording and production took place in our various home-studio set-ups, and the song was mixed by our brilliant Bella Union labelmate, Paul Gregory.”
Berenyi adds, “Lyrically, I’m at the age where a lot of my friends have elderly parents who are increasingly reliant on their help. It’s a new phase in a life relationship and can throw up a lot of emotions. But the words apply as much to all manner of family break-ups and the fraying of long-standing friendships. When you’re young, it’s much easier to justify walking away, but I’m acutely aware, as I get older, of how important even a thread of connection with people who have shared our lives can be, however difficult those relationships can be to maintain!”
The accompanying live performance-based video for “Island of One” was shot in Northwest London by longtime visual collaborator Sébastian Faits-Divers.
New Audio: Kathryn Mohr Shares Brooding PJ Harvey-like “Doorway”
Oakland-based artist Kathryn Mohr creates music that exists in a liminal space of auditory dissociation. Drawing inspiration from lost items washing up on the shores of San Francisco Bay, Mohr’s work thematically touches upon the ephemeral nature of humanity, the warping of memory and how one’s trauma changes one’s experience of the world.
Mohr’s sophomore album Carve is slated for an April 17, 2026 release through The Flenser. The album was written over the course of five years and recorded over several weeks in a single wide in the Mojave Desert. The Oakland-based artist explains that her sophomore album explores how memory exists outside the body, embedded in places and landscapes.
The album’s material is shaped by her first return to the Southwest since a childhood road trip when she was five — and by the experience of moving through terrain that holds deep emotional weight, long after its origins faded. Thematically Carve considers how intimacy feels after years of isolation and what it takes to carve out a life that allows for trust, presence and feeling than mere survival.
Some of the album’s songs were written much earlier, during a prolonged period marked by emotional distance and apathy. During a four year period, Mohr was working through unprocessed childhood memories and trauma, and their long-term impact on her ability to connect with others. While the work was slow and difficult, it involved a fundamental reshaping of how she related to herself and to the outside world.
Mohr explains that the album took form after a difficult tour that ended in Joshua Tree. She pointed her car into the desert and drove alone, crisscrossing the Mojave Desert on dirt roads. Months later, she returned to record the album, working along with an acoustic guitar, a field recorder and limited supplies.
Following that period, she began to allow for intimacy and connection. The time she spent working on Carve didn’t create isolation, as much as mirror it. Working alone, out of an old, western-themed jail AirBnB, the physical enclosure reflected the emotional conditions under which much of the album had been written — distance, restraint and long stretches of stillness. For the Oakland-based artist, love wasn’t experienced as an escape or as a respite, but something inseparable from impermanence and the awareness of loss. The tension felt between connection and inevitability sits at the core of the album’s material.
Carve‘s third and latest single “Doorway” is a remarkably PJ Harvey-like tune that sees Mohr’s accompanying her crooned, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics with buzzing and chiming guitar. The result is a song that captures the inner world and thoughts of its narrator with a woozy, uneasy and desperate precision that feels deeply lived-in.
“Doorway” was written in a Mojave Desert single wide, and as Mohr says, the song “…wrote itself really. The riffs came to me one after another and the lyrics were originally a stream of consciousness and me randomly reading from my notebook.”