Tag: women who kick ass

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Vanille Shares Slow-Burning and Swooning “Un chant d’amour”

Rachel Leblanc is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter and creative mastermind behind the critically applauded recording project Vanille, which has seen the French-Canadian artist craft a sound that meshes elements of 60s folk and chanson in a way that brings the listener into a dreamlike world of dense, verdant forests and swooning heartbreak.

Her recently released, Christophe Charest-Latif-produced third album Un chant d’amour sees the acclaimed French-Canadian artist marking the beginning of new creative chapter, that sees Leblanc’s and a talented cast of musicians, including Jules Encore and Corail‘s Julien Comptour; Velours Velours‘ and Corail’s Philippe Noël; Carla Chanelle‘s and Roselle’s Christophe Rosset-Balcer; Allô Fantôme‘s Samuel Gendron; Arielle Soucy; and Velours Velours’ Raphaël Pépin-Tanguay crafting a sound that draws from retro soul and the mid 1960s-early 1970s sunshine pop movement. Leblanc’s melodies and lyrics are rooted in sentimental overtones. And as a result, the album’s material is meant to unfold like a scented letter received from a mysterious valentine.

Un chant d’amour‘s latest single, album title track “Un chant d’amour” is a slow-burning ballad anchored around Leblanc’s achingly melancholy delivery, atmospheric Rhodes and a syrupy slow-dance inspired backbeat. And while seemingly channelling 70s AM radio rock, “Un chant d’amour” is the sort of song you’d play when you want to slow-dance at the midnight ball with your long-held crush or your loved one.

Directed by Irina Tempea and Elizabeth Landry the accompanying video for “Un chant d’amour” is an swooningly sentimental visual featuring a mixture of dusty found footage and the rising French-Canadian artist in a wedding gown to create a wedding that never really took place.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: XO BLAKELY Shares a Playful and Fun Club Banger

XO BLAKELY is an American electronic music producer, who specializes in bilingual pop that sees her blending Latin rhythms, upbeat beats and her unique and bold sense of flair. The result is music that channels the euphoria and freedom of the dance floor — glitter, strobe lights, thumping beats and late-night emotion.

Her latest single “Normalmente” is a slickly produced, Spanish language club banger that’s one-part Miami club, one-part Ibiza, anchored around hypnotic and propulsive beats, glistening synths and sultry vocals. At its core, “Normalmente” celebrates letting go and giving into the night; of getting on to that dance floor and dancing your troubles and concerns away.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Devantier Rain Teams up with kiana on Vibey “CONSERVATIVE INC.”

Devantier Rain is rising, Berlin-based Cameroonian-German singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, whose work sees him blurring the lines between R&B, hip-hop and Afrobeat paired with soulful melodies, intricate, jazz-like drums and a cutting-edge production approach. He has quickly become a standout in Berlin’s vibrant scene, playing at events like Poetry Meets alongside Tan Brown, bat zoo, Monica Mussungo and Dini Rompos.

Beyond music, Devantier Rain is a fashion world staple — as a model and stylist. Formerly signed to VIVAMODELS, he has collaborated with ADIDAS, Puma and BMW and walked for Kitschy Couture and Afrobodega at Berlin Fashion Week 2024, where he serves as in-house model.

Adding to a busy year, last year also saw the release of three striking singles, each brimming with his signature flair, which teased the forthcoming release of his highly-anticipated full-length debut.

Last year, the rising Cameroonian-German artist released three striking singles which teased the arrival of his highly-anticipated full-length debut, MELATONIN. MELATONIN‘S latest single “CONSERVATIVE INC,” a collaboration with kiana is a vibey, swaggering and hooky mix of hip-hop, neo-soul and R&B.

Throughout the track Devantier Rain and klana trade confident yet vulnerable, heartfelt verses that dive deep into themes of self-worth, betrayal, heartache and resilience with grizzled, hard-fought experience: Devantier Rain’s verses focus on strength forged through being underestimated. klana’s verses focus on standing firm without remorse after being wrong. Throughout the song, the pair offer the sort of much-needed lessons the old heads would try to give the young bloods at a gathering — or the sort of intimate “real life” conversation you’d have with a dear one, late at night as the party winds down.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Womack Sisters Share Strutting “If You Want Me”

Los Angeles-based soul and R&B trio The Womack Sisters — BG, Zeimani and Kucha — are proudly carrying on their family’s legendary musical legacy. And if you had been frequenting this site earlier this year, you might recall that I wrote about the sibling trio’s “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye).”

“I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)” is the B-side to their Daptone Records debut, “If You Want Me”/”I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye).” The sibling trio just shared the A-side, “If You Want Me.” Anchored around a percussive piano attack and the sisters call and response vocal, the new single is a hard swinging and strutting bit of old-school-inspired soul that sounds as though it could have been released in Motown‘s early days.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Kelly Cappuccio Shares a Sleek Club Banger

Kelly Cappuccio is an Italian electronic music producer, whose classical training as a child helped shaped her melodic sensibility and musical ear. Her discovery of electronic music unreleased a creative epiphany: Cappuccio quickly realized she could craft a sound that flows seamlessly between techno and tech house that bridges nostalgia and innovation.

Every track she creates represents an emotional journey frequently drawing from blues foundations paired with irresistibly funky grooves and sleek, contemporary production techniques.

The Italian producer’s latest single “In My Heart,” is a sleek and melodic, deep house banger anchored around glistening synths, a relentless and hypnotic groove and skittering beats that feels simultaneously cinematic and intimate.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Red for Stop Shares Hauntingly Gorgeous “A Ghost in Love with a Ghost of You”

JOVM mainstay outfit Red for Stop is a mysterious French-based indie collective with four core musicians, who have worked in various projects based in different counties, and collaborate with others.

The French outfit’s latest single “A Ghost in Love with a Ghost of You” is broodingly cinematic song, anchored featuring a gorgeous string arrangement and bursts of gently twinkling keys serving as a lush bed for a soulful. jazz-like vocal expressing deep, aching yearning and longing.

At some point in our lives, we learn that ghosts linger and haunt — sometimes far longer and in stranger ways than what we’d expect. “A Ghost in Love with a Ghost of You” evokes the lingering and uneasy mix of heartache, bitterness, longing with an uncanny precision.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Still Blank Shares Punchy and Anthemic “Same Sun”

Rising, transcontinental duo Still Blank — Kaua’i, HI-born, Los Angeles-based Jordy and Manchester, UK-based Ben — have quickly established a difficult to pigeonhole, often minimalist yet emotionally rich sound that draws from shoegaze, grunge and folk.

The duo’s unique sound comes from other unlikely roots: Jordy grew up immersed in the natural rhythms of island life in Hawaii, gigging at weddings and fundraisers by the time she was in her early teens. Her early musical efforts drew inspiration from Hawaiian traditions and Kaua’i’s solitude. Ben, who ,was raised steeped in Manchester’s rich and deep musical legacy, played some of his earliest gigs in pubs with his dad’s band. He developed a love of ambient textures, citing The Durutti Column and Vini Reilly as formative influences.

The duo’s unlikely meeting in the UK sparked a lightning-in-a-bottle creative partnership that started as casual jam sessions in a Liverpool basement and quickly evolved to sessions ranging from stripped-back recordings on a broken, classical guitar to long studio sessions fueled by long walks through rural Wales and a shared commitment to imperfect perfection. 

As a band, the transcontinental duo’s work seemingly echoes the mood and vibe of acts like Yo La Tengo, Big Thief and Cat Power paired with lyrics informed by people-watching, dreams, nature, introspection and existential observation.

The pair’s highly anticipated self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a November release through National Anthem/Capitol Records. “This was a transformational period of our lives, which is reflected throughout the entirety of the record,” Still Blank’s Jordy explains. “Some of the songs were written when we first met, some on other sides of the world while navigating separation, and others born into existence in less than a day, after we initially thought we’d finished the record. With a record written before we’d even conjured up a name, the whole creation of this album felt serendipitous – from a chance meeting between ourselves to magically finding likeminded collaborators who took a chance on 2 kids and allowed us to experiment without any pressure from outside sources.”

The self-titled debut will feature their debut single “What About Jane,” which received praise from the Under The Radar, Clash, Dork, DIY and more, the breakneck post-punk-like “Ain’t Quite Right,” and their latest single “Same Sun.” “Same Sun” is a punchy and propulsive tune that sees the transcontinental duo pairing rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with a gritty, 90s grunge-meets-post punk-like arrangement. And it may arguably be the pair’s most urgent, forceful song they’ve recorded to date.

Built around a hypnotic baritone guitar riff and recorded in a single take, the song as Jordy explain is “about how we can be so disconnected from the reality of other people’s lives around the world, but at the same time we’re all connected in a fundamental way, we’re all staring at the same sun.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Amadou & Mariam Share Swooning “L’amour à la folie”

Over the course of their almost 50-year career run together, the iconic and beloved Malian duo Amadou & Mariam have had an illustrious career that saw them take the Malian blues that made them a household name in Africa and opened it up to rock, hip-hop and EDM/dance influences, which led to spreading their country’s culture and beloved sounds, as well as the pair’s unique joie de vivre. “We’ve always dreamed of tearing down walls and opening people’s ears to new sounds so the whole world can discover and appreciate Malian music,” Amadou & Mariam says.

Late last year, the pair released the compilation album La Vie Est Belle, an album that highlighted their legacy as one of Africa’s most famous duos and the massive influence they’ve had while paving the way for an exciting, new generation of African artists, who have begun to dominate the Western mainstream.

The legendary Malian duo have also acted as Afro-pop ambassadors, who have collaborated with some of the biggest names of Western mainstream music, including U2, Coldplay, Stevie Wonder, Sofi Tucker, BLOND:ISH, Santigold, Akon, TV on the Radio, Damon Albarn and David Gilmour — with their seven studio albums selling over one million records globally. Adding to a globally recognized profile, the duo made the rounds of the global festival circuit, playing sets at Coachella, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury. They’ve also performed at The World Cup, NPR’s Tiny Desk and last year’s Paris Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony, where they covered Serge Gainsbourg‘s “Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je Me’n Vais.” And lastly, they made the run of the late night TV circuits of both the US and UK.

The duo’s final album together, L’amour à la folie is slated for an October 24, 2025 release. Written and recorded together over the past seven years, the acclaimed and beloved Malian duo’s soon-to-be released eighth album conveys the duo’s raw joy through incandescent, exuberant music that perfectly complements their messages of love and unity — and the hope of a peaceful world in which diversity is celebrated and championed. And with love with a capital L as the driving force, music and fuel and sharing as the spark, the duo’s radiant power continues to shine on their final album.

Final mixes of the album’s material were completed last winter. They shared a deep excitement about the album’s release in October. But sadly, Amadou Bagayoko died back in April. It’s Mariam Doumbia’s wish, after the mourning period, to return to stages and perform the album she spent seven years working on with her beloved while celebrating the music and life her and beloved created.

L’amour à la folie‘s latest single, album title track “L’amour à la folie,” is a defiantly upbeat and urgent declaration of a swooning and ridiculously passionate love, featuring a propulsive and funky Afro pop-meets-dance floor groove, driving polyrhythm and Bagayako’s woozy guitar riff paired with the duo’s unerring knack for incredibly catchy hooks and their imitable harmonizing. And at its core, “L’amour á la folie,”is a much-needed joy bomb in bleak, desperate times that reminds all of us that life isn’t worth a damn without a love that drives you mad.

The accompanying video features footage of the pair performing on stages across the world, bursts of behind the scenes footage from video and album art shoots, small moments of families together, behind the scenes footage of the duo together and more.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Niia Shares Mesmerizing, Genre-Defying “Pianos and Great Danes”

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. Bertino’s previously released work has received praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Interview Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar.

The Los Angeles-based artist’s recently released, fifth album, the Spencer Zahn co-produced V is the culmination of years spent experimenting at the intersection of tradition and reinvention. Existing in the tension between control and collapse, V sees her seamlessly bending the electronic textures of contemporary, experimental pop with the interplay that live, jazz-rooted 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.”

V‘s latest single “Pianos and Great Danes” is a mesmerizing and mind-bending mix of propulsive, rave-inspired drum ‘n’ bass grooves, piano-driven jazz, experimental pop and soul that captures its narrator’s desperately unhinged psychological state with an uncanny precision, while being remarkably cinematic. Thematically exploring sex as an escape, Bertino says the song is “closer to a film score than anything from the Great American Songbook,” Niia says.

“Written like a monologue with chord changes, it leans into space and narrative, letting the harmony suggest the emotional shifts,” she continues. “Embracing emotional residue, there’s a chaotic feeling where the only way out is to melt through the track.”  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: White Birches Share Brooding and Stormy “Breathing”

Formed back in 2013, the Swedish synth pop/darkwave duo White Birches — Jenny Gabrielsson Mare and Fredrik Jonasson — quickly received attention across Scandinavia with the release of 2014’s debut EP Stands of White Birches and 2015’s full-length debut, Dark Waters, which saw the pair establishing a eerily moody sound that some compared to the likes Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and The Sisters of Mercy. Adding to a growing profile across the region, the duo’s full-length debut received a Best Synth nomination at that year’s Swedish Indie Grammy Awards, Manifestgalan.

The duo signed with Progress Productions, who released their sophomore album, 2017’s When The Street Calls, which featured the 4AD Records heyday-like “Howl.”

The Swedish synth outfit’s highly-anticipated third full-length album, A New Reign will feature their latest single “Breathing,” which the pair says sets the tone for the entire album. Featuring thunderous, industrial-like thump, layers of eerily atmospheric synths and bursts of scorching feedback as a brooding and stormy bed for Gabrielsson Mare’s dreamily intense delivery.

“Breathing,” captures a narrator, desperately holding on to a thin thread of what might be left of their sanity, and under intense pressure, trying to take long, slow breaths to get themselves right; to get their mind and heart to stop racing . . . It shouldn’t be surprising that the song might evoke how unsettled, unstable and desperate you might feel right this moment. Keep breathing.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Atlanta’s Silk Daisys Shares Swooning, Halloween-Themed “Haunted House”

Atlanta-based dream pop/post-punk duo Silk Daisys — James Abercrombie and romantic partner Karla Jean Davis — have been making music together for some time, but their forthcoming Silk Daisys and Damon Moon co-produced debut will be their first, official release. Interestingly, the Silk Daisys name has been around even further, with Abercrombie using the name on Soundcloud for about a decade to upload random covers and the occasional original song.

“We recorded our album over two weeks with Damon Moon (Bathe Alone, Sleepers Club) at this studio Standard Electric Recorders in Atlanta. Damon was awesome to work with,” the duo says. “We spent a ton of time just talking about music the three of us love and sharing songs back and forth. We’d name some obscure part of a song as a reference and he’d get it immediately, and dial in the tones perfectly. Damon also played drums and percussion on the album. The three of us produced it together, and it was all really collaborative and fun.”`

But in the meantime, the Atlanta-based duo’s latest single, the Halloween-themed “Haunted House,” channels Pygmalion and Souvlaki-era Slowdive with the song featuring fuzzy and swirling guitar textures, glistening synth bursts, thunderous drumming, boy-girl harmonies and enormous hooks and choruses. And at its core, the song sees the duo pairing goth and Romantic themes, evoking the bitter longing for a loved one you can never get back.

“Haunted House” is what I’d consider our only true shoegaze song, though shoegaze elements find their way into our songs just because we’re such huge fans of the genre. When I wrote it, I was thinking about this great Lee Hazlewood song, ‘Won’t You Tell Your Dreams,'” says Silk Daisys’ James Abercrombie. “It’s about how he can’t stop dreaming of an old love. It has this really haunting vibe to it. We’re also really into haunted houses and carnival dark rides and anything in that realm… Karla listens to a lot of ghost story podcasts. Our daughter has ghost hunting equipment and takes it with her to old places. I tend to be a little on the skeptical side, but I am coming around. I really love ghost stories where spirits are doing something routine, like getting their morning coffee. There’s something really interesting to me about the memory of someone being so strong that it feels palpable, like it’s inhabiting your space and haunting you. Karla had the idea to make the vocals at the end sound super ghostly, which I think really adds to the spookiness of the track.”