Black is beautiful all the time, y’all. Or portrait of a charming sister, who caught my attention while covering the Charlie Parker Festival last month.
Tag: women who kick ass
New Audio: The Womack Sisters Share Soulful Ballad “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)”
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. The trio’s Daptone Records debut, “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)” is an old-school soul-styled ballad featuring a slow-burning Motown Records-meets-Staxx Records-like groove serving as a lush bed for Kucha and Zeimani’s plaintive vocals and BG’s soulful lead to effortlessly harmonize throughout the song.
At its core, the song tells a tale of someone coming to terms with the pain of being in love with Mr. Wrong when they know they deserve Mr. Right — and in order to get to Mr. Right, they’ll have to make an uneasy, life altering decision.
New Video: The Death of Lillies Share Broodingly Cinematic “Savior”
The Death of Lillies is a new project featuring:
- Adam Bravin has developed and maintained a reputation for remarkable versatility, gaining recognition for his exceptional talent as a DJ, at one point, becoming the go-to dj for the likes of Prince, Dr. Dre and Stevie Wonder. His ability to blend genres seamlessly and create unforgettable music experiences has also seen him launch club nights like Giorgio’s at The Standard and many more. But he may be best known for his partnership with childhood friend Justin Warfield in She Wants Revenge, an act that has seen massive radio play, sold hundreds of thousands of records globally and toured with Depeche Mode, The Cure and Placebo while headlining their own tours and festivals.
- Rising, Atlanta-based artist Saint Avangeline. Over the course of two albums and a collection of singles, the Atlanta-based artist’s work has been deeply rooted in her personal journey with mental health struggles, domestic abuse and growing up queer, while offering an unabashedly honest exploration of inner turmoil, rage, hope and resilience. In a relatively short period of time, she has amassed a rabid fan base.
The duo’s latest single “Savior” is a broodingly cinematic track that showcases the duo’s sound: Bravin’s signature ominous yet dance floor friendly soundscapes serving as a lush bed for Saint Avangeline’s haunting, darkly seductive vocal. “‘Savior’ is about the complicated truth that sometimes the ones who need saving the most end up being the ones who save us,” The Death of Lillies’ Adam Bravin says. “It’s about the quiet strength found in vulnerability, the way pain, when faced, can turn into something powerful and transformative.”
He adds, telling Northern Transmissions, “The track was written as a theme for Arkhan the Cruel, a powerful and cinematic character from Dungeons and Dragons lore. There was something about Arkhan’s dark, unrelenting energy that shaped the entire sound. When Lily and I first started working together, I played it for her, and the spell that had captured me instantly captured her too. From there, we reshaped it together into something entirely our own.”
The accompanying video directed by Bravin and Ben Haslup was shot in a gorgeously cinematic black and white, and follows Saint Avangeline on an epic journey towards finding her other musical half.
New Audio: Automatic Shares Dreamy “Lazy”
Formed almost a decade ago, Los Angeles-based post punk outfit Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon Gaines (bass, vocals) — have released two albums:
- Their full-length debut, 2019’s Signals saw the trio quickly establishing their sound, which paired motorik grooves with icy atmospheres.
- Their sophomore effort, 2022’s Excess saw the band sonically riding an imaginary edge where the 70s underground met 80s corporate culture.
After they finished touring to support their sophomore album, each member of the trio pursued their own interests: Glaudini honed her skills as a producer; Saxon Gaines enrolled in botany classes; and Dompé got married, moved out to the country and began caring for horses.
With two albums under their collective belts, the trio wanted to do something different for their third album. Slated for a September 26, 2025 release through Stones Throw Records. Is It Now? sees the trio collaborating with producer Loren Humphrey to build upon the sound of their previous releases — minimalist yet danceable songs, which they describe as “deviant pop.” Throughout the album’s recording process, Humphrey encouraged the band to play live and loose through long takes that allowed the rhythm section to breathe. The album’s material thematically demands the listener look at the world’s oppressive structures with a fresh urgency.
Is It Now? will feature album title track, “Is It Now?” and “Mercury,” which I’ve written about over the past couple of months.
The album’s third and latest single “Lazy” sees the band seamlessly blending elements of New Wave, post-punk and spaced-out trip-hop that continues to showcase the trio’s unerring knack for tight, focused grooves. Thematically, “Lazy” is a sort of ambivalent love song, delivered with a dark sense of humor.
New Video: Bella Litsa Shares Dream-like “1117”
Isabella Komodromos is a Cypriot-born, Brooklyn -based singer/songwriter, pianist and the creative mastermind behind the rising cinematic, solo art pop project Bella Litsa. The Cypriot-born, Brooklyn-based artist was raised in a household steeped in classical music: She began studying the piano when she turned seven, and quickly discovered her deep love for singing.
With Bella Litsa, Komodromos has crafts intimate, lush and emotionally potent songs that echo with dreamlike intensity. And in a rather short period of time, her sound which sees her blending vintage romance with experimental textures, a sort of haunted Americana-meeting-minimalist futurism, has helped her draw comparisons to Lana Del Rey, Fiona Apple and Weyes Blood — while being a vessel for connection and cantharis. “Bella Litsa is my sadness personified. It feels like the closest I can get to my shadow, consciously,” Komodromos says.
Komodromos’ second and latest single this year, “1117” is a breathtakingly beautiful song featuring a marching, classically-inspired arpeggiated piano melody and military styled drumming serving as a lush yet uneasy bed for the Cypriot-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s gorgeous and expressive vocal singing lyrics touching upon guilt, longing, love and not quite knowing her place in either. While further cementing comparisons to Lana Del Rey, Fiona Apple and Weyes Blood, “1117” brings to mind the likes of Tori Amos and French-born, Montréal-based artist Lonny — with dreamy and cinematic quality. And yet the song evokes a sense of unreconcilable inner conflict.
“This was one of the more labored-over songs on the record. I started writing it on November 17th, but only had the first half of the lyrics done,” Komodromos says. “I had to wait until certain things in life moved me, until certain things happened, something to finish the lyrics with. It’s strange because I had this dream the following February and prayed to God to give me solace in it, some sort of surrender – and He answered. Only then was I able to finish the song.”
She adds, “It’s an emotionally unstable song, as in I’m fighting with myself and trying to figure out what it is I want and why I want it to begin with. The relationship that inspired it was harmful, but I couldn’t stop myself from being allured.”
Directed by Kelli McGuire, the accompanying dreamlike video features the rising singer/songwriter and pianist spinning and expressively dancing to the song.
New Audio: Swimming Pool Shares Hazy “Wednesday Kinda Weekend”
Split between The Hague and Zürich, Swimming Pool — Klyl Shifroni and Seraina Fässler — can trace their origins back to when the duo met while studying at the Institute of Sonology, where they bonded over a shared passion for songwriting, digital synthesis and code-based composition. The project’s name is derived from a photography series featuring hurricane-damaged backyard pools, which they saw a s a metaphor for the overlooked, the fractured, and the quiet beauty of ruin.
Their collaboration was born from late-night DJ sets in abandoned garages. Those sets saw their sound expanding from instinctive improvisation intoned a layered process sharped by bowed bass textures, processed vocals and subtle sampling techniques. Through a bend of ambient minimalism, lo-fi and punk, the pair blend experimental electronics and emotionally direct songwriting to not only evoke a world that is both carefully constructed and deeply vulnerable, but also allows them to balance intimacy with abstraction and warmth with fracture.
The duo’s recently released EP Line Cuts is a slow-burning exploration of the tension between clarity and distortion, closeness and distance. Rather than delivering catharsis, the EP’s material lingers in the uneasy spaces between feelings. focusing on longing, memory, repetition and collapse.
Line Cuts EP‘s latest single “Wednesday Kinda Weekend” is a slow-burning and hazy track that features glistening, reverb-soaked shoegazer-like textures, thumping beats, a supple bass line, thunderous drum cracks serving as a lush and vibey bed for reverb and distortion-drenched vocals. While seemingly channeling Beach House, the song evokes disorientation — a sense of ethereally floating without recognition or acknowledgement of space or time.
Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Madonna!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Madonna’s 67th birthday.
New Audio: Windsor, ON’s Talking Violet Shares “120 Minutes”-era MTV like “In Your Mind”
Windsor, ON-based quartet Talking Violet — Jillian Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jayden Turnbull (guitar, vocals), Jeremie Brosseau (drums) and Dylan Iannicello (bass) — have quickly developed and established a sound that sees the Canadian outfit seamlessly blending elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop into what they’ve dubbed “dreamo.” Thematically, their work touches upon how we wrestle with the grief of personal change — especially in personal experiences.
Talking Violet’s latest single, the Justin Meli-produced, Will Yip-mastered “In Your Mind” is a breezy, 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem anchored around swirling shoegazer-like guitars, thunderous drumming and enormous hooks and choruses serving as a lush bed for Goyeau’s yearning delivery. Seemingly channeling The Sundays and Tallies, “In Your Mind” manages to capture a very specific sense of helplessness of loving someone through pain and uncertainty and not knowing what to do — or if you can do anything.
“I’ve had to learn over time that no matter how much you want to help people, so often it’s really out of your hands,” Talking Violet’s Goyeau says. “They have to be the ones to figure things out, but you can do what you can from a supporting line.” Interestingly, the new single continues upon the emotional thread of their recently released sophomore album Everything At Once, continuing to draw from the grief and complications of interpersonal change ,. “These tracks draw on a lot of grief of change, most specifically, the grief of relationship changes in our lives,” Goyeau explains. “I was going through changes that I now see as necessary but were incredibly painful at the time. It made me realize how much I had depended on my relationships with others for my identity. I had to slowly relearn who I was—and spent the next few years healing my people-pleasing baseline. It’s still something I work on every day.”
New Video: JOVM Mainstays Friendship Commanders Share Two More Fierce, Earnest Anthems
Nashville-based duo and JOVM mainstays Friendship Commanders — Buick Audra (vocals, guitar) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) — will be releasing their fourth album BEAR on October 10 through their new label home Magnetic Eye Records.
Co-produced by the duo and their longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou, who also tracked the instrumental performances and mixed the material, BEAR’s songs are unified in a theme that runs throughout in various ways: the ever-elusive idea of belonging, where it occurs and where it absolutely doesn’t.
Written around the realization that she had essentially been kicked out of womanhood, Friendship Commanders’ Buick Audra wrote BEAR‘s material as a way to document her awarenesses while cataloging other areas of human connection: art, outsider culture, and dark rock venues — all places where empathy and creativity grow wild. She and her bandmate Jerry Roe arranged and performed the album specifically to have two sides to it musically: heavy and light. Salt and sugar. Fire and air. Lost and found.
Last month, the JOVM mainstays excitedly shared two singles from the forthcoming album: “MELT,” a breakneck yet bold, heart-worn-on sleeve anthem that expresses the sense of betrayal, confusion and heartbreak in a sort of et tu Brute? moment. “KEEPING SCORE,” a defiant war cry of an adult, who has learned to parent and protect her childhood self — and an adult who is willing and able to defend young girls, who remind her of her younger self from the insults and ill-treatment she received when she was their age.
Building upon the momentum of the forthcoming album’s first two singles, the Nashville-based JOVM mainstays have shared two more singles: “X,” continues a remarkable run of bruising yet proudly heart worn on sleeve anthems, rooted in lived-in personal experiences. In the case of “X,” the song is built and informed by the bitter ache of unexpected and tragically unfair loss of a dear one, way too soon.
Written a few weeks after the sudden death of the band’s longtime friend and collaborator Steve Albini, Buick Audra says, ” I was grieving, but I was also watching a generation grieve in ways I’d observed my whole life—stoically, strongly, sentimentally, and somewhat individually. This song is a loving send-up to that lost generation. We wanted the track and visuals to honor some of the artists who raised us creatively, including Steve. The camera I’m holding in the second verse was his. Very moving to have and include it here. He was a young Boomer, but the absolute King of Gen X. Missed and loved.”
“MIDHEAVEN” is arguably one of the more widescreen songs of their growing catalog, a song loose enough that it lets the forceful and dexterous instrumentation and Audra’s powerhouse vocals breath while continuing to showcase the duo’s unerring knack for crafting arena rock hooks and choruses. “MIDHEAVEN goes wider; it gets into this idea of being born under a certain set of stars, and whether or not that has anything to do with who we are. As a person who feels like a lifelong misfit with a nature I can’t seem to change, I’m curious about where that starts. Is it written from the start? I’m willing to believe anything at this point. Some days, it’s tempting to blame it all on the sky.”
“I wanted the video for ‘X’ to have the vibe and look of those by our favorite bands from the Gen X/Grunge era while still being its own thing, so it’s lit, shot and performed in a way that honors that spirit without aping anything too closely (hopefully)! Everyone wanted to appear tough and cool while also not seeming to take what they were doing too seriously.” Friendship Commanders’ Jerry Roe says of the video for “X.” “There’s such a particular mood of the era that no one has captured since. It was the best time for the medium of music videos honestly, and it was a lot of fun to try and channel it. I find it moving to watch in a way that surprises me.”
“‘MIDHEAVEN’ stands out in our discography for being so instrumentally driven. The vocals and melody are just as integral a part of the song as any song in our repertoire, but large portions of this track are just the two of us ripping at each other and it’s an absolute blast to listen to and play.”
New Video: Ivy Shares Breezy, Motown-Inspired “Heartbreak”
Formed back in 1994, the acclaimed and beloved indie rock outfit Ivy featured Andy Chase, Dominque Durand and the late Adam Schlesinger. Understandably, Durand and Chase assumed that Ivy was in the rearview after Schlesinger […]
New Video: Street Eaters Return with Doom-Tinged and Witchy “Spectres”
Oakland-based post punk outfit Street Eaters — co-founders Megan March (vocals, drums) and John No (bass, vocals), along with Joan Toledo (guitar) — will be releasing their long-awaited and highly-anticipated fifth album, Opaque on September 5, 2025 through Dirt Cult Records. The seven-song album reportedly sees the trio attempting to stitch up the bloody wounds of their past while being a meditation on birth, death, excavated trauma, and trying to find steadfast kinfolk in a world that’s increasingly splintered, fucked up and cruel.
Much like all of us, Street Eaters have been through the wringer a bit since 2017’s The Envoy.
The band’s guitarist Joan Toledo, left a transphobic family and government in her native Florida, eventually relocating to San Francisco, where they became an editor at Maximum Rocknroll Magazine and a radical union organizer at the world famous City Lights Books.
The band’s front woman Megan March had a child. And while becoming a mother was, as she puts it, “an incredible joy and opportunity to rewire emotional pathways and deep wounds,” it was also a reminder of her own childhood: March’s mother was violently homophobic and eventually threw Megan and her teenage sister — both queer — from their childhood home.
For March, childbirth was both a traumatizing and transformational experience. Ironically born on July 4, her baby immediately entered a world steeped in bureaucracy: The hospital was so understaffed that March was neglected until the last moment and was forced to endure an emerging C-section. “I was borderline dehumanized by the toxic, misogynistic nature of the American medical system and its focus on efficiency and profit before care,” she says.
“Opaque is a record that gets deep into the stark and beautiful reality of growth and transition from trauma and loss,” Street Eaters’ March explains. “What does it mean to wake up one day and realize you are living the way you have always demanded to live — yet with all those jagged piles of emotional, physical, and social/political baggage still slicing through the veil?” The album isn’t just confrontational; it’s complicated. It sees the band, much like the rest of us, groping towards identity, understanding, and a place in the world in the process of being curated. “It’s a transition into finding peace with the world — a resonant connection with community and chosen family, getting beyond a lot of the pain and hurt,” the band’s John No says. “We’re trying to suture up wounds at this point and create something that’s healthy.”
Last month, I wrote about Opaque‘s first single “Tempers,” a furious, adrenaline pumping ripper that as March explains is about “being in isolation and not being sure what the future is going to be like and how things will be when the storm is over.” The album’s second and latest single “Spectres” is a doom-tinged, witchy incantation that’s deceptively belies its sweet and deeply loving core. The song’s narrator processes their complicated past while reflecting on healthy parenthood, striving to imbue love, caring and positive direction for their child — with the understanding that she also has to empower the child to be their own person. “I’m working to create a much better emotional landscape for my son o grow in — to find both understanding and healing from the breakage of cycles of abuse and isolation,” the band’s Megan March says.
Filmed by Joey Lusteman and John No, the accompanying video for “Spectres” is split between footage of the band performing in a small club and of March locking herself out in an industrial wasteland, trying to figure her way out.
Throwback: R.I.P. Sheila Jordan
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of the legendary Sheila Jordan.
New Audio: Tori Bell Shares a Summery, Club Friendly Banger
Splitting time between Santa Monica and San Francisco, Tori Bell is an emerging singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, whose deep passion for lyricism, storytelling and melodies has been the driving force behind her restlessly exploitive creativity; “I use technology to take on different voices across many genres to tell my life story,” the California-based artist explains. “Most songs are autobiographical or detail commentary on heavier topics like social issues, love, rejection, longing, limerence, mental health release and more.”
Bell’s latest single “bad good” is a slickly produced, summery Ibiza-meets big festival stage bop featuring glistening and glitchy synth oscillation, tweeter and woofer rattling thump and enormous drops which serve as a lush bed for Bell’s sultry pop starlet delivery.
Throwback: Happy 62nd Birthday, Whitney Houston!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the birth of Whitney Houston.