Tag: women who kick ass

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: M. Woodroe Shares Tense, Bruising “Sweetness, Sweetness”

Brighton-based outfit M. Woodroe — Marcie Garwell (vocals, guitar), Ben Elwin (guitar), Jeorgie Pinder-Whiley (bass), Sam Sezarin (drums) — exploded out of their local DIY scene, quickly establishing themselves as one of the city’s most exciting, emerging acts. Their work pairs intricate, provocative and politically-charged lyrics that touch upon boundary-pushing explorations gender, sexuality and desire with angular, fuzzy and noisy post punk-inspired guitar work.

The emerging and rising Brighton-based have played shows alongside Mcluksy, Prostitute, and others, developing a reputation for an intense live show, while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing. And building upon a growing profile, the post-punk quartet recently signed to Venn Records, who will be releasing their highly-anticipated debut EP, The Treatment of Fractures on September 18, 2026.

The EP’s first single “Sweetness, Sweetness” is a bruising tune that captures an indecisive, neurotic narrator, who’s on the verge of exploding in a seething fury in every direction, fueled by self-flagellation and confusion. While sonically channeling the likes of JOVM mainstays Whispering Sons, the song as the band’s Marcie Garwell explains is “about many things — weakness, identity, acquiescence, confusion . . . the position you drink not to make a fuss. It’s a pipe bomb sent to order, hate mail addressed to compromise, yet it’s indecisive in all its threats and feelings – never sure of where it lies.

Directed by J. Taylor-Jones, the accompanying video for “Sweetness, Sweetness” is a feverish portrayal of discomfit, self-flagellation, dread and despair that feels particularly modern.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Indy Fontaine Returns with Flirty “Como Pa’ Mi”

Indy Fontaine is a Cuban-born, Miami-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who can trace the origins of her career to her early childhood: Singing alongside her uncle and his old guitar, she fell in love with music when she was three. By the time she turned six, she was enrolled full-time at a music school in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, where she trained to be professional vocalist and musician. 

Fontaine went on to graduate at the top of her class from Havana‘s prestigious National School of Art. When she graduated, she already had over a decade of experience playing gigs all across her native Cuba, including music festivals, live radio and TV sessions, and more. 

Fontaine then joined Sol y Sun, an act that has made runs of the international festival circuit between the States and Cuba, as well as some of the most popular venues in Havana. The band also frequently performed on national TV and radio shows.

She then relocated to Miami, where she stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist, Her solo debut, 2024’s Moments of My Life ranged across a number of genres and styles, including Adult Contemporary, Easy Listening, Soft Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock and R&B — with songs written and sung in both English and Spanish. 

The album featured “El Amor No Alcanza,” Fontaine’s subtly modern take on bolero, a Cuban genre that frequently focuses on affairs of the heart. Since then, Fontaine spent the past year releasing a collection of successful singles, “Esta Navidad,” “Vacaciones,” “Mariposas En La Lluvia,” “Mejor Sin Ti,” “Que Te Vaya Bien,” “Después De La Caída”  and the Andrés Castro and Guianko Gómez co-written and co-produced “Tú Tienes Algo,” feat. Charlie Cruz.

Fontaine’s latest single, the Fontaine and Guianko Gómez cowritten and Gómez-produced “Como Pa’ Mi” is a thumping, club friendly and flirty bachata tune that captures the feverish desperation of obsessive infatuation, when that person takes absolute hold of every thought and feeling. The song radiates joy –the sort of joy and hope from newfound love. And that joy was the feeling that Fontaine brought into the studio. “I walked into the studio with a happy vibe, a special feeling, and I wanted to share that with everyone — that beautiful emotion that comes up when two people genuinely connect,” Fontaine says.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Uh Huh Her Shares Sultry “Shook”

Acclaimed and influential duo Uh Huh Her — Camilla Grey and Leisha Hailey — were once brought together by a sense of divine providence. Now, more than two decades later, the duo that would help define the indie sleaze era and inspire the likes of Metric, Dum Dum Girls and Magic Wands have returned to beckon a brand new generation of folks to the dance floor with the re-release of their beloved 2011 effort, Nocturnes.

The reissue, Nocturnes:Redux is slated for an August 7, 2026 release through Kill Rock Stars across DSPs and as a limited edition goth confetti vinyl. The reissue features never-before-heard original mixes by acclaimed super producer Tchad Blake, along with two previously unreleased songs — a cover of Sonic Youth‘s classic song “Kool Thing” and a new track “Shook.”

Just like how they came together back in the summer of 2006 through common friends and interests, the duo’s reconnection blossomed serendipitously and quickly. “It feels like it did when we first got together,” says Uh Huh Her’s Leisha Haliey, a songwriter, actor and author, who may now be best known for her starting role on Showtime’s The L Word and its follow-up Generation Q and her 2025 New York Times bestselling memoir, So Gay For You: Friendship, Found Family and the Show That Started It All. “We’re just creative again together, and it’s an interesting place to come back to. And it’s almost like no time has passed, and all of the pressure’s off.”

The original release of Nocturnes was the band’s first independent release. “It meant the world that our fans directly supported the mixing of the album through online eBay auctions of memorabilia, vinyl, art, and even a couple private dinners, because that enabled us to enlist the powers of the incredible Tchad Blake,” Uh Huh Her’s Camilla Grey says. As they contemplated rereleasing Nocturnes with Kill Rock Stars, Grey started digging around to find the album’s original mixes. “I chose Tchad’s first and second mix attempts because I wanted to preserve his first instincts before we gave him a million notes,” she says. This is truly how he heard it on one or two tries. The songs are longer, they’re more rocked out, they’re a little more raucous.” The entirety of those original mixes have never seen the light of day until now.

“Shook,” Nocturnes: Redux‘s first single, and the re-issues only new, original single is a sultry tune that feels and sounds effortlessly crafted yet earnest, deeply universal yet intimate and personal with the song subtly capturing the slow-burn dread and unease of our weird moment. Camila Grey explains that the song is “particularly relevant in a time where everything and everyone feels so unstable. We are living through a profound assault on our central nervous systems by the barrage of media we ingest on a daily basis. While ‘Shook’ is more about a personal situation, the title speaks volumes about what we feel as humans on a daily basis.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Abbie Ozard Shares Soaring and Cathartic “Baby I’m Your Star”

Released to critical applause from the likes of The Times, The Independent, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, Clash Magazine, The Fader, Notion, Hunger and more, 2024’s full-length debut, everything still worries me saw British artist Abbie Ozard explode into the national scene.

Ozard built upon a growing profile with a number of headlining UK shows, a European Union tour opening slot for Briston Maroey and a run of the regional festival circuit that included her debut at Glastonbury.

everything still worries me‘s highly-anticipated follow-up, Baby I’m Your Star EP is slated for an August 21. 2026 release. The EP will include the perviously released “Backbone,” which continues a run of material that has received airplay on Jack Saunders‘ and Huw Stephens’ BBC 1 Radio shows, as well as BBC Introducing Track of the Week, and Abbie McCarthy‘s and Chris Hawkins’ BBC Radio 6 shows.

“Baby I’m Your Star,” the EP’s title track and latest single is a rousingly anthemic tune that sees Ozard pairing open-armed, earnest lyricism and her soaring vocal with swirling and chiming guitar textures and her unerring knack for bombastic, festival friendly hooks and choruses. But underneath the rousingly bombastic catharsis is song that touches upon the sensation of faking-it-’til-you-make-it and wanting to be heard and understood. I guarantee most of us have been there at some point or another — including right now.

“‘Baby I’m Your Star’ is about trying to convince yourself you’re as confident as you want everyone else to think you are,” Ozard explains. “On the surface it’s cocky and playful, but underneath it comes from wanting to be heard and believed in. The song plays with the tension between ego and self-doubt, and the idea that sometimes confidence is something you have to perform before you fully believe it. It feels like a defiant moment for me, but there’s still plenty of vulnerability hiding underneath.”

Directed by Jack Hartley, the accompanying, mischievous video for “Baby I’m Your Star” features an aging guy out in the countryside, trying to stargaze — during the day, eventually coming upon Ozard, strolling through the countryside.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Forest Shares Anthemic “Anchor”

Rising Los Angeles-based artist Forest will be releasing her highly-anticipated full-length debut, Swan Dive through AWAL on September 25, 2026. Swan Dive is reportedly the Los Angeles-based artist’s most fully realized work to date, expanding upon the alt-rock foundation of her earliest releases into something much larger sonically and more fluid. The ten-song album features walls of distorted guitars paired with electronic textures, industrial undercurrents and moments of startling pop clarity. The result is an effort that’s intimate yet overwhelming and sees the rising artist showcasing her capability to shift from whispered confession to emotional free-fall — within the turn of a phrase.

The rising artist’s full-length debut will include the previously released “Prosthetic Stars,” “Whore and Savior,” “Lay With Me” and the album’s latest single, “Anchor.” Featuring fuzzy and chugging power chords paired with thunderous drumming and Forest’s emo and pop-influenced vocal within a classic grunge structure, “Anchor” showcases an artist who can pair earnest, lived-in lyricism with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with a seemingly effortless bombast.

“‘Anchor’ delves into the idea of becoming wrapped up in something you can’t get out of,” Forest explains. “It was written in my childhood bedroom on a trip to Chicago, at a time when I had felt the past wrap its arms around me. The thought of being stuck and tied to the past was the driving thought throughout this track.”

Forest has developed a reputation for unforgettable performances, sharing stages with Starcrawler, Chokecherry, Empty Shell Casing and a long list of others. She kicked off the year, playing the sold-out emo revival festival Burndown in Santa Ana, CA. During the spring, she went on an extensive North American tour with Clarion. The rising artist will be embarking on a West Coast tour opening for ivri. Check out the tour dates below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 60th Birthday, Hope Sandoval!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Hope Sandoval’s 60th birthday.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 97th Birthday, June Carter Cash!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 97th anniversary of the birth of June Carter Cash.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 73rd Birthday, Cyndi Lauper!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Cyndi Lauper’s 73rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Kim Gordon Performs “PLAY ME” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”

The legendary Kim Gordon released her third solo album, the Justin Raisen-produced PLAY ME on earlier this year through Matador Records. PLAY ME is reportedly distilled and immediate, and sees Gordon expanding on her sonic palette to include more melodic beats and the motorik drive of krautock. 

“We wanted the songs to be short,” Gordon says of her continued collaboration with acclaimed, Los Angeles-based producer Justin Raisen. “We wanted to do it really fast. It’s more focused, and maybe more confident. I always kind of work off of rhythms, and I knew I wanted it to be even more beat-oriented than the last one. Justin really gets my voice and my lyrics and he understands how I work—that came forth even more on this record.” 

PLAY ME is the follow-up to 2024’s critically applauded sophomore album The Collective, which featured the two-time Grammy-nominated single “BYE BYE.”  PLAY ME sees Gordon processing in her imitable way, the collateral damage of the billionaire class: the demolition of democracy, technocratic end-times-like fascism, the A.I.-fueled chill vibes flattering of culture — where dark humor voices the absurdity of our moment. But despite its frequent outward gave, the album is essentially an interior effort, one in which heightened emotionality pulses through physical jams, while rejecting definitive statements in favor of an inquisitiveness and curiosity that keeps Gordon searching — and ever in process. 

Amid PLAY ME’s rabbit-hole reality bricolage, pitch-shifted vocals and shadowy layers of dissonance, the album’s material are clear-eyed about the attention they pay to a world that would rather you be distracted and rage-baited into oblivion. “I have to say, the thing that influenced me most was the news. We are in some kind of ‘post empire’ now, where people just disappear,” Gordon says, echoing the title of one of PLAY ME’s tracks.

PLAY ME will feature the previously released “NOT TODAY,” and “DIRTY TECH,” as well as the album’s third single, album title track “PLAY ME.” “PLAY ME” may arguably be the most hip-hop influenced track of the entire album with the song anchored around a swaggering DJ Premier-like production tweeter and woofer rattling beats paired with a meditative, modal jazz trumpet line. Gordon’s imitable croon takes on a subtle staccato, hip-hop like flow to match.

Yesterday, Gordon and her backing band performed “PLAY ME” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. She finhishes her NYC vist with a surprise, sold-out show tonight at Night Club 101. And because of overwhelming demand, she added a second show at Warsaw on September 16, 2026. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: DONALADA Returns with Euphoric “C BEN D’VALEUR”

Montréal-based electronic dance music duo DONALDA — Florence Lafontaine and Olivier Martin-Fréchette — derive their project’s name from the name given to the first women admitted to college in Québec in the late 19th century, and is a nod to the fictional character introduced in Claude-Henri Grignon’s 1933 novel Un homme et son péché, who, for several generations, embodied the consequences of patriarchy. 

Lafontaine and Martin-Fréchette both have an academic background in digital, contemporary mixed-media and instrumental composition, as well as in jazz interpretation. Inspired by UK garage, dubstep, left field bass and other British electronic music sub-genres as well as the queer nightlife scene, the duo take a pedagogical approach to music in order to deconstruct the boundaries of musical genres. While getting people onto the dance floor is their ultimate goal, they also seek to spark musical curiosity among their audience, something that is at the core of their inclusive, unifying philosophy. 

Through composition, sound design and creative coding, the Montréal-based duo tap into their wide-ranging experiences to bring every stage of DONALDA’s creative process to life. And fittingly, their versatility imbued their sound with a coherent and deeply personal artistic identity rooted in a celebration of diversity and inclusion, freedom and the French language. 

The duo recently signed to Bonsound, who released their debut single “C FOU” last month. The French Canadian duo’s latest signle “C BEN D’VALEUR” derives its title from a common Québécois idiom that’s used to exress the sensation — or the feeling — of lost oppotunity, but it’s a wooozily euphoric bit of house music built around Larry Levan-like, arpeggiated and twinkling keys, skittering beats paried with the duo’s soulful harmonies. Theamtically, the song explores the concept of value (valeur in French) and the balance between significance and rarity.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweeping Promises Share Forcefully Urgent “Cocoon”

Lawrence, KS-based duo Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production) — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Meticiuluosly controlling every aspect of their craft, from the frist note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to mastering, each song is a testament to their long-held dynamic chemistry as musicians and artists.

Their full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

2023’s sophmore self-produced album Good Living Is Coming For You was released across North America through Feel It Records and globally through Sub Pop. Produced and recorded in the duo’s Lawrence-based home studio, Good Livng Is Coming For You was a decided cahnge in direction and appraoch: They eschewed the brutalist ambienace of their former Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Kansas studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touched upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

The band’s third album, You Say I Romanticize is slated for an August 14, 2026 release globally through Sub Pop. Recorded over an 18-month period, You Say I Romanticize is a tribute to the chaos of creation and collaboration under shifting circmstances. Mondal and Schung found and tested themselves in their combination tour house and recording studio annually working on dozens of albums by other bands, hosting tour stops, planning shows and the like. After an immerseive process of traking adn whittling down YSIR demos and carving out an idiosyncratic chamber recording member for the album’s deliberate and international wall-of-sound appraoch, the duo brought in touring drummer Spenser Gralla to play the album’s matreial as the band would on stage.

The album’s frenzied and passionate sound shines most in Modal’s vocal perforamnce. Where you might have heard a growl here and there on certain previously releserd Sweeping Promises trcks, the band’s frontwoman shouts, roars, hits tricky notes all over teh place and shreds her thraot throhgout the album’s run time.

You Say I Romanticize takes the art-by-any-means-necessary ethos that Mondal and Schung have firmly established throhgout their careers and turns the prompt upside down, landing on a perosnality epidemic that manifests across the album’s ten songs.

The album’s second single “Coccon” is a forcefully urgent and angular post-punk ripper, anchored around some of the most impassioned and musuclar recorded performances I’ve yet to personally heard from the band — especially from Mondal, who showcases a punchy attack for the song’s verses and a forceful growl for the song’s choruses and hooks.

“We wrote ‘Cocoon’ years ago to extend our live set back when we only knew the ten songs from our first album,” the band says. “

It has become a staple of our live set over the years and has undergone several metamorphoses in our home studio, as we wanted to develop this track in a disarming and dead-simple way for the ‘live sound’ mentality of YSIR. The music video intercuts homegrown live footage of the band playing shows in the Kansas community with the sculptural and psychogeographic idea of the cocoon, which entices and finally envelops our singer, Lira Mondal.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 84th Birthday, Lamont Dozier!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 84th anniversary of the birth of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s Lamont Dozier.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Julia Jacklin Shares Jangling “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You)”

Acclaimed Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and musician Julia Jacklin will be releasing her highly-anticipated fourth album, the Robert Muiños and Jacklin co-produced, 10-song album The Gem through 4AD Records digitally and on CD, cassette and vinyl on September 25, 2026. Exclusive color vinyl editions with retailers will include turquoise, green opal, ruby and rose quartz. Pre-order information can be found here.

When Jacklin first moved to Melbourne from Sydney back in 2017, she discovered a little bar on a back street in Collingwood, a suburb just outside of downtown, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. She didn’t know anyone in town, but knew she wanted to make the city home, so she started hanging out there, facing herself out of her comfort zone. That pub was named The Gem.

Eight years later, Jacklin had released three acclaimed albums, 2016’s Don’t Let The Kids Win, 2019’s Crushing and 2022’s PRE PLEASURE — and was looking to write and record her fourth. Her contract with her previous label had ended. She was searching for a manager. And with time on her hands, she decided that she would make her fourth album in Melbourne, something she’d never done before.

She called up an old drinking buddy Robert Muiños, owner of Rat Shack Studios, which is just above The Gem and brought in her friends Jacob Diamond (guitar), Mimi Gilbert (bass) and Jess Elwood (drums). Recording happened in close quarter, in converted hotel room accommodation upstairs at the pub. Because The Gem was in a residential neighborhood, they couldn’t record late into the night for fear of bothering neighbors and sound bleed for a glorious constant: foot traffic to the hairdressers and lotto parlor next door and loud music from the bands and the kitchen staff downstairs. But if anyone needed a break during the sessions, they would head downstairs and watch a local band play. Jacklin and her friends even played two unannounced shows there to try out the album’s material before recording them.

They thought they’d be able to finish the album in two weeks, like she’d always done previously, but this time that wasn’t the case. In fact, it took nearly a year of tinkering to arrive at something Jacklin could get behind, “The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was doing it almost in the dark, just trusting I was going to find something,” Jacklin says. While conjuring images of excavation, of reinvention, of trusting your instincts and surrounding yourself with the people and things that make life worthwhile, the album documents the songwriter’s journey back to herself.

“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” says Jacklin. That theme underpins the album’s material.

The Gem‘s first single, “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You)” is mischievously charming and hooky bit of 80s inspired jangle pop that captures the neurotic yet yearning push and pull of a narrator, who can’t quite figure out yet how to be free and be loved simultaneously. And while informed by the songwriter’s own-lived in experience, the song is rooted in something that’s both universal and youthful.

The video created by Jacklin reimagines the album’s cover art with images of Jacklin singing and strumming her guitar, and gems on other instruments.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Yeisy Rojas Teams Up with Manolito Simonet and Ricardo Amaray on Defiantly Celebratory “LATINO”

Yeisy Rojas is a Cuban-born, Oslo-based, classically trained, jazz violinist, singer/songwriter and composer. In her native Cuba, Rojas received a classical education and performed as a violinist with the National Opera Orchestra in Havana. Her passion for jazz led her to relocate to Norway, where she pursued her Masters studies in jazz violin at Kristiansand-based University of Agder‘s Conservatory.  The cross-cultural experience allowed Rojas to deepen her understanding of the African influences in Cuban music. 

‘Rojas’ latest single “LATINO,” feat. Manolito Simonet and Ricardo Amaray is an upbeat tune built around twinkling keys, big brassy horns and driving, Afro-Latino polyrhythm inspired by 1990’s Cuban timba energy that manages to be simultaneously thoughtful and dance floor friendly. As a native New Yorker, “LATINO” reminds me of listening to Mega 97.9 in the 90s and teenaged house parties in and around Corona — but at its core, is a defiantly upbeat message of unity and belonging.

“LATINO” was written as a response to the increasingly divisive rhetoric that has dehumanized and villainized migrants and Latino communities across the US and elsewhere. Informed by her own experience, the song reminds listeners of a profound yet simple truth: every person on Earth deserves respect, dignity and respect while being an anthem for Antone who has felt judged because of their origins, their heritage, their accent, their food or anything else. And in turn, the song serves as a celebration of the things that are both universal and unique about all of us. In our incredibly divisive times, it’s a deeply humanistic reminder of all the things we should be celebrating and cherishing.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: I WANT POETRY Shares Shimmering and Upbeat “Future Selves”

German indie electro pop duo I WANT POETRY — Tine von Bergen (vocals) and Till Moritz Moll (keys) — released their highly-anticipated third album Future Selves last month. The hopeful and transformative album is inspired by a brief moment in time when the future still felt like a bright promise, channeling the spirit of past dreams of utopia and progress. And as a result, Future Selves offers a forward-thinking vision shaped by memory, imagination and the will to create what comes next.

Sonically, the German duo’s third album is an evolution from the more reflective tones of 2023’s Solace + Light, featuring layers of shimming synths and soaring melodies. 

The album includes “Mirrors Of The Sky,” the Michael Micheal Vanja, Ghian Wright and The EmU-co-produced “No Is a Full Sentence,” “Backyard Astronauts,” and the album’s latest single, album title track “Future Selves,” Built around glistening synths, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with von Bergen’s expressive, pop star-like delivery, “Future Selves” sounds a bit like it could have been part of a mid 80s movie soundtrack while pointing out to the listener that the future isn’t written yet; that it’s up to us to create that future. It’s a much-needed burst of upbeat optimism in very dark times.