Wollowitz says of the song: “’Found You Again’ is a sincere stab at an upbeat song of the summer, fantasy style. And in true fantasy style, it has inevitably found its way into the world a little bit late, in the gloomy month of November.

“We met Jordana through mutual friends while finishing the sessions for Feats of Engineering and were immediately struck by her stellar songwriting instinct, as well as her incredible dance moves (witnessed backstage at a Palm gig.) Right before she flew away to Los Angeles, we got in the studio to record some last minute vocal overdubs for the record, a true cherry on top right before our mix deadline.

“We knew that a full collaboration needed to happen asap. And thus ‘Found You Again’ was born, a sweet little number about encountering an old lover and reflecting together on what made it so sweet in the first place. Jordana, Al, and Bailey all take turns leading the tale; the tune also features first time recorded contributions from recurring fantasy live band members Margaux (on bgvs) and Kolb (on bass guitar and tin foil crumpling).”

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‘Follow Your Captain’ is the band’s next and last single before their debut LP release. File it under NYC indie rock, noise pop, new psychedelic, or dream pop. ‘Captain’ is a triumphant and emotionally positive song, reflecting on lessons learned in youth with a laugh.

Bailey Wollowitz says of the song: “‘Follow Your Captain’ was recorded in 12 hours in Al’s bedroom earlier this summer and mixed the next day. The essence of the song has existed for as long as the rest of the tunes on the record, yet we never attempted to finish it until long after the album was completed. I had always wanted to release an extra last minute song, perhaps in goofy admiration of pop stars who have the resources to redo all their mixes the night before the album comes out. Or “it’s the same and there’s three more” style.

“And yet, we stumbled across this song, which while existing somewhat in the pop stratosphere had always felt too dark and personal to release. Captain is about our youth together, our time spent in the woods and tunneling underground, and a human’s ability to recklessly let themselves be controlled by another. A lot of the sound design was inspired by Smash Bros. It’s the quickest we’ve ever completed a recording from start to finish, and I think the anxiety of doing so is palpable.”

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fantasy’s sound has already been acknowledged as being difficult to pin down in part due to its sterling commitment to mad-cap maximalism and magpie-like approach to genre, but it’s always anchored by the emotional core of its central relationship. Bailey’s husky baritone whispers, shouts, and croons, Al’s airy vocals twang and soar transcendent, their voices drifting in and out of conversation with each other.

‘Loss’ is a wonderful showcase of that dynamic, careening from silly to sincere, chaotic to serene, achingly beautiful to stridently discordant and back again, with Al and Bailey playing off each other in a call and response that the whole complex composition unfurls around.

Wollowitz says of the song: “There’s always a tension in songwriting between simplicity and excess. Especially in the home digital recording era, it’s hard to ignore an anxious tugging at the endless possibilities of overdubbing and arrangement. Why not put a string section on every song? In these moments of preoccupation, I often came back to the first few Unknown Mortal Orchestra records, which have always inspired me as pieces of work that achieve sonic maximalism with very minimal arrangements; a perfect hybrid between the euphoric peaks of the later Beatles catalogue and the roughest sounding Jay Reatard demo. The song Loss started as a word on a piece of paper and a desire to capture a complex feeling in a simple way. Memory loss, hearing loss, loss of love, loss of a loved one. Getting lost in yourself. This was the first song demoed for the album, and was a turning point for realizing that there was nowhere to hide with being honest about this stuff. By the final mix we had stripped back the layers and left it as it was meant to be: a little song with a lot to say. We also lost some of the drum stems along the way.”

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Emerging, independent rock artist Cutt has released the official music video for her latest single ‘No Crown In This Dead Town’. The video, directed by Ethan Maniquis (“Machete,” Five Finger Death Punch, Daughtry), highlights her Los Angeles roots and the famed Sunset Strip, where the rocker frequently performs. ‘No Crown In This Dead Town’ – produced by Sean Hurwitz (Smash Mouth) and Gregg Cash (Josh Todd & the Conflict), who also co-wrote the song with Cutt – is Cutt’s fight song, serving as motivation to keep working on her music and pushing forward with her career, even when it feels like you can be stuck. “‘No Crown In This Dead Town’ is about me wanting to give up on music,” shares Cutt. “Entourage is one of my favorite TV shows and the intro to the show inspired the opening shots of the video! It’s me in a red mustang looking up at all the billboards on Sunset Blvd. wishing it was me up there! The rest of the video is me and my band performing on a rooftop in downtown LA.”

fantasy of a broken heart are announcing their debut album, Feats of Engineering (out September 27 on Dots Per Inch). To mark the announce the band are sharing a new single entitled ‘UR HEART STOPS,’ with an accompanying video directed by Rachel Brown of Water From Your Eyes & thanks for coming. Though shaped by the surrealist endeavours of 70s prog-rock and late-90s dream pop, and the logic-eschewing rules of animated worlds, the album is ultimately tethered to reality, to music as sculpted by years of live performance. Featuring contributions from other members of the NYC scene the band travels in, including Nate Amos (This Is Lorelei, Water From Your Eyes) and Jordana, the album is a maximalist diatribe anchored by the emotional core of its central relationship. Lyrics careen between the silly and the sincere, while Bailey’s husky baritone whispers, shouts, and croons, Al’s airy vocals twang and soar transcendent, their voices drifting in and out of conversation with each other. ‘UR HEART STOPS’ perfectly walks the line between the poles of the band’s sound, managing to be effective as pop music and avant garde in its construction, funny and genuinely beautiful. It’s a remarkably imaginative piece of music, that manages to be clever and surprising without taking itself too seriously, and it wonderfully captures the unique cocktail fantasy of a broken heart have been brewing for their debut LP. Wollowitz says of the song: “‘Ur Heart Stops’ was conceived in the midst of the pandemic after we moved from New York to Los Angeles looking for a breath of fresh air. With no shows in sight, we made the decision to finish writing the song without ever playing it live, a rarity for us that led to a very honest arrangement unbothered by the potential reaction of an audience. We finally got to play it live a year later at a cathartic house show at Brooklyn’s now closed Bohemian Grove. It felt like people caught onto the song right away despite it being the odd duck in an otherwise familiar set. The basement flooded overnight after the show and everything was caked in mud when I returned in the morning to pick up some gear. Heart is a reflection on the never-ending engine of day and night, separation and reconciliation, and the collective depression felt while marching to the coffee pot. While it started as a more personal dialogue between Al and I, I think the song ultimately became an anthem of perseverance for anyone who struggles to get out of bed every morning. We still do.”

Finom – the Chicago-based band co-fronted by Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart, formerly known as Ohmme – will release their new record, Not God, on May 24 via Joyful Noise Recordings. Now, they present a new single, ‘Cyclops,’ alongside a video directed by Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa “Missy” Dabice. ‘Cyclops’ pulses with a fuzzy bass line and Finom’s signature harmonies. There’s a boisterous tension in its instrumentation, which is captured in the accompanying video. It features Cunningham and Stewart as eccentrically-dressed boxers, joining together to take on an evil force in the ring. “Your band is your own personal Odyssey,” explains the band. “You have to want to go on it, you have to fight for it, you have to live for it. I think this song is reacting to some of the subtle undercurrents and mental demons we’ve had to fight off when it comes to persisting as a band. But also, really thinking about battling a cyclops and all of the injury you endure to make it through to the other side.”

Rising pop artist Brooke Alexx has unveiled her self-directed music video for her recently released single, ‘Hot Like You.’ The video finds Alexx transforming from an office chic to Hollywood glam, with the swipe of some lip gloss, a show-stopping red dress, and her favorite pair of shoes from Pashion Footwear. “The music video represents when I was working a day job and pursing music at nights and on weekends. I felt like a double agent,” Alexx says on the new video. To bring her vision for the music video to life, Alexx teamed up with the aforementioned shoe company Pashion Footwear. The brand makes the world’s first fully convertible and customizable heels (a.k.a. shoes that can turn from heels to flats, as well as be endlessly customized with interchangeable Heel Kits + accessories). [via Substream]

Madrid-based indie rockers Hinds have unveiled plans for their new album, Viva Hinds. The record is set to be the band’s first since 2020’s The Prettiest Curse, and will feature two A-list guest stars. Spearheaded by the incredible duo that is Carlotta Cosials and Ana García Perrote, Hinds have been among the most notable indie bands of recent time, both in mainland Europe and further afield. Hence, there is already a lot of excitement surrounding the announcement of Viva Hinds. The first hints at a new album came back in February, when the duo released ‘Coffee’, their first single in years. However, it is only now that a new album has been confirmed, and details have been revealed. Alongside the announcement, the band released the album’s lead single ‘Boom Boom Back’, giving a sneak preview into this new era for Hinds. The song is a perfect summer anthem, featuring the kind of euphoric indie guitar sound that the band have become synonymous with, backed up by Cosials’ effortlessly cool vocals. ‘Boom Boom Back’ also gives some idea of the calibre of guest stars that will feature on the new record, with Beck arriving to deliver a verse. He met with Hinds by chance during a film screening in Los Angeles, and quickly set about organising a collaboration. The slacker king is not the only guest to feature on the tracklisting for Viva Hinds, as the as-yet-unreleased song ‘Stranger’ is due to feature Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten. The album’s lead single arrived in conjunction with a music video, awash with friendship and euphoria to match the mood of the song. Directed by Cosaials and Perrote themselves, the video sees Hinds take on the streets of Hollywood in the blistering sunshine.

Future soul voyager Raveena touches down once more on new single ‘Pluto’. ‘Pluto’ is a wonderful piece of zero gravity alt-soul, with her jazz leanings providing a real sense of flexibility to that dulcet vocal. In a note, she reveals that this beautiful new single actually relates to loss, while also re-learning the acceptance of joy. She comments… “This record is so inner child for me. It’s a song about loss, but woven into the most joyful soundbed. When making it, I was remembering the feeling of having my little walkman and listening to the most euphoric pop songs, dancing around the yard or looking out the window on a long drive at ten years old. I want to bring back the sweetness that feels like it’s suspended in that time of the early 2000s and 90s. I love the amalgamation of sounds we landed on in this song- it’s such a classic R&B record in so many ways, with all these hidden gems of unique instruments like swarmandal and electric sitar.” The surrealist video was pieced together with VFX imagery by Danish artist Ida Lissner, and acts as a homage to some 80s and 90s greats – think Prince’s ‘I Wish U Heaven’ and Faye Wong’s ‘Sing and Play’. [via Clash]

MOTHICA has released her new single ‘Red’, taken from her forthcoming visual album KISSING DEATH, which tells an immersive story across the tracks and their accompanying music videos. “After releasing Nocturnal, which had more of a heavier influence, I knew I wanted to include a rock song. In the narrative of the album, I wanted younger me to go to a rock show of future me, which is obviously impossible in reality, but it represents all the music I grew up listening to and what I’d later be inspired by,” says MOTHICA. “My buddy Nick Sadler and I wrote this together to be this rock-inspired anthem that teenage me would’ve loved, despite the lyrics being so self-destructive.” [via Bring the Noise]

Slovakian alt-pop artist Karin Ann has launched her debut album, Through the Telescope, showcasing her eclectic musical range and depth in storytelling. Released under 3am Records / PIAS, the album features the compelling new video for her track ‘I Don’t Believe in God’, starring Imogen Heap. Through the Telescope is a fusion of folk, rock, and gothic disco, drawing influences from artists like Mazzy Star and Hozier. Produced with Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe of Okkervil River, the album captures Karin Ann’s journey through love, identity, and mental health challenges. Karin expressed her personal connection to the album, stating, “Before I even considered making this album, I was at a breaking point where I seriously thought about giving up music due to my declining health. Benjamin, my collaborator on the album, unexpectedly entered the scene, and later came Will. The two of them sparked this whole new wave of creativity, and the album turned out even better than I imagined. This project was a labor of love, free from external pressures, allowing us to craft a narrative that reflects our shared artistic integrity. I’m so full of pride as I prepare to share this deeply personal piece of work with the world, and I’m hopeful that it resonates with listeners on a profound level.” The new video for ‘I Don’t Believe in God’ is a visually striking exploration of spiritual and societal challenges. Karin notes, “It’s a vulnerable reflection of spiritual dilemmas, influenced by my experience navigating as a queer woman in a conservative, Christian environment.” The video incorporates themes of religious persecution, drawing parallels with historical events like the witch trials.

The UK singer Mabel has a brash new single out. For ‘Look At My Body Pt. II,’ she teams with Shygirl for a hard, trap-infused pop song about “questioning the male gaze and the power of the divine feminine.” Mabel’s statement on the song: “This record is about questioning the male gaze and the power of the divine feminine. I’ve often felt judged by my appearance, and I’ve let comments get the better of me. Now, I’m at a stage in my life though where I’m celebrating my body without letting it define me. I wanted to let anyone who’s ever underestimated me or judged the book by its cover know that I’m ok with them doing that now because I know who I am. Collaborating with Shygirl is something I’ve wanted to do for a really long time as I’m a big fan of her music and everything fell into place with this record. She totally understood everything I wanted it to be and she’s made the song so special. She’s a superstar.” Watch director David Wilson’s video for the song below. [via Stereogum]

Fashion muse, actress, and writer Julia Fox continues to defy expectations, this time venturing into the world of music. Following the release of her debut single ‘Down The Drain,’ Fox unveils a powerful music video directed by Ben Draghi, known for his work with Zendaya and Dove Cameron. The ‘Down The Drain’ music video delves into Julia Fox’s past experiences as a dominatrix. It weaves a captivating narrative where Julia Fox takes on various roles as she embarks on a mission to rescue her friend Richie Shazam from peril. Shot in a location deeply significant to Fox’s personal history, the video adds a layer of authenticity to her performance, showcasing her unwavering commitment to her artistic endeavours no matter how memeable. Fox took a personal approach, involving her close circle in the creative process. This choice gives the video a distinct, intimate feel. It transforms what might seem like an unexpected move into music into a captivating display of Fox’s unique ability to bridge different creative fields. [via FAULT]

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