Multi-talented singer, songwriter, and artist Kat Von D has released a new music video for ‘I Am a Machine,’ which features Arch Enemy vocalist Alissa White Gluz, and is included on her just-released album My Side Of The Mountain. The music video was directed by Vincente Cordero (Jinger, Cradle of Filth, Suicide Silence etc.) “I’ve been such a huge fan of Arch Enemy for so long, it’s been a dream come true getting to create music with Alissa,” says Kat. “I was actually nervous about even asking her to sing on one of my songs, considering I make more dark, electronic music and not metal, but was so happy/relieved when she agreed to be a part of this album. She’s one of the most talented friends I have. Getting to record her massive vocal range in person was beyond inspiring.”

Last month, Grumpy announced their signing to Bayonet Records (Beach Fossils, Mei Seimones) who will release their new EP Wolfed at the end of October. A NYC-based project led by Heaven Schmitt (they/them), the band has been attracting attention in NYC over the last year, appearing on bills with artists like Katy Kirby, This Is Lorelei, Sinai Vessel and Al Menne. Heaven and the gang are back to share a new single called ‘Flower’ alongside a video co-starring NYC DIY pop musician May Rio. Where lead single ‘Saltlick’ and pre announce single ‘Protein’ were awash with glitchy electronics that envelope Heaven’s intimate and inventive songwriting, ‘Flower’ shows a gentler side of the project, while still flashing the distinctive production flourishes that have set this new EP apart from Grumpy’s earlier material. A waltz, that gradually incorporates strings and layered harmonies over a spare guitar figure, the song is about love can transcend the romantic where it began context. Heaven says of the song: “Relationships arent’ forever, but love can be. ‘Flower’ is about how, for me, at this stage of my life, love isn’t about building a permanent commitment to someone, it’s about nurturing a bond so that it may last a lifetime. In ‘Flower’, I accept the end of a relationship with a peacefulness and gratitude that it happened at all. When I love someone, I know that love is bound to change shape, rather than dissolve, post romance.”

If you have been paying attention to independent music over the last decade you might recognize the voices of Romy and Sari Lightman, even if you don’t recognize their names. Twin sisters, originally from Toronto and now based in LA, the pair first came to public attention as long time members of Austra. Separately and together the sisters have also appeared on recordings from Yves Jarvis and TOPS, released a pair of albums in a project called Tasseomancy, which featured both Lightman sisters and Evan Cartwright of the band Cola, and Romy is one half of the Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band, a collaborative project with Jarvis that put out a record on ANTI- in 2021. Now, Romy and Sari are back to launch a new project called Lightman & Lightman, and announce their debut EP under the name, a release entitled Sister Smile. To mark the announce Lightman & Lightman are sharing the single ‘Bethlehem XL’ which features contributions from Hand Habit’s Meg Duffy, and is accompanied by a video written by Romy and directed by Zak Tatham. ‘Bethlehem XL’ is the EP’s opening track and serves as an overture, as the sisters explain in a statement: “An introduction to the record, intended as an overture. The narrator of the song slinks around like a Jean Rhys character, walking alone through empty streets late at night, filled with a material and spiritual longing. Feelings of interconnectedness & disassociation ebb and flow until the ending takes us to a higher, celestial place of joy and belonging.”

Cults, have released a new music video for ‘Onions,’ the track is off their latest album To the Ghosts. Directed by Alice Fassi, whose work has been recognized at prestigious film festivals such as Cannes Lions, brought her unique blend of satire and horror to the clip. Madeline plays a tender housewife with a dark side, hiding a sadistic, thrill-seeker within. Brian plays her half-dead counterpart, likely fallen victim to one of Madeline’s homecooked brews. Set in a secluded country home circle 1980, the video unfolds with colorful cinematography, and a surreal, delightfully macabre charm. [via Northern Transmissions]

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Georgia Gets By, the project of New Zealand’s Georgia Nott (BROODS), shares a video for ‘When All You Can Manage Is A Sigh,’ a gorgeous and quietly devastating new single. “I wrote this song for a friend a few years ago while they were navigating a divorce. There are those moments where thinking can’t balance out the feelings. You can rationalize all you want but you are still there, holding that enormous heavy sensation that no words can describe,” Georgia explains. “There, on the other side of falling in love, looking around at empty space and wondering whether you can bear to try it all again. This song is a parting gift of some sorts; something to fill the emptiness for a couple of minutes. As Imogen Heap says ‘there is beauty in the breakdown’.”

Gustaf, the Brooklyn no wave / post-punk band announced their debut album last month and now they are back with a double single and video for ‘Here Hair / Hard Hair.’ The first is a brooding, slow-motion growl peppered by birdsong and stabbed by pinpricks of guitar, while its chaser, ‘Hard Hair,’ is 45-second outburst of energy, invective and regret. The songs were produced and mixed by Erin Tonkon with initial production from Carlos Hernandez. Its accompanying video directed by the band’s own Lydia Gammill, features the band wigged out among heart shaped hair brushes and roses.

Manchester’s finest alt-punks The Empty Page just released a gritty new video, calling out the ‘Cock of the Fifth Year’. “Cock of the fifth year is what we called the biggest jock types when I was in high school. Cocky, brash loud and overly confident. Puffed up and swaggering and often quite intimidating. I liked the name for a song and wrote it initially about a cartoonish bloke who unselfconsciously uses up all the space available and makes others feel shoved out of the way. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of blokes like that I encounter when walking around my home city of Manchester. Swaggering, mouthy bellends who can be pretty intimidating when you’re a woman just trying to get from A to B. I was thinking about the idea that being a big deal in high school is the peak of some people’s lives. I hated school with a passion and my own life has got better and better as my school days have receded in the rearview. Seems a weird flex now to have been a big deal in high school,” says Kel, singer/guitarist/songwriter of The Empty Page. [via Loud Women]

Babehoven will return with a new album this spring. The New York-based duo of Maya Bon and Ryan Albert have announced Water’s Here In You, out April 26 via Double Double Whammy. This week sees the release of a new song called ‘Birdseye,’ following the previously released album track ‘Chariot.’ Seemingly aware of the blandness that runs through most modern indie rock, ‘Birdseye’ opts for something more ambitious and strikes a balance between melancholic and soaring, jangley and ornate. The music video, directed by Ash Kron, makes a comforting blanket out of the threads of whimsy in the song, depicting Bon as a balloon-aided bird flapping across the coast and taking advantage of the nice weather to do some human-watching. [via The FADER]

Last year, Saya Gray shared her Qwerty EP. Now, the art-pop musician announced its sequel, Qwerty II, and shared the hallucinatory single ‘AA BOUQUET FOR YOUR 180 FACE’ with a video directed by Jennifer Cheng. “180 face is my bass moment off of qwerty ii EP,” she said in a statement. “it’s about a spooky moody boy with a 180 face.” Qwerty II was made in isolation in 2023, and Gray describes it as “a collection of ideas and collages stuck together as the ying to the yang of the first half.” [via Stereogum]

The new visuals for Fever Ray‘s ‘Shiver’ come from frequent collaborator Martin Falck; Main, the trollish office drone Dreijer has portrayed in this era of visuals, falls from the sky to a red planet. They’re healed by a buff doctor, played by none other than International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation pro bodybuilder Irene Andersen, whose office also doubles as a BDSM chamber. Some light physiotherapy ensues. The new clip was inspired by the Lovers of Valdero, a pair of Stone Age skeletons that were buried for millennia in an intimate embrace. “We fantasized about what might have happened to these two skeletons,” Dreijer says. “Were they so in love they had their mouths and noses too close to each other, or couldn’t stop kissing so they died of carbon monoxide poisoning? Or did a dinosaur kill them, and they died in fear holding each other? Was it a volcano, and they were protecting themselves from the lava burning their flesh? Maybe they weren’t in love at all; perhaps they were lifelong enemies facing their final struggle strangling each other? We felt there was a beautiful story there about the struggles of falling in love and the vulnerability you might feel being ‘examined’ by your love interest who wants to make sure you really are the one they can trust and form a relationship with, that will last for eternity.” [via The FADER]

Tierra Whack has dropped ’27 CLUB,’ the latest preview of her new album, WORLD WIDE WHACK. A reference to the infamous 27 Club of celebrities who died at the age of 27 — including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain — the new single was produced by Whack’s frequent collaborator J Melodic and ProdbyBRIANNA. The track dives deep into Whack’s mental health, as she sings about losing touch with family and friends while embodying the pain of coming up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. After explicitly mentioning thoughts of suicide, Whack sings, “Like a glass full but I’m empty/ Said, ‘I’m broken, can you fix me?’/ If I’m dreamin,’ you should pinch me/ Got a gun to the head, don’t tempt me.” Addressing the song in an Instagram post, Whack wrote, “I was in a dark place for a long time, and no one knew. I found my way out and made a choice to keep living. I wanna be completely transparent with my ‘whackos’ because I’m human just like you and we all have rough days. The key is to keep going! Be kind… you never know what someone else is going through. For the longest time, I felt like I didn’t belong, but now I know that I do, and my hope is for other people to know that, too.” [via Consequence]

Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based alternative artist Abby Sage sustains her musical momentum with an introspective new single, ‘Soak.’ This radiant track offers another peek into her creative process while heightening the anticipation for the release of her forthcoming debut album, The Rot, out March 1 via Nettwerk. Embellished with delicate vocals and complemented by upbeat guitar strums, ‘Soak’ strikes a sonic balance between melodic buoyancy and industrial undertones. Introduced by a simple drum beat, the song gradually reaches its climax in a lively and sparkling chorus. This sweeping alternative-pop track is a testament to self discovery, and an exploration of the liberation found in triviality. “‘Soak’ is the acceptance and surrender to complete unimportance.” Sage says. “It’s recognizing how insignificant everything is and how small I am. It’s celebratory in a way because there is something so beautiful and freeing about letting go of ego and self importance. It frees up a lot of space.” Regarding the video, she continues, “I wanted to focus on the ‘giving in’ aspect of that first so the set was designed to feel chaotic and crowded with the masks and the wind blowing while I struggle to let go. Later in the video, the optical illusion of the puppet ‘carrying’ me around is that manifestation of my surrender and embrace of my insignificance.” [via Broadway World]

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Gia Ford has released a new single. ‘Poolside’ follows on from her recent track drops ‘Alligator’ and ‘Falling in Love Again’, as well as her support slot with Self Esteem at her huge Sheffield Don Valley show. “’Poolside’ was first inspired by an image from a coffee table book, depicting affluent 60s Los Angeles,” she explains. “A birds-eye shot of houses with pools in the hills. I imagined a poolboy, disillusioned and angry at the world, and began describing what he felt and saw, working in a well-to-do LA neighbourhood. There’s this separation between him and the people he’s working for. He’s invisible to them.” [via Dork]

Longevity is a hard quality to achieve in this ever-churning music industry. So is reinvention. Somehow, though, Chloe Saavedra has achieved both, sustaining a career in music that’s spanned projects, sounds and roles. Now, she’s announcing the next chapter in that ever-changing journey, her first solo album under the moniker WTRGRL: Drïpsody, a darkly moving collection of dance-inflected pop songs that fuse the spirit of the club with the torn pages of a poet’s notebook. Premiering her new single, ‘are u up’, along with a seductive new video, Saavedra has provided listeners a glimpse into Drïpsody’s chaotically expanding universe. She says of the video, “I’ve always been interested in body architecture in paintings and photos. I wanted to portray the movements of bodies with a minimalist black backdrop like a baroque painting and to juxtapose the bouncy, sexy demeanor of the song with the seriousness of a high-quality medium. The director, Natasha Wilson, did an amazing job straddling the concept of overt sexuality and the sterile backdrop of fine art. My incredibly talented friends really made the video what it is. Natasha, Stephanie Dobash (DP), Angel Tailan (stylist), Elise Gehrke (MUA), Alec Nicholas (editor), Maia Saavedra Weisenhaus (pyro technician), the dancers, models and my friends who came through to help with the production, were the best team to create with. I felt like we built this super-family on set and had a blast making it, which is why it’s so close to my heart.” [via PAPER]

Discovery Zone shares another enchanting track and video from her forthcoming LP Quantum Web, coming in March on limited hologram edition LP via RVNG Intl. Video directed by Janosch Pugnaghi. [via Gorilla vs Bear]

Anglo-American duo Still Corners kick off the new year with a brand new single, ‘The Dream’. ‘The Dream’ is the second single announced off the eagerly awaited sixth album Dream Talk, available on April 5 via their own record label, Wrecking Light Records. ‘The Dream’ is Still Corners at their most seductive and romantic. This mysterious tale centres around a quote from Shakespeare’s illustrious A Midsummer’s Night Dream: “Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream”. Shakers and a lone rhythm guitar drop into a fast-paced beat of bass and drums, reminiscent of a train travelling at speed through a desert night – “we are on a night train, heading to the east end”. Tessa Murray’s melodic vocals are revealed gradually as the instrumental moves towards its climax. Shifting synths combine with crescendoing congas, gradually revealing the complete picture of this epic adventure – “dream within a dream”. Speaking of the accompanying music video, Tessa Murray added: “The video is based on our deep love of mystery novels and cosy crime fiction. I play a new character called Penelope Braithwaite as she investigates the “Mystery of the Repeating Dream”. Folks from the fictitious town of Reverwood, Sussex have been falling into a repeating dream trap; when they wake up, they realise they are, in fact, in the same dream. Penelope arrives at a mysterious house to investigate. Does she solve the mystery, or is she also stuck in a looping dream? That’s for you to find out.” Beautifully filmed in the English countryside by the band, featuring steam trains and a dilapidated mansion set in vast gardens, this detective story is not to be missed!

In 2021, the eclectic group Shannon And The Clams shared the album Year Of The Spider. Now, they’re announcing its follow-up, The Moon Is In The Wrong Place, produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. The title track is out now with a music video directed by Bobbi Rich. In August of 2022, bandleader Shannon Shaw was weeks away from her wedding when her fiancé, Joe Haener, died in a tragic car accident. “We all felt the urgency of making something that reckoned with this meteor that smashed into our planet,” keyboard player Will Sprott said in a statement. “This is the most focused record we’ve ever done, as far as everything coming from a singular traumatic event.” [via Stereogum]

Bad Omens and Poppy have teamed up for a new single, ‘V.A.N’. Out now via Sumerian Records and written and produced by Bad Omens frontman Noah Sebastian, the song is the first glimpse of what the band will be offering on their upcoming album. Their ‘CONCRETE FOREVER’ project is the soundtrack to their ‘Concrete Jungle’ comic book universe, which they’re also touring Europe in support of from January 27. Noah explains: “That’s a song that started just with the hook ‘Violence against nature’, and then after saving the project with the acronym and seeing it we realized it could be fun to think of ‘VAN’ as a name. Thus the rabbit hole of ideas began that led us to decide to write lyrics from the perspective of an artificial intelligence gone rogue.” [via Dork]

Tierra Whack broke out with her brilliantly weird visual album Whack World almost six years ago. In the time since, she’s released a lot of one-off tracks and a series of genre-themed EPs, Rap?, Pop?, and R&B? Since the last of those came out in late 2021, she’s been keeping a low profile, but she’s finally ready to release a full-length album. Out in March, WORLD WIDE WHACK is being billed as Whack’s official full-length debut. “I really took my time with this,” she wrote on IG, “so I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.” [via Stereogum]

Jewelia wants to uplift you. A pop songwriter who uses music to inject optimism into our lives, she takes from different eras – 80s synth pop, 00s indie – to build her own elixir. New album Little Wins is out on April 19 and it parallels synth auteurs like Goldfrapp, or cutting edge pop savants like Caroline Polachek. Amid her disparate influences, though, lies a tender heart. She comments: “The binding concept behind ‘Little Wins’ is that we all do the best we can at a particular moment in time, with the resources we have at that moment. Those resources can mean anything: time, energy, knowledge, confidence, money, love, other people, self-belief, self-love. So really, there’s no point in beating ourselves up, and instead of constantly focusing on the climb ahead, we should take some time to look back and see how far we’ve come, and learn to celebrate the little wins.” New single ‘Invisible Wall’ leads the way. A delicious pop moment, it wears its retro aspects on its sleeve – all knowing glances and a cute chorus, Jewelia really displays her finesse. Of the single and it’s neat new video, she says… “I’ve always wanted to dig deeper into a retro pop sound and imagery. I actually wrote ‘Invisible Wall’ back in 2017, and it stayed in the vault up until last year, when I realised that it fitted perfectly within the concept of my new album. In video games, an invisible wall is a boundary that limits where the player can go, even though there’s nothing physically there to stop them. It seems like the perfect analogy for the pre-guided life pathways that society tends to force us into, but also for self-limiting thought patterns, both of which are driving ideas behind the concept of ‘Little Wins’.” [via Clash]

Here’s a great song title: ‘All My Exes Live In Vortexes.’ Here’s an opening lyric that will grab you: “I hope no one had to piss in a bottle at work to get me the thing I ordered on the internet.” Both belong to the new single from Rosie Tucker’s upcoming album UTOPIA NOW! The pop-punk-ish indie-rocker’s latest will drop in March. It’ll be their first since getting dropped by Epitaph Records, and it includes last fall’s single ‘Unending Bliss.’ [via Stereogum]

Grammy award-winning DJ and producer Purple Disco Machine has shared his latest single ‘Beat of Your Heart’ in collaboration with Icelandic artist ÁSDÍS. Combining Purple Disco Machine’s trademark disco infused sound with ÁSDÍS’s magnetic vocals, the high-energy track is laden with danceable grooves, big synths and catchy melodies. The accompanying music video, directed by NDVD, brings all of the joy of the dancefloor to life intertwining love, freedom and fantasy. Speaking about the track, Purple Disco Machine says: “I was sent the vocals by ÁSDÍS and I immediately fell in love with her voice. I wanted to release the track as a single and we later re-recorded it together in my studio in Dresden, which was really great.” ]via Fab UK Mag]

Paris Paloma has shared her first new music of 2024 with the reflective yet triumphant single ‘My Mind (now)’ out now via Nettwerk. Following on from her 2023 singles ‘notre dame’, ‘labour’, ‘yeti’ ‘as good a reason’ and ‘drywall’, Paris continues to evolve the magical, yet real world created within her music, with a new chapter within the narrative with ‘My Mind (now)’. A melodic folk-pop track underpinned by dark and despondent journal-like lyrics about the chaos and emotions of the mind, “what did I do wrong, will you tell me what I did wrong”, the song builds introspectively to a jubilant release. The track is accompanied by a compelling video directed by Matt Grass, which perfectly conveys the atmosphere of the song. Paris says: “’My Mind (now)’ is about the BC and the AD of trauma, and what it did to my mental state, the feeling that an event was so cataclysmic that it rearranged the chemical makeup of my mind. The song is a reflection of my struggle with OCD and anxiety as a response to traumatic events, and the electrical storm of emotions that exists inside my head, filling it with noise that never seems to leave, as I search for a few seconds of respite and quiet from it. It is also about the power other people hold to set that trauma into motion, and both the fragility and strength of the human mind. my mind (now) is an embodiment of the the act of creation in the form of art and writing as a coping mechanism that comes out of the overwhelming noise and chaos of the mind.”

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