Back in March, indie-punk trio VIAL unveiled their second album, burnout, which contained a catchy set of songs that skidded between dark anthems and raucous heft. To end the year on a high note, they’ve rerecorded their 2019 debut EP, Grow Up. Titled Grow The Fuck Up, the project arrives November 29 via Get Better Records and will be available on vinyl for the first time. The LP also includes the ripping new song ‘DIY or Die,’ a rewrite of a deleted Grow Up B-side, and comes with a music video where guitarist/vocalist KT Branscom gets doused in blood while dressed like a beauty pageant winner. “We rerecorded our debut EP Grow Up to look back on our progress as musicians and revisit some very nostalgic songs after five years of VIAL,” the band say. “It’s like a little love letter to our younger selves. When we first recorded Grow Up, we had very limited resources during the recording process and didn’t even use our own cables. We feel very lucky we’re able to revisit this EP now that we have access to the funds, skills, and equipment we’d always wanted to allocate toward these eight songs.” [via Alt Press]

Last month, Romy and Sari Lightman announced their debut EP under the Lightman & Lightman name, a release called Sister Smile that will be out December 6, and features contributions from several notable musicians, including Hand Habit’s Meg Duffy, and members of Cola, TOPS and Jessica Pratt’s band. The LP was announced with the single ‘Bethlehem XL,’ and now the sisters are sharing a second preview of the EP, a track called ‘Weave Your Name In Mine.’ Lightman & Lightman say of the track: “I wanted to capture the passion, desperation, even the romantic infatuation to converse with and be seen by the divine. A love song to God through the eyes of Etty & Jeanine with the devotional sincerity of a 60s girl group. I wrote this one much later than the rest of the album. I was walking through a public garden, staring at the roses, thinking of Dantes’ Paradise, and thought what would a pop song about divine love plucked from the secular sphere sound like? In the music video animated and directed by Zak Tatham, we asked our friend, a contemporary dancer to play the role of “the divine source on the ceiling” holding and reflecting back our shared and interconnected humanity. We recorded most of the track in our garage in Tujunga, with Riley Fleck (Tops, Jessica Pratt) playing drums and Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) on guitar.”

Following her recent East Coast tour – which experienced such high demand that a second Naarm/Melbourne show was added – singer-songwriter Odette shares her serendipitous new single and video ‘Seahorses’. Harnessing a songwriting craft that’s nothing short of exceptional, Odette’s approach to lyrical expression is strengthened by her unique sense of curiosity and openness, allowing for moments of vulnerability and catharsis to coexist with her unapologetic self-assurance. With subtle allusions to authority figures and power dynamics, Odette finds a happy medium between scathing cynicism and blissful idealism on ‘Seahorses’, as she playfully flips between vocal registers. Her soaring melodies find their match in the vibrant, playful instrumentation, with the energetic piano-led groove melding with delicate woodwinds and resonant percussion. Speaking on the song, Odette reveals, “’Seahorses’ is buoyant and fun and scathing. I wrote this when I was angry and joyous at the same time in the studio with Kiah. It’s how I was looking at the world in that moment and everything felt beautiful and nightmarish at the same time. I think it still does.” In the self-directed music video, Odette, along with a team of her friends and collaborators, captures the ephemeral moments of joy that lie at the heart of ‘Seahorses’, safeguarding each snapshot for her future self. She shares, ”This is my favourite video I’ve ever done and I directed it!! Monte (@monteemadeit) is one of my favourite producers I’ve worked with. He’s the kind of guy who will get on the ground when you do, it just makes the space feel very collaborative and exciting! This video is just me and my friends having fun together. I wanted to document everyone digitally so I can look back at the funny things we did when I’m older. I love them with my entire heart. I wouldn’t be here without them, seriously.” [via TwentyThree]

Fresh off of touring with Wallows in North America and Olivia Rodrigo in Australia, New Zealand alt-pop player BENEE has a brand-new single for us. Titled ‘Animal,’ this new one follows September’s ‘Sad Boiii.’ Both will show up on her forthcoming album, which drops next year. Upbeat and anthemic, ‘Animal’ has a clear hip-hop influence, with a glitchy backing track. “And you can’t stay mad at me, I’m just an animal,” BENEE sings on the chorus. “A micro-celebrity, but I mean nothing at all.” Benee shared this statement on the song: “’Animal’ is a song I wrote when I felt extreme existential dread. When flying in a plane on tour, looking down onto what looks like an ant-like world really inspired the lyrics. How huge something feels when you’re in it, but zoomed out so SMALL. I love thinking about life like that. I thought about this concept long and hard, and I feel we can only be playful with the thought of how insignificant and small we are compared to the universe. There’s peace in not knowing what anything is here for. It makes me want to enjoy everything in life even more.” Watch the ‘Animal’ video, directed by Keith Herron, below. [via Stereogum]

New Zealand artist and producer Fazerdaze unveils her second album, Soft Power, a release that marks the realisation of her ambitious sonic vision. Steeped in deep meaning and fueled by fierce self-compassion and empowerment, Soft Power is out now via section1 and Buttrfly Records (AU/NZ). This expansive record provided Fazerdaze a space to fully embrace her inner strength and power, while staying connected to her softness, rawness, and vulnerability. Speaking about what it means to her, Fazerdaze (real name Amelia Murray) shares, “This is what I created during the darkest, loneliest, most tumultuous years of my life – entering womanhood, navigating the world, the music industry, and what I thought was love. In my scariest moments, this album was my anchor for hope, purpose, and light. I am so relieved and content to finally share with you; Soft Power.” With an atmospheric feel reminiscent of sunset festival sets, the album beautifully balances lightness and tenderness with a sense of determination and resilience. Listen and watch the first animated Fazerdaze video, for the focus track ‘So Easy’, below. The video was filmed in LA during a day off from tour, directed by Lanning Sally and animated by Rollinos (Gabriel Rolim) in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Desire share new single/video ‘Drama Queen’ from their upcoming album Games People Play, which is coming soon via Italians Do It Better. The track comes ahead of their upcoming European tour, which starts next week in Lisbon and sees shows in Porto, Vigo, Barcelona, Madrid, Lyon, Paris, London, Leeds, Edinburgh, Brussels, Utrecht, Hamburg, Berlin, Poznán, Prague, Vienna, Zagreb, Milan, Bologna, Rome, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn & Helsinki. ‘Drama Queen’ is a high-energy disco anthem built for the dance floor, blending classic piano house with bold, modern production. With the lyric “On The Road… Torture Mode,” Desire delivers unapologetic attitude & sassy edge. Packed with catchy hooks & symphonic stabs, ‘Drama Queen’ combines ethereal ‘70s Disco with a fierce, contemporary twist. Its accompanying music video, inspired by the end scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, adds a cinematic edge, amplifying the track’s bold attitude & setting the scene for ‘Drama Queen’s live debut across a 25-date European tour.

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Lyon-based trio Oakman have released their brand-new single ‘Air Hunger’. An upbeat masterclass in spiritual survival set to a soaring electronic score, ‘Air Hunger’ sees Oakman collaborate with Aurélien Mariat once again for a beautifully retro and fantastical music video. “’Air Hunger’ is about the profound desire to escape one’s mental state and try to breathe again. Running away from reality is a solution that ultimately brings you back to the same issue” says Marine Lazillotta. She continues “it’s something I often do, something we all do. It’s how we turn life into a redundant anxiety and then we suffocate and struggle for air. Behind those moody notes and a quite joyful atmosphere, hides, as always, a touch of melancholy in Oakman. I wanted to share with you some of my feelings through our music, just what I felt, with honesty.”

Twee-extraordinaire Majorette releases a brand new track titled, ‘One Glove’. The song is the first single off of her upcoming EP, Forever Starts Tuesday, due January 23. ‘One Glove’ listens like a reverse strip-tease: totally bare with just a single vocal track and syncopated drum beat. Slowly layers are added on, culminating in a three-part round. Lyrically, the song is exactly the opposite. Singer Danielle Salomon tells the story of selling off her clothing one season at a time in order to make ends meet, finishing with the lyric “looks like this year, I’ll be completely nude.”Inspired by a lost mitten and an ill-fated water park incident where Salomon resorted to tobogganing in a pair of athletic shorts after selling her swimsuit— ‘One Glove’ is equal parts cheeky and tragic. The new single has been paired with a music video shot entirely on 16mm, featuring Salomon in a variety of vintage period-piece costumes she hand sewn herself. Drawing from pin-up style calendars and MGM musicals- specifically ‘Beautiful Girl’ from Singin’ in the Rain and Leslie Caron’s introduction scene in An American in Paris — the video for ‘One Glove’ is one minute and 30 seconds of decadent delusion. The video was directed by Paul DeSilva (Wetsuit), and shot by cinematographer Martin Parsekian, set design by Elizabeth Chaney, lighting and technical direction by T. Michael Culane. This video marks the 2nd collaboration with this team, after last years’ ‘Crockpot’.

Following a series of successful releases with ‘Love Myself’ and ‘Deadweight’, former Hot Chip and Kano vocalist Valentina drops her much awaited EP All Are Lost. Alongside the EP, she releases the focus track ‘Flutes Over Dudes (The Last Time That You Cried)’ and the accompanying music video. Written back home in London after returning from a soul-searching trip travelling across LA, Mexico and Costa Rica; ‘Flutes Over Dudes (The Last Time That You Cried)’ is a sombre, yet playful musing on the idea of being ‘too much’, after being broken up with in the middle of Costa Rica, and realising she had repeated a pattern that she really wanted to break with that relationship. The lyric “If it seems like I’m too much, maybe you’re not enough. I don’t want more, I want it all” is the beating heart of this track and a line that many others will be able to relate to. With her signature hazy vocals layered over airy pads and atmospheric flute instrumentation, Valentina captures an audience with a hauntingly honest tale of finally putting herself first. Of the track, Valentina said “To the people I’ve had in my life who do not take responsibility for themselves, and who almost wear it as a badge of honour, expecting someone else to do the emotional labour for them – “You’re proud you can’t remember the last time that you cried, but you hurt everyone around you in the meantime”. I wasn’t going to downplay or undermine myself anymore or make myself less intimidating or more agreeable for people. I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t need things that I needed. It feels like maturing, growing into yourself in a way, and letting yourself inhabit space that’s been squashed or stifled for a long time.” Alongside the focus track, Valentina drops the music video for ‘Flutes Over Dudes (The Last Time That You Cried)’ inviting us into the artistic, minimalistic and somewhat surreal visual imagining of the track. On the video, Valentina says: “Working with the director Alex Corona on this video, we were looking to be playful with the tone and juxtapose against the rawness of the lyrics. The photographic and contemplative setups in black and white felt like it sat in the right space for the theatrical plays on emotional states of being.”

Minneapolis trio VIAL have been having fun this year, whether that means taking on the bold task of covering Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings’ or unleashing an angsty ska-like song called ‘just fine.’ Now, they’re back with more antics: a track called ‘ur dad.’ ‘ur dad’ is, essentially, a gender-swapped ‘Stacy’s Mom.’ At under two minutes, it packs in enough father-seducing to kill a Victorian child: “And, I hope this doesn’t make things weird between me and you/ But I loved seeing him at his barbecue/ Grilling weenies in his cute little apron/ Oh GOD, he really gets me going.” [via Stereogum]

Dove Cameron has released a new video from her debut album. ‘Sand’ follows on from recent drop ‘Lethal Woman’, and is from her full-length Alchemical: Volume 1, out now via Disruptor Records/Columbia Records. “‘Sand’ is about a person who I loved very much, and who I thought I was going to spend my life with,” she shares. “It’s about the experience of having that seemingly perfect relationship end so suddenly and without warning, the feeling of shock and overnight disintegration of the future you built together, realizing no matter how much I gave of myself, I still had so little of him in the end, and the feeling of being unable to get back even the smallest pieces of myself that I had given away. I hope when you hear this song, it helps you learn to trust your instincts when you fall for someone, and hold out for the one where the more you give, the more they give. Don’t be afraid to lose the ones who can’t possibly see you, not because you aren’t incredible, but because they never could in the first place.” Of the album, she adds: “Alchemical: Volume 1 is a report from the void of my own personal experience with love, sex, loss, trauma, darkness and eventually transformation and healing. I hope you hear yourself and we can meet in these moments in time together.” [via Dork]

For nearly a decade now, Albuquerque-based rockers Prism Bitch have evolved their balance of garage-rock riffing and playful theatricality that bleeds into much of their discography (to say nothing of their famously over-the-top videography). They’ve released a slate of singles since 2021’s PERLA LP—most recently this past April’s ‘Woman,’ which mercilessly drags just about every song with that title written by a man over the past 50 years—and now they return with their most fascinating period piece to date. ‘City Nights’ is a pastiche of mid-’80s haze, with the electronic drumbeat and ambient synths bringing to mind the decade’s stadium-filling pop hits and the muscular guitars and cowbell of the chorus swinging in the direction of the glam metal fad (all of which makes Lilah Rose’s occasional exaggerated butt-rock vocals feel ahead of their time). The track, of course, comes paired with a ludicrous video which continues to pay homage to the ’80s by using James L. Brooks’ romcom Broadcast News as a jumping off point as it depicts the local news in comic tones. “We were able to get all this help from our community in Albuquerque and ended up making something really fun,” the band’s Lauren Poole shares. “It’s important not to disengage from the world around us with all the intense and very scary things happening. It’s also important to keep fun alive, and we really hope that this song and video will brighten someone’s day.” [via FLOOD]

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