Lucius guested on the title track from the War On Drugs’ I Don’t Live Here Anymore, and now Adam Granduciel has returned the favor. The WOD god himself contributes vocals and guitar to ‘Old Tape,’ a new Lucius single out now. It also has a music video with Fred Armisen, a guy who sure does appear in a lot of music videos. Lucius singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig shared this statement on the song: “We wrote ‘Old Tape’ while working on new music at Danny [Molad]’s studio in LA; we were discussing the loops we get stuck in, the rabbit holes our minds go down, even getting nerdy on epigenetics — the voices in our heads that might not be our own, and ultimately, how to quiet that noise and let it all go. We wanted to make something that was both driving and uplifting and no one does it better than The War on Drugs…so after building a landscape, we called our dear friend, Adam, to see if he’d lend his beautiful vocals and guitar. He graciously and enthusiastically accepted and it really brought the track to life. Produced and mixed by our longtime bandmate Dan Molad.” Watch the Lauren Wade-directed video below. [via Stereogum]
Warm Human (aka Meredith Johnston) has released the second single, ‘My Moods!!’, from her forthcoming album, Hamartia, which is due out on October 11 via Sooper Records. The single is accompanied by the Meredith Johnston and Dana Shihadah directed video below. [via The Deli]
Wallice has announced her highly anticipated debut album The Jester (Dirty Hit) out November 15. The LA native has come out swinging, with a double single singles ‘Heaven Has To Happen’ & ‘The Opener.’ ‘Heaven Has to Happen,’ is a confession about suffering from imposter syndrome even while you’re living your dream. “How many more jokes can I make before the wool gets pulled out from over my eyes?” Wallice sings just before a brief, mid-song outburst of distorted bass. [via Ghettoblaster Mag]
Los Angeles-based electro-pop duo Magdalena Bay (aka Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin) have released a new album, Imaginal Disk, via Mom + Pop. Now they have shared its fourth single, ‘That’s My Floor,’ via a trippy music video. Amanda Kramer directed the video, which continues the narrative from the other videos for the album. Watch it below. The band collectively had this to say about the song in a press release: “This song is about how we imagine a party must be like. We’ve never been to one.” [via Under The Radar]
Back in May, Amyl And The Sniffers shared a pair of singles called ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ and ‘Facts.’ Now, they’ve announced a new album called Cartoon Darkness, the follow-up to 2021’s Comfort To Me. Out in October, it’ll include ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ as well as the latest single ‘Chewing Gum.’ Amyl And The Sniffers recorded Cartoon Darkness with producer Nick Launay (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles earlier this year. ‘Chewing Gum’ has a great, mid-tempo guitar groove, though the band’s punk roots come through in vocalist Amy Taylor’s delivery. “Life is short, life is fun, and I’m young and so dumb/ I’m stuck on you just like a chewing gum,” she snarls. She explains: “The adversity of life is desire never fulfilled. Doing the dishes cleaning, but never the one eating the meal, so close but it’s never enough, and trying to celebrate the ignorance of youth despite it being robbed away, so choosing ignorance, choosing to be dumb and choosing love, despite everything, choosing bad decisions for love, for life, because it is short, or is it long? Surrendering to joy, surrendering to being a vision, in your own power, because making decisions based on emotion rather than logic is liberating, and despite the external inferno, you walk away unscathed, through flames, burnt but only superficially, unstopped, unaffected, unhuman. Life is work, life is not free, we can never work enough because the end goal doesn’t exist, so all we can do is choose to be wrong.” [via Stereogum]
Du Blonde has announced the release of her fourth LP Sniff More Gritty, alongside a new single ‘TV Star’ and an upcoming UK tour. The artist’s fourth LP Sniff More Gritty sees Du Blonde take the role of producer and engineer while enlisting an eclectic list of collaborators, with features from Skunk Anansie’s Skin, Against Me!‘s Laura Jane Grace, Maximo Park’s Paul Smith and The Futureheads’ Ross Millard. Alongside the announcement, Du Blonde has released a new single ‘TV Star’ — a grunge-pop exploration of the toxicity of succumbing to fame, and how people can change with mass attention. “Congratulations, you’re a TV star,” they begin in a monotone drawl over the strum of an acoustic guitar. “Hit the bigtime, bought a brand new car / Was it worth it, do you know who you are? “It’s the story of who somebody was before and after fame, and the sadness of losing the good person they used to be,” Du Blonde says of the raucous track. The accompanying music video stars actor and musician Pete Chekvala, and cuts between new footage and 10-year-old clips of Du Blonde and Chekvala to “depict the purity and innocence of the early years,” the artist explains. “Although I’m acting in the early clips, I can see even now how much softer I was and how much I still believed in the magic of people,” they say of the video that was a decade in the making. “I feel like a lot of the new album swings between characters and mindsets and being able to play with the more unhinged sides of my personality both lyrically and aesthetically has been really freeing and fun.” Sniff More Gritty will see Du Blonde take aim at past loves and record industry execs through a soundscape of glam-rock, punk and pop. [via NME]
Glasser, the elevated electronic project from Cameron Mesirow, has announced the expanded version of her third album crux. crux deluxe includes seven previously unheard tracks and is released by One Little Independent Records on September 27. Glasser uses entrancing and dreamy experimental pop to explore themes of personal identity, emotional vulnerability, and the human experience. crux deluxe collects exclusive material written alongside the sessions for crux as well as complete pieces that had been gestating prior to the album’s release. It also features a slower, early version of her single ‘Drift’, which highlights a darker side to the composition. Of ‘Drift Slow’, she says; “I made like 40 versions of that song. And I still can’t listen to it. It’s been my obsession for the last, I don’t even know how long. That lyric is just something that came out of me like “What a good life / Except for all those times / When you want to die” It was kind of meant to be a joke but sounds quite serious in the context of the entire record. But also, like, jokes are serious sometimes too. It’s good to joke about serious things, for me at least. I made so many versions. And I really wanted the final version to have sort of a dance vibe to it because dancing about death is better than weeping. They’re both good, but I wanted to dance about that.”
Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega fight to the near-death over a shared lover in the singer’s gory new music video for ‘Taste,’ the opening track on her sixth album, Short n’ Sweet, out now. After a warning advising viewers that the following contains “explicit content and depicts graphic violence,” the music video sees the two former Disney Channel stars alternate strangling, axing and shooting each other. The video is inspired by Death Becomes Her, a 1992 film starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. With the lyrics, “Oh, I leave quite an impression / Five feet to be exact / You’re wonderin’ why half his clothes went missin’ / My body’s where they’re at / Now I’m gone, but you’re still layin’ / Next to me, one degree of separation,” Carpenter, 25, sings about finding out her ex (played by Halloween actor Rohan Campbell) is back together with his former partner (Ortega). “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true / You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you / If you want forever, I bet you do / Just know you’ll taste me too,” she sings. Just before the video ends, Ortega is seen kissing her boyfriend, who, mid-kiss, turns into Carpenter. When Ortega opens her eyes and sees Carpenter, she grabs a chainsaw and pierces the singer in the abdomen. However, after Carpenter’s bloodied body falls into the pool, she turns back into Ortega’s boyfriend. The final scene shows the two bonding at the boyfriend’s funeral as they walk away hilariously comparing notes on him. “I don’t know how you put with [him],” Ortega questions recalling that he was “very insecure.” Carpenter adds: “Very clingy, lots of trauma.” [via The Independent]
Nemahsis has announced her highly anticipated debut LP, previewed by the new single ‘coloured concrete.’ Verbathim will be released independently on September 13. It follows the 2022 EP eleven achers as well as the career-shifting debacle the singer-songwriter born Nemah Hasan faced last October when she was dropped by her record label over her pro-Palestine activism. ‘coloured concrete’ arrives alongside a music video directed by Hasan’s frequent collaborators Norman Wong and Amy Gardner. With a steady pulse that crescendoes in the chorus as the artist sings hooky vocables and lyrics reflecting on dreaming of a certain unattainable lifestyle growing up, it’s a prime example of Nemahsis’s poised, thought-provoking and effortlessly catchy alt-pop approach. [via Exclaim!]
