Following the extra-curricular electronica of her Projections EP for Technicolour released earlier this year, Polish techno misfit VTSS takes another sharp turn as an artist in ascendance with the vocal-led mutant pop of her long awaited and highly speculated debut for Ninja Tune, Circulus Vitiosus. Across four tracks, her musical character steps further into the light, backed up by razor-sharp production. VTSS (real name Martyna Maja) shares hypnotic new single ‘Incredibly Annoying’ alongside a striking video directed by Furmaan Ahmed and Vasso Vujovic (who have previously shot Willow Smith, SOPHIE and Dorian Electra).
Los Angeles punk-leaning four-piece Reckling (led by Kelsey Reckling) is back with the announcement of their forthcoming EP, Human Nature. The new project is introduced with the release of its first single, ‘In My Hair,’ released alongside an accompanying music video directed by Ambar Navarro. Following their raw and scuzzy self-titled debut release in 2018, Reckling went into an actual recording studio this time around to record their still raw, but louder and more energetic EP Human Nature. The goal was to showcase how the band’s sound has evolved since their 2018 release, and to more accurately reflect how they sound during their live shows.
Claude—the Chicago based existential dream pop solo project of Claudia Ferme—has shared ‘roses’, their second and final single off their upcoming debut full-length, a lot’s gonna change, produced with Michael Mac (Tenci, Tasha, Devin Shaffer, Mia Joy) and out August 12 via American Dreams Records. The single ‘roses’ arrives alongside a Reilly Drew-directed music video. On the track, Claude issued the following statement: “‘roses’ was inspired by a line in Love in the Time of Cholera where the protagonist starts eating flowers and roses because of how obsessed with someone he is. I think in the novel it’s supposed to symbolize how his obsession became all-consuming but I thought about a rose and the thorns on its stem and how someone eating a rose was a perfect metaphor for how as humans we’re so self-torturous, mentally and emotionally, and very unforgiving of ourselves. In the video, we wanted to show this imagery in a more abstract way while still including actual roses – I made the purple top and gray dress and am wearing other pieces that have peaks and spikes and that play with the making and release of tension to show the back and forth we have with ourselves in certain situations.”
New York City-based indie-pop singer-songwriter, Aubrey Haddard shares an electrifying fourth single, ‘Future Boxes,’ along with its stunning black-and-white, Jean Cocteau-inspired video. Haddard’s second full-length album, Awake And Talking, will be out August 19 via Beverly Martel Records. On dense, electric ‘Future Boxes,’ Aubrey Haddard peers into her future, attempting to imagine what lies ahead. She ponders the idea of going through life the way others expect one to, and aims to avoid making life all about checking boxes rather than living in the present. Haddard sings, “Future boxes Make you feel good / Doing things everyone says you should / My four sides are more like suggestions / Maybe I’ve got too many questions.” The track begs the question, though it feels good to do things in a conventional way, might there be more fulfilling alternative paths? “We all have, at some point, an idea of what our lives could look like. We take the steps we can to get there, checking some boxes, with or without that bigger picture in mind,” says Haddard about ‘Future Boxes.’ “At the end of the day, none of us are uniquely ambitious but some will find more fulfillment in carving out their own paths.” The Josh Rob Thomas-directed black-and-white video, between quick shots and an array of angles, zooms and kaleidoscopic effects, shows Haddard alone inside a house, often breaking the fourth wall and examining her own reflection, and conceptually lends itself to the primary themes of her forthcoming LP. “I had a lot of fun making this video because we got to take every tiny detail of my Jean Cocteau obsession and see if we could pull it off. It’s a total testament to the concept of the record as a whole,” shares Haddard.
Clocking in right under the two-minute mark, morgen’s new single ‘Mom Jeans’ is straight to the point fun. As a first taste of her upcoming second EP, ‘Mom Jeans’ arrives alongside an official video that feels like a page ripped from a Lisa Frank coloring book. A lighthearted jab at anyone who has ever told her how to dress, morgen unleashes all the creativity that has been bubbling up in her as she, like many others, had to watch her adolescence speed by while trapped at home. morgen’s second EP is slated to arrive this Fall via Avoca Drive and Sony Music Australia. “’Mom Jeans’ is the first time I’ve truly spoken out in a song,” says morgen. “It’s about body image and how people’s opinions shouldn’t affect the way you present yourself, because you deserve to wear whatever makes YOU feel good.”
The video for November Ultra‘s ‘Come Into My Arms’ encapsulates the song’s themes in a story that’s as touching as it is tender. A young girl is woken by falling rain, which prompts her to head out on an adventure. She leaves home, catches a train, and then glances upwards as she reaches her destination. At this point, the rain stops and a twist emerges: the girl is a drawing by her creator, another young girl, and their reunion stops her tears – the rain – from falling. Visually, it was inspired by animations which blend big emotions with a palpable sense of nostalgia, such as Bambi or the work of Studio Ghibli. The video was produced by the renowned French creative team Remembers. Headed by Felix de Givry and Ugo Bienvenu, Remembers’ previous work includes striking animated visuals for CHANEL’s Métiers d’art show, the Opéra national de Paris, and the music video for ‘At The Door’ by The Strokes. Tamerlan Bekmurzayev says, “When I draw, I am to go in search of what is magical and beautiful in our world. To be a child again; to find magic in every moment and to be amazed by everyday life, by the sight of a tree or a cat. November Ultra sent me some photos of her as a child and I was able to imagine a character who looked a bit like her, so that her voice could blend into my universe and this visual could be ours. I wanted to create a dream-like memory which might seem ordinary for an adult, but which is new, adventurous and therefore significant for a child. My goal for this video was to create a light, poetic comfort – one that helps us find and console ourselves, just like the little girl does.”
Philly-based punk rockers Vixen77 return with their newest single and video ‘Record Store,’ distributed via Megaforce Record. This rowdy jammer is about discovering that your seemingly well-cultured ex is now dating someone with terrible taste in music. What conversations could they possibly be having? The accompanying colorful video sets the scene, complete with an unexpected outcome at the end. Guitarist Elizabeth, who initially came up with the concept of the song, expands, “It’s about when you first start dating in high school, making mix tapes for each other, and you find someone who loves music as much as you do. If you break up with someone, at the very least, I hope you got a couple of new bands to listen to. That’s what ‘Record Store’ always comes back to — loving music.”
La Shana Latrice has dropped visuals for her latest song, ‘Say No More’. Throughout ‘Say No More’, La Shana focuses on self-love, mentioning that if she had a choice to be anything she wants La Shana would be herself. With the assistance of Regina ‘Regg’ Smith, La Shana packages a great song with her euphonious vocals working well alongside the beat. The visuals come in the form of a colourful public service announcement which La Shana uses to speak to the ladies and fellas to hammer in her important message on loving yourself. [via GRM Daily]
LA indie pop act Jazzie Young drops ethereal track ‘wonderland is wonderless’, capturing the sweet, honeymoon stages of a relationship. With a slow-burn piano-led soundscape built around Young’s sultry yet bold vocals, the soaring track is all about the initial sparks we feel in a relationship before the fairy tale romance crumbles and falls away into gritty reality. Taken from her forthcoming sophomore EP, ‘wonderland is wonderless,’ is infused with vibrance and vulnerability equally, accompanied by a lush, rose-tinged music video paying ode to the Alice In Wonderland references in the song writing. Shot and directed by an all-female team, helmed by Jazzie herself as executive producer, creative director, and stylist, the music video has empowerment at its base despite themes of heartbreak and pain framing it. [via Earmilk]
Confronting dark themes sparked by a turbulent past two years on new album We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (released in its entirety in May with no advance singles), Sharon Van Etten has unveiled suitably unsettling visuals for standout industrial-pop anthem ‘Headspace’. Directed by Ashley Connor, the leather-clad US songwriter is joined in her stylishly minimal video by dancers Coco Karol and Miguel Angel Guzmán — writhing around on a bed as Van Etten is consumed by the omnipresent white glow of a monitor screen. “When I was writing this song, I wanted to talk about domesticity and intimacy frustrations under the tensions of working at home and seeking connection while being tied to our devices and still trying to reach each other as lovers, parents, humans… Reminding each other that there is still a primal attraction even in the midst of the mundane and repetition of everyday life,” she says. [via Under The Radar]
Willow Kayne has dropped a video for her new track, ‘White City’. “White City is an interesting place to live,” she explains. “Everyone’s experiences are completely different to one another, like many places in London it seems. Gigantic new buildings appear constantly, old buildings are being destroyed everywhere I look. When I walk down the street here, it is a complete mixture of people. I don’t know any of them and I like it here because they certainly don’t know me. We are simply all out here for ourselves.” Of the video, she adds: “Since moving to London, a lot of my music revolves around this idea of my inner child’s perspective. Finally I got to bring this idea to the table for White City, bringing out the mini Willow. The video is taking the lyrics in another direction, creating a surreal version of London. We covered the city in weird monsters and gave the buildings eyes in the process. I found Hati (@hatti.hatti.mas) on tiktok a while ago and just knew he was the perfect guy to bring that to life for us. I love nothing more than juxtaposition so that’s exactly what we went for with this video; a child’s perspective on a scary scary world. Like my other videos, we always crank up the saturation to add to the child’s perspective. When I was a kid, the world was a lot more colourful… I still chase that in a way. I love working on videos with my friends and Tommy Davis is one of my favourite people to do that with!!” [via Dork]
After years and years of sharing protest bangers, Pussy Riot’s first full-length project is finally on the horizon. The Russian pop group/art collective have announced that their debut mixtape MATRIARCHY NOW will be released on August 5 on Neon Gold Records, and as a preview, they’ve shared its lead single ‘PLASTIC’ featuring ILOVEMAKONNEN. MATRIARCHY NOW includes a handful of collaborators, including Slayyyter, Big Freedia, and Tove Lo, the latter of whom also executive produced the project. Its release date comes just ahead of the 10-year “anniversary” of when three Pussy Riot members were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” and spent two years in jail for protesting Russian president Vladimir Putin. On ‘PLASTIC,’ Pussy Riot parody society’s unrealistic expectations for women to be demure, reticent, and submissive at all times: “I don’t shit, I don’t eat/ I don’t even fucking breathe/ If you cut me, I don’t bleed/ You’re the only thing I need,” the band’s ringleader Nadya Tolokonnikova raps over a bouncy pop beat. In the surreal, Haley Bowman-directed music video for ‘PLASTIC,’ Pussy Riot are miniature versions of themselves dressed in frilly lingerie, waiting to be deformed and dismembered by a young boy — think an R-rated version of Sid’s bedroom in Toy Story. [via Consequence]
Twenty-year-old Zoe Wees returns with her new single, ‘Third Wheel.’ While upbeat and infectious, the highly relatable song explores the heartbreak of loving someone who’s still obsessed with their ex. The track was produced by Patrick Pyke Salmy and Ricardo Muñoz, who helmed Wees’ debut EP, Golden Wings. The official video for ‘Third Wheel,’ which was directed by Gabriella Kingsley (Fireboy DML x Ed Sheeran, ArrDee x Aitch), scales the song’s musical highs and plumbs its emotional depths as the singer is taken from a sunflower-packed room to a darkened bedroom to an exuberant performance with vibrantly-clad dancers. Speaking about the song, Zoe Wees said, “It’s so awkwardly heartbreaking to be the third wheel in any relationship. Although this song’s meaning comes from a really tough moment in my own life, I hope this song will make some people reminisce about their own similar experiences as times when they learned to grow.”
OAKMAN have released a new music video. The new music video, for the track ‘Murder’, is the brand new single from the French pop-rock trio and follows on from their last single, ‘Fantasy,’ which was released back in May. The new music video was directed by Aurélien Mariat. Speaking about the new song and its accompanying music video, the band says, “this song pictures sexual harassment and abuse. It tells how it can affect a person’s life and continue for the rest of their life and grow into pure hate. So in the music video, the victim, represented by Marine, finally becomes the murderer and the murderer becomes the victim. We are inside Marine’s head, in her revenge. But at the end we realize that she is still imprisoned and stuck in it and that she can’t escape this trauma.” [via Distorted Sound]
Award-winning French pop trio Hyphen Hyphen share the official music video for their new song ‘Too Young’. The video, directed by Daniel Zak and Hyphen Hyphen with styling by Pierre Cardin, is taken from the band’s forthcoming new album C’est la Vie due this fall. The video was shot at the Observatory of Nice, their hometown. “There is a light. You are not alone,” says Hyphen Hyphen. “When we crafted this song, we dreamt of an anthem that could combine all our energy and hope. For the music video, we pushed our imagination up to the stars!” [via Broadway World]
Jack River has returned with her first new music of the year, sharing a sunny new single titled ‘Real Life’. The summery track sees the singer-songwriter pivot to a dance-oriented sound, with hints of disco, funk and soul. Its upbeat production comes courtesy of Xavier Dunn and The Belligerents‘ Lewis Stephenson, who helped River create the song. An accompanying music video also arrived with the cut, as vibrant as the single itself. Directed by W.A.M. Bleakley, its use of bright, neon colours radiates ’90s energy, featuring clips of River, butterflies and some old men sunbaking in their budgie smugglers. “One sunny afternoon in the depths of lockdown I was over feeling feelings,” River explained in an Instagram post. “I just wanted to swim with strangers in some sparkly foreign sea, see a mariachi band walking by on the sand, and maybe have a conversation with a friendly dolphin underwater. Anything to get me away from death scrolling and endless headlines about how awful the world is. I wanted to get back to Real Life. Whatever that was.” [via NME]
Doll Spirit Vessel’s second single ‘Something Small,’ taken from the band’s forthcoming debut album What Stays, is out now. The Philadelphia-based trio of Kati Malison, Max Holbrook, and Lewis Brown debuted just last month with ‘Train Brain Rot,’ a captivating indie rock song full of rollicking grooves, angular guitar licks, stirring, emotive vocals. ‘Something Small’ is decidedly dreamier in nature, with its slower beat and hypnotic, reverb-laden guitar creating a summery sun-drenched beach vibe. A welcome haze, the song invites us all to take a step back from our bustling lives and find our inner peace: A state of balance and bliss. “I think it’s pretty common for songwriters to want to express something specific or profound through a particular song, and that does happen, but you often can’t decide what’s there at the surface and ready to come out,” Doll Spirit Vessel’s songwriter and lead vocalist Kati Malison explains. “‘Something Small’ came about a couple of summers ago when I was doing a song-a-day project with some friends – the day before I wrote it I had really toiled over an old song shard, trying to make it something it wasn’t ever going to be. It felt similar to how trying to remember my past sometimes can feel, like I’m grasping for something I both know is there and know I won’t find. ‘Something Small’ is the answer and antidote to that frustration.” Doll Spirit Vessel’s accompanying music video invariably captures the spirit of ‘Something Small.’ Made by Malison along with Jon Cox, Veronica Magner, Priyanka Padidam, and Mark Morley, the visual stars Malison’s dog, while also creating a sensation of space, ease, and circular motion. Interspersed about a primary shot of the dog playing with a large ball in an open cemetery, we see Malison spinning on a playground merry-go-round, a light bulb being screwed in, a hamster in a ball, globe spinning ’round, a basketball twirling on a finger, and so on… It’s a lightly dizzying experience, and one that simultaneously captures the weight of needing things to be perfect and just as you want them to be, and the act of relinquishing said weight and letting things be. “My dog’s favorite activity is herding playballs, and I thought it would be fitting to capture the simultaneous playfulness and intensity of her playing with them for the ‘Something Small’ video. After spending so much time and energy on the video for the first DSV single, I kept insisting this one would be simpler. But when we all got together to plan for the shoot, a whole world organically emerged for the song. We started by brainstorming cyclical things and then thought of all the ways we could have them invade each other’s space.” [via Atwood Magazine]
Nashville power-trio The Foxies recently announced the September 23 release of their debut LP, Who Are You Now, Who Were You Then?. Now, the band is thrilled to share their cinematic new single and accompanying Ryan Sheehy-directed video for ‘If Life Were A Movie,’ which follows on the heels of the euphoric ‘Headsweat.’ Their full-length debut is the sound of a band boldly embracing their wildest and most unpredictable impulses. Speaking on ‘If Life Were A Movie,’ vocalist Julia Bullock reflected on the song’s themes: “When I listen to this song, I see a horror rom com. It’s built around the cynicism I have from giving so much love and somehow never being able to have it reciprocated. So, In a movie… all my exs would be killed off first, and nobody wants to be that guy.” [via Music Existence]
Alt-pop artist Madeline The Person has released her new single, ‘Why I Broke Up With You,’ an endearingly honest peek at a relationship going down in flames. The song arrives alongside a video, which finds Madeline reflecting on her past relationship through a doll-like lens, frustratingly watching as the zombified version of her ex-partner tears down the house they built together. The track is taken from her upcoming EP, CHAPTER 3: The Burning, out July 15. On the song, Madeline focuses on the liberation that can come from a particularly painful breakup. “Growing up, I dealt with my father’s addiction, so I have known from a really young age what an absent mind looks like. I knew how it felt to be talking to a completely different person, who you knew wouldn’t even remember what you were saying. My ex’s dependence on a substance uprooted the trauma of having to take care of an addicted adult as a little girl. I just couldn’t be that little girl again, so I left. That was what was healthy for me.” [via Prelude Press]
Isabella Manfredi has announced the release of her debut solo album, izzi, alongside the release of a sizzling new single titled ‘Naive’. Teaming up with rapper PRICIE, who delivers a fierce and commanding guest verse, the sultry track sees Manfredi take command of two equally important aspects of her life – motherhood and music. Throughout ‘Naive’, Manfredi shares a sparkling tale of colliding worlds with a solid confidence and smooth melody. izzi is set for release on Friday September 2 via Island. In a statement, Manfredi said of her debut solo album: “[It’s] unique in that it felt like an exploration and development of a new artist and also the culmination of a decade’s vision. It is like a beginning and an ending in that sense. That’s why I called it izzi. “I wanted to capture her essence but also create space for my true adult self to have longevity and move beyond her if I needed to. I am ‘izzi’ but she is not me.” [via NME]
