Superfan – “Twilight Living”

Superfan is the solo indie pop project of Los Angeles based artist Kali Flanagan. Later this summer, he will release his debut album Tow Truck Jesus, which will address topics from identity and relationships to navigating the complexities of adulthood, all expressed through an ironically pathos-heavy “deadpan” delivery as well as instrumentals brilliantly on the line between soft dream pop and gritty, guitar-based rock. As Flanagan’s voice evolved through Hormone Replacement Therapy, the creation of this album became “a reflection of his personal journey, addressing themes of desire, dysphoria, and self-acceptance with poignant lyricism;” in this regard, ultimately Tow Truck Jesus will be a “testament to the universal journey of self-discovery and growth.” 

“Twilight Living,” his most recent single following “Sewn Up and Handsome,” “Your Desire In Food,” and “75 Germany,” is a bit more upbeat, leaning further into grunge and a bit of shoegaze. Written “during a state of disassociation following a minor car accident,” the track has a slight hypnagogic aura underneath the gritty guitars and propulsive percussion, which mirroring the esoteric lyrics. All of this results in a track that brilliantly represents the re-gaining of self after circumstance as well as the simultaneous killing of said ego: “Give me confirmation there’s a human in this/ It takes strength to remember how to forget,” Flanagan asks, the instrumentals expelled like plumes of exhaust fleeing the scene; “I want to be anonymous,” he concludes.

Tow Truck Jesus is out 6/28. Pre-order it here. 

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Butter Bath – “My Love” (feat. Jermango Dreaming)

Earlier this week, Butter Bath – aka the psychedelic dream pop project from Sydney-based multi-instrumentalist Toby Anagnostis – released the stunning single “My Love,” featuring fellow dream pop artist Jermango Dreaming. From his bedroom studio, Anagnostis is meticulous when it comes to his compositions; directing all parts of the process, his music is a “sincerely raw and undiluted insight into his psyche,” with songs that, in their impeccable production, gorgeously maintain their intrigue (his 2021 EP Spectator is still on perpetual rotation for me, and I wish I could hear his single “You & Me” for the first time again). He explained the motivation behind the new track with Jermango Dreaming: 

We’re two friends who’s music projects have intersected at various points – playing shows together, signing to the same label a few years ago and playing around in the studio. We figured it was high time we put out a song together.

As is the case with both Butter Bath (and Jermango Dreaming, for that matter), the track is immediately mesmerizing, wasting no time with the building of its atmosphere, complete with a tantalizing wealth of texture and color. Groovy is, quite frankly, an understatement; between the clarity of the vocals, the precise palpitations of the bassline, and the wobbly synth flourishes, it’s a track that begs multiple immersions. And yet, there’s a hint of sadness within this haze – the realization that adoration, like most anything, is often deleterious in excess.

“My Love” is out now. 

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Harper – “Bug Crusher”

Last week, Harper – also known as the bedroom-pop project of Matthew and Sadie Groves – released their stunning debut album The Mother Root. Though the Leicester, UK based duo’s debut ultimately navigates through a wealth of “moments” – moments of “anxiety about self-worth,” moments of “strength found through companionship,” and moments of “everyday life that have a lasting impact and make us who we are” – there is a radiant cohesiveness to the album that ultimately gestures toward a feeling of hope and warmth, and this is only expressed further through their compositions. 

One of our favorite tracks, “Bug Crusher,” is on the more expansive, atmospheric side, with hazy vocals and an emphasis on synth and percussion evoking the elusive bliss of The Bilinda Butchers and the crystallized joy of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Although the track is bright and nostalgic, it is direct in its narrative, detailing a focus on resilience following a destructive relationship. Even the reference to being crushed like a bug is ironic in and of itself, considering most insects, the beetle, for instance, can withstand a force of about 39,000 times its body weight; to be “crushed like a bug,” funnily enough, is a compliment in disguise, a nod towards one’s own resilience. 

The Mother Root is out now. 

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Hana Vu – “Play”

Today, Hana Vu shares her brilliant new album Romanticism. The follow-up to the stunning Public Storage, the album is described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” with narratives that  unafraid to consider the existential side of identity and the true depth of affect and emotion, showcasing “how thrilling it can be to look directly at our feelings, to sing their sorrows and praise.” Vu explained that the “nexus of this album is indulging in these sad feelings, indulging in the senses,” and this occurs both in narrative and composition alike; her instrumentals are textured, atmospheric, and heavy, her lyrics direct, earnest, ardent. And Vu sometimes subverts the nature of the love song all together; for instance, one of our favorite tracks, “Play,” is an exhilarating slice of pop and slight electronica reminiscent of a dance track, but with a complex narrative that unsettles the upbeat, seemingly joyous nature of the song. 

What appears as carefree devotion towards another is, when looking at the lyrics and the fervent nature of Vu’s vocals, a desperate plea for the person in question to agree to completely lose mind, body, soul for her sake, and gestures towards both physical and emotional annihilation that is one-sided: “Hold me until you’re nothing/ Tell me, baby/ Even when the sky is falling, save me.” And yet, despite all the breathless invocations, Vu is entirely self-aware, sharing an admission of guilt at the impossibility to maintain such an intense, destructive relationship: “All I play is you/ Oh, every game I lose.” It’s one thing to admit love for another person; it’s another thing to admit that the love is doomed from the outset based on one’s own flaws. Both, in my eyes, if not representing strength, at the very least show an absolutely stunning vulnerability. 

Romanticism is out now via Ghostly International. 

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photo by Andrew Yuyi Truong

Kai Bosch – “Wishbone”

Last week, alt-pop artist Kai Bosch released his new EP Love, Throw Me A Bone. Bosch’s music is inspired by “articulating feeling rather than any particular genre,” and as part of that articulation, prioritizes narrative. In that regard, Love, Throw Me A Bone is, according to Bosch, “a diaristic real-time account of my breakup with my first long-term boyfriend;” “like the relationship itself,” he continued, the album is “sometimes messy, sometimes beautiful, sometimes oversharing, but always heartbreaking.” In that sense, “Wishbone,” the EP’s closer, is something of a final chapter, but also, a looking back:

“Wishbone” is the simplest song I have ever released. It looks at a failed relationship with honesty and self reflection but also with a sense of sympathy that we were just two people who didn’t quite know how to navigate a messy and traumatic breakup. Despite this, for me the song at its core is about appreciating the moment of light you shared with someone even if it ended up going wrong. It’s a love song for someone you can’t hold anymore – and despite so much of this whole EP coming from a place of anger, yearning and heartbreak, this is probably the song I still relate to most looking back on this relationship in hindsight.

Bosch’s EP is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking releases I have heard in quite some time, and at times, you truly find yourself wondering if you’re intruding on someone’s most private, intimate moments of mourning. But, of course, as is the case for artists that fearlessly wear their hearts on their sleeves – Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine immediately come to mind here – we’re always a little grateful for them, knowing that we can take refuge in their understanding and thoughtful rendering of personal pain, relate it to our own. And there is something about the sheer simplicity of “Wishbone” – the ghostly piano, the muted orchestrals in the background, Bosch’s stripped vocals – that violently cleaves the heart at the same time it delicately mends it. It centers on the often ephemeral nature of love, but also takes solace in being so fortunate as to find that love in the first place; it centers in on, as Bosch stated, “that moment of light.” 

Love, Throw Me A Bone is out now. 

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Lunar Isles – “After Sun”

Earlier this week, Lunar Isles – also known as Scottish multi-instrumentalist David Skimming – shared his latest single “After Sun.” It’s the sixth single since the release of his debut Right Way Round last Spring, a stunning album which “ponder[ed] the complexities of perspective as memories of home and adventure blended into one.” Written and recorded over the length of a year in Skimming’s bedroom studio in his newfound home of Cheongju, South Korea, and seamlessly housing hazy surf-tinged bedroom pop and delicate shoegaze instrumentals, Lunar Isles’s music is perfect for the upcoming summer months, whether that entails festivals, parties, or “reminiscing on memories lost to time.” 

Influenced in part by 90s house music, “After Sun” is lush, ethereal, and otherworldly, a soundtrack to a late-afternoon daydream. Evoking a similar atmospheric tone as Washed Out and Memory Cassette, the synth swells and sways amidst pounding percussion, wholly contained by its own aura. There is a softness amidst the heaviness of the percussion, a nod towards the more ruminative lyrics, where Skimming asks: “Why does it feel/ Like you’re running all the time?” 

“After Sun” is out now.

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Hana Vu – “22”

Next month, Hana Vu will release Romanticism, follow-up to her brilliant album Public Storage. Described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” Romanticism will provide a collection of songs that are honest and vulnerable, with narratives unafraid to consider the existential side of identity and the true depth of affect and emotion, showcasing “how thrilling it can be to look directly at our feelings, to sing their sorrows and praise.” Following the album’s first single “Care,” which explored the subjectivity of individualized emotional experience, and “Hammer,” which doubled down on existentialism, the album’s third single “22” is about “the angst and dissolution of adolescence:

“Being young, there’s so much that I experience for the first time, all the time. But as I experience more things, I become more desensitized to those things…“You get wiser–– I feel quite wiser–– but less fervent, less hopeful….“‘22’ is about how I was paralyzed by grief and memories and by being 22; all at once a baby and the oldest I’ve ever been. But now I’m 23 and I’ll probably be 24 by the time I’ll get to perform this song for people.”

That realization and its underlying disillusion runs like a murky current throughout the track, Vu’s deep, sonorous voice floating above grungy guitars. The lyrics contrast the melody in vulnerability, in earnest desperation. “I’m just 22/ I just want to hold onto you” soon shows itself to have a double meaning, both wanting to hold onto herself, her own youth and personhood, as well as simultaneously wanting to risk that individuality completely in the seemingly irrevocable, that is, sharing her feelings with another. 

Romanticism is out 5/3 via Ghostly International. Pre-order it here. 

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photo by Andrew Yuyi Truong

Hana Vu – “Hammer”

Earlier this week, Hana Vu released “Hammer,” the striking second single from her upcoming album Romanticism. Described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” Romanticism will provide a collection of songs that are breathtakingly honest and vulnerable, with narratives that are unafraid to consider the existential side of identity and the true depth of affect, showcasing “how thrilling it can be to look directly at our feelings, to sing their sorrows and praise.” Following the album’s first single “Care,” which explored the subjectivity of individualized emotional experience, “Hammer” takes the existentialism to another level: 

 I do plead with the world, or the universe, in writing. My writing of songs is where I feel inclined to ask questions and look for answers within myself. “Hammer” is one of the first songs I wrote for this record. It’s one of those songs you write to yourself amidst existential crisis. Maybe that’s what all songs are.

As is the case with all of Hana Vu’s discography, “Hammer” is a perfect amalgamation of catharsis and precision; a stable, yet evocative guitar melody allows for Vu’s vocals to radiate, her lyrics gesturing to the winding paths and spirals one goes down to try and find meaning for their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. The instrumentals after the last chorus are earnest yet pensive, closing the track with an aura of subtle hope. Most gorgeous of all, in the lyrics Vu provides a stunningly cogent summary of existentialism in just ten words, words that philosophers and artists have undoubtedly been turning over for centuries: “And there is no answer / But I want one anyway.”

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photo by Andrew Yuyi Truong

Vampire Weekend – “Classical”

Earlier this week, Vampire Weekend released “Classical,” the third single from their upcoming fifth album Only God Was Above Us. It will be their first full-length release in nearly five years, following the New York-based indie band’s fourth LP Father of the Bride, which was released back in 2019. Fronted by Ezra Koenig, for almost two decades the (now) trio have gone through such an incredible evolution in terms of their sound, but have always maintained the intelligence, charm, and skill that initially set them apart. “Capricorn” and “Gen-X Cops,” the album’s first two tracks, encapsulate looking to the future while simultaneously examining the past in detail – and “Classical” makes that even more literal. 

“Classical” sounds like a work of desperate experimental art, a work that attempts to respond to chaos with grace; almost as if one took a Michelangelo painting and a Jackson Pollock painting and sewed them together. The prophetic, inquisitive lyrics, offset by a bright, bouncy guitar riff (and later, a manic, yet oddly precise saxophone solo), ponder history, iniquity, and aesthetics, or, more specifically, the dark irony of “how the cruel, with time, becomes classical.” It is an indirect, yet powerful commentary on revolution, with both hope and fear attached. This is indicated in the stunning chorus: “I know that walls fail, shacks shake / Bridges burn and bodies break / It’s clear something’s gonna change / And when it does, which classical remains?”

Only God Was Above Us is out 4/5.

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photo by Michael Schmelling

juno roome – “think you’re falling”

Earlier this week, NY-based singer-songwriter juno roome released his stunning new single “think you’re falling.” Though his sound can be described as ambient pop, and, at times, even psychedelic rock, in our eyes his music truly defies genre; we’ve described it in the past as being gorgeously, effortlessly kaleidoscopic, evoking colors of ranging intensities and textures, oscillating between heartache and infatuation so wonderfully that the resulting dizziness is a delight rather than delirium. His previous single “marriott downtown” was a charming, almost tongue-in-cheek love song about someone seeing through your facades, the many masks you wear; “think you’re falling,” built upon a groovy, yet earnest bassline, is a bit more direct, but enchanting all the same. roome’s vocals are soft and echoed, relaying a poetic narrative about losing yourself in the feeling of infatuation (“interlinked / our hints / proliferate / as we lose / seams”). If “marriot downtown” was awash in twinkling pastels, then “think you’re falling” is aglow in slightly blurred neon lights, perfectly capturing the multifaceted mystery – the wonder, the potential, the excitement – of a new love. 

“think you’re falling” is out now.

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photo courtesy of artist