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Hyd, Formerly of PC Music’s QT, Releases Debut Single ‘No Shadow’

Interdisciplinary artist Hayden Dunham, who was formerly the face of A. G. Cook and Sophie’s QT project, has released her debut single under the moniker Hyd. ‘No Shadow’ is taken from Hyd’s upcoming self-titled EP, which is out November 5 via PC Music and features production from Cook, Caroline Polachek, and umru. Listen to the new song below.

Dunham wrote ‘No Shadow’ after temporarily losing her eyesight. “When I lost my vision in 2017, I started being able to see differently,” she said in a statement. “In total darkness you realize you are beyond your body.”

Hyd EP Cover Artwork: 

Hyd EP Tracklist: 

1. No Shadow
2. Skin 2 Skin
3. The One
4. The Look on Your Face

Lorde Releases EP Featuring Māori Versions of ‘Solar Power’ Songs

Lorde has released a new EP titled Te Ao Mārama, which features five new recordings of Solar Power tracks sung in Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. Lyrics were translated by Hana Mereraiha, and the tracks feature background vocals from fellow New Zealand musicians Marlon Williams and Bic Runga. All proceeds from the companion EP will will go to to the New Zealand-based charities Forest and Bird and the Te Hua Kawariki Charitable Trust. Stream the project below.

“Many things revealed themselves slowly to me while I was making this album, but the main realisation by far was that much of my value system around caring for and listening to the natural world comes from traditional Māori principles,” Lorde wrote in a newsletter. “There’s a word for it in te reo: kaitiakitanga, meaning ‘guardianship or caregiving for the sky, sea and land.’” She added:

I’m not Māori, but all New Zealanders grow up with elements of this worldview. Te ao Māori and tikanga Māori are a big part of why people who aren’t from here intuit our country to be kind of ‘magical,’ I think. I know I’m someone who represents New Zealand globally in a way, and in making an album about where I’m from, it was important to me to be able to say: this makes us who we are down here. It’s also just a crazy beautiful language—I loved singing in it. Even if you don’t understand te reo, I think you’ll get a kick out of how elegant my words sound in it. Hana’s translations for Te Ara Tika / The Path and Hine-i-te-Awatea / Oceanic Feeling in particular take my g-d breath away.

Lorde released Solar Power, her third studio album, last month. She recently shared a cover of Britney Spears’ ‘Break the Ice’.

Artist Spotlight: Spirits Having Fun

Spirits Having Fun is a New York and Chicago-based four-piece comprised of vocalist-guitarist Katie McShane, vocalist-guitarist Andrew Clinkman, bassist Jesse Heasly, and drummer Phil Sudderberg. The group emerged in 2016 out of a need to maintain a long-distance collaborative relationship between friends; its members had played together in various arrangements over the years, with McShane, Heasly, and Clinkman having met in the Boston underground scene in 2013 and Heasly and Clinkman having collaborated in the free jazz-inspired outfit Cowboy Band. Spirits Having Fun released their promising debut, Auto-Portrait, in June of 2019, and spent the following month recording most of its follow-up, which was indefinitely delayed due to the pandemic. The aptly titled Two finally arrived last Friday, and it’s an exhilarating showcase of the band’s dynamic capabilities: they’re an experimental rock group whose Bandcamp description reads “rock band making music,” which is to say that simplicity and directness sit right alongside compositional complexity and a fondness for mathy, angular riffs. Two is every bit as adventurous as its predecessor, but it also finds the band honing their approach and relaxing into a more contemplative mode that gives each individual element the space to shine. 

We caught up with Spirits Having Fun for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about how the band got together, their collaborative process, their new album Two, and more.


Do you mind sharing how the four of you first met and also the first impressions that you had of each other?

Katie McShane: My first impression of Andrew was, “Oh, very cool person.”

Andrew Clinkman: Aw, likewise, Katie.

KM: And same to Jesse and Phil [laughter].

Phil Sudderberg: [laughs] Okay!

KM: Well, with Jesse it’s different, because we’re married. But we met Phil – Andrew and Jesse and I knew each other as a sort of friends group, and Jesse and I and didn’t know Phil at all. So, when we went to play together in Chicago with Andrew, Andrew invited Phil to experiment playing drums with us. And we were like, “Phil’s amazing!” He learned all our songs and everything, we were so impressed. Like, “Everybody, we met this person, Phil!” [laugher]

AC: So, to flesh out the story a little bit for you, Jesse and I went to music school together, and Katie also entered the Boston zone around the same time that we were all there. Actually, Katie and I kind of traded places in Boston – right around the time I left Boston and moved to Chicago is when Katie arrived, but we had still known each other a little bit from playing shows on the East Coast. And Jessie and I had had a band that we used to play in and we’re very close, and then when I moved to Chicago I was playing in bands with Phil. So yeah, that first meeting between Phil and y’all must have been like winter 2015 or so when Phil and I were on tour with a different group. And then a year and a half later, Jesse, Katie, and I decided that we really missed playing music with each other and that we felt like we could overcome the distance between us, with me living in Chicago and them still living in Boston. And Phil was someone who I had grown close with here from playing in different groups, so that’s kind of how the foursome got together.

How do you think the local scenes you’ve been involved in separately but also together have shaped your musical identities as well as the dynamic of the band?

Jesse Heasly: Cowboy Band was the first band that Andrew and I collaborated on, and that was all about taking old cowboy standards and playing them with a free jazz, no-wave kind of mentality. And I think there’s something really fun about having that freedom and letting the songs be different every night that has been a part of every band we’ve been in since. And certainly, I think it’s part of the spirit – [laughs] spirits. So yeah, it seemed like a pretty strong connection, and maybe it comes out of being really interested in free music and studying that, but also just the music scene in Boston at the time had a lot of really out there, really interesting and novel stuff, like free improv, noise rock, heavy noise – all that was stuff that Andrew and I were trying to soak up as much as we could.

AC: I think there’s an element of being really, really serious about the creation of the music, and simultaneously never taking ourselves too seriously and always being able to have fun with whatever we’re doing. Like, when we play shows, there’s a lot of kind of musical jokes that are woven into the fabric of the songs as we’re doing it. As much as we are super serious dedicated about what we do, there’s never a point at which it’s not totally fun and acceptable to completely mess with one element here or play around with the form of everything. So I think that yielded a thing for us in our approach where the songs are never completely set in stone, and I think that was born out of those scenes.

KM: And like, the way that we play on the continuum from silliness to truth-seeking…

AC: Katie, that’s good, I like that! We gotta write that down.

Well, it will be written down, so…

AC: [laughs] Thank you, Konstantinos.

KM: Yeah, but I think the main feeling that our relationship – our relationship with Phil only started when we started playing in Chicago, but before that, our relationship with Jesse and Andrew was very much born out of that Boston music scene. And that was part of why I ended up moving to Boston, is because I met them and Cowboy Band and I was like, “That’s not like anything I’ve ever heard before.” And then it just sort of felt like the natural thing to do was like, make bands and try different things – it was almost like a given that we would be trying new bands all the time. And I think that spirit definitely defines my musical experience as a performer.

I wanted to touch on something Andrew said, which is the sort of musical jokes that are layered throughout your performances. That actually made me think of something that’s more to do with the lyrics of the new record, because there’s obviously a lot of natural imagery there, but it’s also combined with some references to music as well, particularly on tracks like ‘My Favourite Song’ and ‘Am There’. With a line like “I can agree to be a song forever,” how much are you reflecting on your identity as an artist?

KM: That’s really good. I’m literally stunned by your really great question. [laughs] I feel I always try and make the lyrics come from writing that I do when I’m feeling a certain kind of way. So, rather than writing stream-of-consciousness every day, there’s sort of like a moment when I know it’s good or not – I kind of have this gut feeling that I’m hitting on something when I’m doing some writing. And probably what I’m hitting on is like, learning about myself and my experience with the world. And I think that all the words that I use in the songs I pull from those little stream-of-consciousness poems where I knew I was feeling connected to something when I was writing it. So I think what you said makes a lot of sense, if I reflect on being an artist. And also, you get to a certain point where you’re thinking about other things – like, you know, people have kids and stuff, and I wonder if I’ll do that kind of stuff.

AC: If may jump in, as someone who did not compose those particular lyrics but who identifies with a lot of what Katie just said, music is such a huge component of my life – and I don’t mean that in a pretentious way, but there are moments where I feel like I literally couldn’t do anything else with my life. When I’m playing music, it’s the time when I feel like the most able to be a person and function at my best. And so I think it feels natural that if you’re writing about your experience, that would gravitate towards the experience of playing music with other people.

KM: I do think that a lot of my lyrics are about that feeling of playing music with the right people, that sort of magical experience of playing with people you connect, which I don’t feel in anything else in my life.

AC: To take it a step further, and Katie, I don’t know if this is something that you would also identify with, but this is something that I feel personally, is that I frequently feel like I have an easier time accessing musical language than I do, like, spoken language. And so I think there’s a way that the text of the songs ends up serving more of a role as a musical element than it does even as a spoken direct meaning thing – it’s like, it seems sometimes easier to jump into the musical language of what we’re doing and communicating with each other than it is to use words, and so it feels natural that the words would end up serving a musical purpose more than like a direct literal language purpose, if that makes sense.

KM: That makes sense, and I also realized that the thing I was saying about having that connected feeling when I’m writing and then drawing from those words that somehow I felt were getting at something, I feel like using those words makes me feel more bold about performing them. And I don’t even really know maybe quite what I’m saying, but I feel confident about sharing it, because it has that feeling. And I feel that way about the writing I’ve done on the songs – I’m confident about sharing it when I’ve gotten to that sort of connected feeling. With the music, too, I think it’s the same experience.

JH: The feeling the music and the lyrics create, they seem to support each other, and they help me enter the world of performing and get me into the right mindset to live inside the song.

I know that kind of goes against the idea of musical language, but could you talk a bit about how you experience that musical language as a group? What do you feel makes it unique to this band?

KM: It’s just like a big specificity-and-then-freedom thing. That’s a big part of the language, is really learning something together, and then the important thing about performing is just to really know this potentially complicated thing and then really be listening to other people. We all know the core thing, and the core thing is unique because it’s something that we all created. And then we also know that the way we’re going to play is going to be that, but it’s also going to grow into something else.

AC: I’d like to think there’s a looseness and a really intense trust that we have in each other, that we can learn the premeditated written material together but then hopefully transcend beyond just playing the parts. You know, play the parts but also give life to something new that is different every time and fun and exciting. And I hope that people feel that excitement when they listen to it, that they see that this is a group of people that care about each other very much and trust each other and that generates something fun and exciting.

KM: Compositional language is excitement. It’s that same thing – it’s like, “Oh, that made me feel like there’s something.” And then you got to just remember and notice and appreciate those things that are like, “There’s more.”

JH: If you’re wondering about the origin of the musical language that we’re using, I think it just comes out of long friendships and long histories of collaborating. It’s sort of hard to put a finger or a label on what exactly the language is or where it’s coming from, but we have so much shared experience and shared interest that there’s enough – like, the Venn diagram between the four of us is, I guess, big enough to make a band out of [laughs].

There’s all these different layers and moods on the record, and excitement is definitely one of them, but then there are these more meditative, nostalgic, and even just romantic songs, like ‘See a Sky’, ‘My Machine’, or ‘Picture of a Person’. Was that a deliberate contrast to the more fun and boisterous side of the record?

JH: It’s interesting, because two of those songs are more from me. Like, ‘My Machine’ and ‘See a Sky’ are more ideas that came out of my notebook – the bulk of it is from Katie, and a bunch of it is from Andrew and Phil as well. And maybe it’s just a tendency of mine to be reflective and quiet, and just write music from that kind of place. I don’t think it was like, “We need to have some chill stuff on the album.” I think it was more like, “We have this idea and feeling pretty good about it, let’s see what we can make with it.”

AC: And also, I think being more experienced as a band and being a couple years further into the project, we were able to slow it down and explore some of those different moods and zones, whereas maybe early on in the band we would have been overwhelmed with the excitement of playing with each other and developing new songs.

Katie, I know you also have a very important role in bringing together the different fragments of a song. Could you talk about what that process was like for you, especially during the early stages of the album?

KM: Everything that I wrote, it was in like a two week period, and then we went and recorded. It was a classic sort of thing, you know, imagining maybe a form or experimenting with clips and then putting them together. And some of the songs which are more composed by me, that’s just more… I guess I haven’t really thought about my process for how I wrote those songs in a second.

JH: I mean, I’ve seen Katie’s writing process a lot of times, and I think sometimes, Katie will start with just a form. Like, A-A-B – almost like a rhyme scheme, it woud look like. And Katie will just fill that out with different ideas, and I think that maybe sometimes it doesn’t matter where the idea comes from, maybe it comes from a recording from one of these two out of Chicago or a little snippet that I had been kicking around with. And Katie has this ability to sort of massage stuff into place and stitch things together.

AC: If I’m remembering back to that time when we wrote some of that stuff, I had a handful of riffs and scraps that were sitting in a private SoundCloud, and Katie kind of had to bug me to send them over so she could make something out of them. Because the way that my musical brain operates, I can kind of get the spark of a raw idea, but I often have this anxiety about piecing things together in a more formal sense. And Katie kind of comes from the other direction and has such a brilliant way fitting pieces together and dealing with the proportions.

KM: Andrew played something and I sneakily recorded it, and then I was like, “Re-learn this! I want it to be a part!”

PS: What was that? I forgot what that was.

JH: It was the ending of ‘Hold the Phone’, right?

AC: Oh, yeah, you’re right. That chord progression.

KM: Yes! Just being attuned to when stuff is really alive and good.

JH: I think it’s about paying attention and being present, yeah. I guess everything is.


This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. 

Spirits Having Fun’s Two is out now via Born Yesterday Records.

Lana Del Rey Details New Album ‘Blue Banisters’, Releases New Song ‘Arcadia’

Lana Del Rey has today revealed the details of her next studio album, Blue Banisters, which is set to arrive on October 22. She’s also shared a new single from the record: ‘Arcadia’ was written by Del Rey and produced with Drew Erickson. Check out its self-directed music video below.

On Instagram, Del Rey shared the following statement about the album and the new single:

I guess you could say this album is about what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.

If you’re interested go back and listen to the first three songs I put out earlier. They chronicle the beginning. This song hits somewhere in the middle and by the time the record drops you will hear where we’re at today.

As much as the on going criticism has been trying, it at least has pushed me to explore my own family tree, to dig deep, and to continue to exhibit the fact that God only cares about how I move through the world.

And for all of the skepticism about feigning fragility and unreasonable explanations of not showing general accountability- I must say I’ve enjoyed moving through the world beautifully- as a woman with grace and dignity.

Thank you to my friends over the last 18 years who have been an example of attraction not promotion. I’ve never felt the need to promote myself or tell my story, but if you’re interested this album does tell it- and does pretty much nothing more.

Back in May, Del Rey released three songs, ‘Blue Banisters’, ‘Wildflower Wildfire’, and ‘Text Book’, all of which appear on Blue Banisters along with ‘Arcadia’. The singer-songwriter originally announced the follow-up to 2020’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club in April, suggesting it would be released on July 4.

Blue Banisters Cover Artwork: 

Blue Banisters Tracklist: 

1. Textbook
2. Blue Banisters
3. Arcadia
4. Interlude – The Trio
5. Black Bathing Suit
6. If You Lie Down With Me
7. Beautiful
8. Violets for Roses
9. Dealer
10. Thunder
11. Wildflower Wildfire
12. Nectar of the Gods
13. Living Legend
14. Cherry Blossom
15. Sweet Carolina

The Trends That Are Changing How We Gamble Online

More of us are playing bingo online than ever before, with a staggering array of platforms offering thousands of different games and content options for every casino game imaginable.

The bingo industry has famously been keen to adopt new trends and technologies early on, as evidenced by its rapid embrace of crypto gaming and the use of VR in live games. But what are the trends that are currently driving forward change in the online gambling sector? Read on to find out.

Hybrid Games are Ascendant 

Within online gambling, the lines between different genres of games are increasingly blurred. Nowhere is this more evident than with the game of Slingo, which has risen through the ranks to become one of the most popular online casino games ever. As you can see at https://bingo.paddypower.com/p/slingo-games, Slingo is a cross between conventional online 75-ball bingo and slot games.

Players spin the online slot reels in the hopes that the reels will throw up the numbers they have on their bingo cards, allowing people to win in new ways while still enjoying classic online casino games. Hybrid genres such as Slingo look set to take over the world of online gambling.

There are various appealing factors for gamers: firstly, the game itself is ridiculously simple and doesn’t feature lots of complex and elaborate rules. Secondly, the slots element of the game means that it’s remarkably speedy and doesn’t demand hours of your time (unless you want to do a marathon play session). Thirdly, easy access to the online landscape via different devices such as PC desktops and smartphones means that people can play conveniently whenever it suits them. The success of Slingo implies there’ll be other hybrid innovations in the years to come.

Giving You Options

One of the most important trends in online bingo right now is the broad inclusion of new payment/deposit methods. As highlighted on https://www.linnworks.com/blog/online-payment-methods, there’s a broad range of payment options available. A lot of credible bingo sites support the standard Mastercard transactions, but also encourage newer methods such as eWallet transactions and cryptocurrencies, based on the increasing use of these methods across other industries. Here, many of the top bingo platforms have led the way, offering all members greater control of their gaming habits and allowing them to customise their access like never before.

Nowadays, the emphasis is all on putting players in the driver’s seat and ensuring that they are empowered with the tools they need to play with as much convenience and control as possible. Inevitably, further adaptation to new forms of online currency will be increasingly commonplace in the months and years to come.

Deals Without the Catch 

Finally, online bingo sites are proliferating and platforms are working harder to become more competitive. Through the inclusion of ludicrous welcome bonuses and offers, new customers are being drawn in by the sheer array of additional features provided just for clicking on from the initial landing page.

It’s no secret that online gambling is one of the most popular leisure and entertainment activities in the world right now. The online gambling market was worth a staggering $64 billion worldwide in 2020, according to https://www.prnewswire.com/global-online-gambling-market, with there being every indication that it will continue growing exponentially across the coming decade.

To us, these are the major trends driving change within the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry. In time, they are likely to completely dominate the sector, transforming how we play bingo online forever.

Charlotte Cornfield Shares Video for New Song ‘Partner in Crime’

Charlotte Cornfield has shared a new song, ‘Partner in Crime’, alongside a Wes Anderson-inspired music video. The track is taken from the Toronto songwriter’s upcoming album, Highs in the Minuses. Check out the clip, directed by Charlotte’s brother Joe, below.

“In the Partner in Crime music video, Charlotte is reunited with an old friend, and the pair embark on a mission to get the old band back together,” Joe Cornfield explained in a statement. “In an homage to Bottle Rocket, Charlotte and her band don yellow jumpsuits and take off in a VW bus to execute a daring musical ‘heist.’”

Charlotte added: “My brother and I grew up watching Wes Anderson movies. They were a huge part of our childhood and adolescence, and I feel like they’ve seeped into our DNA at this point — the colours, the outfits, the humour. When I sent Joe this song and he came back with this idea, it was a no-brainer that we’d do it. He made it all happen: the van, the jumpsuits, the whole thing. Tara Kannangara, Steven Foster and Sam Gleason came with us on the journey and fully embraced the concept.”

Highs in the Minuses is due out October 29 via Polyvinyl/Double Double Whammy. It includes the previously released single ‘Headlines’.

Tricky Announces New Collaborative Project Lonely Guest, Shares New Song

Lonely Guest is a new collaborative project that was conceived and put together over the last 18 months by Tricky. Today, Tricky has announced Lonenly Guest’s debut self-titled album, which features appearances from the late Lee “Scratch” Perry, IDLES’ Joe Talbot, Maxïmo Park’s Paul Smith, Marta, Oh Land, Breanna Barbara, and more. It’s out October 22 via False Idols, and the new single ‘On a Move’, which features Kway, is out now. Give it a listen below and scroll down for the LP’s cover artwork and tracklist.

Earlier this year, Tricky released the album track ‘Pre War Tension’ with Joe Talbot and Polish singer Marta Złakowska.

Lonely Guest Cover Artwork:

Lonely Guest Tracklist:

1. Lonely Guest [feat. Marta]
2. Pre War Tension [feat. Joe Talbot, Marta, Tricky]
3. Under [feat. Oh Land]
4. Pay My Taxes [feat. Murkage Dave]
5. Atmosphere [feat. Lee “Scratch” Perry, Marta, Tricky]
6. Move Me [feat. Marta]
7. Pipe Dreamz [feat. Rina Mushonga]
8. On a Move [feat. Kway]
9. Christmas Trees [feat. Paul Smith]
10. Big Bang Blues [feat. Breanna Barbara]

Watch The War on Drugs Perform ‘Living Proof’ on ‘Colbert’

The War on Drugs stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night to perform a live-in-studio rendition of ‘Living Proof’, the latest single from their upcoming album I Don’t Live Here Anymore. Watch it below.

Back in January, The War on Drugs appeared on Colbert for a remote performance of their 2008 track ‘Arms Like Boulders’. Their last studio album, A Deeper Understanding, came out in 2017, followed by the live album LIVE DRUGS last year. I Don’t Live Here Anymore, the band’s first LP for Atlantic Records, is set to arrive on October 29.

Circuit des Yeux Shares Video for New Song ‘Sculpting the Exodus’

Circuit des Yeux has shared the second single from her upcoming LP, -io. ‘Sculpting the Exodus’ follows lead offering ‘Dogma’, which landed on our Best New Songs list. It arrives today alongside a music video shot in Chicago during the same session that yielded the album’s cover image, for which Haley Fohr trained with stunt coordinator Talin Chat (The Mandalorian) to perform a series of 5-7’ free-falls on camera. Watch and listen below.

Fohr had this to say about ‘Sculpting the Exodus’ in a statement:

What is Sculpting the Exodus?
It is devotion. It is the well.
It is my grandmother going into hospice, writhing in pain.
It is reality exploding on an island made of sand. It is depression and the isolation of deep grief.
I was trapped in a choir of myself with nothing to grab onto but echoes of past selves.
It obliterated my heart until the only working parts of me were the appendages furthest from my mind.
A few notes here
A couple notes there…
The fingers were working when nothing else could. And I was fantasizing of leaving like I always do…

-io, Circuit des Yeux’s debut for Matador, is due out October 22.

Pavement Announce UK and European Reunion Tour for 2022

Pavement have announced a UK and European reunion tour that’s set to take place in 2022. The band, who reunited in 2010 for a run of international dates, will kick off their latest reunion with two dates connected to Primavera Sound before heading to the UK and Europe in October 2022, including a four-night residency at the Roundhouse in London. UK tickets go on sale at 10 am on Saturday (September 11) here. See the full list of dates and check out the tour poster below.

Pavement 2022 UK and European Tour Dates:

Oct 17 – O2 Academy, Leeds
Oct 18 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
Oct 19 – Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Oct 20 – O2 Apollo, Manchester
Oct 22 – Roundhouse, London
Oct 23 – Roundhouse, London
Oct 24 – Roundhouse, London
Oct 25 – Roundhouse, London
Oct 27 – Le Grand Rex – Paris, France
Oct 29 – Vega – Copenhagen, Denmark
Oct 30 – Sentrum Scene – Oslo, Norway
Oct 31 – Cirkus – Stockholm, Sweden
Nov 2 – VoxHall – Aarhus, Denmark
Nov 4 – Pier 2, Bremen – Germany
Nov 5 – Tempodrom – Berlin, Germany
Nov 7 – Cirque Royal – Brussels, Belgium
Nov 8 – Royal Carré Theater – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Nov 10 – Vicar Street – Dublin, Ireland