Hovvdy have released a new single, ‘Town’, alongside an accompanying music video. The track, which follows last month’s ‘Everything’, was co-produced by Andrew Sarlo. Check it out below.
“Writing and recording ‘Town’ helped me break out of a relatively dark place,” the duo’s Charlie Martin said in a statement. “There was catharsis in almost every layer — I remember crying recording the mellotron flutes. I’m not sure why, but with ‘Town’ I wanted the instrumental to do the heavy lifting, leaning less on storytelling. In that way, the song’s meaning isn’t terribly specific, but for me it’s about missing your friends and hoping they miss you.”
Hovvdy’s most recent album, True Love, arrived last year.
Dana Gavanski has unveiled a new single, ‘I Kiss the Night’, lifted from her upcoming second LP When It Comes. “It’s an ode to the night, learning to lean into its magic and the spookiness of solitude in a winter storm,” Gavanski commented in a press release. The track comes alongside a Gaia Alari-directed video comprised of 1,700 hand-drawn frames. Check it out below.
“The nocturnal and lulling atmospheres evoked by Dana’s song, had me design a video treatment that aims to represent a dreamscape, or, more precisely, the moment of drowsiness happening right before falling asleep,” Alari explained. “By entering the door of the liminal space between awake and asleep, the character erases the external world and enters within her brain, experiencing a maze made of layered visions, distorted perception of self, time and space, intrusive thoughts that range from playful-bizarre-uncanny sequences to reassuring memories, in the attempt to fall asleep and finally shut the door.”
Katie Alice Greer, formerly of Priests, has announced her debut solo album. Barbarism is out June 24 via FourFour Records. Today’s announcement comes with the release of lead single ‘FITS/My Love Can’t Be’, alongside an accompanying video. Check it out below.
“I’d spent something like 70 days mostly alone since the pandemic started,” Greer said in a press release. “Then one weekend I biked out to Fairfax Avenue and found myself amongst thousands of people. It was jarring … To go from mostly the stillness of a barely-lived-in bedroom to projectile shopping carts, strangers chanting, phalanxes of beige gun toters, and tanks parallel parked outside luxury underwear and grocery shops on Melrose. Stuff was on fire. I think I listened to Exile On Main Street headed home, because it’s similarly contradictory and complicated mixture of emotions felt resonant. I wanted to try and capture all that I was feeling without so much as re-telling events that inspired the emotions themselves. ”
“I’m not a journalist, but maybe to underscore the contrast between a reporter and a storyteller, I wanted to make a Network Howard Beale-inspired music video to visually communicate the cacophony of feeling,” she added of the video, which follows a news broadcast from the “Barbarism News Network.”
Barbarism was written, performed, produced, and mixed entirely by Greer. Back in 2020, she shared two EPs, No One Else on Earth and 3 Colors. Priests announced an indefinite hiatus following the release of their album The Seduction of Kansas in 2019.
Barbarism Cover Artwork:
Barbarism Tracklist:
1. FITS/My Love Can’t Be
2. Talking In My Sleep (Intro)
3. Fake Nostalgia
4. Dreamt I Talk To Horses
5. Flag Wave Pt. 1
6. Flag Wave Pt. 2
7. Captivated
8. No Man
9. A Semi Or A Freight Train
10. How Do I Know (PRING 5)
11. Barbarism
Floating Points has released a new single, ‘Grammar’, via Ninja Tune. It follows last month’s ‘Vocoder’, which marked Sam Shepherd’s first new music since the release of Promises, his 2021 collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. Listen to ‘Grammar’ below.
Recently, it was announced that Floating Points will be providing an exclusive soundtrack to longtime collaborators Hamill Industries’ ‘Vortex’ installation as part of London’s 180 Strand’s Future Shock exhibition, which runs from April 27 until August 28.
Horsegirl have shared ‘World of Pots and Pans’, the latest offering from their upcoming debut album. Check out a lyric video for it below.
“‘World of Pots and Pans’ is the first love song Horsegirl has ever written—or the closest thing to it,” the band remarked in a press release. “We wrote it in Penelope’s basement while preparing to leave for our first ever tour. The lyrics, inspired by the misinterpretation of a Television Personalities lyric, imagine a (possibly unrequited) romance unfolding through references to Tall Dwarfs, Belle & Sebastian, and The Pastels.”
“We made the lyric video in a couple hours,” they added. “The three of us had a fully formed vision of what it should look like and were able to quickly execute the real-time “animation” in only two takes. It feels special to showcase our creative chemistry, and Nora was able to finally carry out her childhood dreams of making an OK Go (ish) type video.”
Cape Town songwriter M Field has announced his sophomore EP, Re: M Field. The follow-up to last September’s M Field EP will be out on June 9 via Leafy Outlook. New single ‘Block Universe’ arrives with a music video directed by Jarred Figgins. Check it out below.
“Matt and I gravitate towards these seemingly mundane activities,” Figgins said of the video in a statement. “Carrying a chair around London and using it to jump a wall seemed like a great day out. This simple task gives more room for the music to breathe, rather than being bombarded with too many themes or visuals. That, and sometimes we just need to take a load off.”
The Re: M Field EP was produced by Ross Dorkin, Matthew Field’s bandmate and longtime collaborator in the South African pop rock trio Beatenberg. ‘Block Universe’ is the second single from the project, following last month’s ‘Hyenas’.
Re: M Field EP Cover Artwork:
Re: M Field EP Tracklist:
1. Hyenas
2. Block Universe
3. A-B
4. Fire on Campus
5. Jolly Roger
6. House and Leisure
London punk four-piece Fresh have announced their new album Raise Hell, which lands on July 1 via Specialist Subject. To accompany the announcement, they’ve shared a new single called ‘Babyface’. Check it out below and scroll down for the record’s cover artwork and tracklist.
“It’s a song about having a mind that’s both overstimulated and under-stimulated at the same time,” lead singer and songwriter Kathryn Woods – who is a member of bands including cheerbleederz and ME REX alongside Fresh bandmate Myles McCabe – explained in a statement. “The light, airy synths make it a cry for help masquerading as a pop song.”
1. Our Love
2. Morgan & Joanne
3. Babyface
4. Going to Bed
5. Sleepover
6. Fuck Up
7. Deer in the Headlights
8. Pls Don’t Cry
9. We All Know (Blondie)
10. I Know I’m Just a Phase to You
11. Why Do I
Empire of the Sun’s Luke Steele has released a new song called ‘Running, Running’, taken from his forthcoming album Listen to the Water. Following previous singles ‘Common Man’, ‘Pool of Love’, and ‘Armageddon Slice’, the track comes with an accompanying video directed by Jodi Steele. Check it out below.
Listen to the Water is slated for release on May 13.
Wallice has shared her latest single, ’90s American Superstar’, the title track to her forthcoming second EP. Check out a visual for it below.
“‘90s American Superstar’ is about a fictional relationship in which my partner is showing very LA ‘dating a musician’ type behaviour. It’s kind of a part two to the saga from a track on my last EP called ‘Hey Michael’,” Wallice said in a statement. “The chorus makes it sort of a breakup song, and the verses make it a diss track. The first verse has six 90s movie references, and looks inwards at a breakup and what I did wrong. The second verse is blaming the other person – so it’s kind of a rollercoaster of emotions. The chorus is very lighthearted, and I think the tone of the “la la la’s” is important in showing a devil-may-care attitude – not knowing what to feel or do and just going with it.”
90s American Superstar, the follow-up to Wallice’s 2021 debut EP Off the Rails, arrives on May 6 via Dirty Hit. “The EP is a hypothetical look into the celebrity life that lots of musicians and the LA entertainment industry crowd seeks. It’s fun to think about, “what if I was famous?” and how fame can change people,” Wallice explained. “Especially since I grew up in LA– I love it here, but it’s a strange place and it can feel like everyone is just looking for their big break. To me, the EP plays with that perspective and the way people think about that dream. By exploring the idea of fame, I think the EP is a fun way of saying everyone is human. We all have aspirations, bad qualities and egos, but even if you’re famous (which by the way– I’m not in any way), that doesn’t make you better or worse than someone who isn’t.”
“I wrote this song as a little tongue in cheek moment,” Petcoff explained in a statement. “I was starting to see someone new in the throes of the pandemic, and I had to cancel on them almost every time we had plans because I was having an anxiety attack or a depressive episode or a chronic pain flare and couldn’t get myself out of bed. I didn’t want them to view me as a sick person, and I wanted them to still want to see me when I got better. This song came out of nowhere one day while my roommate was doing laundry and moving around bags of garbage that we hadn’t been able to take out in a few days because neither of us had our shit together. In the end I hope this song resonates with anyone that has a mental illness, chronic illness, or anything that prevents them from feeling normal, healthy, and cute.”
