Charly Bliss have shared a new video for ‘I’m Not Dead’ a highlight from their new album FOREVER. The band’s own Dan Shure directed the clip, which you can watch below.
“I wrote this song at the start of covid when I thought I was going to die and I was sad that I hadn’t partied more, if this was truly the end,” Eva Hendricks explained.
Shure added: “We thought this song needed a music video. Eva and I have both become huge fans of Murder She Wrote, so this was the perfect chance to make a fun, creative lyric video. We shot this on an iPhone literally one day after we wrapped the Back There Now video (which was also my birthday). We started writing the song over zoom, alongside K.Flay. Over a year later, as the song went through a few different versions, we finally ended up with this soaring fuzzy power pop hit.”
Read about how The Summer I Turned Pretty, Lexapro, friendship, and more inspired FOREVER in our interview with Charly Bliss.
Vera Sola has announced a new EP, Ghostmaker, which comes out November 15 via City Slang. It features reworked “(or re-remembered)” tracks from the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter’s latest album Peacemaker, with guest appearances from Marisa Nadler and another The Milk Carton Kids. Check out the new single ‘The Ghostmaster’s Daughter’ below.
Vera Sola shared the following statement about the new track:
This is a song that originally was set to be on my most recent album, Peacemaker, but didn’t fit sonically or thematically. Since the record release, however, it’s become a favorite to play. I’ve also received countless requests for where to find it. Here is the answer. I re-recorded it following the first leg of the tour, and offer it up as just my voice and guitar, as close to what you’d hear from me on stage as possible.
In brief it’s a love story staged across lifetimes—which at its core touches upon the possibility of transformation and transcendence. The end of a romance doesn’t have to mean the end of love. All that ends offers a chance at a beginning. Along with it is to come a handful of reimagined tracks from the full Peacemaker LP. Reimagined might not be the right word. Remembered is more like it; as I wanted to present what these songs were like when I wrote them initially.
Cornelia Murr has returned with a new single, ‘How Do You Get By’. Out now via the singer-songwriter’s new label 22TWENTY, the track comes paired with a video shot by Melanie Drew Chambers and starring Jack Henry Robbins. Check it out below.
“On the one hand, it is playfully provoking a conversation about money, how we make it and deal with it (in these hard economic times, with certain new particular challenges for musicians),” Murr said of the song in a statement. “It’s bringing innocence to the understandable curiosity about how other people and other artists make it all work, which we’re conditioned to think is rude to wonder about. But more so it’s loosely examining different forms of currency and what we choose to give value. Be it money, creative expression, spirituality, love… what keeps us going, what sustains us. Often people who have one of these want the other.”
BENEE is back with a new single called ‘Sad Boiii’. The song arrives with an accompanying video directed by Nikki Milan Houston. Check it out below.
“I tried to write a summery and happy tune with a dark meaning,” BENEE said in a press release. “I’d go to local festivals as a kid, and I wanted to capture the vibe of the outdoor setting. A lot of New Zealand music has a reggae energy, which is very nostalgic for me. Lyrically, ‘Sad Boiii’ is about being in a relationship where you’re pissed off with the other person because he has a façade going on. Even though he pretends to be tough, he’s just another damaged boy who needs help. Maybe you came from that in a past relationship and thought this guy was more stable, but he ends up being a depressed dude too. I fall for so many of those men, and it’s draining. They don’t want to get therapy; they just want to stay with you. Don’t be fooled by the bad boy image!”
BENEE is currently on tour with Wallows and will join Olivia Rodrigo on the Australian leg of her GUTS Tour this October. Earlier this year, she was credited as a co-writer on NewJeans’ ‘How Sweet’.
Machine Girl have put out a new song from their first album in five years, MG Ultra. This one’s called ‘Motherfather’, and it follows lead single ‘Until I Die’. Check out its John Lee-directed video below.
“Motherfather is a smash of all things intended to work well but only make a mess by mere existence – technology, love, marriage, creation,” Lee said in a statement.
Machine Girl added: “Disclaimer: All of the AI effects in the video were self-generated using original footage and 3D models that were recorded/made specifically for this video, giving it that uncanny nightmare fuel effect.. I was personally assured by the director John Lee (PFFR founder, co-creator of Wonder Showzen and Xavier Renegade Angel) that his sentiments on generative AI are the same as mine (that it sucks and is deeply unethical). Enjoy <3”
Yasmin Williams has shared a new track, ‘Hummingbird’, taken from her upcoming album Acadia. Featuring Tatiana Hargreaves on fiddle and Allison de Groot on banjo, the song arrives on the heels of lead single ‘Virga’. Listen to it below.
“Being thrust into the folk genre has granted me several invitations to play at various folk and bluegrass festivals,” Williams explained. “This style of music is not one that I grew up with and is still relatively new to me; however, I can’t help but be somewhat influenced by the amazing musicianship of all the bluegrass, folk, and old-time musicians I’ve seen in the last few years. Although this wasn’t on my mind consciously when I wrote this tune, I assume these influences entered my subconscious.”
Alexandra Levy, aka Ada Lea, has announced a new EP titled notes. Following 2021’s one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden, the six-track effort arrives October 4 via Saddle Creek. The new single ‘come on, baby! be a good girl for the camera’ was co-produced by Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Marshall Vore. Check it out below.
“I wrote this song while on a very challenging tour that took everything out of me,” Levy explained in a statement. “Over the years, I’ve developed a suspicion that your skin must be made of macho steel to ‘make it’ in the industry — you’ve gotta be able to suck it up, put a nice smile on your face, and do a little dance with a twinkle in your eye. The chorus runs with that belief, in a cheeky, noncommittal and playful way.”
Earlier this year, Sting formed a new power trio, Sting 3.0 – featuring longtime guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas – which will head out on a North American tour later this month. To celebrate the occasion, the band has shared a new song called ‘I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)’. Producer Martin Kierszenbaum plays organ on the track. Check it out below.
‘I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)’ marks Sting’s first new song since his 2021 album The Bridge.
Ethel Cain has shared her cover of American Football’s ‘For Sure’, alongside a self-directed video. It’s taken from the upcoming American Football (Covers), which features takes on songs from the band’s 1999 self-titled debut LP by Iron & Wine, Manchester Orchestra, Blondshell, and more. American Football have also released a newly remastered version of the original track from the 25th anniversary edition of the LP. Take a listen below.
“I knew I wanted to do ‘For Sure’ immediately,” Cain, aka Hayden Anhedönia, said in a press release. “It’s always stood out to me every time I spin the record, and I knew exactly how I wanted to translate it into my sound. My favourite part of the entire track is the sound of the train going by the apartment I lived in back in Pennsylvania, stretched out like a synth at the beginning and end. American Football is one of those bands that really marked such a moment in time with their debut record, a mark with so much longevity that it found me the same way at 20 years old that I imagine it found everyone else the day it was first released: as an instant classic. Their sonic storytelling has inspired me in more ways than I can count over the years, so being asked to contribute to this covers edition was truly an honor. American Football forever.”
American Football’s Steve Lamos had this to say about ‘For Sure’: “It’s a simple-but-powerful statement on change and uncertainty that still rings as true for me in middle age as it did when I was in my mid-20s. It also showcases some of my all-time favorite Mike vocals: the ‘ooooohs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ of ‘June seems / too late / delayed / maybe for the better’ are, to my mind, perfection. Ethel Cain has somehow made me like this track even more than I already did.”
Lamos, a college professor by day, came across Cain’s music through one of his students. “They wrote a brilliant paper explaining how Cain’s ‘American Teenager’ created a lush sonic landscape through textural elements, careful pacing, and plaintive lyrics,” he explained. “Cain bathes ‘For Sure’ here in similar luxury. She takes her time with each note, each phrase, and each vowel. In the process, she manages to intensify the ache and longing of the original: the ‘ooooohs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ echo almost endlessly here.”
American Football (25th Anniversary Edition) and American Football (Covers) are both out October 18 via Polyvinyl.
Kelly Lee Owens has unveiled ‘Higher’, the third single from her upcoming album Dreamstate. It follows previous cuts ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Love You Got’. Check it out below.
Dreamstate, Owens’ fourth studio album, is slated for release on October 18 via dh2.
