Hannah Van Loon, aka Tanukichan, has shared a new one-off single called ‘NPC’. Listen to it below.
“‘NPC’, non-player character, is about exactly that,” Van Loon said in a statement. “Feeling like one person in a million, blending in and being a spectator to the mundaneness of life. Maybe avoiding some responsibilities.”
“I wrote NPC with my live band as well, so this video is so special and perfect for the song,” she continued. “We toured for months and got to play huge venues together. It’s a full circle moment with this song as the soundtrack.”
Oct 22 San Luis Obispo, CA – SLO Brew Rock
Oct 24 Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
Oct 25 Tucson, AZ – Club Congress
Oct 27 Austin, TX – Levitation Festival
Oct 28 Oklahoma City, OK – Ponyboy
Oct 30 Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad
Nov 1 Salt Lake City, UT – Beehive
Nov 2 Boise, ID – Shrine Basement
Ahead of the release of their new LP Spike Field this Friday, Maria BC has unveiled one more single, ‘Lacuna’. It follows previous offerings ‘Amber’, ‘Watcher’, and ‘Still’. Check out director Sam Kann’s video for it below.
“I struggle with words, generally speaking,” Maria BC said in a statement about the new track. “Lyrics are tough for me. I’ll often start working on a piece of music thinking it’s going to be instrumental, but then, I don’t know, it ends up feeling incomplete, so I give it some words to flesh it out. This instrumental, though, ended up sounding self-contained to me, or like even the most interesting lyrics would diminish it. The gated vocals, the cryptic textural sounds – it all evokes a kind of preverbal state. Hence the title.”
Kann added of the visual: “I’m so drawn to the eerie nostalgia in the music. It was a joy to break out my old mini DV tape camcorder to create unsettling, dreamy images for Lacuna. Collaborating with [Maria BC] is soul expanding—I’m grateful to be exploring the definition of connection alongside them.”
Former Brockhampton leader Kevin Abstract has dropped a new song, ‘What Should I Do?’, taken from his upcoming solo album Blanket. The track, which follows the previously released title track and ‘GUM’, is accompanied by a visual called ‘SLIP N SLIDE’. Check it out below.
Blink-182 have dropped another song from their upcoming album, One More Time…, ahead of its release on Friday, October 20. This one’s called ‘You Don’t Know What You’ve Got’, and it follows previous cuts ‘One More Time’, ‘More Than You Know’, ‘Edging’, ‘Dance With Me’, and ‘Fell in Love’. Today, Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker have also revealed the album’s cover art. Check it out and listen to the new single below.
Julie Byrne has announced a new EP titled Julie Byrne With Laugh Cry Laugh, which arrives November 17 via Ghostly International. Following her July LP The Greater Wings, the singer-songwriter recorded the collection with Emily Fontana and Taryn Blake Miller. Going by Laugh Cry Laugh, the trio worked on the songs at Miller’s apartment in the winter of 2022. Listen to the new single ‘Velocity! What About the Inertia!?’, as well as a cover of Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’, below.
Julie Byrne With Laugh Cry Laugh EP Tracklist:
1. ’22
2. These Days
3. Velocity! What About the Inertia!?
4. Entropy Increasing
Lowertown, the duo of Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, have dropped a new song, ‘Root Canal’. It’s taken from their upcoming EP Skin of My Teeth, which is out October 27 and includes the previously released single ‘Bline’. Listen below.
‘Root Canal’ “was written from a point of reflection after having recently left a very toxic relationship,” Osby explained in a statement. “The person I had been dating was very manipulative and jealous and would jump on any opportunity to put me down. They got a lot of enjoyment from my failures and would get extremely upset when anything in my life would start to go well.”
Spencer Zahn has announced the companion to his album Statues I, which was released earlier this year. Released as a double LP, Statues I & II will be out on November 17 through Cascine. The new single ‘High Touch’ is out today, and you can check it out below.
“‘High Touch’ began as a song that I thought would be good for a singer,” Zahn explained in a statement. “It’s a love song that is celebratory, triumphant even. It is a dedication much like the entire album. I wrote the chords on a Fender Rhodes and then added a Yamaha CP70 and CS50 to build up the harmony. Once that sound started to come together it felt more like a Jon Hassell recording than a song for a vocalist. Spencer Ludwig was staying at the house for a weekend so I asked him to play trumpet on it and we immediately found the identity of the song. With the doubling of soprano saxophone by Chris Bullock, drums by Booker Stardrum, and additional drum programming and production by Tyler Gilmore, this became one of my favorite songs on the album.”
Zahn also shared the following statement about the two albums:
I find it hard to talk about the personal side to my music. The emotional ambiguity in instrumental music is something that I love, and my hope is that people can find meaning for themselves in my songs. I also think that adding some context around why I want to share music is important, without lifting the veil or having the music feel too literal.
My life was full of love, creativity, collaboration, and solitude when I made this music. But change is inevitable and happens when one least expects it. The ground shifted, and as that happened these songs felt even more meaningful as a representation of the life that I had. I wanted to leave these songs as a letter of gratitude for the recent years.
In 2022 I was living a quiet life in upstate New York. I’d spend my days focusing on writing new music at the piano, enjoying the silence in my studio. I had recently finished the album Pigments with Dawn Richard which is a large scale, orchestral album. So sketching out minimalist ideas felt refreshing.
I got into a routine of improvising at the piano each morning. Short sketches that I liked would be developed further. Eventually two sets of music started to present themselves. The first set of music was songs that felt fully formed as solo piano pieces. I could live in these compositions as they were. The songs encapsulated a precious six month period of my life upstate. Subdued, minimal, solitary moments.
The other set of music that developed simultaneously was a series of piano sketches that felt incomplete yet had potential with an ensemble surrounding them. As these ideas developed I wanted to borrow from the production style of Pigments by having other musicians improvise across the core arrangements. Tyler Gilmore aka BlankFor.ms, Spencer Ludwig, Chris Bullock, Jas Walton, and Booker Stardrum all contributed with their depth of musical personalities and helped breath shape, intrigue, and beauty into the songs.
Lastly, the artwork by Hana Tajima for this double album is a series of sculptures carved by her grandfather. She and I have been creating art and music together since she did the design for my album Sunday Painter in 2020. Her paintings, design, and overall aesthetic have inspired me for a long time and this album is a culmination of that.
These two collections are Statues I & II.
Thank you to everyone who put their stamp on this music.
With love, SZ
Statues II Cover Artwork:
Statues II Tracklist:
1. Changes in Three Parts
2. Morning
3. High Touch
4. OST
5. Wind Unsung
6. Wave
7. Shadow Setup
ELIO has returned with a new single, ‘Sorority’. The track, which follows her 2022 mixtape ELIO’s INFERNO, arrives with a music video directed by Dillon Matthew. Check it out below.
“Over the past couple years it’s been hard for me to escape the realizations of growing up in a society that teaches us what it means to be a woman,” ELIO explained in a statement. “‘Sorority’ is the start of me unpacking the feelings of growing up and thinking that other girls were my competition. It’s hard to break away from all of the noise of what society wants us to be.
“I was having a conversation with my friends about how we were all scared of each other the first time we met, and it really made me question why that is such a common opinion among us,” ELIO continued. “I love the women in my life but have no doubt been subject to comparison and felt the need to be the one that appears perfect. ‘Sorority’ is about letting all that go and just being able to be there and support our friends and community with no expectations and judgement.”
BADBADNOTGOOD and Charlotte Day Wilson have linked up for a new single called ‘Sleeper’. The track was recorded on analog tape at the Los Angeles studio Valentine Recording. Listen to it below.
“Sleeper wrote itself… we were in the studio just messing around and the guys came up with the colorful instrumental while I freestyled the lyrics,” Day Wilson said in a press statement. “The song portrays someone who chooses the path of least resistance and finds themselves in a lifeless, loveless relationship.”
In 2016, Day Wilson joined BADBADNOTGOOD on their track ‘In Your Eyes’. More recently, BADBADNOTGOOD appeared on ‘I Can Only Whisper’, a track from Day Wilson’s 2021 debut LP ALPHA.
Barrie has released a new track, ‘Hard Candy’. The track is available online for the first time after being heard in January 2022 on the Freeform series Single Drunk Female. Listen to it below.
