I've been unavoidably absent for most of March, so I'm just going to throw some of my favourite tracks out there from the last few weeks and try and get going again. Slightly unhelpfully I know nothing about Oliver Hohlbrigger other than he's a multi-instrumentalist from Norway, and on his recent track 'Velveteen' he joins together with his pal Pål Jackman, who I unadvisedly googled to reveal lots of online pictures of Hugh Jackman playing golf with pals. But he's from Norway too and is a film director and musician. 'Velveteen' is a really cool track, with Hohlbrugger's vocals dominating, i ..read more

To be honest I was quite overwhelmed looking at the range of releases around the world this week, and normally I'd have probably been tempted to head in the direction of a 12 minute post rock track, but a lovely song entitled Pictures in the Sand' from Canadian project Wide Arches won me over, there's a charming simplicity to it and I think the arrangements add an interesting dimension to the song too. It also led me to their album 'Farewell to the Lovely Things' which was released late last year. The project was created by Toronto musician Jacob Gorzhaltsan, originally during lockdown "as a ..read more

Kindsight are another band we've featured regularly since their debut in 2020 and I found myself reading up earlier what I said about them at the time, describing an almost 'childlike exuberance' in their music. I also curiously suggested their music was so 'bang on centre in the Indie Pop genre' that maybe the 'Indietracks or Indiefjord festival would care to sign them up for 2021". Sadly the Indietracks festival ceased to exist shortly after I wrote this comment (quite possibly because I wrote it), whilst we can't expect anything more from the lovely people at Indiefjord, who took on our re ..read more

Coincidentally I recommended Icelandic project Red Barnett in January to someone whilst having a conversation about fellow countrymen Mono Town, both artists writing similarly fluid melodic indie music. Little did I know that at the same time Red Barnett were finishing up working on their new EP 'Rise' in the lovely Quandrangle / Rockfield Studios in Wales - although it was probably a good job I didn't know given I'd have been tempted to drive down for an afternoon and peek through the windows to see what they were up to. Red Barnett was originally set up by Halli Sveinbjörnsson back in 2015 ..read more

Another week, another update to our playlist ..read more

I'm not going to deny it, this is is my favourite new release of the last few weeks, and it comes courtesy of West Yorkshire based Little Hand Feet and the lead single from their forthcoming debut EP. Typically for a DIY band they've been playing regularly at local venues since 2017, slowly building their reputation with an impressive list of support slots, features via good old BBC Introducing, then later being described by Our Sound Music as “Gloriously shambolic... punk, rock but with more roll, a twisted pop sensibility". Now of course that sounds like a description of Cardiacs, which is ..read more

Just a quick mention for another band featured regularly on these pages, and it's appropriate given that it's a remix of the track that I first wrote about when I came across them in 2018. Based around the talents of Teresa Woischiski and John Alexander Ericso, The Ghost of Helags have been Berlin based for a few years now and in latest album 'Reconstructed Works' they offer, erm, reconstructed workings of previous tracks, most of which come from their 2021 album 'We Came from the Stars'. Everything that these guys release is beautifully done, the new version stripped back and more exposed, w ..read more

I love hearing from bands that we haven't heard from for a while, and baula definitely fit into that category, having not released a track since 2019. They're a Swedish / Icelandic duo consisting of Karolina Thunberg and Ísak Ásgeirsson, and I originally wrote about their fabulous piano driven debut 'Don't Bother' in 2016, before releasing their shimmering guitar indie EP 'Drought', which was also featured by our friends at the 'official' (and sadly no more) Nordic music publication JaJaJaMusic. Anyway their new song 'mercury in retrograde' is the 1st from a brand new album, which is high up ..read more

I was going to 'just' post this on a playlist, but Swedish duo Club 8 are always worthy of a few extra words. They're a band we've featured a number of times over the years and that Swedish readers will be particularly familiar with, originally formed back in 1995 by Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård from Poprace, going on to release about 9 albums, countless singles and being rightly described on their Spotify profile as a 'pillar of the Swedish pop scene'. I'd also recommend Johan Angergård's side project The Legends, which has featured  Karolina Komsted on some tracks too. They re ..read more

It's been a particularly good week for Nordic albums I think, starting with one that came courtesy of the excellent One Chord to Another, the essential online guide to Finnish (and world) music. Penniless (previously 'The Penniless People of Bulgaria') have released the excellent 'Ego Catastrophe', an album that I'm still only scratching the surface of, but that is probably my favourite Finnish long play release since The Stillwalkers. The new Hafdis Huld release 'Darkest Night' was expected, and it's a lovely album, at times thought provoking and even fragile lyrically, yet immensely enjoyabl ..read more