Next month, Hana Vu will release Romanticism, follow-up to her brilliant album Public Storage. Described as a “contemplative, coming-of-age indie-pop that mourns the impermanence of youth,” Romanticism will provide a collection of songs that are honest and vulnerable, with narratives unafraid to consider the existential side of identity and the true depth of affect and emotion, showcasing “how thrilling it can be to look directly at our feelings, to sing their sorrows and praise.” Following the album’s first single “Care,” which explored the subjectivity of individualized emotional experience ..read more

Earlier this week, Marika Hackman released her new single “Slime,” the third from her upcoming album Big Sigh. Since her debut I’m Not Your Man, Hackman’s take on guitar pop continues to be remarkably fresh and inspired, with impeccable, thoughtful songwriting and near-cerebral melodies, made even more intimate with her signature vocals, always somewhere between a sigh and a croon. She explained that this album took longer than her previous releases, and that “by the time I got to the end of it I was quiet;” it’s the equivalent of “stepping into a new world, moving forward, chipping away. Bre ..read more

Today, Petite League shares the sentimental “Nite Stairs,” the fourth single from their upcoming sixth LP Thrill Seekers. Following the already released singles “Floating Blue,” “Pantone Karaoke,” and “Bloody Knuckles,” the new release shows off a comparably softer, slower side of their signature lo-fi sound; jagged guitar and a bouncy bassline provides a platform for frontman Lorenzo Gillis Cook’s textured and echoed vocals, expressing a narrative about the frustration of falling in love too fast, too soon. He compares it to those moments characterized with sudden fear, with chagrin and emba ..read more

Yesterday, IAN SWEET – also known as the solo project of Los Angeles based artist Jilian Medford – released the surprise new EP STAR STUFF. The new release, follow-up to her stunning 2021 debut LP Show Me How You Disappear, has Medford taking inspiration from both Sheryl Crow and Cocteau Twins, resulting in dream pop that’s soft and vulnerable as much as it’s jagged and fiery. Alongside the fantastic title track and the slow burn “Fight” is “Die a Million Times,” an effortless pop stunner. Medford explained the inspiration behind the stand-out track:  “Die a Million Times” is about bein ..read more

This October, A Beacon School – also known as the experimental dream pop project of Brooklyn-based multi instrumentalist Patrick J Smith – will release his highly anticipated sophomore album yoyo. The follow-up to Smith’s brilliant debut LP Cola – first digitally released in 2018, and then reissued and pressed to vinyl in 2019 – yoyo will be the first full-length release from Smith in nearly five years, a body of work that described as “an untainted exploration of the unconscious artistic self and the oscillation of time.” Following the stunning “KITM” – which had some of the finest, most tra ..read more

Today, Bloomsday – the Brooklyn-based indie dream pop duo of Iris James Garrison and Alex Harwood – share their gorgeous debut album Place to Land. Recorded over the months of 2020, the seven-track release was written during Garrison’s gender transition, with lyrics beautifully weaving through “periods of loss, upheaval, hope, fear,” but, most of all, “setting oneself free.” Written, performed, and fronted by Garrison (they/them) and beautifully produced and accompanied by Harwood, the “brotherly dynamic” between the duo is seamless, earnest, and built on a sense of trust that is palpable, re ..read more

Last week, Mutual Benefit released “Wasteland Companions,” the second single to his upcoming fourth album Growing at the Edges. The Brooklyn, NY-based musician, who has been recording since 2009, explained that the title of the new album relates directly to the past two decades, as well as the fact that “it’s okay, at any age, to search your core beliefs and figure out if you might be fundamentally wrong about something.” While the lyrics in his previous albums focused more on questions, there are huge statements here; for instance, many of the tracks on the upcoming album deal with “areas of ..read more

Last week, bedroom pop artist Layzi released the gorgeous new single “idk.” The Boston-based artist has been steadily releasing stellar singles since her 2021 debut EP What’s Left To Lose, a charming, impressive collection of lo-fi dream pop tunes that consistently put her ethereal, perfectly balanced vocals front and center. To us, it was a sophisticated balance of opposites, light and dark, soft and jagged; the electric guitar throughout opener “If U Want Me 2,” burning through the pasteled synth like a wildfire, proves that her compositions are anything but one-dimensional. “Ego,” her prev ..read more

Earlier this week, Seattle-born, Los Angeles based artist Akira Galaxy shared the otherworldly debut single “Virtual Eyes.” Merging dream pop and alt-rock, her style is at once ethereal and vaporescent, and, most of all, gorgeously unapologetic in its utter vulnerability. In an interview about the single, in fact, she speaks to something similar to this, about the beauty of art in its helping to soothe and transmogrify moments of internal strife: “Writing this song was a cathartic experience. It came together when I was in a state of complete brokenness, and being in the vortex of this song ..read more

Earlier this week, Tennis (also known as the soft-rock wife/husband duo of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley) announced the upcoming release of their sixth full length album Pollen, follow up to 2019’s Swimmer. Their music, earnest and honest, has always been about intimacy and devotion towards another, but not without first establishing an initial sense of inner strength and independence. Swimmer was about navigating the emotions surrounding death, grief, and illness – monumental events in life that take up precious space in the subconscious – and Pollen seems like a natural extension of this i ..read more