Tunic come in out of the cold, Grande Royal are just a bunch of ne’er-do-wells, Nephila tries on a nightshade, Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez is tired of trying to be better, Serlin Greaves reconnect with their teenage heart — and if you think that’s end of your latest gargantuan Weekend Roundup, think again. It’s too late to stop now!
63 | Tunic | Invalid
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Winnipeg is cold. Ice cold. And judging by the the emotional brawn and hardcore might of the three-piece Tunic, it can get very very dark. Tunic explores that darkness on the band’s new album Exhaling. Across songs like the title track, Invalid and Fade Out, the trio of David Schellenberg (Guitar / Vocals), Rory Ellis (Bass) and Dan Unger (Drums) use their visceral art punk approach to explore themes related to coping with the illness of a loved one, the dark side of creativity and dealing with toxic friendships.”
64 | Grande Royale | Troublemaker
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Grande Royale release Troublemaker, the fourth and final single leading up to the Swedish garage-rockers’ fifth studio album Carry On. Troublemaker throws you straight into the action, mixing Orange-fueled electric guitars, crushing bass tones and thundering drums inspired by ’90’s rock. Vocalist Gustav Wremer sings with more grit than on previous albums, adding a ton of attitude to the new songs. All put together, Carry On offers an energetic and straight forward take on garage-rock.”
65 | Nephila | Belladonna
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Offering a dreamy and psychedelic sound expressed with theatrical visualizations, Nephila are set to release their self-titled debut album in summer 2021. Belladonna is the second single. With tasteful use of synths and stunning vocal harmonies provided by the band’s two lead singers, Belladonna throws you into a psychedelic journey, guided by a lyrical message tackling environmental degradation. The band explain: “Belladonna is about the environmental crisis the earth is facing, but from Mother Earth’s perspective. She’s begging for mercy before her time has run out and glory days have long since past. She brings life to us, but we bring death to her.”
66 | Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez | Better For You
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez is a singer/composer in Brooklyn. Rooted in jazz and R&B, the songwriter invites us into her unique sonic world with harmonic nuance and lyrical poetry. Her latest single Better For You grapples with the gaze, focusing on the experience of being objectified and the ambiguous response to this reality. The song is most explicitly about sex and the ways in which heterosexual dynamics often prioritize men’s pleasure. Better For You highlights the ways in which women contort themselves physically and emotionally to be more desirable. Raina shares, “It also depicts the flip side of this, where we become or can become hooked on being the desired one; the way we come to need it, the way our identity becomes tied to this positioning. This is the ambiguity, the grey.”
67 | Serlin Greaves | Teenage Heart
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Serlin Greaves (Joey Serlin and Daniel Greaves of The Watchmen) solidify their reunion with a new track. Teenage Heart marks the first single from their forthcoming album Sad Songs For Sale, out May 28. The song arrives in timely fashion as the world navigates online connection more than ever, reflecting on how youth live, learn and grow in a digital age, and the emotions and experiences that arise in these collective spaces. Serlin says, “It’s hard to watch kids growing up today in a social media age. They put themselves out there to be scrutinized and judged, and the world can be cruel. I often wish that my kids could grow up the way I did, with friendships made through time spent together and connecting with kindred spirits. If you ever came across negativity, you could disconnect and move on. You weren’t trapped by technology. Teenage Heart speaks to this. This song encourages teenagers not to succumb to this negative conformity and to cut loose the dead weight. Live life to the fullest, while being true to yourself.”
68 | Ravive | Sahara
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “American pop newcomer Ravive has released her debut single Sahara. Ravive, a hypnotic synth-pop vocalist, captures the feeling of being stranded in an unfamiliar place on Sahara. She states: “Sahara was an experience. I wanted to really paint the visual of trudging through the desert, feeling exhausted, but still trying to make it home. Pop music has always been a euphoric, but sometimes heartbreaking sonic trip for me, so I wanted to create a song that could be that experience for someone else. Sahara captures an odd juxtaposition between mental exhaustion and finding sanctuary. Exploring those opposites melded into a synth fusion that I instantly fell for.”
69 | Lake Street Dive | Being A Woman
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Happy Women’s History Month! This one goes out to all of the hard-working women of the world,” says Lake Street Dive bassist Bridget Kearney, who wrote Being a Woman, a new song from the band’s upcoming album Obviously. “We are thankful to the many voices that came before us shouting for gender equality, without whom we may never have had this microphone in which to say, ‘It’s not fixed yet!’ With this song, we humbly add our voices to that chorus.”
70 | Jehnny Beth | French Countryside (Rone Remix)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Songwriter, singer, and author Jehnny Beth has teamed up French electronic artist Rone for a hypnotic remix of her stunning new single French Countryside. “This is the song that caused me the most issues,” says Jehnny. “Up until the last week of mixing we didn’t have a version I was happy with, but I am very proud of it now. I almost didn’t put it on the record because it is so close to the bone it almost feels too self indulgent, but it was my intention to write a song that felt more vulnerable than anything I had ever written before.”
71 | Kauan | Maanpako
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Russian post-metal visionaries Kauan have revealed new song Maanpako from their upcoming album Ice Fleet. Maanpako begins in a state of gentle nostalgia, erupts into a post-rock storm punctuated by blackened screams, then settles back into the calm where it began. The song, like all of Kauan’s work, paints vivid pictures that range from the melancholy to the rapturous. Ice Fleet, Kauan’s eighth full-length, is based on the true story of an unidentified fleet of ships discovered in 1930 in northernmost Russia, completely frozen under the permafrost with crew and passengers’ bodies grotesquely preserved.”
72 | Jeffrey Martin | I Know What I Know
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Portland, Oregon singer-songwriter Jeffrey Martin ponders this moment and the ways in which isolation, both physical and emotional, has exacerbated its many challenges. Jeffrey explains: “At some point, when the exhaustion becomes too much and the debate becomes too ugly, when we’ve become saturated in curated news headlines that speak only to our specific fears, we all succumb to a narrowness of thought that separates people into drastically simple categories: those who are of our view, and those who are not. As if our own political and ideological conclusions are bullet-proof scripture, rooted in irrefutable evidence. Despite the subjectivity of interpretation and the general lack of reliable information in the world, if we get frustrated enough, or scared enough, or desperate enough, we each feel justified in defining the ugliness of the other in no uncertain terms.”
73 | Bend The Future | Clausa
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Founded in 2019, Bend The Future are a progressive rock band from Grenoble, France. They are most notable for their odd time signatures and melodies that incorporate elements of ’70s prog rock, jazz, funk and Eastern European music. Bend The Future includes Can Yıldırım (guitars/vocals), Rémi Pouchain (bass), Pierre-Jean Ménabé (saxophone) and Piel Pawlowski (drums). More recently, the band reached its final formation after Samy Chebre (keyboards) joined. At the end of 2019, Bend The Future released their debut album Pendellösung.”
74 | Everything We’re Not | Let It Go (ft. Max Bemis)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Indiana quartet Everything We’re Not is a band with a simple mission statement: To play music that they love. Let It Go features legendary Say Anything vocalist Max Bemis and is an absolute earworm of a song. Everything We’re Not vocalist Jonathan Newton is no slouch — his high-flying performance is the star of this track, which showcases the crystal-clear voice and impressive range that make him one of the brightest storytellers in pop-punk. “Let it Go is a song about young, reckless love, or puppy love. The song has serious elements mixed with more of a carefree vibe. It’s a song going through the rollercoaster of emotion that is young love.”
75 | Grey Aura | Maria Segovia
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Hailing from Utrecht in The Netherlands, Grey Aura create a liquid form of atmospheric black metal which shifts between forms like quicksilver, flowing over the boundaries of genres, slipping between cracks in the restrictive walls that surround them. Their second album Zwart Vierkant is breathtaking in its breadth and independence, dazzling in its ambition and utterly enthralling and all consuming in its complexity of vision. Each song is imbued with the sensuality of the tale, rife with its mysteries and laden with its ambiguities and suggestive power. It is an album like no other from a band that reach further, look deeper and explore beyond the limits of imagination.”
76 | Tuvaband | Post Isolation
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Tuvaband is the solo project of Norwegian singer-songwriter and producer Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser. Tuvaband just shared the futuristic track Post Isolation and announced that the album Growing Pains & Pleasures will be released on May 21. Tuva says: “The song is about returning to the world after isolation, and how overwhelming that can feel. It’s a song about irrational fears. I had a demo of the song, and went into a studio to re-record parts of it. I realised later that I liked the demo version the most, so I kept everything I had already recorded in my home studio, except my programmed drums.”
77 | True Villains | Dig Your Grave
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nashville’s modern-rock powerforce True Villains prove the genre is not dead with latest single Dig Your Grave. With a heavy sound and warning lyrics, the song is a cautionary tale of accountability. “Dig Your Grave is a heavy reminder that sometimes there are situations in life when you need to face up to the consequences of our own actions. Alternatively, you are not responsible for cleaning up someone else’s mess that they’ve created for themselves. Sometimes the best lessons are the ones learned the hardest.”
78 | Urne | Desolate Heart
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “London metal trio Urne have unveiled new single Desolate Heart and announced that their debut album Serpent & Spirit will arrive June 25. There is no single way that Urne describe their sound; it all comes back to one thing: heavy. There are shades of Metallica, Mastodon and Alice In Chains hopping between sludge, tech-metal, doom, hardcore and anything else with a weighty heart. Formed by ex-Hang The Bastard bassist Joe Nally and guitarist Angus Neyra, the pair already had a reputation for big, heavy riffs. Getting drummer Richard Harris on board in 2018, they gilded their new outfit with debut EP The Mountain Of Gold, which immediately marked Urne as a formidable new metallic force.”
79 | Anni Pohto | Everywoman
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Helsinki pop singer-songwriter Anni Pohto has released the single Everywoman. This is the third single to be released from her forthcoming concept album The Rising, due in late summer. On Everywoman, Anni Pohto delves into the universal bond of womanhood over pulsing electro beats. Pohto elaborates: “If I were Malala or Rosa Parks, if I were Hillary Clinton or Hannah Arendt, how would I have been able to handle all the pressure? Everywoman is an epic call for unity in which you can hear Whitney Houston’s tragedy ringing.”
80 | Gizelle Smith | King of the Mountain
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Gizelle Smith is proud to take you on a journey across new musical terrain with her unique, expansive cover of Kate Bush’s King of The Mountain. This is the first single released off her third upcoming album Revealing, due for release early summer.”
81 | Malacoda | Deadlights
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Malacoda have released Deadlights, the second single from their upcoming EP Crawling Chaos. With music described as dark, foreboding and with lyrics to enjoy as well as unsettle being a constant in the band’s sound, the next step would be to write a followup to Restless Dreams. Malacoda’s Lucas Di Mascio adds: “The song is based on the movie, It’s one of the better horror movie remakes that’s come out recently. We really tried to capture the emotion from the film with this one.”
82 Lauryn Macfarlane | Nowhere Town
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Lauryn Macfarlane has been recognized as a bewitching storyteller, drawing inspiration from her own experiences and struggles as an empath with an unceasing flow of emotion. Relocating to Montreal granted Lauryn the opportunity to work alongside producer/engineer Sam Woywitka and musicians Isaac Symonds, Mishka Stein and Robbie Kuster on her debut EP. Lauryn showcases a different style of writing on Nowhere Town, the latest offering from her forthcoming collection. A realization that you’ve outgrown your small hometown, the song also retaliates those who don’t deem the faith and beliefs of others to be valid.”
83 | Raven Artson | Peak In Me (ft. Ray Fuego)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “L.A. and Amsterdam-based multi-hyphenate Raven Artson allows us to peek into his ego on new single Peak In Me. Slow-motion hyper-pop, documenting a life swinged by uppers and downers. The multi-dimensional song was written in a period where partying was absorbed as a mix of self-deceit and temporary bliss: “What I overshared at night, I’d forget when sobered up. It took some processing to realise I was at ease with myself.”
84 | Sideline | When The Son Rose Up That Morning
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The bluegrass gospel tradition is as old as the music itself, and if you needed a reminder, the solemn Appalachian ring of the banjo on the latest single from Sideline furnishes one. When The Son Rose Up That Morning, by songwriters Rick Lang and Josh Shilling, brings the same devotion to the gospel message and the bluegrass song that earned their previous sacred release I’ll Live Again a place in the top 30 bluegrass gospel songs of 2020. “When we got When The Son Rose Up That Morning from Josh,” says Sideline bassist Jason Moore, “it hit a nerve with each of us due to either the groove, message or words, depending on each individual. The main thing we knew was, we wanted to do the song.”
