Atwood Magazine is excited to share our Editor’s Picks column, written and curated by Editor-in-Chief Mitch Mosk. Every week, Mitch will share a collection of songs, albums, and artists who have caught his ears, eyes, and heart. There is so much incredible music out there just waiting to be heard, and all it takes from us is an open mind and a willingness to listen. Through our Editor’s Picks, we hope to shine a light on our own music discoveries and showcase a diverse array of new and recent releases.

This week’s Editor’s Picks features Armlock, S.G. Goodman, Nii, Night Tapes, House of Harm, and snuggle!

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“I take a big sip, pull my shoulders back, trade the blue chip, we made a blood pact as a form of love…” There’s a quiet magic pulsing through Armlock’s “Strobe” – a kind of understated intensity that slowly envelops the senses, drawing you deep into the song’s soft, glistening glow. Hypnotic and hushed, raw and radiant, “Strobe” feels like a memory – fleeting and yet eternal, flickering in and out of view like headlights on a late-night drive… or the hazy warmth of someone you love laughing on the other end of the phone. Dozens (upon dozens) of listens in, this track continues to move and mystify me. It’s unvarnished, it’s aching, it’s immersive in the most gentle and genuine way. In its softness lies something truly beautiful… something that stirs the ears, the heart, and the soul.

I take a big sip
Pull my shoulders back
Trade the blue chip
We made a blood pact
As a form of love…

It’s been a leashed year
Kept it on the rails I feel it shift gear
Breathe in and exhale
Isn’t it wonderful…
Because

Released on May 1^st via Run for Cover Records, “Strobe” is the Melbourne, Australia-based indie rock duo’s first single since releasing their sophomore album Seashell Angel Lucky Charm in 2024, and it feels like both a continuation and a reintroduction – a small evolution, subtle but intentional. Written while touring across Europe and the US, the song became a live-testing ground for new ideas: A chance for Armlock – comprised of Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell – to refine what they do best while pushing into new sonic territory. “We feel it’s refining what we already do but also pushing it into slightly different territory,” Armlock tell Atwood Magazine. “We’re constantly trying to come up with a new feeling within our songs, but trying to present it in its most pure and simplest form.”

“The guitar part was actually inspired by some 2000s progressive house tracks. They way they structure chord progressions is really different to the way you’d usually structure chords in a guitar band, so we wanted to play off that idea. We listen to a lot of rap, and that influenced the vocal melody for sure – just using the same few notes and letting the chords create the colour. We actually tried so many different layers in the production, but we found most of the time it would make the song less immediate or would distract from the lyrics. If we’re on the fence about a sound we just get rid of it, and we’re really picky, so it ends up so minimal.”

That minimalism gives “Strobe” its emotional power. The song’s climax – “That’s my friend on the phone / We’ve been laughing all day / That’s my dad out the front / Think we kinda look the same…” – is disarmingly personal and deeply moving, offered like a Polaroid from someone’s life. “I guess it’s like taking someone on a mini tour of my life,” Lam says. “Like driving around and pointing and saying ‘this is the shit that matters most to me.’ And none of it’s really grand or anything, but it’s all awesome.”

That’s my friend on the phone
We’ve been laughing all day
That’s my dad out the front
Think we kinda look the same
She’s the one, number one
Never wanted me to change
Take a lap, cut the chicane
And we do it all again

Even the song’s title hints at that tension between outward shine and inward calm. “It was just taken from one of the lyrics,” they note. “We like how it almost doesn’t suit the song, but alludes to some of the underlying intensity.”

Lam sees that line, “I’m a strobe, blinding eyes with the glow,” as a kind of metaphor for life on the road: “The lyrics kind of touch on the feeling of being off then on, shining but intermittently. Playing shows on a tour kind of feels like that – you give the best version of yourself for the set, then you switch off again until the next one.”

I play it face down
It’s got two and two
I skip the headcheck
Do what I gotta do
Just leave it on the floor…

Infinite, it’s all riding on this
No scoping, heat seeking, we can’t miss
I’m a strobe, blinding eyes with the glow
Because

That off-and-on rhythm echoes throughout the song – in its softly flickering guitars, its near-whispered vocals, and its meditative refrain. It’s a song rooted in the real: In friends and fathers, in phone calls and porch steps, in the people who ground us when the rest of the world won’t stop spinning.

“We just hope people like it, makes them feel good,” Armlock say. “Maybe it reminds someone of their own friends and family. It’s a weirdly positive song for us, but we think we’re down for doing more like this.”

Maybe that’s what keeps me coming back to “Strobe” – why I’ve listened to it so many times, and still can’t quite put my finger on what makes it hit so hard. It’s not just the warmth or the softness, the ache or the glow; it’s the fact that this song feels lived-in. It feels like a familiar smile; it feels like a hug. It feels real. It feels like it means everything to Armlock – and in that vulnerability, in that gentle intensity, it ends up meaning everything to me, too. It’s everything all at once.

That’s my friend on the phone
We’ve been laughing all day
That’s my dad out the front
Think we kinda look the same
She’s the one, number one
So be careful what you say
Take a lap, cut the chicane
And we do it all again

“Look what it’s done to you.” S.G. Goodman’s “Satellite” is a smoldering fever dream – a soft hypnosis that aches in all it says, and in all it leaves unsaid. Hauntingly beautiful and breathtaking in its restraint, the track opens her upcoming album Planting by the Signs with a slow-burning eruption. From the first line – “Say it’s good, say it’s right, wishing on a satellite” – we’re locked in orbit, circling the anxieties of disconnection, distortion, and faith in false signals.

Built on sparse guitars, a steady, insistent drumbeat, and Goodman’s singular, trembling voice, “Satellite” simmers with tension, grit, and tenderness all at once. The chorus, “Ooh ooh, look what it’s done to you,” hits like a whisper and a wound – equal parts reflection, reverie, and emotional reckoning. Her voice may sound gentle, but it carries a crushing weight; a lament dressed as a lullaby.

Say it’s good, say it’s right,
wishing on a satellite
Kingdom come, kingdom come
It’s the same for everyone,
it’s the same for everyone

Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Look what it’s done to you

For Goodman, this song and its parent album speak to a deeper need – not just to express, but to preserve. “Satellite” isn’t simply the opener; it’s the doorway into a larger conversation about memory, meaning, and the ways we chart our lives by forces greater than ourselves. It sets the tone for Planting by the Signs as both a personal and collective confrontation – a body of work rooted in old wisdom and made urgent by the disorientation of the present day.

“The whole premise behind the practice of Planting by the Signs is that we can look to nature to understand when would be the best time to do something to get the best results,” the Kentucky-born and raised singer/songwriter shares. “I am interested in how man is obstructing nature and its ancient knowledge, while the human condition remains the same: that to survive we must be in harmony with nature and each other.”

In the jaw, in the jaw
That’s where you can catch it all
Say it’s true, say it’s right
Wishing on a satellite, wishing on a satellite

Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Look what it’s done to you

That conflict – between humanness and modernity, nature and technology – pulses at the core of “Satellite.” It’s a warning and a wonder, a meditation on what we’ve lost and what might still be salvageable.

“Sometimes you have to keep an old story going so that others can see their place in it next to yours,” Goodman explains. “When writing songs for this album, details and imagery from Planting by the Signs would emerge in songs that I feel portray universal experiences through my particular view. I do believe that from our earliest existence, humans have been seeking ways to live life in the right way, and we continue to fight about it to this day. I am interested in how as a human race we will reconcile expanding technological advancement, data driven metrics, and how we receive information.”

She continues, “What happens when as a society we look to screens for guidance and not the natural world? I believe it is leading us further away from our ability to acknowledge both what we could gain and lose by ignoring nature’s messages. I start my album with ‘Satellite,’ where I am in conversation about these concerns.”

Moon is full, moon is right
Pulling on your shadowside
Born again, pulled the tooth
Cut the skin down at the root
Cut the skin down at the root

Kingdom come, kingdom come
It’s the same for everyone
Kingdom come, kingdom come
Talking shit and having fun
Kingdom come, kingdom come
It’s the same for everyone

Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Ooh, look what it’s done to you
Ooh, look what it’s done to you

That tension – between progress and preservation, digital noise and natural clarity – isn’t just written into this song’s lyrics; it lives in the sound. “Satellite” feels like a transmission from the in-between: It’s Goodman reckoning, in real time, with the widening gap between humanity and the earth that raised us. Her aching voice is searching, almost pleading, as she confronts a world that’s forgotten how to listen to anything but its own reflection. The result is not just a haunting meditation on modern disconnection, but a call to reattune – to ourselves, to one another, and to the messages still echoing in the dirt and the stars.

Dramatic and disquieting, “Satellite” is the sound of trying to stay grounded in an untethered world. Of reaching for something real while signals distort above our heads. It’s intimate, intense, and deeply personal – and maybe that’s why it lingers long after the final line. “Wishing on a satellite,” S.G. Goodman repeats in the outro, her voice fading into static – into an uncomfortable catharsis.

Look what it’s done to you. Look what it’s done to all of us.

Planting by the Signs is out June 20 via Goodman’s very own Slough Water Records / Thirty Tigers.

Say it’s good, say it’s right,
wishing on a satellite
Say it’s good, say it’s right,
wishing on a satellite
Wishing on a satellite
Wishing on a satellite
Wishing on a satellite

“Stuck around just like a stain… has my welcome been overstayed?” Nii opens “People Talk to People” with a gut punch, and from there, he doesn’t hold back. A standout off the British singer/songwriter and guitarist’s sophomore EP Whiplash, the song is upbeat, intimate, achingly emotional and relentlessly intense – a cathartic burst of social anxiety and self-awareness wrapped in driving guitars and dynamic rhythms. It’s propulsive and provocative, dancing between overthinking and oversharing, internal reckoning and raw release.

Stuck around just like a stain
Has my welcome been overstayed
The mood falls like September rain
No I don′t wanna be dead to you

Oh don’t be so hard on yourself boy
You′re making this awkward
For everyone else
Bleeding all over the carpet
It seeps through the floorboards
I’ll help you on your way out of here

“Funnily enough, the title came before anything else,” Nii tells Atwood Magazine. “I had a few lines about social anxiety, and we started a little groove in [producer] Jack Segal’s home studio. When I presented the concept to him, we sat down on his balcony with two guitars and wrote the chord and lyrics together before going back in to record the track.” The result is a whirlwind of emotion: From its anxious heartbeat to its disarming pre-chorus – “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, boy / You’re making this awkward for everyone else” – “People Talk to People” captures the chaos of trying to connect while constantly second-guessing yourself.

Tell me how I’m supposed to feel
I lost my words so I′m blind
behind the steering wheel
Well last night you had us laughing
Not sure if it was real
Well these drugs are like communion
Where no one ever heals

“It’s about social anxiety and how much more alienating it becomes as I get older,” Nii explains. “Realising that this mountain that I thought I had climbed in my younger years has sprouted its ugly head again. And it’s not so cute or endearing now as a ‘grown adult’… I wanted to express how much it feels like a casualty for me, but if I hide it well enough after a drink or two, friends can convince me that I have no problem at all. That’s if I don’t end up oversharing as a wild overcorrection.”

Don′t be so hard on yourself boy
You’re making this awkward
For everyone else
Seems like no one even noticed
You had trouble talking
Won′t you keep it all to yourself next time

People talk to people
Lately I’ve been see-through
Hiding but I don′t meant to
No I don’t wanna be dead to you

This song doesn’t hide anything. It twists his heart and soul inside out: “No, I don’t want to be dead to you,” he confesses in one breath, before losing himself in spirals of self-doubt the next. And yet, beneath the jagged edges, there’s a hopeful current – the kind of honesty that opens doors, if not for others, then at least for oneself.

For Nii, this track captures so much of the soul of his new EP. “Whiplash represents a struggle between who I am and who I want to be,” he shares. “Throughout the EP it feels like I’m unwillingly forced to face who I actually am, despite reaching for a person or a substance that I think will change me. That includes those moments where I’m reminded of how I felt growing up, being in the outside looking in and wishing I had the words to express it. I found those words with ‘People Talk to People.’”

It’s a powerful reminder to meet yourself where you are – and maybe offer a little grace while you’re there. “I hope listeners that relate to it realise they’re not alone in how they feel,” Nii says. “I think most of us at some point can relate to feeling out of step with your social life, relationships and how you express your true self. And it’s better to accept where you’re at and change it rather than mask it.”

“It’s not a subject I’ve successfully grasped in my writing until now, so I’ve found it really cathartic to write. It feels like years of observations culminating into one song and younger me needed to hear it. So I’m fulfilled with the work itself but even more so knowing there’s maybe a version of younger me out there listening that can connect.”

Should be easy now we’re older
So tell me little lies
Like everything changes
when you least expect and
It’s all in your mind
I′ll chew on it while I′m sober
And spit it out at night
Yeah people talk to people
But I said too much this time

Hailing from Leeds and now based in London, Nii released his debut single in just April of last year, closely followed by his debut EP Nothing Waiting, an intimate introduction to his vulnerable art and seductive artistry.

“I want people to know my aim is always to be honest, sometimes painfully so,” he says of those just discovering him today. “Showing flaws so I can connect with others and we can sit in the messiness together. My music’s for the over-thinkers, and if you’ve ever felt too much and said too little, you might find a home in these songs.”

A radiant reckoning five times over, Whiplash is truly the perfect embodiment of those sentiments. “For me, this EP is really a whirlwind through self-discovery,” he confides. “It’s a bunch of falling down moments after getting ahead of myself, perhaps trying to pursue somebody else’s life. In the wake of my last EP, there was everything to gain, so there are more forthcoming themes and sounds in Whiplash. And with the emergency stop of ‘Death Song,’ I seek to be more candid about the things I can’t change in myself, other people, and whatever is inevitable.”

Start with “People Talk to People,” but don’t stop there. Whiplash is a ride worth taking.

Night Tapes’ “Television” is pure intoxication – a slow, simmering spell that slips under the skin and lingers in the bloodstream long after the final note fades. It’s brooding and melancholy, moody and moving – dancey and haunting all at once. Released on Valentine’s Day as the second single off the London trio’s upcoming debut album portals//polarities (out September 26^th via Nettwerk Music Group), the track pulses like a lucid dream: Lush and cinematic, full of soft shadows and fleeting light. Iiris Vesik’s vocals glide high and weightless above a bed of swirling synths and nocturnal percussion, their texture as emotionally charged as the lyrics themselves.

I don’t want to become just a person
on my phone in ambiance
wanna be where the fun is
you refine until you crystallise

everybody’s television
anything can be a vision
everybody’s intermission
anything could be a part
these days, yeah

I’ve had Night Tapes’ 2024 EP assisted memories on steady rotation for months, and “Television” somehow feels like both a continuation and an ascension – a deepening of the band’s already immersive sound. There’s a subtle ache baked into every moment here: That quiet feeling of being surrounded, but somehow still alone. Of seeking connection through endless digital windows, and only catching glimpses of reflection.

As Vesek shares, the song was born of one of those everyday moments that slowly turns profound. “I was sitting in the park, looking into a portal in my hands and worrying about the world,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “When I looked up, I could see that there were lots of people in the park who, like me, had come to enjoy the park. Everywhere I looked – they were in the portals in their hands. Some were diving headfirst, some kept good posture, and I thought to myself that at least singing with good technique requires good posture, so hopefully when I’m 80, my body would still be somewhat straight up when I’m going somewhere.”

“I also thought that this is not how parks are meant to work. So I wrote down the first sentence of this song into the useful portal in my hands to use it later.”

I just wanna be where the fun is

you can’t go back
you know too much now
you can’t go back
forward, forward
go on

you can’t go back
you know too much now
you can’t go back
forward, forward
go on

It’s that collision of inner and outer worlds – the visible and invisible, the tangible and the transcendent – that gives “Television” its weight. Night Tapes, which began as housemates Max Doohan, Sam Richards, and Iiris Vesik jamming together in London, craft music that lives in the liminal spaces. Their sound blends tactile textures with metaphysical themes, creating something that feels emotionally immediate and cosmically distant all at once.

been refracting light through a prism
every single lie has been a prison

life lived on the edge
life lived on the border
treading waters end
I don’t miss it
I don’t miss it
I don’t miss it
hanging by a thread

That rings especially true on “Television,” as the trio confront questions of perception and reality. “Herman Hesse has said, ‘There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself,’” Vesek adds. “So I followed his advice, closed my eyes, and formed a different portal that took me to my body in order to get into my inner world…”

“Television” pulses in that sacred space between reality and reflection. It’s a portal of its own – one that doesn’t disconnect you from the present, but instead pulls you deeper into it. One that reminds you how to feel, how to breathe, how to be.

Plug in. Drop out. Drift off. Let it take you somewhere quieter.

portals//polarities arrives this fall.

you can’t go back
you know too much now
you can’t go back
forward, forward
go on

you can’t go back
you know too much now
you can’t go back
forward, forward
go on

“Can’t Fight the Feeling” is pure, unadulterated post-punk exhilaration – a searing, shadowy rush of sound and emotionally charged sensation that aches as much as it intoxicates. It’s dark and dramatic in all the best ways: Brooding and propulsive, haunting and hedonistic. From the Boston-based trio House of Harm – Michael Rocheford, Cooper Leardi, and Tyler Kershaw – this song is the first release since their acclaimed 2023 album Playground, and it arrives like a shot to the system.

Moving on to what?
It’s hard to want to
Before could stop
It’s all I won’t do
Asleep in the same room
Just to hide the lies that I’m dreaming
The mirrors became you
Reflecting the sounds, so misleading

Can’t fight the feeling
You don’t get me anymore
With each night revealing
That we’ve closed another door

This track sounds like fresh air at 10:30pm – that electric pause before the night begins. It’s anticipation and ache wrapped into one; that perfect, fleeting moment when anything feels possible, even as something important slips through your fingers. The lyrics cut deep – “Can’t fight the feeling / You don’t get me anymore / With each night revealing / That we’ve closed another door” – and yet the music refuses to wallow. It lifts, swells, and surges forward, creating a cathartic kind of chaos: A celebration in the midst of collapse.

“Lyrically, the song was inspired by real events and also dreams,” frontman Michael Rocheford shares. “At first, I was trying to convey the clarity I felt when a personal relationship was falling apart. The song developed as that mess played out, and took on a more uneasy and regretful point of view. I also incorporated a dream which involved reluctantly jumping off a cliff.”

Pulling eyes wide shut
The face we cut through
Seeing what you want
When nothing could hold true
We could waste the day
With fake composure
Yeah, we don’t see it quite the same
So embrace the closure

That dream logic bleeds into the track’s surreal, cinematic edges – where reflection and distortion blur together, and emotion overrides everything else. The verses teem with dread and longing (“the mirrors became you / reflecting the sounds, so misleading”), but the chorus erupts like a scream in a silent room – undeniable, immediate, and fully felt.

Can’t fight the feeling
You don’t get me anymore
With each night revealing
That we’ve closed another door
Can’t fight the feeling
You don’t get me anymore
With each night revealing
That we’ve closed another door

With “Can’t Fight the Feeling,” House of Harm continue their steady evolution while staying true to their core: a sound that’s sleek, stylish, and unrelentingly human. This is a song you move to as much as you feel it. It’s nightlife and nightmare, heartbreak and release. Don’t fight the feeling – just surrender to it.

It’s taken hold again
Assuming eyes, once leading
Pacing by the edge
Opening arms call to me
I can’t see it, but everyone knows
I can’t see it, but everyone knows
Everyone knows
Everyone knows

Snuggle’s “Dust” is dreamy, tender, and above all else, spellbinding.

An intoxicating alternative reverie full of raw, heavy, understated feeling, the Copenhagen duo’s latest single is delicate and devastating all at once. There’s a quiet power in its softness – this sense that emotion is seeping through the stillness, the gentleness, the breaths, the void. snuggle prove that you don’t need to scream or shout to let it all out.

Built on dream-pop guitar textures and a hypnotic breakbeat groove, “Dust” fuses visceral emotion with a woozy, slow-motion atmosphere. Andrea Thuesen’s voice drifts like smoke through Vilhelm Strange’s lo-fi production, spinning a surreal vision of love and loss at the end of the world. “Burning cities, cicadas silent / Everything is dying,” she sings, her tone breathy and serene even as the imagery collapses around her. It’s a song that confronts heaviness by floating above it, finding beauty in oblivion.

Salt trails on my skin,
your fingers following them
Diving into your eyes, ocean deep,
sand grains in my teeth
I’m grinding
Burning pine trees, cicadas singing
the mountainside is changing
Orange flames are eating the remains
of the day

“The song started as a completely different, really melancholic country-style riff and became what it is now,” snuggle tell Atwood Magazine. “It’s almost like the chords and funky drums didn’t want to follow where the lyrics were going. We were thinking about how the world feels more lost than ever in our lifetime and, at the same time, being close to someone you love and wanting to be there forever – that double-sided, strange feeling.”

They describe “Dust” as their “love song for an apocalypse,” a phrase that captures the emotional core of the track perfectly. “Sunburnt skin, melting ice cream, and chaos humming in the back of everyone’s mind,” the duo explain. “We love songs that feel like they belong in a certain moment in time, whether it’s the listener’s moment or our own – it’s something we steer towards. The ‘end of the world’ part refers to the lyrics: Cicadas that are silent, all that.”

Orange peel under my nails,
the sweet juice touches my lips
Your lips on my neck

Sweet words said under your breath

We’re breathing still
Ashes in the windowsill

Inspired by Bowery Electric’s album Beat – specifically its use of tape loops and breakbeats – “Dust” leans into a dreamlike hypnosis that feels both ancient and futuristic. “The way they use tape loops and breakbeats to build these super hypnotic tracks is so cool,” the band share. “Highly recommend if you haven’t checked it out.”

And while the song may be built on contradiction – quiet chaos, soft collapse, heavenliness amidst despair – that’s exactly what gives it its glow. “If the world’s ending, we might as well go out with a good soundtrack,” they say. “But really, we just hope people connect with it in whatever way makes sense to them – and that the world doesn’t end!”

An intimate alternative whisper, “Dust” lingers like a strange memory of something you haven’t lived yet. snuggle really do say it best themselves: “This is a love song for an apocalypse… Miss David Lynch.”

Ash trails on your skin,
my fingers following them
The wall paint is melting,
these four walls and all they contain
Gone, is gone
Burning cities, cicadas silent
Everything is dying
Dust, what’s left of us
Ashes

Ashes to ashes
Ashes to ashes

— — — —

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