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 Billie Marten, benches, Gatlin, The Happy Fits, BODHI, and quickly, quickly!

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There’s a moment just before dusk when the world exhales – when the wind stills, the trees hush, and everything seems suspended in golden light. Billie Marten’s “Feeling” lives in that moment. It’s a song of delicate grace and quiet catharsis, gently unfolding like a whisper in the breeze. One of the sweetest, softest songs I’ve heard all year, “Feeling” stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it live – just Marten, her guitar, and a room full of hearts quietly breaking open inside Woodstock’s Bearsville Theater. She opened her set with it that night, and two weeks later, I’m still floating.

Sweep the leaves and cut the air
Find a secret hanging there
You are hiding at the top of the stairs
Where you can be alone

Drawing roads into the sand
Falling deep into your hands
Barely grown enough to stand
And looking up at you

The second single off Marten’s forthcoming album Dog Eared (out July 18^th via Fiction Records), “Feeling” is softly stunning – a dreamy, aching surrender that swells with warmth and wonder. Every breath, every lyric, every lullaby-like guitar strum feels deeply intentional and deeply felt. The chorus alone – “And you look so good / And you are so clean / I am on my way, hey, hey / I am barely breathing” – is enough to knock the wind out of you, even as it lifts you up.

And you look so good
And you look so clean
I am on my way, hey, hey
I am in between feeling
Feeling…

Marten describes “Feeling” as a tapestry of memory and sensory impressions. “I’ve discovered that I have a really particular long-term memory: I have specific sensory recollections from when I was two onwards, that I can recall easily now,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “One of these is marking out roads in my grandmother’s patterned carpet, for my Dad’s old 1950/60s toy cars to drive on. I used to trace patterns in everything: fabric seats at the dentist, carpets, wallpaper and walls, raindrops on car windows. Everything had a pattern to be noticed.”

That sensitivity to detail – to movement, texture, light, and shadow – flows through this song’s every note. “Another strong memory is the feeling of big, warm hands when you’re a child and how comforting and safe that feels,” she continues. “The notion of age being so far away from you, but you know it’s a future inevitability, and that you’re on your way there. The inarticulateness of that ‘feeling’ you can’t describe yet, but you’re aware of a push in the world that you don’t yet understand.”

We are oh so lightly here
Softer than a rabbit ear
Watch me as I disappear
Into the great unknown

It’s this intangible, tender pull that gives “Feeling” its shape and soul. That, and the spellbinding guitarwork of Núria Graham (another former Atwood artist-to-watch), which Marten says “sparks the album into life and really sets a benchmark in terms of rhythm.”

“Feeling” is more than just an album opener – it’s a gentle awakening, a shimmering prelude to whatever’s next. It’s a song to breathe with, to hum along to on hazy summer nights, to wrap yourself in when words won’t come. The musical equivalent of a warm breeze, it drifts through the air and lingers long after it’s gone. If this ends up on my list of the best songs of the year, I won’t be the least bit surprised – it’s that special, and with Dog Eared out in just a month’s time, Billie Marten is only just getting started.

And you look so good
And you are so clean
I am on my way, hey, hey
I am barely breathing
Into the feeling
Into the feeling

benches’ “Kill the Lights” is an unassuming beast of a song – the kind that creeps under your skin, then sets your soul on fire. From the first listen back in April, it gripped me with its feverish energy and never let go. Two months and countless plays later, I’m finally ready to talk about it – and damn, what a stunning, sub-three-minute fever dream it is.

The title track off the San Diego band’s recently released EP, “Kill the Lights” is a searing, cinematic indie rock reckoning: Unrelenting, immersive, and emotionally charged. It doesn’t just feel like catharsis – it is catharsis. A visceral purge of anxiety and existential dread, this song hits like a panic attack in motion, then holds you steady as it crashes into release. “I still get that feeling that there’s poison in my heart,” frontman Anson Kelley sings, his voice raw and searching. “In another life, I was almost me / On the coast, near the angels / Where the light can’t see me.”

I still get that fantasy that tears me apart
I sure was a fighter when I played the guitar
These fingers got stiff, I took another sip
And let you go

All the years fade from my mind
All the years fade from my mind
All the years fade from my mind

“At its core, the song is about fear,” Kelley – who plays together with Ethan Bowers (drums), Evan Ojeda (lead guitar), and Charlie Baird (bass) – tells Atwood Magazine. “I think it’s a very common feeling to be afraid to make the wrong decision and end up living a life that isn’t in line with what you were hoping for. This song is like an anxiety-driven play-by-play of a worst-case scenario. A life where you made all the wrong decisions and every time you catch a glimpse of the ghost in the rearview, you drive faster in the opposite direction trying to escape it.”

“I think fear and worry and this sort of existential dread that’s tied to it all is a driving factor in a lot of what I do, and I think these emotions make for potent songs. Sometimes when we write, we like to try and have a destination in mind. And most times, anxiety and uncertainty will creep up and bleed into the work. So a lot of times I just end up writing about these all-consuming fears, unintentionally. You have to embrace what scares you and face it head on. Usually if something scares you, there’s something important there.”

I still get that feeling that there’s poison in my heart
Jesus was a family friend, but he never sent me cards
Well, a little alcohol for the OCD
In another life, I was almost me
On the coast, near the angels
Where the light can’t see me
I tried to let you go
But I know they still make fun of me all the time
Can all the years fade from my mind?

There’s no pretense here – just raw, radiant heat. The band pour themselves into every moment: from the raunchy, distorted guitar tones to the propulsive, driving rhythm section that gives the track its intensity and edge. Kelley’s vocals teeter on the edge of unraveling, and that’s part of what makes this song so gut-wrenching. It’s unfiltered, urgent, and painfully human.

“Kill the Lights” doesn’t run from the dark – it lives in it. And in doing so, it shines.

All the years fade from my mind
All the years fade from my mind
All the years fade from my mind

It’s just a fantasy
It’s just a fantasy
It’s just a fantasy
A stupid fantasy

There’s a kind of ache that lives in silence – in the things we don’t say, the desires we bury, the fears that keep us from speaking our truths. Gatlin’s “If She Was a Boy” cracks that silence open with grace, vulnerability, and a dizzying, dreamy beauty. Her first release of 2025, and her debut for Dualtone Records, feels like both a reckoning and a release: a tender, aching coming-out song that’s as sweet as it is sorrowful, as freeing as it is fraught. It’s brutally honest and unfiltered, and yet there’s something wondrous and radiant about it – like sunlight breaking through clouds.

I caught her like a cold in August
Is there a pill to stop the body aches?
She touched my hand said
“Wanna be chaotic”
I’ll do my time and pray it all away

She took all my plans and tossed ‘em
Drew up all my lines and crossed ‘em
Caution, talking to a guilty conscious
I don’t really think I’m seeing straight

I’ve been a fan of Gatlin’s since the beginning – in premiering 2019’s “Curly Hair,” I admired her lyrically-potent, melodically-savvy artistry, praising it as “an artist deep in the process of finding herself and coming into her own as a self-aware mover and shaker in her community.” 2020’s debut EP Sugarcoated was just that – a stirring outpouring of vivid and vulnerable emotion, all packed into an utterly captivating record at the intersection of the pop, alternative, and indie folk worlds. She has consistently dazzled throughout the past five-plus years, and yet, this moment feels like a reintroduction – – like she’s stepping into a new chapter, boldly and unapologetically. “If She Was A Boy” floats on reverb-drenched synths and soft indie-pop textures, but it hits like a confession that’s been sitting on your chest for years. “If I was born another time, another state / Would I be torn between someone you love and someone you tolerate?” she sings, her voice trembling on the edge of heartbreak. “But if she was a boy, I’d be in love.”

If I was born another time another state
Would I be torn between someone you love
and someone you tolerate
I’m too afraid of what you think and who’s above
But if she was a boy
I’d be in love, I’d be in love

“I wrote this bad boy with two incredibly talented queer women, Chloe Kraemer and Amanda Cy, while working in London,” Gatlin shares. “It was such a special room to be a part of – it’s not often I’ve gotten to make a track with all women. As I was packing for my trip to London, I had misplaced my current journal so brought one from years prior that had some empty pages in the back. The day before we wrote this song, I was flipping through the old pages and back in 2018 I had written about my first time having a crush on a girl. One of the things I had written was ‘If she was a boy I’d be in love’ – so I brought that into Chloe and Amanda and it was one of the most seamless songs written on the album. Funny enough, the girl I had a crush on was from London, big full circle moment.”

Maybe it’s just cause she’s got a British accent
Maybe it’s just cause I wanna look like her
It’s just a phase, I’ll brush it off
And I won’t think about her touch or
How her skin and hair and lips would pull me under

If I was born another time another state
Would I be torn between someone you love
and someone you tolerate
I’m too afraid of what you think and who’s above
But if she was a boy
I’d be in love, I’d be in love

There’s magic in that full circle – in taking a line written years ago in a diary and turning it into a shimmering, soul-baring anthem. “If She Was A Boy” is the kind of song that brings artist and listener closer together: It makes space for queerness, confusion, longing, and liberation. Gatlin wraps raw emotion in beauty and lets it breathe. It’s a song for anyone who’s ever questioned what love is supposed to look like – and who they’re allowed to love. And if this is just the beginning of her next era, I can’t wait to hear what comes next.

If I was born another time another state
Would I be torn between someone you love
and someone you tolerate
I’m too afraid of what you think and who’s above
But if she was a boy
I’d be in love, I’d be in love

The Happy Fits’ “Everything You Do” feels like a jolt of joy straight to the heart – like the sonic equivalent of a confetti cannon exploding midair: A radiant, rambunctious rush of feel-good fervor that hits hard, fast, and leaves you grinning like an idiot. It’s loud, it’s lively, it’s unabashedly huge – the kind of cinematic indie rock anthem that fills every inch of a room, lifts the spirit, and reminds you what it feels like to be fully, truly alive.

This is a band I’ve known from the very beginning – when I featured their debut EP Awfully Apeelin’ back in 2016, I wrote: “Calvin Langman and Ross Monteith are as surprised as anyone else is by the success of their band The Happy Fits’ debut EP, but in retrospect, perhaps they shouldn’t be…” Nine years, multiple albums, and countless tour stops later – including Lollapalooza and other festival stages around the world – The Happy Fits are still delivering that same spark I first heard in their breakout single “While You Fade Away,” but with even more firepower, polish, and passion. Their fourth album Lovesick is out September 19^th, and “Everything You Do” is its first exuberant, heart-on-sleeve taste.

One more night of overtime
Keep me up in this box with knuckles white
Well I’ve got bills to pay, and I’ve got mouths to feed
I’m so moody, moody, moody
(Moody, moody, moody)
Then you caught me by surprise with this helpless feeling
Everybody wants to love you
You’re the apple of my eye, what I’m always eating
Everybody wants to love you
Oh, everybody wants to love you
(Everybody wants you)
But I cannot afford to love

“Everything You Do” feels like the musical manifestation of that electric, butterflies-in-your-stomach kind of love – the kind that hits like a freight train and leaves you breathless, giddy, and alive. From the first note, it bursts forward with radiant energy: Pulsing drums, soaring strings, and Calvin Langman’s signature cello lines exploding into technicolor euphoria. It’s pure serotonin – the kind of track that demands to be blasted with the windows down, arms outstretched, heart wide open. And beneath that jubilance lies a thread of yearning and vulnerability, grounding the track in something real and relatable.

For all its bombast and brilliance, “Everything You Do” is still a love song at its core – one bursting at the seams with emotion, longing, and vulnerability. Langman’s lyrics toe the line between joy and desperation, capturing the spiraling rush of falling head-over-heels for someone you feel you can’t have: “I can’t get my mind off loving you / ’Cause I’m in love with everything you do / So help me please from falling faster / There’s no stopping this disaster.” It’s giddy, breathless, and a little bit unhinged – a heartsick anthem set to a euphoric soundtrack. That tension between exuberance and emotional chaos is exactly what makes it hit so hard.

I can’t get my mind off loving you
Cause I’m in love with everything you do
So help me please from falling faster
There’s no stopping this disaster
Save me, won’t you say you love me too?

“I read somewhere that the amount of married US adults dropped from 67% in 1990 to 53% today,” frontman Calvin Langman shares. “At the same time, over 50% of millennials are taking on multiple jobs and ‘polyworking.’ I’m no data scientist, but why is it so damn expensive to be in a relationship these days? Maybe it’s just my social circles and algorithm, but there’s a shared feeling amongst the hoi polloi of being overworked, underpaid, and underloved. It’s not that we don’t want to be in relationships, it’s just that we simply can not afford to love. ‘Everything You Do’ is my own internal battle of fighting for my heart vs. being practical and rational. Knowing me, the heart always finds a way to win…”

Langman continues, “For the grand premiere of the bigger, better The Happy Fits 2.0, we knew we had to show what we do best: perform! The video was shot in the basement of the punk-world-famous First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, along with a skeleton crew of guys who knew how to squeeze every ounce of vibe out of that space and into the video. Ironically, we were kicked out two hours earlier than we expected due to an Agnostic group who had rented the space after us, claiming they rented it earlier than it said on the call sheet. They seemed pretty sure about this for a group of people who aren’t sure about a lot. Nonetheless, over 11 hours of shooting, we got the dozens of takes needed for our first performance-based music video ever, and the first look into the future of The Happy Fits.”

I say, you say, “What’s the deal?
It’s a very short life with no appeal”
Well I’ve got time to kill and I’ve got pills to take
I’m so moody, moody, moody
(Moody, moody, moody)
Then you caught me by surprise with this helpless feeling
Everybody wants to love you
You’re the apple of my eye, what I’m always eating
Everybody wants to love you
Oh, everybody wants to love you
(Everybody wants you)
But I cannot afford to love

I can’t get my mind off loving you
Cause I’m in love with everything you do
So help me please from falling faster
There’s no stopping this disaster
Save me, won’t you say you love me too?

There’s a certain magic to this band’s musical alchemy – the way they blend catharsis with joy, unfiltered emotion with electrifying hooks. “Everything You Do” is a perfect example: a song that wears its heart on its sleeve while compelling you to dance, shout, and sing your lungs out. It’s a testament to their evolution and their unrelenting sense of fun – the kind that’s built not just from talent, but from trust, chemistry, and years of shared growth.

The Happy Fits have always been the kind of band that makes you feel better just by pressing play. And now, nearly a decade in, they’re not just still doing that – they’re doing it bigger, louder, and more beautifully than ever before. “Everything You Do” isn’t just a comeback – it’s a celebration.

You drive me crazy all the time
You spin in circles ’round my mind
And if the stars would all align
Then would you love me?
Would you be mine?

I can’t get my mind off loving you
Cause I’m in love with everything you do
So help me please from falling faster
There’s no stopping this disaster
Save me, won’t you say you love me too?

Oh how I love a good brood – and BODHI’s “This Little Dove” hits that emotional sweet spot with stunning precision. A smoldering, soulful seduction, it’s both soothing and aching: an atmospheric, slow-burning confession that stirs something deep inside. Their voice – beautiful, bold, and heartbreakingly tender – aches with raw vulnerability, turning pain into poetry and burnout into balm. It’s a song you feel in your bones, in your breath, in the quiet places you don’t always let others see.

If I’m on the bend, please save me from myself
Set my vices on a fire, leave me wadin’ in the water
If you need me here I swear pray for my health
I fear my body’s getting old,
I fear I’m losin’ my composure

“This Little Dove” is the third single of the year from the 23-year-old Bridgeport, CT-based artist, and it’s as captivating as it is cathartic. BODHI opens with a plea – “If I’m on the bend, please save me from myself” – and from there, the weight only builds. “I’m on fire, fire! This little dove is tired…” That lyric alone feels like a gut-punch, a whispered cry for help carried on the wind. Burnout, fatigue, and the desperation to keep going pulse through every harmony and every breath, their voice weaving between cinematic swells and soft, aching silences.

I’m on fire (fire)
Please tear me off the wires
I’m losing all control now,
you act like you don’t know
I’m on fire (fire)
This little dove is tired
I’m running low on hope now,
you act like you don’t know
I’m on fire, fire, fire (I’m on fire), fire

“To set the stage for my album of self-reflection, I start at my lowest moment. A moment of pure burn out and devastation,” BODHI tells Atwood Magazine. “The build up of instrumentation, harmonies, and volume is a representation of the build up felt within. This message in this song is felt universally, and I hope to draw listeners in to hear and heal with me through the rest of the story.”

That intent radiates through every second of this track. The production is immersive and restrained, letting each word land like a heavy truth. Their vocal performance is otherworldly – gripping, ghostly, gorgeously human. It’s the kind of song that doesn’t just echo your own exhaustion; it offers a quiet place to sit in it, to honor it, and to maybe start healing from it.

My momma told me I run in my sleep
I’ve been runnin’ for forever, lookin’ forward to forgettin’
The land I lay the young, the wild, and free
I will write until the chains off, I’m alive until the chains off

I’m on fire (fire)
Please tear me off the wires
I’m losing all control now,
you act like you don’t know
I’m on fire (fire)
This little dove is tired
I’m running low on hope now,
you act like you don’t know

BODHI may be at the start of a new chapter, now signed to Nettwerk and prepping their debut project, but their voice already carries the weight of experience and the promise of something unforgettable. “This Little Dove” is a breathtaking introduction to an artist who isn’t afraid to meet the darkness head-on – and who sings with the hope that we’ll come out the other side together.

I’m on fire (fire)
Please tear me off the wires
I’m losing all control now,
you act like you don’t know
I’m on fire (fire)
This little dove is tired
I’m running low on hope now,
you act like you don’t know
I’m on (fire, fire, fire, fire)

quickly, quickly’s “Take It From Me” feels like a secret being whispered right into your ear – soft and serene, quietly enchanting and deeply comforting. A rare and radiant standout off the Portland artist’s fourth studio album I Heard That Noise (released April 18 via Ghostly International), it glows like a warm, incandescent light: all tender acoustics, glistening textures, and hushed emotion. There’s a sense of nearness in the music – like Jonson is sitting in the room with us, guitar in hand, singing gently into the quiet.

I walked in, covered my ears
You said, “Don’t come”, but I’m already here
I know you’re pissed off from working the show
I was just trying to lighten the load
You parked down a couple of blocks
Near a campsite, trading money for rocks
I unlocked your passenger door
And you said, “I can’t live with this anymore”
Take it from me…

“This was one of those melodies that I just had in my head for a while before I recorded it,” Jonson tells Atwood Magazine. “When I finally did put it down it was cool but didn’t stand out enough so I let it sit for a few months. When I came back to it, I completely restructured the song to fit more in the universe of the others on the album. There are two separate stories on this song – the first verse is a lived experience of a broken relationship, and the second a more inward look upon myself. Both end in the resignation of ‘take it from me’ as a blind plea for some kind of change.”

There’s something deeply cathartic about the way “Take It From Me” unfolds – in how it holds tension and then releases it with the softest of sighs. “I walked in, covered my ears / You said, ‘Don’t come,’ but I’m already here” – the scene is set in quiet chaos, full of hurt and miscommunication. Jonson paints intimate portraits of heartbreak and unraveling: “You parked down a couple of blocks / Near a campsite, trading money for rocks… I unlocked your passenger door / And you said, ‘I can’t live with this anymore.’” The lyrics ache with unspoken grief, with loneliness, and with resignation.

“Take it from me,” he repeats like a plea – one part surrender, one part quiet strength. “A great storm is coming over the hill / I hope it don’t hit, but I know that it will / It’ll split me from my heart and my skin / It’s not if, but a matter of when.” That imagery lingers long after the music fades. Jonson captures the fragile beauty of vulnerability – the kind of raw honesty that gives you chills. “I’m not proud of who I’ve become / I’m alone, but so is everyone. Take it from me…” That mantra-like refrain lands like a soft reassurance in the dark – a reminder that pain is never ours alone to bear.

A great storm is coming over the hill
I hope it don’t hit, but I know that it will
It’ll split me from my heart and my skin
It’s not if, but a matter of when
I’m not good (Not good)
A couple problems under my hood
I’m not proud of who I’ve become
I’m alone, but so is everyone
Take it from me…

As Jonson explains, “‘Take It From Me’ was written during a rough part of my life. I wanted to explore the idea of the two meanings – as in taking a burden off of somebody, and as in a shared experience.”

Like much of I Heard That Noise, the song is autobiographical and emotionally open-ended. “It was all kind of written during the same part of my life,” Jonson says. “So a lot of the songs are similar themes of love and loss and anxious attachment. They are also autobiographical, and ‘Take It From Me’ is no different.”

There’s also a deep humility and quiet confidence to Jonson’s process. “I think it’s really important for songs – especially autobiographical songs like this – to be vague enough so the listener can connect with whatever meaning they want to it,” he reflects. “When I make music, I tend to disassociate from the actual lyrical content of the song and it feels like it wasn’t even written by me. So, I get to create meaning in that as well.”

For those just discovering quickly, quickly now, this is the perfect entry point – a gentle invitation into a project defined by subtlety, warmth, experimentation, and emotional honesty. “I love to make music!!! It’s really the only thing I’m good at,” Jonson adds. “I am super lucky to play music with some of my best friends. We even have matching tattoos of a roadrunner.”

His project may be named quickly, quickly, but this song envelops the soul slowly, slowly – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. If this is what it sounds like to live with your heart on your sleeve, I hope Graham Jonson never puts it away. “Take It From Me” is a quiet triumph – a stunningly soul-soothing moment of reflection that leaves you feeling a little more understood, and a little less alone.

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Editor’s Picks

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