Every Friday, Atwood Magazine’s staff share what they’ve been listening to that week – a song, an album, an artist – whatever’s been having an impact on them, in the moment.
This week’s weekly roundup features music by Gabriel Dinero, Sunddi, Melody Briar, NOANNE & Gregory Darling, Meadowglade, John Wood, McGrath, Girl Apocrypha, Above & Beyond, Lola Audreys, Saskia, FLEUR ROUGE, Scizzorman, Burry, Ferguson Hi-Fi, Tess Clare, Efro, Lily Franc, Imperial Teen, & Hope Winter!
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follow WEEKLY ROUNDUP on Spotify
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:: “Apariciones” – Gabriel Dinero ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Apariciones – ghostly appearances – can make a whole room disappear. Haunting, hypnotic, and soul-stirring, Gabriel Dinero’s new single is a warbling, glistening alt-R&B reverie that pulls the listener into its orbit almost immediately, one voice and one guitar opening a world that somehow feels both achingly intimate and enormous.
His vocal melody begins exposed, carrying a bruised tenderness on its own before the guitar finds it; from there, the two rise and fall together, sometimes shadowing one another so closely they seem to share the same breath. Propulsive guitar figures keep nudging the song forward beneath all that atmosphere, while Dinero’s voice stretches, aches, and radiates through the spaces between. There are shades of Mk.gee and Dijon in its tactile guitar work and restless intimacy, but “Apariciones” ultimately belongs entirely to Dinero – brooding yet bold, gentle yet visceral, creative in its construction and utterly engulfing in execution.
The song’s singular atmosphere is striking because so little is actually required to create it. Written and produced by Dinero, and mixed and mastered by Luca Scarfidi at Merlo Recording Studios, “Apariciones” strips his music down to its essentials. Dinero has described the song as an exercise in moving beyond his comfort zone, part of a larger 2026 chapter in which the Guatemalan, London-based artist has been trusting intuition over perfection and reducing his songs until only their most necessary pieces remain. Here, that restraint creates intensity. Every plucked note matters; every fluctuation in his voice seems magnified. The arrangement feels less assembled than discovered, as though Dinero simply stumbled into a frequency that had been humming somewhere all along.
The song’s Spanish lyrics reveal the hurt beneath all that beauty. “Apariciones” is about the lingering presence of someone who is gone but keeps resurfacing everywhere – in photographs, memory, habit, and the empty spaces we continue setting aside for them. Dinero begins with an admission that letting go is happening, just nowhere near as quickly as he would like:
“Te voy sacando, pero voy muy despacio
Para tus fotos todavía hago espacio
Veo pa’ atrás aunque no haya más que ver
Miro pa’ arriba y nadie me dice qué hacer”
“I’m letting you go, but I’m going very slowly
I still make room for your photos
I look back even though there’s nothing left to see
I look up and nobody tells me what to do”
That contradiction sits at the center of “Apariciones.” Dinero understands the relationship was never meant for him; intellectually, the lesson has already arrived. Emotionally, he is still waiting for whatever the loss took from him to come back. “Y a lo hecho pecho, todo eso ya lo sé” – “What’s done is done, I know all that already” – gives way almost immediately to “Pero te juro que se llevó algo mío / Y por aquí no ha vuelto todavía” – “But I swear it took something of mine / And it still hasn’t come back.” That is the song’s wound: Dinero accepts what happened while still waiting for the part of himself that disappeared with it. He can know the truth and still be haunted by it.
“I’ve always been drawn to the small things that end up telling the truth. You can delete the photos and still keep making space for them,” Dinero shares. “I think part of us never fully lets go of the things that once made us happy. I still don’t know if that’s a contradiction or simply a duality we learn to live with.”
The refrain gives that haunting its clearest shape:
“Y me tocó perder
Me dejaste caer
Si no vas a volver
Dejá de aparecer”
“And it was my turn to lose
You let me fall
If you’re not coming back
Stop appearing”
“Apariciones” means “apparitions” or “appearances,” and that final command turns the title into something almost physical: Stop showing up. Stop reentering the room. Stop becoming present again when absence is already difficult enough to survive. Yet Dinero’s performance betrays how impossible that request really is. His melody keeps reaching outward, and the guitar follows, their synchronized movement giving the refrain an almost gravitational pull. The song grows more radiant as the sentiment gets darker, guitar and voice coursing together until longing itself seems to become momentum.
“‘Apariciones’ is one of my personal favorites from the project because it’s the most stripped-back one,” Dinero explains. “It’s the sorta thing you do when you’re just trying to come up with ideas and just saying whatever’s on your mind at that exact moment, but you don’t really end up using the initial idea as it came to you without some tweaking or refining. So it remained a bit shameless, I guess, and it makes sense that it’s the song where there aren’t many things getting in the way of that truth coming out.”
That shamelessness is precisely what makes “Apariciones” hit with such soul-stirring force. Dinero leaves nowhere for the song to hide, and in return, it becomes its own fully inhabited world – intimate enough to sound whispered directly into your ear, expansive enough to swallow everything around it. The guitar glistens and buckles; his voice moves alongside it with aching precision; memory hangs over the whole performance like a presence that refuses to leave. “Apariciones” is spellbinding because its beauty and its hurt are inseparable. Dinero takes one guitar, one voice, and the ghost of somebody still occupying space in his life, and creates a dramatic display of artistry that feels timeless in the moment you hear it – vulnerable, propulsive, heartfelt, and startlingly alive.
:: “Heavy Eyebrow” – Sunddi ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Heavy attraction has its own gravity on Sunddi’s “Heavy Eyebrow,” a striking, spellbinding indie pop slow-burn that moves with the irresistible pull of desire taking over. Pulsing bass and weighty drums drive the song forward beneath hazy psychedelic textures, while Sunddi’s vocals climb higher and higher through the mix, giving all that brooding atmosphere a radiant center. Moody, seductive, and beautifully dramatic, “Heavy Eyebrow” unfolds like a fever dream you don’t particularly want to wake from – a sweetly sludgy rush of sound that smolders one moment and surges with soul-stirring force the next.
Heavy Eyebrow, you destroy me.
Knees are shaking, I am dead.
Do I know you? I sure want to.
We should wrestle in my bed.
Would you mind it?…
Cause’ I don’t mind
I’m a wreck, you’ve run me over.
Oil is leaking everywhere.
Can’t control it, I’m not sober.
You’re the liquor to my head.
I don’t mind it…
Do you mind?
The lyrics are disarmingly direct about what has him so rattled. “Heavy Eyebrow, you destroy me / Knees are shaking, I am dead,” Sunddi sings, following that wonderfully evocative opening with an invitation that leaves very little to the imagination: “Do I know you? I sure want to / We should wrestle in my bed.” Attraction quickly becomes total disorientation. He’s a wreck, he’s been run over, he’s leaking oil everywhere; by the time the song reaches its central plea, lust has completely overwhelmed whatever composure he started with:
I want you bad
I need to feel your lips
Touching mine
I need it soon
And would you like that too?
Would you, would you?
Part of the song’s charm lies in the fact that “Heavy Eyebrow” was never originally supposed to belong to Sunddi at all. The Gothenburg-based artist first wrote and produced it for somebody else, only reclaiming it after that artist ultimately decided against releasing the finished track. “I actually wrote and pitched this song to someone else, and then we co-wrote lyrics,” he explains. “And then when the production and mixing was done, the artist didn’t want to release it under their name. But I still absolutely adored the song, so I figured I’d just lay down all the vocals myself and release under my project. And here we are.”
That unusual route seems to have unlocked the song’s looseness. Sunddi asked the intended artist what he had been listening to, received “Outkast and Parcels” as his answer, and started building from there. “I thought, ‘perfect,’” he recalls. “So from there I just started cooking snippets and ideas. I still remember when the vocal hook for ‘Heavy Eyebrow’ came to me. That was an awesome feeling. And through writing for others I’ve really let go of trying to fit the music into whatever it is I think my music should be or sound like, I just go with whatever sounds cool to me. That’s been very liberating.” You can hear that freedom everywhere: the thick low end, the heavy rhythmic thump, the vocals soaring over all that density, and the refrain locking into a hypnotic repetition of “Would you mind it?” until the question itself becomes part of the groove.
“For me personally this song is just about really leaning into a vibe and letting that magic take the wheel in the process,” Sunddi says. “I was initially writing it for someone else, and that allowed me to create more openly, I think. That’s also sort of how I view it in hindsight. This song very much unlocked my sense of just writing and producing freely in whatever genre or sound that feels right, without concerning myself with what something should be or fit into. If that makes sense? It has been very liberating for me, and is something that I will carry with me in my creative work moving forward.”
That instinct suits an artist who grew up on Sweden’s west coast surrounded by folk, jazz, metal, pop, and rock, and now says he “cook[s] most musical meals from home,” largely handling his own writing, production, mixing, and mastering. Sunddi may live broadly within indie pop and rock, but “Heavy Eyebrow” suggests an artist far more interested in following instinct than policing boundaries. There’s psychedelic haze here, rhythmic muscle, pop immediacy, and an almost physical density to the production, all packed into a song that somehow feels both heavy and buoyant.
“Heavy Eyebrow” is intoxicating because Sunddi lets the whole thing breathe, throb, and swell on its own terms. Desire becomes rhythm; anticipation becomes pressure; a funny, horny little lyric becomes the center of an immersive rush that feels genuinely alive. Hypnotic, charged, and irresistibly invigorating, it’s a breath of light and life wrapped inside a darker pulse – proof that sometimes the best creative decision is simply to stop asking where a song belongs and follow whatever magic has already taken the wheel.
:: “The Intangible Man” – Melody Briar ::
Danielle Holian, Galway, Ireland
Melody Briar’s “The Intangible Man” feels like the sound of someone standing at the threshold between memory and disappearance, reaching for a person who can no longer be reached and discovering that grief has its own strange architecture. Rooted in Briar’s lifelong relationship with piano, voice, and classical music, the single carries an elegance that never feels ornamental. Its sweeping strings, textured acoustic guitar, and atmospheric production create a cinematic haze around deeply intimate songwriting, allowing the track to breathe with the weight of remembrance. There is something dreamlike in the way Briar approaches loss, not as a single moment of devastation but as a gradual transformation, where someone who once occupied physical space begins to exist instead through stories, photographs, fragments, gestures, and the unreliable chambers of memory. The title itself captures that haunting transition. The “intangible man” is no longer someone who can be touched or spoken to, yet his presence persists in ways that can feel almost more powerful because they are no longer bound to the physical world. Briar understands the contradiction beautifully. Her music does not attempt to resolve grief so much as inhabit it, giving uncertainty and longing room to unfold.
What makes the song particularly affecting is its understanding of how memory can both preserve and distort. Loss does not simply remove someone from our lives, it changes the shape of the relationship itself. Briar explores that process with a songwriter’s eye for detail and a poet’s sensitivity to emotional contradiction, moving between quiet intimacy and wider cinematic passages as though the song itself is remembering. There are moments that feel almost whispered into existence before the arrangement expands around them, creating the sensation of a private memory suddenly becoming enormous. The influence of classical music is crucial here, particularly in the way the instrumentation seems to carry emotional information beyond the lyrics. The strings do not merely decorate the narrative, they deepen it, giving the song a sense of movement through time. Listeners drawn to the emotional worlds of Phoebe Bridgers, Lana Del Rey, Caroline Polachek, or The Cranberries may recognise the combination of vulnerability and atmosphere, but Briar’s voice remains distinctly her own. She has an ability to make the personal feel strangely universal, allowing a specific story of loss to become a mirror for anyone who has ever watched a loved one slowly become part of the past.
As a glimpse into Green Aventurine, “The Intangible Man” suggests an album deeply interested in the spaces where love, mortality, memory, and healing overlap. There is no easy sentimentality here and no attempt to make grief beautiful simply for the sake of beauty. Instead, Briar finds beauty in the uncomfortable truth that remembering someone can be its own form of transformation. The song understands that we do not necessarily leave the dead behind. We carry altered versions of them forward, reshaping their voices inside our own, turning absence into story and eventually story into something resembling mythology. That makes “The Intangible Man” more than a song about mourning. It is a meditation on what remains when everything tangible has been taken away. Briar’s classical foundations give the composition a sense of grandeur, while her contemporary alternative instincts keep it emotionally immediate, creating a track that feels suspended between chamber music and dream pop, between confession and elegy. By the final moments, the song leaves behind the sensation of having wandered through someone else’s memory and somehow found pieces of your own there. “The Intangible Man” is tender without being fragile, cinematic without losing its intimacy, and deeply sorrowful without surrendering to despair. If Green Aventurine continues along this emotional path, Melody Briar may be building something quietly powerful, a body of work where grief is not simply endured, but transformed into language, sound, and lasting connection.
:: “Suite 17” – NOANNE & Gregory Darling ::
Joe Beer, Surrey, UK
Prague-based artist NOANNE joins forces with producer, musician and singer-songwriter Gregory Darling on new single “Suite 17.” Inspired by classic noir and suspense films, the song tells the story of a mysterious character named Jack, introduced through the line, “My name is Jack, I live in Suite 17…” Jack is never fully explained, but represents temptation, memory and the experience of falling back into destructive patterns. The original idea was partly inspired by a real story about a letter that arrived after its sender had died.
The production helps bring that story to life, pairing a darker atmosphere with sweeping strings and a strong sense of drama. NOANNE and Darling take on different roles within the song, giving it a conversational feeling. The string parts were performed by the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and recorded at Forum Studios in Rome, giving the track a rich orchestral element alongside the two vocal performances.
The collaboration also brought new life to a song Darling had been sitting on for several years. He explains, “A tune which has been lying dormant for years until NOANNE stepped into the equation, which I felt was the perfect voice and artist to collaborate with and deliver a solid duet with heartfelt conviction.” “Suite 17” ultimately uses its mysterious storyline to look at obsession, emotional dependency and how difficult it can be to leave familiar patterns behind.
:: “Magnolia” – Meadowglade ::
Miranda Urbanczyk, Michigan
Meadowglade feel different than other indie rock groups on the rise right now. The Nashville four-piece bring something different to the table. Not only are their lyrics vulnerable, but also frontman Luke Cooper’s voice makes you feel the emotion behind each verse. Every band has their own niche; for some it’s upbeat pop bangers that you get lost in. For Meadowglade, it’s an honest, yet striking single that makes you question everything about the current landscape of indie rock. The track I’m referencing is “Magnolia,” a song that’s stolen the hearts of many music lovers. It’s impressive to say the least, especially when the group only has one released song, and manages to pull in 26,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. “Magnolia” is just the beginning of Meadowglade’s fresh perspective within the genre. Considering the rise of groups with a similar feel, I’m excited to see how their unique sound continues to impact listeners.
:: “Just A Little Longer” – John Wood ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Love can make ten more minutes sound like everything. John Wood Band capture that wonderfully simple desire on “Just A Little Longer,” a warm, sunny folk pop reverie built around the wish to keep a good thing going for just a few minutes more. Easygoing guitars, buoyant rhythm, glowing keys, and John Wood’s inviting voice give the track its breezy summer pull, but the real magic comes from TJ Roy’s saxophone, which sweats and soars through the arrangement with sweet, dreamy abandon. It’s lush, enchanting, and effortlessly smile-inducing – the kind of love song that makes falling for someone sound brand new all over again.
The Wilmington, North Carolina six-piece know exactly what they’re asking for. Wood opens from bed, bargaining against the clock before the day has even begun:
10 more minutes baby
That’s all I need
Come back to bed
Take those shoes off your feet
From there, “Just A Little Longer” settles into the dizzy pleasure of infatuation, where a look can derail your concentration and every touch seems capable of resetting the world. “Every time I touch you baby / I melt into your skin / And every time I kiss you baby / The world is all spinning again,” Wood sings, his performance carrying the easy sincerity that makes the song’s sweetness land. The chorus opens its arms from there, simple enough to sing after one listen and earnest enough to mean every word:
Baby don’t go
Baby don’t go
I want you
Just a little longer
Just a little longer
“‘Just A Little Longer’ gives that windows-down summer love song energy,” the band share. “It’s the kind of song that makes you want to roll the windows down, turn the volume up, and enjoy the moment. We feel like this is some of our strongest work yet, and we’re excited to finally share it with everyone.”
That windows-down ease comes with a real musical lift. Co-written by Wood with Nick Matthews, Blake Weinbach, and William Bennett, “Just A Little Longer” marks the band’s first collaboration with Charleston-based producer Wolfgang Zimmerman, whose touch brings their folk, pop, and soul instincts together naturally. The saxophone is essential to that chemistry: Roy doesn’t merely decorate the track, he brings it fully to life, sending streaks of color through the arrangement and giving its romance an extra rush of heat. When the instrumental break arrives, the music gets to say what Wood’s lyrics have been reaching for all along – stay here, stay close, keep this moment going.
John Wood Band themselves are still a relatively young proposition. Formed in 2025 after Wood expanded his solo project into a six-piece, the group brings together Wood with lead guitarist Brody Folkers, Roy on saxophone, Grant Harward on keys, Jay Eades on bass, and Caleb Dulin on drums. Their debut EP Chronology introduced that interplay, but “Just A Little Longer” sounds especially comfortable in its own skin: polished enough to shine, loose enough to breathe, and powered by musicians who clearly know how to play around one another.
“Just A Little Longer” understands the spell of wanting time to stop precisely because you know it won’t. Jobs, obligations, distance, and whatever else waits outside the room can hold off for another few minutes. For now, John Wood Band give love a sunny soundtrack full of sweetness, saxophone, and wide-open possibility – a song for rolling the windows down, turning the volume up, and remembering how wondrous it can be to want somebody close.
:: “Burn Daylight” – McGrath ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
McGrath has figured out how to make longing combust. His second single, “Burn Daylight,” is a smoldering folk rock fever dream that starts in suspension and steadily gathers force, burning brighter and brighter until the whole thing erupts. Acoustic textures give way to roaring guitars, pounding drums, piano, synths, and flashes of percussion, while Mick Russell’s voice rises through it all with startling conviction. Stirring, spirited, and intensely cinematic, “Burn Daylight” takes the private misery of missing someone and blows it up to widescreen proportions – every hour apart carrying the weight of an eternity, every swell of sound pushing him one step closer to home.
The Donegal native and Belfast-based songwriter introduced himself earlier this year with “Rotha,” a featherlight, heart-on-sleeve indie folk debut about leaving a relationship and finding hope on the other side. I wrote then that its chorus “seems to lift itself out of the room and hover there,” and “Burn Daylight” takes that same instinct for emotional elevation somewhere far more combustible. Released via Some Action Records and once again produced by Rob Kirwan, McGrath’s sophomore single widens the frame considerably: Russell handles vocals, bass, guitars, piano, and synths, with Rhys Jiang on drums and Kirwan adding synths and percussion. Where “Rotha” spun patiently forward, “Burn Daylight” surges.
The lyrics begin in a stranger place, their dream logic matching the song’s trance-like pull. Russell notices “something in the gaps between / The paving stones in sideward streets,” then slips between waking life and restless thought as water heats into steam below him. Soon enough, the source of all that pressure comes plainly into view:
“Look for other ways to pass the time
Test my patience and I burn daylight
Though it’s happened ‘bout a million times
When I’m missing you I lose my mind”
That last line is the ignition point. “Burn Daylight” captures separation as a physical disturbance, the mind racing because the body cannot get where it wants to be. Russell’s next image is enormous – “My head a ten ton wrecking ball / That’s slowly sweeping hall to hall” – and the arrangement rises to meet it, churning and expanding around a vocal performance that grows more impassioned with every pass. McGrath sings like he is trying to outrun the clock itself, pouring strain, devotion, and sheer pent-up energy into a chorus whose repetition only makes it hit harder. The song’s cinematic sweep comes from that marriage of scale and intimacy: one person missing one person, rendered with enough force to shake the walls.
“This is for anyone who has had to endure being away from their significant other,” McGrath explains. “Whether that be for professional reasons or otherwise. Loneliness creeps in and sometimes you just want the sun to burn away the day so you’re that bit closer to returning to the one you love. I wanted a dream/trance-like sound to convey the out-of-body feeling that this can evoke.”
That out-of-body quality is exactly what makes “Burn Daylight” soar. The song keeps pressing upward until longing becomes momentum, Russell’s voice cutting through the storm as the arrangement gathers behind him. Yet for all its drama, the destination remains wonderfully simple: “The only form of remedy that I know” is knowing the person he loves will eventually be beside him again. Two singles in, McGrath is already showing remarkable range – from the graceful rotation of “Rotha” to this roaring, radiant release. “Burn Daylight” burns because waiting hurts, and it shines because every passing hour brings reunion that much closer.
:: “Like Adam Would” – Girl Apocrypha ::
Danielle Holian, Galway, Ireland
Girl Apocrypha’s “Like Adam Would” does not so much begin as erupt, throwing open the doors with a wall of distorted guitar and an immediate rush of noise, tension and feeling. From there, the Brighton solo artist plunges into a beautifully unstable space where grunge, shoegaze, synth-pop, alternative rock and electronica collide without ever settling into predictability. Produced alongside Jag Jago and mastered by Kurt Martinez, the track possesses a striking duality, its rougher textures constantly rubbing against a sleek electronic undercurrent. A solitary bass synth and restrained drum programming initially pull everything into a hazy, almost submerged atmosphere, but beneath that stillness there is always the sense that something is about to break loose. It is this tension between grit and gloss that gives Apocrypha’s music such a distinctive pulse, allowing the track to feel simultaneously nocturnal, theatrical and wonderfully volatile.
The song’s greatest strength lies in its restless sense of movement. Just as the listener begins to acclimatise to one texture, Apocrypha tears it apart and rebuilds it somewhere stranger. Live drums crash into the mix, guitars fuzz and swell, and electronic details flicker around the edges, creating a sound that can feel enormous one moment and almost skeletal the next. There are clear echoes of Interpol, Placebo and Nine Inch Nails in its darker, guitar-heavy instincts, while the warped synths and flashes of pop theatricality hint at the influence of Lady Gaga, Grimes and The Dare. Yet ‘Like Adam Would’ never feels like an exercise in reference collecting. The expressive piano stabs, unexpected shifts and warped electronic flourishes reveal an artist more interested in possibility than genre boundaries. Even its central collapse into a sparse, atmospheric lull feels instinctive, a sudden clearing in the storm that makes the eventual return of the song’s weight all the more visceral.
At the centre of this beautifully unruly arrangement are Apocrypha’s vocals, which become another instrument in the track’s constant negotiation between control and chaos. Her voice shifts from subtly processed, almost boxed-in deliveries to soaring open passages, before stripping everything back for moments of exposed acapella vulnerability. That elasticity gives ‘Like Adam Would’ its emotional centre, because beneath all the distortion, synths and crashing drums is a performance that remains startlingly human. There is something fearless about the way Apocrypha allows fragility and force to occupy the same space, refusing to smooth away the rough edges in favour of easy resolution. The result is a song that feels less constructed than unleashed, a vivid collision of heavy rock, electronic experimentation and fragile beauty. ‘Like Adam Would’ ultimately succeeds because Girl Apocrypha trusts her instincts completely, turning chaos into colour and contradiction into momentum, and establishing a sound that is as emotionally exposed as it is sonically audacious.
:: “When You Believe” – Above & Beyond ::
Ashley Littlefield, California
Life has its twists and turns, often without announcing when changes arrive to pull you in new directions. Above & Beyond released their latest single, “When You Believe,” on August 14 via their Anjunabeats imprint. The song soars with hope, supported by pulsing, oscillating synths and their signature emotive piano notes, alongside English Grammy Award-winning songwriter Victoria Horn. She offers tender vocals with an uplifting melody. Victoria Horn, also known as Lady V, has co-written the track with the trance trio on “Counting Down the Days,” as well as with a number of artists such as Markus Schulz and Armin Van Buuren. The best way to let moments be and guide you is to find a perfect blend of letting life be and guiding you exactly where you are, and “When You Believe” does exactly that, as listeners can reflect on the lyrics: “Life will bring you what you need,” followed by the chorus, “When you believe in love, you believe in life / And your life will love you back.” Fans of Above & Beyond can resonate with the song, as it paints a picture that consoles the heart, lets go, and believes: “There is a ray of light within your heart.”
:: “Summer On A Sunday” – Lola Audreys ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Summer doesn’t need fireworks to become unforgettable. Sometimes it’s enough to have nowhere you need to be, somebody beside you, and a whole day stretching out ahead. Lola Audreys captures that simple pleasure on “Summer On A Sunday,” a dreamy, sun-soaked pop song with an easygoing pulse and a sweetness that never tips into cliché. Rich basslines roll beneath buoyant beats and gleaming melodies, while Audreys sings with the relaxed radiance of someone fully present in the moment. It’s breezy, smile-inducing, and irresistibly warm – the musical equivalent of realizing you’ve lost track of the time and deciding you couldn’t care less.
The South African, London-based artist builds the song around those fleeting pockets of freedom we spend years trying to recreate. Even its opening verse recognizes the shadow hanging over them – clouds roll in, age creeps closer – before the chorus chooses presence over worry:
“I’m taking it in, I’m breathing it out
Watching the sky paint the sun down
Sound of the waves, wash it away
Like summer on a Sunday”
That chorus carries the song’s whole philosophy. Produced by French Original and written by Audreys with Alexandre Anthony and Ted Tarling, “Summer On A Sunday” glides rather than rushes, its polished pop production leaving plenty of air around the vocal while the bass and beat keep everything gently in motion. The imagery gets sweeter as the song unfolds – a flower tucked into her hair, footsteps moving together beneath the stars – yet Audreys keeps mortality somewhere in the frame. “And now I’m wondering, will it stay the same?” she sings, knowing full well that the answer is probably no. That awareness gives the sunshine its color: The day matters precisely because it cannot last forever.
“‘Summers and Sundays’ are the moments when life feels full of possibility,” Audreys explains. “You head out with no real plan, discover new places, meet new people, laugh at almost anything and somehow learn so much about who you’re becoming. I wanted to capture that feeling in a song, that excitement of not knowing exactly where the day will take you, but knowing it’s going to be memorable.”
Audreys has spent years learning how to bottle that kind of immediacy into pop. Raised on her family’s farm in South Africa before relocating to London to pursue music full-time, she broke through internationally with “Miami,” featuring Nile Rodgers, and has since amassed more than 10 million streams across her catalogue. “Summer On A Sunday” shows another side of that instinct: less about chasing the biggest possible moment than recognizing when an ordinary one has quietly become precious.
By the bridge, summer has already begun slipping into memory. “Life moves along / You and I live on / Like the moon at high tide / You pull me back to your side,” Audreys sings, before wondering whether another lifetime might bring these two people together again. “Summer On A Sunday” smiles because it knows the day will end. That’s what gives this dreamy little pop escape its staying power – an invitation to breathe it in, watch the sun go down, and hold onto the sweetness while it’s still yours.
:: “sickofmyself” – Saskia ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Saskia sounds suspended between escape and surrender on “sickofmyself,” a hypnotic, enchanting electropop reverie whose delicacy only makes its emotional force hit harder. Airy synths hover around textural drums and deep electronic pulses, creating a dream state that calls to mind the ethereal intensity of Halcyon-era Ellie Goulding and the spectral intimacy of London Grammar.
Yet Saskia never disappears inside the atmosphere. Her voice remains the magnetic center – intimate and exposed in the verses, then suddenly soaring into a soul-stirring chorus that sends shivers straight down the spine. Fragile and spirited, otherworldly and remarkably sure of itself, “sickofmyself” carries a mystic charge from its first breath.
The song begins inside an exhausted mind desperately searching for an exit. Saskia’s opening question is devastatingly simple:
“Where can I go to?
I’m sick of myself
I’ve been outrun here
By somebody else”
That “somebody else” could be another person, another version of Saskia, or the self she wishes she could become; the ambiguity gives the lyric its power. “sickofmyself” captures the claustrophobia of realizing the place you most desperately want to leave is your own head. Even change becomes complicated. She reaches toward transformation and retreat in the same breath, caught between the desire to become different and the instinct to stay exactly where she is.
I wanted to change
but I’d rather stay the
I wanted to change
but I’d rather stay the night
Oh I’ve been outrun here
By somebody else
“This song represents that no matter how much you try to bottle things up, or cover over them, they will always find their way out. I didn’t really mean to write this song – it sort of unfurled by accident,” Saskia explains. “It encompasses a feeling I was reluctant to put into my music; the feeling of wanting to be anywhere other than in your own mind. It’s strangely uplifting given that the lyrics lean towards a darker sentiment, but I think that’s the freedom in admitting something.”
The music gives that admission wings. “sickofmyself” moves with an uptempo electronic pulse even as Saskia’s lyrics sink deeper into isolation, and the tension keeps the track beautifully unsettled. Weightless keys and atmospheric textures leave vast amounts of room around her voice; then the percussion gathers underneath, bringing motion to thoughts that otherwise threaten to loop forever. The contrast reaches its peak in the chorus, where language itself begins to fall away. Saskia’s soul-stirring “oohs” rise above the production with startling force, first floating and then swelling until they sound almost elemental. For a song built around being trapped inside your own mind, its greatest release arrives beyond words.
Those wordless cries are the showstopper. Saskia can describe the nightmare plainly – “Take me out of here / Away from the nightmares / Take me out of here” – but the “oohs” that follow communicate what explanation cannot. They ache, soar, and reach outward, transforming private distress into pure expression. That moment brings the listener home to her: no metaphor to decode, no narrative distance, just a voice opening completely. The effect is breathtaking because its strength comes directly from exposure. Saskia’s openness becomes a source of strength because she allows herself to be heard so clearly, and powerful because she refuses to retreat from what comes out.
That balance has been taking shape throughout the Devon-born, London-based singer/songwriter and jazz pianist’s young career. Her debut EP The Noise introduced an artist drawn toward rich chords, detailed electronic production, and the uncomfortable corners of her inner life; collaborations and sessions with artists including Bicep, Pollyfromthedirt, and Bob Mackenzie have since pushed those instincts into wider territory. Now signed to Black Butter Records, Saskia describes herself as a “happy girl making sad music,” and “sickofmyself” may be the purest expression yet of why that contradiction works. Darkness moves through the lyric while the production reaches toward freedom, each side giving the other greater consequence.
“sickofmyself” ultimately finds release through the very act Saskia was reluctant to undertake: saying the ugly thought aloud. She gives self-disgust, restlessness, and the desire to flee a ravishing electronic form, then allows her voice to rise above all of it until the words themselves become unnecessary. That chorus is instant showstopper territory – an electrifying flash of raw humanity inside a song already overflowing with atmosphere and grace. Sublime from beginning to end, “sickofmyself” captures an artist trusting both her fragility and her power, and discovering that sometimes the way out of your own head begins with giving the feeling a voice.
:: “Small Talk” – FLEUR ROUGE ::
Joe Beer, Surrey, UK
FLEUR ROUGE’s new single “Small Talk” taps into the feeling of déjà vu that comes with modern app dating. Offering something that is totally relatable, it touches on those endless openers, recycled questions and how things fizzle out before they even get going. Emphasizing the absurdity of that loop, the new single makes listeners feel a little less alone, reassuring us that we’re all experiencing this crazy new world of dating together. The London-based artist explains, “Dating, heartbreak, and feeling disconnected can be really isolating, so if someone listens to Small Talk and thinks, ‘It’s not just me,’ then I’ve done what I wanted to do.”
Sonically the track also introduces a heavier side to FLEUR ROUGE’s alt-pop sound, with bigger guitars and a catchy pop hook. It’s the first taste of that new direction ahead of her forthcoming five-track EP, which is also said to touch on not only dating challenges, but also messy relationships, beauty standards and the general uncertainty of navigating your twenties.
:: HOW TO GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT WITH WHAT’S LEFT – Scizzorman ::
Danielle Holian, Galway, Ireland
There is something inherently appealing about a band that responds to an uncertain world by making music even more unpredictable. Scizzorman’s. HOW TO GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT WITH WHAT’S LEFT is a compact but remarkably expansive seven-track album, a psychedelic collision of alternative funk-rock, glam, stoner rock, swamp blues, retro funk and trip-hop atmosphere. Rather than treating these genres as fixed destinations, the Australian outfit uses them as colours on the same palette, allowing songs to pivot from swagger to haze, from groove to heaviness, often within the same musical breath. The album’s origins in a post-pandemic hiatus and a bout of writer’s block are revealing because this is music that seems to have rediscovered its appetite for possibility. Terry J Vinci’s vocals and drums sit at the centre of the record, his lyrics moving through anecdotes, social observations and existential absurdities with a mischievous theatricality, while Cody Robson’s bass provides the supple rhythmic backbone and Stewart Herbertson’s guitars and synthesizers supply much of the psychedelic colour. The result is an album that feels deliberately difficult to categorise, but never difficult to enjoy.
What makes Scizzorman particularly interesting is the way their eccentricity is balanced by an instinctive understanding of groove. “The Lesser-known (Pts 1-3)” establishes the album’s fragmented, exploratory character, before “The Next Gen Is Broken” introduces a sharper cultural perspective. “Narcissistic Nymphs Of The New Age” pushes further into satire, transforming contemporary narcissism into something theatrical and rhythmically engaging. Later, “Cavalcades” and “The Great Unknown” expand the record’s psychedelic dimension, while “Mystical Yeast” demonstrates the band’s willingness to follow an idea simply because it sounds entertainingly strange. There are obvious echoes of artists such as Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, alongside the psychedelic sensibility of The Dandy Warhols and the alternative-rock instincts of Arctic Monkeys. Yet these references function as signposts rather than destinations. Scizzorman are not attempting to recreate a particular era or sound. They are borrowing the adventurous spirit of their influences and applying it to a contemporary landscape filled with uncertainty, overstimulation and cultural contradiction. Adrian Vinci’s mix is important here, giving the record enough sonic definition to contain its many ideas without sanding away their rougher edges.
HOW TO GET YOUR LIFE RIGHT WITH WHAT’S LEFT succeeds because it understands that artistic identity does not necessarily come from narrowing your possibilities. Sometimes it comes from embracing them. Scizzorman have made a record where absurdity and seriousness can coexist, where a funk groove can carry an existential lyric and where psychedelic experimentation can sit comfortably beside rock muscle. At just over 30 minutes, the album is concise enough to avoid the indulgence that can accompany such stylistic ambition, yet dense enough to reward repeated listening. Its greatest strength is perhaps its refusal to provide an easy answer to the question posed by its title. Instead, it offers a more interesting proposition: accept the confusion, question the obvious, find a rhythm and keep moving. In that sense, Scizzorman’s return is not merely a comeback but a creative reawakening. This is an album with humour, musical intelligence and a genuine appetite for the unexpected, and in an increasingly predictable musical landscape, that willingness to take the scenic route feels positively refreshing.
:: “No Hard Feelings” – Burry ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Sometimes the best way through heartbreak is to dance straight toward it. Burry’s “No Hard Feelings” is a dreamy, enchanting indie pop rush that aches and glows with sweet wonder, transforming the slow realization that a relationship has an expiration date into three minutes of sparkling release. Synths flicker and guitars swell around punchy drums and flashes of radiant pop energy, while the Halifax artist’s breathtaking voice carries the whole thing skyward. By the time the chorus hits – catchy, charged, charming, and effervescent – all that impending heartbreak sounds like one hell of a good time.
This is fun while it lasts
We might be moving too fast
Don’t get me wrong you’re nice but
Something just doesn’t sit right
Who thought it’d come to this
Just need someone to miss
Something must be wrong with me cause
I don’t see what you see
I don’t remember you or the sound of your laugh
Maybe that’s not bad
Maybe that’s not
I can’t seem to keep your attention anymore
Maybe I’m just bored
Maybe I just
The sweetness of the music only heightens the wonderfully blunt writing underneath it. Burry already knows where this relationship is headed; “No Hard Feelings” lives in the strange stretch before goodbye, when affection remains but the future has disappeared. Their chorus practically skips toward the inevitable:
Already consider you my ex yeah no hard feelings
Already looking for the next I swear I’m healing
I really tried it
I couldn’t find it
Gave it my best shot and I didn’t mind it
Already consider you my ex
yeah no hard feelings
There’s freedom in admitting the truth early, but Burry leaves enough uncertainty around the edges to keep the song from becoming a simple kiss-off. “I wish I was still at home / I wish I didn’t call because I’m alone,” they confess later, exposing the loneliness beneath all that bubbly momentum. The production mirrors that push and pull beautifully: Adrian Morris of Neon Dreams brings his pop and punk instincts into Burry’s hyperpop world, creating a bright, kinetic backdrop for lyrics caught between attachment and escape. Burry’s vocal is the spark throughout, playful and soaring one moment, bruised the next, giving the chorus its irresistible lift while preserving the complicated emotions underneath.
“I started to write the lyrics for ‘No Hard Feelings’ when I was briefly dating someone,” Burry tells Atwood Magazine. “Things were going well enough with her, but I felt like my heart wasn’t really in it. She was so fun and we got along great, so I kept telling myself we could just keep seeing each other while it was fun, but knew there was a deadline on the relationship. That got me thinking about casual dating and how it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to be seeing someone and know it’s going to end, but doing it anyway because it’s fun.”
“I met up with Adrian Morris (Neon Dreams) to write in his home studio. He had a couple of instrumentals that he had made and let me go through and pick one I liked. The instrumental that is now ‘No Hard Feelings’ stood out to me instantly and I started humming a melody and we dove right in. We had the demo finished in about three hours. I love working with Adrian; it was like he knew what I was going to ask for before I could say it, and I can’t wait to collaborate more with him.”
“I hope people take ‘No Hard Feelings’ and have fun with it!”
That invitation fits an artist whose music has consistently made space for candor and self-expression. Burry, who hails from Halifax, Nova Scotia, blends indie and pop while writing openly about identity, mental health, and experiences that often go unspoken. Here, that honesty arrives with a grin: They acknowledge the relationship’s end while refusing to spend its remaining days mourning prematurely. There may be an ex waiting somewhere just beyond the chorus, but for now the synths are sparkling, the beat is moving, and Burry is having far too much fun to skip ahead.
“No Hard Feelings” understands that endings can carry their own sweetness. Sometimes two people simply reach the edge of what they can be together, and resentment only weighs down the goodbye. Burry gives that realization a gorgeous pop pulse and a chorus built to stick around long after the relationship itself has faded – an enchanting little reminder to enjoy what’s good while it’s here, know when the moment has passed, and leave with your head up and the music still playing.
:: “Get Over It” – Ferguson Hi-Fi ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Get over it? Good luck. Ferguson Hi-Fi’s debut single “Get Over It” is the kind of feverish indie rock eruption that practically demands another spin the second it ends – relentless, restless, explosive, and ridiculously fun. Overdriven guitars churn, glisten, roar, and soar around a rhythm section pushing determinedly forward, while frontman Pete Ferguson throws himself headlong into the commotion. The whole thing crackles with the thrill of release, a feel-good blast of pent-up emotion from a brand-new Glasgow band who have arrived sounding gloriously alive.
I never met your mama
I shoulda killed your father
I knew it then I oughta
Too bad I can’t be bothered
Ferguson matches that instrumental abandon syllable for syllable. His vocal practically tumbles out of him as he ricochets through “I never met your mama / I shoulda killed your father / I knew it then I oughta / Too bad I can’t be bothered,” winding frustration, fatigue, and dark humor around the song’s endlessly addictive refrain: “And I just can’t get over it.” Later references to a “psyop,” Lafayette, fire, and falling off easy keep the lyrics delightfully unruly, less linear confession than a brain unloading at full speed. The guitars answer in kind, surging and scraping their way around him until voice and band seem caught in the same glorious combustion.
Too young to feel this tired
Who ya callin a liar?
Who gonna feed the feeling, feeling?
And I just can’t get over it
Ferguson Hi-Fi bring that fresh start to life as a proper four-piece, with Ferguson on vocals and guitar alongside guitarist Darren McCaughey, bassist Rachel Wilson, and drummer Shaun Hood. The band also represents a deeply personal reset for Ferguson. After signing to a major label as Wuh Oh shortly before COVID, his career veered off course; he eventually left the label and turned to alcohol before getting sober and returning home to Glasgow. Now he is re-entering the pop world on his own terms, with Ferguson Hi-Fi and a run of new singles ahead. Suddenly the exhilaration coursing through “Get Over It” carries even more weight: This is the sound of an artist rediscovering his appetite for music, movement, and whatever comes next.
For Ferguson, that chaos carries the unmistakable charge of starting over. Previously known for his work as Wuh Oh, the Glasgow songwriter and producer conceived “Get Over It” in a middle-of-the-night burst shortly before a studio session with Stevie Jackson of Belle & Sebastian, Dave McGowan of Teenage Fanclub, and his younger brother Mike. What began as instinctive nonsense quickly revealed a deeper tension: the messy overlap between remaining hung up on the past and realizing how damn good freedom can taste.
“I had a day booked in the studio with Stevie (Jackson) from Belle & Sebastian, Dave (McGowan) from Teenage Fanclub and my wee brother Mike, but a couple days before the session I had the feeling there was still one song missing,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “I got out of bed in the middle of the night, picked up the guitar and thrashed out what would become ‘Get Over It’ in one go, singing gobbledegook into my dictaphone. In the morning I wrote lyrics based off the nonsense and found tonnes of meaning buried in it. The vibe I got was bitter rumination but also a sort of burgeoning excitement for being free of the whole thing. Even though I’m saying I can’t get over it, I’m also saying thank God it’s over.”
“I brought it to my ad hoc Glasgow supergroup and it instantly came alive. I knew straight away we had the first Ferguson Hi-Fi single.”
You can hear that freedom in the performance. “Get Over It” barrels ahead with the abandon of musicians discovering how exhilarating this particular configuration can be, and Ferguson is a proper frontman at its center – animated, urgent, and pouring himself into every inch of the song. Even the repeated “fire, fire, fire” near the end sounds ready to ignite the whole arrangement around him, until the refrain comes roaring back one final time. Raw release meets instant gratification here, and Ferguson Hi-Fi understand that sometimes getting past whatever has been dragging you down requires making as much noise as possible on the way out.
What an introduction. “Get Over It” captures the pure infatuation of encountering a new band at full throttle and immediately needing to know what comes next. Ferguson Hi-Fi have given themselves a hell of a starting point – feverish, insatiable, and bursting with personality – and wherever they take this thing from here, we’ll be listening. Until then, “Get Over It” is staying HOT on repeat.
:: Diva 98 – Tess Clare ::
Ashley Littlefield, California
Tess Clare steps into her power on her debut album, Diva 98, a 14-track celebration of self-reclamation, confidence, and becoming more fully yourself. The Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter moves between indie pop and dance-pop as she explores what it means to trust your instincts, embrace your complexity, and claim your own voice. That journey builds on a musical path Clare began carving out with her 2021 debut single, “Meet Again,” a collaboration with Nashville producer and DJ Golddub that introduced her dance-pop sensibilities.
From the smooth pulse of opener “Hourglass” to the buoyant dance grooves of “It Girl” and the gentle acoustics of “Circles in the Valley,” Diva 98 continually circles back to self-liberation. Clare moves between romance, uncertainty, and newfound conviction, using each song to explore another facet of the person she is becoming. Even the album’s title carries that sense of reclamation. “It all started as a word defining a female opera singer, an openly vulnerable, emotional, ‘vocal’ woman wanting to be seen, heard, and loved in her depth and complexity,” Clare shared on Instagram. “To me, a true diva is a woman who can own her value, her power, her voice in a world continuously trying to judge and silence it.” Diva 98 takes that definition to heart, presenting self-confidence as an ongoing act of choosing yourself and refusing to shrink your voice for anyone else.
:: “Lipstick Stains” – Efro ::
Danielle Holian, Galway, Ireland
Efro’s “Lipstick Stains” arrives like a summer evening remembered through half closed eyes, all heat shimmer, faded colour and the sweet ache of something already slipping away. From its opening moments, the track establishes a world entirely its own, where psychedelic textures and vintage grit curl around a groove that feels both lived in and effortlessly cool. Fuzzy bass gives the song its low slung pulse, while biting guitars, distorted keys and boxy drums create a wonderfully tactile sense of imperfection. There is a lo-fi intimacy to the production, as though the song has been pulled from an old cassette left too long in the sun, yet beneath that haze sits a sharply considered alternative sensibility. Efro’s sound is instantly recognisable because she understands that atmosphere is not decoration, it is the emotional architecture of the song.
What makes “Lipstick Stains” particularly intoxicating is the way it balances its influences without becoming trapped by them. There are flashes of PJ Harvey’s raw, instinctive rock vocabulary, the loose-limbed warmth of Sun Room and Dope Lemon, and a streak of Lou Reed’s nocturnal nonchalance running through its veins. Elsewhere, the guitars carry a cool, slightly scuffed swagger that recalls The Strokes, but Efro softens those sharper edges with psychedelic flourishes and subtle washes of synth. The arrangement never feels overcrowded. Instead, every element seems to drift in and out of focus, allowing the bass to linger, the guitars to sting and the keys to blur at the edges. It is music that understands the seduction of restraint, finding its character not in grand gestures but in the spaces between them.
At its heart, “Lipstick Stains” is a song about the strange afterlife of summer romance, when the heat has broken, the nights have grown cooler and certain memories somehow remain stubbornly warm. Efro captures that contradiction beautifully, turning fleeting intimacy into something sun faded and cinematic, romantic without becoming sentimental. The title itself feels like a perfect metaphor, an impermanent trace left behind after someone has gone, vivid enough to summon an entire moment but fragile enough to disappear. There is melancholy here, but it moves with a relaxed confidence rather than dragging its feet. “Lipstick Stains” lingers because Efro knows that nostalgia is most powerful when it arrives sideways, through texture, rhythm and atmosphere. It is a hazy, stylish and deeply evocative slice of alternative summer rock, the kind of song that feels less like a soundtrack to the season than a memory of it playing softly from another room.
:: The Fitting Room – Lily Franc ::
Danielle Holian, Galway, Ireland
There is something beautifully restless about Lily Franc’s debut EP, The Fitting Room, a six-track coming-of-age record that understands identity is rarely something we simply discover. More often, it is something we try on, outgrow, return to and eventually leave behind. The Dutch singer-songwriter builds the EP around that idea, moving through achievement, emotional distance, heartbreak, love and nostalgia with a storyteller’s eye and a pop songwriter’s instinct for melody. Opening with “burnt out gifted kids club,” Franc immediately establishes the emotional world of the record, portraying the quiet exhaustion of someone whose worth has become tangled in achievement. From there, “fun sponge” shifts into playful funk territory, masking its observations about emotional detachment beneath a brighter, more mischievous exterior. It is this ability to let difficult feelings breathe inside colourful arrangements that gives Franc’s writing its charm. Nothing here feels like a lecture. Instead, each song opens a small window into a character trying to understand why the life they have been building no longer quite feels like their own.
The EP grows increasingly intimate as it moves through its middle chapters. “under the weather” sits in the grey space after heartbreak, where moving forward is less about one dramatic moment of closure and more about learning to create emotional distance. Franc captures that lingering ache without allowing the song to sink into melodrama. On “old leather jacket,” the familiar story of unrequited love gradually changes shape, becoming something more quietly empowering as the character begins to recognise that not being chosen does not make them less worthy. “soldier” widens the lens again, exploring emotional equality in relationships and the delicate line between supporting someone and losing yourself inside their struggles. Throughout these songs, Franc’s empathy is striking. There are no easy villains, only people carrying insecurities, expectations and wounds they are still learning to name. Her classical violin training, which began when she was five, gives these stories another emotional dimension, with cinematic violin arrangements threading through the indie pop, folk and country-pop foundations. The instrument becomes almost another narrator, rising around the melodies like memory itself.
By the time “for old times sake” arrives, The Fitting Room has become less about deciding who we are than accepting who we no longer need to be. Franc treats nostalgia with tenderness, but never confuses remembering with returning. It is the perfect final note for an EP concerned with growing beyond old expectations while still honouring the person who once believed in them. Across its six tracks, Franc displays an impressive instinct for character-driven songwriting, balancing the conversational intimacy of the singer-songwriter tradition with the melodic immediacy of contemporary pop. There are echoes of artists such as Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Carole King and Joni Mitchell in her storytelling sensibility, but her violin-led arrangements and distinctly empathetic perspective give the record its own emerging identity. The Fitting Room feels like a collection of songs caught at the precise moment between leaving and becoming, when the mirror still reflects several possible versions of you. Franc does not pretend to know which one will last. She simply invites us into the room, lets the songs play, and asks the more interesting question: what are we finally ready to stop pretending fits?
:: “Overdrive” – Imperial Teen ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Imperial Teen put a little swagger in your step with “Overdrive,” an irresistible jolt of indie pop propelled by a steady pulse, sly attitude, and a slick groove that feels tailor-made for strutting down the street. The song locks in almost immediately, its rhythm chugging forward as guy/girl vocals, guitars, and keyboards pile into a wonderfully hypnotic rush. Fun, infectious, and gloriously cheeky, “Overdrive” gets the body moving before the brain has much say in the matter.
That physicality suits a song obsessed with motion. “Let’s start the show / Let’s take it slow / Don’t stop and go / Let’s take it fast / The best for last / Just have a blast / We’re so alive / In overdrive,” the band sing alongside roaring electric guitar drones, accelerating and decelerating inside the same refrain as though they are working the throttle themselves. The clipped phrases bounce against the beat, while the repeated “get over it” that follows gives the track an almost mantra-like propulsion. Imperial Teen keep tossing fresh images into the slipstream – a cybercafe, a baseball bat at the mall, red lipstick, a made-up face “like a heart attack” – and the cumulative effect is wonderfully mischievous, sexy, and a little absurd.
let’s start the show
let’s take it slow
don’t stop and go
let’s take it fast
the best for last
just have a blast
we’re so alive
in overdrive
something in the way, get over it
just another day, get over it
it’s a cybercafe, get over it
nothing left to say, get over it
“Overdrive” leads Imperial Teen’s forthcoming seventh album, All Over You, arriving October 9 via longtime label Merge Records. More than three decades into their life together, Roddy Bottum, Will Schwartz, Jone Stebbins, and Lynn Truell still build records through periodic reunions, gathering from different cities to write and record whenever their schedules align. “Overdrive” itself came from one of those compressed bursts: Written late during a Provincetown session, its final vocal was captured in a single last-minute take before Schwartz had to catch a ferry. That bit of history suits the finished song perfectly. You can hear the urgency of people grabbing the moment while it is still in front of them.
As Schwartz puts it, “We want to make people dance and think and feel at the same time.”
“Overdrive” takes the dancing part seriously, but its pleasure comes from the personality packed into every corner. Imperial Teen’s hooks have teeth, their humor flashes by at street speed, and the arrangement keeps pushing forward with the loose confidence of a band that knows exactly how much fun a great pop song can hold. Even “We’re so alive in overdrive” reads less like a thesis than an invitation: Get moving, get weird, get carried away for a few minutes.
That invitation proves hard to resist. “Overdrive” has the pulse, strut, and irrepressible momentum of a song built to soundtrack forward motion – headphones on, sidewalk ahead, suddenly walking a little faster than you were a minute ago. Imperial Teen have spent thirty years making catchy music with wit and bite, and here they sound utterly at home in the fast lane.
:: “If You Ever Loved Me” – Hope Winter ::
Mitch Mosk, Beacon, New York
Hope Winter sounds like a star arriving in real time on “If You Ever Loved Me,” a soulful, dreamy, sun-kissed bruised-heart reverie built for the devastating moment when love lingers long after a relationship has stopped giving anything back. Glistening, warbling keys glow beneath her bold, radiant voice, while piano and sweeping strings wrap the song in warmth, deepening its hurt. Winter pours passion and pain into every phrase, drawing on the grandeur of soul’s golden age while inhabiting the music with a presence entirely her own. Gorgeous and utterly timeless, “If You Ever Loved Me” is heartbreaking in the best way.
The London-based singer/songwriter gets right to the wound. “Could you act like you still love me / If you ever loved me at all,” she pleads in the chorus, asking for the smallest imitation of affection from someone whose distance has already answered the question. The devastation lives in that contradiction: Winter knows she deserves better, yet part of her would still accept the performance if it meant postponing the end. Even her anger carries attachment. An early “Well f*** you” lands with a flash of fire, but the song keeps circling back to longing, bargaining, and the impossible hope that yesterday’s love might somehow be recovered.
Winter describes that tension plainly: “‘If You Ever Loved Me’ is a song about denial as much as it is a breakup song, about the pain of being let down, despite the love you might still feel,” she explains. Her vocal makes that denial audible. Winter can soar, but some of the song’s most affecting moments come from the restraint surrounding her – the keys gently moving underneath, the arrangement opening around her as the strings rise, her phrasing carrying each disappointment before she finally lets the melody climb. By the time she sings, “I’ve been losing all my light / Tryna keep you by side,” the relationship has become an act of self-erasure. Later, “Baby don’t just watch me crying / When did you give up trying,” strips away whatever ambiguity remains: She is still fighting for a connection whose other half has already checked out.
“If You Ever Loved Me” also marks an exciting new chapter for Winter as her first single on PULSE Records after “Small Talk,” “Missing You,” and “Once In A While (In Love Again).” Co-written with James Smith, it completes what her team describes as an accidental trilogy tracing a relationship from love into loss, while following a recent Ronnie Scott’s performance where Winter was personally selected to support Olivia Dean. Those milestones matter because the song itself sounds like a leap forward: Her jazz, pop, and neo-soul instincts gather around a voice capable of carrying the weight, drama, and immediacy of a much older tradition.
The final admission cuts deepest. “But you don’t even love me / Have you ever loved me at all,” Winter sings, collapsing the song’s hopeful conditional into the realization she has spent the entire performance resisting. “If You Ever Loved Me” lives in that brutal space between knowing and accepting, when the truth has already arrived but the heart keeps asking for one last piece of evidence. Winter gives that heartbreak a radiant soul soundtrack, and in the process announces herself as a thrilling next-generation voice with one foot in classic soul and the other planted firmly in her own future.
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