“Chrysalis” by she’s green make the kind of shoegaze that tends to melt into the atmosphere, not quite as noisy or hooky as their recent tourmates in Glixen and Softcult. But on their latest EP “Chrysalis”, they prove there’s real muscle and heart to their Slowdive-coded aesthetic. Zofia Smith’s iridescent voice reaches too many high notes to fade into the background, giving weight to familiar tropes in the genre: ghosts taking on the shape of distorted guitars (‘Graze’), love as a delicate daydream (‘Silhouette’).
she’s green has put me into a transe. The power and ethereal are so complimentary, each song feels like being raptured into an eternal state of bliss. The visceral drumming and pummelling during some of the softer moments suggest it’s often the beautiful dreams that land a punch to the gut. Rather than shrouding them in layers of gauze, she’s green remind us they can’t be buried for too long.
Men I Trust is a Canadian indie band formed in Quebec City, Quebec, in 2014. The band consists of Emmanuelle Proulx (lead vocals, guitar), Jessy Caron (guitar, bass guitar), and Dragos Chiriac (keyboards). The group has self-released all of their music and has released physical editions on the Canadian indie and independent label Return to Analog.
They self describe their music as a blend of “dream pop and indie elements” whereby blending “hypnotic melodies and captivating vocals they have been able to transcend a genre into their own musical space”.
It’s a vibrant moment for indie music aficionados as Men I Trust, the Canadian band known for its dreamy synth- pop sound, has just released their latest album “Equus Asinus”.
The album serves as the first of two interconnected studio releases anticipated throughout the year. The band’s choice of unique album titles—drawing on equine nomenclature—reflects a larger artistic concept. Both albums, “Equus Asinus” (meaning “donkey” in Latin) and the upcoming “Equus Caballus” (meaning “horse”), explore distinct emotional landscapes while showcasing their signature light, jazzy pop sound characterized by baroque touches.
With the new release, fans are not only treated to fresh music but also a wealth of live performances to anticipate this summer, including a highlight appearance at the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. As they prepare to hit the road, Men I Trust continues to generate conversation within the music community about the evolving nature of their artistic expression.
Good Flying Birds is a jangly, noisy guitar-pop group from the Midwest, USA. The project began in December 2023 with a string of 4-track cassette recordings and stop-motion videos uploaded to YouTube under the name “Talulah God,” accompanied by a chaotic, GIF-filled website. Over the next few months, songs were uploaded regularly, eventually catching the attention of influential punk and DIY label head Martin Meyer.
In January 2025, “Talulah’s Tape” was released on Rotten Apple, compiling home recordings from 2020–2024. It showcased a wide-ranging love for independent guitar music, clever songwriting, and a charmingly scrappy, twee-punk aesthetic. The release found immediate underground acclaim, earning radio play and selling 300 cassettes in under a month.
Riding the momentum and building a reputation as a dynamic live act, the group attracted significant label interest, ultimately signing with Carpark and Smoking Room. Those labels will co-release “Talulah’s Tape” on vinyl and streaming in October 2025.
They played their first show in June 2024 as a minimalist three-piece in Indianapolis. By August, with a full lineup and a new name—Good Flying Birds—they launched into a steady run of Midwest and East Coast shows.
They’ve shared stages and basements with like-minded janglers such as Sharp Pins, Answering Machines, Wishy, Pardoner, Horsegirl, and Chronophage, helping spark a renewed flame for scrappy guitar music. Their sound nods to lo-fi icons like Guided By Voices, Beat Happening, DLIMC, Talulah Gosh, and The Vaselines, but carries a singular, earnest charm. It’s the sound of wide-eyed optimism in a cracked world—rosy cheeks, a tambourine in hand, and guitars ringing in all directions.
After years out of print, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s pre-Fleetwood Mac album was finally reissued last week1973’s “Buckingham Nicks” was the lone album released by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks prior to the pair joining Fleetwood Mac. If you haven’t heard it, you’re not alone. It’s never been on streaming or CD and made its most recent appearance on vinyl in the early ’80s.
Fleetwood Mac was a blues band on life support when drummer Mick Fleetwood heard Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s 1973 debut as romantic and creative partners, tying his group’s fate to Nicks’ vocal spell in “Crying in the Night,” the country-blues kicks in Buckingham’s fingerpicking, and the power-ballad finale “Frozen Love.” “Buckingham Nicks” died on arrival, but now sounds, after an eternity in collector purgatory, like it’s always been ready for prime time, a perfectly-cut diamond of early-Seventies songcraft and natural, harmonizing bond. And here’s sweet justice: The reissue debuted in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200.
But that changed with the announcement earlier this summer that Rhino Entertainment would finally be bringing a true lost classic back into the mainstream, freshly remastered on vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming at long last.
Produced by Keith Olsen, Buckingham and Nicks recorded the material for the record at Sound City, working with a strong collective of players including bassist Jerry Scheff, drummer Jim Keltner and future Nicks collaborator Waddy Wachtel. Unlike some early records that sound nothing like the better known material that comes later, it’s easy to hear the magic that the duo would subsequently create with Fleetwood Mac. Songs like album opener “Crying in the Night” and “Don’t Let Me Down Again” fit strongly with the sound they became known for on a larger scale with the Mac.
dig into the archives, and now Nicks has shared a heartfelt letter written to her family during the recording of the album.
Writing on Instagram, Nicks wrote, “I wanted to share this letter I wrote to my family while Lindsey and I were making Buckingham Nicks. My mom saved it and it’s been in a drawer for over 50 years.”
At the time, the duo were still waiting for their big break and Nicks writes with the excitement and humour of someone who thinks it might just be round the corner. “Here I am,” she begins in the letter, addressed to her parents and brother Chris, “once again at the “famous” Sound City Recording Studio. I am getting very tired of sitting around listening to 12 hours of music per day. Oh well, I know it will pay off in the end, and when I am sitting in my small but tasteful pool that is totally secluded, where I can sun in the nude and tan my entire fat body whilst waiting for my plastic surgery leg left – it will all be worth it.”
After comically debating on how the family should celebrate her impending 25th birthday (“I have decided that we should set aside the entire month of May”), her thoughts to turn to the record and she mentions that the song that would eventually be titled “Don’t Treat Me Like A Stranger” is coming together particularly well. “By the way – Dad and Chris – that rock and roll tune that you both like (“Baby Baby, don’t treat me so bad”) with the fancy guitar work is almost finished and Lindsey may go down in history as one of “greats” in guitar playing. It really is amazing.”
Signing off, she implores them to “hold good thoughts about this thing”. The album certainly paid off, just not in the way that Nicks imagined at the time. “Buckingham Nicks” made next to no impact until, on a tour of the studio, Mick Fleetwood heard it playing by accident and the path to the duo joining his band was set. The rest is history – soon enough, Nicks would be one of music’s biggest stars and that luxurious Beverly Hills pad she’d dreamed of could become a reality.
Meanwhile, the expansive track “Frozen Love,” which clocks in at over seven minutes is still a stunning moment in the LP’s running order. It’s also the track that reportedly caught Mick Fleetwood’s ear when he heard Olsen playing the album on the studio monitors at Sound City, prompting him to pursue getting Buckingham and Nicks into Fleetwood Mac. Listening to “Frozen Love” again decades later, the drummer provided an apt summary on social media that fits the album as a whole. “Magic then, magic now.”
Minneapolis punk trio Husker Du had a incredible year in 1985, releasing two of their best albums, which then led to a major-label deal. “1985: The Miracle Year” centers on a hometown gig from January featuring soon-to-be classics “I Apologize” and “Makes No Sense at All” and covers of “Eight Miles High” and “Ticket to Ride.” Select songs from other 1985 shows round out these exemplary performances by a band that exited too soon.
Perhaps because they were surrounded by bands that were more formally daring (Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma, Big Black), Hüsker Dü has sometimes taken back seat in the 1980s u-ground rock mythology. Of course, this really depends on an individual’s perspective, as the trio’s discography remains a foundational text in how to lay down the hardcore-era punk scorch with non-trite melodicism while being instrumentally limber (in the manner of the great rock trios).
Directly related to Hüsker’s formal achievement is the high number of subsequent bands that directly swiped their sound. By comparison, far fewer aped Sonic Youth or Minutemen or Big Black. And so, it was also easy to get fatigued by the sheer impact Hüsker Dü had on the scene. Yes, it was all a long time ago, but hierarchies can become codified over time. Packed from start to finish with blazing performances, “1885: The Miracle Year” is a glorious perspective corrector, particularly for anybody who tuned out after “Zen Arcade”.
The Minnesota speed demons were in roaring form and career flux — closing out their indie-punk purism at SST Records, about to sign with Warner Bros. — on these stage dates: a January 1985 rave-up at First Avenue in Minneapolis, plus hot shots from the Hüskers’ touring that fall. Velocity can trump coherence — hardly a problem amid the thrill of it all. But five songs from Salt Lake City are a scalding preview of the pop contours on 1986’s “Candy Apple Grey”, while a hometown-encore streak of Byrds and Beatles covers shows off the Sixties-garage classicism always at the heart of the din.
Stella Donnelly returned with the slow-burning album “Love And Fortune” this year, a tender, and gorgeous record concerned with the parting of a friend. Perhaps the best song is “Year of Trouble”, it’s a moving and heart breaking moment from the Melbourne artist. Accompanied by just an isolated piano, Donnelly’s vocal performance is absolutely gorgeous, laying her heart on the line; her tone is absolutely exquisite, warm and compassionate, yet wistful and longing, as she intimately charts the last days of parting. Donnelly says she “almost turned [the song] into a sad dancefloor moment but decided to keep it real for the feels. Maybe there’ll be a remix one day.”
“Since you closed off to me/ I’ve been on a lonely ride,” she sings with a lump in the throat inducing quiver, one can hear and feel the pain as she reaches for a high note pushing her voice to the edge of break, it’s a stunning vocal performance and one of the best tracks I have heard this year.
Stella Donnelly has returned with a deeply personal and anchored album, a body of work that traces the journey back to herself after a period of profound change. Recorded in Naarm/Melbourne, the album carries the grounding energy of place, offering a sonic landscape that feels both intimate and expansive. Joining Donnelly on the record are longtime collaborators and friends Marcel Tussie, Sophie Ozard, Julia Wallace, Timothy Harvey, and Ellie Mason, whose playing brings a looseness and vitality to the music, holding space for Donnelly’s voice to shine in its most tender and unguarded forms.
The songs on“Love or Fortune” gnawed away at Stella Donnelly; they wouldn’t leave her alone, they had to be written. They distil the sheer depth of her song writing, the recognition that sometimes less is more, the purity of her voice, which can turn tiny moments and subtle shifts in a day into ones that can eventually change a life. It’s also proof that sometimes taking your time can offer rewards. It’s a sterling showcase for her indefinable ability to turn trauma into triumph, the feeling of being lost into finding yourself again, one note at a time.
released November 7th, 2025
Written, composed and performed by Stella Donnelly
One of my very favourite periods of music was that of the indie scene of the late eighties. So many incredible bands, and the great thing about Silk Daisys is that they are well and truly bringing it all back home. And then some.
‘It’s A Laugh‘ opens proceedings like if The Darling Buds and Lush had formed a kind of supergroup and roped Johnny Marr in on guitar. Then on ‘Kiss Me Like You Mean It’, they’ve swapped out the Smiths man for Will Sergeant and moved closer to the sound of Curve instead. To say this is a strong start is quite feasibly the understatement of the century. Aural ecstasy and nectar for the soul.
silk daisys: karla jean davis – vocals james abercrombie – vocals, guitar, bass, synthesizer
additional musicians: damon moon – drums and percussion andrew lawandus and ora abercrombie – handclaps on “it’s a laugh” olive abercrombie – background vocals on “nervous wreck”
Ichiko Aoba‘s, “Luminescent Creatures” is absolutely wonderful, offering moments of quiet isolation and meditative beauty and hope amidst the overwhelm of doom scrolling..To listen to Ichiko Aoba is to be drawn into a world as intimate as a warmly lit home, but cosmic in scale. The Japanese singer, songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist has taken a dedicated online fanbase built from TikTok sounds and critically acclaimed, and translated that into international tours spanning more than 20 countries.
Opener‘COLORATURA’ has delicious echoes of the work of Françoise Hardy, with the whirring instrumental motifs, and pungent wood wind notes guides us into a new terrain of the environment man has sought to destroy, while colourful wisps of melody comfort as you are submerged in slumber. ‘FLAG‘ distills pure simplicity and transfixing majesty, with her beguiling isolated voice and a guitar, Aoba reflects on life while gazing at the sea and singing: “Is it true that we are reborn so many times over?”
At the heart of “Luminescent Creatures” is the push and pull between the beauty and brutality of nature, one moment its vast landscapes and oceanic depths can make us feel insignificant and powerless to its cruelty, and the wonder and awe of nature and the glowing illumination of the core of every living creature: it’s these dichotomies that Ichiko Aoba channels quite exquisitely. A beacon to call you home in the dead of night, safe harbour, a reminder of what it means to feel grounded, to be alive and it sounds absolutely magical.
When The Beths released 2022’s dazzling, “Expert In A Dying Field“, the band found themselves gaining a bigger audience thanks to earworms such as‘When You Know You Know’ and the instant classic title track. Despite this success, the path to the follow-up wasn’t an easy one. Liz Stokes, lead singer and songwriter, suffered from writer’s block, as well as various health issues. In an interview with The Guardian, she talked openly about dealing with Graves’ Disease and the effects of the prescribed medication. Stokes spent time writing pages of lyrics and ideas for this album, and eventually finessed them into a concise ten track album.
Stokes’ revealed some of her insecurities and struggles in the newspaper interview, and this is part of what makes her such a remarkable songwriter and performer. She puts those topics into her songwriting, whether it’s a love song ‘Til My Last Breath’ or a song about her mental health ‘No Joy’.
Impressively, she has a gift for turning these confessionals into immaculate hook-filled pop songs. “Straight Line Was A Lie” isn’t just another great Beths album, it’s their most varied and best album since their stellar debut.
New Zealand indie rock heroes The Beths latest album “Straight Line Was A Lie“ is a catchy, instant classic out on Anti. Written in Los Angeles and self-recorded in the band’s hometown of Auckland, “Straight Line Was A Lie” is their first release for ANTI-Records follows 2022’s critically celebrated LP “Expert in A Dying Field”.
Lead singer and songwriter Liz Stokes delves deeper into her psyche to address everything from roundabout progress to physical and mental health challenges, and fraught family dynamics. Inspired by The Go-Go’s, Olivia Rodrigo, filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and Stephen King’s On Writing, amongst others, Stokes’ songwriting has achieved startling new depths of insight and vulnerability.
Fans will agree that “Straight Line Was A Lie” is the most sharply observant, truthful, and poetic Beths project to date.
“The inclusion of personal issues has given these songs an infectious juxtaposition between some of their best songwriting and the underlying melancholy…It’s so easy to root for Stokes and The Beths in general, because struggles and growth are relatable and the music captures it beautifully. “Straight Line Was a Lie” is a remarkable record that epitomises why the band is so special. They hit the ground running almost a decade ago and haven’t faltered one bit. “
By the time Irish musician Maria Somerville started writing “Luster”, her landmark label debut for 4AD, she had lived away from her native Connemara for quite some time. Having grown up amongst the wild, mountainous terrain of Galway’s rural west coast, she later relocated to Dublin, where she patiently developed an atmospheric dream pop signature inspired by the landscape of her youth – a spellbinding sound world of gusting ambient electronics, ethereal guitar strums, sparse percussion, and hushed lyrical vignettes. In 2019, this culminated in “All My People“, a self-released LP steeped in reverb, nostalgia and a yearning for home that won praise from discerning press and listeners alike.
It was upon returning to Connemara, in a house near where she was raised overlooking one of the country’s largest lakes, Lough Corrib, that work commenced on the songs that would eventually become “Luster”, an album that illuminates Somerville’s music anew, pushing it forward in both sound and spirit. “Where All My People” conveyed memories and melancholic longing with misty slowcore balladry, these 12 tracks show us an artist who’s more assured in the path her life has taken, and the person she’s become in the process. As she sings in ‘Trip’ “I can see more clearly than I could before. I know now what’s true for me.”
Invigorated by her surroundings and emboldened by her community, Somerville found a renewed sense of creative energy upon returning to home soil. It provided “fertile ground” for free-flowing recording sessions in her small living room studio, where she stitched together demos that were then fleshed out with friends and collaborators, and later mixed by the renowned New York-based engineer Gabriel Schuman. Contributors included producers J. Colleran, Brendan Jenkinson and Diego Herrera (aka Suzanne Kraft), as well as Lankum’s Ian Lynch, whose uilleann pipe drones you can hear in ‘Violet’, and Margie Jean Lewis, whose violin bows reverberate through the ambient haze of ‘Flutter’. Sessions with musicians Henry Earnest and Finn Carraher McDonald (aka Nashpaints) helped “tie it all together”, while contributions from friends Roisin Berkley and Olan Monk enshrined the companionship they’ve shared since Somerville returned to Connemara.
Listeners have had a window into Somerville’s world every Monday and Tuesday morning since 2021 via her beloved Early Bird Show on NTS Radio, where her dawn chorus selections range from blissful ambient and shoegaze to traditional Irish folk songs. Since signing to 4AD that same year, Somerville has toured with her labelmates Dry Cleaning, and released two covers for the label’s 40th anniversary celebrations – taking on Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Kinky Love’ and Air Miami’s ‘Sea Bird’. With the release of “Luster”, she has signalled the arrival of a new era that will see her play around the world in 2025 accompanied by a live band. Rest assured though, no matter where Somerville goes, she’ll take a piece of home with her – a living, breathing, timeless essence you can sense in every note, as clear as the air by the Corrib.
The Fat Angel Sings 