The big news this time around is the forthcoming release of the first proper album from UK indiepop supergroup Railcard, who feature members with experience in Heavenly, Dolly Mixture, Talulah Gosh, Trash Can Sinatras, Would-Be-Goods, Swansea Sound and more. Their new album “Two Steps At A Time” is a gorgeous pop statement and we can’t wait for you to hear it!
Railcard bring together Rachel Love (Dolly Mixture), Ian Button, Peter Momtchiloff (Heavenly) and Allison Thomson (Trash Can Sinatras, The Love Band) for a debut that feels instantly familiar. Formed in 2025, the band quickly followed three acclaimed EPs with “Two Steps At A Time”, a collection of warm, melodic indie-pop full of jangly guitars, inventive arrangements and shared vocals. Highlights include ‘Flannelette’, ‘Sunday Sun’, ‘I’m A Disaster’ and the title track, alongside two standout songs from Momtchiloff. Mixed by Allan Crockford, it’s a confident debut that wears its classic pop influences lightly.
Also reissues of Rachel Love‘s two recent (and very hard to find!) albums “Picture In Mind” and “Lyra” on vinyl and CD are have been out for a minute and they’re rather amazing! They’re both packed with lush, dreamy pop that sits comfortably between 60s sunshine pop and the mod-ish sounds of groups like Saint Etienne and Broadcast. 100% essential and very nice companions to her records with Railcard!
From the Railcard album ‘Two Steps At A Time’, on Skep Wax Records and Slumberland Records. (Release date 18th September 2026.)
Together with co-producer Jon Titterington, Troper has marshaled his many muses as seamlessly as ever, and TIPMGAS is both his most varied and most cohesive record to date. Fans of the jangly guitar pop Troper is perhaps best known for will find plenty to chew on in songs like “Best Seat In The House,” “Rotten,” and “In The Band.” Broader palettes will delight in “Let’s Get Back To Music,” which recalls something like yacht rock if the vessel in question was an embittered blues cruise chartered towards Shutter Island. Contemplative closer “Moscow To The Ground” wouldn’t be out of place in the Elliott Smith songbook, the kind of deceptively simple (and deceptively peaceful) coda that belies an interior life that’s anything but.
This is far from some macabre, labyrinthine odyssey through a tortured mind, though. Rubberneckers will find this particular crash site frustratingly put-together. Not to say these are the songs of a man at peace: rather, it’s hard to shake the sense that only someone who’s been on the same mental roller coaster as Troper could render emotional whiplash so compellingly and even charmingly that it makes the sentiment “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” feel as obvious as “if you don’t eat, you’ll starve.”
Margaret Glaspy is releasing a new album, I Am Both, on August 7th via ATO. Now she has shared her second single, “That Rose,” as well as a live performance video for the song.
Glaspy had this to say about the song in a press release: “Songwriting feels like running down a mountain for me. There are lots of snap decisions to be made so that you don’t break your legs. This song felt like that to make. Once I started it just kept picking up pace and I had to bob and weave so as not to fuck it up. It had a life and a mind of its own.”
Previously Glaspy had shared “I Am Both’s” first single, “Michigan,” as well as a live performance video for the song. “I Am Both” follows Glaspy’s 2023 album, “Echo the Diamond” as well as her 2024 EP, “The Sun Doesn’t Think“, and her 2025 EP, “The Golden Heart Protector“.
Joe Henry (Aimee Mann, Joan Baez) produced “I Am Both”. Glaspy wrote the album longhand and on a typewriter.
“I wrote the title track a while ago; the story is based on a female character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing reality very clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find that embracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.”
She adds: “When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back – to walk the walk in terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter. At first it was really hard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’d gotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions. It was life-changing.”
In Ensenada, Mexico, where the Pacific horizon cuts a clean, unwavering line, Holy Wave recorded their latest full-length, “i’m DADA“, a record that feels both expansive and newly concentrated for the subterranean pop four-piece. Stepping outside the United States was less a retreat than a shift in perspective, creating distance to recognize a new sound that had been slowly taking shape among them. “i’m DADA” quickly revealed its character: more propulsive, more candid, and their most structurally deliberate work to date.
Working alongside experimental duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete at their studio El Derrumbe the sessions folded community into the album, though its emotional core had already formed over months of pre-production. Half of Holy Wave is Mexican, with roots in the El Paso border region, so recording in Ensenada felt intuitive and relaxed. Joo Ashworth, mixing engineer and longtime friend, provided a pivotal presence helping crystallize the album’s rhythmic language and subtly expanding the band’s sound. The songs began reflecting conversations about fatherhood and partnership, breakups and estrangement, the queasy acceleration of AI, and what it means to remain present and principled while the world lurches unpredictably forward.
This tension is not announced but absorbed into the music. Holy Wave stretches their familiar sense of woozy atmosphere into something leaner and more direct. There are more loops and samples woven throughout than before, grooves that feel constructed, cyclical, hypnotic. Some tracks drift toward dub’s elastic spaciousness; others pulse with cinematic downtempo gravity. There is a fresh sense of momentum throughout the record, rhythms that pull forward, dream-saturated textures, sheets of fuzz, and softly suspended vocals.
“dewey’s dirge” unfolds patiently: hazy guitars bloom, a softened motorik pulse moving steadily beneath. The vocals remain submerged, widening rather than exploding. It feels expansive and reflective, a comedown hymn that trades drama for immersion. “i’m DADA,” by contrast, locks into a lean, circular groove. A tight drum figure, rubbery bassline, and clipped guitar phrase repeat until they begin to feel animate. Lyrically, the song circles the complicated devotion of fatherhood, written in a brief pocket of rare solitude for a parent: Always loving (Try to do what’s right) / Always learning (There’s never enough time). “s33.u.in/HAL” plays like a transmission caught midair, faintly mechanical, immersive without ever fully resolving, capturing the album’s central sensation: the act of trying to communicate clearly through static.
If earlier Holy Wave records often felt defined by their sense of drift, i’m DADA feels newly grounded. The album doesn’t abandon immersion; it disciplines it. Grooves settle, repetitions accrue weight, and the music is composed and unshaken amongst its heavier themes. What emerges is not reinvention but a sharpening, with Holy Wave sounding less like a band drifting through atmosphere and more like one deliberately shaping it amongst the chaos.
the Austin psych-rockers’ latest album of the same name, out this Friday via Suicide Squeeze.
Gilla Band are happy to share their first new music in nearly four years, the new single “Giraffe” is released by Rough Trade Records. The hugely original and influential Dublin four piece will also be touring the UK / Europe at the start of 2027.
After dropping their first new song in three years in May, Gilla Band have confirmed there’s more where that came from. “Giraffe” is the first new music from Gilla Band in nearly 4 years and to mark this the band are releasing a very limited 7” picture disc.
For over ten years now, the Dublin quartet — vocalist Dara Kiely, guitarist Alan Duggan Borges, bassist Daniel Fox, and drummer Adam Faulkner — have been redefining what you could loosely call “rock music” in the 21st century, influencing a wide swath of similarly forward-thinking guitar acts along the way.
The band perfected a vision that wasn’t quite post-punk, wasn’t quite noise-rock, wasn’t quite anything besides an idiosyncratic, ground-breaking hybrid that could only come from the four of them – “Giraffe” is their bold new offering.
They also shared a new track, “Placeholder,” alongside a dreamlike, colour-saturated music video directed by Cuan Roche.
“Pugnello” is entirely produced by the quartet, and mixed by Fox. In a press statement, Kiely noted that “Placeholder” is a reflection on his childhood creature comforts, from Big Brother to the Power Rangers. (“I remember I was at some sort of Christian summer camp when I was about six and was asked what I want to be when I grow up. I said ‘a Power Ranger,’” Kiely says. “I was laughed at and was told the shocking truth that they didn’t exist and it is not a profession worth pursuing. I’ve never forgiven them for that.”)
Gilla Band released their last album, “Most Normal”, in 2022. They’ve stayed relatively under the radar since then, save for the 2023 loosie “Sports Day.” The group will support “Pugnello” starting this fall and all the way through 2027 on a North American and European tour.
Alabama Shakes have announced details of their first album in more than a decade – “I Must Be Dreaming“, which is released on August 28th via Island Records.
“I Must Be Dreaming” was written by Brittany Howard, Heath Fogg, and Zac Cockrell after the band reunited in late 2024 and recorded in Nashville at Sound Emporium Studios and Blackbird Studio.
Speaking about the album title, Howard says, “There’s a double meaning to it. It could be saying, ‘I must be dreaming, because the world is so fucking crazy right now.’ But it could also mean, ‘I must be dreaming, because the world is so incredibly beautiful.’ Both those things can be true at once.”
The album announcement arrives alongside the announcement of the new single “I Feel Hope Coming”, which is released on Friday, July 10th. The track follows the acclaimed singles “Another Life” and “American Dream“. Recorded in Nashville at Sound Emporium Studios and Blackbird Studios, “I Must Be Dreaming” was produced by Alabama Shakes alongside Shawn Everett. The six-time Grammy winner engineered and mixed “Sound & Color”. Sonicly and thematically, the Brittany Howard-fronted group are said in press materials to “lean into a richly textured, psychedelic soul sound while exploring love, mortality, human connection, and the increasingly surreal contradictions of modern life.”
Howard and bandmates bassist Zac Cockrell and guitarist Heath Fogg reunited in December 2024 after a six-year hiatus. Alabama Shakes toured in 2025 and released the single “Another Life,” their first new original music in 10 years. .
Alabama Shakes detailed “I Must Be Dreaming”, their third studio album and first in over a decade. The long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s “Sound & Color” is due out on August 28
Sharp Pins is the lo-fi noise pop project of Chicago musician Kai Slater, also of post-punk band Lifeguard. Drawing on touchstones from the Beatles to Guided by Voices, Slater’s songwriting most recently took shape on 2025 album Balloon Balloon Balloon.
“The soundtrack to my 18th summer riding a Chinese Taotao 50cc scooter around Taqueria Moran and four tracking my Sta-Prest-Dreams. I thought it would be cool to record a bunch of songs that never really got recorded in a semi-more-thought-out-way. Recorded on a Tascam Porta One in the old concrete Stulogulo with an imaginary band of Men in Green Striped Trousers. The original Sharp Pins garagepopspew sound in all of its crustiness and yelping…I think I dubbed like 50 of these. Now my teenage dream is yours.”..
Sharp Pins is the super solid lo-fi pop project of talented Chicago musician Kai Slater of Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe. This was a covers album, but man this is still great. The original Mod Mayday ’79 is great, and I’m so glad I found out about it through this, and Kai’s renditions complete the Mod revival aesthetic by making them sound like they actually came straight out of the 60s.
This album is amazing from beginning to end. RIYL: Kinks, early Who, The Wave Pictures, Guided by Voices
Indie-folk songstress, Isabel Rumble, crafts intimate, earth-rooted songs that speak directly to the heart. Hailing from a walnut farm in the southern valleys of NSW, Australia, her music draws on the folk-music-rich community that nurtured her childhood. She weaves warm acoustic textures, poetic storytelling, and a “voice like honey” (ABC Country) to create listening spaces that captivate and heal.
October 2025 saw the release of Isabel’s second full-length album, “Hold Everything Lightly“, followed by a nationwide Australian tour. The album has had extensive national and international radio play, online features, and been warmly received across the country in intimate candlelit listening rooms and iconic full-band venues alike.
Her Folk Alliance Australia–nominated debut album “Bird Be Brave” (2023) and 2024 EP “Water Wings” led to tours across Australia, Europe, and the UK, and major festivals including Port Fairy Folk Festival. The music has taken her to unique spaces from house concerts in India to mountaintop venues in the Austrian Alps.
In 2026 Isabel is touring “Hold Everything Lightly” to the UK, Ireland and Europe alongside Australian dates and festival appearances.
U2 have a new song “Street of Dreams” produced by Jacknife Lee and previews U2’s next as-yet-untitled album.
Lee boasts co-producing credits on 2004’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”, U2’s stand-alone 2007 song “The Saints Are Coming” with Green Day and 2017’s “Songs of Experience”. He later served as musical director on frontman Bono’s “Stories of Surrender” theater tour in 2022-23.
The two EPs arrived around religious holidays, first on Ash Wednesday with February’s Days of Ash and then on Easter with April’s Easter Lily. U2’s last recent all-new album was “Songs of Experience“, followed by 2023’s “Songs of Surrender”, which reimagined older material.
The video shoot, atop a school bus with graffiti by Mexican artist Chavis Mármol, was only drummer Larry Mullen’s second major appearance since neck surgery forced him to miss their 2023-2024 Las Vegas residency, U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere. “I ignored my symptoms over a few years and just pushed through,” Mullen said. “Turns out, I’m not invincible – and when you don’t listen to your body, the consequences are inevitable.”
Mullen was also on stage in May 2025 when U2 was honored at the Ivor Novello Awards in London. He’d been temporarily replaced by Bram van den Berg in Las Vegas.
“Street of Dreams” is U2’s first new single since 2023’s non-album “Atomic City,” although they’ve issued a pair of EPs in the meantime. U2 have also released a short clip from the video back in May after shooting wrapped in Mexico City, along with a sample lyric.
Nation of Language is sharing a striking new cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love album track “Tougher Than the Rest.” The song will also be available on a limited-edition 7” single (of 1000 copies). Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney offers this on the track: “Like any good New Jersey resident I grew up listening to Springsteen, but this song somehow slipped by me during that formative era. I was really only exposed to it within the last few years, and it’s followed me around since then.
I can remember finishing a particularly emotional show somewhere deep in last year’s tour, and our sound engineer Skinny started playing it as our exit music. It caught me so hard that I stayed there, just offstage, and listened to the rest of the song blasting, mixed with the sounds of all of the people milling about the venue.
When we ultimately endeavored that we might try doing our own version of the song we luckily had a Yamaha CS-80 at our disposal, the same synth model which featured pretty heavily across the Tunnel of Love sessions back in ’87. Knowing we were working with some of the same textures as the original made it a little less daunting to cover Bruce.”
