The Fat Angel Sings

Los Angeles based five-piece Dummy are back with their latest do you love the colour of the sky?

“do you love the color of the sky?” Is chock full of dynamic beats and melodies throughout. I especially loved the sound you achieved on the opener “April Limousine”. The vocals on any given track pair so well with the melody, which is especially highlighted by the percussion for me. What were some of your inspirations for the landscape you were building musically?. A prolific touring band. I think I read you recently completed about 113 shows in 150 days.

On Dummy’s new album, “do you love the color of the sky?“, the Los Angeles five-piece open up their sound with fresh textures, rhythms, and a sharper sense of intention. It’s their third album and first for Polyvinyl, recorded between their home studio and Studio 22 with collaborator and engineer Joo-Joo Ashworth.

Leaning into downtempo dance beats, electronics, and adventurous guitar work, the band push their songwriting somewhere new without losing their core identity. Alex Ewell’s production and sound design run throughout, while “Full Spectrum Dominance”, “Alluvial Fan”, and “Heaven’s What You Make Of It” highlight the album’s pop instinct and Emma Maatman’s strongest vocal delivery yet.

The exchange between guitarists Joe Trainor and Nathan O’Dell adds real immediacy, bringing a gorgeous new directness. The result is Dummy’s most ethereal and sincere record to date, balancing feminine, delicate undertones with the gritty, noisy textures they’re known for.

Classic Traffic — vocalist/guitarist Andy Altadonna, bassist Dogmeat and drummer/lyricist Dante Fotino — formed in 2022 and the New Jersey band have been on a tear ever since. They’ve racked up three full-lengths and collaborative covers EP and have been making a name for themselves with a particularly revved-up brand of power-pop that falls somewhere between Teenage Fanclub and Thin Lizzy. “Real Music” takes Classic Traffic’s core sound and pushes it further into the red.

The recording is sharper, the guitar theatrics are wilder, the hooks are bigger–these are the kinds of songs that hit you in the guts and put a smile on your face. Or as Dogmeat evocatively puts it: “So much shit is just bullshit. Real music blows your dick back. I know bands are shy about liking their own music but what’s the point in that? I think our music is fucking awesome.

That pretension-free mentality seems key to Classic Traffic’s approach and their lyrics are no exception. Fotino is the band’s sole lyricist, citing fellow drummer/songwriters like Rush’s Neil Peart and Descendents’ Bill Stevenson as comparisons. He keeps things earnest and forthright, leaning into evergreen themes of longing and frustration with the same gusto that Altadonna applies to the timelessness of a ripper guitar solo. Good rock ’n’ roll music exists on a continuum, the fun is in taking these time honored elements and somehow wringing even more life out of them — it’s not about blazing a new trail, it’s about hurtling down the existing trail with the windows down and the speakers blaring.

“Real Music” certainly accomplishes that goal. Tracks like “My Rage or Running Joke” combine the guitar pop precision of Matthew Sweet with the outsider edge of Tenement, while elsewhere “Ballad Of The Storm Shelter” and “Wanna Wish” pile on the intricate harmonies and inventive chord changes like Jellyfish filtered through an N.J. punk basement. By the time the album comes to a close with stunner Sorry Songs you’ll have no choice but to admit: This really is real music. The kind of rock ’n’ roll that, when done right, has the ability to bypass all reason, all hangups, all hesitations, and just sound… real good.”

Classic Traffic are here to make things a lot simpler. Their latest album is eight tracks of loud, catchy rock ’n’ roll that’s so elemental, so confident, and so satisfying that you’ll have no choice but to agree that it does in fact deserve its title

What makes a life well lived? Career, home, savings, family: these are the milestones that make adulthood legible as success. Friendship, meanwhile, is often treated as something that either endures or doesn’t, more a matter of luck than a relationship requiring its own devotion, maintenance, and care. When really, as the world becomes more isolated and artificial by the day, friendships may be the most important thing a person ever builds.

“A lot of times in life I feel like a late bloomer, like I’m still trying to get my shit together in a way that other people have already figured out,” says Chastity Belt drummer/vocalist Gretchen Grimm. “But then I reflect on my adulthood, and my top priority has largely been my friends, which I do not regret at all.” That priority feels like the guiding principle on the band’s sixth album, “All My Friends”. Not that they set out to make an album about friendship—during mixing the band’s longtime collaborator and engineer, Samur Khouja, pointed out that a lot of the songs referenced the subject. Which makes a lot of sense.

Julia Shapiro (guitar/vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar/vocals), Hunter Truscott (bass/vocals), and Grimm have been making music together for 15 years. Friendship has sustained the Chastity Belt project as its members have grown alongside one another, both as people and as musicians. Across a resonant catalogue, they’ve moved from the raucous wit of their early records toward the lush, introspective moods they’ve refined on each album since via trademark intertwining guitars, meticulous rhythms, and double exposure of melancholy and optimism.

“All My Friends” comprises songs recorded across multiple years, time zones, and studios, including Seahorse Sound in LA, Way Out in Woodinville, and a centuries-old house on the Greek island of Hydra. The oldest track dates back to around 2018; the newest were finished within the past year. These days, the band spans three cities (Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago); less writing/rehearsal time means songs are often worked out in the studio, relying on the spontaneity and instinct that comes from knowing one another so well. The result is rawer and less polished than their last couple of records, closer in spirit to the band’s roots.

England’s Florence Road have released new single “Wish Upon You,” out via Warner Records, alongside the announcement of their biggest tour to date, taking in major venues across the UK and Europe in 2027. Pre-sales sold so quickly that a second night at London’s O2 Kentish Town Forum has been added.

“Wish Upon You” opens with a piano intro before Lily Aron’s vocals take over, building to a soaring chorus. The band debuted the song live at their recent New York show.

They say of the track: “We didn’t have a plan for the song, but it became a love song without us really meaning for it to. It’s about that point when you’re with someone and everything just feels a bit easier. You’re not thinking too much about it, you’re just happy to be around them. Looking back, it’s probably one of the most uncomplicated resolute songs we’ve written, and I think that’s what makes it mean something to us. There’s no great sadness behind it or complicated story. It’s just about being happy, letting yourself believe in something good, and not feeling the need to talk yourself out of it.”

The single follows August’s “7563”. The band’s catalogue has now passed 112 million streams, and their monthly Spotify audience has topped 2.5 million listeners.

Florence Road recently completed a sold-out U.S. tour. During the run, their gear was stolen from a van in Los Angeles, and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam stepped in to lend them equipment so the tour could continue.

The band end this year with sold-out headline dates across Ireland in November and December,

Star Moles is the project of the Philadelphia-based Emily Moales. She released a new album, “Highway to Hell”, back in February and this week it was announced that she has signed to Dead Oceans, who will be putting out the album on vinyl for the first time. She also shared a new song, “Born Again,”.

Kevin Basko (Rubber Band Gun) produced the album and Moales worked with him again on “Born Again.” He mixed and recorded the song at his New Jersey studio. 

Moales had this to say about the song in a press release: “The thing about writing something that’s true is that it basically can’t be narrative. If you’re angry or sad or in love, the feeling itself is an exaggeration. Trying to tell the truth in a song by saying ‘here’s what happened’ isn’t satisfying to me.

‘Born Again’ is a painting of real frustration, and the best way I can express that feeling is with a strong voice and words that mythologize. I wouldn’t say I’m religious, but I think sometimes my emotions are.”

“Highway to Hell” is released on 4th December 2026 via Dead Oceans

One year on from the release of acclaimed album “Rose Main Reading Room”, Peel Dream Magazine return with new companion release “Taurus”.

Spanning twelve previously unavailable tracks that were originally recorded for their lush and inviting 2024 full length, “Taurus” offers a wider glimpse into songwriter Joseph Stevens’ process and creative output from those sessions.

The band, whose name nods to the BBC Radio 1 legend John Peel — arbiter of all things underground, quality, and (it must be said) “cool” — has since its inception been a genre-hopping experiment, jumping from motorik krautrock to shoegaze and space age pop.

On “Taurus”, Peel Dream Magazine remain explorative, drifting effortlessly across a gamut of styles that range from the twee indie pop of lead single “Venus In Nadir,” the title track’s cozy vibraphones, and the bubbly space-synths of “Seek and Destroy.”

Although unbound by genre, Peel Dream Magazine still inhabit the sonic milieu of warm woodland tones and droning repetition. In the entrancing standout “Believer,” they evoke “Rose Main Reading Room’s” atmosphere through vocalist Olivia Babuka Black’s mantric melodies and Philip Glass-like woodwinds and mallets, bringing “Taurus” into focus as a welcoming companion piece to its predecessor.

Peel Dream Magazine are releasing their 2025 mini-album, “Taurus”, on vinyl via Topshelf on November 11th. This week he shared one of its bonus tracks, “Blind Faith.”

Frontman Joe Stevens had this to say about the song: “This is another track I was working on during the time I made “Rose Main Reading Room”. Like a lot of those songs, I recorded it a few times over, but I couldn’t get a particular sound I was looking for, and the structure kept changing. I decided to put down the pen and didn’t revisit the song until earlier this year. I was inspired by Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser”, The Books, and some other minimalist, glitchy music from that time.

The song is kind of about wandering the maze of your own head, trying to escape the habits that lead nowhere.

British four-piece The Big Moon are releasing a new album, “Forever”, on  October 30th via Fiction Records. This week they shared the album’s sort of title track, “F.O.R.E.V.E.R.”

The band collectively had this to say about the song in a press release: ““F.O.R.E.V.E.R” is about comparing the interconnectedness of everything in the universe with our tiny lives here on earth and remembering that however small you feel, you still have an effect. You are still part of something much bigger than you and your body and whatever you might be wrapped up in.”

Four years on from last LP “Here Is Everything” and a further eight since frontwoman Juliette Jackson first laid the foundations for the band – the London-formed four-piece find themselves in a very different, if similarly challenging, headspace. Where that record was conceived in the context of COVID and found Jackson processing the life-altering experience of new motherhood, “Forever” examines what’s left when you’ve already checked off many of the major milestones, and is tempered by a first-hand understanding of life’s fragility.

The truth is, the past couple of years have been a big readjustment for Jackson. In 2024, she was diagnosed with a cholesteatoma – a benign but destructive cyst inside the eardrum which has to be removed with surgery. Jackson explains, “I permanently lost most of the hearing on one side, which was pretty much existential, because writing songs is my job and my identity.” Stoic by nature, Jackson forged forward with songwriting regardless but found herself faltering. “I couldn’t hear properly, everything sounded out of tune and I was just struggling to find a point at all, just writing these miserable songs I couldn’t really hear.”

The answer was to shift her outlook completely, manifesting “a happy ending that didn’t exist yet.” “I just decided to write songs for this imaginary time, one or two years in the future, when I would be all healed and happy again. I didn’t know if I would ever get to that point but, by projecting and almost tricking myself into it, it actually became a really nice way of writing.” It proved an extremely fruitful approach, producing some of the brightest songs of The Big Moon’s career to date. Recorded over three weeks at Norfolk’s Bam Bam Studios, with Kevin Morby-collaborator Sam Cohen co-producing alongside the band, “Forever” is brimming with hook-heavy alt-pop gems, not least because Jackson had fallen out of love with writing verses.

“Over the years I’ve got more impatient with music,” Jackson explains with a grin. “I just like getting straight to the point.” As bandmate Celia Archer explains, they hope the album proves uplifting. “They’re not trivial songs lyrically or thematically or musically, but Jules has shown us you can face all this stuff and choose to be hopeful and find power from it. Hopefully other people can apply that to their own lives.”

Texas-born/Los Angeles– and Marfa-based singer/songwriter Jess Williamson released a new album, “A Mile South of Heaven“, today via New West Records Williamson shared its latest single, “Hum of the City,” via a music video.

Williamson had this to say about the song in a press release: “I’m kind of a wanderer by nature, and this song is about my complicated relationship with the idea of home. I’ve spent years feeling pulled between the excitement of life in the city and the peace of a more rural life, never quite sure where I belong.

“There’s a romance to being in hotels alone. I love checking into my room, going down to the hotel bar, and talking with the bartender. I once checked into a hotel and realized I was staying in the very same room I’d been in years earlier (room 12, from the song), during a completely different season of my life, right before a major life change. There’s something uncanny about the anonymity of a hotel room holding such a personal memory.

“The song imagines a conversation with the hotel bartender, asking him to change the music. Sometimes contemporary music feels a little weird if you happen to have history with the person singing it. But old country music always hits.”

Shooter Jennings produced “A Mile South of Heaven“, recording it at Sunset Sound in Hollywood.

“Depending on your outlook, a mile south of heaven may sound sad, or it may sound hopeful,” Williamson explains of the new album’s title. “We’re always a mile south of the impossible goals we set for ourselves, and my point is, maybe that’s ok, because a mile is pretty close. It’s about appreciating where we are now, because there is no finish line. There is always more work to be done.”

Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman) has released a new single “The X-panded Universe,” a six-minute epic that tackles the multiverse, crossover events, and angels. It’s out now on Sub Pop. Father John Misty is on tour his current live band is well worth seeing.

“The X-panded Universe” follows “The Old Law,” The latter track was previously known to Father John Misty fans as “God’s Trash” and debuted as part of the live set in the fall of 2024.

All three singles follow the release of “Mahashmashana”, Father John Misty’s acclaimed sixth long player in twelve years, released in November 2024. a new song Father John Misty released back in January and “The Payoff,” a new song shared in April .

Drew Erickson and Tillman produced “The X-panded Universe,” which was written and composed by Tillman and arranged by Erickson. Michael Harris mixed and engineered the song at Fivestar Studios in Topanga, CA, and it was mastered by Adam Amyan at Ayan Mastering. 

‘The X-panded Universe‘ by Father John Misty out now on Sub Pop Records