Rising London-based three-piece Our Girl have shared new single ‘I Really Like It’.
It’s been a busy few months for the band, touring with Pale Waves, The Magic Gang, and more. ‘I Really Like It’ contains their precocious live energy, a raw recording that allows their heartfelt songwriting to rise unhindered to the surface. That nagging chorus will stay lodged in your cranium for days – it’s aptly named, for sure. Singer Soph Nathan explains:
“It’s one of our newest songs. I was initially quite nervous to share it because it feels quite different to the others. I’d never written about love in this way before. It has the inevitable moments of craziness and longing that can come with falling in love, but mainly it’s just a really happy song.”
ISLAND are an Alternative guitar band from London. Their music is arena ready, both explosive and atmospheric with gigantic hooks emotionally build with ambient blues and immersive catchy song-writing
Recorded all in one room in just two weeks with sparing use of overdubs and no click track, London-based Island’s debut album is a sonic document that’s all about feel, all about capturing four musicians at their most unprocessed and uninhibited. A combination of influences ranging from trad-folk to high-octane punk rock and encompassing everything in-between, “Feels Like Air”, with its hook-filled anthemic choruses and inventive drumming simultaneously deploys Island’s rolling melancholy and bottles the lightening of the group’s imperious live shows.
Forming as teenagers when frontman Rollo Doherty’s acoustic bedroom project was treated to the boisterous backing of guitarist Jack Raeder, bassist James Wolfe and drummer Toby Richards in a dingy windowless practice room where they began to painstakingly shape a sound which combined darkly twisting instrumental with a sweetly melodic song-writing nous that belied their age.
Now signed to New York tastemaker label Frenchkiss Records, the band are gearing up to release their hotly anticipated debut album, due April 6th 2018 and entitled ‘Feels Like Air’.
In keeping to their DIY approach to making music, ‘Feels Like Air’ was written and produced entirely by the band and includes all new music. Drawing on influences from their shared love of artists like Fleetwood Mac, Kings of Leon, War On Drugs and Grizzly Bear,
their debut offering, with its hook-filled anthemic choruses and inventive drumming, is a body of work two years in the making.
The eleven-track album progresses through a range of emotions, experimenting with the down-tempo and cinematic and includes their singles ‘Try’, ‘The Day I Die’, ‘Ride’ and ‘Horizon’.
The band’s live show is fearsomely tight and effervescently energetic through years of playing together week in, week out since their youth. Be sure to catch ISLAND touring Europe and North America in 2018.
“They are very very special, this band” – Huw Stephens BBC Radio 1
“One of the most exciting bands at the moment.” – Wonderland
At only 18-years of age, London singer-songwriter Emma McGrath has a ton of talent already bursting out of her. We first discovered her through her latest single “Love You Better,” taken from her sophomore EP Silent Minds. Emma McGrath is an singer-songwriter heralding from Harpenden, North London. Writing her own material since the age of 12, Emma self released her first EP, The Judgement, in November 2014. This was followed up in December 2015 with the self released single Sit With Me, which caught the attention of key media including BBC Introducing
“Butterfly,” another track also taken from the EP, is another promising slice of indie rock that has some elements of pop mixed with delicate traces of folk-rock that give it a good ebb and flow. Check out the session clip of McGrath performing “Butterfly” live at Urchin Studios.
Hey Love is the third single to be lifted from the forthcoming album Wild Notion. It has that 1960’s girl band vocals blended with alt rock guitars and if The Concretes were shoegaze orientated they may have well sounded like this. The two b-sides are not bad either. The previously unreleased You Don’t Tell Me sounds like a Twisterella outtake whilst the band’s cover of Jane Wiedlin’s Rush Hour sounds as poppy as the original. Hey Love was available as a limited edition cassette but it’s now sold out so give it a isten here.
After a run of dreamy singles, London’s Lazy Day have graced us with their first proper collection of tunes. Four songs, interlaced with three ‘Ribbons’, tying together their debut EP. Features the singles ‘With My Mind’ and ‘Hiccup’. Lost Map Records are delighted to welcome London lo-fi dreamy-grunge quartet Lazy Day. Ribbons was released on 10” vinyl .
The EP follows Lazy Day’s now long-since sold-out Record Store Day 2015 split 7” single with Tuff Love, ‘Portait’ / ‘Groucho’, and 2016’s ‘Disappear’7” single, as well as the PostMap postcard single With My Mind, released earlier this year, which also features on the Ribbons EP.
Lazy Day began life in 2014 as the bedroom solo project of Tilly Scantlebury. Self-recording her tracks on Garageband and making them available to hear via SoundCloud, she quickly gained extensive attention and praise from many respected music websites and blogs. Since expanding to a four-piece band currently featuring drummer Beni Evans, guitarist Liam Hoflay and newest member bassist Jake Head, they’ve gone on to twice be longlisted for Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition.
Huge, crashing and anthemic yet always deeply personal and intimate and with a delicate eye for detail, Ribbonscaptures Lazy Day in a key stage of their development. From anguished “breakup anthem” ‘With My Mind’, through the hazy hooks of ‘What’s Up’, ‘Hiccup’and ‘TV’, as interspersed throughout with the variously strange, playful and pretty incidental tracks ‘Ribbon’#1, #2 and #3, it’s an EP that exemplifies the impressively broad range and reach of Tilly’s songwriting, and does so much more than the average EP does.
Ribbons was recorded by Bottle Rocket Recordingat The Crows’ Nest Studios, mixed by Adrian Hall (Anna Calvi/Goldfrapp) at Clever Pup Studios and mastered by Andy ‘Hippy’ Baldwin at Metropolis. Artwork and press shot by Eleanor Crewes.
London quartet and Dirty Hit signees King Nun have more raw energy in one fingertip than most alternative rock bands these days have in their entire bodies. Though there’s no debut album to speak of yet, tracks like “Hung Around”, “Sponge” and “Speakerface” display a level of excitement and grit that mainstream rock often lacks. The band got signed a few years ago when they were just teenagers, and after hearing their stop-start, blues-rock stomper, “Hung Around,” there’s no question their label made the right call. King Nun toured with labelmates Superfood and Pale Waves and scored a slot at last year’s Reading and Leeds festival, so there’s a lot of momentum behind this band. Word on the street is that they have an EP set for release this year.
Band Members
Vocals/Guitar: Theo
Guitar: James
Bass: Nathan
Drums: Caius
This London quartet have also set their sights on America, having announced their first North American shows in support of Pale Waves this coming March and April. Inheaven released their self-titled debut album last year via PIAS Recordings to critical acclaim and they’ve also released a new single this year, “Sweet Dreams Baby.” Their album is equally escapist and rooted in reality, with an overarching feeling of nostalgia, teenage dreams and romance as well as the resounding, rebellious beat of defiant political protest. “Drift” and “Sweet Dreams Baby” exemplify the band’s hazy, dreamy alt-rock, while “Treats” and “World on Fire” exemplify the youthful, punk spirit that 2018 desperately needs.
Nilüfer Yanya, a West Londoner, draws inspiration from jazz and soul for gentle but achingly insistent songs driven by her own acoustic guitar fretwork. Watch her session from our day stage during SXSW.
This London-based singer songwriter Nilfufer Yanya joined the PledgeHouse day party on March 13th at SXSW. The up-and-coming alternative/indie singer showed off her new-age sound, astounding the audience with her subtle saxophone and guitar arrangements, supporting her gorgeous, deep voice.
Nilüfer Yanya, a West Londoner, draws inspiration from jazz and soul for gentle but achingly insistent songs driven by her own acoustic guitar fretwork.
Songs performed 1:05Angels5:32Golden Cage14:25Thanks 4 Nothin‘ 20:01Baby Luv
Girl Ray makes self-proclaimed “estrogen pop” that seems to exist outside of time. Though heavily indebted to harmonious crooners and jangly indie acts of the 60’s and 70’s, Girl Ray creates a sound that’s fresh, ambitious and all their own. Poppy Hankin’s vocal delivery is calm and collected, forming a spirited juxtaposition to her biting lyrical wit.
The Fat Angel Sings 