New album: Vibrant, tight, bright, excellent toe-tapping indie electro-pop with a darker undercurrent by the Manchester quartet in their sixth full LP and first for six years, echoing influences such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and The Blue Nile
Read moreShana Cleveland: Manzanita
New album: A sublime third solo LP by the singer and La Luz co-founder, a beautiful selection of Californian-style folk, named after a native evergreen tree with medicinal properties, and awash with pristine acoustic guitar and her mesmeric voice
Read moreH. Hawkline: Milk For Flowers
New album: Cardiff’s Huw Evans releases his fifth LP, a charming, tender, wistful, sensitive, intelligent, and beautiful collection of alternative pop with a folk/country hue, co-produced with Cate Le Bon, and players including Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo)
Read moreFever Ray: Radical Romantics
New album: Sweden’s Karin Dreijer returns with her first Fever Ray LP since 2017’s Plunge, this third packed with rich, eerie, complex, multifarious songs about the bewilderment of love
Read moreThe Lathums: From Nothing To A Little Bit More
New album: After 2021’s chart-topping How Beautiful Life Can Be, the fresh-faced Wigan indie quartet fronted by singer/songwriter and guitarist Alex Moore build on they unpretentious, uplifting, honest, catchy, and wistful numbers
Read moreSteve Mason: Brothers & Sisters
New album: The former Beta Band main man returns with one of his finest solo albums yet, a groovy protest record (“a big fuck off to Brexit”) drawing in different cultures and throwing a party for Britain’s rich heritage from an immigrant population
Read moreLowly: Keep Up The Good Work
New album: On a smaller, more intimate scale than previous album Hifalutin, as previewed on Song of the Day, Seasons, the Danish experimental quintet’s new album is filled sensitive, vulnerable, textured, beautifully building electro-folk-pop
Read moreDavid Brewis: The Soft Struggles
New album: A beautifully arranged release by one brother half of Field Music, with his falsetto voice, gentle piano, woodwind, acoustic guitar and some brass decorating a folk-pop-jazz fusion that also has the magic of early 70s Van Morrison and Nick Drake
Read moreMiss Grit: Follow The Cyborg
Debut album: Sensual, strong, intelligent, highly original indie-electro-pop debut by the Brooklyn-based Korean-American artist Margaret Sohn with songs that explore the idea of identity and what it is to be alive
Read moreGorillaz: Cracker Island
New album: The eighth studio album by the cartoon personas of Damon Albarn is one of the shortest and most musically coherent, catchy, clever and poignant, with guests including Thundercat, De La Soul, Stevie Nicks, Beck and Tame Impala
Read moredEUS: How To Replace It
New album: The Belgian rock band who formed in 1991 return with their first for 10 years, an LP feels refreshed and re-energised, frontman Tom Barman and co’s songs with a spring in their step
Read moreCaroline Polachek: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
New album: Following 2019’s Pang, this cleverly constructed fusion of art-pop and other genres by the dynamic, intelligent, soaring-voiced American ticks all the boxes to be an enormous mainstream hit
Read moreAndy Shauf: Norm
New album: Following 2020’s The Neon Skyline, the Canadian singer-songwriter returns with beautiful, crisp, meticulous folk-pop, filled with narrative, clever philosophy and his delicate, engaging, falsetto voice
Read moreEmily Breeze: Rapture
New album: Wonderfully engaging, darkly humorous, catchy, clever noir pop by the self-deprecatory but talented Bristol artist presenting “a collection of coming-of (middle) age stories which celebrate flamboyant failure, excess and acceptance.”
Read moreParamore: This Is Why
New album: The Tennessee rock band fronted by Hayley Williams return with their sixth album, a more angular guitar affair influenced by Bloc Party and Foals, marrying post-punk with edgy, angry restless indie pop
Read moreLiv.e: Girl In The Half Pearl
New album: A dizzyingly indefinable and innovative debut by the Dallas-born singer-songwriter Olivia Williams, mixing experimental R&B, gospel, neo-soul, spoken word, electronica, cosmic jazz, and pop
Read moreHifi Sean and David McAlmont: Happy Ending
New album: Crisp, soulful, lush, soaring pop, with a Bollywood flavour, as one of the finest ever British vocalists releases a first collaborative full LP with producer and musician Sean Dickson
Read moreRobert Forster: The Candle and the Flame
New album: This eighth solo LP by the former Go-Betweens man brings powerful, intelligent, emotional bittersweet songwriting in a largely acoustic home setup involving his family members, and foreshadows his partner’s diagnosis with cancer
Read moreHamish Hawk: Angel Numbers
New album: After the lauded Heavy Elevator LP, further fabulously crafted, numbers by the witty, articulate, smooth-voiced Edinburgh singer-songwriter, with a set of sensitive, moving and gently humorous songs about patterns of destiny and the future
Read moreThe WAEVE: The WAEVE
New album: Fantastically original, eclectic and melodious eponymous debut by the duo of Blur’s Graham Coxon, and ex-Pipettes’ Rose Elinor Dougall, packed with an indefinable mix of indie pop, folk, post-punk and much more in a free-flowing tapestry of sounds and textures
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