Dizzy are a quartet including three young brothers from suburban Ontario, Canada: Charlie, Alex and Mackenzie Spencer. Their neighbour Katie Munshaw is the lead singer of the band. Winning the Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year in 2019 with their debut album Baby Teeth wasn’t exactly a bad way for them to start their career.

Moving into a new episode, they just released a new single: Sunflower. It’s described by Munshaw as ‘a three and a half minute ‘snap out of it!’ to myself when I’m feeling low, unconfident or not myself’. The band produced the track themselves. It was mixed by Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, Florence & The Machine). A song with a pleasingly vibrant sound, that sits somewhere midway Maggie Rogers and Soccer Mommy.

Recommended as well:
Dizzy – Heavy
Dizzy – Backstroke

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Canadian pop band Dizzy includes Charlie, Alex and Mackenzie Spencer and their neighbour Katie Munshaw. Their debut album Baby Teeth won them the Juno Award for Alternative Album Of The Year, last March.

Now, the band are back with a brand-new EP, Heavy, which contains five tracks. Well, two different songs, in fact: you’ll find three versions of recent single Twist, and two versions of the EP’s title track and new single.

Munshaw explains: “Heavy is a song about feeling sad for long periods of time and being afraid to tell others what you’re going through in fear of hurting or worrying them. I wrote it after a span of touring where we’d been away from home for a long time. I think touring is publicly made out to be exciting but often times, for me at least, it can feel monotonous and lonely, and can incite a lot of self doubt. Charlie and I wrote the first bit of it at a piano in our studio space in Whitby and it quickly came together when Mack and Alex got on board.”

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In her home country the Netherlands, Bloom de Wilde was formerly known as Bloem de Ligny. She released her debut album Zink in 1998. This led to critics comparing her with Björk – both in appearance and way of singing. They can’t be blamed, for there are more similarities. Apart from music, both artists are also heavily involved in other artforms. Visuals and fashion, for instance. In 2021, Bloom de Wilde is still ‘the full package’.

After a stint as part of Sam & The Womp (who scored the UK #1 single Bom Bom), she returned to being a solo artist. Garden Of The Sun is her new single and it has no problems living up to its title. Her vocal style is still as distinctive as ever, but this time it’s set to an uplifting, colourful, exotic, ska-like musical soundscape. It features a prominent trumpet part courtesy of S&TH partner Sam Ritchie, and even her own children Dizzy and Sesame can be heard. Although sometimes cryptic, its lyrics deal with heart connections that reach beyond time and space.

A new album, Kaleidophone, is in the works and due out later in the year.

Follow Bloom de Wilde on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify

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Last year, Soccer Mommy released the first two songs off her upcoming album Color Theory (28 February), and here is #3. 22-year-old Nashville native Sophie Allison follows up Lucy and Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes with Circle The Drain. The tune is as intriguing as it is contradictory. Lyrically, it addresses dizzying sadnesses, but the melody is poppy and deceptively cheerful. I even hear echoes of Whoops Now by Janet Jackson in it.

Confronting the ongoing mental health and familial trials that have plagued Allison since pre-pubescence, her new album explores three central themes. Blue (representing sadness and depression), yellow (symbolizing physical and emotional illness) and gray (representing darkness, emptiness and loss). Hence its title. “I wanted the experience of listening to Color Theory to feel like finding a dusty old cassette tape that has become messed up over time, because that’s what this album is: an expression of all the things that have slowly degraded me personally”, Soccer Mommy said in a press release.

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