Ardyn is a Gloucestershire-based twin duo (sister and brother Katy and Rob Pearson), who used to pair their folky roots with piano melodies and melancholic vocals. At least, they did so on last year’s EP The Valley. For their new single however, they appear to have re-invented themselves.
Together is a wonderful slice of electronic pop. No less melancholic, but ever the more fresh and uplifting. Sounds like a young incarnation of Fleetwood Mac.
Axel Flovent is a talented, 19-year-old singer-songwriter from a small fishing village in Iceland. He has been compared to artists like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and fellow countryman Ásgeir, and Axel has a bright future ahead of him. A future lit by northern lights, presumably.
He has been writing music for years, but he only broke through in 2015 with his EP Forest Fires, whose songs have already been streamed over 16 million times. Since this EP, he released two songs. Quiet Eyes is the third. A beautiful melancholic song that deserves to be heard by at least 16 million more people.
Do you remember Elli Medeiros? The French singer who started her career in the late seventies in punk band Stinky Toys, but scored big time in 1987 with the great, latin flavoured single A Bailar Calypso? A year before, she had given birth to a daughter, Calypso Valois.
30 years later, Calypso treads in her mother’s footsteps. After playing in some movies and contributing songs to a few soundtracks in recent years, she just released her second solo single. Vis à Vie is a melancholic pop song that could only have come from France. Combining equal parts disco, guitar, piano and violins, it’s a real ‘délicatesse’!
When I told you I can’t wait for Haim’s second album, I actually wanted to say to the girls: I want you back. So, the title of their new single proper, the swift follow-up to last week’s teaser track Right Now, couldn’t have been more appropriate.
Want You Back has just been released and precedes the band’s new album Something To Tell You, that will come out 7 July.
Laura Hayden grew up in Barcelona with her Spanish father and English mother. She is a former MTV Spain presenter, but now lives in London, fronting the four-piece band Anteros. She loves the Pretenders and Blondie, alongside Stevie Nicks and Gwen Stefani. Maybe that’s why their music (which they call ‘bitter dream pop’) will please fans of both 1978 new wave and 1995 Britpop.
Anteros’ new single Cherrry Pop can be found on their second EP Drunk. The video includes cameos from Two Door Cinema Club and Sundara Karma. Watch it below:
Clean Cut Kid already was the title of a Bob Dylan song, and now it’s also the name of a band. One from Liverpool, featuring Saul Godman, Ross Higginson and husband and wife Mike and Evelyn Halls. They have released seven singles so far, and I like them all! Especially, because of how easily they combine happy melodies with lyrics that are taken from (student) life. They write about student debts, the pressure to perform and personal loss, for instance.
Felt is the title track of Clean Cut Kid’s debut album, which drops 5 May (finally). I specifically love the shift in pace, a minute before the song is done!
Put on your dancing shoes for this week’s Carte Blanche Music Wildcard! This whole week you’ll be only one mouse click away from I Don’t Know by GotSome feat. Lisa Kekaula, for the song features prominently in the upper right corner of this blog (on a laptop, that is).
GotSome is talented British producer/remixer Adam Gorsky, from Bristol, and Lisa Kekaula sings in American ‘rock ‘n’ soul’ band The Bellrays, but also lent her vocal cords to Basement Jaxx’s Good Luck. And that’s a great reference!
Foster The People is an American band of singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Foster. He started the band in 2009, when it became clear he couldn’t make a living out of writing music for commercials and jingles. As a ‘real’ musician however, he was instantly successful. His 2011 debut album Torches spawned no less than five singles.
After a second album in 2014, Foster The People now release their third project, an EP called III. The first single is Doing It For The Money, co-written by OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, but out of the three tracks the EP contains, SHC (which stands for Sacred Hearts Club) is my absolute favourite.
Norwegian band Sløtface doesn’t shy away from a political or feminist lyric. Yet, it wasn’t that, which caused controversy around them. It was their band name… Because they were banned from several websites, like Facebook, they decided to change the original ‘u’ for an ‘ø’. This didn’t change the pronunciation of their name, but ended the censorship issues.
After several singles and EP’s, Sløtface are now back with new single Magazine, featuring a guitar riff from Boston’s More Than A Feeling. As they sing themselves: ”Patti Smith would never put up with this shit.” Their debut album Try Not To Freak Out will follow mid-September.
Every day I throw my musical tips upon you and every time you decide whether or not to read them. Fair enough. But exactly which recommendations have been viewed the most in the month of April? In other words, what tracks were your favourites among my favourites? This is your Top 10:
