The result is a six-minute song that earns its runtime. Black describes it as a hallucination of a love song – the thing that undoes you and resurrects you simultaneously, with the tension itself as the energy. The production framework is Depeche Mode by way of Roy Orbison: four-on-the-floor drums and analog synths alongside Americana elements – castanets, lap steel, stacked harmonies. The opening melody draws on Ennio Morricone’s cinematic quality, giving the whole thing a wide-screen feel that suits the emotional territory it covers.

The song fakes an ending at the three-and-a-half-minute mark before pulling back and building once more into a final surrender, and that structural choice is what separates it from a well-made pop song and puts it closer to a composition. It doesn’t rush toward resolution. It stays in the difficult feeling because that’s the honest place to stay. Canyon Prince has two more tracks still to come – “These Hooded Eyes” and “Palace Intrigue” – and based on what’s landed so far, the full EP should be worth the wait.

Here is a rare case where someone who actually knows what they are doing uses AI tools for production to create a genuinely compelling song with a real musicality to it. The classical foundation is audible – the emotional arc is structured, not stumbled into, and the dynamics move with real intention, from sparse and intimate in the verses to something close to epic by the time the final chorus lands. Sarah collaborates with Ukrainian vocalist Liliia Kysil, whose presence gives the track a weight that the lyrics demand. The song is about collective awakening – the moment people stop feeling alone in their grief and start recognising each other across the noise. The production earns that theme rather than just gesturing at it.

The lyrics do serious work here. Lines like “every hook they made you carry, every earworm in your head, was a needle full of sleeping” use the language of pop music against itself, which is a sharp move for a dark pop anthem to pull off. “MOVEMENT” lands somewhere between Chappell Roan’s theatrical instincts and a folk singer who never fully shook the roots. With a full album on the way and radio rotation already building, Valkyrie’s Bard is worth paying close attention to.

Compared to “Chemicals,” this one sits a little quieter in its approach, but the Moon Construction Kit fingerprints are all over it. The layered production, the vintage warmth, the way Cornu builds atmosphere from the inside out – it’s all present. The Elliott Smith and Father John Misty references make sense here more than they did on the previous single. The song earns its fairground-at-night description, and the Big Pharma mantra that closes it out lands with the unsettling feeling he was clearly going for.

One-man projects live and die by how intentional every decision sounds, and Cornu’s are. “Snake Charmer” is another solid entry in what’s quietly becoming an interesting catalog.

Believe unfolds with a sense of calm determination. Warm, ringing guitars guide the arrangement, creating a bright sonic landscape that feels both expansive and intimate. The melodies move with an effortless flow, supported by layered vocal harmonies that add emotional richness without overwhelming the track’s natural balance.

Lyrically, the song centers on the simple yet powerful idea of remaining true to oneself. At a time when global tensions, economic strain, and a culture increasingly shaped by artificial appearances can blur the line between what is real and what is constructed, Believe offers a grounded perspective. Its message is neither loud nor confrontational; instead, it carries a quiet strength, reminding listeners that conviction and authenticity remain meaningful anchors in uncertain times.

The single sets the tone for what Hi Fi Joyride promises to deliver. The track blends classic songwriting sensibilities with a modern polish, allowing the guitars to breathe while the melodies stretch confidently across the arrangement. There is a sense of timelessness here, a sound that nods to the warmth of traditional rock while still feeling fresh and immediate.

The band’s dedication to authenticity extends into the production process itself. The upcoming album was recorded entirely live in a full studio environment, with no reliance on AI-generated elements, loops, or pre-programmed samples. Every sound comes from musicians playing real instruments, reflecting a commitment to the craftsmanship of classic studio recording.

Mixed by acclaimed engineer Jess Bailey, whose credits include Paul McCartney, Seal, and Simply Red, the project also benefits from the experience of veteran co-producer Tony Swain. Together, their involvement reinforces the album’s focus on organic musicianship.

With Believe, Groovy Shirt Club deliver a thoughtful and resonant introduction to Hi Fi Joyride, a song that stands firmly in favor of sincerity, musicianship, and the enduring value of believing in what is real.

What began as a simple piano-and-vocal recording with Ian Pellicci at Brothers (Chinese) Recording got shelved for a bit as the band members moved around California. Months later, they revisited it at Olivia’s home studio, exchanged ideas, layered sounds and textures, and finalized the recording in Los Angeles. Beau Sorenson mixed the track. The band’s been working together for over 10 years, and Young Lee says the time and distance apart over the last few years has translated into learning how to create more sonic space in their songs.

Their take on the song features reverb-soaked guitars and swirling, warm synth pads that evoke the sensation of wind breezing past your face. Those ethereal textures accompany an exceptionally intimate vocal performance. Naturally, those textures provide ample space for the vocals to breathe and add significant weight to the emotional core of the song. In contrast with the original, which was a simple stripped-down acoustic performance. This version feels bigger but not outside of the inner confines of the mind as it toils with those thoughts of isolation.

There’s Talk has been building a sound that pulls from electronic dream pop and shoegaze since their debut EP Tiny Strands, touring with acts like Glass Animals, Baths, and Cigarettes After Sex. Their work draws from Olivia’s childhood love of electronic synthesizers, her Chinese heritage, and queer identity. This cover shows how much ground they’ve covered since then, taking a raw emotional song and expanding it without losing what made it work in the first place.

This is musical theater. It’s not just a typical post-rock soundscape concept album. It feels weird to even call that genre typical, but the genre does have its tropes, and you can tell when something is executed with no passion and is just a husk of tropes dressed up to sound nice. But here it’s the complete opposite of that. This is an incredible use of music to tell a story, giving Carmina Alegrìa her record and providing closure for a whole life to complete her story. 

“Desaparecer” serves as an intro, combining motifs from multiple tracks yet to come, ultimately crescendoing and landing us back down for our main entrée. The title track starts out beautifully with these dreamy arpeggios, which we revisit halfway through this movie of a song. The sound production and harmony choices, along with the voice of Carmina herself as a texture, create a warm, endearing atmosphere of remembrance. 

The title track established our home base, so now “Coágulo de un instante” begins our journey to somewhere far from it, like a flight close to the surface of an ocean of passing souls. We then ascend to the heavens as we enter “Volver al aire”. This is where the musical theater description from earlier really comes through. Beautiful operatic vocals weave themselves through rich tapestries of colorful harmony in grief to guide us back down to earth. 

“Siempre (la mano en el fuego)” definitely feels like a song back down on the earth, a continuation of those neo-classical theater influences, with grounded thunderous percussion making a reappearance, and the whimsy of the flutes here and the energy of the backing guitars. To me, this represents the human spirit’s survival. 

“Los muertos siempre son verdad” is the same song as the title track, with one key component missing: Carmina Alegrìa herself. It’s gut-wrenching to revisit it with her voice being gone. Like revisiting a home with no one there, it’s not home anymore. The song transforms; its warmth disappears with her absence. This is the kind of storytelling only music as a medium is capable of. 

In “Decirlo a veces sin palabras” bowed strings and airy textures take us through one last time in remembrance, as we revisit an element of each song, each chapter of this story, and end with an a capella recording of the family singing and chanting “Carmina Alegrìa” a beautiful touch to end on. 

“Levantando las manos” is the bonus track on the album and feels like a final moment in musical theater where the spotlights shine down on a character for an encore of powerful drama. Although it’s short, it is powerful and effectively delivers that closing curtain moment that the album needed.

Borrero also writes poetry and has won awards for it, which tracks when you listen to how this album unfolds. The way he revisits the title track later without his grandmother’s voice is the kind of move that only works if you understand narrative structure beyond just sequencing songs. This is a complete narrative arc and a beautiful work of storytelling, best experienced with full immersion to really be able to reflect on it and how it relates to your life.

Lyrically and thematically, it’s heavily inspired by Lynch’s most popular work, the TV show Twin Peaks. It invokes surreal imagery of angels in the very first line. From my perspective, Cupid Spell explores mainly four ideas in the song’s lyrics: Duality, Duplicity, Dichotomy, and Love. Just as I wrote that, I found an amusing coincidence that these align with David Lynch’s initials. That might be my subconscious making connections. This song will definitely put you in that dream-like state.

Musically, it’s very trance-like. You just feel trapped inside, unable to move, dragged into introspection land as the haunting layers of bells and voices completely surround you. Samples of Lynch’s voice play intermittently throughout the verses. The steady groove keeps you grounded, but the repeated melodies and the surreal lyrics carry your mind outside of your body. I think David would have loved this song.

“Look Alike” emerges not just as Cupid Spell‘s inaugural offering, but as a personal meditation on identity and perception wrapped in Lynch’s signature dreamlike atmosphere. And transposing that to music is no small feat, which makes me excited for what Cupid Spell has planned for releases later this year.

A collective of artists from Genova, Italy, that mixes rock, pop and electronic music, philosophy, art, science, and machines, Andrea Pizza and the Purble Mice is born of a vision, one that doesn’t see a clear-cut distinction between things we have put in different categories: humans, machines, emotions, thoughts, ideas, people. In their new album, released in late August this year, those ideas in all their messy glory are explored in a spacious, speculative, and musically experimental fashion. 

Led by vocalist and songwriter Andrea Pizzo, along with his wife Raffaella Turbino, who co-writes the lyrics, and joined by various friends and acquaintances like Roberto Tiranti and Riccardo Morello, as well as guest singers like Irene Buselli and Antonella Suella, the band has only released EPs and singles before this debut album, which functions as the first complete window view into their initial vision. 

The album opens with the song Ada, which is sung in the voice of English mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace, who was one of the first thinkers to imagine and conceive of applications beyond calculations for the machine. In the song, “Ada” says, “If you can give me poetry, give me logic/Imagination, mathematics are the language/Of unseen relation between things.” In a brilliant mathematicical, logical mind, the collective sees poetry, imagination, language and beauty. In that way, this song functions as a type of a thesis statement for the band’s vision, providing not only interesting music but interesting views of those we have been taught to see in only a certain light. Though in English, the vocalist, perhaps unintentionally, sings in a purely Italian cadence, which brings a certain foreignness to the song’s sound and voice. Not a failure, but rather another interesting aspect of a song that is all about fusions. 

More songs follow in the album that are interested in historical, scientific figures, such as “The Current War” that overlooks the rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Imaginative, playful, and fun, the song mixes narration with lyrical singing. Its fun, punk-y sound, stands in contrast to “The ballad of Alan Mathison”, that takes a more melancholic, contemplative, and poetic direction. “Hidden Figures” and “Bombshell” are more songs that center known figures, giving them a different voice. 

“We are all bots” and “the Machine” are among the album’s songs that explore the possible aftermaths to such relationships with machines. The tracks that stand out the most, however, are “The Space and Beyond” and “”. The former is an adaptation of Versus de Naturis Rerum By Ambrosius Mediolanensis (Saint Ambrose), with added recitative text from The Three Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov. The song lingers than nearly all others in the fandom in the instrumental section, with no lyrics except for the recitations, becoming a definite unique standout. “Eternità,  on the other hand, might just be the most beautiful in the album. The lyrics, excerpted from the Homeric Mymn to Aphrodite translated into Italian by Ettore Romagnoli, make the only Italian singing in the entire album, strikingly performed by Andrea Pizzo and Antonella Suella in an operatic fashion. The result is an eerie, captivating track that is reminiscent of Florence and the Machine mixed with hardscore electric guitar solos. Overall, Andrea Pizzo is a unique, unusual voice, who alongside the rest of the collective, brings to us a fresh, experimental vision. 

Inspired by images of war-time partings between Ukrainian parents and their children, Deering constructs the story of a father’s last playful moment with his daughter before she’s forced to flee. It’s a portrait of love on the brink of collapse, not through romantic drama, but through political horror. The words are few, but the emotion roars beneath the surface.

Sonically, the song is a mood piece built on fragmentation: splintered guitar textures, falsetto layers used more like instruments than voice, and percussive depth that roots the piece even as it floats with longing. The drums, provided by Peter Anderson (Run Westy Run), act as the emotional spine, while production advice from Ryan Smith (Soul Asylum) helped Deering shape the song’s unconventional form into something strikingly coherent.

There’s a rawness in “Gotta Get Away” that feels deliberate, this isn’t polished pop or a neatly resolved narrative. It’s a song of exile, both external and internal. The distorted middle section brings a flash of fury that tears through the quiet restraint; an eruption of the father’s unspoken rage, giving the piece its core tension.

A clear standout is the melodic motif, simple yet unforgettable, that lingers like an unresolved question. At one point, the energy briefly channels classic rock’s bite, with an undercurrent reminiscent of Angus Young’s defiance, before sinking back into the grey of uncertainty.

Deering doesn’t aim for grandeur; instead, he captures something far more elusive: a private catastrophe, a small goodbye that represents countless others. “Gotta Get Away” doesn’t just tell a story, it places you inside it, in the fragile space between what’s said and what’s felt.

In a world too often desensitized to tragedy, Deering reminds us how sound can rehumanize, how a falsetto echo or a lonely lyric can cut through the noise. Quietly, powerfully, he gets it right.

A singer and songwriter who has been honing his songwriting craft since the age of 8, Matt Deangelis is based in Turnersville, New Jersey. His involved and twisting vocal melodies, with their trace of drama and baroque melodies bring to mind the music of Natalie Mering’s Weyes Blood, while his intricate song building and his fluency with leading motion and harmonic rhythms give the music a classical feel that is akin to a toned-down early Muse.

‘For Better’ is a call for action about how interpersonal relationships between people are degrading and how life itself is getting more and more complicated by the day. Featuring Deangelis’s gorgeous songwriting, ‘For Better’ is home to dazzling chord sequences and intimate vocal belts, as well as a thunderous bridge section that showcase Deangelis’s inner rock talent. For a song calling for listeners to simplify their lives, ‘For Better’ is a deliciously intricate piece of work that features complex harmonic rhythm. 

The fulfilling mix is also not to be ignored, ‘For Better’ is a wonderfully produced cut with a searing guitar solo and a powerful arrangement that all lands exactly where they should. This introspective cut looks outwards and gives precious advice while being fascinating in its structure and melodies. A fantastic new release by Matt Deangelis.