'On Our Own' is the emotional story of our journey from collective activity to atomisation. It relates the history of a building that served as a music venue, was knocked down and replaced with an office block - and now stands empty because all the jobs have been automated. (The song is more fun than this implies.)
Taken from the bands next album 'Pre-post-truth' (due 13th November) which has been described as a collection of twelve new punk and power-pop tunes with a lot more lyrical bite than you get from the average indie band.
Sometimes described as an indie supergroup, Swansea Sound are Hue Williams (ex-The Pooh Sticks), Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey (Heavenly), Bob Collins (The Dentists) and Ian Button (Death In Vegas, Railcard). ‘Pre-post-truth’ is their third album. They have recorded sessions for 6Music, Radio X and WFMU (New York) and have just completed a tour of the US.
‘Pre-post-truth’ sees Swansea Sound expand their musical ambition and broaden their lyrical targets. It used to be YouTube and Spotify that the band railed against, but now everyone’s getting their heads round those issues, so why not attack the whole edifice of tech-bro hegemony? This album is loud and it’s outspoken, but it’s also energetic and very witty. There’s an awareness of impotence too: the songs are often self-mocking, asking if it’s even possible to make subversive statements in a world where the communication channels are all owned by the tech-bros themselves.
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Canadian singer-songwriter Shiloh Lindsey shares “Wolves In Your Head,” a haunting, restless and ultimately resilient folk-noir track and the second single to be revealed from her forthcoming album, The Western Veil, set for release on November 6th, 2026. Pairing bluesy acoustic guitar with hypnotic rhythms and otherworldly electric textures, the song turns familiar Western imagery inward, transforming a wilderness stalked by wolves into a metaphor for the fears, thoughts, and difficult parts of ourselves that can prove impossible to outrun.
The song grew from Shiloh’s concern for the mental health struggles she witnessed around her, informed by both her own experiences and her work as a mental health worker in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. From there emerged an image: someone alone in the wilderness, huddled around a tiny fire, searching for the language to tell another person how they’re really doing.
“The wolves represent the fears, thoughts and difficult parts of ourselves that can circle in our heads,” Shiloh explains. “The Wild West imagery eventually becomes an internal landscape – the ‘wildest’ territory can sometimes be our own mind.”
As the song unfolds, its relationship with those wolves begins to change. Initially something to fear and fight off, by the end they are invited to sit beside the fire. Drawing on lessons Shiloh encountered through therapy and shadow work, the transformation reflects an understanding that healing does not always mean defeating or eliminating our darker impulses. Sometimes it means learning why they exist and changing the way we meet them.
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New York–based alternative singer-songwriter Lauren Minear shares “Autumn Leaves,” a nostalgic and hopeful new single that wrestles with the choices that shape a life and the paths we leave unexplored. Written from the perspective of a mother wondering whether she sacrificed her chance at a music career to raise a family, the song transforms that uncertainty into something warmer and more accepting, finding meaning not in the life that might have been, but in the one unfolding directly in front of her.
The song was sparked after Lauren heard Kelsea Ballerini’s “I Sit In Parks,” which explores the desire to have children alongside ambivalence about a successful music career. Lauren immediately recognized herself on the opposite side of that equation: someone deeply driven toward music who had sometimes wondered about choosing motherhood over pursuing that ambition more fully.
It was November, and as she watched the leaves falling from the trees, the passing season became inseparable from the feeling that perhaps her opportunity had passed with it. She sat down to write, and “Autumn Leaves” emerged. While Lauren was finishing the song, her son sat down beside her at the piano. In that small moment, the regret and uncertainty she had been writing through suddenly gave way to a different realization: she was exactly where she was meant to be.
That emotional turn makes “Autumn Leaves” less a song about regret than one about holding contradictory truths at once. Ambition does not disappear with motherhood, nor does loving the life you chose mean never wondering about another one. Instead, the song allows longing, gratitude, uncertainty, and contentment to coexist.
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| Photo - Aleksandra Savchenko |
Cork bubblegrunge meets post-punk 5-piece Other Mother release their anticipated debut EP Can’t Help But Feel Dramatic. Built around an evocative blend of grunge, post-punk, electronic textures and what the band call “unapologetic feminine rage”, the five track EP showcases a strikingly complete and well constructed sound despite being the band’s debut.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Wavefield Recordings (Cliffords), the EP brings together biting guitar tones, theatrical intensity and richly layered soundscapes. Moving fluidly between evocative spoken word and soaring melodies, it shifts from gritty urgency to intricate, psychedelic flourishes, balancing raw intensity with moments of ethereal beauty.
From the evocative spoken word and pop-punk undertones of opener ‘not sorry’, through the post-punk grit of ‘anymore’, to the atmospheric alt-rock swell of ‘fish to fry’, and the at first emotional and ethereal, and then intense and driving ‘worm song’, Can’t Help But Feel Dramatic reveals the full breadth of the band’s musical identity. Intricate, yet fuzzy and intense guitar work, textured arrangements and melodic flourishes combine to create a sound that is both visceral and expansive, embracing the tension between beauty and grit, chaos and atmosphere.
Speaking about the EP lead vocalist Willow explains: “We had an amazing time recording this EP; We went over to the countryside of West Cork and had a sleepover at our favourite place, Wavefield recording studios. Brian, Sarah and their dog Juno create the perfect atmosphere for creating music. It was a dream to be able to wake up, take a walk surrounded by nature and then come back and record our favourite songs of ours.
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Acclaimed singer, songwriter and performer Anna Rose returned yesterday October 8 with “The Landslide,” a dark, atmospheric new single about the weight of watching a rapidly changing world and the responsibility of leaving a better one behind for the next generation. Written with songwriter and producer Jess Grommet while Rose was pregnant, “The Landslide” took on new meaning when she recorded it after the birth of her daughter. The song captures the complicated feeling of trying to make sense of the world while carrying an immense new responsibility for the person growing up in it. As Rose describes it, raising awareness about the decisions we make both individually and as a society can sometimes feel like “screaming at the sky.”
But “The Landslide” isn't a quiet meditation. Its lyrics move from helplessness to confrontation, shifting from “I feel like nothing / And the landslide’s coming down” to the declaration, “I’m the landslide now.” Against an ominous, immersive backdrop, Rose turns anxiety into something more powerful: the realization that change can also begin with us.
The production draws from the late-'90s and early-2000s music that soundtracked Rose's formative years, channeling the atmospheric pull of artists including Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, Sneaker Pimps, Zero 7, Moby, Björk and David Gray, alongside the stark, experimental spirit of David Bowie's final album, Blackstar. The result is a track that feels both deeply rooted in its influences and distinctly of the moment.
Rose has spent years carving out a singular space between alternative, indie, country and singer-songwriter music. Her acclaimed 2023 album Last Girl of the Rodeo, released August 25, was described by Rose as “truth in costume” and earned attention from Rolling Stone, Billboard, People Magazine, Earmilk, American Songwriter, Flaunt, Nylon and more. She followed the album with the 2024 single “Plush” and 2025's “The End.” With “The Landslide,” Rose continues to push her sound forward while staying rooted in the raw, honest songwriting that has defined her career.
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| Photo - Si Moore |
Pōneke New Zealand post-punks So So Modern have finally shared their latest record, and their first new material in 13 years. Light Years is So So Modern’s latest offering. A collection of songs written in the decade since their last release, the twenty-something-year-old post-punk band have for years defied convention for how a group should operate or sound. Today the band resembles less the four young, unknowing friends who started this journey in the mid-2000s but more an extended family, bound through intersecting lives and close-knit community.
The musical landscape has since overtaken them with speed and saturation, but SSM have stuck to the path of the slow and steady - because time beats everything. Whilst the band’s sound has garnered a reputation for complex, chaotic convergences of guitars, synthesisers and rhythm, the songs in Light Years are about clarity, restraint and simplicity - an acknowledgement and misremembering of the straightforward hardcore punk and pop that inspired them as teenagers.
Light Years represents time, distance and the entanglement of life, although it is unclear if this is in relation to a distant past or the horizon of the future. The limited 12” vinyl release by Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records is accompanied by the illuminating artwork of Lily Paris West.
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