Originating from South Africa, the now Melbourne dweller and singer-songwriter Ruby Gill has a voice that's distinctively her own. In "Your Mum" she sings out her frustrations with a strong-willed and emotional tone that quickly goes from assured to heartbreaking. While at one point her voice is leveled and steady at other points it's erratically emotional. The main line Gill repeats is "I'm sorry I don't cook like your mum" but it's clear that the undertones of this pain are about more than just home-cooked food. Still the way, she uses this argument to release her insecurities both sarcastically and genuinely are breathtaking. With just an electric guitar and a powerhouse voice gone soft she sings, "I know I don't cook like your mum but I'm trying to love her son." Offering her voice, story and self-doubt wrapped up in a song, Ruby Gill has truly given us something of value and substance.

Tasha, a blooming artist off of Father/Daughter Records, has shown herself to be gentle before. This time, with her most recent single, “New Place,” Tasha offers solace in new beginnings. She soothes us, “a new place, a new time / a new sun, new sunlight / a new bed, a new night / a new hand to hold tight.” Tasha's sweetness carries us throughout the song, her confidence in what’s to come shines brightly. “New Place” sways back and forth between spoken word and singing, creating a serenade that feels both like a rally cry and a lullaby. Her anticipated debut album, Alone at Last, creates a world where “there’s plenty of room to forge your own home where you can rejuvenate and heal." And “New Place” offers its listeners just that — a space where we can find strength in our vulnerability, “it’s okay if you feel nervous / look at me, my hands are shaking” but also where we can find joy in the endless possibilities of tomorrow.

Eliza Shaddad has released another single off her album Future, out October 26 via Beatnik Creative. "Just Goes to Show," a song reminiscent of the 90s pop-punk bands many of us grew up on, is about the sinking feeling one has when being broken up with. Yet, for such a melancholic topic, "Just Goes to Show" is light and shimmering, bouncing on a plane much more uplifting than a breakup. Shaddad’s song could be called a dancing-in-your-room type bop, one that you would listen to in the car with friends or while getting dressed on a weekend night. A crispness reminiscent of Phoebe Bridgers or Julia Jacklin, Shaddad’s sound has already blossomed into something that sounds obvious to listen to. Pulses of foggy guitars and relaxed drums warm the work, while the singers voice pierces through the upbeat tone of the work. We are incredibly excited about Shaddad’s debut album, and expect similarly wonderful things from her in the future.

Transparent B*tch, the debut EP from indie-pop project, Reilly & Co., really couldn’t have a better title. On the first track, “Depersonalization,” we find singer/songwriter, Em Noll, telling you exactly how she feels when she’s locked in discomfort. “I struggle with anxiety and a lot of the time, I guess as a coping mechanism, I sort of depersonalize,” Noll said of the song, “It's a difficult feeling to describe.” 

Amidst a keyboard bop, spacey guitars and an array of bright electronics, Noll uses her lilting vocal to chronicle the chaos that subtly arises when she feels threatened. She sings, “I’m trying not to go AWOL in whatever army I've been enlisted/ But who would really notice I’m gone when I've already been gone for so long,” disguising her angst in the melodies of a catchy chorus. Reilly & Co. lives somewhere in-between the indie warmth of Adult Mom and the glittering experimentation of Sylvan Esso, both playful and purposeful. “Depersonalization” lives somewhere in Noll’s psyche and she knows she’s not alone in that.

The most touching moment in Pearla’s breathtaking “Forgive Yourself” comes about halfway through the song, just before the point of no return when the song releases the breaks and builds into a cacophonous finale. Singer Nicole Rodriguez has at this point been asking herself, “Can you forgive yourself?” not just for 90 seconds but likely for her whole life, when an ounce of hope creeps into her voice and she turns the question around. “You can forgive yourself,” she allows, and worlds of possibilities flood through the crack in the sonic doorway. But even in her triumph come tribulations — among the layers and layers piled on over the course of the joyous celebration, discordant drones sounding more like helicopters landing than like anything in a recording studio pull her away from a simple happy ending. But that goes both ways, and in her tribulations, she has found triumph. “Writing it made me feel a thousand times lighter,” she says, and the feeling is mutual.

“Bad Idea,” the second track from Madeline Kenney’s latest release, Perfect Shapes, eases you into a melodic tranquility that is bolstered by Jenn Wasner’s (Wye Oak) sleek production. With sparse drum hits and fragile synth swells, a winding soundscape is planted as the backdrop for Kenney’s ample thoughtfulness. When she sings, “Someone gave up/ I don’t know who it was/ We’re getting bad ideas,” she reflects on the disjunct of relationships. Her vocal echoes the timbres of Half Waif’s, Nandi Rose Plunkett, who also constructs keyboard kingdoms and dreams up poetic lyricism. Kenney shows her allegiance to experimentation on this track, by the end offering pitched down backing vocals, clinking percussion, and a synth that sounds like a theremin.

Lauren Turk's soft croon and song pattern resembles popular artists from past decades such as the great Anita Baker. The Los Angeles singer-songwriter is a multi-instrumentalist, activist, speaker, etc. whose talents and impact extend far outside of music. As a singer-songwriter the themes of heartbreak and its aftermath are common territory, but Turk's insight is rare. "See You Again" is a story of letting go with love. The longer we hold on to things, the heavier they become...so letting go is really a vital act of self-love. Doing so with love not only sets us free, but attracts it back to us," she tells us. It's a powerful sentiment and as Turk sings there's more assurance with every note that one day she'll see this old love again and maybe then it won't hurt the way it use to. Make sure to follow Lauren Turk on social media to hear more of her music and humanitarian efforts.

Oddly enough, searching SoundCloud for “cushy bedroom psychedelic bossanova & dream surf” yielded no results until the release of Getaway Dogs’ “Papersoul II.” This song could have come out of few places but Santa Cruz, a seaside town that prides itself on its Austin-or Portland-like weirdness, close enough to San Francisco to fully feel the force of its 1960’s psychedelia. An expansive track surrounded on either sonic end by a twitchy bassline and echoing guitar twinkles, “Papersoul II” allows the drumbeat to steer the song, ranging in volatility from staring at the ceiling to urgently staring at the ceiling, discovering the symmetry in its hidden patterns..Nearly a cover of their own song, 2016’s “Paper Soul,” the sequel reads almost like a renewal of vows, as singer Kai Killion doubles down on his noncommittal lifestyle, singing “I don’t know but I’ve been told / My soul’s worth paper / If so I’ll sell it later / Not this time.”

The Holydrug Couple latest single "Forever End" is a psychedelic dream machine. Hailing from Santiago, Chile the band formed a decade ago and recently release their fifth full-length album Hyper Super Mega. Bearing comparisons to the music of psychedelic rock master Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, there is a sense of getting lost in this song. The escape is welcomed and as Ives Sepúlveda sings a steady melody the lyrics repeat each other in a circular motion seeming to begin again with the word "forever." As if being hypnotized by the repetition, it's easy to get in lost inside the consistent groove song and find soon enough just how long you've had this song on repeat. Make sure to listen to the rest of Hyper Super Mega out now and catch the boys on tour this fall!

If “Heaven” is your introduction to Charly Bliss, you might have a few misconceptions about the band, none of them particularly harmful. First, you will not know that guitarist Spencer Fox voiced Dash in Pixar’s The Incredibles, and while this fact is not strictly relevant, it is very, very interesting. More importantly, you might think singer Eva Hendricks lives her life in a state of (don’t say “bliss”) constant wonder at all the things going right in her life, and not in a state of self-destruction (“I’m gonna die / In a getaway car”) and self-doubt (“Am I the best / Or just the first person to say yes?”) as she does on the band’s breakthrough debut album Guppy. 

Written as a challenge to write a love song instead of a three-minute coping mechanism, “Heaven” shows off Charly Bliss’ bubblegum-punk style and Hendricks’ characteristic howl in a somewhat sweeter setting, waltzing through the walls of distortion we have come to expect from the band. With “Heaven,” Hendricks sets sights on a bright future for herself and for the band, an assertion that they do not need to fundamentally change to be versatile.

Folk quartet Mona Lisa Tribe are back at it again with their latest single “Safe,” another beautifully orchestrated and blended indie folk track that demands to be listened to. The all-female band have come together to create a song that evokes the listener’s emotions and brings them to a place that feels vulnerable yet safe. With its well-crafted and impressively executed harmonies, combined with a heartwarming mix of gentle piano playing and strings, the track expresses the feelings one feels when in the arms of their love at night in bed together. The well-written lyrics match the feelings expressed in the instrumentation, especially the line “We need each other to get some rest / need your arms around me with my head on your chest / my world is a place / in your arms I feel safe.” (photo by Imani Givertz)