The quasi-fantastical opening scene of the music video for Piper Connolly’s infectiously upbeat single “beautiful life” (directed by Kev Creature) fits the whimsical tone of the song. Connolly answers a pink rotary phone on the side of a desert highway before getting in the convertible that pulls up with her bandmates. The song ramps up to a celebratory bit about an unexpected love that brings to her other unexpected joys including possibly getting into a band she had previously thought was overrated. The spirited “hey” at the beginning of every chorus is practically designed for audience participation and the song itself is basically about accepting something good into your life when it presents itself to you without having to complicate it with internal barriers that don’t serve where you are now. It’s a reminder to embrace possible happiness rather than push it aside. Watch the video for “beautiful life” on YouTube and follow Piper Connolly at the links provided.
Dren’s new single “Fading” features soulful vocals from Sophia James. The music video of a flower developing and blooming pairs well with a song that has in the background an evolving harmonic drone and bass pulse with the vocals in the foreground almost traced by a repeating guitar figure like scaffolding for James to dance elegantly about with her voice in modes both intimate and soaring. Hearing the emotional character of the song its reminiscent of an unlike collaboration between Tindersticks and Cocteau Twins with Jeff Buckley arranging. It has an enigmatic quality like taking a journey into a mystical internal space with imagery that combines organic structure with mythical symbolism of human beings brushing with diving inspiration and gleaning bits of eternal wisdom from an experience that communicates in methods that don’t have a direct analog to human language but which we can comprehend and express through art and music meanings that approximate knowledge just out of reach standard vocabularies of transmitting information. In that way the song is like a dream that feels like something we’ve experienced but is best experienced as something felt rather than something fully understood with linear logic. If genre tags need be used to convey how this song might appeal sure it’s sort of dream pop folk and art rock in a modern classical mode yet a piece of music that resonates with the listener on its own accessible terms. Watch the video for “Fading” on YouTube and follow Dren McDonald at the links below. The new Dren McDonald album Vox Pterous releases July 31, 2026 via Appearing Records.
“Burning Hearts” starts out quietly and gently fitting its subject matter of loss and being haunted by the presence and memories of the people who are no longer with us but whose influence on us lingers. The song by Head Full of Stars is flowing with strong melodies that flow and soar and stir the emotions as the song takes off into the far reaches of the psyche while remaining grounded in an emotional immediacy. One might think of the song as psychedelic rock or shoegaze but of the variety more akin to Low and that band’s focus on songcraft as a vehicle for embodying emotion and exploring the essence of what we feel rather than getting a little trippy and rocking out. There is an economy to the songwriting here that honors what it truly feels like to lose people and also feel a little lost yourself in the wake of that loss as you try to make sense of a world without the physical existence of those closest to you. Listen to “Burning Hearts” on YouTube and follow Head Full of Stars which includes former Sky Cries Mary member William Bernhard at the links below.
The live video for Bank Myna’s performance of “No Ocean Of Thoughts” and “The Shadowed Body” was filmed at Chapelle des Petits Augustins in Paris, France on February 4, 2026. The setting with the old art pieces along the walls and subtle lighting plaster casts and bas-reliefs line the walls with a replication of Michaelangelo’s Last Judgment, images of French Renaissance monuments and other sculptural images enhances the majestic sound of the music that is a fusion of heavy post-rock and moody post-punk reminiscent of late 80s Dead Can Dance. During the second piece the band strikes upon an urgently menacing section halfway through that juxtaposes dynamic footage of the band with the classical statuary invoking and channeling some kind of ancient energy that predates classical music and reaches something more Gothic, even tribal and the band builds the tension expertly that fans of Swans, Museum of Light, SUMAC and SOM would appreciate. When that build breaks into more ethereal moments, bass thrumming from being struck by drum mallets, the group escalates the sound into an even more intense build that is sustained through a noisy and hypnotic repetition that tumbles into a crushing processional outro and intensely cathartic release. Watch the video of Bank Myna performing live at Beaux-Arts de Paris on YouTube and follow Bank Myna at the links below.
The uplifting, delicate energy of “Everything” accompanied by the music video with layers of cityscapes with the band atmos bloom superimposed over it, or vice versa, feels like a soundtrack to hopeful reflection. The guitar leads seem to dance over a buoyant rhythm even in the more melancholic and meditative moments. Tilda Gratton’s vocals seem to switch with complete facility between vulnerable and warm and yearning and urgent all with a delicacy of feeling that is accented and anchored by a minimal but comfortingly ever present bass line locked in with percussion that expertly guides the moods of the song with its pacing. The melodic shift in the last third of the song with a little more grit in an otherwise fairly ethereal song for just a few moments truly sets this song apart from a standard modern dream pop song. Watch the video for “Everything” on YouTube and follow London’s atmos bloom at the links provided.
Danny Clinch photographing Low Cut Connie on December 21st 2025 in Asbury Park New Jersey.
Low Cut Connie is a rock and roll band based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The group fronted by singer, pianist and songwriter Adam Weiner began in 2010 as a way to manifest his songs as a dynamic live act. Prior to Low Cut Connie Weiner was mainly a solo artist who played piano and sang in bars of all stripes, restaurants, honky tonks, warehouses, anarchist squats, DIY spaces and all manner of places where the opportunity presented itself. By the time an actual band came into the picture Weiner had honed his stagecraft and command of an audience from thousands of hours of getting in front of not always receptive audiences. The 2010 debut Low Cut Connie album Get Out the Lotion, despite being recorded in original guitarist Neil Duncan’s garage in Florida in just four days, had a captivating immediacy and freshness that garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Robert Christgau (writing for MSN rather than Village Voice at the time), Ken Tucker of NPR and Merrill Garbus (Tune-Yards).
Across subsequent albums Weiner’s songwriting built upon an ability to express stories and situations about the lived experiences of real people as they are, not overly romanticized, and discerning and vividly articulating an essence of the human condition that anyone hearing the song and witnessing it live could immediately identify. A Low Cut Connie video typically has people in it that might look cool but aren’t necessarily fitting a Hollywood archetype and simply the kind of people you run into every day and showcasing their inherent grace and dignity even if a particular song is about an aspect of life that isn’t the most fun. There is an emotional honesty to a Low Cut Connie song that draws you in and perhaps get you to dance. The style draws some inspiration from the likes of Sly & The Family Stone and Aretha Franklin and their gift for insightful social commentary inside an undeniably moving and exuberant bit of music as well as early rock and roll and infused with a touch of punk spirit and charismatic stage presence. The music combines high energy with raw vulnerability and compassion showing how that combination can not just be exciting but cathartic and good for the soul.
Over the years Low Cut Connie has garnered attention from public figures and high profile musicians such as Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Howard Stern and Nick Hornby. Obama included the track “Boozophilia” (from the 2012 album Call Me Sylvia) on his Summer Spotify playlist for 2015. Since then the group has released a handful of critically acclaimed albums, been featured on television, performed at festivals like Newport Folk Festival, Bonnaroo and Pickathon and otherwise built a devoted cult following and expanding collaborative work and recordings. Then on February 13, 2025 Weiner put out a statement about canceling the band’s scheduled March 19, 2025 performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in response to President Trump’s takeover of the institution. The invite to perform had been extended prior but the newly re-elected president’s legacy and policies promoting racism, hate generally and authoritarianism was and is antithetical to even the conceit of human decency much less the diversity of the band’s fanbase. Other artists canceled their own performances and otherwise resigned from the Center’s board of artistic advisors. That may Low Cut Connie released the acoustic version of the single “Livin’ in the USA,” a song that didn’t have explicitly topical references but the music video and the sentiments of the song seemed to be a critique of the Trump administration’s radical immigration policies and the illegal and unconstitutional actions of ICE throughout the country not to mention talk even in the previous administration of stripping legal immigrants of their citizenship status. And by extension that being something that could be done to anyone that dared to oppose the Trump regime. The song got Weiner threats online of violence and death thus vindicating the song’s message completely.
In February 2026 Low Cut Connie released the electric version of “Livin’ in the USA” as a peek into the forthcoming 8th studio album Livin’ in the USA out July 3, 2026. The album itself is a vivid set of snapshots into the American character and psyche. At a time when it feels like things are falling apart and on the verge of collapse, this new set of songs sees past the divisions without ignoring sources of conflict and despair and keys in on the hope inherent to being weary of things being desperate in a climate of ambient chaos, menace and oppression. Throughout the ten songs we hear stories of human connection and the ways in which we can alienate ourselves from others and from our own hearts. It doesn’t necessarily offer solutions but offers resonant emotional truth in a time when we are bombarded by lies and misinformation by not just the president but the oligarch/technocrat-captured media and social media. It’s a record the reminds us that analog human experience is our best hope for liberation from the perils of the current era.
AUTORHYTHM in bed making music. New album Self Help Manual out 2026.
Joakim Forsgren as AUTORHYTHM appears to have tapped simultaneously into the explorative end of 1970s electronic Krautrock and late 70s power-pop on “Symmetry.” Tones zip by, resonate, fade out, zip in and flare and trace a sonic landscape anchored by a minimal electronic percussion rhythm that resonates in the brain with both “Autobahn” and “My Sharona” and that’s a combination that shouldn’t work but it does. It feels playful and like the soundtrack to a Rudy Rucker novel in that it sounds both retro and futuristic like its channeling the energy of a utopian future as imagined in the 1970s that actually manifested in the present rather than the dystopian, oligarch dominated global order we’re experiencing now. In that fashion it’s an intensely hopeful work. Listen to “Symmetry” on Spotify and follow AUTORHYTHM at the links provided. The project’s sophomore album Self Help Manual released May 29, 2026.
Prepare for some colorful and inspired weirdness before watching the video for applied communications’ single “cowboy bebop & eric’s trip.” It looks like something that was imagined in a part of the 80s before the artist was born but with image references that could only come from the 90s to now with the proper video tools to produce something that intentionally looks retro in a way that hasn’t been done a million times since the late 2000s. The music too is like something that absorbed Why? and late 2000s indie pop including post-punk weirdos The Mathematicians through the lens of late 90s Modest Mouse. But none of those comparisons does justice to the appeal of the song that seems to reference going to ambient shows which is not something many other artists seem to do and for anyone that does go to those kinds of performances, much less plays them, this feels like a real nod to that rarified reality. He also mentions “geologist’s bag” – a reference to the member of Animal Collective who does sound manipulation and provides many of the samples for the band? Nevermind the title name checking a beloved animated series and both an obscure, underground alternative rock band (whose membership included later indie rock darling Julie Doiron) and the Sonic Youth song after which it was named. Even if not, the potential triple entendre fits the vibe of the song which feels like someone coming out of a place of psychological and emotional stasis and climbing the ladder through familiar cultural reference points to a place of being ready to embrace new experiences which doesn’t happen nearly often enough in music much less with something so individual in sound and visual presentation as this. Watch the video for “cowboy bebop * eric’s trip” on YouTube and follow applied communications at the links below.
“Us & The Moon” by Tugboat Captain is in fact not a liminal zones song, at least not overtly, despite its fantastic music video including lyrics over what looks like video taped or 90s digital video footage of wandering around south London at night. And yet the visuals fit a song about missing someone with whom one may have recently split or there is a needed separation for the best psychological space of both people involved. But the song and its luminous keyboard line and minimal percussion like a pop song incorporating IDM sounds and pacing and putting forth a palpable vulnerability as the vocals express tender sentiments and a fear of loss and wondering if the other person is thinking and feeling similar things in the same setting because of the emotional connection that was or still is there. The low key romantic sensibility and gentle energy of the song really draws you in and keeps you with the song to the end and hoping things work out because it’s obvious there’s plenty of affection there. Watch the video for “Us & The Moon” on YouTube and follow Tugboat Captain at the links provided.
Brisbane, Australia’s Layer Cake channel a bit of 1980s UK and New Zealand indie pop on “numb.” The bright guitar melody with winsome lead vocals that deliver a tale of heartbreak and heartache and how one can feel both too much and, yes, numb when the moment hits you and it feels amplified in your brain but your reaction becomes unpredictable and complicated when you’ve invested so much of your heart in someone and suddenly, or seemingly abruptly, it’s over whether one knew that was coming and it’s difficult to just let go. Fans of C86, Flying Nun, Sarah Records and Slumberland bands would do well to give Layer Cake try. Listen to “numb” on Spotify and follow Layer Cake at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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