Thobias Eidevald and Henrik Sunbring of DOMUS are not utility members of Sinoia Caves but the beautifully saturated synth tone on “Unavoidable Cycles” has a similarly fantastical quality. Like music for a dystopian, existential, retro-science fiction film. The song from the duo’s latest EP The Last Swan (released December 12, 2025) is accented by what sounds like a touch of bass guitar through reverb or light delay but the synth layers and the arrangement of the pacing is in the style of a classic IDM track from the late 90s and early 2000s like they had absorbed Boards of Canada circa Geogaddi as well as mid-to-late-2000s Black Moth Super Rainbow. The song is the last track of the EP and it indeed has a mood of accepting the end of a journey with an uncertain future ahead. Perfect for the times we’re in. Listen to “Unavoidable Cycles” on Spotify and follow DOMUS at the links below.
“I will eternally miss you when the abyss finally disintegrates me” by the fear of death and the end of time is in fact not a song by an early 2000s emocore band nor is it post-rock. The sentence of the title captures the mood of a song that starts off sounding like it’s going to be a cool, lo-fi indiepop song before the distortion kicks in a little and ups the emotional intensity for a moment before transitioning to the end with the spoken word piece over the melancholic, harmonic drone. The nearly whispered words come across like the final page of a diary entry of someone who is living at the end of the world and regrets not having more time with their loved one and how cruel that that connection had to happen right when there is no escaping the eschatological disaster. Fans of Slint’s influential 1991 album Spiderland will appreciate the mood of this song and the rest of the album together we fade away though this music is more in the realm of noise and drone but the enigmatic tone of the song and the album resonates deeply with the mood of what Slint has done. Fans of They Are Gutting a Body of Water will find more than a little to like here too. One might think of the track as kind of a bummer but take a look at the world and the impending doom of climate collapse and socio-political disintegration in late stage capitalism and it hits as more poignant. Listen to “I will eternally miss you when the abyss finally disintegrates me” on YouTube and follow the fear of death and the end of time on Bandcamp.
The title track of SloNewsLife’s September 13, 2025 EP ansible has a fragile and lo-fi quality that sounds refreshing in an era of excessive production and when you’re not sure if you’re hearing something made by a human. The spare guitar work and vulnerable vocals in the beginning of the song gives way around the one minute fifteen mark to the sound of an organ like the song is conceptually entering a phase of deep reverie. The lyrics recall a memory of childhood that comes back to haunt you later in life. The line “you swore to me we were all going to die” followed by a bit about how in “three decades it turns out you were right, always right” suggests the loss of a loved family member who often offered sage observations that don’t hit the right way immediately. The title of the song possibly references a communication device created by Ursula K. Le Guin for some of her science fiction novels. The device allows for instantaneous communication across intergalactic distances. It seems for this song and possible as a theme of the EP the yearning for the ability to connect across a different type of distance in time and past barriers of interpersonal communication and as a poetic device it makes the song carry a little more weight. Fans of Owen Ashworth and his various projects will find a lot of resonance with what SloNewsLife has to offer. Listen to “Ansible” the song and the EP on Spotify.
“I’m On Fire” by Variety Hour sounds on the surface like a moody indie rock song with a minimal rhythm guitar riff at the beginning of the song. But as it all progresses it dawns on you that the guitar part might be looped as well as the possibly electronic or sampled drums. And then the rhythm drops out as does the guitar and the melancholic vocals drift through a soundscape of birds, insect sounds, echoing guitar plinking before the sound of a soft explosion signals the song going into its final passages and a whorling drone courses as the backdrop of the vocals and sometimes in the foreground. It doesn’t draw immediate comparisons to other artists except maybe the vibe is reminiscent of JOHN or Panchiko with the genre-blurring aspect of the latter. The lyrics follow a similar theme as the rest of the EP of needing to break free of the constraints of a mode of living that seems stifling and no longer serves you and the music for this song feels like a person the verge of making that break because the spirit to do so is already there. Listen to “I’m On Fire” on Spotify and follow Variety Hour at the links below. The band’s new EP Need a Change released on October 31, 2025.
GUMDROP’s winning blend of 80s New Wave and hyperpop is fully realized on the “EYE CANDY” single. Warping and lingering guitar riffs drip like the confections that serve as a central symbol in the song. The song’s lyrics are a playful and sometimes surreal exploration of keeping up with the quickly shifting beauty standards in late stage capitalism and the absurdity of the situation that wasn’t designed for actual, analog humans to successfully navigate without some psychological consequences. In the song the band subverts what those values need to be and for whom those standards need to serve. All the way the lyrics deftly talk about how arbitrary aesthetic standards can cling to your psyche and rot your mind from within if you don’t have a well-established sense of self. But when various standards permeate the ways we’re encouraged to engage with the outside world ironically through digital means it amplifies the general deleterious effect of this insidious stage of capitalism is having on us all and how we’ve come to adapt to its dictates whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. But GUMDROP identifies that pain and has some fun with subverting the interweaving, dominant paradigms. Watch the charming video for “EYE CANDY” on YouTube and follow GUMDROP at the links below. The group’s self-titled album dropped December 25, 2025.
The video treatment for Dax’s new single “Diary Of A Trying Man” deftly borrows the scene from the Forrest Gump as a visual reference point. And the song with its looped guitar and tasteful trap beat help to enhance a melancholic sense of loss. The song is the narrative of a man who is still haunted by memories of a love lost when meeting her at the wrong time in both of their lives. He talks about having moved on but his words speak to how he hasn’t let go of his feelings or perhaps more accurately his sense of who he was and is as tied to his ability to keep that relationship together with someone who wasn’t at the same place as him then. But when you listen further into the song it seems obvious also that the narrator hasn’t allowed himself to grow emotionally because he’s still stuck with the memory and idea of how things were supposed to be. Which is understandable when you grow up and have to move on in life, you look back and wonder how and why things went wrong with various things especially relationships that felt so vibrant and significant earlier in your life in a way that only new experiences fully can for most people. Yet move on you must and the song with its obvious sense of deep heartache at least expresses that pain and honors it instead of keeping it buried which itself is a way to process and open up your life to something better. Watch the video for “Diary of a Trying Man” including the humorous ending on YouTube and follow Canadian rapper/producer Dax at the links provided.
Trip Tease’s “Acapulco Wave” sounds like the opposite mood of winter and its bright, saturated synthwave tones are a welcome bit of musical warmth during the colder months of this writing. The upbeat piano melody and accented electronic drums brings to mind a scene from a 1980s action movie or thriller during a period of celebration or leisure between the darker and more menacing scenes. Or perhaps more accurately it is like music for a Mexican, police procedural version of Miami Vice created today but set in the 1980s and the music was the perfect companion to scenes in which our heroes are about the business of investigating. But all cinematic considerations aside it’s a fine song for the dance floor on the DJ nights catering to modern synthwave with its sensuous tones and expertly syncopated rhythms. Listen to “Acapulco Wave” on Spotify and follow Trip Tease at the links below.
Corey Ledet is a zydeco musician and composer who was born in Houston, Texas but grew up around Louisiana Creole culture spending summers with relatives in Parks, Louisiana just east of Lafayette. As a kid Ledet started playing drums around age 8 or 9 playing on his grandfather’s old kit, which the latter had played when he was a drummer in Clifton Chenier’s band (Chenier was one of the pioneers of zydeco). From there Ledet was playing shows and eventually switched to playing accordion around age 12 or 13. The musical style fuses elements of blues, rock and roll, soul, R&B and Creole folk songs and its lively energy and uptempo rhythms helped to make it popular well beyond its southwest Louisiana origins. Zydeco artists entered underground and mainstream American music throughout the 80s with the popularity of artists like Rockin’ Dopsie, Terrance Simien and of course Buckwheat Zydeco. Ledet came of age during this time and over the course of three decades has established himself as one of the musical form’s most prominent practitioners twice nominated for a Grammy.
On December 23, 2025 Corey Ledet Zydeco & Black Magic released the album Live In Alaska on CD, download and streaming. It is the sixteenth record led by Ledet and a solid representation of his band’s chemistry as a performing unit. The recordings were culled from three separate performances during the Anchorage Folk Festival. The songs showcase the collective’s ability to take improvisational passages and the album includes a piece created at one of the shows: “Alaska Funk.” It’s a vibrant document of the vitality of the musical style and Ledet’s band in particular.
Listen to our interview with Corey Ledet on Bandcamp and follow the musician and songwriter at the links below.
Daniel Avery’s remix of Woomb’s single “Powerless” reworks the moody, dream pop original and turns it into a dark downtempo track. The guitars echo further into the dark and Hristo Yordanov’s vocals seem to preserve a good deal of the warmth and light of the song with Gueorgui Linev’s guitar swarming and saturating the song at various points with a luminous energy. The drums also resonate with greater depth of tone and overall Avery highlights the both the low end and the mid-range with a touch on the high end so that the most distinctive lines reach forth most strongly lending what feels like a greater sonic focus to an already strong piece of music. Listen to Daniel Avery’s remix of Woomb’s “Powerless” on Spotify and follow Woomb on Instagram.
Helga Luzhnikova and Anastasia Kriazhevskaia, photo courtesy the artists
“The New Year Tree Sisters” is a collaborative track between Helga Luzhnikova and Anastasia Kriazhevskaia, experimental electronic composers from the country of Georgia. The song sounds like it’s assembled from various percussion samples and field recordings of weather, chimes, sequenced beats and spectral synth melodies coming together as a kind of sound collage procession. Amid the layers of sound one hears distinct themes coursing through with processed drones peeking through and what sounds like processed xylophone and other tonal percussive noises keeping a loose melody aside from that provided by the synth while wordless vocals drift in to haunt the piece a little. It is intended to embody a time of the world when the holiday activity has settled down some and one has the time and space to observe and reflect upon the world as it is and how it has been. As the track progresses toward the end the sheer details of activity slows down and the distorted signal lines trail off and the ethereal harmonics ascend into the distance. It’s a unique listening experience that actually captures a sense of easing off from intense activity and having one’s attention demanded to a time of rest and tranquility. The composers intended it as a kind of “story about a shamanic journey on a magical New Year’s Eve” and truly sounds like exactly that. Listen to “The New Year Tree Sisters” on Soundcloud and follow Helga Luzhnikova on Spotify.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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