SubmitHub – Page 14 – Queen City Sounds and Art

The Fantasy-Themed Music Video for myah’s “Dodging Bullets” Perfectly Reflect the Often Brutal Costs of Romantic Obsession

The Game of Thrones-esque aesthetic of the music video for myah’s “Dodging Bullets” is perfect for a song about loving the wrong person. The singer’s confident vocals match the sentiments within that seem confused and undeterred by the object of her love rebuffing her amorous gestures at the expense of keeping on getting hurt the way many of us will allow ourselves to be hurt by those who we set our mind to getting into our lives because it feels right and in an alternative universe maybe it would be but blinded by passion and fantasies that should be a reality but aren’t. The lines “built my future around you/now I’m stuck in the present without you/trust issues, long overdue/my life’s a mess living in deja vu” vividly sum up the situation because maybe at some point it seemed like something was possible and it hurts so much to find out it never really was. The finely syncopated bass line exchanging moments with the vocals and the slightly fuzzy guitar riff gives the song an uplift that carries an emotional momentum to the song’s conclusion hinting that despite our folly we can survive and overcome the situation and turn things around even if it doesn’t end up in an ideal situation. Watch the video for “Dodging Bullets” on YouTube and follow myah at the links below.

myah on TikTok

myah on Instagram

Kin Capa’s Urgent Yet Melancholic Indie Folk Ballad “Wreckless Ruins” Mourns the Rapid Decline of America

Kin Capa takes a bit of a different tack when writing about an uneasy spirit regarding one’s own home country on “Wreckless Ruins” (aka “Living With America”). With layered acoustic strumming to establish a dappled tonal sheen and lively rhythm to accompany a tinge of melancholic tension in his vocals, Capa creates an urgent but not hurried pace as he spins the idea of coming to terms with living in a country that is bordering on unrecognizable as a relationship with someone with whom one recognizes has changed in ways that seem to be causing you to drift apart at a rate that would trouble anyone. All while casting the song as one for a hope for a reconciliation of some kind, a shift in spirit and in character that can turn things back to a positive path but being unsure if that’s possible. That kind of nuance runs through the song though it works well as simply a finely crafted, indie folk ballad but the emotional colorings and Capa’s arrangements from guitar to percussion truly make this one of the songwriter’s best and most compelling creations including the nice use of neologism in the title. Listen to “Wreckless Ruins” on Spotify and follow Kin Capa at the links below.

Post Death Soundtrack’s Menacing, Industrial Post-Punk Single “A Monolith of Alarms” Seethes With Righteous Fervor

As “A Monolith of Alarms” by Post Death Soundtrack progresses from its sinister, murky beginnings with a shuffling beat and the echoing vocals come in, the song becomes increasingly reminiscent of something that might have appeared on the 1994 Killing Joke album Pandemonium. The guitars are both moody and savagely cutting, haunting synths cast a simple and icy figure in the background and the rhythms are insistent and hypnotic. But the whole while the song sounds like it’s on edge and ready to unravel at any moment as the singer relates what sounds like a harrowing tale of deceit and manipulation with a dramatic illumination of the truth that will bring down the cycle of abuse and control. It’s a heady song that should appeal to fans of the more industrial end of post-punk. Listen to “A Monolith of Alarms” on Bandcamp and follow Post Death Soundtrack at the links provided. The band’s new album In All My Nightmares I’m Alone dropped May 30, 2025.

Post Death Soundtrack on Twitter

Post Death Soundtrack on Facebook

Post Death Soundtrack on Instagram

Graffiti Punks Hack the Techbros in the Retrofuturist Cyberpunk Video For HLLLYH’s Pop Punk Indie Rock Single “Flex It, Tagger”

In the video for HLLLYH’s “Flex It, Tagger” we are taken back in time to an alternate reality where a punk tagger is adding some color to a rundown, possibly abandoned house. All the while headlong drums and a minimal, spiky guitar melody sketches the soundtrack to come. What the tagger doesn’t know is that someone inside seems to be hacking reality itself. And streaks of color run across the screen over normal existence as various taggers are profiled and hunted down by drones from a retro-futurist version of an authoritarian, technocratic regime as part of “Project Carnivore.” The song is like a more eccentric pop punk but with the same exuberance and ear for melody and exciting rhythms that make that music work. But not to worry, as in real life, things don’t go as planned and the infrastructure that makes the drone strike and persecution malfunctions and waxes itself. The end. It’s an absurd premise straight out of a more ambitious and surreal take end of the movie Hackers (1995) but it has the kind of energy we need now when technology seems to be channeled into the most dystopian, fascist plots to destroy society and the planet and it needs to be subverted by ideas and actions the techbros can’t envision with no small amount of mockery thrown in. Watch the video for “Flex It, Tagger” on YouTube and follow HLLLYH (formerly The Mae Shi) at the links below. The band’s debut album URUBURU released June 27, 2025 via Team Shi.

HLLLYH on Instagram

The Mae Shi on Bandcamp

múm’s “Mild at Heart” Unfolds Hidden Heartache in Melancholic Minor Keys

Icelandic experimental pop band múm is set to release its seventh studio album History of Silence on September 19, 2025 via Morr Music. Ahead of that event the group has released the tender and ethereal single “Mild at Heart.” The melody is seemingly carried by percussive tones in simple yet layered strands of textural sound, spare piano and echoing melodies that well and dissolve like dappled sunlight on lake. The vocals are near-whispered like introspective readings from an old poetry diary and discovering glimmers of observational insight into heartbreak and heartache within that inspire a delicate treatment to honor the precious sentiments uncovered. In the music video we see Sigurlaug Gísladóttir languishing about a set of rooms and buildings appointed like the secret and magical chambers of personal reverie out of a folkloric fantasy novel. Fitting for the way the song orchestrates organic, analog sounds and sensibilities with great subtlety and hushed but vibrant emotional resonance. Watch the video for “Mild at Heart” on YouTube and follow múm at the links below. The band is on tour in North America in fall 2025.

Bad Flamingo Stretches Its Songwriting Wings on the Upbeat Vampire Love Song “Hold Up the Lighter”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo stretches its songwriting skills well beyond where it has been before on the new single “Hold Up the Lighter.” With the music video and one of the members seen almost acting out the story of the song it’s like a the song is a noir power pop song about love and obsession. It’s tempting to say it’s supernatural and fantastical given the line about “a vampire bite” and sitting up well into the night spying the object of one’s affections and staking out their place waiting for the moment to consummate one’s desires with the line, “Wanna sink my teeth into you” – one has to wonder if it’s purely metaphorical or if the band is telling a darkly romantic story about a creature of the night yearning for a special connection. Either way the song works and the touch of banjo, the subtle guitar screeches and the finely accented percussion give the song something paradoxically less musically dark than some of its earlier songs. And yet, Bad Flamingo once again proves that its gift for love in peril and between people who might be a little dangerous is unchanged. Watch the video for “Hold Up the Lighter” on YouTube and follow Bad Flamingo at the links provided.

badflamingomusic.com

Bad Flamingo on Facebook

Bad Flamingo on Instagram

Twin Fates’ Glitchcore Dream Pop Single “Ribs” Evokes the Warmth of Being Recognized and Accepted For Your True Self

With Twin Fates’ “Ribs” you are from the very beginning pulled into a fantastical sonic realm of intimate spaces and ethereal soundscapes. Processed vocals hover and come into focus like a fey shoegaze hyperpop singer—autotune used truly creatively to bring to the song a sense of the otherworldly that demands being taken on its own terms like something Alice Glass would write if she put her hand to writing a dream pop piece. The placid drones that weave in and through the song seemingly about sweet and tender memories of another time and of the recognition of one’s infatuation and the ways in which one has felt the need to mask one’s absolute true self as a sustained act of self-protection but being accepted when the facade can no longer be fully maintained. That moment of feeling that embrace of one’s truth is so poignant in the song that the fact that the song isn’t in some super established subgenre of music doesn’t matter at all and is a symbol of the meaning of the song. Listen to “Ribs” on Spotify.

Adrianna Krikl’s Ambient Jazz Noir EP The Shadow Lounge is Imbued With a Spirit of Menace and Urgency

Adrianna Krikl, photo courtesy the artist

Inspired by film noir Adrianna Krikl’s new EP The Shadow Lounge is a trio of tracks that layer textured rhythm, echoing trumpet processed almost into abstract atmospheres and harmonic synth backdrops that give each song a baseline mood of suspense and mystery lurking beneath the surface with a touch of menace. Which is what you want when evoking the kind of noir that David Lynch seemed to execute so well over the course of his filmmaking from Blue Velvet onward. The title track sets that expectation and “A Memory of Tomorrow” would suit well Jim Jarmusch’s own adventures into noir with a song imbued with more forward momentum and electronic strings evoking an exotic setting and sensibility. Violins streak with a tense urgency across a slow roiling wave of a dynamic in the rhythm and you feel like something ominous is quickly approaching. Concluding track “Fading Lights” is more ethereal in its orchestration of dark things afoot. Like the listener is wading through the aftermath of the skulduggery suggested by the earlier tracks. The spectral winds blow through the song and the threads of tone ripple and drift slowly into a hazy infinity. Listen to The Shadow Lounge on Spotify and follow Adrianna Krikl at the links provided.

adriannakrikl.com

Adriana Krikl on Twitter

Adriana Krikl on Facebook

Adriana Krikl on Instagram

Adriana Krikl on Bandcamp

Adriana Krikl on YouTube

Jouska Soothes a Sense of Lovesickness With the Luminously Warm Dream Pop Single “Flower Moon”

Guitars sketch faint tonal lines of melody in the opening parts of Jouska’s dream pop single “Flower Moon.” Jouska’s voice is soft yet evocative in describing a situation of melancholic yearning. Wanting a sign from a loved one that seems uncommunicative after a disruption in the relationship. The warm harmonic keyboard figure that illuminates the song’s backdrop embodies the underlying sadness that informs the song and with the sweeping percussion it all establishes a beautiful atmosphere that soothes the morning and lovesick feeling one can get into in those moments where you feel left wondering what comes next with no real sense if anything will. Listen to “Flower Moon” on YouTube and follow Norwegian dream pop artist Jouska at the links below.

Jouska on Facebook

Jouska on Instagram

Clark Stiles’ Introspective Synth Pop Single “Keep On Trying” is a Song About Affection and Perseverance in Pursuing Life Affirming Inspirations

Perhaps with a title like “Keep On Trying” is may be obvious that Clark Stiles’ song has themes of perseverance and commitment. But with the beautifully saturated synth layers and electronic horns over a subtle, shuffling beat there is a gentle momentum that the song sustains. And the lyrics go further than merely pushing ahead but also to challenging oneself to pursue new inspirations and to be open to new things that spark one’s imagination and curiosity. Without getting out there you only have your immediate experiences and stimuli to draw upon. Stiles also incorporates ideas of how people can enrich their commitment to each other through these adventures into new realms of experience and the tenderness with which he delivers lines like “It’s why I get out of bed/To help each other” and when he sings “I’m pushing back/I’m pushing back/For whatever sparks my interest” we get the sense that he is driving away the psychic forces that keep him in penned in to the familiar and complacent. It’s a gentle song about growing and the bonds that sustain us while doing so. Listen to “Keep On Trying” on Spotify and follow Clark Stiles at the links provided.

Clark Stiles on Facebook

Clark Stiles on Instagram