Angel T33th seems to channel Dazzle Ships-period OMD and the manifestation of those sounds in Future Islands in the expansive and lush “Mika 2000.” The sound has an energy that feels explorative and reflecting on what wonders may be ahead. The steady pulse of harmonic distortion and hand clap percussion and the more more insistent synth melodies convey a sense of romance and tragedy that the vocalist in her breathy turns of phrase seems to sketch a story of interacting with a person, an entity who is always around but exasperating but whom one comes to appreciate on a level that can only really happen when familiarity turns to affection. Overall the song feels like a piece of a futuristic story of isolation in the far flung corners of the human intergalactic diaspora. Listen to “Mika 2000” on YouTube and follow Angel T33th at the links below. The debut album A Message to Myself dropped on August 11, 2025.
Elly Kace evokes strong feelings of being haunted by a former love on “Even with the light on.” The hushed piano work carries the rhythm as a harmonic guitar figure floats forward in the background to accompany Kace’s breathy and melancholic vocals. The song is like an attempt to help these lingering feelings move on like a ghost that clings to you with unresolved attachments. With gentle words and affectionate resonances Kace acknowledges these feelings as a presence and encourages both herself and the persistent feelings to move on so that a health psychological balance can be encouraged to grow. Kace’s song has a bit of a baroque pop flavor like something from decades ago but her sound palette is entirely modern and striking that balance of contrasting yet complementary styles and musical ideas lends the song a timeless quality that brings you back for a re-visit. Listen to “Even with the light on” on YouTube and follow Elly Kace at the links below.
The Double Headed Seagull, photo courtesy the artist
The title track to The Double Headed Seagulls’ new EP Play Artful (released August 28, 2025) composer Dave Wirth’s keen ear for melding melody with rhythm and texture in a continuous flow that eases and stimulates the mind at once. It sounds like music boxes attained intelligence and learned to communicate with each other via electrical wires in on the process of communication in a collective, harmonious process in which every entity involved contributes to a dynamic sound that reflects a joyful spirit sustained for the track’s two minute and thirty-seven seconds run time. Tones pulse slowly, a background wave of low end comes to the foreground in pleasing pulses and the simple but jaunty percussive sounds buoy the energy of all the other elements for a net effect of a gentle momentum that feels like a completion of some kind of journey at the end and arriving at your destination at ease. Listen to “Play Artful” on Spotify and follow The Double Headed Seagull at the links below.
Editrix builds slow tension with “Flesh Debt.” Suitable for a song about romantic desire and where that intersects with its physical expression. But also how one can often feel apprehension of letting those desires overwhelm your better instincts in order to fully indulge those feelings and acting upon them. Of course the consequences of it all. The angular rhythms, guitar harmonics and almost sing-song-y vocals and the push and pull of the song dynamics and its shift in maintaining higher guitar tones over the finely-arranged low end keeps you in the song until it turns into almost a thrash song toward the end for a few passages but transitioning quickly into a math-rock/jazz-inflected bit of sonic intensity that is reminiscent of FACS at its most chaotic yet covertly controlled. Listen to “Flesh Debt” on YouTube and follow Massachusetts-based post-punk band Editrix at the links provided. The group released its latest album The Big E July 25, 2025 via Joyful Noise.
Scatterbrain is a project that includes rapper Grip, Mallbangs and the rhythm section of Grouplove and its debut release is “Switch” recorded live at Big Trouble. The charismatic performance speaks for itself as does the unexpected chemistry of styles present with Grip’s vocals having a hip-hop cadence but more punk style. The lyrics delve into the choices and compromises one makes in life that have various consequences. Initially the lyrics are about people going into straight jobs and being successful in conventional terms of having mortgages, children and stable and ample incomes and how our narrator has “drunken nights/Hotel rooms and red eye flights.” A whimsical and sardonic “Hooray” punctuates lines and then we got to the lyrics where it’s admitted that maybe this life of an artist has its undeniable rewards that someone who is more beholden to a more scripted life will never fully know. But also there’s something to be said about not being behind on bills and the ramification of being so can have on your everyday life. The song juxtaposes and plays with these contrasts of lifestyle in succinct and poignant manner that ends on a hopeful note for the creative life, “I still got miles and miles to go/Can’t stay this low forever.” Because everyone has miles and miles to go and even if they think they have things under control and streamlined and you think you know what to expect, including with people who struggle more with everyday mundane concerns, life doesn’t always work out to stay that course. The song is a tacit nod to how everyone’s life has its ups and downs. Watch the video for “Switch” on YouTube and follow Scatterbrain on Instagram.
Ukrainian band THISFAR accompanies its low key, downtempo single “Leave Me and Go” with a music video that looks like someone shooting footage while driving by a sun-drenched morning countryside with a windmill in the distance. The quiet vocals are above a whisper but sung in confidence like one would if you felt like you had to be covert in your actions and speech. The kind of tentative energy that can overtake one’s everyday habits when you’re living through an active war, as in Ukraine, or perilous times in your life. The pulsing drone that begins the song over a simple beat as slightly sparkling harmonics ease into the soundscape establishing a dream-like mood reflecting on tough times. Though the references are obvious it’s the kind of song that would work for a post-apocalyptic film set in a more realistic scenario, the kind Ukraine and plenty of other war torn places in the world have been facing and continue to do so. The song has a gentle touch but an emotional intensity that keeps you hooked in throughout. Watch the video for “Leave Me And Go,” the title for which hits hard in the song, on YouTube and follow THISFAR on Spotify.
Cloakroom is a shoegaze band from Northwest Indiana that got off the ground in 2012. The group’s association with heavy bands since its inception is fitting since it’s own crafting of atmospheric rock has built into it a physicality of tone that is as electrifying as it is weighty. In moments it’s like hearing Holy Mountain-period Sleep working with Fantastic Planet-era Failure in how the sounds can sound like they’re cutting through time and space and immersively transporting at once. This quality was in high form on the 2022 album Dissolution Wave, a concept album about saving the human race from a phenomenon that threatens to wipe out humanity’s art and abstract thought. In 2025 Cloakroom issued its latest album Last Leg of the Human Table, an effort that showcases the band proving itself capable of writing whatever style it wishes without losing its essence of creating entrancing atmospheres. It is also evidence of the band’s gift for pop songcraft and memorable melodies. For years Cloakroom has been one of the bands of choice for connoisseurs of modern shoegaze.
Listen to our interview with bassist Bobby Markos of Cloakroom on Bandcamp and follow the outfit at the links below. Cloakroom performs at the Hi-Dive on Sunday, August 24, 2025 as the headlining act of the final night of Ghost Canyon Fest.
Buildings is a trio from Minneapolis that spawned in around 2006. Over the next decade the group gained a bit of a cult following in underground circles among those that appreciate the kind of challenging but thrilling noise rock one heard out of labels like Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go. Buildings seemed to learn further into the chaos and industrial aspects of that music and by the time of its 2017 album You Are Not One Of Us there was a touch of ambient tonality in the songwriting like a band that wouldn’t have been out of place on the GSL imprint or a more brutal version of a later era Butthole Surfers record. The experimental streak continued with the 2019 album Negative Sound. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the band drifted apart some and the demands of adulthood meant operating full time as a band wasn’t as possible as previously. Drummer Travis Kuhlman and bassist Mike Baillie formed DUG and have enjoyed some success as darlings of modern noise rock. But in 2024 members of the band including vocalist/guitarist Brian Lake started hanging out again as friends do and Buildings became a going concern again playing its first public show at the Caterwaul festival, the flagship noise rock festival in the country, in 2025.
Listen to our interview with Brian Lake on Bandcamp and follow Buildings at the links below. Buildings performs at Ghost Canyon Fest on Sunday, August 24, 2025.
Ghost Canyon Fest, Denver’s DIY music fest showcasing left field music of various stripes, runs August 21-24, 2025 at venues in Colorado Springs in Denver and here is our modest rundown of what’s in store each day. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit ghostcanyonfest.com.
Flowting Clowds A cause of celebration because Jeff Mueller and Sean Meadows of June of 44 fame performing the new they’ve been working on for over a decade.
Latter is an experimental noise rock band from Chicago with vocalist Meredith Haines and drummer Jon Alvarado at its core. The project came about when Haines moved from Philadelphia to go to graduate school and wanted to start a heavier and more confrontational kind of band and Alvarado, a member of indie pop band Beach Bunny, aimed to join something more aggressive. Originally a four piece before songs cohered the fledgling group shrank to a duo and named itself Latter. The new lineup quickly developed songs and recorded its 2024 debut album the raw and confrontational My Body Is My Sickness, an album that skewers abuse, offers incisive self-examination and exults in bold vulnerability. The album was recently reissued on vinyl following the release of the 2025 EP What Lives Inside Me, a set of songs that sets fire to misogyny and the ways culture and capitalist civilization seems to render everyone disposable in various ways. It’s gloriously ferocious noisy post-hardcore awash in caustic distortion yet not without an undercurrent of melancholic atmosphere in moments. In Spring 2025 Latter went viral when Haines shared a live version of “I Don’t Owe You” on TikTok seeming to tapped in to an experience many have shared in the aftermath of a toxic relationship by articulating those feelings with poetic precision.
Listen to our interview with Meredith Haines and Jon Alvarado of Latter on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. See Latter at the Ghost Canyon Fest in Denver, Colorado at the Hi-Dive on Saturday, August 23, 2025.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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