Nichols+Roark, the London-based DJ/Producer duo, utilize captivating, saturated synth tones and measured yet urgent, techno beats in the dusky synthpop single “CITY LIGHTS.” The effect is one of a sense of melancholic contemplation. When paired with a near-future looking metropolis somewhere perhaps London or some other urban sprawl at night—in the tube, the New York subway, near the Port of London, looking out across the city and its sprawl of lights and lots of foot traffic and darkened side streets. The view wanders in all spaces while you are engulfed by the song and its strong beat like an early 2000s club hit touched by the influence of electroclash and the percussive techno dance pop of Weval. The cinematic feel of the song generates plenty imagination stirring on its own and the accompanying visuals makes one wish this could be in one of the more visually striking horror films of late like Smile 2 or a Danny Boyle vehicle so that people could hear it and wonder who wrote such an entrancing piece of music. Watch the video for “CITY LIGHTS” on YouTube and follow Nichols+Roark at the links below.
MikelParis is perhaps best known these days as a keyboard player in the rock band O.A.R. but for many years he was also a cast member of the STOMP touring show as well as working with Pink, Train, The Dan Band and Jewel. All along MikelParis has developed his “GuitarDrumming” style of playing acoustic guitar. It combines his technique for playing piano, his honed sense of complex rhythms into a fluid and endlessly evolving sound that incorporates intuitive and expressive improvisation and songwriting acumen. His latest, and fourth, album GuitarDrumming 01 has the musician bringing in peers and friends like Vernon Reid (Living Colour), G. Love and Of Good Nature. The sound is richly varied and at times is reminiscent of 90s Peter Gabriel as the latter further integrated non-Western rhythms into his pop songcraft. The album released on March 28, 2025 on 12” vinyl, digital download and streaming services via ZP Records.
Listen to our interview with MikelParis on Bandcamp and follow him at mikelparis.com.
This is the much belated year-end-best list that Brian Tallman and I have been doing since 2024 but these picks are of course for 2024. Not definitive, just a sampling that is manageable and it’s a deep dive in various recording situations so the sound will switch up some. Brian is an attentive music fan near my own age who still gets into new music with great enthusiasm and while we share a love of post-punk, shoegaze and some mainstream pop our tastes different enough that hopefully this conversation and selections are interesting. The Spotify playlists are linked below. I would prefer to use a different platform but it’s the one for now that is easy enough for listeners to plug into and hear all the songs without the need for a lot of formatting.
Whitney Walker sounds like he’s spent a lot of years picking up musical ideas and inclinations before writing the music for his new EP Where To Go And How To Get There (released June 13, 2025). The sinigle “An Owl Hoots Your Name At Night” has a richly eclectic aesthetic especially considering it’s a mere two minutes thirteen seconds long. Jaunty percussion, swells of carnival-esque keyboards, calypso psychedelia and jazz pop leanings with the band coming in clutch with simple but elaborate arrangements and contributions from Dana Colley of Morphine fame turning in choice bits of clarinet and flute throughout the song. Concise yet cinematic and with a touch of Vaudeville that song has a unique appeal like something tapping into pre-modern popular music and a band like DeVotchKa. The music video is similarly colorful and wonderfully eccentric interspersing animations, collages and live performance in perfect balance. Watch the video for “An Owl Hoots Your Name At Night” on YouTube and follow Whitney Walker at the links below.
King-Mob’s use of loops, processed drones, razory and expansive guitar on “Arabesque” is hypnotic in its gritty and menacing yet haunted way. In its harrowing layers one hears resonances with The Body, This Heat and Swans. Pounding, accented, processional percussion interspersed with steady cymbal hits are almost a solid counterpoint to the gloriously scuzzy haze and distended cacophony of the other elements of the music working together and then manifesting as ascending, post-metal riffage but dissolving into ghostly atmospheres. It is refreshingly unlike much else you’ll be hearing this year unless you’re deep into the outsider noise and the weirder end of industrial noise rock and even at that it’s challenging to make any immediate comparisons yet it clearly has a strong creative coherence of its own. Listen to “Arabesque” on Spotify and follow King-Mob at the links provided.
SAADI’s new album Birds of Paradise drops September 3, 2025 but the advance singles reveal an art pop sound unique in its fusion of non-Western rhythms, creative almost lo-fi electronic production and imaginatively pointed lyrics. The single “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” is most obviously a reference to the Palestinian genocide but of course in recent events of June 2025 applies to the war being waged on Iran. The layers of percussion provide a rich foundation on which SAADI’s vocals stand out in calmly but not dispassionately describes the horrifying legacy of colonialism playing out yet again. Fans of The Knife will appreciate the way SAADI masterfully utilizes seemingly disparate sound sources to craft a song with sensitivity and urgency in equal measure and worthy of the weighty subject matter. Some may remember Boshra AlSaadi ala SAADI from her time in the great post-punk band TEEN or experimental dance pop group Looker or even her tenure playing with the late, great Bubu musician Ahmed Janka Nabay, music of the latter directly informs this song with its jaunty rhythms and sharply observed social and political commentary. “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” has a refreshingly different sound that stretches the sonic boundaries of pop music even more than AlSaadi’s previous bands did. Listen to “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” on Spotify and follow SAADI at the links provided.
Fuubutsushi releases its new album Columbia Deluxe, a set of live recordings of the only live performance the ensemble has performed in 2021 at the First Baptist Church of Columbia, Missouri for the Columbia Experimental Music Festival. The quartet comprised of Chris Jusell, Chaz Prymek, Matthew Sage and Patrick Shiroisi, all prominent figures in the world of avant-garde and ambient music, approach the music with a punk ethos of spontaneity, commitment and diversity of approach coming from worlds of classical music, jazz, heavy music, pastoral folk, ambient and abstract indiepop. On the live record you can hear a transformed but no less gorgeously pastoral and layered version of the song “Loop Trail” originally from the project’s 2022 release Birthingbodies. The song masterfully weaves together a sense of wonder and spaciousness as the various musical voices step in and wander out of hearing like the perfect manifestation of a walk in a place of great, quiet beauty and absorbing the often missed details of the surrounding landscape and of the experience of the environment itself when there isn’t a layer of technological civilization to catch the bulk of your attention. The song conveys this sense so elegantly it’s easy to lean into its quiet energy and go along for the drift into more tranquil emotional spaces and an acceptance of the inherent value of a place and time that doesn’t completely serve the demands of violently transformative commerce. Listen to “Loop Trail” on Spotify and follow Fuubutsushi at the links below. Columbia Deluxe releases on vinyl on July 11, 2025 as well as for digital download and streaming.
Rubedo is a psychedelic prog and pop band from Denver. The trio is comprised of childhood friends Kyle Kramer, Alex Trujillo and Gregg Ziemba whose roots in the influence of alternative rock and art rock bands like The Mars Volta has meant Rubedo would never be trend hoppers and with an interest in concepts of alchemy and how that can inform how music can be made and functions, Rubedo has had a different kind of journey through, around and out of the Denver music scene. In the early 2010s they met R. Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, keyboard player for The Mars Volta and Jack White’s band and became friends and collaborators as he produced the albums Massa Confusa (2012) and Love Is The Answer (2013). Owens became a mentor to the band influencing their ethos, their already strong work ethic as artists and their drive to continue to put out worthwhile releases. Even with the tragic passing of Owens in 2014, Rubedo has continued their friend’s commitment to community and cultivating artistic vision. For a handful of years they were involved in running the influential DIY space Unit E which has since morphed into a record label that focuses on quality local releases including their 2025 album Citrinitas which started brewing in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and was written and recorded across sessions at R.A.R.E. Records in Winchester, TN (co-owned by Michael McDonald) with Michael Lee, Tayler Martin, Jeremy Mason and Charlie Powell. Additional engineering at The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado with Andrew Berlin, mixed by Matt Embree (Rx Bandits) at ICS in Long Beach, CA and mastering by Tyler Lindgren (The Milk Blossoms). It’s a record that reflects the band’s community and connections local and beyond and the album is co-release with Mash Down Babylon, Embree’s label. The album is typically both a touching and personal set of songs and those that are an incisive and poetic commentary on the times in which we find ourselves ravaged by the psychopathy of oligarchs, fascists and the ways in which we’re encouraged to isolate ourselves when the opposite is what is needed.
Craters of the Lost Souls is a 2025 album by London-based producer and composer Raz Olsher. It’s music for a spaghetti western that maybe takes place simultaneously in the world of the 1960s retro-futurist TV series The Wild Wild West and that of Jodorowsky’s El Topo as designed by Moebius. On lead single “Can’t Have What You Want, harmonica echos, dusty guitar sounds shimmer, a sound like a guitar processed to sound like someone gently and slowly creating chords to sound like dragging a mallet across the pipes of a xylophone. The leisurely pace is both soothing and haunting and captures the loneliness and grandeur of being a traveler across desert landscapes to fates as yet determined but beckoned by the promise of intrigue and adventure. Listen to “Can’t Have What You Want” on Spotify and follow Raz Olsher on Bandcamp.
Dr. Rocket sounds like a psychedelic version of The Band on “Maybe It’s Time.” Meaning elegant, folk-rooted songwriting and nuanced and detailed musicianship and surprisingly self-aware lyrics. The song appears to be one about someone trying to come to grips with how he undermines his relationships through neglect and not committing out of a strange sort of insecurity. The kind where you think you’re doing enough to cultivate your relationships but maybe it’s all from your own perspective and not so much about the other person’s needs but your ideas of what their needs should be. But if you deal with your own anxieties you can maybe, just maybe, have the psychological space in your mind to being open to changing how you go about things. The gentle melodies and delicate vocals reflect a sincerity in that will to change that feels poignantly sincere. Listen to “Maybe It’s Time” on Spotify and follow Seattle’s Dr. Rocket on Instagram.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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