SubmitHub – Page 10 – Queen City Sounds and Art

The Analog Detail of loverghost’s “sweet tooth” Render’s Lends Deeply Vulnerable Love Song a Cozy Intimacy

For the recording and music video for “sweet tooth,” Virginia Beach’s art pop band loverghost undertook meticulous, even granular, execution of production to maximize the analog feel of all elements. Recording partly to a Tascam Portastudio 424 (who that recorded up through the mid-2000s didn’t have one of those and how many wish they had one now?) and a video that includes VHS live footage, hand drawn animation, processing through analog video synthesis (something one most often sees done at a live show) and printing out hundreds of frames through a thermal printer to lend yet another layer of something that seems like it’s coming from another time the whole presentation of the song is incredibly intimate. Which suits its tender sentiments expressing love for someone that doesn’t really get and thus appreciate music which is a bit of a quandary if you’re a musician who these days have to orient part of their navigation of getting the music out toward the attention economy that is partly ruining the purity of creating and experiencing music directly. Musically it resonates with Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” and its own deeply vulnerable energy. The song balances openly confessional affection and acceptance of potential rejection and being willing to risk that heartache if the feelings aren’t mutual. Knowing how much effort went into the final presentation of the song isn’t essential but one can feel the love and care that went into the whole thing listening the song and taking in its fascinating visuals and that makes a major difference in a world where so much music is treated as disposable by culture and for sure by the industry. Watch the video for “sweet tooth” on YouTube and follow loverghost at the links below.

loverghost on Instagram

loverghost on Bandcamp

Kramies’ Psychedelic, Orchestral Pop Single “Hollywood Signs” is a Trip From Haunted Headspaces to Tranquil Accceptance

Kramies’ lead single from the forthcoming new album Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour (out October 10, 2025) “Hollywood Signs” emerges as almost a musical avatar of the historic times we’re living through. Produced by David Bowie producer/engineer Mario J. McNulty, the song has a measured pace, sheets of spectral background harmonics and the songwriter’s voice relating a portrait of a relationship that has long since fallen out but where the connections linger. The lightly psychedelic choruses are reminiscent of something a gentle mashup of Sgt. Pepper’s and Days of Future Passed. Along with that an orchestral sensibility in the way the song is structured. The song sounds both deeply haunted and as though the feelings it conveys sustain an immediacy that keeps you engaged throughout. It’s the kind of song you can and want to lean back into for the trip through its melancholic spaces to its conclusion being left on the side of a pastoral roadside with the last of the warm mornings coming on before the full swing of fall in a state of rest—emotionally, physically and spiritually. It’s a perfect song for this season. Watch the beautiful lyric video with its lo-fi animation on YouTube and follow Kramies at the links below.

Ana Hausmann’s “nausea-stalgia” is an Organic Ambient Articulation of the Dark Mysteries of Nighttime Streets

In the organically immersive flow of Ana Hausmann’s “nausea-stalgia” one hears not just intermittent textures like hearing the detritus in the breeze of nighttime streets on the edges of an urban sprawl. The oddly harmonic scraping of hinges articulated by processed violin harmonics, the plinking of kalimba like sonically stylized droplets of rain and the low rumble of bowed guitar like the barely felt but always present thrum of aircraft from an airport in the distance. The field recordings of wind and environmental noise is used with such care it is impossible to fully tell the difference between that and an intentionally generated sound such is Hausmann’s care in the mix and layering of elements in the aim of crafting a unique listening experience. It is a “song” in an expanded understanding of the term as a composition that evokes emotion and provokes a psychological response. In this case it is a sense of mystery and distant menace, of a haunted landscape nearby whose tendrils of mood are in a constant drift to draw you in to something that might be fascinating if not dangerous. Listen to “nausea-stalgia” on YouTube and follow Ana Hausmann on Spotify.

Blankslate’s Exuberantly Affectionate “Nov. 16 (Paper Ducks)” is a Riotous Declaration of Love

Blankslate’s curiously titled “Nov. 16 (Paper Ducks)” is an unconventional love song, a riotous declaration of affection and devotion worded in endearingly idiosyncratic terms. It does read a bit like a cherished journal entry that spells out one’s effusive feelings of adoration for another person couched in the images of private moments and memories that permanently embed someone’s essence in your heart. Musically it has some distortion on the vocals in the beginning and ramps up to nearly shouted joy between the band’s two main vocalists like that welling up of love is bursting out because it feels impossible to hide it any longer and intertwined with confessions of one’s own shortcomings that the recipient of your passionate regard helped you to overcome perhaps without intending to. It’s a string of words worthy of Andrea Gibson’s own, exuberant and entirely sincere poetry along similar lines of expression. It’s indie rock buoyed with driving rhythms and excitement but balanced by tender moments that resonate with an irresistible sincerity. Listen to “Nov. 16 (Paper Ducks)” on Spotify and follow the Denver-based Blankslate at the links provided. Its latest album Lookout Mountain Charley released August 9, 2025.

blankslateband.com

Blankslate on Facebook

Blankslate on Instagram

The Pastoral Grandeur of Dustin O’Halloran’s Minimal Piano Piece “Gold” is an Expression of the Mind Free of the Pressure of Mediated Life

Dustin O’Halloran, photo courtesy the artist

“Gold” was recorded in one take by Dustin O’Halloran in his studio in Reykjavik, Iceland. The member of A Winged Victory for the Sullen captured the intimacy of just him at his piano and natural resonances and reverb without removing the physicality of the instrument and its moving parts heard in the recording nor punching in any “mistakes” in the performance or the intonation the can change when you’re using analog instrumentation. The result is the essence of what it would be like to be there and experience the lingering progression, the chords sounding out and trailing off before being replaced by the next set of sounds. O’Halloran’s accents and minimal arrangement lend the pastoral piece a quietly majestic quality that is adjacent to melancholy but is more reflective as though concentrating on and taking in moments of pure tranquility separate from the press of mediated information that clutters up so much of modern life unless you take the time to disconnect and prioritize life and experience as we had it more than a decade ago and can still have it if we indulge our capacity for grace and patience to benefit our inner psychological spaces and not fill it with maximized and monetized content.

Dustin O’Halloran on Twitter

Dustin O’Halloran on Facebook

Dustin O’Halloran on Instagram

Dag och Natt Leans Into the Acceptance of Impermanence and the Healing Properties of Emotional Drift With Dream Pop Single “Tunis”

Dag och Natt, photo by Henrik Mårtensson Almegård

The long form travel travel video for “Tunis” by Swedish dream pop band Dag och Natt with the hazy images layered upon each other in moments and the color filters going nearly monochrome and back to color in dreamlike drifts is the perfect manifestation of a song about complicated and subtle emotions. The song itself is a deeply introspective piece with clear melodies that provide some of the distinct emotional resonance. The song itself is about emotional drift and the impermanence of so much of life and finding peace with how things can often must change in gradual or even sudden ways because that’s the nature of life and often we’re not prepared for that change and we can be cast adrift with those former anchors to the patterns of our lives dissolve or disappear without much warning. In these moments we can often come to appreciate how maybe we got a little complacent and comfortable with situations that weren’t necessarily the best for our long term growth and yet allow ourselves to feel the pain of that loss at least a little. The soft, meandering passages of the song reflects that state of mind of just feeling everything without being overwhelmed by it completely and allow that slow pace of it all wash over us and not sweep what once defined our lives completely into some darkened corner of the mind never to be thought of again. Watch the video for “Tunis” on YouTube and follow Dag och Natt at the links below. The group’s new album Years and Years released August 15, 2025.

Dag och Natt on Instagram

Smokey Brights’ “Peace Sign Pentagram” is a Fuzzy Power Pop Anthem to Making One’s Unfulfilled Rock and Roll Dreams Come True

“Peace Sign Pentagram,” the title, before you hear a note actually does deliver on the imagery. It’s a gritty, grungy, melodic hard rock song like something you’d expect out of the early 80s. Like a lost Starship and The Cars collaboration before the former went full schlock. Thrown in some Cheap Trick influence and you get the idea. The guitar hooks, the fusion of electronic elements in with the lilting power pop melodies and the dual vocals solidify the impression. As does the story of an ill-fated romance that both parties are looking back on with some sense of hope and intention. There is a touch of nostalgia with memories of driving in the summer which many of did up until after the mid-2010s when it seemed that casual drives for fun in the robust journeys through urban decay and the hinterlands and find some mystique in the experience. And the part of the song where we hear about dreams never realized but still possible we get to the crux of the inherent romantic aspect of the song when our narrators realize that those dreams are attainable even now after some of the romance of being in a band means almost paying more attention to the marketing and promotion than the inherent fun of being in a band and going on adventures, creating music for the joy of it and finding receptive audiences and people part of a larger community. And, indeed, having aspirations that aren’t so fanciful if idealistic. May Seattle’s Smokey Brights find its rock and roll fantasies coming true more fully in the wake of the release of its new album Dashboard Heat on September 26, 2025 via Share It Music. Listen to “Peace Sign Pentagram” on Bandcamp and follow Smokey Brights at the links below.

smokeybrights.com

Smokey Brights on Facebook

Smokey Brights on Instagram

Smokey Brights on Spotify

“Lost & Burnt” by Legends of the Seven Golden Vampires is Hypnotic, Noir-Inflected Downtempo

“Lost & Burnt” by Legends of the Seven Golden Vampires with its echoing vocals from Ilsa Van Der Linden and loping, lurking rhythms sounds like a downtempo track from a neo-noir film set in the late 70s. The music video features neon signs and views of the musicians through old TV screens while light flickers like the images are being projected from an old film reel. This aesthetic suits well the slow shimmer of synths in the song and how it contributes to a kind of grimy yet undeniably entrancing psychedelia. It’s the kind of song you’d hope to hear at Bristol Northern Soul Club as the band’s single “Autumn Fall” was embraced as this track truly has a classic Bristol music resonance with deep mood and a gently hypnotic feel. Watch the video for “Lost & Burnt” on YouTube and follow Legends of the Seven Golden Vampires at the links provided.

Prank Monkey Records TikTok

Prank Monkey Records Instagram

Patrick Shiroishi’s Ambient Jazz Piece “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening” is a Meditation on the Ongoing, Daily Impact of the Legacy of Racism and Colonialism

Patrick Shiroishi, photo courtesy the artist

Patrick Shiroishi’s forthcoming new album Forgetting is Violent (out September 19, 2025 on vinyl, for download and streaming via American Dreams) promises more of his exploratory compositional technique. The track “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening” features Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s elemental vocalist otay::onii contributing a slow wailing chant alongside Shiroishi’s own spoken phrases to the layered, ritualistic drones paired with rhythms embodied in the iterative flow of organic textures. The sound of Shiroishi’s signature saxophone is transformed into characteristically nearly unrecognizable forms. One imagines this music being performed in a remote, Zen meditation retreat in a spot that continues to be a place of deep, internal, mystical experiences once your mind is freed of the distraction of the press and demands of commodified modern existence in the global capitalist dystopia. Once freed of that energy the recognition of one’s ongoing connection to eternal forces and patterns becomes obvious and this song seems to speak to the process of reconnecting with that which is ongoing underneath the illusion of atomized, monetized, contingent social reality. The album itself is a meditation on the legacy of racism and colonialism and the title resonates with the lingering and still very present impacts of such historical realities that permeate daily existence whether society collectively chooses to acknowledge them or not. Listen to “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening” on Spotify and follow Patrick Shiroishi on Instagram.

Origami Ghosts Travel Through the Ephemeral Charms of Digital Life to the Human Yearning for Analog Connection on Psychedelic Pop Single “Virtual Reality Boy”

Origami Ghosts, photo by Brittne Lunniss

Origami Ghosts’ “Virtual Reality Boy” is musically reminiscent of something from the 2000s before indie rock and pop became too much of a genre branding exercise. Its idiosyncratic vocals and rhythms feel organic like something written because someone had a nice guitar melody and a concept that is beautifully realized in the animated music video with images straight out of early video art and resonances with a Daniel Johnston album cover. The song seems to be one of exploring the wonders of a virtual world and in the end a yearning to be back in one’s own meatspace even though real life can often be challenging and a bummer and lacking in supposed infinite choices. But the lack of actual connection and the underrated and often unconscious emotional adjustment of not being overstimulated and thus natural emotional regulation is something our minds crave even when we’ve convinced ourselves otherwise. The vocal melody suits the song and its tone well even if it’s not some overprocessed and conventionally “pristine” because it’s human and that is where the song’s appeal rings most true. Watch the video for “Virtual Reality Boy” on YouTube and follow Los Angeles-based, psychedelic pop band Origami Ghosts at the links below. The band’s latest album A fine time to talk about nothing released August 8, 2025 on vinyl, cassette, CD, download and streaming.