Josh Jacobs raps deftly with righteousness and swagger over a blend of bomba and trap beats on “LANDfill” taking on racist right wingers directly. But he doesn’t stop at the clever invective nor at racism but religious bigotry and classism. His flow and delivery is reminiscent of Vast Aire the way the latter will take some bars in a higher register and seem to answer back but elaborate in a different tone while maintaining a compelling narrative. It’s a refreshingly unapologetic song that embraces the the artist’s Hispanic heritage while calling out those who choose imagined safety in their relatively privileged economic status. Listen to “LANDfill” on Spotify and follow Josh Jacobs at the links provided.
The motorik beats of “Follow the Impulse to Insanity (Black and White)” by AUS!Funkt accented by the fluid bass line are like a guide out of the straight jacket of late capitalist, technocratic control over too much of our lives. The vocals nearly whisper in the first half of the song but echo in near hysteria in the second half as though shaking off the “logic” of conforming to the dictates of “pure” economic decision making that isn’t done for the benefit of real humans but of a system that is designed to funnel the goods of society upward rather than distribute them in even a rational way that would ensure the well being of civilization. The sound of the song as it gets noisier and more psychedelic is a rebellion against your conditioning to go along with something bad for you. The title of the song spells that out and suggests that maybe “insanity” or the awakening to the “irrationality” of wanting to live as a human with the analog “flaws” and emotional responses to situations intact. The chorus of “I can’t accept these new conditions” speaks directly to how in corporate controlled environments parameters are changed regularly often to maximize your your use of time and demand increasingly more until you can give nothing else. The song is anti-authoritarian krautrock disco at its finest. Listen to “Follow the Impulse to Insanity (Black and White)” on Spotify and follow AUS!Funkt at the links below.
Tan Cologne infuses into its dream pop single “In Resin” strands of hypnotically repetitive guitar figures under and over gossamer, melodic guitar drones and shimmery leads. In the middle of the song the main progression shifts from a melancholic augmented chord into a minor chord for an effect that stirs feelings of deep reflection. The whole song is reminiscent of a late-80s period Cocteau Twins but with a touch of desert rock shoegaze but think more like Morricone than Kyuss. The song’s twists and turns are gentle like it’s guiding you to a better place in your head. The song is the concluding track from the band’s new album Unknown Beyond which was released on June 20. 2025 and it’s hard to imagine the record going out on a more evocative note. Listen to “In Resin” on Spotify (where you can check out the rest of the album) and follow Tan Cologne on Instagram.
Dumomi The Jig’s “My Own” takes a fairly traditional approach to the subject of love for a woman with expressions of devotion, appeals to formal commitment and even declarations of wanting to meet her parents and introduce her to his own. It’s a tender gesture of getting approval of and sanction for what he already knows is real and enduring love. The song itself is like a dub ballad sung in both English and Nigerian Pidgin with layers of soft percussion and sensuous rhythms with luminous tones bursting softly in the background and sax adding a touch of dynamic mood that lingers and trails perfectly into a stream of sounds that fade into what is almost an unfinished sentence of music suggesting that this story of love is always going to be continued. Listen to “My Own” on YouTube and follow Dumomi The Jig at the links below.
Sure the Freedom Fry song is titled “Best Friend” and superficially it sounds like the words of someone who wants to be more than a lover to someone but also, indeed, a best friend. The vocals are melodic and sweet but the bass line has a menace like something out of a crime or spy thriller soundtrack. It has a seductive tone especially with the dreamlike melodies and the sultry aspect of that bass line. But the lyrics contain promises and mentions of sticking a needle in one’s eye and hope to die rather than break the narrator’s word to the object of her affection. It’s reminiscent of an Air song through the filter of a darker LCD Soundsystem tune and something made for a skate disco party in a Guy Ritchie film. The surreal claymation style music video seems to confirm the suspicions of skullduggery or at least criminal conspiracy afoot and holding the couple together but fortunately it is that of the more musical variety and Freedom Fry offers yet another memorable song to its already impressive catalog. Watch the video for “Best Friend” on YouTube and follow Freedom Fry at the links provided.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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