With her latest slew of singles drawing well-deserved attention, the final countdown to Lindsey Radice AKA PYNKIE’s highly anticipated sophomore album #37 is on.

Having worked doggedly for the past two years to establish her place as a jagged indie-rock gem, PYNKIE is readying the release of her new album with “Vacation,” a track that embodies her whimsy and DIY spirit.

“Vacation” sees a slight veer away from the swirling synthy sound that often lies underneath PYNKIE’s music. Taking a more organic approach, the track actually sounds more like a The Beach Boys track in places, leaning on a twee, surfing rhythm.

Yet, as is to be expected of a PYNKIE track, there’s always more than initially meets the ears. With a clean, resounding electric guitar sprinkled over the acoustic anchor, momentum is built. Radice‘s husky, drawling voice orchestrates “Vacation” into its final thirty seconds, where the song really takes off.

It’s in those final seconds that it’s made apparent how much groundwork has been laid initially to allow “Vacation” to bloom. The final lyrics “give you the green light” fade out with such a beautiful everlasting feeling, like if “Vacation” will go on endlessly. Not a coincidence when you know the meaning of the track.

“‘Vacation’ is about mentally taking a permanent vacation from a former relationship and way of thinking,” explained Radice. “I have held onto relationships and tried to resuscitate them long after they’ve obviously died. This is not only unhealthy but also a waste of time and energy. However, I’m sure most people can say they’ve done this either with a romantic relationship or in some other aspect of their life.”

The accompanying video to “Vacation” is a charming compilation of home videos, all lovingly converted from VHS’s and organised into a sentimental time capsule. The video plays as an amusing and heartwarming homage to growing up and presents an interesting way to explore the aforementioned feelings of taking a “permanent vacation” from unhealthy ways of thinking.

With two amazing singles already in their bag, “Tell U” and “Of Drawing“, Couch Prints are one of our favourite up and coming bands out there. Consisting of Jayanna Roberts (vocals), Brandon Tong (keys), and Jacob Truax (guitar), the NYC-based synth-pop trio has just announced the release of their debut EP and shared the video for “Tell U”, their 2019 ethereal breakthrough single.

“I wrote the first iteration of this track while living in Denver,” explained Tong. “I was working this job I hated and had this feeling that life was speeding by. I ended up moving to New York a few months later, and shortly after Jake came out from Paris to record some of the music we’d been collaborating on the past year. While he was [In Paris] he had worked on music with Jayanna, so he called her to come sing on the tracks. We showed her the tracks and immediately she was humming along and had this incredible tone and way of singing, so we started recording for “Tell U” and finished it that night. With so many moving pieces coming together so serendipitously, the final song came to celebrate this feeling of transience and movement and leaving the past behind.”

He then added:

“When we gave the song to Mayachka for the music video, she took that wistful feeling and our experiences, and created a story about a supposed three-way love triangle between us – with all the romance and nostalgia of a 2000’s soap opera. It perfectly captured the melancholy and strangeness of our first year coming together.”

Shot with a Betamax camcorder, the vintage video looks more like a Telenovela than Truffaut‘s Jules et Jim as their depiction of love, jealousy, and heartbreak is funnily over-dramatic (the intro credits are pure comedy). The visuals were shot in the Lent-Riker-Smith homestead, the oldest private dwelling in New York City. Watch and pre-order the EP below.

Singer-songwriter-nurse Lindsey Radice, better known as PYNKIE, is no stranger to the unusual. Saving lives by day and tooling around with bandmates John Messina and Josh Bartsch at night, the versatile artist has been working on her sophomore album as PYNKIE for a long time.

Finding time whenever her nurse scheduling would allow, the road to completion has been bumpy. “I took some time away because I felt like I couldn’t get it sounding the way I wanted,” says Radice. “And then the pandemic happened, which made being a nurse pretty hard for a bit. But we found a way to make the record work, and somehow everything got done in the last couple months.”

“Personality” is the first glimpse into the world of this effort. A self-proclaimed ode to divorce (more specifically Radice’s parents divorce), the track is as sharp and witty as you’d expect from PYNKIE. It possesses this off-kilter touch that we’ve seen her adopt since her self-released 2018 debut album neoteny.

The track references specific interactions between PYNKIE’s parents as they fight over possessions in the messy divorce. Lines such as “Furniture, Furniture/Over my dead body” are sung with a delightfully naïve charm, effectively capturing the sometimes obliviousness or misunderstanding that children have when it comes to events of such grandeur.

This speaks to PYNKIE’s style. Having started by making up silly ditties to herself in the form of odes to her shower curtain, her childlike sense of fun hasn’t been lost, even though the subject matter has changed into one of more gravity.

With its buoyant bassline, jangly guitars, stoic percussion and perfectly imperfect slacker vocals, “Personality” is musically a raw joy to behold. It’s flawless in its mixture of the known and the unknown, expected and unexpected. Skilfully wrong-footing the listener by setting up expectations of direction and then changing at the last minute is something that PYNKIE excels at. Lo-fi ethics and embedded nostalgia have become a staple of her music.

This 90s nostalgia also takes the main role in the accompanying Kelli McGuire-directed visuals. We see Radice with her hair in bunches, wearing chokers, double denim that’s been scrawled on in felt tip pen and jelly sandals. The lighting is soft yet colourful with a light fuzz that gives it a retro warmth to it, casting our minds back to childhood. With vibrant graphics breaking up the video, topped off with the karaoke-style lyrics at the bottom of the video, the effect is one of wistful fondness.

With its combination of unadulterated playfulness, darker tones and gleefully childish sensibilities, “Personality” speaks to a larger theme that will carry through the upcoming album #37. The record was named as a reference to Lindsey Radice’s mother’s first husband, who sadly died early in the marriage. #37 was the number on his high school football jersey and it became a poignant symbol for Radice and her family.

“My mom and sisters feel that 37 is very symbolic of him,” she says. “They see it everywhere and usually at very strangely coincidental moments. They feel like it’s him looking down and protecting them. Then I started seeing it all the time too, and it just turned into this magical/meaningful number in my mind, especially during the time I was making this album.”

It’s this meaningful undertone and more sombre subjects that makes PYNKIE’s music really soar. There cannot be darkness without light and PYNKIE sublimates this alchemy with originality and authenticity. Watch and pre-order the album below.

Last year, Charlottesville artist Kate Bollinger released her gorgeous debut EP, I Don’t Wanna Lose, which was recorded in a live set-up. “I’m really happy with the way that I Don’t Wanna Lose turned out, but everything was so new to me, so I didn’t take things where they could have gone,” she explained. Her sophomore project, A word becomes a sound, will be more fleshed out, sophisticated as the 5 songs were crafted to sound exactly like what she imagined in her head.

After the amazing “A Couple Things” and the lead single “Grey Skies,” she has now unveiled the third single, “Feel Like Doing Nothing”. During summer, when it’s particularly hot, it’s not uncommon to feel lazy and unproductive. Her breezy, jazz-inflected new song reclaims the right to procrastinate and to allow yourself to postpone a task until the next day.

“By now I know that I am happiest when I’m keeping myself as busy as possible, but with that I always seem to make the same mistake again and again, which is trying to do too many things and wearing myself down,” Bollinger explained. “This song was written at that point, it’s meant to feel playful and like an abandonment of all responsibility, but it’s also supposed to feel a little uneasy. It’s a song about avoidance and escapism at its heart.”

The track also comes with a video, courtesy of directors Phineas Alexander and Graham Barbour. Watch and pre-order the EP via Bandcamp below.

A few weeks ago, TR/ST released the second part of his double album The Destroyer, on which he sounds more vulnerable than ever before. If these eight new tracks focus on organic and smooth textures, the synth-laden lead single “Iris” remains particularly epic. According to an interview that HighClouds recently had with Robert Alfons, this is actually the track that represents the best this double project (you can stream the track in our Best Tracks of 2019 playlist).

There’s now a video to go with the track, which was directed by Muted Widows, a collective consisting of Nedda Afsari, Michael Zumaya, and Michael Linn. About the dystopian visuals, they commented:

[su_quote]We wanted a feeling of warmth and tenderness, but also ones of loneliness, which I think is essential for anyone who wants to go down a path of self-realization and consciousness expansion. We really strived to [show] the energy that comes with that loneliness, but it’s never negative.[/su_quote]

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onYEDDY6VX4&feature=youtu.be”]

Toronto’s electronic and dark wave musician and producer Robert Alfons, better known as TR/ST, is going to unveil the second installment of The Destroyer in a few months. Following up on the intense lead single “Iris“, the artist has now shared the title track from the project, “Destroyer”. The track is actually not totally new as he already posted a video for it back in 2017. According to the artist, writing this track was a pivotal moment as it “unleashed a whole new direction for the project and really shaped how the rest of the album would be produced”. The track sounds indeed very different from some of his previous offerings as it experiments with dark pop rock balladry. Listen below.

You can now pre-order the album and catch TR/ST on tour in Europe (tickets), including a gig in Brussels.

20 Nov London – Heaven

21 Nov Brussels – Botanique

23 Nov Bern – Saint Ghetto

24 Nov Paris – Le Trianon

26 Nov Amsterdam – Paradiso Noord

Following up on The Destroyer – Part 1 released earlier this year, Toronto’s dark synthpop act TR/ST has announced the second part of the project for this Fall. He has also unveiled the first single off of the 8-track record. Titled “Iris”, the song is described as “a very important moment on the record. swallowing weight of shame, growth of fritillaries, and an ode to an eternal muse”. Listen below.

The artist will also be on tour to promote the record. Check his itinerary below.