Now, Lew has just returned with another taster, “Give In.” With glitchy drums and washed-out shoegaze guitars, the song sets an otherworldly tone from the start. “Outside a treehouse is a home / Who lives in there you’ll never know / At night the blinds are falling off the wall / You find a light careening from a hole,” Lew sings, painting a ghostly picture of obsession and curiosity.

“Give In” explores the pull of intrusive thoughts, especially the persistent urge to step inside forgotten, abandoned places. As Sea Lemon explains, “Growing up, I never knew the term of ‘intrusive thoughts’ but often had them… ‘Give In’ is about giving into the intrusive thoughts, and the relief and the consequences that happen after.”

Written in a single afternoon, the track feels both immediate and spellbinding. And it also comes with a video created by Otium.

Catch Sea Lemon on tour:
5/22 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre*
5/23 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre*
5/24 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall*
5/25 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall*
7/10 – New York, NY – Nightclub 101
7/12 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
7/29 – Missoula, MT#
7/30 – Spokane, WA#
8/8 – Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern

*supporting American Football
#supporting Death Cab For Cutie

Lew’s upbeat single is described as a platonic love letter to a sleeping security guard she encountered at a thrift store. She wrote, in a post on Substack, that the song is about reliving his fears, and that “it’s okay to need to rest, relax, take a beat…”

Lew says that writing the song led to more music inspiration for her about the stories of people dealing with surreal situations and how she would imagine talking to them.

Sea Lemon’s debut album, Diving for A Prize, is described as a collection of songs that operate somewhere between fantasy and reality. As shown in previous releases, Lew is clearly skilled at balancing between the two spheres, meaning listeners should expect more dreamy and wistful pop songs on her upcoming LP.

Lew is supporting American Football and Death Cab For Cutie this spring and summer. Check out where you can catch her live below and watch the visualizer for her new single.

LIVE DATES
5/22 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre*
5/23 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre*
5/24 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall*
7/29 – Missoula, MT#
7/30 – Spokane, WA#

*supporting American Football
#supporting Death Cab For Cutie

Jane Penny, the mesmerizing lead vocalist of TOPS, is readying the release of her solo debut EP, Surfacing. Shaped by her time in Berlin during the pandemic, a period she defines as challenging and fraught with vulnerability, the project became a catalyst for her to explore resilience through a transformative musical journey.

After “Messages,” Penny has now unveiled a fluttering and sexy new track, “Wear You Out,” of which she said: “I wanted to make something poppy and cute but also a bit sinister and weird, sensual and witty. Lots of wordplay, a bit dirty, I think the video represents the song well. Sometimes the greatest passion and the most intense love is slightly destructive and I wanted to explore that in a fun way.”

Like the previous single, “Wear You Out” comes with an excellent OTIUM-directed video. Watch below.

Lead singer of Montreal indie royalty TOPS, Jane Penny is launching her solo career with Surfacing, scheduled for this Spring on Luminelle. Penny started to write, produce and record the EP in both Berlin and Montreal, following TOPS’ European tour in March 2020.

“There are things I wanted to explore sonically and creatively, which would be impossible in the context of TOPS,” explained Penny. “I wanted to challenge myself to create a whole world of my own, to write all of the parts, program the drums, choose every sample, write the bass line. When I took control over the entire world of music that I was creating I felt that it also opened up a lot of emotional space, sensuality and intuition that comes through solitude. It took a while to reach a point where I feel it’s ready to share, but now the gates are open and I’ll definitely be continuing on this path.”

To introduce the project, Penny shared the first single “Messages.” Talking about the track, she said, “It’s a pop song about getting notifications from everyone except the one person you want to hear from, which was happening to me at the time. The opening sample — ‘there is a message for you’ is a strange message that the credit card machines in Montreal cabs make.”

Watch the video, directed by OTIUM and inspired by Maya Deren’s 1943 film Meshes Of The Afternoon, below.

Jane Penny – Surfacing EP artwork

Natalie Lew, better known as Sea Lemon, has had a circuitous route to music. Though she’s always been a fan, she only started putting out her own releases recently, effectively logging out of Spotify and stepping into the studio. The Seattle native grew up in an area rife with musical influences, gathering early inspiration from the iconic KEXP station to the influential Capitol Hill Block Party. That said, her own debut record, Close Up, was just released in 2022. She is a member of the COVID class of musicians who came out of the shadows as the world shut down, a time that allowed some to explore and record while stuck at home.

Close Up caught the attention of iconic label Luminelle Recordings. Armed with a powerful team and a newfound confidence, Lew has just released her sophomore EP, Stop At Nothing. The new record builds upon the stellar sound Lew shared in her first project while also showing a rawer, deeper side of her artistry through her incredible lyrics and buttressed by producorial choices by Jackson Phillips of Day Wave.

It’s hard to categorize Lew‘s music. In a statement, she describes her sound as “Costco Cocteau Twins,” which is both incredibly apt and obviously hilarious. The catchy, saccharine “3A” features twinkly guitar and a buzzy, irresistibly poppy chorus. “Breakdown” ricochets us into zoned out, Washed Out-like territory. Other songs slingshot from lo-fi garage rock, to true shoegaze, to synth pop, and back again. While the EP contains multiple personalities, it’s anything but schizophrenic. With music listeners often preferring playlists over deep listens of a single album, an eclectic choice of moods, sounds, and vibes is a wise choice from an up-and-coming artist like Sea Lemon.

Diving into Lew‘s sparse yet evocative lyrics, the theme that most powerfully comes through on Stop At Nothing is a sense of longing. On “3A,” she sings, “Listen, he’s still just a no one / They turn into someone / Quicker than I’d like / Missing you more than a minute / I swear I’ll stay in it / A fighter on a flight in candlelight.” Though Lew doesn’t given insight into the inspiration for this song, it feels likely that the singer-songwriter is tapping into the ways in which we self-sooth after a relationship ends. They were really no one, right? Lew asks what happens when that turns out to be a lie, when the object of your desire evolves into a notable person.

This sense of missing someone bleeds into “Breakdown,” where Lew laments, “I’ll stop at nothing for you / Lean on your older sister / Stay until you’re overworked you knew / I’d wait around / Yeah I’ll keep sticking with you until you’re mine.” Drawing inspiration from famously spurred singer-songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers, Sea Lemon explores what it means to stay in a relationship even though it is obviously unhealthy. Furthermore, on closing track “Dramatic,” Sea Lemon‘s fascination with technology and parasocial relationships comes to a head, as she explains, “Plan a vacation to another country / Saw you were there maybe a month ago / Land into town I doubt it ever hits me / Get in the pool, it’s just like that episode.” Throughout Stop At Nothing, Lew tempers her fascination with the subject of her song. As she explains in “Dramatic,” “I only know you just in passing.” Lew loves deeply, but at a distance. The way she describes this dynamic is extremely personal and intensely relatable.

More than anything, Sea Lemon is most skillful when she’s putting words to common fears and anxieties. This comes through most prominently in highlight “Vaporized.” Lew sings, “Sometimes when I struggle to sleep I / Look up the news / See someone was caught in a landslide.” She continues, further expounding on this horrible scenario, “Ripped them in two / And I toss and I turn and I’m scared / Yeah I won’t lie / It sticks with you / Try hard to remember I’m happy / Yeah I’m trying to.” It’s often difficult to confront, but this world can feel incredibly dark, fatalistic, and horrible. Sometimes it seems that our deepest relationships are with the dark screen in front of us. In many ways, she is positioning herself to become a voice of a generation, as she’s shown that she’s unafraid to describe the paranoid thoughts and feelings that permeate every corner of our troubling times. And yet, she does it with a peppy beat, with an unforgettable guitar riff, with a zonked-out production style. Stop At Nothing is a hell of a record, and Sea Lemon is just getting started. Take a gander at the link below to check out the full album. Claire Greising

Sea Lemon has been on our radar since the release of her excellent debut EP, Close Up, in 2022. Now signed to Luminelle, home of some of our favourite artists, Natalie Lew – her real name – deepens her dream pop sensibility on her upcoming Stop At Nothing EP, that she just announced today. “I call it Costco Cocteau Twins,” Lew says about the project, which showcases “another side of me”. “It’s a modern spin on classic dreampop and shoegaze.” The five new tracks were crafted in collaboration with an established name of the genre, Jackson Phillips, aka Day Wave.

Along with the announcement, Sea Lemon also shared a brand new track, “Vaporized”. Working as a companion to previously released single “Cellar”, the song embodies her conflicting infatuation with horror movies and intense fear of death, something that the Seattle-bred artist has been dealing with since her childhood. It all makes sense in the accompanying video, that she co-directed with Otium.

Two years after Voyage to Mars, MUNYA is readying the release of her sophomore album. Jardin will be out this Fall but Josie Boivin already shared two track off the record, that was entirely co-produced with Kainalu. “This album is about the people who raised me, the people who inspire me, those who made me the artist I am today,” she detailed.

We can already listen to the opener “Hello Hi” as well as “Un Deux Trois,” which comes with an Otium-directed video, in which MUNYA is chasing another woman (Greta Akopov) in the streets of New York.

“MUNYA has always paid homage to Giorgio Moroder; I referenced him as early as 2018 when I released my first song,” Boivin says. “This song is a tribute to him and the music he’s inspired, like Daft Punk’s incredible ‘Giorgio by Moroder.’ When Daft Punk broke up after 28 years, I was devastated, because they were among my favorite artists. You can hear Moroder’s influence throughout Jardin, but this song is specifically for Daft Punk and all those who have loved Moroder’s music. He’s contributed so much to my career as an artist as he did theirs. Plus, the world needs more music like Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder.”

You can buy the two tracks and pre-order Jardin via Bandcamp below.

A few weeks ago, Magdalena Bay announced a new edition of their excellent debut album Mercurial World and shared a Danny L Harle remix of their banger “Chaeri”. The Los Angeles-based pop duo have now detailed the full project, which they describe as “a mish mosh of sorts, an amalgamation of new songs that didn’t originally fit the flow of Mercurial World, of reimagined versions of existing album tracks by us and some talented remixers, plus some special secrets.” According to Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, fans can also expect this new version “to flow like the original album did.”

The first off these new songs to be revealed, the very orchestral ballad “All You Do” comes alongside a Luke Orlando-directed video. Watch the visuals, pre-order Mercurial World Deluxe, and check the full tracklisting of the 28-song project below.

Mercurial World Deluxe tracklisting

1. secret 1
2. The End
3. Mercurial World
4. Unconditional
5. Dawning of the Season
6. Secrets (Your Fire)
7. secrets 2-9: medley
8. You Lose!
9. secret 10
10. You Lose! (8-Bit)
11. Something for 2 (Cecile Believe Remix)
12. Chaeri
13. secret 11
14. Halfway
15. Hysterical Us
16. secret 12
17. All You Do
18. Prophecy (Synth & Strings)
19. Follow The Leader
20. secret 13
21. Chaeri (Danny L Harle Remix)
22. Chaeri (Piano & Strings)
23. Dominó (Spanish Version)
24. Dreamcatching
25. secret 14
26. The Beginning
27. Mercurial World (Piano & Strings)
28. secret 15