Brisbane singer-songwriter Harriette Pilbeam aka Hatchie has announced the release of her sophomore record Giving The World Away. “It’s the concept of giving your heart away,” says Hatchie about what she described as her ‘truest’ project. “Putting everything on the line…the entire album is really me realising that I actually need to do that in order to grow and accept myself.”

Following up to “This Enchanted,” she has also unveiled the amazing Jorge Elbrecht-produced lead single “Quicksand,” which combines dream pop, shoegaze and a certain pop grandeur – Olivia Rodrigo‘s collaborator Dan Nigro is also credited on the cathartic track. “I’m capable of writing more than just nice dream-pop songs, and there’s more to me than just writing songs about being in love or being heartbroken — there’s a bigger picture than that,” Pilbeam adds. “This album really just feels like the beginning to me, and scratching the surface – and even though it’s my third release as Hatchie, I feel like I’m rebooting from scratch.”

Watch the Nathan Castiel-directed visuals and pre-order the album via Bandcamp below.

After “Rabbit Hole” and “Big Bang,” Clementine Creevy continues to showcase a more electronic side of Cherry Glazerr with her wavering yet dreamy new track “Soft Drink.” “I started with that synth line,” explained the Los Angeles-based artist. “It just popped into my head while I was driving and I like frantically recorded it into my voice memos while driving to the beach kind of down by Hermosa and Manhattan beach. I was randomly obsessed with the song “Naive” by the Kooks and kind of listening to it a lot, and I think that sound crept in a little. The song is about yearning for some validation. Sometimes all you need is company and you’re not looking for anything specific, just someone to dance with. It was a lonely year obviously haha.”

Two years after Atlanta Millionaires Club, Faye Webster has announced the release of her new album, I Know I’m Funny haha, and embraces a rockier edge on lead single “Cheers.” “This song has always felt like a standout from the record to me. It was the kind of song where you’re like ‘oh yeah, this is the one,’” she explained. “Right after the first take. It felt different to me and it made it feel like I was entering a new era and chapter for myself. It’s kind of the outlier on the record but at the same time is still so original and identifying to myself. Also it just makes me feel like a badass for once.”

In the accompanying visuals, directed by Matt Swinsky, the singer-songwriter is surrounded by some Real Bike Life Only riders from the Atlanta scene and yes, she looks like a badass! Watch and pre-order the album below.

Following on from her 2019 album Atlanta Millionaires Club and her recent stand-alone singles “Both All The Time” and “In A Good Way,” Faye Webster has shared another melancholic and rootsy rumination about longing and loneliness.

About “Better Distractions,” the new queen of the pedal steel explained: “I wrote this song kinda without knowing I was writing it. It’s a kind of free association, just thoughts running straight from my head onto paper untouched. I also think it’s best my band has ever sounded on record”. Watch the visuals, directed by Matt Swinsky and Eat Humans, below.

One year after her delightful album Atlanta Millionaires Club, Faye Webster has just returned with “In A Good Way,” a ballad that puts her love for hip-hop textures on hold for a few minutes. Opting instead for a string quartet and tender guitars, the 22-year-old singer-songwriter delivers a soulful, laid-back serenade brimming with nostalgia and vulnerability. “You make me wanna cry in a good way,” she sings about her newfound love and happiness. Listen and watch the accompanying visuals, that she co-directed with Hunter Airheart, below.

For good reason, Shura sounds, for lack of a better word, unbelievably sure. The English producer/songwriter’s dazzlingly suave sophomore album forevher, released last week, marks a change not only of heart but of location. Her 2016 debut was firmly rooted in West London, where she lived in Shepard’s Bush. Her lyrics turned the Uxbridge Road into a stomping ground for pondering walks home. forevher’s journey goes far beyond: Shura’s newfound romantic buoyancy takes her to the US, bringing with it the freedom and excitement of new experiences. Treading London’s streets in solitary is replaced with loved-up subway journeys to the beach (“oh yeah!”), introspective questions replaced with conviction.

It’s no surprise that forevher is daring in all the right ways. The record started with a date – one that required a flight to New York. Having met her now-girlfriend on a dating app, Shura initially bridged the long-distance gap with phone calls and text conversations until they could hold no more, finally booking the trip that would mark, in so many ways, the beginning of her new album. Far from impulsive, the move was the perfect example of ‘when you know, you know.’ Two years on, the pair live together in New York, and Shura’s sophomore record is born.

Much of Shura’s then-blossoming, now realised relationship is documented in its various forms throughout the album. The taunting, bittersweet longing of a long-distance (“BRYKLYNLDN“), the thrill of an initial spark and first meeting (“the stage“), the euphoric contentment in a life shared: “This is the real thing” (“forever”). The arc is hopeful, inspiring, a joyous departure from the heartbreak of Nothing’s Real.

forevher is bounding, sounding bolder than its more sheepish but no less characterful older sibling. Any trepidation is steeped in a flirtatious excitement, any fear lost in the knowing acceptance of vulnerability in intimacy. Growing in heart, Shura’s trademark synthy hooks take shimmering shape, laced with soulful 80s-infused R&B. An unconventional but wonderful fit for Shura’s soft-spoken breathy vocals, whose delivery alternates to express both tenderness and elation. Owed to its smooth but unpolished production and songwriting, the feel is timeless – classic, yet thematically subversive.

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Centring the canonically heteronormative soul-pop love song very clearly around ‘her’ is deliberate and emphatic, but in no way a statement. In this shifted, queer narrative, nothing changes so much as it normalises. The love story claims space in even the most remote, traditionally unaccepting of places. Religious iconography in the electrifying, sultry “religion (u can lay ur hands on me)” and accompanying video is blasphemous in the best possible way – Shura steps out, all in white, juul in hand, as ‘lesbian pope’ surrounded by smooching nuns. Even the softly sultry blue-hued album artwork, a gender-bending portrayal of Rodin’s The Kiss universalises the experience, bringing queerness into a world that it’s long since been excluded from.

But it’s not all glitz and glamour. Morbid existentialism splices the album toward the latter half, with “tommy”, “princess leia” and “flyin’” musing on loss, death, and all that comes after. These tracks delve into the human experience as a whole, the 28-year-old filtering her own thoughts and concerns through the lives of others. “Maybe I died when Carrie Fisher died,” she croons on “princess leia”, while “tommy” is an ode to a widower Shura met travelling across America. Opening with a monologue recording of his story in his own words, she turns the tale into a piano ballad from the point of view of both the life lost and the one who has to keep on living.

A labour of love to love, it’s impossible not to feel the distance between where Shura was and where she finds herself now. Nothing’s Real walked so that forevher could soar.

Released this week, “the stage” follows the English producer’s prior singles pulled from the upcoming album, forevher, in baring the feelings of constraint and elation in her current relationship – one dictated by time and space in the most painful and rewarding way. “BRKLYNLDN” chronicled the agonising throes of a blossoming long-distance arrangement. Then, “religion (you can lay your hands on me)” saw the pair’s searing desire, finally, physically realised.

This boldness is an insurmountable leap for Aleksandra Denton, whose first album was heralded as a sonic bible of otherness, anxiety, and unfulfilled romance. Tracks like “2shy” and “Touch” were sweetly painful tales of unrequited or unvoiced love. Now, Shura’s latest video sees her take on the quietly commanding role of ‘lesbian pope’, surrounded by dancing nuns who unabashedly express their feelings for one another – and, in turn, their ceremonious rejection of the status quo. 

“the stage” is no different. Centred quite literally around a stage – containing none other than fellow 80s-influenced synth-pop force MUNA, at that – the narrative tracks the thrill of a first date at a gig, and, ultimately, the lightheaded excitement of the couple’s swift exit before the night’s end. Swathed in classic soul-funk percussive patterns and soaring synth hooks, Shura speaks in knowingly romantic hyperbole. Rather than tentative, her questions are intrepid, playful. “Are we gonna kiss? Exciting,” she sings, with all the flutterings of new love and desire. A profession rather than confession, “the stage” puts Shura exactly where she belongs. 

Atlanta’s alt-folk singer-songwriter Faye Webster will release her new album on Secretly Canadian in a few weeks and we’ve heard the lead single “Room Temperature” so far. For her new offering, “Flowers,” the artist, who draws inspiration from the local hip-hop scene, has linked with Father, the mastermind behind her previous label Awful Records. About this collaboration, Webster explained:

[su_quote]During My Time on Awful I learned a lot about making music with other members. It was refreshing because you don’t think about it and it’s always a spontaneous thing to be in the same room as someone and start working on a song without over-thinking. This song is one of those.[/su_quote]

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