“Cool To You” is the third release of this year from Taylor Van Ginkel’s solo project, Teenage Priest. Written and produced by the Los Angeles artist, he expresses the struggle of wanting to be perceived as cool, despite straying from his internal desires. Definitely relatable, especially in the era of social media, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole.
With a strong and catchy chorus, this track will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Breezy guitars paired with the DIY, lo-fi sounding vocals of Ginkel (a bedroom pop™ specialty) make for a supremely dreamy sound. The perfect track to lounge around to, which is perfect for me because that’s all I do.
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Orchid Mantis is the experimental lo-fi project of Atlanta-based Thomas Howard. The project, having begun in 2014, has allowed him to play around and experiment with the more laid-back genres of the music scene. Blending lo-fi beats which back often shoegaze melodies, Thomas been producing tracks that have a fresh sound bordering bedroom and dream pop.
Orchid Mantis has come a long way since 2014, and now sees around 30k listeners on Spotify, marking their music as something that really needs to be checked out. With his new EP Light as Leaving coming out September 17th, we now get another single drop leading up to its release.
“No One Else Around” starts straight away with a strong drum beat that gives way to a heavily sounded shoegaze melody. High pitched synth play in a lethargic sway as Thomas’ dreamy vocals take on a bedroom pop vibe. This is definitely headphone music for the people watchers and window gazers.
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Pop oddball and melodic savant Pizzagirl has shared his off piste new jammer ‘dennis’.
The bedroom talent comes stumbling into daylight this Autumn, with the long-awaited release of debut album ‘first timer’.
Out on October 11th via Hit Or Heist, the latest preview is in the shape of “class clown” alt-pop jammer ‘dennis’.
Wrapped around that irresistible guitar hook Pizzagirl pens lyrics about jealousy and resentment, but it’s all done in a gleefully infectious way.
Tapping into the last of that summer sunshine, ‘dennis’ is packed with surreal word play and incredible zest.
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Sofi Tukker is kicking off back-to-school season with an upbeat new party track, “Purple Hat.” The song appears on the group’s upcoming EP Dancing on the People, whose name is taken directly from its lyrics. The collection arrives September 20 via Animal Talk.
“We wrote ‘Purple Hat’ the day after our first Animal Talk party,” the band shares of the song. “We started throwing these parties to bring back the wild and inclusive dancing vibe to the nightclub experience. Tuck was literally wearing a purple hat and a cheetah print shirt, people were climbing on top of people, it was over sold out and sweaty, our favorite people were packed in the booth, everyone was loose AF and feeling themselves. It was wild. Every Animal Talk party since then has been like that, and we wanted to capture that raw feeling in a song. If there was a song that included everything we are about, this would be the one.”
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Even if his name may not sound that familiar to you yet, Montreal’s singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Thom Gillies is not a real newcomer. Over the last few years, he co-founded the critically-acclaimed art-rock band Vesuvio Solo and was also a former member of TOPS; an impressive curriculum vitae, isn’t it?
Now going solo as Blue Material, Gillies has just released his debut album, where his lo-fi pop songs explore “the sorrows and triumphs of a love lost in a city slowly being transformed by capitalism”. On the record, which notably features contributions from Montreal fellas Braids and Blue Hawaii‘s Raphaelle Standell-Preston and Suuns‘ drummer Liam O’Neill, the artist is showing his love for the overlooked grooves of the 70s. This is once again palpable on his new single, “Personal”, that we’re so excited to premiere today.
Written during the summer of 2017 and originally slated to appear on the Blue Material album, “Personal” sounds like an improbable encounter between the funk of Prince, the disco edge of Chic, the elegant indie-pop of Men I Trust, and the psychedelic touch of Unknown Mortal Orchestra. To make a long story short, this is an infectious and slapping track focusing on human-sized struggles. Behind its lightness and as its title suggests it, “Personal” is also an introspective song about the end of a stormy and passionate relationship and expresses, first and foremost, a need for space and closure.
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