Following on from debut single Never Going Home, the California based Australian has just released new track It's Not Real. It's another shimmering slice of fizzy and jangling beach dream pop. Like the end-of-summer, It's Not Real feels like the end of something, the song calling on listeners to stay genuine.
Promise is the storming new single from LA trio MUNA, comprising of band members Kate, Josette and Naomi. Their second single of the summer, Promise is a dark synth-pop record that talks to the feelings that result from mistaking expressions of passion for expressions of love. Kate sings of girls that sabotage their loves to punish themselves - "They can't believe that they deserve anything else".
Promise is a perfect pop moment and a fab follow-up to earlier single So Special. Check it out below:
Following up his track Pacing from last month, Canadian producer Tep No is back with this new big soulful electronic pop track. There is a bit less of a washed out feel to Under Rage, and instead we get something that sounds like a Balearic take on Prince. Cue big insistent hooks and warm gorgeous melodies.
Say Yes Dog were formed back in 2011 by two Germans and one Luxembourger and they create clever electronic pop music reminiscent of Hot Chip and Metronomy. Stronger, out yesterday, is their latest single and it combines a killer hook with the vocals adding to the appeal here - loving this track!
Look out for album Plastic Love, out 4 September 2015 through Diskodogs Records / Cargo. Listen to Stronger below:
Evvol are a one-part-Irish, one-part-Australian duo who have somewhat appropriately evolved out from previous moniker Kool Thing. Eternalism represents a debut for the two female bandmates as Evvol, even if it does follow on from their 2013 album within their previous act.
Eternalism is a short, sharp injection of dark atmospheric pop music. Opening the album with dischordent feedback and synths, I See You (I Am You) initially sounds restrained, but Evvol show their true colours through the soaring layered vocals and scratched guitar melodies that gradually emerge.
Tracks take on the shapeless groove-like form that Warpaint have successfully based their career on, but layered with electronic, futurist touches. Sola is a dreamy cinematic example of this, sweeping melodies given ample space to form their gently shifting song-shapes. Where Warpaint seemingly hit upon songs in spite of themselves the slow building grooves of Eternalism always feel a bit more deliberate. That may mean they never feel quite as miraculous as Warpaint's Undertow or Love Is To Die, but they manage a consistent brilliance all the same.
Evvol are unafraid to mix some real hooks in amongst their jams, and the chorus the tumbles out of No Love feels revelatory because it comes just when you least expect it. Similarly the nagging chorus and atmospheric calypso percussion of Four Steps From Home feels like an epic encore to everything that precedes it on Eternalism.
The only problem with Evvol's debut album is that there isn't enough of it. With nine tracks it is over all too briefly - of those nine, even two of those clock in below two-minutes, forming short but perfectly crafted interludes. It says something that the simple stark keyboards of one of these short interludes, Sirius A, is still more beautiful than most things I've heard this year. Simple, yet brilliantly effective.
Eternalism is released through !K7 on 24 July, pre-order now on iTunes.