Listen: Skeleton Castle - Elodie Rêverie

Elodie Rêverie is an Brooklyn native turned LA-based musician. She began writing and producing her own music in just January of this year. Skeleton Castle is a great representation of her talent - a slightly weird, left field pop record about ancestry and history.

As Elodie explains, Skeleton Castle is about her getting in touch with her family history:

“I wrote the lyrics for this song on a songwriting retreat in Scotland when I revisited the ancient ruins of a castle owned by my ancestors I’d previously convinced by family to visit over 10 years ago-the song explores making peace with divorce and growing up. I produced the beat in my hotel room in London after the retreat and recorded vocals the next day at Strongroom.”

Skeleton Castle was mixed by Mark Needham, who is known for his work on Mr Brightside. For me, what makes this record stand out is the catchy essence of the vocals combined with the synth-heavy chorus. As Elodie sings of being at the Skeleton Castle, the electronics combined with this earthy, grungy guitar work to make something that feels both grounded and otherworldly. It’s pop music, but not quite as you know it.

Listen: The Queen Ann’s Revenge - Bad Pilot

Taken from Bad Pilot’s new EP, Hybrids, which is out today, The Queen Ann’s Revenge feels like a crescendo of sparks and dreams, the memories of your favourite moments as they slip through your fingers. Busy drum beats clatter, high pitched vocals conjure the same child-like wonder of Arcade Fire at their best, and electronics spinning weirdly out of control.

Queen Ann’s Revenge was recorded in the band’s rehearsal room near Paris, and was inspired by famous female pirates Mary Read and Ann Bonny, depicting them escaping on the ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge. In its depiction of escape, and the idea of running away with treasures and one another, the song is a story of love and freedom. As the vocals cry out their jumbled lyrics, they capture a feeling, a yearning for the dreams we never quite land, “I wanna be lucky, I wanna be lucky too ... wanna make you madly happy next time”.

I feel a little lost in this music... It instinctively makes me want more. To feel more, to love more, to be loved more, to experience more. We only live once, and so I say tie me to the mast, let the waves break me and the sun scorch my face and the seagulls pick at my flesh, for we only have so much time to write our story, and I want mine to last.

Check out Queen Ann's Revenge below, or the full EP as a YouTube playlist here.

Listen: If I Was Brave - Alessandra

Having worked with artists including Iggy Azalea and (frequent Rihanna collaborator) producer Alex da Kid, Swedish songwriter and producer Alessandra has just released her debut EP, If I Was Brave. The title track from the EP is a heartbroken ballad drenched in sadness and affection, swinging from quiet vulnerability to moments of huge, anthemic emotion.

On If I Was Brave, Alessandra hopes to evoke classic, iconic artists of the 60s and 70s like Joni Mitchell and David Bowie, alongside contemporaries London Grammar, Niki & The Dove and Lana Del Ray. And you can certainly hear that in the restrained yet delicately sparkling production exhibited here... The piano melody gently moves alongside Alessandra’s rousing vocal, strolling when she sings solo, then pounding like an insistent toddler with the soaring harmonies on the chorus and then the bridge. This is the kind of song that both feels simple and incredibly dramatic. It all hinges on Alesandra’s incredibly emotive performance, which feels like it has every bit of her inside it.

The song itself is about love and control, as described by Alessandra:

“If I Was Brave is about losing self-control. It hopelessly romanticizes hopes of a simpler world - to run from someone or something without understanding why. The whole project assumed this theme of chasing an impossible idea of love. The process became a lot more personal when writing music for myself.”

The EP, If I Was Brave, is out now on KUMLA music. Check out the total track below.

Listen: Drink Yours Too - SUMif

SUMif blew me away last year with her song Know You, a record that fizzed with the overwhelming feeling of wanting to be completely swallowed whole by a person. The track established Steph Wells as someone for me to keep my eye on, and here she is, back with another dreamy electronic pop record about the unexpected places our feelings can take us.

Where Know You was a record that conveyed the sense of awe another person can instil in you, Drink Yours Too is the opposite - being surprised and disappointed by the person you thought you knew actually turning out to be different.

We live in a world where our relationships take on different dynamics through different mediums. You may find the person from your mundane day job becomes your best friend when you get chatting to them on your phone. You can find yourself falling for the way someone spars on their Twitter account without ever really knowing who they are in their real, day-to-day life.

It’s that warped sense of connection that SUMif tackle here, on a song penned by Wells and Dylan Emmet. As Steph describes:

“This song is about this one time I met someone via Instagram who lived on the other side of the world... we talked and Facetimed for hours for a couple of months, and then I flew from San Francisco to Barcelona for a weekend to meet her... it was a complete fail. no regrets though, I could have spent another 100 hours of my life facetiming/talking with her, but instead I figured it out quickly along with a great story...”

The song itself rides a gentle muted guitar line, which combined with finger clicks manages to create the feeling of excited anticipation. It feels like a journey to meet someone who you already feel in love with the idea of, warm synths hitting you like the heat of Barcelona as you step off the plane.

Sometimes you have to chase what feels right, even if it turns out to be wrong... Love is by definition an experience only made possible by taking risks and putting yourself out there.

Drink Yours Too listen on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/6Nd87swF504yrDMykyRtCW

Listen: Halo - Nightmøde

Nightmøde is Matt Kass, a writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who originally hails from Philadelphia but is now based in East Nashville. Following acclaim and streaming success with previous singles Penthouse Refugees, and The Pressure, Nightmøde is back with this, a new single. A collaborative exercise between Kass and Austin Thomas (who works as Spookyghostboy), Halo is a song about the experience of being in a long distance relationship.

You can feel the experience of uncertainty and inconsistency in the music. The feeling of having someone right with you some of the time, but then being aware of their absence as soon as they are gone. The feeling of not knowing quite what is going on with someone when they aren’t with you, of trying to maintain the emotional tenacity to keep that person in mind... close enough to be in a relationship with them but not so close that they become all you think about.

The sound of Halo is hazy, with a chill wave consistency that feels like be lost in daydreams and not being able to maintain a presence with those physically around you. It’s a slightly heartbreaking record - the sound of things not working, not because they weren’t necessarily to be, but simply because it was too hard to figure them out.

Written by NIGHTMØDE & Austin Thomas Produced, Mixed & Recorded by NIGHTMØDE Mastered by Adam Grover at Sterling Sound Nashville, TN