Listen: Crying In Your Sleep - Iska Dhaaf

Iska Dhaaf are a producer-songwriter duo based in Brooklyn. Together they create indie influenced electronicic with a focus on textural soundscapes and lyricism.

Crying In Your Sleep is the latest song from Iska Dhaaf and it creates a lush, cinematic feeling. A slow pulse of electronic percussion gives the song a sense of movement, the sounds gradually layered upon one another whilst soft instrumentation comes together to create a dreamlike sound. If this is crying in your sleep, it sounds peaceful.

Overall it is Benjamin Verdoe’s falsetto vocals that really make Crying In Your Sleep stand-out, enveloping the subtle production with a sense of drama and emotion. The overall sound here evokes a warm, quiet type of disco, the result sounding like Yumi Zouma fronted by Rhye’s Mike Milosh. Crying In Your Sleep is soft, subtle, raw, vulnerable and blissful. Check it out below.

"Crying in Your Sleep," the newest release from Iska Dhaaf, tells a multilayered story that revolves around two separate dialogs: one from the waking world and one from the dimension of dreams. The production of the song has an ethereal delicacy that cycles around a driving bass line and clusters of electronic percussion. Beautiful pads and arpeggiations flutter and dance around the steady beat and heavenly keys. The main melody drifts in and out as a sweet lullaby as Benjamin Verdoes's gentle voice lilts and sways. Melancholy and sincere, "Crying in Your Sleep," flows through the currents of a lucid dream.

Listen: Set Fire To The Night - Lazer Owl

Lazer Owl’s Set Fire To The Night slides its way into my mind with a casual over-familiarity that reminds me of drinking with new-found friends-of-friends at the end of lost nights… It feels easy, and way more worn-in than it should.

Lazer Owl is a musical alter-ego of Italian musician and songwriter Anthony Lazaro, which when embodied frees him from his acoustic skin into a multicoloured synthetic identity.

Lazaro’s vocals evoke a feeling I can only describe as low-slung, embodying a unfussiness that instantly makes him sound cool. I’ve always been a sucker for slacker rock, a sound epitomised by Pavement, a band that often sounded like if they were any more laissez faire they would be asleep. On Set Fire To The Night, Lazer Owl somehow manages to apply that aesthetic to disco, and gosh is that my jam. I will follow you anywhere Lazer Owl, my lovely Italian mystery, as you lazily point the way to some mystic heavenly rave in a distant forest. Sure, let’s set fire to the night, but let me just pull a stretch and slip on a comfortable sweater first.

Watch: Permanent Maniac - GRAE

Back with a follow up to April’s Slow Down, Toronto musician GRAE has just released her second EP, Permanent Maniac, together with the title track and its accompanying video.

Where Slow Down was a dramatic, electronic piece of pop music, Permanent Maniac fizzes with a nervous energy, a glittering indie sound perfectly complimenting GRAE’s wistful vocals.

On first listen, Permanent Maniac could be mistaken for a conventional love song, but GRAE confesses it is really about her love of the Cure’s Robert Smith, whose music has clearly influenced her sound here:

”Permanent Manic is a love letter to Robert Smith from The Cure. I’ve had a real obsession with him since I was a teenager and even went through a phase where I did my makeup like him and dressed like him. The Cure’s music hits me in a way like nothing else has, and I’m so inspired by Robert, his sound, his writing. This song is about how I love him, and he’ll never know. Permanent Maniac is definitely the vibe I’ve been trying so hard to create for a long time. So, thank you once again, Robert Smith (if you’re reading this, I love you)."

The video features GRAE wigging out in her room, surrounded with references to the Cure as she draws pictures of Smith, writes words and music about him and ultimately makes music that expresses his influence on her. It all culminates in GRAE’s fabulous, steely guitar solo as her adulation triggers her musical creativity.

The video, created by co-directors Iris Kim and Priya Howlader, is a wonderful intro to GRAE’s sound and energy. I also love the credits to the video, which boast another brief blast of post-punk noise that recalls both The Cure and The Jesus And Mary Chain.

Listen: You And Me Again - Sophie Meiers

Released alongside the announcement of the EP it takes its title from, Sophie Meiers’ You And Me Again is an aural assault. With production work from Danny Harle, the sound here is distinctively intense - one-part sugar-coated, one-part tortured, Meiers’ heartbroken sounding vocals brittle and delicate, surrounded by sharp objects.

The song evokes an “us vs the world” mentality, drawing on feelings of vulnerability and helplessness as it depicts the sense of isolation from everyone and everything except the one person who understands what you are feeling.

With a visual identity that draws on dark gothic imagery combined with a childlike innocence, Meiers challenges the norms and expectations associated with traditional gender roles and sexuality in music. Having grown up in Durango, Colorado, Meiers quickly gravitated to music growing up, escaping a toxic home environment at the age of 14. With support from a community cultivated online, they couch-surfed around the country, writing and producing music before ultimately gaining traction on SoundCloud with a style that recalls “90s Gwen Stefan produced by Trent Reznor”.

Check out Meiers’ You And Me Again below.

Listen: Machine - Shima feat. Miyachi

It would appear that August is the month for pop songs called Machine. Back following up on Rare, her single released this time last year, Shima is a half-Japanese, half-American musician who brings together an eclectic array of sounds, cultivating a crisp modern reimagining of what pop can be.

Describing the creation of Machine, Shima explains how the song came about as she decided to pursue music as a full time career, leaving her office job behind:

“I started writing this song shortly before I quit, as I started to realize that I was living in denial by choosing a safe and low-risk career. However, it soon transformed into a broader commentary on how corporations treat their employees.”

There is a a sense of fun to Machine, but it ultimately describes something important: we should work to live, and not live to work. It can be easy to feel dominated by our jobs at times, and it is important that we remember what matters.

Together with Shima’s cool, sassy vocal, Machine really additional vocals from rapper Miyachi, who brings contrast to the track whilst maintaining its overall energy.

Check out Machine below: