Listen: Easy — Bowie x Naked Cat

Bowie is an independent songwriter from Hamburg, Germany, who is working on her debut EP, having written most of the songs whilst on one of her regular jaunts to LA.

Easy is Bowie’s debut single, and is an attempt to capture the value of being in-the-moment:

“The song is like a reminder to myself, so that I don't forget that everything is finite — and therefore valuable. I'm constantly on tour and often lose sight of the moment, yet in the end it's the only thing we have left.”

For a song entitled Easy, it boasts an appropriately effortless intimacy. Bowie’s vocals float above a bouncy melody with a sense of weightlessness that comes courtesy of producer Naked Cat. Check it out below:

Listen: iPhone — Bellatrix

Having performed live on stages shared with Jarvis Cocker and Imogen Heap, Bellatrix has been featured by the likes of Wonderland, Clash and Dummy. And whilst she has been on my radar for a little while, it is the brutal honesty of iPhone really takes her sound to another level, in the process pushes all my buttons.

Drawing on the kind of alt-pop sound I have grown to love from the likes of Empress Of and Dev Hynes, iPhone fizzes with a glitchy, infectious energy. Soft focus synths gently drop a reflective melody as Bellatrix sings about WhatsApp groups and the Northern Line, invoking a pedestrian background for Bellatrix’s internal anxiety.

The central melody on iPhone reminds me of the sublime title track from Thom Yorke’s solo album, The Eraser, in a great way… And the irony is that whilst the songs are tonally distinct, they both feel concerned with a determination to move through a level of existential dread. Yorke’s “The more you try to erase me…” echoed in Bellatrix’s “Don’t forget me… Please believe my love”. I’m almost sure these echoes exist only in my head, and yet they make a sort of perfect coupling of intelligent pop records.

iPhone is lifted from Bellatrix’s forthcoming EP, I Was An Aphid, the name of which is a reference to Audre Lorde’s 1978 observation that "women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance to their masters”. Check out iPhone below:

Listen: Happy Now — Girlhouse

With crisp, sun-kissed guitars and hazy vocals, Happy Now feels like summer vacations bottled and spritzed, a film of warmth upon my skin. At the same time, it bristles with a level of anxiety — vocals puncturing the easy-breezy feeling melodies with the refrain of, “Are you fucking happy now?”

The lyrics themselves portray the experience of sacrificing a bit of yourself for someone else, and yet feeling that the sacrifice isn’t recognised. Discussing the song, Girlhouse, real name Lauren Luiz, says:

“Happy now is about trying to make someone else happy at the expense of your own mental health. I wrote it shortly after moving to Nashville and had a lot of anger at the time. It was recorded and produced in the basement of a frat house in Nashville.”

Having grown up in Portland, Luiz initially pursued acting in LA, and it was this that exposed her to the people and places that would ultimately form the basis for her music career. She met her future bandmate and producer Tyler Thompson in the UK whilst studying and working in Bristol. Once Luiz returned to LA, her and Thompson formed the band WILD with another bandmate, who saw success on streaming platforms and through advertising and movie exposure.

In the background, however, Luiz was writing music for her own project, Girlhouse. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Soccer Mommy, The eponymous Girlhouse EP was a breakup letter to LA. Now residing in Nashville, Luiz continues to make music as Girlhouse. Check out Happy Now below:

Watch: Slip Away — Meet Me In Orbit

Meet Me In Orbit are Bay Area duo Jared Brannan and Brandon Bews. The band formed in 2014 when the pair, then roommates, started releasing their self-produced music on Soundcloud.

Following a feature on the Tricycle Record’s annual compilation of up and coming artists from the Bay Area, Meet Me In Orbit were signed by NY indie label Sky Council Recordings. Radio coverage and numerous live appearances followed, with the duo taking quarantine as an opportunity to refine their sound and work on a new EP.

Slip Away represents the product of that time, and like a lot of art emerging now it feels like it not only comes from, but also reflects on, the experience of isolation resulting from COVID-19. Meet Me In Orbit explain:

“With Slip Away, we wanted to explore the claustrophobia of desperately yearning for something, but having no clear sense of what that thing is. It’s a song about the ways we tend to craft our inner-dialogue around autobiographies that are themselves constructed of little lies and self-deceptions. In the end, that’s what nostalgia itself is--the overwhelming desire to go back to a time and place that never really existed in the form we’re yearning for.”

The sound created of Slip Away blends modern electronic production with melodic pop and a dash of 80s New Romanticism. Meet Me In Orbit have created an appropriately otherworldly feel to the song — percussive melodic synths picking out rhythmic melodies beneath vocals with effects that enable them to embellish the emotion of the record. It’s a crisp, accessible and atmospheric record — check it out below.

Listen: Burning Rubber In The Sun — Don’t Connect

London-based collective Don’t Connect are back with another lethargic and laid-back piece of experimental indie-pop. Having caught my attention back in May with On My Mind, their Metronomy-like tribute to being genuine, I was excited to hear another new track so soon.

Leveraging the same vocal overdubs and lo-fi production tropes as On My Mind, Burning Rubber In The Sun is a slow song about driving fast. I can’t help but think about slow motion cinematic scenes of wheel spins when listening to it. With an easy guitar melody and fuzzy bass played gingerly, this song has exactly the raw and loose feel that drew me to On My Mind.

Check out Burning Rubber In The Sun below: