Listen: Calling Out Your Name — Fourth Daughter

Calling Out Your Name, from Fourth Daughter (real name Emily Atkinson), opens with crisp percussion and minimal synths. The result is a sound that gives the vocal the space it needs to shine — particularly as Atkinson launches into a reverb-heavy bridge.

As Calling Out Your Name progresses, however, the sound gets more complex. Coming out of the song’s chorus, the percussion develops a layered, clattering complexity. The mix feels sophisticated but thick, evoking the sort of classy nightclub pop of the late 90s and early 00s, like Everything But The Girl and Olive.

Atkinson’s inspiration includes contemporary talent such as Jamie XX and Sylvan Esso, and her artist pseudonym is a reference to her experience growing up as the youngest of four daughters. Music became a way to escape the boredom of growing up in the small-town Scottish countryside.

Calling Out Your Name is actually the b-side of Say What You Want. Calling Out Your Name is below, and you can check out both tracks here.

Listen: My Heart Won’t Break Again – Nicolás

Following in from the haunting Everytime I Go To Bed, musician Nicolás is back with another piece of introspective dubstep, and D&B influenced breaks.

My Heart Won’t Break Again moves with a similar sense of pace, skippy drums rolling around the inside of my mind as looped vocals dissolve into their own form of instrumentation. Ambient synths wash over, as a taut melodic refrain is stretched around the song like a wrapper.

As with his previous music, Nicolás art feels determined to encourage self-reflection and emotional vulnerability. My Heart Won’t Break Again’s repeated refrain of the song’s title doesn’t have the determined resolve the words might imply. Instead, it feels more nebulous. Maybe the point is that something is either broken or unbroken — it can’t break and then break again, and something that heals is never fully broken.

Watch: Rabbit King EP — Courtney Farren

Building on from her single White Rabbit, which I covered back in December, Bay Area musician Courtney Farren is back with a new EP, Rabbit King.

Featuring three tracks in addition to White Rabbit, Farren’s new EP demonstrates surprisingly diverse soundscapes. The lo-fi, hi energy clash of that prior single is a distinctive moment within a release that is undeniably broader in its ambitions.

EP opener King marries soft keys, glassy vocals and reverb to create something introspective, authentic yet polished. Care is a woozy, reflective and softly played electronic piece laced with a sense of dread — foreboding introduced via uneasy bass tones and a nervous vocal. In contrast to everything else here, EP closer Happy is brittle and bruised, a heartfelt and vulnerable piece about the challenge in finding contentment.

What stays with me, having spent time with Rabbit King, is how varied Farren’s talent is. This is an EP with as much depth as it has accessibility — the kind of thing you can instantly appreciate, yet has the complexity to reward repeated listens.

Check out Happy below. The full EP is currently on YouTube.

Watch: Electric Carfé — Mflux & Kiku

Sat at 124bpm, Electric Carfé, is placed at the point of intersection between dancing and relaxing, creating the kind of progressive electronic music designed to lose yourself to, emotionally.

With a layered sound, Mflux combines deep, dark bass sounds, melodic synths and piano to create a sophisticated, clean sound. Having worked together with The Bass Rangers, Mflux has partnered with Kiku here, on Electric Carfé.

Kiku elevates the song with a vocal that paints a picture against the scene created by Mflux’s production work. That vocal is used very sparingly — just establishing the song at the beginning, before the instrumentation takes over.

The video depicts a late night drive through a city, shot in time-lapse, as Electric Carfé slowly builds. The video has a kaleidoscopic aesthetic to it, gradually transitioning through a series of visual motifs that create the sense of humanity moving through urban environments. The result is somewhat transcendental — an experience as much as a piece of music.

Listen: Softspoken Eyes — Sofi Gev

Having caught my attention last year with her wonderful cover of Bat For Lashes beautiful Laura, Sofi Gev is back with a new single in the form of Softspoken Eyes.

Softspoken Eyes blossoms with an organic-feeling blur of clicks and crackling instrumentation. Layered percussion and glitchy synth work provides texture to what is otherwise a distinctly naturalistic sound, guitars gently plucked as Gev’s vocal harmonies quiver in the air.

As the song progresses, Sofi hits upon a central vocal, layering vocals atop of one another. “Swallow the evidence”, she repeats, as she depicts the feeling of being infatuated with someone… An extreme desire to form a deeper connection becoming its own barrier, which only deepens the obsession.

The sophisticated layering and naturalistic aesthetic Gev deploys on Softspoken Eyes reminds me of the early work of Sia’s Colour The Small One, combined with the electronic-influenced folksy sounds of Norwegian musician Magnet. Regardless, Sofi has carved out an affecting and beautiful sound.