Listen: Body Is Love — Billy Vena

Following on from Rabbit Hole (Love Is What You Make It) and Romantic Logic, Panama-native and Texas-based musician Billy Vena is back with a new release. Body Is Love marks the start of a new series of releases, whilst leveraging the timeless retro-influenced pop Vena has become known for.

Even though it retains the general Prince-esque vibes of Vena’s previous work, Body Is Love is nonetheless slung lower than previous work, and looser in feel. It basks in the sunny glow of 90s R&B, with guitars, chunky bass and snappy drums evoke the liberal aesthetic of early TLC and En Vogue.

Describing the song, Billy Vena talks about the inspirational form the people around him take:

“I was inspired to write Body Is Love to sort of express how beautiful the people in my life are, and how much I wanted them to see themselves as such. In the simplest of forms, it’s me saying, I want you to love you, like I love you.”

Check out Body Is Love below:

Listen: Another Story — Monomotion & Piers

With the kind of emotive piano and synth combination not unfamiliar to fans of the likes of Jon Talabot, Another Story is an emotive piece of electronic music for your body and your mind.

Having long sought the opportunity, Monomotion and Piers were able to come together to work together on Another Story. The piece looks to channel an ambiguous sense of atmosphere and melancholy, targeting the dance floor as a place for communal healing.

What struck be about Another Story is its restraint. A simple piano melody forms the central hook, around which Monomotion and Piers arrange textural percussion synths. It manages to capture sadness and hope, both at the same time.

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.