Listen: Contact Lens by Head Ballet

Made up of duo Kiera Court and Danny Casio, Head Ballet are a self-produced act the pair formed whilst living together in Manchester during the COVID-19 lockdowns. With an experimental sound that blends together soft, dream-like melodies and warm distortion, Court and Casio bonded over a shared love of musical heroes that include Grimes, Arcade Fire, and Nine Inch Nails.

Featuring guitar work from Yungblud guitarist Adam Warrington, Contact Lens was created in Head Ballet’s London studio. With a sound that the pair liken to Venn diagram overlap of White Lies and Caroline Polachek, Contact Lens definitely has the emotive indie-pop charm of Polachek’s work within Chairlift. Hazy melodies combine with snappy-yet-muted drums as Kiera’s vocal picks out a fragile melody, later joined by Danny’s vocal harmonies.

Contact Lens itself a song about the experience of romance. The titular contact lens is representative of the sad conclusion that, just as a contact lens can fall out and be lost, beauty can slip from the eye of the beholder, the new perspective gained “just as dizzying”.

I love the soft-focused indie-pop aesthetic here — a dash of Sofia Coppola meets some good old romantic yearning for what was lost. Check it out below:

Listen: Jupiter by Jules

Jupiter is the new single from Toronto-based musician Jules, and on it, she brings forth a beautiful, baggy form of folk pop.

With an understated, glassy vocal style that evokes the wonderful sound of Clairo, Jules’ style is both restrained, and yet emotive. Whilst her Great-Grandmother sang professionally in World War II, both Jules and her siblings grew up as closeted singers, a fact that potentially explains the restraint she demonstrates here, now she is singing in the open.

In her performance, Jules demonstrates a marked vulnerability, as she sings about the struggles of maintaining mental wellbeing amidst the demands of modern life. There is a desperate sense of distance and removal in Jules’ tender vocals, as she sings “Feels like I’m on Jupiter, not Earth” in the song’s chorus.

Describing the song, Jules says:

‘I wrote the song at a time when I was feeling a bit stuck or stagnant in where I was in my life, maybe a little lost or unsure. This was causing me to look back and wonder about if I’d taken a different path in life. I was starting to feel like I wasn’t sure I was in a place that I was able to grow if I stayed where I was.

’There are also strong themes tied into the song about mental health. I was trying to capture this feeling that I’ve felt a lot in my life — I guess which was feeling like I just couldn’t keep up and everyone around me always seemed to have it so together — I’ve felt this way many times in my life.’

Listen: Ghost Complex by darkDARK

The latest single from duo darkDARK, Ghost Complex, forms part of the high-concept sci-fi narrative that represented by the album of the same name.

Together, the darkDARK are duo Genevieve Vincent and Chris James, and on their forthcoming album they are imagining:

‘A post-apocalyptic world where, in a last ditch effort, humanity tasks two A.I. generated beings to download a sequential set of songs designed for them by the PETAL program (Planetary Escape Through Artificial Learning) with the intention of starting civilization over.’

Most of the songs are created by humans as fables, intended to tell their stories and teach ‘their human way of thinking and feeling’. This specific song, Ghost Complex, describes the experience of the AI beings, who view themselves as empty vessels, restricted to only mimicking the humanity that created them.

In contrast to Arcade, the darkDARK song I covered back in July, Ghost Complex has a delicate, angelic feel that suits the perspective it is written from. There is a metallic innocence to the song, which contrasts to the crunchy synths of Arcade. Where that song felt like a melding of person and machine, _Ghost Complex_feels purely robotic, an algorithm discovering humanity on its own. I find myself reflecting on Chris Cunningham’s haunting video for Björk’s All Is Full Of Love, a video that imbued a sense of a lonely soul in something that looked pure machine. As I imagine the being behind this song’s voice, I can’t help but think of Björk’s shiny, Apple iPod-like robotic form.

The gentle emotional drama here is beautiful, and created through the use of darkDARK’s deftly applied production and atmospherics. Genevieve’s vocal has a whispery lightness to it, and it contrasts with the sophisticated, crisp lines that surround it. Clean synths and slick bass reverberate with a mechanical sense of movements, as rhythms scroll past like lines of evolving code.

Listen: Thai Milk Tea by RHY

RHY’s new single, Thai Milk Tea, opens with filtered guitars and chunky drums that evoke a 70s radio vibe. The sound has the soulful, eclectic R&B swagger of Haim, combined with some indie authenticity.

Based in Perth/Boorloo, RHY has unveiled Thai Milk Tea just as summer gets going in the Southern Hemisphere. Following on from the joyful About You, featuring Jewel Owusu, Thai Milk Tea is the second song to be lifted from a forthcoming EP, set for release in 2024.

Thai Milk Tea is inspired by RHY’s appreciation of the drink, and is a metaphor, with the artist likening the sweetness of the Thai drink with the qualities that first drew the artist to his wife. Describing the song’s creation, RHY says:

‘My songs rarely begin with lyrics, but I found myself singing the first line of the chorus to myself a while before I nailed down the musical elements, which set the stage for probably my most lyrically driven song. I wanted to capture the feeling of a fresh relationship during the phase of dating, where everything is new and exciting, like a sweet drink that you can’t put down. Of course, I still feel the same way about my now-wife, but it’s always fun to reminisce on those early months.’

My appreciation for RHY’s latest track stems from the way it blends together disparate styles, creating an earnest sense of yearning. There is a lush feel to the instrumentation that RHY conjured from the five-piece band format RHY uses, and the worldly sound feels like a holiday, and a trip into someone else’s mind.

Listen: Sugar by Chris James

Having built up an impressive record that includes a co-writing credit on the BTS Billboard Hot 100 number one song, Life Goes On, Chris James has accumulated a brain-breaking 1.7 billion Spotify streams across his collected work. Here on Sugar, James turns his hand to an indie-folk influenced style of energising pop.

Sugar is the kind of instantly infectious record that you can’t help but move to. The song’s magic is in part in its ability to weave together an authentic, raw vocal together with polished electronic melodies and moments of thoughtful vocal overdubbing. The result feels joyful, uplifting and yet also surprisingly genuine. The rest of the magic is all in a chorus that bubbles with energy, as James delivers the song’s repeated refrain, “The air, it tastes like sugar”.

Chris James’ song is a somewhat therapeutic exercise, and the sense of warm relief that runs through the song somewhat ironically reflects its difficult incubation period, followed by the relief in its conclusion. As James describes:

‘I was going through a little creative rough patch while I was trying to crack Sugar. It‘s funny cause the song itself is really about the feeling you have when coming out of a situation like this, and you finally get to breathe again, so in a way, the song's theme reflects the journey to making it.’

In Sugar’s closing minute, Chris pulls back all that polish and electronic instrumentation to deliver the song’s vocal on a basic microphone, giving the song a naked aesthetic, sounding like something he might record on his phone, in his bedroom. The result is surprisingly emotive, revealing the heart of the song and letting the melody stand tall, free of the production wizardry that embellishes the first two-thirds of its duration.