Listen: Cabin Talk by Longing Louisa

With softly played keyboards Melodies and hushed overdubbed vocals, Longing Louisa’s Cabin Talk inhabits a similar space to Au Revoir Simone’s Through The Backyards. The song is an affecting combination of sounds — a cosy soundscape, the song’s melody sprawls and modulates like some sort of oceanic blanket. At the same time, it is also a haunting Klein bottle of isolation, twisting around on itself as two people share stories of the things that make us who we are.

Longing Louise is the musical project of Reetta Hotti, who wrote, produced and played the instruments on Cabin Talk, with mixing and mastering from Julius Mauranen and Virtalähde Mastering respectively. Having previously released music under her own name, Longing Louise represents an opportunity for her to do something different. Hotti describes the fact that the music is inspired by the Japanese idiom, ‘mono no aware’, which reflects an empathy towards things, particularly the transient and ephemeral. This brings a sense of awareness, presence, and sadness to the music of Longing Louise. It reminds me of the concept of feeling nostalgia for a moment whilst it is still happening. It is both a beautiful and heartbreaking experience.

That feeling runs through Cabin Talk, its subtle melody content and restrained, in service of both the vocals and the atmosphere. It takes inspiration from the sea, and a trip on a cruise ship, as, Reetta describes:

‘A tiny cabin of a cruise ship, no windows, a steady hum coming from the motor and the waves crashing on the side of the ship; a conversation between me and you that left me feeling haunted.

‘This is a simple song, with softly pumping synths on each side and a wailing electric guitar. I wanted to keep this quite small and flowy. Actually, artistically speaking, this is a love song for Sufjan Stevens. He’s my favorite songwriter, and I thought a lot about him while writing and producing this track.’

Cabin Talk is taken from Longing Louisa’s forthcoming debut album, Waterphile, due on 7 November 2025. Describing the album’s inspiration, Hotti says:

‘For me, water is the most fascinating and intriguing element, and I’m always somehow drawn to it wherever I go. That’s how the term waterphile came to my mind. I also found out that in chemistry there actually is a term hydrophile, which implies “a molecule or other molecular entity that is attracted to water molecules and tends to be dissolved by water” (Wikipedia). Water, of course, serves also as a symbol – of what, I won’t explicate here. This album for me is kinda like the Mermaid’s tale in reverse. It’s dedicated to all you other waterphiles out there.’

Check out Cabin Talk below, and look out for Waterphile next month.

Listen: Debbie Downer by Francesca Everly

The new single from British artist Francesca Everly sits right on the edge of my sonic taste. Debbie Downer is ultimately a slice of high attitude pop music, but there is an energy and authenticity to this it that I couldn’t resist.

Created in response to a feeling of being misunderstood and overly sensitive, Francesca’s song describes the experience of feeling like you need to bottle up your emotions out of a fear of being judged for them. Debbie Downer is a subsequent emotional release, as she decides to let it all go anyway. Against a wall of guitars, Everly frustratedly cries, ‘Fuck’s sake, give me a break!’, and the result is cathartic for anyone who has ever felt like they are made to feel abnormal for their emotional response to a situation.

I’ve always been a sucker for the loud-quiet-loud thing, and Everly uses it to great effect here. Opening with gentle acoustic guitars and hurt sounding vocals, Debbie Downer transforms into a rowdy and assertive anthem. In the song’s finale, we get a return to its hushed opening in the form of a bridge that briefly feels introspective. It leads to a sense that Francesca has b een unshackled, however, as she shakes off the introspection, hitting the run into the song’s chorus in a brief a cappella solo. It is the kind of perfect little moment you can only really get in a pop record.

Based in London, Italiane-born musician Everly produces indie pop and, as demonstrated here, has a penchant for ‘unfiltered lyrics for your late-night overthinking sessions’. Debbie Downer follows on from her debut EP, This Heart Like I’ve Never Felt It. Check out the new single below:

Listen: Along With Mine by I Wish I Was A Punk Band

Something about Along With Mine, the new single from I Wish I Was A Punk Band, reminds me of Jack Antonoff and the Bleachers. Sure, it is there in the spacious synths and snappy drum machines, but it is also there in the clear-eyed vocals laid down by Phil Hamilton, whose project I Wish I Was A Punk Band is.

Where this most evokes Antonoff’s band, however, is in the vibes. There is something of the dream-like coming-of-age feeling of John Hughes, shot through a soft gauzy 80s filter, that is shared with much of Antonoff’s work. And, just like Bleachers, this is the sound of the idea of a rock band, disassembled and reassembled, with the benefit of hindsight. It is the sound of garage-y rock with Bruce Springsteen heart, tuned for modern sensibilities.

All of which might sound cynical, but it really doesn’t feel it. Along With Mine has bags of heart, and you can’t help but feel a sense of the hope I Wish I Was A Punk Band are channeling here. It culminates in a desire for more, growing from somewhere inside you, and an unwillingness to settle.

The gutsy feels are there as Hamilton gently promises, ‘Fuck it, we can take it slow… Tell me where you wanna go’, before quietly pleading that place isn’t just home. It is in the shouted BVs, as they chorus the song’s title, and the slammed refrain of notes as the song hits its final chorus, and the general slow-building distortion that the whole thing rides, like growing excitement.

Overall, Hamilton has made something that conjures just a little magic.

Listen: New School by UFO Hawaii

UFO Hawaii might just be the most apt band name I have heard in a while. Actually hailing from Berlin, Germany, UFO Hawaii nonetheless channels a laid back aesthetic full of a lazy, humid Hawaiian warmth. This is shot through, however, with a disorientated and paranoid otherworldliness.

Against slowly looping drums, guitars weave their way around keys, sliding past us like we are enclosed within our own flying saucer. Lyrics flow, deadpan in their delivery, like a stream of consciousness. These are snapshots of scenes and thoughts, but their delivery is surprisingly vivid, with moments, like ‘I've had enough of standin’ here in line, Central Park bridge, waiting for that bitch’. Who is ‘that bitch’, and what is meant by the similarly evocative line ‘a new economy is hitting my veins’? An addiction of a more financial nature, perhaps, but it is hard to know, and perhaps that is the point.

Overall, UFO Hawaii’s New School is a weird, disorientated piece of dream pop that refuses to submit to any desire for clarity or specific meaning, and instead embraces you in its weird grip. It is a woozy experience, and yet a reassuringly peaceful one.

Listen: Lose The Feeling by Jake Back x Nextlife

Jake Back appeared on BlackPlastic.co.uk last summer with the dubby, dark cacophony that was his disco infused workout, Lemme Tell You. Here some 14-months later, Back has teamed up with Nextlife to produce something quite different. Where Lemme Tell You was all about creating a feeling to get lost in, and potentially find connection through, new single Lose The Feeling is a more cerebral affair.

Opening with layered percussion and pillowy synth tones, the instrumentation falls back for a vocal that gently marinades in its own uncertainty. As the lyrics carefully lays out the individual components of a heart that is at the mid-point of breaking, depicting a growing sense of unease and uncertainty. Even if they reach an eruption, relationships never end in one moment, but through a series of small adjustments in how the participants view their futures. It’s this slow-moving demise through misalignment that Lose The Feeling so beautifully captures.

Much of the atmosphere Jake Back and Nextlife create here comes from the growing interplay between the vocals and instrumentation. As the song builds towards its central question, the lyrics are gradually wrapped up in abstract vocal harmonies and layered synths. Left sounding genuinely alone, the song ends with that question, ‘When did we both lose that feeling?’, to which there can be no satisfying answer.

The soft electronic mourning on display on Lose The Feeling reminds me of a song I haven’t revisited in years — 2011’s What I’ve Lost by Benoit & Sergio. Sung to a potential love interest, the magic of What I’ve Lost is how much it is about the hurt the past can still conjure in us. Both Benoit & Sergio, and Jack Back & Nextlife, have captured and bottled the sort of emotional experience that ultimate shapes who we become, for better or worse.