+Recommended Listen

After nearly 4,000 posts, Recommended Listen has reached its natural conclusion. Between its time under this banner and the years spent under a different music site name, I’ve been able to cover over a decade of new music, and it feels like the right time to finally close this chapter.

First and foremost, I want to thank anyone who has been a supporter of this site. This includes all readers, artists, labels, publicists, and friends alike. These days, finding “your people” is not easy in an increasingly noisy, content-oversaturated world, so to be acknowledged for any work in sharing the music I’ve felt was important to be heard has been the thing that kept me going.

This isn’t for a loss of love of music or for writing, but maintaining a music site as a passion project has become a time-consuming endeavor in more recent years atop of an actual job and the pursuit of a life outside of it all. There’s always going to be new music you will be excited to share. There are always going to be new artists you want to support and help be discovered. There are always going to be surprise announcements and a constant churn of new songs, albums and videos as part of the press cycle, and just when you think you have caught up, the publicity e-mails pile on. It’s admittedly become whelming, and to be very online on a regular basis with doing the work of it all is a great demand on the self.

Thankfully, I do have faith that there are more than enough music sites and mediums out there for new music to be shared these days, so as far as music coverage goes, it’s not going to miss Recommended Listen. It has served its purpose. As a writer, it’s easy to get caught up in the constant cycle of it all, however, where you feel like you can’t afford to take a break from it. Sometimes you need to take that leap and step away from it all in order to see the greater picture, and I’m looking forward to finding other ways to enjoy and be a part of music beyond these pages.

For now, thank you for having been a part of this.

Photo courtesy of Erika Kamano

This July, the continuously rising UK singer-songwriter beabadoobee returns with the follow-up to her promising 2019 debut Fake It Flowers with her sophomore effort Beatopia. We’ve already heard a couple of good ones that throw back the times to early millennial pop-rock with “Talk” and dreamy, shruoom-induced bedroom pop in “See You Soon” with 2022′s new class of the alternative pop culture current in mind. “Lovesong” is its latest preview, and it sits with its own self in being lovestruck and saccharine with Beatrice Laus' wistful aches for when her other isn't physically near, but consciously close in a warm, mostly-acoustic reflection pool. "I'm running over sentences at times / I better quit dreaming just so I could write / Yet the words to describe you / Aren't so hard to find / Like a good quote from a book that I've memorized," she sings. Give it a listen below...

Got a minute or two? Okay, because that’s all the time Tony Molina needs from you to shred pop, rock and punk into another instant hit of warm weather dopamine. The Bay Area hardcore scene stalwart is back with a new album IN THE FADE, due in August, and his first album (and first release in general!) for the Run for Cover Records’ west coast boutique label Summer Shade ran by Fury guitarist and general SoCal hardcore scene maker Madison Woodward. “The Last Time” is its first jam, and it clocks in at just under 90 seconds. Molina dials down the fuzz here in favor of a ground level Detroit Rock City electricity with breakup melancholia clenched coolly in his tune. “I’m leaving you girl for the last time / Don’t expect you to understand / ‘Cause when I tell her that I need her / Will she still judge me for who I am,” he sings, and that’s literally all he sings. No need to overstay your welcome, and Molina knows it. Listen to “The Last Time” for the first time below...

Photo courtesy of William Hawk

ZORA is the moniker of 22-year-old Minneapolis-based triple threat producer, singer, and rapper Zora Grey. Her music is finessed by the modern styles of stream-baiting aesthetics, but beneath its accessible lure are loud political statements that bring to the surface the experiences of those within the trans community and our shared capitalist hellscape. This summer, she’ll be releasing her debut album Z1 (more eloquently known as “The Cuntification of Zora Grey” on the album’s cassette spine) for Get Better Records, and every one of its previews released so far standing on their own feet with intentionality.

Lead single “Runnitup” hears R&B songwriter Myia Thornton joining ZORA in a track that puts her rap game into a blender with hyper-pop freakiness. What pours out is a sonic confrontation that’s timely for these inflation-fucked times. “I wanted to make a song about metaphorically running up on somebody who didn’t give us what we were owed. In reality, this song is pretty explicitly about US Capitalism and how we need to just overthrow it. I still have hope, at least.”

On “Happiest I’ve Ever Been”, again featuring Thornton, the pair navigate declarations of the surface level appearance versus a true reality in a slithering post-punk riff grating a cloud of confusion. “I had a pretty jarring mental health scare in the summer of 2021, and landed myself in the hospital over the 4th of July weekend. Once I got out, I used songwriting as a way to cope with my circumstances and speak up about what I had gone through, no matter how intense it was,” she said of its creation. “I wanted to make a song that sounded carefree, fun, and relaxing, accompanied by some of the darkest lyrics you’ve ever heard. Haha.”

Finally, on “All Around the World”, ZORA ushers in Pride and Black Music Month with a most pure sincerity in its symbolic energy for its communities, and assigns to a chest-puffing rap-pop beat that steps to the rest of the outside world without needing to explain herself. “With today’s climate, there are so many times that we only hear about trans people when we’re dying or at risk somehow, and I wanted to create a song to remind us just how powerful we are, and to remind the masses that we’re not going anywhere."

Her messages are seen, for sure. Listen to all three below...

Z1 by ZORA

Z1 by ZORA

Z1 by ZORA

Photo courtesy of Natalie Piserchio

Brooklyn art-pop collective Ava Luna haven’t release an album since 2018′s excellent space groove Moon 2 and its subsequent EP in 2019, Pigments, but its members are an ambitious bunch of creatives who take days off. Felicia Douglass is a star ascendant as a member of Dirty Projectors and a thousand other projects. Drummer Julien Fader is a studio workhorse, and he also cut a really fun ode to guitar-pop alongside Speedy Ortiz guitarist Andy Molhott as COFFEE on 2018′s Big Hug / Ocean Fruit. Meanwhile, Becca Kauffman left the band to bring her performance project Jennifer Vanilla to its fullest potential.

Multi-instrumentalist Carlos Hernandez has quietly been among the busiest of them. A studio guru who has helmed some of Brooklyn DIY’s best efforts over the years, we’ve also heard him team up with drummer Julien Fader and Phantom Posse’s Nadia Hulet as NADINE, and release a solo album under his own name with 2018′s Folly. 2020 heard him rechristen himself as Carlos Truly, with the re-introduction heard in the Canal EP. This June, he’ll be following that up with a full-length entitled Not Mine.

Co-produced alongside his brother Tony Seltzer, known for his work behind the boards throughout Brooklyn's rap underground with Wiki and Princess Nokia, it’s gathering to be a chic, cool-sounding collection of introspective avant-pop built around minimalist electronic arrangements, classic pop rock, and a certain feel in its air that’s fit for a summer daze. Herndandez’ featherweight vocals are perfect for its temperature. A couple of listens have already made their way out into the wild, with its opener “New Growth” initially pacing a soft souled beat before wriggling new alien limbs, and “108″ assigning warm memories over an asymmetrical electric symphony for a relationship post-mortem. Its latest preview “Vessel” -- co-written alongside Nick Hakim -- is another perfectly sculpted glance into subcutaneous meditations on growth spurned by those around us who shape us around.

When I tried listening to Harry Style’s latest critical mass and culture-checking pop event effort Harry’s House the other day, it fell flat hard because it was attempting to be daring while using indie-pop as its foundation. There was nothing of substance beyond its temporal sparkle and flashy showmanship. If you are always hungry for pop music that transcends timelines of the retrospective and futurism on an artist’s singular canvas, Carlos Truly’s Not Mine could very well be be the alternative in its exotic sugar that satisfies cravings left by real life.

Alex G most recently took his freak-making soundscape to the big screen for the soundtrack of the modern digital age horror film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, and he’s keeping that same energy leading into whatever comes next since his last proper album the 2019 listmaker House of Sugar. “Blessing” is more of a sensation than it is a typical fully-crafted lyrical piece of song from the weird pop maker, with it being concentrated around a grimy groove, the phrase “Every day is a blessing” sung beneath a heavy breath, and eerie synths reaching over its stammer.

In its music video directed by Zev Magasis, he and bass player Sam Achione cosplay a ‘90s cock rock/nü-metal look that matches the listen’s vibe. It may not initially seem like much, but with a full U.S. tour just announced in tow, this usually indicates something else is on the way, so in the meantime, consider Alex G reemergence to be its own “Blessing”…

Multi-instrumentalist Brittany Parks and her moniker Sudan Archives is headed somewhere ambitious whenever her next album drops. More recently, we heard that level up on the horizon with the single “Home Maker”, which palettized experimental funk, disco, rap and pop within a culture-crossing arrangement that swaggered in its self-care meditation. With her latest single “Selfish Soul”, she’s again turning toward the inward embrace out, with the track celebrating the beauty of all hair in the face of societal expectations and doing so in her singular fashion of sonic expression. Electric violin rips side by side with the bass body movement that clap back at all the critiques set by these standards. “I don’t want no struggles, I don’t want no fears / Does it make sense to you / Why I cut it off? / Okay, one time if I grow it long / Am I good enough, am I good enough?,” she asks, though not for approval. “About time I embrace myself and soul / Time I feed my selfish soul.” Her look is unapologetic confidence.

“I wanna know what's wrong / With all of the ways I am / I'm trying to be someone / That you could love and understand / But I know that I'm not,” sings Sophia Allison on “Bones”, the opening track from her forthcoming third studio effort Sometimes, Forever. Unlike its predecessors “Unholy Affliction” and “Shotgun” which heard producer Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never permeate her indie rock gaze with intriguing glitches in Soccer Mommy’s matrix with her romantic withdrawals and self-defeats. Yet, “Bones” returns to the consistency in Allison’s cannon of her sad-eyed indie rock cool, and with Lopatin’s studio hand, causes her innards to shimmer. “You make me feel like I am whole again / But I think your heart could use a tourniquet / ‘Cause I've bled you out and patched you up again / Far too much to call it love.” If she’s bleeding out, this one vessels the mess. Hear Soccer Mommy’s “Bones” rattle below with gothy music video directed by Alex Ross Perry...

Dehd broke through the noise and malaise of 2020′s worst parts using the most critical elements of post-punk and a seemingly infinite jolt of energy and pop bursts. This especially couldn’t have been more in demand or needed during those darkest days. At times, Flower of Devotion, the Chicago trio’s sophomore effort, held your ear close enough up to its watery surface, but didn’t fully embrace the air. This felt intentional, however, as co-mingling vocalists Emily Kempf and guitarist Jason Balla presented their existentially-compacted emotions on their every being as if they were submerged just centimeters away from achieving the brightness on the other side. You, too, felt seen while hearing it.

The band’s third studio effort Blue Skies embraces a confidence in finding out what’s on that other side in spite of what may be pulling you back. Now signed to Fat Possum, their hard work and appreciation for time prompted the Kempf, Balla, and drummer Eric McGrady to take what they’ve already grown and known in their surf-sided punk sound, and detail it with further depth in the studio with synths and layers of drum machines -- with mixing by big indie studio guru Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, the National) and Heba Kadry (Slowdive, Bjork) -- that revel in bolder lines and higher def, vivid colors in their weather alongside refracting their kinetic energy by the multiple across its 33-minute play.

Atop of the wild of Kempf’s presence, Balla’s nervous, nimbling guitars and McGrady’s steady plot lines, Dehd moves toward winning even when life, love, and sex can be confusing as fuck. That’s heard especially in the LP’s most eccentric strikes “Bad Love” and “Stars” where Kempf commands the world’s whirlwind ways in her direction. Her carnal charge has only become more amplified, being like a cathartic purge of toxins in exchange for those dire positive vibe vitamins from the sun gods.

Even as the albums enters into frame with the tides toughened and roughened, and “Control” feeling like its in in the hands of a freefall, Dehd meet that energy along the journey with their own kind of resistance where relinquishing the reigns to chaos results in weightless shrugs like the Balla-led “Memories” and “Palomino”, and the rise-above climax of surging guitars and Kempf at her most triumphant even in acknowledging self-defeat on ”Blue Skies”. “I was wondering how the rain was getting in / Was it from all this crying or was it from heaven?,” she wonders, only to proclaim a belief in something bigger beyond those doubts. “When will I feel it? Will I believe it when I do? / Blue skies! Do!” Though the other side of perspective is not worry-free, Dehd have perfected upon the outlook what Flower of Devotion planted here, embracing the clarity up above.

Blue Skies by DEHD

In Fear of Punishment Due brings together two of modern hardcore’s most brutalist makers in World Peace from Oakland and Blame God from New York -- a true west coast to east coast scene split collaboration. World Peace released the excellent full-length COME AND SEE last year, and it was an onslaught of 20 tracks clocking in at an average of a half-minute’s length each with the fast after-effect hanging around thereafter. They’ll also be playing this year’s stacked Sound and Fury fest in Los Angeles later this summer. Blame God compliment World Peace’s energy with further gravel being piled into their heavy grinding destruction, and in just about a minute and 23 seconds, each band maxes out in intensity on the split’s respective first previews “First Conditional” and “Home Invasion”. They’re both perfect warm-ups heading into another season of hardcore weather. Check them both out below...

World Peace / Blame God Split by World Peace

World Peace / Blame God Split by Blame God

“Through the Fires” is the third listen off Angel Olsen’s forthcoming album Big Time, due out in June’s beginning, and it holds a special significance among its surrounding scenery which the nomadic songwriter etches in a fearless heart and a decidedly countryesque turn that permeates throughout the LP. "'Through The Fires’ is the centerpiece statement of this record. It’s a song I wrote to remind myself that this life is temporary, the past is not something to dwell on, that it’s important to keep moving, keep searching for the people that are also searching, and to notice the moments that are lighter and bigger than whatever trouble I’ve encountered,” said Olsen of its creation. Whereas its predecessors “All the Good Times” and “Big Time” kindled rustically in twang and crooning valor, this track expands those humble views with big, breathy, orchestral balladry that transform ascendant. “And let go of the pain that obstructs you from higher, higher, higher,” she proclaims in its final moments. Walk “Through the Fires” with Angel Olsen below...

If there must be a house music renaissance, then let it by Special Interest’s doing in pushing it beyond just a revival and giving it a purpose beyond the movement it creates on the dance floor today. The New Orleans punk band made that approach felt on their 2020 breakthrough effort The Passion Of in that they did everything in the dark disco was with added teeth involved. ”(Herman’s) House”, their latest single and first since inking with Rough Trade, is the equivalent of smashing together the pit with the club, all while remaining resoundingly political about their battle cry. Feeding its energy from that of the Angola Three -- Black revolutionaries who maintained resistant against their incarceration despite being held in solitary confinement for over 40 years -- fueling their beacon to destroy oppression, Special Interest deconstruct the dance with it, jarring house pianos against a buzzing synth beat, with Alli Logout doubling as both the siren call and the snarling voice resistance. “May the fire in the street light the way,” she proclaims. They’re not only burning down the disco, but the whole system with it.

Where as the proceeding listens leading up to “The Fall”, the latest preview off Zola Jesus’ new album ARKHON, were created through more organic elements of instrumentation as well as the human breath, muscle, and morrow, this track arguably the most directly pop-projecting from our dark Mother Nature’s creative vision since her turn toward blown-out spectral synth-pop on 2014′s polarizing Taiga. The difference most apparent between these two eras in her work are in their intention with no greater power forcing the widescreen of Zola Jesus into our view. “I wrote ‘The Fall’ for myself. It was an exercise in using music as a tool for the sake of my own inner catharsis,” said Nika Roza Danilova of its conception. “I had a lot of turmoil and complicated emotions that I couldn’t process in any other way. I suppose some feelings require you to write a pop song in order to fully understand them. For that reason, this song is very precious to me.”

In its music video directed by Jenni Hensler and choreographed by Sigrid Lauren, Danilova’s spiritual movements in sound and energy intersect in motion and bring the body from the darkness into a state of rebirth with the present moment, and it’s all presented in living art. “The Fall” and rise of Zola Jesus below...

We got know a bit of the world as Stella Donnelly sees it on her slept-on 2019 debut Beware of Dogs, a well-crafted document of guitar-based indie-pop surrounding her work as a woman and the lovelorn of it all. Even if you didn’t, then you needn’t worry, because the Australian artist’s sophomore follow-up Flood, due out in late August, is a personal and creative restart of sorts for the songwriting after pushing herself to experiment beyond the borders of guitar pop and look further within as she she wrote the album amidst travels in Bellingen rainforests and birdwatching.

“Maybe it's the last time that I'll see ya / Puttin' too much salt on the story / It's not lovin' if you fake it / There's a limit to your mood,” she chirps in on its opener and lead single “Lungs” across excitable drumming, synth twinkles and a debonair flourish of piano keys beneath them, bringing a dance symmetry to that energy into her reflection. Like the Banded Stilts which adorn the album’s art work, Donnelly is relearning to walk through this life with herself and around others.

In its music video directed by Duncan Wright and choreographed by Donnelly’s childhood friends, sisters Billie, Nikki, and Stevie Tanner of the Tanner Dance Academy, they interpret this through the dance of adulting in birdlike form. Breathe through Stella Donnelly’s “Lungs” below...

“The natural part in your hair before you comb / Eye socket into eye socket bone on bone / Exclusively tentacle porn,” sings vocalist and guitarist Dimitri Giannopoulos in the opening moments of “The Natural Part”. As the pseudo title track off Horse Jumper of Love’s new album Natural Part, the listen sonically flows in the same way his lyrical visual hangs off his tongue if that makes any sense at all. Guitar lines drip and curl downward, and gravity has an effortless pull on the way the Bostonian slowcore trio apply pace and rhythm to such an ordinary moment made into widescreen intimacy. Clarity in the mix captured by Danny Reisch, most recently of labelmates Sun June’s latest effort Somewhere, brings bolder detail to life in Horse Jumper of Love’s sound, making something so mundane as the drop of a strand of follicles feel devastatingly poetic in their romantic downfall. “You cut the split ends off my hair / And threw them out in a plastic bag.” Hair today, love’s gone tomorrow.

Photo courtesy of Cheryl Dunn

It isn’t much of a surprise that a new band who is very promising would come out of the Chicago scene, but at the same time, Horsegirl have also managed to be eccentric to it all. They’re style sways heavily into past their label Matador’s indie rock legacy likeness, but the trio is also still young (last check, a few of the members were still in high school) to assert their gaze onto that sound from the present state, and in turn, put them into their own timeline. Lyrically, vocalist and guitarist Nora Cheng has painted their songs in non-concrete detail that is a welcome change of shape from modern indie’s over-articulated diary entries.

We’ve already heard three excellent advance singles from their debut album Versions of Modern Performance in “Billy”, “Anti-glory”, and “Worlds of Pots and Pans”, and its final preview ties the oddities rise altogether in the video for “Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty)”. Surrounding seasick guitars and a slightly shoegaze bend, melody sugarcoats the coming of age nostalgia in the listen and the self-directed visual recorded at guitarist Penelope Lowenstein’s elementary school, featuring members of their weird corner of the Chicago indie scene in the likes of Lifeguard, Friko, Dwaal Troupe, and Post Office Winter. They are not your average teenage “Dirtbag”, as seen and heard below...