Reviews

Chizabam’s Trauma for Sale is a 17-track Southern rap-soul record built around an unusually heavy ledger: childhood, grief, survival, faith, and everything that gets carried long after the crisis itself is over. Born in Atlanta and now based in Dallas, Chizabam grew up between a Nigerian father’s discipline and a…

Winnipeg’s CAR287 return with “End Of The Day,” the first single from an upcoming five-song EP following their 2025 debut album, Looking Through The Lens. Recorded at Winnipeg’s CTRL Space Records, the track takes a simple feeling — finding the person you genuinely want beside you — and turns it…

Oslo collective Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations strip country music back to its warmest, most human elements on “Wild River Rose,” a gentle single built around memory, mortality and the struggles of ordinary life. Formed by two brothers and a close friend, the project draws from country legends such…

Sehore dives into the strange, unstable relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence with “IA,” the first single from the art-pop and experimental pop project’s third album. The track makes its subject feel fragmented and slightly uncanny, using an unusual rhythmic structure to reflect a world where machines can imitate human…

UK-based songwriter and composer Michael Waters has built his work around emotional storytelling, memorable melodies and the space between reflective ballads and feel-good pop. His songs have already found international attention, with compositions such as “A Baby Of My Own” and “The Boy Who Really Loved You” reaching the World…

London singer-songwriter Paul Garside turns a deeply personal struggle into something warm and uplifting with “Mariana Trench,” a contemporary folk-rock single about finding your way out of depression. What began as a simple acoustic guitar and vocal gradually expanded into an international collaboration, bringing together musicians from Scotland, Uganda, Finland,…

Johanna Telander’s Tales of Les Dames Blanches turns some of folklore’s most haunting female ghosts into women with stories of their own. Inspired by legends of the “Ladies in White” across cultures, the concept album follows twelve spectral figures carrying fragments of a woman’s soul toward an esoteric shoreline, where…

Thomas O’Shea gives glossy 2010s-inspired pop a darker twist on “No I Won’t,” turning the familiar shape of a messy love song into something far more personal. Written, produced, performed, mixed and mastered entirely by O’Shea in his Madison, Wisconsin home studio, the single grew from an experiment in recreating…

Marty Van Wells returns for a third time with Songs To Send, an album that finds folk intimacy meeting a more upbeat, full-bodied sound. Still rooted in the simple relationship between a voice and a guitar, Van Wells allows the arrangements to breathe a little wider this time, bringing in…

Sharpshooter Soundworks, the creative project of Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist Andrew Shabazz, turns a simple rhythmic idea into a surprisingly cinematic journey on “Marching Orders.” Released August 15, 2026, the single began with the thought that what if a beat built around snare rolls could capture the precision and movement of a…