News

Oisin Mod returns with “Mirror Mirror,” his first new music since 2022’s Honeycomb and again produced by Bill Ryder-Jones. The Galway songwriter pairs retro swirl with warm analogue keys and gentle vocals on his most introspective writing yet, calling the track a study in pretending and observing others do the same. The video is directed by Mod and Rory Ryan.

Rowena Wise announces her second album, Bad Things Feel Good*, and shares new single and video, Diamond In The Rough. The song, “about the pressures of being told that you’re special from a young age, creating an unattainable standard you must maintain,” is accompanied by a Didirri-directed video, the concept for which was inspired by Jamie Lee Curtis’ ‘The Last Showgirl’.

Family Stereo, the project of singer-songwriter Blake Watt, shares “Waiting On Nina,” the second single from debut album The Thread, out 31st July via Bella Union. The country-tinged folk-rock track turns on birth and innocence, lit by Dov Sikowitz’s lapsteel. Recorded over nine months in north London with producer Sam Hodder-Williams, the album is followed by four UK headline shows in September.

Scottish songwriter Jo Mango returns on June 12th with her new album “The Lightswitch,” a concept album about her love for music, but also the fall-out of love, the shadow behind it, the emptiness left behind when the music draws to a close. Taken from the album, watch her performing her latest single, The Clock, co-written with Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow.

Aaron MF Olson shares “Who Do You Think You Are I Am?”, the second single from “Songs Album II”, out June 26th via Country Thyme Records. A rough-and-tumble pop progression that grinds immaculate ’50s and ’60s hooks into glittering noir. “I am the window, you are the breeze. I am the pollen, you are the sneeze.”

London-based cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates releases “The History of Sound,” the original motion picture soundtrack to Oliver Hermanus’s period romance starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. As well as singing on several tracks, Sam Amidon, a KLOF favourite, was also a music adviser and was tasked with turning the film’s two stars into seasoned balladeers in just three weeks.

Spell Songs return on 4th September with their third album, In Thin Air, out via Hudson Records. A musical companion to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds, it follows the “Seven Wonders” from nest to migration — a celebration of birdlife and a plea to halt its loss. First single “Flight” is out now, ahead of a September UK tour.

Tara Clerkin Trio have shared “Lazy Daisy”, the latest track from their forthcoming album “Somewhere Good”, out 5th June via World of Echo. Following a 6 Music session, it’s the Bristol trio’s first album since 2023’s “On The Turning Ground” — forty-odd minutes of harmonium, upright bass and hushed vocals, sounding more like themselves than ever.

BCMC — Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain — return with “Tête-à-Tête”, the second single from their forthcoming Drag City album “Stash”, out June 26th. Where lead single “Kaleidosmoke” unfurled in patient, accumulative psychedelia, this one rotates skyward — Crain’s organ tearing through prog, gospel, psych and funk, MacKay’s twin guitars tracing intricate, Krautrock-leaning patterns. A new visualiser arrives alongside the single.

The Bevis Frond unveil the music video for “Romany Blue”, taken from their recent 27th album “Horrorful Heights” on Fire Records. Directed by Italian filmmaker and long-time fan Roberto Beani in Bologna using a vintage Academy 1.37 aspect ratio and handheld camera, the clip arrives ahead of a UK tour beginning in Coventry on June 4th.

Biita Houdei — the new moniker of singer-songwriter Lisa Houdei (formerly LéPonds) — shares debut single “Life Inside The Hourglass” via Basin Rock and Father/Daughter. Shaped in the shadows and sounds of Topanga Canyon, the sub-three-minute strum dropped into her mind “from a ghost of sorts” and was written in twenty minutes. Produced by Haley Heynderickx in her first lead production role.

Pharis & Jason Romero return on June 12th with “These Are The Days That Turn In To Years”, their seventh studio album for Free Dirt Records. Recorded at the duo’s restored riverside barn in Horsefly, BC, it is, in press notes, “a songwriter’s deep exhale, replete with stories, love, and nostalgia.” Title track “These Are The Days” is out now.