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Heavy Rock Sensation Georgia Nicole Channels Personal Struggle Into Electrifying New Single “Too Alive”

Eric Alper
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Heavy Rock Sensation Georgia Nicole Channels Personal Struggle Into Electrifying New Single “Too Alive”

Georgia Nicole has been building something real, and “Too Alive” is where it all crystallises. The UK heavy rock artist returns with a single that started as a piano ballad during one of the hardest periods of her life and evolved into a full-throttle rock anthem complete with anthemic chants and a vocal performance that leaves no room for doubt. “I wanted to show people that they’re not alone in their suffering,” she says. That intention is audible in every second of the track.

The single draws from a well of genuine emotion and channels it into something galvanising. Inspired by Nothing But Thieves, The Killers, Muse, and Shinedown, Georgia’s sound blends powerful rock riffs with emotionally charged lyrics that hit hard without ever feeling calculated. Danielle Holian of Decent Music PR puts it plainly: “With raw honesty and electrifying performance, she’s an artist who commands the stage and connects deeply with every listener.”

Georgia’s live credentials back that up completely. She’s performed five times at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2025 alone, across stages including Platform One, Kashmir, and Electrolove. Her Paramore tribute project Paramour drew a 4,000-person audience at its 2025 Isle of Wight Festival debut. She’s also the lead vocalist for function band Forever To Go and performs in an Eminem tribute act that consistently fills Electrolove to capacity. This is an artist who thrives in front of a crowd.

The momentum behind her recorded output is equally strong. Her debut single racked up over 23,000 streams in six months. “Game You Play” broke the South Coast Music Show record for consecutive weeks in their top ten and peaked at number two in their 2025 charts. Isle of Wight Radio named her One to Watch in both 2024 and 2025. She debuted “Too Alive” at the 2025 Wight Noize finals, where she was a finalist, and the response confirmed what her growing fanbase already knew.

“Too Alive” is part of her upcoming EP ‘A Little Bit Of It All,’ and it marks a significant moment in Georgia Nicole’s trajectory. The resilience that shaped the song is the same quality that’s driven everything she’s built so far. The single is out now.

Eurodance Icon Haddaway Returns With New Album ‘The Sun’ and a Sound Built on Warmth and Motion

Eric Alper
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Eurodance Icon Haddaway Returns With New Album ‘The Sun’ and a Sound Built on Warmth and Motion

Haddaway is back, and ‘The Sun’ arrives not as a nostalgia play but as a genuine forward step. More than three decades after his voice became embedded in global pop memory, the eurodance icon returns with a full album that reflects perspective, warmth, and a clear sense of what he wants to say now. This is music made by someone who’s lived widely and creates from that place.

The album opener, “The Sun (Beach Mix),” sets the tone immediately. Relaxed, sunlit, and built around rhythm and ease, it moves with the lightness of open air. It’s a smart entry point into the wider record, offering the album’s atmosphere in its most distilled form before the full version of the title track arrives on the album itself.

Across ‘The Sun,’ Haddaway draws on familiar pop and eurodance instincts, this time softened by jazz harmony, reggae-inflected warmth, and modern electronic touch. The songs breathe. There’s space to move, to pause, to stay with the music, and that quality mirrors how Haddaway actually lives. An active outdoor life built around windsurfing, snowboarding, mountain biking, golf, and long rides on his Harley informs the discipline and clarity running through every track.

The album also extends beyond the studio in a meaningful way. In Bucharest, Haddaway marks ‘The Sun’s arrival by spending a day with local animal shelters as part of “Where the Sun Shines, Hope Grows,” cooking alongside fans and volunteers in an act that reflects the album’s values directly. It’s the kind of gesture that says a lot about where this artist is in his life right now.

Haddaway’s music has never really stopped travelling. It’s been passed between generations, scenes, and places without instruction, carried forward by listeners who found their own meanings in it long after its original moment. ‘The Sun’ gives those listeners something new to hold onto, a record that doesn’t attempt to explain itself or reframe the past. It simply moves forward, on its own terms, and lets the music do the rest.

‘The Sun’ is out now. Listen here.

Indigo Girls’ Emily Saliers Opens Up About Her Health With Honesty, Grace, and a Tour on the Horizon

Eric Alper
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Indigo Girls’ Emily Saliers Opens Up About Her Health With Honesty, Grace, and a Tour on the Horizon

Emily Saliers has always sung from a place of honesty. That didn’t change on April 17, when she and Amy Ray sat together on a couch, guitars in hand, and shared something deeply personal with the Indigo Girls community. Saliers revealed she’s been diagnosed with two movement disorders, cervical dystonia and an essential tremor, conditions that have altered her voice and reshaped how the duo approaches their music. It was a moment of quiet courage, and it landed exactly the way it was meant to.

Cervical dystonia, which comes with a condition called torticollis, makes it difficult for Saliers to hold her head centrally without shaking, directly affecting her throat and singing apparatus. The essential tremor impacts her ability to hold a straight tone and has changed the character of her vibrato. “My voice will not be what it was,” she said, tearfully, with Ray beside her offering steady, unwavering support. There’s no cure for either condition, and Saliers isn’t pretending otherwise.

What she is doing is everything possible to keep performing at the highest level she can. Her current treatment includes physical therapy, therapeutic massage, chiropractic care, acupuncture, and Botox injections. She’s also working with a vocal coach who specializes in movement disorders for singers. Joining the duo on their upcoming tour will be singer-songwriter Lucy Wainwright Roche and longtime collaborator Jeff Fielder, both there to help carry the weight of the harmonies and arrangements with care.

The Indigo Girls have been one of the most beloved and enduring acts in American music since forming in Georgia in 1985. Songs like “Closer to Fine,” “Galileo,” and “Power of Two” have found their way into the lives of generations of fans, including a whole new wave after “Closer to Fine” appeared in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in 2023. That kind of staying power doesn’t come from technical perfection. It comes from truth, and Saliers has never had a shortage of that.

Ray has been, by all accounts, exactly the partner Saliers needs right now. “She’s been super supportive,” Saliers said, patting her friend’s shoulder. The two view the conditions as part of the organic process of aging together as bandmates and as people. “We’re just telling you because we’re going through this year touring,” Ray added, “and we don’t want it to be like, this thing that people are talking about that we’re not talking about.”

That transparency is its own kind of gift. Saliers asked fans for grace, and anyone who has followed the Indigo Girls for any length of time knows that grace is exactly what this community has always had in abundance. The 2026 tour kicks off April 24 in Athens, Ohio. Show up, sing along, and let Emily Saliers hear you.

And put them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame already.

Craft Recordings Drops Nine Essential Limited-Edition Vinyls for Record Store Day 2026

Eric Alper
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Craft Recordings Drops Nine Essential Limited-Edition Vinyls for Record Store Day 2026

Record Store Day 2026 is here, and Craft Recordings has shown up with nine titles that cover serious ground. From mono jazz reissues to cult Latin classics to indie tribute compilations making their vinyl debut, this is a lineup that rewards the committed digger and the casual browser equally. Get to your nearest participating independent record store now.

The jazz selections alone justify the trip. Abbey Lincoln’s 1957 sophomore LP ‘That’s Him!’ arrives in a rare mono mix on 180-gram vinyl, mastered all-analog by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and limited to just 4,200 copies. Accompanying Lincoln on the original recording were Sonny Rollins, Kenny Dorham, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Max Roach, a lineup that speaks for itself. JazzWise called it “a key work in Lincoln’s discography,” and this pressing gives it the treatment it deserves.

Miles Davis gets equally serious attention. ‘The New Sounds,’ his 1951 solo debut for Prestige Records, returns in its original 10-inch format for its 75th anniversary, mastered all-analog from the original mono tapes by Jeff Powell at Take Out Vinyl and limited to 4,900 copies. A young Sonny Rollins appears here too, alongside Art Blakey and a 19-year-old Jackie McLean making his recorded debut. This is Davis before the legend fully calcified, confident and exploratory and already impossible to ignore.

On the Latin side, Markolino Dimond’s 1971 debut ‘Brujería’ returns to vinyl for the first time in more than 50 years. A salsa dura masterpiece produced by Harvey Averne, Larry Harlow, and Johnny Pacheco, the album blends progressive jazz with Afro-Cuban rhythms and features a remarkable cast including legendary vocalist Angel Canales, bassist Andy Gonzalez, and a coro that includes Héctor Lavoe and Ismael Quintana. Limited to just 1,500 copies on 180-gram vinyl, this one will move fast.

The Jazz Dispensary crew delivers ‘Magia Brasileira,’ a freshly curated Brazilian compilation pressed on eye-catching “Brazilian Shimmer” vinyl, a green, yellow, and gold blend housed in a jacket designed by São Paulo-based artist Fernanda Peralta. Featuring Dom Um Romão, Bola Sete, Flora Purim, João Donato, and more, it’s a rousing collection of mid-century samba and funk-drenched jams limited to 6,000 copies.

For the rock and pop contingent, the lineup is equally strong. ‘Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac’ makes its first-ever vinyl appearance, a 2-LP set on Translucent Sea Blue vinyl featuring 19 covers from HAIM, Tame Impala, St. Vincent, MGMT, The Kills, Lykke Li, Best Coast, and more. Originally released in 2012, it hit the Billboard 200’s Top 50 and peaked at number 15 on the Top Rock Albums chart. AllMusic called it “an unusually satisfying tribute album,” and hearing it on vinyl for the first time is reason enough to celebrate.

Mayday Parade’s ‘Tales Told by Dead Friends’ turns 20, and the career-launching EP returns on Translucent Orange 10-inch vinyl, limited to 2,500 copies. Violent Femmes’ 1986 album ‘The Blind Leading the Naked,’ produced by Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison and featuring the Stooges’ Steve Mackay on horns, gets its own pressing on “Candlelight Swirl” vinyl. And ‘Here Come the Tears’ by The Tears, the short-lived reunion project of Suede’s Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, finally gets its first-ever vinyl reissue. Rounding things out is ‘Stax: Killer B’s,’ a rare B-sides compilation from the legendary soul label featuring Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, and Booker T. & The M.G.’s.

Nine titles, all available now at participating independent record stores. This is what Record Store Day is supposed to feel like.

Craft Recordings Record Store Day 2026 Releases:

Abbey Lincoln – ‘That’s Him!’ (1-LP, Mono, 180-gram vinyl, limited to 4,200 copies)

Miles Davis – ‘The New Sounds’ (10-inch LP, Mono, limited to 4,900 copies)

Mayday Parade – ‘Tales Told by Dead Friends’ (10-inch EP, Translucent Orange Vinyl, limited to 2,500 copies)

Various Artists – ‘Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac’ (2-LP, Translucent Sea Blue Vinyl, limited to 3,700 copies)

Jazz Dispensary – ‘Magia Brasileira’ (1-LP, “Brazilian Shimmer” Vinyl, limited to 6,000 copies)

Markolino Dimond – ‘Brujería’ (1-LP, 180-gram vinyl, limited to 1,500 copies)

Violent Femmes – ‘The Blind Leading the Naked’ (1-LP, “Candlelight Swirl” Vinyl)

The Tears – ‘Here Come the Tears’ (first-ever vinyl reissue)

Various Artists – ‘Stax: Killer B’s’ (rare B-sides compilation)

Toronto Indie Folk Trio The Couriers Open Their Hearts on Debut Single “Smooth Skin”

Eric Alper
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Toronto Indie Folk Trio The Couriers Open Their Hearts on Debut Single “Smooth Skin”

The Couriers have arrived with “Smooth Skin,” and the Toronto indie folk trio make an immediate impression. Lifted from their self-titled debut album, the track is acoustic-leaning, intimate, and quietly romantic, built on finger-picked guitar, hushed dynamics, and harmonies that stack with real warmth. It’s the kind of song that doesn’t announce itself loudly but stays with you long after it’s done.

The origin story is genuinely unexpected. “Smooth Skin” was inspired by a line from a video game character who mistakenly believed he was a ghoul. Vocalist and guitarist Stephen Edwards explains: “Once the title was cemented, the song quickly evolved into a story about a love interest lost to time.” That shift from absurdist source material to tender romantic reflection says a lot about how The Couriers work, finding the emotional truth in unlikely places and letting it breathe.

The song carries extra weight as a landmark moment for the band. “This was the first ever song written to be played by The Couriers,” Edwards shares. “Hence, it seemed fitting that it should appear as the first track on our debut album.” As an opening statement, it does exactly what a first track should, establishing the band’s voice clearly and confidently without overreaching.

Stephen Edwards on guitar and vocals, Mateja Lasan on drums, and Bronson Aguiar on bass bring a decade-long creative partnership to every note of the record. That history is audible in how naturally the three voices and instruments move together. The restraint here is a choice, not a limitation, and it’s the right one. The harmonies carry the emotional weight of the song without the arrangement ever pushing too hard.

“Smooth Skin” is a quietly captivating introduction to a band that understands the power of understatement. The Couriers’ self-titled debut album is out now on all major streaming platforms.

Queens of the Stone Age Bassist Michael Shuman Gives Jennifer Paige’s “Crush” a Dark, Cinematic GLU Makeover

Eric Alper
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Queens of the Stone Age Bassist Michael Shuman Gives Jennifer Paige’s “Crush” a Dark, Cinematic GLU Makeover

Michael Shuman has been quietly building something that demands full attention. GLU, his genre-blending solo project, is out now with a bold reimagining of Jennifer Paige’s 1998 pop hit “Crush,” and it’s a genuine statement. Darker, more cinematic, and planted firmly in GLU’s modern sonic landscape, the cover preserves the original’s vulnerability while pulling it somewhere entirely new.

Shuman is direct about why “Crush” made sense. “The music side is the fun part, where you augment it to a completely different landscape, giving a totally different perspective to the original,” he explains. “Crush is an amazing pop song, but was produced at a time where I don’t think it got its due.” The reimagining gives the song room it never had, and the video delivers on every promise the audio makes.

The release also comes with significant news. GLU has signed a brand new recording deal with FLG (Skunk Anansie, Corella, As It Is), adding serious infrastructure to a project that’s already proven it can move without it. This is a year of momentum for Shuman, and the pieces are falling into place fast.

GLU first surfaced in early 2023 with debut EP ‘My Demons’, a raw excavation of struggle, addiction, loss, and childhood trauma. The project found Shuman writing outside his comfort zone from the start, building from beats, synths, and lyrics rather than guitar riffs. “I wanted to do something that scared me,” he’s said. “Something that felt fresh, and fully on my own terms.” That instinct paid off immediately.

The 2025 single “Boogie Man” pushed things further. An infectious, dance-forward track drawing comparisons to Jamiroquai, Gorillaz, and Mac Miller, it landed a major sync placement in MLB The Show ’25 alongside Kendrick Lamar and De La Soul, and pushed GLU past three million global streams. BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music both came on board, with press from NME and Rolling Stone cementing the project as something operating well beyond side-project territory.

GLU has toured with The Kills, Blood Red Shoes, and Miles Kane, and has headlined its own UK dates. With a new record deal, a striking new single, and a full year of activity ahead, GLU is running at full speed. “Crush” is out now, and it’s only the beginning.

New York Alt-Pop Singer Scarlett Macfarlane Goes Down the Rabbit Hole on “Winter’s Whisper”

Eric Alper
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New York Alt-Pop Singer Scarlett Macfarlane Goes Down the Rabbit Hole on “Winter’s Whisper”

Scarlett Macfarlane has a new single out, and “Winter’s Whisper” is exactly the kind of track that refuses to sit still. The New York alt-pop artist blends rockabilly-tinged energy with pop immediacy and a surrealist edge drawn straight from Lewis Carroll, creating something playful, eerie, and genuinely hard to categorize. Produced by Grammy-winning Scott Jacoby, it sounds like nothing else in her lane right now.

The song started simply enough, a magical winter walk as the initial image, but Macfarlane let the concept pull her somewhere stranger. “Words like ‘magic’ and ‘wonderland’ took me down a not-so-proverbial rabbit hole,” she explains. What emerged is a commentary on reality itself, how bizarre and uncontrollable and occasionally wonderful life actually is. “This world, life itself, is filled with fantasy,” she says. “It can be all at once transformed by the cast of characters you encounter throughout your own zany story.”

Production details make “Winter’s Whisper” work on multiple levels. Eerie Halloween-adjacent synth textures give the track its off-kilter atmosphere, while layered call-and-response vocals, subtly panned left and right, create a genuine sense of internal dialogue. The bridge in particular rewards a good pair of headphones. Macfarlane put it simply: “I’ve tried to sit still through it. I can’t. I haven’t met anyone who can.”

The single belongs to a 15-song collection written and recorded in a single creative burst, each track standing independently while sharing a common emotional thread. After years of performing other people’s words, from glossy pop to fronting a rock band, Macfarlane writes entirely from her own perspective now. That shift is audible in every second of “Winter’s Whisper.”

This is an artist fully in command of her own voice, and “Winter’s Whisper” makes a compelling case for paying close attention to whatever comes next.

Liverpool Trip-Hop Duo Dealer’s Choice Announce Themselves With Debut Single “Some Kind Of Way”

Eric Alper
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Liverpool Trip-Hop Duo Dealer’s Choice Announce Themselves With Debut Single “Some Kind Of Way”

Dealer’s Choice have made their entrance, and it’s a confident one. The Liverpool-based duo of cousins Joe McHugh and Barry Mullaney release their debut single “Some Kind Of Way” now, a dreamy, trip-hop-tinged introduction that signals something genuinely worth watching. Lush instrumentation, introspective lyrics, and a sound that sits comfortably between alternative and electronic without belonging entirely to either.

The pair bring complementary backgrounds to the project. McHugh has spent nearly a decade as a prominent DJ in Liverpool’s music scene under the name Jack Trades, holding down regular spots at Motel and Teddy’s. Mullaney comes in as an accomplished musician and producer, previously releasing music as Deadbeat Drew to national press attention in Ireland, with Hot Press calling him “one of the more exciting up-and-coming producers in Ireland.” Together, the chemistry is immediate.

Both originally from County Mayo in the west of Ireland, the duo’s perspective on Irish identity from inside the UK gives their writing a distinctive layered quality. Barry puts it plainly: “A lot of the lyrics used so far have been from before I made the move to Liverpool from Ireland, that I could never really find a way of completing. So, working with Joe, the songs were given a fresh pair of eyes, and this basically became the foundation for Dealer’s Choice.”

Drawing inspiration from LCD Soundsystem, Yard Act, and The Avalanches, Dealer’s Choice blend danceable nu-disco grooves with lyrics shaped by rural Irish upbringing and the particular clarity of observing home culture from a distance. “Some Kind Of Way” captures that balance with ease, a debut single that feels fully formed.

A five-track EP arrives this summer. Dealer’s Choice are only getting started.

Jim Jones All Stars Unleash Feral New Album ‘Cat Fight’ and Hit the Road

Eric Alper
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Jim Jones All Stars Unleash Feral New Album ‘Cat Fight’ and Hit the Road

Jim Jones All Stars don’t make polite records. ‘Cat Fight’ is out now via Silver Arrow Records, and it arrives exactly as advertised, twelve tracks of claws-out, feral rock and roll that sounds like it was recorded in a room that didn’t have enough exits. Produced by Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes, this is the band operating at full, glorious intensity. Listen here.

The album pulls from a rich and rowdy lineage. Little Richard’s primal energy, the straight-up fury of MC5 and The Stooges, Stones-y leather-clad grooves, and Bond-theme brass all collide across these twelve tracks with complete conviction. “Make It Rain” opens the set like a detonation. “Born 2 Ride” mows down John Barry sophistication with a Steppenwolf biker boot. “Cat Fight,” the title track, struts like Tom Jones getting loud with Booker T & The MG’s.

The guest list is equally serious. Chris Robinson contributes vocals, Chuck Prophet adds guitar, and Gloria Jones brings her own iconic presence to the record. Robinson’s wife Camille designed the artwork. Recorded at Bakerland Studios in Leeds and West Eleven Studios in London, the album was mixed by Jim Jones himself and mastered by Nick Page at Forking Paths Mastering in Los Angeles.

Classic Rock called their previous work “filthier than a mechanic’s rag, sleazier than a Soho spiv.” Rolling Stone compared the band to “the blow of a hammer on the fingers.” ‘Cat Fight’ gives both publications even more to work with. This is the kind of rock and roll record that doesn’t ask permission and doesn’t need to.

‘Cat Fight’ is out now on CD, limited edition red vinyl, and digital download via Silver Arrow Records. The band hits the road with remaining UK dates this spring and summer.

‘Cat Fight’ Tracklist:

Make It Rain

Exiled

Born 2 Ride

I’m On Fire

Goin’ Higher

Bekolah

Cat Fight

Gashman

Drink Me

Chubby

Luv U

Let U Go

2026 Tour Dates:

April 23 – Norwich, UK – The Waterfront Studio

April 24 – Exeter, UK – The Cavern

July 3 – Sheffield, UK – Yellow Arch Studios

July 5 – Cambridge, UK – Portland Arms

UK Punk Trio Grade 2 Bares It All on New Album ‘Talk About It’

Eric Alper
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UK Punk Trio Grade 2 Bares It All on New Album ‘Talk About It’

Grade 2 have a lot to say, and ‘Talk About It’ is where they say all of it. The Isle of Wight punk trio, Sid Ryan, Jack Chatfield, and Jacob Hull, deliver their fourth album via Hellcat Records, a twelve-track chronicle of love, loss, and the grinding work of growing up inside a band. This is their most direct and emotionally honest record yet, and it lands hard.

The lead single “Standing In The Downpour” sets the tone immediately. Written like a conversation between old friends, it traces the arc from rowdy seaside-town adolescence to the harder work of finding your footing as an adult. It’s defiant without being cheap about it, a punk track with real texture and a hook that sticks. Grade 2 have always had the energy. Here, they’ve matched it with genuine songwriting depth.

The album title says everything. “It became ‘Talk About It,’ which sums up the whole album,” frontman Sid Ryan explains, “touching on every emotion that you feel while being in a band, from love to loss to personal turmoil to ambition. It’s a coming-of-age story about Grade 2 entering adulthood.” Twelve years since they first cranked amps as schoolkids, they’ve earned every word of it.

The band’s resume backs up the confidence. Festival slots at Rock am Ring, shared stages with Rancid and Slipknot, and a self-titled 2023 LP that announced them as one of modern punk’s most compelling acts. ‘Talk About It’ doesn’t rest on any of that. It pushes forward, harder and more focused than anything they’ve done before.

‘Talk About It’ is out now via Hellcat Records. Grade 2 hits Europe this spring, with dates running through June.

‘Talk About It’ Tracklist:

Cut Throat

Hanging Onto You

Standing In The Downpour

Better Today

Talk About It

Don’t Worry About Me

Crash And Burn

Smugglers Haven

Rotten

Wasteland

Otherside

2026 Tour Dates:

April 25 – Dusseldorf, Germany – Zakk

April 30 – Jena, Germany – F-Haus

June 18 – Dessel, Belgium – Plein Air

June 20 – Zurich, CH – Stadion Letzigrund

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That Eric Alper

Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.

Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com

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