The Overjoyed’s third studio album is out now, self-produced by the Athens-based punk trio with engineering and mixing from Marios Adamopoulos. Known across Europe for relentless touring and explosive live shows, the band made this record differently, writing it fully collaboratively for the first time. “I’m so excited about this album,” frontman Leo says. “It’s the first time we collaborated 100% in the writing process.”
The record dives into personal struggle, mental health, addiction, and identity with the blunt force the band has always brought to their music. Opening track “Can’t Write Music” sets the tone immediately, written from what Leo describes as “a really dark place, struggling with self-identity, drugs, a break-up, while living in a world recovering from a worldwide epidemic and a social-political mass hysteria.” Elsewhere, “Spark” brings back the defiant energy the band is known for, and “Sleep,” one of their oldest songs, finally finds its place on record as a haunting reflection on comedowns and emotional collapse.
The Overjoyed’s new album is out now. European touring follows.
ULTRABOMB’s third album ‘The Bridges That We Burn’ is out now via DC-Jam Records and Virgin Music Group, and the lineup alone tells you what kind of record this is. Greg Norton of Hüsker Dü on bass and vocals, Derek O’Brien of Social Distortion, Agent Orange, and the Adolescents on drums and vocals, and Ryan Smith of Soul Asylum on guitar and vocals. Three punk and alternative rock veterans bringing decades of combined history into the present tense.
Latest single “Look Forward In Anger” is out now with an official video, and it captures the band turning shared frustrations into connection and forward movement. Norton is direct about the lyrical angle: “‘Look Forward In Anger’ is a commentary on how partisan politics push to divide us, when we should all be coming together. Love over BS, any day.” It’s a classic punk move, channeling anger into something that builds rather than just burns.
The album was recorded at Creation Audio in Minneapolis and produced, engineered, and mixed by John Fields, with mastering by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering. MAGNET describes the band’s sound as “a swift blow to the sternum that harnesses both the speedy energy of Norton’s early Minneapolis days and the ragged hard-rock sensibility of Twin Tone-era Soul Asylum,” which is exactly the reference frame you’d want. Punk Rock Theory sums it up simply: “Think Hüsker Dü, early Soul Asylum, and The Replacements.”
‘The Bridges That We Burn’ is out now via DC-Jam Records and Virgin Music Group.
Arrows of Athena’s sophomore album ‘Daydreaming’ is out now via Belhaven Records, and the story behind its standout single “Comets” is one of the more unexpected in recent alt-rock memory. The Boston cinematic duo of Jac-Lyn Gibson and Scott Lerner built the track around the real-life story of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, the French widow who took over her husband’s wine business in the early 1800s, defied every patriarchal constraint of her era, and eventually became Madame Clicquot, the Grande Dame of Champagne. Veuve Clicquot is still consumed around the world today.
Gibson discovered the story through the 2023 drama Widow Clicquot and immediately went deep. “As soon as I finished the movie I read her biography rather quickly and then got to work in the studio,” she says. The specific detail that anchors the song: comets crashed into the vineyard one evening, everyone was convinced the grapes were ruined, and Ponsardin alone believed it would improve the flavor. She was right. “The story is fascinating and a true testament of what women can overcome in times of despair,” Gibson adds.
For a duo named after the goddess of female strength and wisdom, the fit is exact. Lerner laid down a cascade of thunderous dance beats and thrashing riffs as the foundation, Gibson shaped the narrative over the top, and the result is one of the most expansive tracks in their catalog, pulsating and star-gazing with the 90s-coded electronic alt-rock energy that has drawn comparisons to Garbage and Republica since their debut.
‘Daydreaming’ marks a deliberate shift in creative territory from their 2024 debut ‘The Ghost Archives,’ which centered on death and personal loss. The new record explores storytelling across happier emotional terrain, capturing two adults navigating families, careers, and a desire to honor the peaceful and positive. “Now that we got through that chapter of pain, we are ready to tell a different story,” Gibson says. There are more guitars on this one overall, though the synths and dance beats that define the Arrows of Athena sound remain fully intact.
Sandy Skye Netburn released her debut album ‘Issues’ on her 18th birthday last October, and the new self-directed video for “Tunnel at the End of the Light” brings fresh attention to one of its standout moments. The Long Island singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer wrote, recorded, directed, filmed, and edited the entire project herself, and the video is packed with Easter eggs and visual clues into her creative world. “This song is widely open to interpretation,” she says, “but I wrote it about finding the good in hard times.”
‘Issues’ is a 14-track record of acoustic Americana folk-pop protest songs, written and produced entirely by Netburn with a wry wit and theatrical sensibility that draws comparisons to Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Nancy Wilson while remaining entirely her own. WoNoMagazine wrote that listening to her debut is “perhaps what people older than me experienced when they listened to Bob Dylan for the first time.” Worcester Magazine called her “an eternal flowerchild who sounds like a genuine product of the singer-songwriting, Summer of Love sixties,” with the caveat that she’s a Long Island teenager. That contradiction is exactly what makes the record interesting.
Netburn is a genuine multi-hyphenate, adding ventriloquism and a celebrity interview podcast series, Sandy & Friends, to her creative portfolio. She’s already drawn fans including The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz and The Runaways’ Cherie Currie, who pulled her onstage to perform “Cherry Bomb” at the 2023 NorthEast ComicCon.
‘Issues’ is out now on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms.
Hen Ogledd’s third album ‘DISCOMBOBULATED’ is out now via Weird World, and the critical response has been immediate and emphatic. Uncut gave it 9/10 and called it “a truly singular record.” Mojo awarded 4 stars. The Quietus declared the quartet makes “music that is quite literally beyond compare.” Wire calls it “the greatest musical and lyrical realisation yet of their diverse strengths.” For a band that has always operated at the outer edge of what folk, drone, and experimental music can do together, ‘DISCOMBOBULATED’ represents a genuine peak.
The album arrives alongside “End of the rhythm,” a new track and video directed by James Hankins, inspired by early 90s rave visuals and 3D computer animation of that era. The song evokes a chaotic dance capable of transcending enclosure and moving toward rapture, release, and healing, anchored by Dawn Bothwell’s declaration that “They want us to fail, but workers can win.” It’s a fitting entry point into a record that balances political fury with warmth and accessibility in equal measure.
Hen Ogledd, the collaborative project of Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson, and Sally Pilkington, has been coalescing since Davies and Dawson began working together in 2013, with the full quartet coming together ahead of 2018’s debut ‘Mogic.’ ‘DISCOMBOBULATED’ is their most emotionally charged record yet, moving through political tumult, personal crisis, and mental wellbeing with the complex, moving intelligence the band has made their signature. By turns emphatic and vulnerable, joyous and furious, it’s also their most accessible.
The album is available on DomMart-exclusive pink vinyl with signed art print, standard vinyl, CD, and digitally.
The most extraordinary event attached to this release is still ahead. On June 6th, Hen Ogledd will perform DISCOMBODURATION, an 8-hour sound ritual at The Horse Hospital in London, running from 2pm to 10pm. The extended un-concert splinters ‘DISCOMBOBULATED’ through prisms of drone, improvisation, dance, kinetic sculpture, dream-pop, and what the band describes as “horrible stuff, coo-ing and large blasts.” Artist Rachael MacArthur brings costume and a life-size pop-up book set to create a psychogenic fantasy episodic landscape across each stage of the performance. Audiences can attend for the full 8 hours or drop in at their own peril. RSVP is open now.
‘DISCOMBOBULATED’ is out now via Weird World. DISCOMBODURATION takes place June 6th at The Horse Hospital, London.
Balderdasch has released ‘Stillness Gyrating,’ a 6-track EP out now on all platforms, and it arrives as one of the more distinctive releases in the experimental pop space this year. Self-produced by Balderdasch with additional production and mixing by Pete Wareham, whose credits include The Smile and Nadine Shah, and mastered by Jamie Hyland of M(h)aol, the record covers avoidant and attached lovers, non-monogamy, and toxic inter-class relationships with wry humor, intimacy, and genuine sonic ambition.
The EP shape-shifts constantly across its runtime, moving from the folk-leaning Joni Mitchell-referencing “seeking arrangements” through the grunge-fueled sample chaos of “pimp” and into the electro-industrial abrasion of “homoerotic.” Brash and sleazy moments sit alongside tenderness and introspection across a record that mirrors the messy, contradictory ways intimacy actually works. Balderdasch is deliberate about the lyrical approach: “I set out to write lines that felt almost embarrassing for me to say out loud, brutally honest moments that make me wince a bit when I hear them back. I’d go on a date, come home and document it, warts and all.”
The EP’s closing track “Not Again, But For The First Time” arrives with a visualiser directed by Matt Spratt, filmed across London as Balderdasch wanders with no fixed destination after finishing an office job. The song details becoming capable of love precisely when there’s nowhere to place it, and the visual captures that aimless composure with real elegance.
Press has been paying attention. BBC Radio 6’s Emily Pilbeam called Balderdasch “quite special.” DIY likens her to Jockstrap and Lynks while noting her own unique take. The Line of Best Fit, RTE 2FM, and Nialler 9 have all added their voices to a growing critical conversation around one of Irish-London experimental pop’s most interesting emerging artists.
MOULD have announced their debut album and it arrives with serious momentum behind it. ‘Hoping As A Coping Mechanism’ drops July 10th via 5dB Records, a 13-track full-length produced by Sean Oakley, who flew in from LA specifically for the project, and recorded at 5dB Studios in London. New single “Falling Posture” is out now and makes an immediate case for what the Bristol trio have been building toward.
“Falling Posture” opens with a cacophonous blast of noise before locking into a rattling punk number and then dropping out into an unexpected slacker final third. Vocalist and bassist Kane Eagle describes it as a “Frankenstein song,” made of seemingly disparate ingredients bolted together into something exciting and surprising. The lyrical content is equally direct: “It’s about the pressures of staying positive whilst being bombarded with life’s expectations. Getting caught up and stuck in a loop of your own and others’ expectations of what success is. Doing so never really leads to anything positive.”
The band frames the album with the kind of self-aware confidence that suggests they know exactly what they’ve made. “The collective sum of our combined beans condensed into half an hour of unrelenting bangers,” they say. “As an album it has a lot more range than anything we’ve done before, a refining of our strengths, with a lot of focus on dynamics, structure and melody.” The album follows BBC 6 Music-playlisted lead single “Float,” released last November, and across 13 tracks explores what MOULD call the horrors of the outside world and the internal minefield of the brain.
Rachel Love, former member of beloved British indie trio Dolly Mixture, has had her 2 solo albums reissued via Slumberland Records, both out now on vinyl for the first time. ‘Picture In Mind’ (originally 2021) arrives on orange vinyl alongside a repackaged CD, and ‘Lyra’ (originally 2024) on yellow vinyl LP with repackaged CD. Originally self-released as limited-edition CD-Rs, both records are now reaching the wider audience they’ve always deserved. Listen to the album sampler here.
‘Picture In Mind’ was recorded at home with close family support, built around Love’s softly sung, bossa-like vocals and fluid arrangements shaped with her late husband Steve Lovell. The album draws threads from Dolly Mixture’s baroque ‘Fireside E.P.,’ the reflective British pop of Saint Etienne, and the electronic folk melodies of Broadcast. It includes Love’s version of Dolly Mixture’s “Down The Line,” a collaboratively written song that in her hands drifts downstream, transformed by gentle electronic accompaniment into something intimate and luminous.
‘Lyra’ carries a different emotional gravity. Written and recorded after the passing of her husband Steve, and co-produced with care by David Lovell, the album is a tribute shaped in grief and released with extraordinary composure. BrooklynVegan’s Bill Pearis describes the records as sitting “somewhere between ’60s sunshine pop and the mid-’90s lounge revival,” while Austin Town Hall’s Nathan Lankford calls ‘Lyra’ “one of the best surprises pop fans have gotten this year.” The album draws on the ticking electronics of Stereolab’s quieter moments, the lushness of Air, and the sweet ache of Emma Anderson, while finding its own emotional register entirely.
‘Lyra’ was originally released with The Cat Collects, the label that also releases music by The Cleaners From Venus, an apt parallel for music this beautifully crafted on a small scale but sounding considerably larger. Love sings with an unforced, unadorned calm throughout both records, a quality that makes the depth of feeling on ‘Lyra’ land with particular force.
Dolly Mixture, the trio Love formed with Debsey Wykes and Hester Smith, remain a touchstone of early 80s British independent pop. Wykes has since become a regular member of Saint Etienne’s live band, a connection that makes the critical comparisons feel earned rather than convenient. Love’s solo work extends that lineage quietly and beautifully.
Both ‘Picture In Mind’ and ‘Lyra’ are out now via Slumberland Records on vinyl and CD.
Chloe Violette’s debut album ‘Colourfast’ is out now, a Gippsland-based indie pop and folk record shaped over 3 years across Melbourne and regional Victoria. Produced by Josh Walton and recorded at New Market Studios, Bellbird Studios in Collingwood, and Macks Creek Hall in Gippsland, the album traces Violette’s shift from inner-city Melbourne to small-town living, exploring monotony, grief, mental health, and the quiet moments of hope that emerge on the other side. Listen here.
The title track anchors the record’s emotional arc, built around folky acoustic guitars, buttery piano, and steadfast rhythms, charting a story of graduated resilience. Elsewhere, “Skin,” “Road to Recovery,” and “Brave Face” move through mental illness and healing with the kind of direct honesty that makes the record feel genuinely personal rather than broadly thematic. Violette framed her vision for producer Walton simply: “I want the listener to feel like Dorothy stepping out of sepia-toned Kansas into technicolour Oz.”
‘Colourfast’ also marks a significant personal transition for Violette, representing a deliberate move away from classroom teaching toward a life centered on music. That commitment shows in the care taken across every track. It’s a debut built to last.
Real Farmer’s second album ‘Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right’ is out now on Strap Originals, Peter Doherty’s label, and it arrives with the kind of critical momentum that comes from a band that has been building something real across Europe for years. The Groningen, Netherlands-based four-piece recorded at Far Out Sound Studios in Rotterdam with Niek Van Den Driesschen, their third release from the same room, and the results are urgent, politically charged, and sonically sharp.
“Heart Out,” the album’s lead single and latest video, is a thrilling collision of 60s beat and proto-punk, with hollering vocals and swashbuckling guitars evoking the wasted, sweat-stained downtown New York of Richard Hell and Dead Boys. The video was filmed live by Roger Sargent, whose credits include The Libertines, at Margate’s iconic Dalby Cafe. The band frames the song’s energy directly: “We need to resist becoming bitter by what is happening out there. Love is the drive to do everything but also sets the intention that an act should have. Resistance needs love.”
The album is a 12-track statement that moves between DIY punk, angular art-rock, and Stereolab-esque textures, with previous singles “Run By Animals” and “Missing Link” already signaling its range. “Not all songs are punk songs, but everything is written in this spirit,” the band says. “With this album we hope listeners can also find a sense of empowerment and hope through our songs.” Press response has been strong, with praise from Under The Radar, CLASH, DIY, and a notably enthusiastic reaction from Anthony Fantano.
Real Farmer spent 2025 supporting Babyshambles, Protomartyr, and The Libertines, and played The Great Escape, Primavera a la Ciutat, and Pitchfork Paris. The band released the album week of their support slot for Peter Doherty at a sold-out 2,700-capacity L’Olympia in Paris, a moment that signals exactly how much their profile has grown. The UK headline run coming in June is their biggest yet, covering Brighton through Southampton across 11 dates.
‘Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right’ Track Listing:
Missing Link
9 Till Not Alright
I.D.K.T.S
Sob Story
System
Settle
Wash Away
“Heart Out”
Beggars Hymn
The Mass
Run By Animals
Judas
Upcoming Tour Dates:
May 29 – Utrecht @ ACU
May 30 – Eindhoven @ Skinfest
June 01 – Paris @ Verte est la nuit
June 02 – Brighton @ Prince Albert
June 03 – London @ New River Studios
June 04 – Cardiff @ Clwb Ifor Bach
June 05 – Manchester @ YES (basement)
June 06 – Newcastle @ ZEROX: the Shooting Gallery
