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Alternative

Lotus Mirage’s Rebirth of Honor Is Dream Pop in Full Fairycore Bloom

Posted on 21 July 2026

When everything about an artist is titularly mystifying, it is hard not to feel your expectations rise before you hit play. Thankfully, Rebirth of Honor by the NY-based alternative artist Lotus Mirage delivers all the spirit-sating whimsy you hope it would. The classically trained singer-songwriter uses every ounce of knowledge she gained to cultivate the dream-pop scene, lending it a sense of grandeur; a sense of grandeur which elevates the genre without making any of the baroque beauty within her lush atmospheric single feel inaccessible.

Rebirth of Honor is escapism in its purest form; anyone fixated by the fairycore trend will find their own sense of utopia within it. Yet beneath the shimmer, the single carries a complex web of pain and the promise of possibilities, allowing the single to become emblematic of every transition of the spirit.

Lotus Mirage writes from the perspective of the high-achiever who left the mapped-out path, moving from classical piano, LSE and tech sales into atmospheric alt-pop concerned with nostalgia, ambition and identity after structure falls away. That context is integral to Rebirth of Honor’s emotional intelligence. The folksy arrangement explores the full emotional spectrum through lighter layers that add scintillation, while lower, sombre strings thread mourning through the release.

With appeal for admirers of Weyes Blood, Phoebe Bridgers and Sarah Kinsley, Lotus Mirage has found rare territory in dream pop, where academia, ambition and self-reinvention serve as mythic terrain.

Rebirth of Honor is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Download’s Future Bill Starts Here: Black River Renegade’s Next Mistake Is Blues-Rock at Its Hardest Hitting

Posted on 20 July 2026

Any playlists featuring Highly Suspect, Royal Blood and Rival Sons would be remiss to look past the latest hard-rock hit, Next Mistake, from Black River Renegade. The Norwich four-piece have taken their modern approach to bluesy hard-rock riffs and sent a rampage across the UK rock and metal scene; Next Mistake alone carries enough force to raze the stagnating monotony of the circuit to the ground.

In the red-hot hit, which becomes a battle of will between sirens and sense, you can hear the seductive serpentine roots of hard rock under the sleek amplification of crashing drums and low-slung basslines. Black River Renegade honour classic-rock influence without embalming it, bringing the form forward through pornographic guitars, sharp songwriting chops and hooks that land straight in the sternum.

Following a busy 2026, including support for A Thousand Horses at Norwich Arts Centre, sets at the Royal Norfolk Show and Aldeburgh Festival’s Big Day Out, plus bookings for HMV Live & Local and the John Peel Centre’s Emerge night, the band’s live reputation is clearly catching up with their recorded output.

If Download Festival ever dared to look past legacy and novelty acts for the top of its bill, Black River Renegade would be a fitting charge into the future of rock.

Next Mistake is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Ava Trepeck Cast a Multi-Sensory Cinematic Spell with the Beach House-Level Textural Sorcery in ‘Sphinx’

Posted on 20 July 2026

Ava Trepeck created multi-sensory cinematography with her seminal ethereal pop single, Sphinx. The New York City-based alternative dream-pop artist, originally from Birmingham, Michigan, has a voice that could see her hailed as this generation’s Kate Bush, a sound that establishes her as talented as Beach House when it comes to alchemising intoxicatingly timbred melodies, and that touch of je ne sais quoi that makes her so stylistically hypnotic.

The soft, reverb-lush way every note drifts in hazy weightlessness through the retro-futuristic colour of the pastel-toned triumph is enough to make you feel as though you’re defying gravity as you drink in the dreamy, artful textures. Beneath the beauty, Sphinx carries a deeply considered emotional architecture, exploring divine union within the self and the balance of masculine and feminine energies as a route towards safety, freedom and inner equilibrium.

Trepeck’s background in psychology and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California gives the single its rare sense of psychic detail and visual depth. You can hear why Dora Jar, Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Kate Bush and Miley Cyrus sit within her wider constellation of influence, but Sphinx never feels derivative. It’s escapism at its finest, and it is proof that Ava Trepeck’s talent refuses to settle into complacency; there’s a palpable sense she’s pushing sound design into transcendently imaginative terrain with each of her new releases, and this is no exception.

Sphinx is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Mert Spalty’s PODUNK Brought Queens Alt-Rock to a Scuzzy, Sweat-Slick Punk Crescendo

Posted on 20 July 2026

The writing is on the basement-venue wall; Mert Spalty’s LP, PODUNK, is the kind of woozy, scuzz-laced release to get the alt scene moving to the exhilaration of posture-free punk rock again. The Queens-based independent musician has played north of 300 shows since 2022, and that live-wire through dodgy PA conditioning burns straight through the album’s beer-spilt bloodstream.

With the same devil-may-care authenticity as Pavement, the raw emotional accessibility of garage-punk heavyweights Fidlar and inklings of Modest Mouse through the campy eccentricity and existential slacker humour, PODUNK traverses the alt spectrum with unruly purpose. Recorded in a shared practice space and Spalty’s apartment, then self-produced and mixed, the record captures bar basements packed with friends, cigarettes outside and punk rock with a bossa nova flute interlude.

The alt anthems are slick with the sweat of an artist uncaging himself. It just so happens that the outpouring of his fervent candour takes the form of some of the best alt-rock and punk instincts: almost innocently childlike creativity, high-fidelity lines ignored, sanitised mainstream potential kicked aside, reality placed front and centre.

With Fletcher Gull tracking drums in a single day before flying home to Australia, and a sold-out Ridgewood release show already proving the songs’ physical pull, PODUNK feels built for rooms where people remember why guitars and gigs you don’t have to skip rent for still matter.

PODUNK is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Jim Laczkowsk penned a Nocturnal Love-Letter Lullaby with ‘by moonlight’

Posted on 19 July 2026
hold on by Jim Laczkowski

Jim Laczkowski delivers the kind of honeyed melancholy that stings, even when the bitterness is abstracted from the bitter-sweet dichotomy. The Chicago-based musician, writer, filmmaker and librarian has spent two decades recording and self-producing original songs for records and film soundtracks, and by moonlight, from his new album Hold On, is locked and loaded to disarm through grace.

Lyrically, the single drifts into a nocturnal take on You Are My Sunshine, followed by Neutral Milk Hotel-esque indie-folk experimentation to close out the accordant, rich and intimately eccentric performance. It is the ultimate indie lullaby for lovers who know the true beauty in connection lies in the simplest of moments; the moments that feel as tender as the timbres and harmonies in by moonlight.

Laczkowski’s voice carries the softer, more melodic side of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, but his artistic world is also shaped by film, literature and the kind of cultural devotion that led him to host Director’s Club, write about John Darnielle and compile Wilco covers to benefit Chicago venues. That wider creative life comes into focus with by moonlight, which feels curated by someone who understands memory as sound, image and feeling. With its Jeff Buckley-adjacent sensitivity and homespun glow, the single settles straight into the chest.

by moonlight is now available to stream on all major platforms. Support the artist by purchasing the single on Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Ricky Leroy – Feiern Vereint: a Bubblegum Eurodance Party-Pop Anthem for Full-Throttle Escapism

Posted on 19 July 2026

Guilty-pleasure party pop feels like a dying art form in the pool of sanitised posturing we are calling modern music, but Ricky Leroy is keeping absurdity alive with his latest single, Feiern Vereint. Born and raised in the USA, Leroy brings rodeo energy and an honest life force into the German Partyschlager scene, giving each one of his hits a personality that refuses tasteful restraint.

Carrying that unmistakable classic 90s Eurodance beat and infectiously cheeky vocals that spill hype at every turn, Feiern Vereint introduces splinters of modern production to the genre while preserving the bubblegum Europop sweetness. The result is shamelessly kinetic, festival-ready and engineered for communal release; it’s the kind of track that understands pleasure as a full-contact sport.

After early songs unexpectedly lit up a party, Leroy’s project moved from novelty to a serious prospect through Shooter Promotions, producers, labels and a creative link-up with star producer Stefan Vogel. Together, they created his ten-track debut album, Hier Geht die Party Ab!, a record built for singing along, dancing hard and surrendering to collective escalation.

Feiern Vereint sits perfectly inside that mission. Ideally, you will hear it with a beer in your hand, surrounded by raised arms at Malle, clubs, festivals, après-ski or any room allergic to self-seriousness.

Feiern Vereint is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Juliez Andrewz Cast an Ethereal Post-Punk Spell with the Semi-Lucid Sermon, The Forgotten

Posted on 18 July 2026

If Juliez Andrewz is good enough to grace the stage at the Whisky A Go-Go, they are worthy of a spot on your darkwave playlists. The alternative-rock project, led by guitarist and songwriter Jed Tyler, has been performing since 2018, building a reputation across the U.S. and Canada for professional shows, movement-stirring songs and a catalogue that already includes RocknRoll Girl, Life in Rewind, Other Voices and Something From Nothing.

With a Protomartyr-level of panache to their ethereal take on post-punk in their latest standout single, The Forgotten, the spoken-word lyrics become a semi-lucid technicolour sermon. Reverb glistens through the arrangement that borders on avant-garde art rock, refusing to follow formulaic rules while still giving listeners enough rhythmic pull to sink fully into its strange emotional architecture.

You could almost imagine the single drifting through a soundtrack to an indie arthouse flick in place of Dream Baby Dream by Suicide. The cinematic pull of The Forgotten intensifies through its intoxicating psychedelic swells, proving that Juliez Andrewz know exactly how to achieve the correct dosage when alchemising allegories that hold a mirror to societal atrocities.

After four appearances at the iconic West Hollywood venue, Juliez Andrewz sound primed to convert cult intrigue into wider underground devotion.

The Forgotten is now available to stream on all major platforms. For the full experience, watch the official music video on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Soul Dive – Shell of a Man: a Brashy Rock Breakout with Slacker Rock Swagger

Posted on 18 July 2026

Fresh faces in rock are always easy to underestimate, but that only makes being gripped by the brashy, euphoric adrenaline of Shell of a Man by Soul Dive all the more exhilarating. Hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the four-piece began where a lot of great rock bands do: in a garage, with loud guitars, raw vocals and a shared hunger to make music that actually makes you feel something.

So, imagine if the New York Dolls came onto the scene 20 years later and experimented with punk-riled slacker indie rock, then give that parallel sonic universe the melodic pull of 00s rock in the vein of Semisonic and The Calling, and you would end up with the infectiously authentic emotive pull and panache of Shell of a Man.

Rather than splicing together all the juiciest parts from the annals of rock, indie and punk in an attempt to create a Frankenstein’s monster of hook-rife rancour, Soul Dive organically make their music feel greater than the sum of its parts by the sheer will of their unfeigned imagination.

There is a wild current in the performance, as though you can feel the friction of Luca’s commanding vocals, Cristiano’s driving guitar, Santino’s rhythm and keys, and Rylan’s deep bass grooves pushing the track forward and rubbing against their determination to hook you into the momentum of their lyricism.

With influences spanning Pearl Jam, Green Day, The Black Keys, Radiohead, Audioslave, Metallica and Pink Floyd, Soul Dive are already naturally hungry for rooms as big as their sound.

Shell of a Man is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

close to u by Leea Clem Is Shadowy Dance Pop with Euphoria-Grade Seduction

Posted on 17 July 2026
LEEA CLEM

If Maddy from Euphoria made moody alt pop, it would struggle to match the same demure volition as the latest single, close to u, by the up-and-coming sensation Leea Clem. The independent Italian artist has stepped into a sharper phase of her career with a release that understands exactly how to weaponise desire without losing its dreamy echoes of yearning.

Vocal seduction drips over the shadowy progressive dance pop hooks as oscillations of cosmic retro-futurism make the production feel infinitely expansive. It is the kind of all-consuming earworm that refuses to resonate as sound alone; the swirling kaleidoscope of cinematic colour psychology creates a vignette of basement club lust as the beats sonically pump adrenaline straight into your veins.

After debuting in 2021 with A Universe Apart, releasing moving on through Sony Music distribution with support from Puglia Sounds, performing at Medimex Showcase and following with SWEET REVENGE in 2026, Clem already has the foundations of an artist ready to scale beyond underground admiration. Now as an independent entity, she’s more uninhibited than ever; if close to u is anything to go by, she’s at her zenith when refusing to soften herself and fit into someone else’s vision.

As a club anthem, prime material for international radio A-lists and a single with serious viral appeal, if close to u does not break into the mainstream, it will not be because it leaves anything to be desired. If anything, desire is the epicentre of close to u.

close to u is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Bitten Tongues Become Dreamy Alt Indie Rock Catharsis in Bushwick Princess’ Latest single, Temkins

Posted on 17 July 2026

Brooklyn trio Bushwick Princess channelled the pulled teeth of compromised peace into Temkins, a reverb-rich alt indie rock allegory steeped in post-grunge, melodic 90s rock and shoegazed art rock. The fourth single from their EP carries the strain of relationships stalled by stubbornness, pride and too much shared history, where potential remains visible while honest conversation stays trapped behind bitten tongues.

Matt Francini’s vocals drift through spectral Thom Yorke-esque harmonies and Cornell-reminiscent gravel, holding onto their honeyed vulnerability as angular guitars and choral bass movements swell around him. Kane Delaney’s drums give the arrangement shifting physicality, while Andrew Miller’s bass and synth work deepen the sense of emotional suspension. Every contortion in the production visualises the strain of loving someone through an impasse, accepting imperfection while swallowing the words that might disturb a fragile peace.

Francini’s classical background, years spent moving through blues, rock, alternative rock and industrial music, and later vocal training feed directly into the song’s precision and emotional reach. Recorded through a 100% DIY ethos in his Brooklyn apartment, Temkins carries the intimacy of something lived at close range. Its universalised alienation pulls the listener from a tiny interpersonal world into a spiralling vortex of connection, delivering a deliciously timbral, multisensory, synaesthesia-inducing experience with the philosophical force of discovering Kafka, Camus or Dostoyevsky for the first time.

Temkins was officially released on July 16th and is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast