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Dream-Pop

Starleen Turn Evolution // Rebirth: A Lynchian Alt-Pop Ritual for Souls Surviving the Machine

Posted on 29 May 2026

Starleen, the electronic alt-pop duo based in Dallas, Texas, opened Evolution // Rebirth like a forgotten piece of Lynchian cinema, with an official music video that feels almost macabre in its dystopian disquiet. From the first frame, the single establishes a world where rebirth arrives through unease, metallic pressure, and bodies moving against the architecture of control.

Tension keeps creeping into the production as ethereal tones collide with harsh industrial-adjacent electronic motifs. Droning reverberations enmesh with scintillating sources of sonic light while the duo assert a hymnal, arcane vocal presence into the single, turning the track into an altar for transformation with cinematic severity. The arrangement feels ceremonial, bruised by the machinery of modern life, yet its ethereal centre keeps reaching towards catharsis.

The music video reimagines the aesthetics of The Matrix through an arthouse lens; delicate dance choreography juxtaposes cold, harsh cityscapes with grace as the ultimate exposition on what it means to keep your soul alive in the harsh reality of our world. Through its noir-lit futurism, industrial ache, and spectral alt-pop intensity, Evolution // Rebirth becomes a statement on survival, growth, evolution, and the spiritual act of respawning with more light than the world tried to leave you with.

Starleen Said:

“This song paired with its visuals really sets the tone for the full-length coming out later this year. After years of working together, we believe we have finally found the sound for us. Visually, we are leaning more towards having other artists tell the story through their talents. We were amazed by what Evelyn Phan brought on set that day, and during the rain! Keanu Cordero directed while Ryan Ritchie handled the cinematography.

Both Zachary and I feel that this song, along with the rest of the album, is finally telling a story we’ve been trying to tell for some time now. We feel optimistic about the future and are grateful for the experience of creating art with amazing people.”

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Evolution // Rebirth is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify. For the full experience, watch the official music video on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Luka Sol’s Killin’ It Floods the Soul with Neon Strobes and Synth-Heavy Self-Belief

Posted on 27 May 2026

Luka Sol’s second single, Killin’ It, from his sophomore LP, Mirrors, paints him as an unreckonable alt-pop force who will never be caught bringing a knife to a gunfight. As a master of bridging the gaps between new wave synth pop, RnB, and dream pop with pure, iridescent emotion, he has gone beyond attempting to stay ahead of the curve; his synth-heavy sonic signature sits in a whole other stratosphere from the nostalgia-clingers.

Like a synthesis of all the most affecting aspects of The Midnight, The Human League, Kraftwerk, and The Weeknd, Killin’ It is an earworm that endears its way into your soul and floods your rhythmic circuitry with neon-lit strobes of interstellar kinetic energy. Co-produced with Courtney Ballard and Jared Poythress, the single carries the raw force of drowning out external noise and internal doubt, turning defiance into an atmospheric anthem for late-night reckoning.

Behind Luka Sol is Shawn Day, an artist, DJ, and producer shaped between Los Angeles and Sheridan, Wyoming. After Stargaze charted on Spotify and reached 120,000 streams within its first two weeks, Killin’ It affirms his ability to build cinematic alt-pop around isolation, ambition, and hard-won self-belief.

Killin’ It is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Anni Hung Turned Stillness into Sublime Indie Folk Motion and Raw Yearning in ‘A Piece of Peace’

Posted on 5 May 2026

In a world that celebrates the loudest voices and overlooks the introverted minds that wind around the intricate beauties and tragedies of life, Anni Hung still triumphs in breaking through the noise with her delicate compositions, achieving the seemingly impossible by easing her international fanbase out of the frantic pace of modernity and subduing them in a hypnotised stupor. A Piece of Peace is the perfect introduction to the sublimity of her sound, which embraces stillness, puts it into languidly ornate motion, and moves people to tears in the process.

It’s the kind of song that would stick with you more than the plot if you heard it in a soundtrack. Under the euphonic sublimity of the ambient indie chamber pop instrumentals and Hung’s whispered bilingual vocals, there’s a rawness; a demonstration of what it means to yearn for peace in a relentless world, and find the bitter-sweet sanctuary. The arrangement feels featherlight, but the emotional weight settles deep.

Taiwanese singer-songwriter Anni Hung, now based in London, has built her world around minimal indie folk, warm vocals, and simple acoustic arrangements, with her live presence growing across the UK and Europe, including a sold-out headline show at The Social. That intimacy and care runs through A Piece of Peace, making it feel personal, patient, and profoundly affecting.

A Piece of Peace is now available to stream on all major platforms. For the full meditative experience, stream the official music video on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Siren Song by First Robin Wraps Indie-Folk Pop Around Seduction, Devastation and Diaphanous Euphony

Posted on 5 May 2026

Lush with weightless whimsical feeling, the sophomore single from indie singer-songwriter First Robin cradles you in euphony so diaphanous and ornate that you might be hesitant to breathe through fear of disrupting the arcane atmosphere of Siren Song.

Following on from her successful debut single, Spider Veins, First Robin has remained committed to projecting the intimate aches of womanhood. The airwaves are flooded with pop songs seared with growing pains, but there’s a maturity to Siren Song as she relays the lingering pains of the fragility of femininity through poetic lyrical devices and angelic motifs that allow you to envisage cherubs fluttering around the musings of how inspiration and seduction rarely come without devastation.

It’s a stunning release from a phenomenal voice, who has the effortlessly beguiling presence of Dolores O’Riordan; coincidentally, her sound shares a similar pensive depth to The Cranberries, all off the back of her expansively emotive authenticity.

While some artists stay in their own lane, First Robin has her own orbit and turns hyper-specific feeling into something broadly human, letting indie-folk and subtle dream pop textures carry the emotional undercurrent with rich resonance. Siren Song circles the dangerous line between temptation and ruin with grace, wisdom, and enough melodic strength to leave a long afterglow.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

antwan_nawtna’s Experimental Hip-Hop Fever Dream, Mango Flavoured Lips, Hits with an 8-Bit Sugar Rush

Posted on 3 May 2026

The irreplaceably one and only hip-hop titan of experimentalism, antwan_nawtna, has dropped his new EP, AntwanWonka, and if you thought you heard it all with his carnivalesque, quasi-macabre 2025 LP, Cirque du Ghoul/Antwan’s Circus, the EP will force you to adjust the parameters of your perceptions of the artist and his limitless eccentricity.

Drifting into a dreamier, trappier, more psychedelically lush palette with the standout single, Mango Flavoured Lips, the independent emissary of quirky urban alchemy found himself in 8-bit territory; the tones are bathed in a celestial glow, adding a sense of fantastical scintillation to the production, which draws to a close and leaves you feeling like you’ve just awoken from the most sugary fever dream known to man.

There is a narcotic softness to the atmosphere, but antwan_nawtna keeps the track strange, playful, and unmistakably left of centre, letting the synth tones glimmer while the rhythm rolls through with a woozy late-night gait. The way he bends hip-hop into something so surreal and game-lit gives Mango Flavoured Lips its own unruly magic. Based out of the South Eastside of Chicago, antwan_nawtna continues to prove that underground rap still has plenty of room for imagination, oddity, and fearless tonal mutation when it’s in the hands of someone willing to warp the frame.

Mango Flavoured Lips is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Get Caught in the 2010s Indie Afterglow with the Ethereal Oscillations in LORI USAI’s Masterstroke of Melancholia, ‘Wet Denim’

Posted on 24 April 2026

With more style than a cover of Vogue and as a haunting indie callback to that 2010s sweet spot when Warpaint, Poliça, Wolf Alice, Lorde, and London Grammar sat deep in the cultural bloodstream, LORI USAI’s standout single, Wet Denim, hypnotises you into its ethereal oscillations of melancholia. There’s a lived-in emotional intelligence to the way she handles atmosphere, making the track feel less like a throwback and more like a continuation of everything that made that era hit so hard in the first place. Her writing circles what remains when self-deception falls away, when longing, loneliness and obsession are left exposed without anything neat to hide behind.

Even when playing with elements of discordance, the release stays committed to catharsis, keeping the production euphorically lush through its torrid spells of riled-up feeling. The luminous synths and quasi-cosmic indie pop aesthetics temper the romanticism of LORI USAI, who feels fully attuned to the torture of letting emotions run deeper than surface level. There’s heartbreak, but also shame, hope, anger, and that strange state of breaking apart while still feeling feverishly alive.

Wet Denim is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Polyphonic Pop for People Who Text and Delete in Gabriella Lin’s ‘Like I Used To’

Posted on 13 April 2026

Gabriella Lin has perfected the art of delivering bitter-sweet euphony through polyphonic pop harmonies, evidenced in her latest leagues-ahead-of-the-curve single, Like I Used To. Imagine if Sabrina Carpenter’s songs weren’t engineered to simply be superficial ear candy, then envisage Taylor Swift if she were actually relatable, and you’ll get an idea of what the indie singer-songwriter delivered with Like I Used To, which lingers in the push-and-pull tension of a relationship where complete radio silence is the only absolute until it is broken in yet another rekindling of a romance that was never going to fully bloom.

There is a very specific emotional space this single lives in, the aftermath, the almosts, the texts you type and delete, the strange comfort of unfinished stories. The polyphonic harmonies act like emotional echoes, reinforcing the sense that nothing in this relationship ever truly ends; it just pauses, regroups, then starts again under slightly different circumstances. The songwriting leans into emotional honesty and narrative clarity with almost a Y2K conversational candour, allowing the listener to sit inside the unresolved tension and resonate within it.

Raised between New Zealand and Southern China before later studying at Berklee College of Music, Gabriella Lin brings a global perspective and a musical theatre-influenced understanding of melody and storytelling into her indie pop sound, which will undoubtedly travel further than she has during her trips around the sun.

Like I Used To is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Tokyo’s RAINBOW BELTZ built a monolithic monument of ethereal visceralism in their shoegaze single, 246

Posted on 11 March 2026

‘Sonorous’ hardly scratches the surface of the full-frontal production in 246, the latest single from the Tokyo-based powerhouse RAINBOW BELTZ. The track arrives as a colossal surge of sound, pushing its momentum forward with a pulsating, oscillating energy that feels almost physical in its impact. The production asserts itself with monolithic force, creating an atmosphere that floods the senses while still allowing the song’s melodic core to shine through the haze.

Even the most impermeable walls of sound raised by shoegaze pioneers would struggle to match the intensity of 246. The release thrums with kaleidoscopically hazed momentum, allowing indie dream-pop harmonies to ascend above the intrinsically melodic tumult. Those harmonies glide across the arrangement with diaphonous elegance, hovering above the surging instrumentation while the rhythm section drives the track forward with relentless propulsion.

The way the sound resounds, the way the release becomes greater than the sum of its parts, and the way RAINBOW BELTZ establish their own viscerally ethereal sonic signature all contribute to a listening experience that exhibits a band with a cultivated approach to scale and texture. Their ability to turn dense arrangements into something almost surreally luminous is something not easily forgotten.

246 is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Jake Marsh reached the epitome of sublimity the indie pop boy-next-door bubble of candour, ‘edge of the bed’

Posted on 5 March 2026

Being a bedroom pop artist never used to be a badge of honour, yet Jake Marsh has helped elevate the intimate genre with his debut album, edge of the bed. The record ticks every box for that candour-by-candlelight immersion, or the blue glow of a screen at 2 a.m., carrying the familiar sensation of a diary entry drifting across the airwaves. Marsh’s songwriting leans fully into that closeness, allowing listeners to sit in the quiet of his thoughts rather than merely observe them from afar.

The album opens confidently with magnets, where Marsh fuses his cultivated command of a fretboard with the humility that defines his lyrical presence. There’s a disarming sincerity in the way he lets the listener wander through the dreamy hues of infatuation. The grooves lock the opening track firmly into a new-wave pop lane, while the soft sonorous production constructs a weightless corridor of reverie to stroll through.

Across the record, Marsh reveals an eclectically constraint-less songwriting approach, guided by vocal melodies that feel effortlessly mellifluous. It’s the sort of LP that provides refuge when the weight of reality becomes too loud, wrapping you inside a bubble of boy-next-door charm and understated warmth. Rather than glorifying heartbreak theatrics, the debut encourages listeners to pay attention to the delicate tug of sincerity that pulls far deeper.

Originally from New York City, Marsh wrote and produced the album in his bedroom studio, penning over 40 tracks before curating the LP into 11 tracks which (subjectively) peak with ‘medusa’; a track that glows with diaphanous dream-pop textures and transcendental timbre, revealing the honeyed sincerity that has already attracted more than 36,000 monthly Spotify listeners worldwide.

edge of the bed is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Liliana de la Rosa – haunted by roses: Melancholic Fantasia in Dark-Pop Form

Posted on 13 February 2026
Liliana de la Rosa

Liliana de la Rosa opens haunted by roses with the same arcane pull that shapes her wider creative world, letting the cinematic sweep breathe through a sound that leans into shadow and soft ruin. In haunted by roses, she scores cinematic etherealism which transcends trends, and material reality to boot; drifting away from the monotony that bites on our souls to veer into the weightlessness of melancholic fantasy. The track feels like a quiet slip into where desire glows at the edges and pain turns strangely luminous, guided by her hypnotic siren presence.

Her non-lexical harmonies rise with that arcane power she channels so naturally, creating the sense of a portal being held open. The lyrical burn ignited by a love turned toxic carries its own sting, especially as she sketches out corsets catching fire, a heart torn apart, and a love slipping into ghostly territory. Through her unique vision, emotion lands in the liminal space where hopeless romantics and poetry-soaked souls tend to linger. It sweeps through the darker corners of longing, yet it offers relief in the same breath, giving listeners a route out of their emotional weight rather than leaving them drowning in it.

Her background as an actress and visual creator shapes the world around the track; she has spent years moulding an aesthetic and choreographed tension build a universe that pulls you in with ease. As she continues expanding her catalogue for a full 2026 reveal, it is clear that her approach to dark-alternative pop is grounded in instinct and imagery. This debut serves as a doorway into the world she has been quietly constructing, one where beauty, fantasy, and danger circle each other without losing momentum.

haunted by roses is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast