Browsing Tag

Synthpop

ROMAANCE Scattered Stardust and Synth Euphoria in ‘D.I.S.C.O.’

Posted on 16 September 2025

ROMAANCE chose to open their debut LP, Dust Among the Stars, with D.I.S.C.O., and from the first glint of synth strobe, they make it clear this is no ordinary dancefloor filler. Imagine a Kate Bush and The Human League mash-up, throw in a shot of Apoptygma Berzerk, finish it with the unflinching glamour of 80s Madonna, and you will be somewhere near the sonic cosmos ROMAANCE have crafted.

So much more than a sequence of synth pulses, phasers, and chameleonic harmonies, D.I.S.C.O. is the vision of a dualistic force leaving neon confetti in your rhythmic pulses and the glitter-ball glow of transcendence in your chest. Each progression lands like a new revelation, defying its electronica foundations with humanistic oscillations of pure devotion as the vocals sanctify the altar we find on the dancefloor.

The elusive collective, brought to life by Jason Wann, doesn’t just flirt with disco-pop euphoria, they command it with cinematic gravitas, turning Dust Among the Stars into a place for star-crossed dancers to finally find themselves.

D.I.S.C.O. is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Tyomlee Scorched Synthpop with Carnal Euphoria in His Queer Anthem, ‘Like a Fire’

Posted on 31 August 2025

If you like your synthpop hot, scorch your playlists with the heat in Like a Fire, the latest single from Tyomlee. The euphorically carnal earworm slips into uncharted intersections between house, EBM, and synthpop while strobing neon synaesthesia through the taut contours of the queer pop anthem. Its pulse is primal, its atmosphere feverishly intoxicating, and its resonance lies in how unashamedly it refuses to obey convention.

Clearly, Tyomlee disrupts more than binaries through identity; through their discography, they spark a seductive sonic signature that thrives on pure, unfiltered expression. Like a Fire is less a track designed for easy consumption and more a manifestation of the hazy transcendence born in underground club culture. It’s sweat, lust, and liberation, stitched together in a rejection of aural heteronormativity.

As a queer artist, Tyomlee has made it their mission to fold personal experiences of identity, passion, and transformation into sound. With Like a Fire, they celebrate desire and the burning intensity of self-expression while affirming solidarity with the trans community.

Like a Fire is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Peter Horton crooned romanticism into the heart of indie with the radiant synth-soaked seminal single, ‘Róisín Dubh’

Posted on 5 August 2025

Peter Horton crooned romanticism right back into the heart of indie with his latest seminal single, Róisín Dubh. There’s nothing synthetic about the 80s aesthetic that gets serenaded through every progression in the revelation of a single that finds a myriad of ways to tantalise you with every nuanced twist in timbre.

If you’ve found that most new wave indie synth pop artists are distinctly lacking in soul, Róisín Dubh will never disappoint; affection cascades from the release as much as the lush reverb spills radiant light across each melodic line.

Pulled from his EP, ‘Who You Are’, Róisín Dubh is steeped in the kind of authenticity that comes from examining your own relationships, your travels, and finding your way to the core of who you are. Horton’s affinity for 80s music oscillates through his sonic signature, setting his story of self-reflection and passion against a backdrop of shimmering New Wave-inspired synthpop.

The single’s namesake is a nod to a legendary music club in Galway, Ireland, a city where Horton once studied abroad in 2011 – it’s that memory, and a desire to channel the spirit of a night lost in a club’s neon haze, that brought this single to life, resulting in a radiant and soulfully honest release that lets listeners bathe in both nostalgia and new light.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Maxell’s Psychedelic Indietronica Debut ‘Hide and Seek’ Taps Into the Ether

Posted on 27 November 2024
https://www.youtube.com/@wearemaxell

Maxell, a London-based trio, might be a fledgling force, but with a synth-driven sound more psychedelically potent than anything you can buy in a back alley in Camden and the wealth of experience they bring from other bands, they’re proving to be unreckonable.

Following an intro which hits with the pulse of She Wants Revenge, their memento-musing debut single, ‘Hide and Seek’ soon twists into a stylistically embellished installation of Avant-Garde indietronica.

The synths distort into kaleidoscopic oscillations as they synergise around the shimmering organ tones and delay-saturated guitars, creating an entrancing backdrop for the ethereally crystalline vocal lines, which paradoxically carry immense weight as they embed the lyrics deep into the listener’s psyche.

If you have a lot of love for Legendary Pink Dots, you may as well hand your heart over to Maxell and their signature ‘hauntology’ sound now.

Stream the official music video for Hide and Seek on YouTube or head over to Bandcamp where you can purchase the single; all proceeds from this single will be donated to the homeless charity, Crisis UK.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

80s euphoria grooved back around through Electraverb’s debut LP, NEON

Posted on 23 July 2024

In their debut LP, NEON, the synthpop duo, Electraverb, crafted a euphoric gateway to the 80s dancefloors. I Feel the Music, the standout single, ensnares through delicious grooves, neon-dripping chords, and sensuously magnetic vocal lines; each element ties together not just to revisit an aural era but to fuel it with contemporary fervour.

From the ashes of their previous project, Stoneblue, the founding members, Chris and Mazdak, seamlessly transitioned their synergy, catchy melodies and intricate guitar work which resounded through London’s synthpop scene in the 90s into their new project which marks their maturity as earworm architects.

The addition of esteemed backing vocalists Jo Garland and Shirley Lewis, known for their work with icons like George Michael and Elton John, is a testament to Electraverb’s determination to push their sound to the heights celebrated by their influences.

If you envisioned an aural love child of The Human League, Kraftwerk and George Michael, you’d conjure a reflection of the scintillating soul which oscillates through I Feel the Music which delivers hypnotic rhythms as the harsh snares pierce the lush reverb under the harmonised to the nines vocals.

NEON was officially released on June 14th; stream the LP in full via Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Anxious affection resounds in The Good Neighbors’ synth-swathed synthesis of alt-pop and indie-rock, Room for You

Posted on 4 March 2024

The Good Neighbors borrowed a cup of earmilk from The Strokes for their latest single, Room for You, before pouring it into a synth-swathed production that eclipses the contemporary indie synthwave trend.

After moving away from their syntheses of alt-rock and punk, The Good Neighbors aligned their creative ambitions with their passion for painting across the alt-pop and indie-rock spectrum. Room for You not only exhibits the duo’s softer side; you can FEEL the authenticity, soul and delicious devil-may-care approach to constraint-less fusionism. The seminal single is uninhibited expression in scintillatingly melodic motion.

The jazzy neo-pop middle eight extends the experimentalism to the nth degree to assert the Buffalo, NY-hailing duo as genre fusionists that are a cut above the rest as they regale a vignette of anxious affection and explore the neuroscience of expanding our minds to accommodate people capable of turning our world’s upside down. Hit play and meet your new aural addiction.

Room for You will hit the airwaves on March 1st. Stream the single on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The Rude Awakening subverted the synthpop scene with surrealism with their latest single, She Has a Juice Box

Posted on 24 November 2023

The UK synthpop duo The Rude Awakening has amassed an ardent following since their debut with their tendency to give ‘adult listening’ a brand-new meaning and their habit of allowing fiction to create friction with reality in their subversively surreal soundscapes. Their long-awaited third single, She Has a Juice Box, from their forthcoming album is by no means an exception to their originality, which opens a wormhole of mind-altering escapism.

The Kraftwerk-y orchestration thrives on abstract lyricism, which compels your imagination to go into overdrive to connect the conjectured dots, and this was wholly intentional given the duo’s encouragement of subjective takes on the track; I’m not sure even Freud could get to the bottom of this one, but I can’t help loving The Rude Awaking more for the mental gymnastics their innovation demanded.

The radio edit of She Has a Juice Box and the old-skool 12” remix will be released on November 24th; hear it on Spotify and Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

Dream Optimist sugared sonic soul before pouring it into their spacey synthpop single,  Think Gently of Yourself

Posted on 9 September 2023

Silence the maleficence of your inner critic with the latest interstellar indie space pop escapade, Think Gently of Yourself, from Dream Optimist. If Do You Realize by The Flaming Lips never fails to pull at your heartstrings and stir your soul with unabashed positivity, the same viscerally sweet reaction awaits when you hit play on the seminal single from Dream Optimist’s 15-track LP, Seven Day Love Challenge.

Atop the twinkling Grandaddy-esque keys and around the chamber strings, the questioning and pervasive with doubt lyricism leads you on an affirming odyssey of a journey through the cosmos, with the consolingly compassionate vocals acting as a star-roving guide.

The Oakland, CA-residing songwriter and composer, frequently voyages between synthpop, bedroom pop, chamber pop and a myriad of other genres when penning his hits for his ‘low head count collective’. Before breaking into song crafting for the airwaves, the collective’s head honcho, David Marc Siegel, honed his talents in art-punk outfits and as a composer for ad music, theatre music, musical theatre, and short films, which goes a fair way in explaining how he settled on his cinematically spirited sound that will take you as high as the transcendent register on the vocal harmonies.

Stream Think Gently of Yourself by heading over to Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The sonic raconteur of space-age tales Robert Ramirez held a mirror to our future with his single, Migrate

Posted on 27 July 2023

With a music video more compellingly dystopic than the latest season of Black Mirror, the standout single, Migrate, from Robert Ramirez’s debut LP, is one small step for synthwave and one giant leap for synthkind.

As the polyphonically playful synths hammer down in a scintillatingly ethereal atmosphere, the Migrate lyrics and music video tell the tale of an android venturing to an underground lab where human emotions are extracted and sold. Given the rapid rates of technological progression and the rising levels of ennui, the concept that brought Migrate viscerally to life under Ramirez’s deft touch as a composer and sonic raconteur of space-age tales won’t be farfetched for long.

Boldly going further back than most synthpop artists dare to roam, Ramirez also dabbled in late 70s-esque synthetics reminiscent of Thomas Dolby, Telex and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

The official music video for Migrate Premiered on July 13th; stream it on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Sandor Gavin borrowed from 80s synthpop pioneers in his captivatingly lush synthwave single, Ghost of a Memory ft Weldon

Posted on 27 June 2023

For his latest single, Ghost of a Memory, the Synthwave sensation, Sandor Gavin, borrowed the mesmeric vocal timbre of the featuring artist, Weldon, to leave the airwaves awash with nostalgia, emotion, and captivatingly lush melodies.

There is a strange assumption amongst artists and producers that when summer hits everyone is drunk on love and desperate to hear anthems which capture the euphoria of lust. Thankfully, Sandor Gavin injected realism into his latest synthwave crusade to help his audience through the minefield of lost love and shattered dreams.

The relatability of his crushed romanticism does so much more than just scratch at the surface of superficiality. Everything within Ghost of a Memory runs deep, from the basslines to the ennui to the reverberant hums emanating from the vocals, ensuring that the bitter-sweet release hits all the right marks.

Ghost of a Memory hit the airwaves on June 16; stream it on SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast