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smog moss disfigure the boundaries of Boston’s punk scene in the lo-fi frenzy cop porn!

Posted on 14 June 2025

smog moss brought back the sweat, scum, and savagery of hardcore punk with cop porn!, a battering ram of barely structured rhythm and Machiavellian angst that gives the Boston duo’s disdain a set of teeth. The lo-fi chaos is more than just aesthetic in the distorted and discordant track that revels in rawness; it’s an essential component of the defiant and debased composition that scratches its name into the back of your skull before the one-minute mark.

While most punk projects rehash the past to keep their underground credibility, smog moss punches down the stylised expectations with a sound that has no intention of fitting inside the margins. Through the stripped-back instrumentation of a drum and bass setup, cop porn! manages to get louder than most five-piece outfits. It’s a nauseatingly adrenalised dirge wrapped in a warped bounce that mocks and maims with equal measure, and there’s no mistaking that it was born out of a scene that still sees cops as the enemy, not the caricatured antiheroes they’re becoming in some quarters of the mainstream.

Formed by Margot and Aidan, smog moss are currently desecrating the Boston underground with their self-described pond punk scum jazz noise. Whether their output is goofy or grotesque, it always has the power to leave you bruised and buzzing.

cop porn! is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast.

Smokecharmer Turned Protest into Grungy Groove Rock Power with ‘Breadline’

Posted on 14 June 2025

Breadline, the latest single by Smokecharmer, plugs into grungy Alice in Chains-esque sludgy tones and feeds early Black Sabbath-style weight into the intensity of the angst-charged release. There’s no room for partisanship here, just the outpouring of an artist sick of the suffocation of the inequality that leaves the majority scratching for a living while the rich pick our scabs as we asphyxiate.

Midway through the single, the amplification of angst drags you deeper into the static before the guitar solo threads its way through the stylised discord, offering an outlet for the fury instilled. Smokecharmer doesn’t rile their audience and leave them festering in scorn. The energy is sculpted, channelled, and given a sonic space worth returning to time and time again.

Founded by Stephen Taylor, whose past work with Sixteen Horsepower, Wovenhand, and Superjoint laid down his legacy in underground rock, Smokecharmer brings a new dimension to protest music. Alongside Michael Parent, Raul Garza and Andre Laurent, the band taps into grungy groove rock that holds just as much soul as it does sludge.

Breadline is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Smiling Jackals Sharpened the Edge of Addiction and Apathy in ‘Health Junkie’

Posted on 14 June 2025

Smiling Jackals didn’t just subvert the usual rock ‘n’ roll tropes in Health Junkie, they twisted the neck of tired clichés and bent James Dean Bradfield-esque guitar solos around cerebrally sardonic snarls until rock and punk created enough friction to singe the skin. The pulse of the progressions itches to break into the cataclysmic outcry of the choruses, but every moment of restraint and release is measured with magnetic precision.

There’s no empty swagger in Health Junkie, only feral finesse. Smiling Jackals are clearly on a mission to etch out a legacy with volition charged by intellectual firepower. The nostalgia-choked touches may nod to their formative sonic lineage, but there’s no coasting on borrowed memory. They weaponise the raw grungy fidelity as a conduit for angst, catharsis, and lyrical gold with enough weight to put them on the Forbes rich list, if sonic currency counted.

Reigniting the flame they lit before stepping back in the early 2000s, the trio’s return carries scars instead of sheen. Barry Sloane’s vocals hit like serrated confessionals, Nick Kilroe keeps the rhythm volatile and muscular, while Rob Nico’s lyrics cut between social commentary and spiritual unrest with riffs that kick like divine retribution.

Health Junkie is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Viktoria Kaufman Found Her Pulse in Folkloric Frequencies with the Electronica Debut ‘Heartbeat’

Posted on 13 June 2025

Heartbeat is the novelistic debut Viktoria Kaufman was destined to open with. The singer-songwriter found her sound in the intersections of electronica and folk; there, in the reverie of the uncharted territory, she planted the seeds to orchestrate her authentic brand of florescence. Paradoxically blossoming through synthesised melodies that carry all the naturalism and etherealism of traditional folk, complete with hypnotic oscillations and pulses of transcendent reverb, Heartbeat is a livable, breathable abstraction from the torn fabric of reality.

Her voice effortlessly aids escapism, but it’s her songwriting that turns every progression into revelation. Every chapter of this panoramic vignette tells a story forged in the tension of separation, belonging, and loyalty that beats louder in absence. There is no hollow performance here, only sincerity set to a celestial score. Kaufman set the bar high by wearing her heartstrings on her synths, but it would be foolish to expect anything but a triumphant return to mythic form with her sophomore single.

Born in Russia and now based in the UK, Kaufman used Heartbeat to preserve the emotional anchors she left behind. Slavic folk-inspired vocal layering underpins the devotion to her roots, while cinematic production shapes the sonic monument to soulmates distanced by time and fate. As her voice rises above the frostbitten ambient textures, she gives warmth to what the world often renders numb.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Mavi Veloso Queered the Pulse of the Club Scene ith ‘DLites’

Posted on 12 June 2025

Mavi Veloso smeared the club scene in erotic self-reclamation with DLites, taken from the seminal EP Her Blossoming Delights. After a glitchy intro that shakes you right out of your comfort zone, the dancefloor-ready revelation of mind-altering mantras versed through bilingual vocals starts to take hold around the experimental time signatures that ensnare you in the volatile rhythms.

Nothing is safe in DLites, and the innovative siren made that so much more than a design flaw. It’s a thematic device developed to disjoint the dancefloor as she embraces the cultivated chaos of a production that keeps the momentum pulsing through beats sharp enough to make trip-hop rhythms seem on an even keel.

As an anthem of liberation, DLites sensually caresses all the right spots while ticking every box expected from a voice as viscerally ungovernable and ideologically potent as Mavi Veloso. The club aesthetics become entangled with deeper cartographies of transfeminine desire and resistance, conjuring a mythos rooted in personal power and mythic decadence as DLites unravels.

Pulling threads of influence from Brazilian trans icon Cláudia Wonder and reworking her immersive performance art project Her Delights into a sonic manifesto, the Netherlands-based Brazilian polymath made DLites a space for both radical disorientation and rooted liberation. From the deconstructed vocals to the layered glitches and baile funk ruptures, Veloso makes you question where your body begins and the beat ends.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Dissolved Girl Delivered Existential Sensuality and Dystopian Grit in Alt-Electro Single Granite State

Posted on 12 June 2025

Dissolved Girl brought brutalism to the airwaves with their latest single, Granite State, released on the 30th of May. Reverb may cushion the blow in the architecture of this trip-hop-adjacent dark indie electro cascade into catharsis, but nothing masks the bruising impact. When the unsettling voice samples enter and the ethereal vocals start to drip with a subdued kind of existential sensuality, the distortion-slicked guitars pare back the production and deliver a white-hot solo that bleeds with finale flair, resulting in a release that takes root where reality grows raw.

Known for their cinematic edge, Dissolved Girl pushed their signature into new dimensions with Granite State. The bleak stylisation creates a mirror to the crumbling glamour of their own city, reflecting a truth more tangible than the stretch of escapist synthscapes that often feel too far removed to reach. Through dystopian elegance and viscerally magnetic production, the four-piece London outfit sharpened their edge without polishing away their purpose.

Fuelled by a shared love of 90s trip-hop, alt-rock abrasion, and dense sonic layering, Dissolved Girl took their time crafting their debut LP. With Dani Castelar at the helm of production and Matt Colton finalising the master, their sound digs deep into the hollowed-out spaces where genuine emotion still pulses. Their ever-rising Spotify play count and pending European tour plans are no fluke. Their intent is clear, and so is their trajectory.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Falc1 Transformed Romantic Reverence into a Desert-Born Swell of Emo-Folk in Desert Tears

Posted on 12 June 2025

Falc1 delivered a duskily dreamy indie folk serenade with Desert Tears, a reverie-wrapped love letter that lays it all on the line. With a clever and measured integration of 80s-esque reverb in a future-forward and genre-fluid arrangement, the track transcends style. It finds its definition in the resonance that reverberates between the acoustic and emotional architecture of the single.

The lyrics move like an impassioned swarm of poetry through the synchronicity of piano and acoustic guitars, amassing visceralism with every progression until the crescendo of amplified emotion. As that wave crests, it stings like a heartbreak vignette, but nothing is lost in the swell. The reprising admission of “I love that you’re mine” becomes a primal mid-western emo cry, soaking every syllable with soul and all the contradictions that come with love held tight through doubt and clarity.

Based in Toronto, Falc1 is no stranger to breaking moulds. With over 60 tracks to his name and a loyal audience built from the ground up through TikTok, he’s become a vital voice for the fans who live between genres and crave substance more than spectacle. Desert Tears proves he’s not trying to fit into a movement. He’s making his own. With new tracks landing monthly and momentum only building, Falc1 is an artist not just to keep on your radar, but to keep in your headphones on repeat.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Bliss Foxx Tore Through Alt-Rock Apathy with Grunge-Tinged Venom in ‘Stretch’

Posted on 11 June 2025

Stretch by Bliss Foxx is a viscerally infectious outpouring of pure grunge-tinged furore that picks up where Hole left off and catapults the sound into the future of cataclysmically cathartic alt-rock. The angst of the alt-90s still tears its way through the frenetic onslaught of the guitars that were never strung to know mercy as they chug to the blistering rhythm section, but there’s nothing retrograde about the fury in this release. Instead of choking the hit with nostalgia, Bliss Foxx prowled into the pantheon of contemporary alt-rock with all the mainstream appeal and magnetism of Destroy Boys and Amyl and the Sniffers. If you’re looking for a track to shake the cobwebs out of your synapses, look no further.

This Portland-hailing powerhouse didn’t just plug into a current. They generated it. With unapologetically raw hooks and an uncompromising attitude, they’ve taken the force of punk, the hooks of power pop, and the emotion of alternative rock and fed them through a distortion pedal soaked in sweat and swagger.

The vocals snarl, the momentum thrashes, and the attitude bleeds through every carefully calibrated blow, allowing Stretch to prove their capacity to write with venom while making it stick in your head like bubblegum.

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

Find other ways to connect with Bliss Foxx here. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Staytus Scrawled Blood on the Wall of Repression in ‘How to Be a Serial Killer’

Posted on 10 June 2025

Staytus’ latest seductive sonic onslaught is one of pure scathing scintillation. Even if Combichrist remixed a PJ Harvey track that gave way to one of the darkest impulses written into the human condition, it wouldn’t come close to How to Be a Serial Killer. Caustic snares and a relentlessly pulsative energy amplify the scorn in the vocals that hammer home what we can be driven to by people who push us to the edge, invoking the version of ourselves that salivates for rage-fuelled bloodlust within a macabre, mechanical and murky atmosphere.

It isn’t your ordinary offering of sonic catharsis, but for anyone who finds sanctity through vicarious sonic fantasy, there’s no one better to turn to than Staytus, the ultimate siren of a femme fatale who embodies vengeful glamour without ever flirting with cliché.

With scintillating production from Matt McJunkins at Secret Hand Studios, the industrial textures meet nu-metal volatility head-on, translating psychological unravelling into performance and noise. There’s venom in every syllable, precision in every drop, and a raw cinematic ferocity that lingers under the skin long after the final distortion burns out.

How to Be a Serial Killer is the final release in Staytus’ Twisted Frames series, a cinematic, visceral exploration of chaos, catharsis and fractured identity. Inspired by the cult horror-comedy it shares its name with, it holds a mirror up to inner madness without sanitising a single inch of the reflection. Staytus doesn’t hold anything back — and why should she?

How to Be a Serial Killer is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

John Arter and the Eastern Kings Turned Country Rock into a Thunderstorm Confession on ‘Last Ride’

Posted on 10 June 2025

John Arter and the Eastern Kings didn’t make it easy to articulate the sheer panoramic force of their whiskey-soaked Southern country rock sound in their latest standout single. The dusty Americana cinema of Last Ride hits with the force of a hurricane, sweeping anyone privileged enough to hear the phenomenon into the eye of the storm that embodies Americana culture. The raucous appeal of a splintering dive bar, the expanse of the open road, the fortitude of the people that keep the culture alive — it’s all there and roaring through the riffs.

The second single from their debut album, Not Just a Story, Last Ride is a whipcrack outlaw-country anthem that gives country rock its teeth back. With lap steel and twang-soaked guitars pouring gasoline over thunderous drums, the track never pauses for breath. Arter’s vocals almost defy belief with their gravity, the kind that could haunt the rafters of any bar and still command the silence of the room.

Formed around Arter’s raw, literary songwriting, the Eastern Kings are already redefining what UK Americana can sound like. Their concept album threads myth, memory, and modern turmoil into something unapologetically unfiltered. They’re not here to flirt with the genre; they’ve already poured blood into its soil.

What John Arter and the Eastern Kings did with Last Ride was so far beyond contributing to the Americana genre. They epitomised it and forced fresh blood into it on their own terms.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast