Editors' Picks

Sometimes simplicity is all it takes to spread your message, and Sam Fischer showcases that wonderfully with his newest single, Hopeless Romantic.

Brakence comes back from an agonizing slumber with arguably his greatest song yet, argyle.

It’s been a decade since Frank Carter left Gallows, but it’s only in the last few years as the firebrand vocalist has established his newest band as one of the most thrilling live acts currently out there, that you sense everything has started to fall into place. Because now, with their fourth album in six years now out there in the wild, and that reputation for showmanship of the highest order firmly established, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are getting the credit they deserve. 

California rockers We Are Scientists have a special relationship with the UK. They arrived on the scene at the time that indie was going through a reinvention in the UK, and fans on our fair shores took their 2006 debut album With Love And Squalor to their hearts, sending it Gold and earning a dedicated if slightly cult following over here. In the years since, that fan base has stuck with We Are Scientists, and their live shows and albums have always done well.

British singer songwriter Calum Scott, who many may remember from his appearance on the 2015 season of Britain’s Got Talent, has dropped a new single this week, which BBC Radio 2 have made their Record of the Week.

New England folk singer and songwriter Dar Williams made her full debut with The Honesty Room way back in 1993, and in the years since has earned comparisons with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez (who helped launch her career, but more on that later). Williams has won a loyal following for her insightful, gentle, but powerful songwriting and voice. And somehow, she’s also found the time to write, including two young-adult novels and a green blog for Huffpost, conduct songwriting workshops, and complete her urban-planning study, published in 2017: What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America's Communities — One Coffee Shop, Dog Run & Open-Mike Night at a Time.

Irish singer songwriter Gavin James has teamed up with Ollie Green (who contributed to Tom Grennan’s number one album Evering Road) and Fiona Bevan (who co-wrote One Direction’s hit Little Things with none other than Ed Sheeran) for his new track Greatest Hits. And sonically, it’s a real sea change for James, who is perhaps most widely known for his gentle acoustic touch, most recently heard on his fantastic EP from last year, Boxes.

North-east native Sam Fender is a young man with the world at his feet. From being named one of the BBC’s Sounds of 2018 to winning the Critics Choice Award at the 2019 Brit Awards, he and his debut album Hypersonic Missiles have been hoovering up accolades like they were as scarce as petrol. And with good reason too, Hypersonic Missiles was a gem, a record that, despite its youthful stance, in many ways bellied the tender years of its creator, a smart and accomplished collection that couldn’t obviously be bettered.

Having scored the biggest hit of his career to date alongside Nonô with 12 million+ streams for ‘Sorry’, TCTS again teams up with the Brazilian vocal sensation for their brand new ‘Off My Mind’. The track represents his first release under a new deal with Insanity Records. 

One of the greatest bass players in modern times has returned with a new single coming from her Grammy-winning magnum opus, 12 Little Spells, titled Formwela 10 which showcases once again the rawness of her ideas, and the beauty of her talent.

Coming out strong with a slightly-more-accessible second single, Invisible Monster, from their upcoming fourteenth album A View from Atop of the World, Dream Theater prove that thirty years of legacy have done nothing but refine their chops and their songwriting skills.

Dublin indie grunge trio HAVVK attracted attention with their self titled EP in 2016, and it’s follow up She Knows in 2017, before their debut album Cause & Effect, a stunning record that explored some big themes, brought their music to a wider audience. New album Levelling landed this week and, I’m delighted to report, keeps the fury and frenzy alive, while being just as lyrically intriguing as its predecessor.

Comprised of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker, indie rock minimalists Low have been enchanting fans with their vocal interplay and drop dead gorgeous musical arrangements since the early 1990s. Up until relatively recently though, their formula remained largely unchanged, until their 2015 album Ones And Sixes signalled a significant change in direction as they incorporated new sounds and began working with producer BJ Burton. 

Australian singer, songwriter and record producer Matthew Victor Kopp, otherwise known as Running Touch, first rose to prominence as the guitarist for, and founding member of, nu metal band Ocean Grove in his homeland roughly a decade ago. However, Kopp struck out on his own in the mid noughties, releasing a string of singles and an EP, A Body Slow, in the years that followed.

Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier, better known as Andrew W.K., was one of the big breakthroughs of the early noughties alternative revival. His single Party Hard was a mainstay of rock club nights up and down the country, while the album that spawned it earned rave reviews and featured in many critics ‘album of the year’ rundowns, and gained a solid following, partly fuelled by the (at the time) controversy over the cover image of the blood-stained star himself.

As one of the defining musicians of the 1990s Britpop era, Graham Coxon had absolutely nothing to prove. However, that hasn’t stopped the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from producing a huge range of solo material away from the band with whom he made his name. And that material has been as varied as it has been rewarding, from the folky garage rock of The Sky Is Too High and the indie classic Happiness In Magazines, to the predominantly acoustic The Spinning Top and beyond.

The British heavy metal titans, godfathers of power metal, and one of the strongest forces in rock are back with their first new single since their latest album, 2015’s Book Of Souls, titled Stratego, from their upcoming album Senjutsu.

Johnny Flynn is a man of many talents. From carving out a reputation (and rightfully so) as the UK’s premier folk artist, to starring on the stage and silver screen, and racking up a huge amount of awards wins and nominations over the years, there’s seemingly very little the South African born superstar can’t turn his hand to. 

Las Vegas four-piece Imagine Dragons are an intriguing outfit. They are, by almost every modern metric that matters, one of the most blisteringly successful bands of the last decade. Billboard ranks their singles Believer, Thunder, and Radioactive as the three biggest rock songs of the 2010s in the US charts, they were Spotify’s most streamed outfit in 2018, and they’ve surpassed 20 million album sales worldwide. And yet, they just don’t seem to have been welcomed into our consciousness in the same way acts like The Killers, in many ways the band that paved the way for their success, have been.

Anyone who has set for inside a club on indie night at some time in the last decade will be familiar with The Vaccines, the London five-piece having carved out a name for themselves as one of the leaders of the current generation of dancefloor-filling, guitar-wielding pack of bands that also includes the likes of The Wombats, The Kooks and The Courteeners. 

For a band who have continually reinvented themselves over the years, from the young androgynous punk upstarts who gave us Generation Terrorists, to the virtiolic The Holy Bible era, and the Britpop conquering albums Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the Manic Street Preachers 14th studio LP The Ultra Vivid Lament still carries with it a big surprise.

London’s own Oscar Lang had an alarmingly busy 2020. Despite the Coronavirus pandemic torpedoing live music, Lang saw his stock rise considerably, releasing not one, not two, but three EPs – Overthunk came first, then Hand Over Your Head, before Antidote To Being Bored rounded out an incredibly, and surprisingly, productive year.

American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and photographer Faye Webster got what was, by any definition of the phrase, a big break when, at the end of last year, none other than former President of the United States of America Barack Obama picked her track Better Distractions for his end of year ‘best of’ list. 

Having carved his name into the list of the last decade’s biggest indie troubadours with his smash hit Another Love (520 million plays on Spotify and counting), a song that will play long into the night at weddings up and down the land for years to come, Chichester singer-songwriter Tom Odell could have ridden off into the sunset, his future and legacy secure, safe in the knowledge his music is loved by many.

Twenty-two-year-old singer songwriter Claire Cottrill – known better as Clairo – began posting her music online around six years ago, quickly winning fans with her unflinchingly honest and real stories. 2017’s lo-fi track Pretty Girl, and it’s accompanying homemade video, proved to be something of a breakthrough, wracking up close to 80 million views on YouTube to date, and leading to her penning a deal with Fader Label, who dropped her debut album Infinity in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim.

If you were looking for a measure of quite how successful The Killers have been in the UK, how completely we’ve taken the Las Vegas outfit to our hearts, then the fact that Mr Brightside, their defining, signature hit, recently passed 280 weeks in the UK top 100 is it. By that metric, it is the most successful song ever released here, and it’s not even close – Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, itself a chart behemoth, is it’s nearest rival with a paltry (by comparison) 166 weeks in the top 100.

For now, Jake Bugg arguably remains Nottingham’s biggest recent star, but he should be wary because hot on his heels in Chloe Rodgers, the latest breakthrough act to emerge from the city’s burgeoning underground scene.

Northumberland-born singer Jade Bird’s self-titled debut album was chock full of gorgeous acoustic guitar and Americana-influenced vocals and songwriting. It reached the top ten of the UK albums chart, and topped the UK Americana chart, making Bird a rising star in the field of contemporary country music. And so, when she decamped to New York and Nashville to work on a followup, it seemed likely that Bird would continue in a similar vein. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

Finneas’ newest single, The 90s, is a harmonious lament with plenty of production tricks and polish expected in a Finneas track.

When the then seventeen-year-old Jake Bugg burst out of the Nottingham suburb of Clifton and onto the Glastonbury stage a decade ago, with his tales of teenage life told in his distinctive and entrancing drawl, he was an almost instant sensation. As the hype built and his songs filled the airwaves, he seemed to be on the verge of becoming the UK’s defining indie star of the decade, a new Gallagher brother for the Snapchat generation. 

In one of the most ambitious and unexpected collaborations of all time, Earth Wind & Fire, Lucky Daye, and Babyface put their talents together to rework and modernize the first’s classic song “Can’t Hide Love” under the new name “You Want My Love”.

RINI’s newest single, Red Lights, not only serves as a wonderful neo-soul song, but might be one of the artist’s greatest song.

The progressive rock gods are back with their first single, “The Alien”, from their upcoming album “A View from the Top of the World”, with a new heavier edge and clear progression from their latest effort “Distance Over Time”. 

In a new fun twist to pop punk, We Are Scientists did a wonderful job bringing new life to the genre in their newest single, “Handshake Agreement”.

A bit of pop, a bit of folk, a bit of rock, and a whole lotta Finneas, the young artist’s newest single, “A Concert Six Months From Now” is a beautiful journey that takes you through just about every emotion one might face in the midst of a pandemic-induced confinement.

All good artists evolve, and The Weeknd has shown in the last couple years that the sky truly is the limit when it comes to his musicality. In a continuation of the 80s inspired sound from After Hours, his newest single “Take My Breath” is a deeper exploration into the sounds that brought an entire generation to the dance floor every weekend.

Sounding like a true and proper progression of “Ouch”, Matt Watson, shows his improvements in both his songwriting and production in his newest single, “Bored”, released with his first music video as a solo artist.

In a surprise new single, Motionless in White returns to their roots with “Timebomb”, a true metalcore masterpiece through and through.

Three years after her last album with a whole new sound, MARO is back stronger than ever, alongside musician NASAYA, with I SEE IT COMING, a poppier song, all the while maintaining the elegance she’s exercised consistently in her career.

In a perfect blend of catchy harmonies, groovy rhythms and floating chords, Elko brewed a wonderful late-summer banger with their newest single, “Pretty Little Lies”.

London-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Cat Burns has enjoyed a truly meteoric rise over the last year and a half. When lockdown first hit in the Spring of last year, Burns had just started out posting clips online, mainly through Tik Tok. Within a year she’d amassed well over half a million followers, had been signed by RCA Records, and was the face of a Tik Tok advertising campaign. Not bad work for someone who had been rejected by several labels before embracing the social media platform. 

At the start of this review, it’s only fair that I make a disclosure: Chinatown by Bleachers, featuring none other than Bruce Springsteen, was one of my very favourite tracks of the last year. A real lockdown record, with its haunting vocals and infused with a sense of yearning, it captured the essence of a difficult period. When lead singer and frontman Jack Antonoff and Springsteen crooned “I wanna find tomorrow”, it felt like they were talking to us all and our hope of better times to come.

Though she is probably still most widely known for her work presenting Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3, Hannah Peel is widely recognised as one of the brightest composers around. The Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and broadcaster studied music at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and has a wide and varied CV. Her work includes collaborating with Paul Weller on his number one album On Sunset and writing and conducting all the orchestral arrangements for his 2018 shows at London’s Royal Festival Hall, to composing and recording the soundtrack for Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, which earned Peel a 2019 Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score).

Predicting what will come next from Liars has become an almost impossible task over the years. The New York outfit are now ten albums and more than twenty years into a career that still refuses to be easily labelled. Their back catalogue has taken in everything from the punk sound that influenced their early releases to funk, electronica, dance and rock. They’ve been through personnel changes – founding member Aaron Hemphill in 2017, and drummer Julian Gross three years earlier – and yet continually refused to stand still.

Coming straight from his new album, there’s something quite cleverly unique with Anders’ opening track, “Free Myself”, through both its tone and melodies, paired with the lack of clear genre and its uniqueness.

Coloratura is Coldplay in their most epic medium – a ten-minute powerhouse that is nothing but a pure showcase of talent from the British musicians.

Just as the world was still wrapping their heads around the genius of their Silk Sonic’s first single, “Leave the Door Open”, the duo released “Skate”, another absolute masterpiece through and through.

Even if you haven’t heard of Scunthorpe-born singer-songwriter Stephen Fretwell, you will almost certainly have heard his music. That’s because his song Run – taken from his 2004 album Magpie – is the theme tune to the TV smash hit show Gavin & Stacey, and was apparently chosen by the show’s creator and star James Corden as he’s a big fan of Fretwell’s music.

When Willy Mason crashed into the early noughties indie scene as a nineteen-year-old with his rallying cry Oxygen, he was hailed as a Bob Dylan for the post-grunge generation, a folk singer-songwriter who had a political message for millenials everywhere. For a couple of years, around the release of his debut album Where The Humans Eat, it felt like Mason was a bonafide global superstar in the making. 

Here’s something that, if you grew up watching The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and listening to DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s Summertime, is going to make you feel old: Willow Smith, Will Smith’s youngest child, is twenty years old. TWENTY. Seriously, where does the time go?

Irish four-piece The Academic dropped their debut album Tales From The Backseat in 2018 to positive reviews, it’s blend of youthful exuberance and noughties-inspired indie, as well as the band’s reputation for exhilarating live shows, winning them fans both in the UK and at home in Ireland, where it hit number one in the Irish Album Charts. They built on that momentum last year with Acting My Age, a six-track EP recorded with Nick Hodgson of the Kaiser Chiefs that spawned the single of the same title, a mainstay of their live sets.

One Week was the ludicrously catchy track littered with pop culture references that first turned on a whole host of listeners around my age to the Barenaked Ladies in the late 1990s. It remains the band’s calling card and biggest hit, and still serves as the best introduction to their work for anyone who has not yet (somehow) heard them. Though, thanks to the sheer runaway success of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, for which the band created the distinctive theme song, that title is arguably under threat. 

A lot of people claim punk, metal, and rock artists make the best ballads. YUNGBLUD’s new single, Mars, is a testament to that.

Known for his vintage, soulful sound, Leon Bridges steps a foot into a more modern sound with his newest single, Why Don’t You Touch Me.

Before you hear this track for the first time, you read the title and you know this is going to be something epic! Then the track starts with an almost cinematic crescendo, with harps, horns & strings all building anticipation and in the last second of the intro you have no idea what’s about to hit you. 

It’s the icing on the cake, it’s the cherry on top, the very highlight of summer, yes the summer fling is an old classic that never gets old, and I’m glad Nina has captured this vibe in her latest effort “ Summer Fling “. 

Ahh yessss ! Punk rock and sticky, beer-soaked carpet, a unique smell that’s hard to forget. 

There’s a song for every moment of your day, and if you’ve just woken up and poured your first coffee, let Courtney Barnett ease you into your day, with her latest effort, Rae Street. 

Some say its Neo Soul, some say it’s retro. Either way Curtis never lets anyone down. 

One person, an acoustic guitar and a capo. This is quintessential folk/Americana at its best. 

The sun’s as hot as can be in early July, and Tyler Shaw does nothing to help with the heat. In fact, he decided to release a burning hot single, Sex on the Beach, which will groove you into the rest of summer.

It’s time to break out your vintage AKAI drum machine, and bring that retro sound to the new generation.

Take two parts punk, one part rock and a dash of pop, mix well in a test tube and out comes a high octane cracker of a song called “Contact High”!

Shuffle over. Inhaler is here with their latest effort “Totally”.

Imagine Dragons are a hit machine! The challenge at this stage of the bands journey is to try and do something different, yet not alienate their fans in the process.

Kojaque, otherwise known as Kevin Smith, is the latest in a long line of musical talent coming out of Dublin. On his debut album, the young rapper specialises in carving out sharply observed slices of life in the Irish capital, and in particular the experiences of the city’s young people, ravaged by years of political, economic and social change that have priced many out of finding their own home. Indeed, Kojaque wrote the album while living at home with his mum. 

Best known as the lead vocalist of Australian pop rock outfit 5 Seconds Of Summer, Luke Hemmings has stepped away from the band to launch his solo career, beginning with the release this week of his new single Starting Line, produced by Sammy Witte.

Willow manages to push her limits as an artist once again with an analog twist. “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l”, her newest single with the percussive powerhouse Travis Barker (Blink 198).

“Cathartic” is the single word 21-year-old Londoner Aziya Aldridge-Moore (known as just Aziya) used on her official Facebook page to describe the release of We Speak Of Tides, her first EP and a release that was spawned from the last year and more of life lived under lockdown. Unable to perform with her band, Aziya instead took to social media, releasing covers of some of her favourite artists, and working on the tracks that would form her debut EP.

Maisie Peters has already enjoyed a truly meteoric rise. After gaining popularity through YouTube and dropping the EPs Dressed Too Nice for a Jacket (2018) and It's Your Bed Babe, It's Your Funeral (2019) through Atlantic Records, the 21-year-old singer songwriter penned a record deal with none other than Ed Sheeran earlier this year, and the ginger-haired pop behemoth is all set to release Peters’ debut album You Signed Up For This later this summer through his Gingerbread Records label.