Category: Pop

On Freaked, the vocal of Victor Longato is placed in that processed room – where it is not smoothed out but it is edited and has weight. It is pushed by the Jersey Club beat, the percussion that will not give in. Reminds me of what Kelela was doing some years ago but with a more pop-facing sound and less […]

Being such a song of swansong, Love is Everywhere, seems to be very appropriate as a song to a group whose whole life is about bonding despite the hardly attainable geographical apartness. This Beatles-esque slice of the glory of INTERCONTINEN7AL, written and performed by Argentina’s Nereo Paulus on the final album of the group titled Volume 7 is a heartrending, […]

Something about Michellar’s Game of Love is incredibly nostalgic and the song seems like a rediscovery of a forgotten summer so tattered it has faded and gone. With the assistance of Minneapolis songwriter Rad Datsun, the San Francisco-based artist has made something that is truly heartfelt to listen to – a duet that affectionately and intelligently examines the playful nature […]

The manner in which Ava Valianti presents herself in Hot Mess is somehow quiet the part of the impressiveness. Being only sixteen, she does not sound like someone who is trying to figure things out but a person who already knows that the confusion is a part of the deal. The song is lightly self-conscious, playful, a bit cynical, but […]

Something tells you, silent like in Till I’m Drunk and Confused. Exzenya does not romanticise heartbreak or even anthropomorphise it, she leaves it floating, a bit erratic like the thoughts re-emerging long after the final word. The song seems to be based on that same sense of late-night dizziness, where the room is half light, you have lost your guard […]

In My Dreams has a quality of the soft ache in it, which comes in at the end of the night when the world has finally shut up, and your mind is left making more noise. San Sebastian (who plans to reclaim his birth name Sebastian Rydgren during the coming year) exploits that emotion with a breathtaking level of clarity […]

But what is authenticity anyway anymore, when all things in the world are duplicable, filtered, upgraded, endlessly recombinable? That is the question which, though faintly humming, is never absent in Cloned and Upgraded, Insert Soul Here by Rellyo Bambini. It is never given to the form of a thesis or a concept that you are expected to work out. Instead, […]

There are those songs where you get inspired seemingly within a second, as though you have just made a sudden leap into the air, and that is what “Chasing Stars” accomplishes at the very start. Jari Salmikivi has created something that is at the same time intimate and broad expansive as to look up at the night sky and realise […]

There are songs that come not as entertainment but like a conversation that we are so desperately in need to have but it is done on a channel of melody instead of verbal. Precisely the same is offered in Truth over Lies. The partnership between Michelle Bond, Michael Levine and Matthias Schmidt was the result of a creative retreat held […]

Why does Christmas have to have snow and jumpers? Eylsia Nicolas has brought the ideal antidote to the old-time fare with the yuletide season with a brilliantly paced song, Hot Hot Christmas, which redefines the holidays with palm trees and warm skies. This song is exuding contagious energy since the first bars. The energetic use of instruments evokes a cheerful […]

Something about I Promise I’ll Wait For You, the new single of British singer-songwriter TaniA Kyllikki, is deeply touching. It is not any other love song but a heartfelt statement that reaches directly to the soul, touching on the desire and the beauty of loving someone when you are apart by impossible distances. The first thing that catches your attention […]

It is rather quiet and breathtaking how the little things that build up until a house becomes a real home occur in small groupings, moments that you never really notice are building your life until you take a moment to look and see. That is what Junifer manages to capture so beautifully in Thoughts For The Night. It is tender […]

The outcome of the experience of San Sebastian in his Swedish Idol has produced something truly interesting. Imaginary Lover is a bold step by the Stockholm artist as it incorporates a modern contemporary electronic pop and unexpectedly insightful comment upon contemporary relationships, both natural and artificial. What at once impresses you is the voice of Sebastian tuneful and expressive and […]

It has this beautiful cosiness in it that Southbound by The Quiet North has that makes one feel like they are getting away into the sunshine after months of greyness. It is a truly cinematic work by Fredrik Kristiansen a piece of indie pop that conveys that particular sense of escaping the cold winter in the Nordic countries and running […]

The brilliantly unsettling nature of Ophelia Moon in Avatar: Encryption Code is what perfectly captures our present day. This smooth, filmic song seems a caution in a beautiful package, a kind of cautionary story concerning artificial intelligence that is conveyed with the help of ethereal vocals that radiate above shimmering arpeggios and this tight cyberpunk beat. It is that type […]