Hello world,
Here’s your latest FP Picks update with great new trx fm Alice Costelloe, Snail Mail, Flip Top Head & lots more. If you like what you hear please follow and share this playlist, it helps us keep doing our thing by getting the algorithms on our side. Also please support the artists featured in any way you can!
Until next week
Helen (Futureproof) x
Courtney Barnett – Site Unseen (ft. Waxahatchee)
Courtney Barnett announces new album Creature Of Habit with reflective single Site Unseen. The album was written after the singer-songwriter relocated from her native Australia to Los Angeles and saw her long-running label Milk! Records close, bringing the confusion that the upheaval invited into the recording process. Courtney says of the track: “I tried three separate times over two years to track this song, and each time it either wasn’t finished or didn’t sound right and each time we had to start again. I kept hearing this really high harmony in my head, so for the fourth and final version, I asked Katie [Crutchfield of Waxahatchee] if she’d be into singing it with me. I’m a big Waxahatchee fan. I really love Katie’s songwriting and her voice, so it was an honour to have her sing on Site Unseen.” Two great vocals on this captivating track.
Alice Costelloe – How Can I
Alice Costelloe has shared emotive new single How Can I, taken from the upcoming album Move On With The Year about her damaged childhood, and her father’s substance abuse. Of the track, she states: “When I was finishing the song, I read a quote from Feist where she said, ‘When you say something or sing something enough times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – it’s almost like casting spells.’ It made me think about what it would feel like playing songs full of sadness, night after night, and whether those were the spells I wanted to be casting… So I added the line ‘I am good, I’m enough, I’m surrounded by love’. I know it’s unbearably cheesy, but I wanted a moment in the set that could counteract some of the darker parts of the record and manifest something more positive.”
Olive Jones – Kingdom
Funky new single Kingdom fm Olive Jones is taken from the upcoming album For Mary. “I was so upset by Brexit and even more upset by the arrogance and ignorance of Britain as a country during that time,” says Jones of events that led to the song’s creation. “So, this is my political anthem about the buffoon that made it happen.” The mix of soul and electronica with an indie attitude on Kingdom is rather unique and hard to resist. She adds of For Mary: “Your first album is like a tapestry of yourself. I’ve been writing songs for so long, and each of these tracks has its own story and a moment in my life – so the record is a quilt made from all those patches.”
Arctic Monkeys, War Child Records – Opening Night
Arctic Monkeys recently shared Opening Night, their first new song since 2022 and the lead single to the upcoming charity compilation HELP(2) from War Child Records. “I felt incredibly honored when War Child asked me to work on HELP(2),” James Ford said in a statement. “The original HELP meant a lot to me and to have the opportunity, given the current news cycle, to help galvanize our music community into doing something as unarguably positive as helping children in war zones seemed like a no brainer.” Drummer Matt Helders said the studio was the band’s “happy place” and somewhere “it feels natural” for them to be. Poignant, emotive lyrics on this captivating, nostalgic track.
Flip Top Head – Porcelain Plugs
Brighton art-rockers Flip Top Head have shared the beautiful new single Porcelain Plugs, taken from their upcoming EP Trilateral Machine. Inspired by Sylvia Plath’s musings on hot baths, the track circles guilt, vulnerability and the strange comfort of private rituals. Musically it drifts between hushed intimacy and swelling art-rock drama; never quite settling, always keeping you on your toes. The band take cues from fellow experimental collectives Ugly and Tapir! to craft intricate but emotionally resonant tracks that find wonder and whimsy amidst the daily grind.
Pem – milk, blue
Pem takes inspiration from the moon for her vulnerable new single milk, blue, taken from upcoming EP other ways of landing. Pem states: “This is about the Moon, I’m very in awe of the moon. My dad passed away on the full moon and wrote about it a lot in his memoirs so it holds a lot of symbolism for me. It’s my ode to feeling nicely small beneath the full moon and the way it punctuates my life.” It’s a song filled with aching tenderness on a bed of warm mellow cello. A dreamy looping acoustic guitar drips beneath a voice as beautiful as it is distinctive; as tender as it is strong. Pem has also announced a UK headline tour, which begins on 1st March.
Father John Misty – The Old Law
Father John Misty has shared bittersweet anthem The Old Law, previously known to fans as God’s Trash and debuted as part of the live set in the fall of 2024. The track finds Josh Tillman employing musical performance and satire to explore how human behavior repeats and resurfaces. The Old Law opens up with churning ‘90s-like distortion, rhythmic drum patterns, and a lead guitar line – the combination of which saturates the airwaves with a sweaty, spirited heat. Colorful layers and instrumental textures blend thoughtfully throughout the composition, the warm piano and guitar notes coalescing around Tillman’s empathic voice to create dazzling moments of harmony and connection.
Snail Mail – Dead End
Snail Mail (aka Lindsey Jordan) has shared new single Dead End, the nostalgic lead single from her forthcoming third album Ricochet. Dead End mourns the simplicity of youthful rites of passage—parking in quiet cul-de-sacs, smoking with friends, minor rebellions at the edge of nowhere—wrapped in a lush blend of grunge-gaze textures and shimmering, ‘90s-inflected alt-rock hooks. The track builds from reflective verses into an expansive, almost cathartic sing-along, emblematic of a songwriter coming into her power while acknowledging what came before. A mark of Jordan’s matured sound, the glittering, smooth guitar is reminiscent of popular 90’s rock, like Radiohead and Pavement.
Chalk – I.D.C.
Belfast electropunk duo Chalk announce debut album Crystalpunk with rave-ready cut I.D.C. The track is a ferocious floor-filler which Chalk’s Ross Cullen has described as “the danciest track on the album”. He states: “I.D.C. captures a fictional night out — self-destruction disguised as celebration, knives twisting beneath the strobe.” The album is set to be their introduction proper, born as it is from their experiences of growing up in Northern Ireland amidst conflict, sociopolitical complexity, and resilient beauty. The accompanying music video, portraying a gimp-masked individual walking through the streets of a city, reflects the song impeccably.
Mitski – Where’s My Phone?
Mitski’s new single Where’s My Phone?, taken fm the album Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, is a surprising return from one of indie’s most offline songwriters. The track is an energetic change of pace, and not just because we’re hearing gritty guitars again casually obscure and slowly swallow Mitski’s voice, which in her recent chamber-pop outings has been isolated in the spotlight, gently cushioned by beautiful and sometimes ornate instrumentation. The album’s main character is “a reclusive woman in an unkempt house,” and the video for Where’s My Phone? cranks up the tone of paranoia and psychic unease. The track erupts into a cathartic, fuzzed-out guitar solo—a taste of the gleefully warped drama promised on the album.
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