Hello world,
We’ve got this week’s Futureproof Picks, full of absolute bangers inc trx fm Perfume Genius, The Bug Club, Picture Parlour & many 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
Picture Parlour – Who’s There To Love Without You?
Great to see Picture Parlour back with their banging rock anthem Who’s There To Love Without You? – a densely layered track, weaving swaggering rock instrumentation with a cinematic flair. The duo, vocalist Katherine Parlour and guitarist Ella Risi, draw on a shared upbringing steeped in Northern soul and transatlantic rock traditions. The new single was written and recorded in Nashville, a nod to the genre-crossing spirit of the track. They state: “Who’s There To Love Without You? is our first single of the year, and we didn’t fancy a subtle reintroduction. At its core, the song is a bombastic tongue-in-cheek declaration that is wrapped in big riffs, and that’s our mood for 2025. The chorus lyric belts and repeats the song’s title, as though we are refusing to be ignored. This song begs for, if not demands attention because, in the end, what’s the point of anything if the person or thing you want most can’t see you?”
Car Seat Headrest – CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)
Car Seat Headrest have shared an indie-rock adventure in new single CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You), from their forthcoming new studio album, a self-described rock opera entitled The Scholars. The band said of the character in CCF: “Beolco is a student of Parnassus University, a college founded in ages past by a famed playwright known as the Scop. Beolco is deeply fond of both the college and the Scop, believing himself to be spiritually connected or reincarnated from the playwright. He yearns for confirmation of this secret belief.” Frontman Will Toledo self-produced the album and states: “One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot. I didn’t want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it’s like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance.”
Jenny Hval – The artist is absent – 89 seconds rewrite
Norwegian musician, artist and novelist Jenny Hval has shared toe-tapping, hypnotic new single The artist is absent, taken from her upcoming album Iris Silver Mist. Named after the fragrance made by the French perfume house Serge Lutens, Hval’s Iris Silver Mist also moves like a scent – between flower and smoke, ghostly yet alive. The album started with the absence of music; as live music disappeared during the pandemic Hval filled the void with perfume. It was only later she understood why: she was searching for another way to sense presence, to fill the emptiness music had left behind. The artist is absent encapsulates this feeling. Hval sings: “A stage without a show / A hazy silhouette around an empty space / A club without a club.”
Doves – Lean Into The Wind
Manchester-based trio Doves have shared their poignant new single Lean Into The Wind, taken from recently released album Constellations For the Lonely. Vocalist Jimi Goodwin states: “It’s all there in the lyrics, it’s about addiction. It’s drawn from a situation I was in at the time and, although I am inspired more by making songs about characters, this literally happened to me. Going to someone’s house, trying something and it consuming you within days. I am not ashamed of it; it’s a story of what can happen and it’s not uncommon. It happens to people every day, hopefully it’s a cautionary tale.” Fantastic, heartfelt songwriting on this captivating track.
The Bug Club – Have U Ever Been 2 Wales
We’re loving the witty, uplifting new single Have U Ever Been 2 Wales fm The Bug Club. The hard-working, never-not-touring band is on the road supporting their 2024 Sub Pop debut On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System as well as playing new songs, and also older songs. This infectious slice of indie-pop is a joyous new ode to their beloved home country that features upbeat, regionally referential lyrics like “Have you ever been to Wales? It’s good, it’s goo-ooh-ooh-ooh-hood” and “…every choir from Caldicot to Treorchy will sing it proud. Their international 2025 live schedule ends at The End of the Road Festival in Dorset on 30th August. What an absolute earworm!
Xav Clarke – Bluebells
Xav Clarke finds joy in loss with psychedelic new single Bluebells, taken from his upcoming album Fossil Forest. The track showcases Clarke’s signature blend of cosmic optimism and heartfelt introspection—this time applied to the deeply personal subject of losing his father. The track transforms grief into something glowing and life-affirming. Clarke explains: “It lives in the same world as a song like Do You Realise by The Flaming Lips. It refuses to be sad about death, instead turning it into a cosmic journey full of positivity and transcendence.” Inspired by the life cycles of nature, the track wraps Clarke’s lyrical reflection in a rich, 70s-inspired sonic forest of swirling psychedelia and hopeful energy. Inspirational & emotional – loving this infectious tune with its heartwarming lyrics.
Daughter of Swords – Morning In Madison
Daughter of Swords (aka Alex Sauser-Monnig) recently dropped the new album Alex and we bring you the track Morning In Madison. Alex says of the track: “I had a crush on this person for several years before dating them. I knew they would be bad for me, but it was too cool to not. A Charlie Brown Christmas was very in the mix, sonically speaking.” Paste contributor Andy Crump wrote of the album: “From track to track, verse to verse, no two songs here sound alike in tone or texture. For an artist with roots in Americana and folk music’s traditions, Alex reads as distinctly modern, except on songs where it instead reads as retro, or on the ones where each of these flavors of past and present collide.”
Perfume Genius – Clean Heart
Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) recently shared the new album Glory alongside third single from it Clean Heart – a contemplative, quietly hopeful cut that follows recent singles It’s A Mirror and Aldous Harding collab No Front Teeth. The track is a beautifully twinkly lullaby that builds into some true top-shelf art-pop. On Glory, Hadreas says in a press release that he was more open to input from his band and collaborators. “I’m more engaged with the band and the audience,” he says. “I’m still on some wild tear, but there’s more access and it’s more collaborative, in a way that makes it better, but also scary—because it feels more vulnerable.”
Cliffords – Dungarvan Bay
Cliffords have dropped their new single Dungarvan Bay, taken from forthcoming new EP Salt of the Lee. “Dungarvan Bay is a song about growing with grief,” vocalist Iona Lynch has said of the new track. “Two years ago, a college friend of mine passed away and for me, and for a lot of my friends, it was our first proper encounter with grief .. I wanted the song to show all the different emotions that come with loss; that there can be great moments of humour, joy and growth. And whilst it will never truly leave you, things will change over time.” The track shifts effortlessly from intimate verses replete with spindling guitars and the masterful vocals of Iona Lynch, whose imagery evocatively captures all of the sides of loss. It swells into an enveloping chorus, and the crashing crescendos are an emotional epiphany of epic proportions.
Corbin – Come Down
The former SoundCloud star Corbin flits between unflappability and panic on ambitious album Crisis Kid that marries sunny melodies with existential exhaustion. The LP is a project of striking ambition. It aims to marry optimistic melodies with writing that probes uncomfortably deep into questions of morality and feelings of existential exhaustion. It’s lean and pointed, refusing to sacrifice its depth for a cleaner shape or its hooks for the sake of mood. Corbin joined fellow Twin Cities natives Allan Kingdom, Bobby Raps, and Psymun in Thestand4rd. While that quartet only released one album, they did seem to presage many of rap and R&B’s sonic developments over the next decade. Psymun’s hand was key in crafting Crisis Kid. He infuses even the most unadorned songs, like Come Down, with his wonky melancholy.
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