Hello world,
Here’s your latest FP Picks update and we’ve got a host of banging new tunes as always fm Nrvs, Whitelands, BC Camplight & 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
Royel Otis – car
Royel Otis have shared their infectious new single car, a bittersweet slice of jangle pop. The summery new song was unveiled as BBC Radio 1’s “Hottest Record” track earlier this week and arrives alongside the news that the celebrated Aussie duo will release their second studio album, hickey, on August 22. Cowritten by Royel Otis (Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic) with writer/producers Blake Slatkin (Gracie Abrams, Omar Apollo) and Omer Fedi (Lil Nas X, the Kid LAROI), the track is strikingly minimal and all the more catchy and affecting for it. Wistful melodies mix with driving drums as Otis dreamily sings a painful farewell: “Yeah I’ll meet you at the car on the corner, but we know it’s gotta change sometime / You know I love the taste of your water, but I think it’s time to say goodbye.”
Whitelands – Heat Of The Summer
Whitelands have dropped the euphoric track Heat Of The Summer and despite the sonic weightlessness, its backstory is rooted in a desire for change. Singer Etienne Quartey-Papafio explains: “It’s about a community of people coming together to overthrow a tyrant, whether it be a city, a town, or a nation. I was very upset about Trump when I started writing it last summer, then the take-down of that CEO by Luigi Mangione was my encouragement to finish it. The Spike Lee movie Do The Right Thing gave me inspiration, too — heat representing rising tensions.” The band emerged from London’s lo-fi underground, with their noise pop DIY mess-thetics gradually forming into something shoegaze-primed.
Matt-Felix – Wounded Little Soul
Anglo-French artist Matt-Felix has been building a steady reputation with a sound drawn from his dual nationality heritage. His latest single, Wounded Little Soul, is a captivating cut with a genuine cinematic edge. The opening riff immediately sets the tone – dark and atmospheric – while his powerful vocals carry what is a propulsive track. Fans of ’90s and ’00s alternative rock should find plenty to like here, but with a slightly poppier sheen. It’s easy to picture this going down a storm at live shows, and it definitely whets our appetite for further releases.
Champ – Taste To Run
Hartlepool newcomers Champ have dropped their rousing anthem Taste To Run. Built around its guitar driven intro, the track’s blistering percussion and soaring vocals lead the way as a tantalising introduction to what lays ahead from the promising new outfit. Discussing their debut release, frontman Jonny Bee revealed: “Taste To Run is about that burning desire for wanting something beyond the hand you’ve been dealt, and realising there’s no time like the present to go and get it.” The quartet’s sensibilities are rooted in authenticity and emotion – the shimmer of adolescence in their melodies and the bruised tenderness of their lyrics making ordinary life feel cinematic.
GANS – IT’S JUST LIFE
Birmingham duo GANS have shared their high energy new single IT’S JUST LIFE with pulsating synth melodies and catchy vocals, taken from the forthcoming debut album GOOD FOR THE SOUL. The track opens with a flurry of drums and guitars before the immediate punch in the gut vocals “spent your life thinking / forgetting how to feel /…it’s just life,” hits you. Drummer and vocalist Euan Woodman states: “IT’S JUST LIFE is about that feeling we all have – the eternal chase for the grass being greener on the other side. And it isn’t, no matter what we do it always comes back to the same old sh*t of living in our minds and having to deal with it all, no matter where we end up on the planet. That’s just life isn’t it.”
BC Camplight – A Sober Conversation
Manchester-based US singer-songwriter BC Camplight has shared his seventh album A Sober Conversation and we have the title track – an eccentric rock opera about repression, depression and anger told with the meta-theatrical, tragicomic style that has won Brian Christinzio a cult following. The track veers into showtune territory, shimmying in double time as he employs a kooky variety of voices to tease a “big secret”, but also has a gorgeous, melancholy vocal melody. The captivating album documents the last two years of his life, confronting a shocking childhood trauma while embracing sobriety, to create his bravest and most revealing record.
Nrvs – Free
The ever-elusive Nrvs are back; this time with the emotive track Free – a strikingly alternative lament about the existential experience of heartbreak, or as the band put it “Just another dumb song about love found & lost within the wreckage. It happens. What are you gonna do?” A taste of what’s to come from their upcoming album produced by Luis Felber (Attawalpa) & Matt Allchin (Florence & The Machine, SOAK, Mark Ronson) at South London’s Off License studios, where Joy Crookes, Muck Spreader & Sleaze have all recorded, Free features as the closing track on episode 9 of this summer’s hotly anticipated Netflix show Too Much, written & directed by Lena Dunham.
Folk Bitch Trio – Moth Song
Melbourne’s Folk Bitch Trio navigate unrequited love on the sparse, violin-laced ballad Moth Song, taken from their upcoming debut album Now Would Be A Good Time. Band member Gracie Sinclair says it’s about “being so spun out by everything that you feel like you’re delusional and hallucinating crazy things.” According to the band, their debut album covers the highs and lows of being in your early twenties, spanning “dissociative daydreams, galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload.” Great songwriting and beautiful vocals from this captivating trio.
casual smart – cranes
Cardiff newcomers casual smart have shared their emotive new single cranes – a buoyant and heartfelt blend of endearing anti-folk and impassioned bedroom-rock into a tasteful indie-post-punk package. A sprawling, beguiling and yet at the same time elegantly simplistic soundscape of piano arpeggios, boxy guitar tones and brass hums over driving drums, the track displays the band’s raw yet accomplished sonic approach comparable to Black Country New Road and Man/Woman/Chainsaw. Pianist/vocalist Peter Martin states: “It’s about how the love for a person can help mend a relationship with a place, and vice versa. It’s also musically our most ambitious song yet; the outro, especially, is something we’re very proud of. It is a good statement of how the band will sonically sound moving forward, marrying together the softer elements of our first two songs, with a stronger and grander tone.”
For Nina – Swallow
Dublin three-piece For Nina have shared their atmospheric new single Swallow. The band state: “Holly wrote the guts of the song years ago, back when she was in secondary school, and it got completely lost in the drafts. We stumbled across it sitting at home one night and heard this crazy potential from the chorus, gave it a new format and first verse and we were flying from there. We only started playing it a couple months ago, but from the first time we played it in a live set we knew it was sparkling in a different way to some of our other songs.” The song’s slow build draws to a monumental conclusion as the band break into a wash of heavy, shoegaze-inflected distortion, carrying Holly’s stunning ethereal vocals to a soaring, near-cinematic peak.
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