FUTUREPROOF PICKS 08-05-25

Hello world,

Here’s your latest FP Picks update .. loads of great new music as always inc trx from Panda Bear, Florence Road, Humour & 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

Lael Neale – Wild Waters

Singer-songwriter Lael Neale has shared new single Wild Waters, taken from recently released album Altogether Stranger. Lael states: “The video for Wild Waters was a collaboration with choreographer and dancer Sandi [Denton]. I had this vision of dancers playing the part of interdimensional beings performing a dance that would open a portal, calling my character through. In perfect synchronicity, when I approached Sandi with the idea, she had already been building a two-person dance that fit seamlessly. I love working with Sandi for this reason.” Altogether Stranger simultaneously confronts the relentless noise of city living and provides a much-needed sanctuary away from it through its comforting intimacy.

Panda Bear – 50mg

Assisted by his Animal Collective bandmates, Noah Lennox’s latest solo LP Sinister Grift is disarmingly laid-back. It might be his most straightforwardly beautiful record—and also his most emotionally complex. Amusingly, despite being rooted in reggae, Sinister Grift is the least dubby record Lennox has ever released, with echo, staccato repetitions, and decontextualized FX kept to a minimum. A pedal steel guitar weeps behind the shimmering wah-wah shuffle of the track 50mg as Lennox sings about the stony silences that seem to be the only thing he now shares with a partner. “Engines running, I can feel the miles,” he sings, the prism of harmonies around him shot through with the deep blues and violets of an island sunset. Great songwriting and we just love the distinctive sound of Panda Bear.

The Beths – Metal

Auckland indie-rock quartet The Beths are back with new single Metal – a jangle-rock jam that calls to mind fellow New Zealanders like The Chills and The Clean. Vocalist Elizabeth Stokes began writing after a period of rigorous touring and health issues both mental and physical. She explains in a press release: “In some ways Metal is a song about being alive and existing in a human body … I have a hunger and a curiosity for learning about the world around me, and for learning about myself. And despite all the ways that my body feels like a broken machine, I still marvel at the complexity of such a machine.” Of the track, Stokes says: “I think we ended up with an arrangement that embodies the frenetic intricacy of an engine in action. There’s a lot going on, until there isn’t.”

Florence Road – Caterpillar

Florence Road are an Irish band who make tender, sensitive, string-laden acoustic ballads. They’ve just released their captivating new single Caterpillar about anxiety and feeling so embarrassed that you can’t stand yourself. They’ve also got a lo-fi live video where they perform the song in a bathroom on a recent trip to Boston. The group developed their sound during teenage years spent rehearsing in vocalist Lily Aron’s garden shed, drawing influence from The Cranberries, Wolf Alice and Phoebe Bridgers. Matching indie rock aspects against some elements of 90s pop production, Florence Road anchor their approach in fantastic songwriting and what stunning vocals on this beautiful track.

Westside Cowboy – Shells

Westside Cowboy have shared their harmonic new single Shells – an exhibition in dynamic command. Reuben Haycocks and Aoife Anson O’Connell’s hushed vocals dissolve into each other from the opening seconds; after a minute the calm is broken as drummer Paddy Murphy practically bursts his foot through the kick drum, whilst Jimmy Bradbury’s guitar stabs run hot. “Shells is broadly about acceptance,” the band said in a press statement. “Whether it is the acknowledgment of what you have, or the acknowledgment that change is inevitable. The song is loosely based on a film, in which the character masters this. We have yet to reach this point though. I suppose it’s a little more earnest, and it starts slow, but it kicks in soon enough.” Congrats on winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition – can’t wait to check ’em out!

Humour – Plagiarist

Glasgow Post-Hardcore Band Humour have dropped new single Plagiarist, taken from their upcoming debut album Learning Greek. The track shifts between jagged melodies and off-kilter rhythms, balancing discord and directness. Vocalist Andreas Christogoulidis said the track explores creative exhaustion: “Plagiarist is about being a lyricist and having run out of ideas and inspiration. In the song, the character is under pressure to put words to music written by the band, and realises that he can’t even steal lines from his favourite books because he has already used them all. He fears being discovered as a fraud and being punished for it with death.” The album moves between heavy, feral swells and sharp, melodic shifts, combining lithe riffs with a corrosive loud-then-quiet dynamic.

The Itch – The Influencer

Electronic duo The Itch have shared their all-new double-single The Influencer and Co-Conspirator, offering barbed electronics, twisting and turning while somehow remaining tethered to their creative core. The two tracks function as sonic companions, ingeniously manipulating identical audio stems to create distinct yet related compositions. Utilising the same drum and bass foundations, and warping original vocals into fresh melodic hooks, Co-Conspirator acts as a club-oriented remix, a shadowy mutation of The Influencer’s core DNA, sharing the same key, BPM, lyrical themes, and underlying audio elements. Mirroring this theme of reimagined source material, the accompanying visuals for both tracks feature the same venue in contrasting states.

Hotline TNT – Candle

NYC shoegazers Hotline TNT are keeping up the burning anticipation with new single Candle which is taken from their upcoming Raspberry Moon LP. It’s a headspun fuzz-pop love song that finds Will Anderson getting vulnerable with a crush: “I wanna try/Get butterflies.” The lo-fi video begins with Hotline TNT fans in Japan reacting to the track. Anderson states: “This song was the first thing we wrote for Raspberry Moon – it flowed out of our guitars quite effortlessly and it barely required even 1% of our power to put the parts in the correct order. Just to make sure it was as good as we thought it was, we brought the song over to Japan, and this video documents the reaction from that experiment. Candle is LIT.”

Powerplant – Crashing Cars

London-based synth-punks Powerplant have shared their new single Crashing Cars and the band’s Theo Zhykharyev states that the track “signals the return to their signature formula of marching drum machines and wailing synthesisers, matured by life experiences of prolonged touring … Car is life, brother. Sometimes you drive it, other times – the car drives you. And, statistically, we’ll all see the airbags go off sooner or later, as the consequence of choices made by us or onto us, consciously or not.” Crashing Cars breaks out the gates to the heavy low end driven dance floor. “I was listening to a lot of Bladee when I wrote it and needed a similar thick kick to get you moving”, says Theo.