Hello world,
Here’s your latest FP Picks update with a host of great new tunes as always fm Sorry, Royel Otis, Madra Salach & 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
Francis of Delirium – Little Black Dress
Luxembourg’s Francis of Delirium recently dropped the single Little Black Dress. With its dense layers of harmony and huge, bashed-out drums, it’s the kind of rock song built for big rooms, grand catharsis, and maybe even pop radio airplay. The music cruises along aerodynamically throughout, but when that chorus hits, this thing truly surges skyward. Vocalist Jana Bahrich states: “Coming home fresh off a tour opening for bôa, playing to all these kids excited about guitar music, and heading into the Blondshell dates, I wanted to put out a song that captures the energy and messiness of playing live and being on stage. It’s a song about the anticipation of going out, the hope, the desperation, and the ultimate disappointment.”
Sorry – Today Might Be The Hit
London’s Sorry have shared new single Today Might Be The Hit, taken from their forthcoming new album COSPLAY, with a bouncing energy that recalls the band’s early works but possesses layer after layer of detail. Snippets of bird song, overlapping gang vocals and fragments of conversation are shot through the track, creating something both immediate and overwhelming that blazes across its short run time. Sorry‘s latest offering takes inspiration from the life of physicist and mathematician Ludwig Boltzmann, who proposed an entropy formula that was dismissed throughout his lifetime, but eventually inscribed on his gravestone. Speaking on the track, the band says: “s = k. log w.”
Feral Family – Feels So Right
Yorkshire trio Feral Family have shared their uplifting anthem Feels So Right and it’s a swaggering, widescreen soundtrack to the best days of your life. Assembled from searing jangle-crunch guitars, dynamically driving drums, big backup vocals and a soaring chorus, this is a song that needs to be cranked up loud! Of upcoming So Far Behind EP, frontman Jamie Lowe states: “It’s more like a condensed album — six huge songs that we’re buzzing to deliver,” he reveals. ‘There’s some big raw riffs in there, but the EP peels back some deeper layers of our sound. And our new drummer Regan (Grimson) brings even more heat to these new tracks.” Guitarist Oscar Lowe promises the EP will include “love, loss and yearning — experiences that echo throughout your life.”
Snõõper – Pom Pom
Nashville’s egg-punk pioneers Snõõper have shared their new single Pom Pom which retains their distinctive high-energy approach, while simultaneously opening up their sound into something a little more expansive and mature. Vocalist Blair Tramel states: “Pom Pom is about being your own cheerleader, a topic that is explored throughout the whole record. It’s about having to sit on the sidelines sometimes, supporting others, taking hits, and bouncing back. After cheering for other people for long enough, you reach a point where you learn to cheer for yourself as well. While self confidence is important, you also have to be able to laugh at yourself. Honestly, if you can’t laugh at yourself, you might have some work to do — GO TEAM!!!!”
Hallan – Borgo Pass
Portsmouth’s Hallan recently dropped their anthemic new single Borgo Pass. Fusing post-punk urgency with synth-driven flair, the band builds on their momentum as they follow up their spring release, Lilian’s Regret. The band stated: “Our new single takes inspiration from Stoker’s Dracula, but instead of a Halloween caricature; we paint him as a flawed romantic -longing for love yet cursed to eternal loneliness. Blending vampiric imagery with poppier, more accessible sounds, the track explores universal themes of longing, isolation, and finding meaning in a finite life. It’s both a nod to literary tradition and a call to appreciate the fleeting beauty of being human.”
Royel Otis – who’s your boyfriend
Australian duo Royel Otis have shared their highly anticipated new album hickey and with 13 songs that traverse the highs and lows of messy young love, the sophomore set’s sound swings between blissful and wistful, blending together slack indie rock, jangly new wave and swooning dream-pop. Infectious new single who’s your boyfriend is a romantic new wave dream featuring soaring synth melodies, tumbling drums and driving guitars. The track finds Royel Otis caught in a friendship with someone who seems to want it both ways, building to the sing-along hook, “He bailed on your birthday, and you’re calling me up a lot / So, baby, who’s your boyfriend now? While you’re sleeping with him, is it me you’re thinking about?”
Magdalena Bay – Second Sleep
Magdalena Bay have shared two tracks: Second Sleep and Star Eyes – their first tracks since releasing Imaginal Disk last year. The band’s Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin describe the songs as “both a sort of spiritual successor to the album’s mood and emotional arc. We like how they complement each other, so here they are as a pair.” Second Sleep spends five minutes building from calm to chaotic, with abundant drum fills and synth squeals along with the way. There’s a burst of funky R&B during the finger-snap breakdown, too.
Zo Lief – You (A Burden)
Dutch/British band Zo Lief have crafted their own brand of indie/dream-pop and turn their unique connection into a psychedelic, whimsical dream on new EP Hypnosis stating: “We love the juxtaposition of something that can be both heavenly and heavy, and seek out the intersection of those opposites; the areas in-between.” Zo Lief swirl fuzzy, retro guitars around Laura’s floating, melancholic vocals, teasing heavier indie sensibilities in and around the choruses on the single You (A Burden). The band told Still Listening that the track is “an introspective torch song fuelled by frustration. It describes finding oneself putting up with someone who’s a force to be reckoned with. Although they weigh you down, and are intolerable at times, you refuse to acknowledge them as a burden, because despite everything, there’s a glimmer of hope that this person is worth bearing.
The Last Dinner Party – The Scythe
Art-rock outfit The Last Dinner Party tackle grief on latest single The Scythe, taken from their second album From The Pyre – a poignant account of lost love that has been shared alongside an arresting, affecting music video. “This song began nine years ago, like a prophecy. I wrote it before I had known anything of grief or heartbreak, how a relationship ending feels exactly the same as that person dying,” explained frontwoman Abigail Morris. “I’ll see you in the next one/ Next time I know you’ll call,” Morris says in the driving chorus. Check out the video which the band describe as “one of our proudest and most intimate” to date then check tour dates cos they’re well worth a watch!
Madra Salach – Blue & Gold
Irish folk artists have emerged morphing traditional songs and sounds through increasingly experimental means, incorporating disparate genres as drone, jazz and electronic music into age-old tunes. Dublin’s Madra Salach (which translates to ‘Dirty Dog’) are the latest group to use a more avant-garde sonic palette with their powerful debut single Blue & Gold. Detailing the group’s decision to explore the experimental Irish folk route, Paul Banks states “to be completely honest, it was just gut feeling. There’s something in all folk music that connects universally, that’s arguably its defining characteristic. And we were all so taken with the more experimental stuff that was being released at the time, we just wanted to be a part of that body of work, to contribute our own take on it.”
You can check out the whole playlist here. Please follow the socials below for our weekly updates and share about the place!
