by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our weekly recap of this week's new music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "Further Listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web. It's generally written in the early hours of the morning and semi-unedited... but full of love and heart. The list is in alphabetical order and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music we've included. There's a lot of great new music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music.

*Disclaimer: We are making a conscious effort not to include any artist in our countdown on back-to-back weeks in order to diversify the feature, so be sure to check the "Further Listening" as well because it's often of top-notch quality too.

AMY O | “Dribble Dribble” (feat. Glenn Myers)

Bloomington’s Amy O aka Amy Oelsner has been known to write “bops,” the pure unfiltered smash-hits that feel truly unforgettable. Her homespun DIY pop is stickier than glue and her songs have a tendency to burrow deep into your memory. After a five year wait, Amy O returns with Mirror, Reflect, a new full length, due out May 10th via Winspear (Divino Niño, Wishy, Video Age), an album said to document her transition into motherhood during the early days of the pandemic. If a baby means more time spent home, that feeling transfers to the sound of lead single “Dribble Dribble,” and it’s fantastic warbling production. In true Amy O fashion it’s a pop nugget, the type of song you want to play on repeat, whirring and drifting with a raw jangle and brilliant melodic design. Together with Glenn Myers (Durand Jones), the pair glide through earworm verses, trading back and forth as hooks form at every turn.

MANDY | “High School Boyfriend”

Mandy don’t waste any time. The Chicago band formed by Miranda Winters (also of Melkbelly) are fully locked into a massive guitar hook within about four seconds of “High School Boyfriend”. With Lawn Girl due out next month, the record’s first single is dazzling in a way that’s engaging without excess repetition. Winters is a special songwriter, there’s an instantaneous feel to everything she does, whether it be an impossibly incessant riff or her signature laconic cool vocal melodies, her songs feel warm and lived in. “High School Boyfriend,” a “ballad for high school girls everywhere” pokes fun at young heartbreak and embarrassing sincerity, brought to life by Winters’ perfect vocal inflection and a wry sense of humor. The song dips in and out of that mountainous guitar hook, working its way into a rolling crescendo that feels charmingly celebratory, an indie rock ripper void of mounting tension.

MUI ZYU | “Sparky” (feat. lei,e)

That’s a transportive nature to Mui Zyu’s music, a quality that feels stripped from another realm, like space travel in tranquility. Last year’s Rotten Bun For An Eggless Century brought an electronic flourish to Eva Liu’s words, the songs felt immerse and alien but emotionally resonant. Experimenting with layers of synths and programmed rhythms, Mui Zyu’s song tend to feel limitless, ideas sustained on infinite timelines as hearts shatter and the mind wanders. nothing or something to die for, due out May 24th via Father/Daughter Records, seems to expand the depth of Liu’s song while slightly contracting the sonic palette, pulling away from overt chaos toward something that’s lush and stunning, beauty from desperation. “Sparky,” the record’s third single, pairs Mui Zyu together with lei, e (aka Emma Lee Moss) to create a sinewy dream-pop reflection on the pursuit to happiness and all that entails.

ROSALI “Bite Down” LP

If Rosali’s No Medium was a masterpiece rippling at a heavy boil, Bite Down feels like the casually simmering counterpart, an album laced with heavy sentiment and graceful patience. Rosali Middleman and her band (once again joined by David Nance, James Schroeder, and Kevin Donahue) balance gentle textures and peeling guitars, the careening boogie tempered with the softer more nuanced moments of quiet retrospection. There’s a great deal of emotional muscle in the lyrics, Rosali drifting between loss and love, a mix of longing and understanding, songs that often find Rosali down but absolutely never out. While it’s a more serene affair than the band’s last record, it’s not without it’s rollicking moments of boisterous country twang and silky soul. Bite Down proves to be a gorgeous and dynamic record, veering between moods and mental states with an unflinching sincerity. It’s a reminder that Rosali deserves all the flowers.

STUCK | “Deep Tunnel b/w AITA?”

Last year Stuck released the exceptional Freak Frequency, the Chicago band’s second album. The record found their sound expanding into stranger territory while simultaneously offering some of their biggest hooks. Ahead of the band’s European/UK tour dates, they’ve return with Deep Tunnel b/w AITA?, two new gems that highlight Stuck at their detached finest. For a band that’s as mechanically tight as they are, Stuck always shine brightest when they let their personality seep in, and it’s all over these songs. “Deep Tunnel” rides a combustible rhythm, toppling one moment and grooving in the cut the next, with a wiry melody that shifts and contorts. The whole song comes brilliantly unglued in unexpected way, collapsing and darting forward, the sections never quite repeating the way you might imagine. “AITA?” on the other hand is here to ask the tough questions over a structure of jagged and clanging quakes of sardonic disdain.

USA NAILS | “Feel Worse” LP

Six albums in and USA Nails just keep getting better. Never a band to rest on their laurels, the London based quartet are forever warping their sound, an intersection of damaged noise rock, charismatic post-punk, and discordant post-hardcore. With Feel Worse, the group’s first record for One Little Independent (Bad Breeding, Crass, Björk), they’re examining societal misfortune in its many forms. With sharp and pointed lyricism at times abstract and other times more direct, Steven Hodson and Gareth Thomas howl and malign the indifference that has washed over so many. Feel Worse is spring loaded with corrosive riffs and seasick layered distortion. There’s a visceral attack firmly in place throughout the record’s aggressive sound, but the album is undeniably dynamic, an exploration of brute grooves and swarming abrasion that bends in new directions, sputtering and stampeding in equal measure.

WINGED WHEEL | “Sleeptraining”

Winged Wheel’s debut album, No Island, might have been the single best remote project to arrive from the pandemic, a cosmic krautrock album that wandered where few have. Comprised of Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Rider/Horse), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray), Whitney Johnson (Matchess), and Matthew J Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo), the group worked in seclusion to create a record that was hypnotic, psychedelic, and utterly immersive. Fast forward two years and the group, now joined by Lonnie Slack (Water Damage) and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) return with Big Hotel, an album recorded together in person, a new chapter for their forward thinking motorik explorations. “Sleeptraining,” the album’s lead single is propulsive from the start, with a kinetic beat pulsating beneath oozing guitars and a dense atmosphere drone. Swirling and tangled in a hazy bliss, Johnson’s vocals tie it all together into with a dreamy focus amid the chaos.

WITCH VOMIT | “Black Wings of Desolation”

Abhorrent Rapture, and Buried Deep In A Bottomless Grave before it, were impossibly heavy, a pair of slime infested and brutal death metal records. The past three years have had us wondering where exactly Witch Vomit go from there, as they can’t get much heavier. Funeral Sanctum, the band’s third album, due out April 5th via 20 Buck Spin (Slimelord, Terminal Nation, Atrae Bilis), answers that question with a new emphasis on dismal melodic touches. Make no mistake, this isn’t “melodeath” and Witch Vomit haven’t embraced the genre’s cheesier tendencies, but their carnage and dread has more of a melodic focus buried within the primordial sludge. While the shift on “Blood on Abomination” took some getting used to, the records second single, “Black Wings of Desolation,” comes lurching forward with demonic grooves and the sense of decimation like a twinkle in the band’s cavernous eye sockets.

Further Listening:

MARCH 11 - MARCH 17:

MARCH 18 - MARCH 24: