by Dan Goldin (@paintingwithdan)
Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our recap of the past few weeks in new music. We're sharing our favorite releases in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "Extended Listening" section of new and notable releases. It's generally written in the late hours of the night and semi-unedited... but full of love and heart. The list is in alphabetical order and we sincerely recommend checking it all out (especially as we try not to repeat from the prior column). There's a lot of great new music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music.
CRV
“Plus Tax And CRV” LP
At their core, Los Angeles’ CRV are a synth punk band, but one listen through their debut album, Plus Tax And CRV, and it becomes immediately clear that’s there a lot more depth than that simple genre tag might suggest. The quartet - which features members of Diode, Vaguess, and Rearranged Face, among others - have created a dynamic sound, keeping you guessing on an album that’s far more expansive than it might initially suggest. While there are certainly moments of PYLON indebted work-outs and waves of sci-fi garage jitters, it’s often when the band slows things down that the nuance of their music shines. Jennifer French’s vocals are capable of a wide range of expression as she glides and skitters across the tracks, wrapped in a warm melody one moment (“Neckstand”) and crackling with energy the next (“Believin’”). Plus Tax is an album that really ought to be heard in full, rattling and hypnotic in equal measure, permanently off balance in the best of ways.
DANA MARGOLIN
“Big Beautiful Sound”
It might not be explicitly known as to why Dana Margolin decided to call it a day with Porridge Radio, but it is abundantly clear that the London based band went out in a blaze of glory with Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me, a modern indie rock masterpiece. Following a lengthy farewell tour that brought the band around the globe, Margolin is back with a new single, the first music she’s released under her own name. It should come as no surprise, it’s gorgeous. With close mic’d acoustic guitars and a melody that rises just to dip back down, “Big Beautiful Sound” rests on the weight of her words, they lie heavy but retain a sense of optimism, a reflection of acceptance found deep within the depths of her being, arriving at the center is a resplendent light, or more specifically, a beautiful sound. That grace is captured in Margolin’s stunning guitar progression and her lulling vocals, meditating on life as she sings “and wasn’t it a strange way down”.
DELIVERY
“Measuring Cup”
Delivery rip with a radiant abandon. The Melbourne based quintet really make the most out of being a quintet. They’re an explosive live band, locking into tight grooves before positively erupting, the charming attack of their three guitarists and three vocalists approach forever shifting but always bright and captivating. They have room to explore as they wiggle around motorik frameworks with a rapidly boiling sense for melodic hooks. Zone 3, the band’s third album (due out February 26th via Heavenly Recordings), continues to push their brand of hypnotic post-punk and sunny garage pop to its expansive extremes, evident on lead single, “Measuring Cup,” a song that rides a retro-futuristic groove, dance-floor ready and spring-loaded with tongue-in-cheek attitude. With touches reminiscent of Elastica (and Wire in turn), the song squirms from one big chorus to the next, ripping between the steady pulse with a flood of nimble fuzz and biting harmonies.
EARLY GRAVE
“Violent Winter” LP
It’s been a monumental year for filthy, brutal, and artistic hardcore releases - from the unpredictable dread and conceptual depth of the new Brain Tourniquet album and the grindcore obliteration of Fake Dust’s debut to the fried disgust of Reek Minds (see also Yambag, Yleiset Syyt, Gunner) and the blackened crust of Zorn’s latest. Then there’s Early Grave’s first full length, Violent Winter, a thrashing masterpiece of wigged out hardcore that tirelessly reimagines all a great riff is capable of. The guitars, as raw as can be, go berserk from start to finish, coming unglued and swarming in every direction as the band maneuver between stampeding carnage and mid-tempo bludgeoning. Whipping around like a sock full of quarters (or maybe a bag of rusty nails), Early Grave go from neck-snapping savagery to guitars that feast upon psychedelic exploration, and yet it all feels cohesively primal. These fucking riffs though… in my humble opinion, this is the hardcore record of the year.
ERROL HOLDEN
“Supreme Magnetic 3” LP
Errol Holden has quickly become one of hip-hop’s most loquacious and eloquent emcees. His album comes packed with chatter, not just in his bars but between the verses, he lets his records form like standing on a corner, taking in all the narratives of the city as the streets buzz around him. With a tendency to release albums in spontaneous batches, Supreme Magnetic 3 is Holden’s first record of the year (with his next, produced by frequent collaborator Roc Marciano, due out later this month), a brazen album that splits the difference raw drug talk and a verbal complexity that leaves most rappers in the dust. The Harlem based MC is spitting bars in rapid fire clips, a mix of stream-of-conscious poeticism, reflections on humble beginnings, and reverence for street legends and the dope fiends that made them. Errol Holden has risen above the gutter but he’s still entrenched in the gime. Eschewing hooks for stark conversations, Holden shines on verbose verses that present his ideas by the kilo and then he’s out, a ghost in the dusted winds.
EX:RE
“Radio Station”
For those that enjoy a stroll through the city just after midnight, Ex:Re’s “Radio Station” should a new addition to the all-timer playlist. Elena Tonra’s (Daughter) solo project returned with in a plume of late night magic, a smoky dose of lounge psych and art pop that pops from the speakers - swirling, simmering, and serene. The first single from the upcoming Save As, due out October 30th via 4AD (Julia Jacklin, Aldous Harding, Kim Deal), might not set the tone for the album, but as Tonra sings on the hook, “tuning into the fragments, I am a changing radio station” and you can’t help but sink into the song’s acoustic groove, a vortex of coffee and cigarettes, of laconic drums that sit deep in the pocket and Tonra’s spiraling vocal harmonies, as crisp as their are undeniably cool. The warm production allows the song to float, punctuated by the warped progressions and the layered approach to the strings, as the song moves in and out of shadowy focus.
HELENA DELAND
"How Do You Like Me Now"
Three years after the release of Goodnight Summerland (in addition to a few stray singles and a collaborative album with Ouri), Montreal’s Helena Deland returns with another loosey in the form of “How Do You Like Me Now,” a gorgeous experimental folk / art pop song with a kaleidoscopic resolve. Out via Chivi Chivi, the single drifts on a lush bed of guitars, percussion, organ, and piano, the eloquent landscape dreamy but momentous, cascading subtle peaks and gentle valleys in support of Deland’s ever so softly mischievous vocals. Exploring the idea of sneaking around and reading someone’s personal diary, knowing all there is to be known, only to be asked the question at hand, “how do you like me now”. Moving like a leaf in the breeze, Helena Deland’s composition is free to explore (figuratively and literally), sweeping between the pages never meant to be read.
LASSO
“Covarde” LP
While Lasso introduced themselves with three skull-crushing EPs over the coarse of three years, the Brazilian hardcore band erupted with a full length, Parte, back in 2024 and toured all over the globe. Two years later and the group are back with Covarde, their second album of annhilating punk and rip-your-spine-out-through-the-back-of-your-neck hardcore. As raw as it is, there’s a blistering skate punk energy to be found in the riffs, bulldozing the last remaining brain cells that reside behind your earbuds with a sense of joyous decay. Covarde is as aggressive as can be, but but you get the impression that Lasso would rather see the camaraderie of a reckless audience than say sheer violence in the world et large, digging into their riffs with as much a sense of fun as a sense of carnage. Don’t get it misconstrued, Lasso play with relentless brutality, but there’s a bounce in their step, an excitement that comes from laying sonic waste.
SCIENCE MAN
“Top Of The Chain”
We’ve often described Science Man’s music as the aural equivalent of being chased down the street by some maniac with a chainsaw, and quite frankly, we can’t get enough of it. The Buffalo based hardcore band play with a mutated density all their own, exploding under a heavy atmosphere of debris and radiation soaked rubble. For all the chaos however, Science Man play with defined structure, dynamics, and the most unlikely of hooks. As steeped in piercing noise and violent abrasion as they might be, at their core, these are well written songs. A year after the great Monarch Joy album, the band are back with The Exchange of Ideas and Information: Part 1 and they just keep getting better. “Top of the Chain,” the record’s lead single and opening track is feral and anxious, distorted, volatile, and artistic, a song that hits with a truly unhinged sense of urgency. By the time they peel back into momentary syncopation just prior to the minute mark (before going berserk once more), any sense of apathy has been eradicated.
SNOOPER
“Mouth Closed”
Snooper, the ever ebullient and giant insect friendly Nashville based punk band, are set to release a new EP on October 30th, the same day they join Mannequin Pussy and Wednesday for a US tour. While details beyond that remain unannounced, the band did share “Mouth Closed,” the record’s animated first single, an electronic punk song that crackles like a burst of lightning. With a hypnotic bass tone that could pillage a small village, the song evolves with programmed beats, robotic hand-claps, and Blair Tramel’s delightfully warped vocals that shape the song’s earworm melody. Grinding and pulsating in equal measure with a tightly coiled dose of structural repetition, the song carries with it Snooper’s unbridled energy and kicks it directly into a tornado, thrashing into the manipulated digital abyss as the layers wrench up the song’s vibrating agitation.
THE TRUFFLE PIGS
“Lanes and Lanes and Lanes” LP
The Truffle Pigs are a new Melbourne based band comprised of Stephanie Hughes (Hedge Burners, Boomgates), Amy Hill (Primo!, Sleeper & Snake, Terry), and Al Montfort (Lower Plenty, Sleeper & Snake, Terry), three musicians whose resumes speak volumes beyond what is listed here. They’ve all played in punk bands, they’ve all made folk music, they’ve all been immersed in art that derives from a political consciousness. Lanes and Lanes and Lanes, the trio’s debut album is a gorgeous record built on acoustic guitars and droning melodies, gentle sounds that occasionally run headfirst into atonality, the mix ever so soft as to never sound jarring. At the center of their music however is earnest folk songwriting, warm home-spun songs that jangle with timeless story-telling, each member adding to the camp-fire harmonies and detached semblance of ease. Songs like “That Can’t Be Right” and “The Trial” provide an emotional depth to the album, grappling with loneliness and daydreams of a life that could have been.
USA NAILS
“The Lubricant of Self-Hate”
Some bands lose their sense of hostility as the years go by, giving in to age and malaise, opting for something cleaner and more sterile as a result. USA Nails is not one of those bands. “The Lubricant of Self-Hate,” the first single from the band’s seventh album, Routine Flesh, would suggest that time and the world we live in is only fueling their agitation, as if the London based quartet have been getting kicked in the head for the past twelve years and their collective migraines can only be exorcised with swarming aggression. With the album out February 12th via One Little Independent (Björk, Crass, Bad Breeding) and SKiN GRAFT Records (Hyper Gal, U.S. Maple, Yowie), there’s a corrosive nature to the first single, a blaring noise punk song that thunders with a primal d-beat rhythm and all the subtlety of an atomic detonation. USA Nails do’t stick around to see the results on the decimation, opting for the get in, destruct, get out approach, the single still smoldering upon its exit.
extended listening:
@ “Bird”
200 STAB WOUNDS “Pangs of Conscience”
ALEXALONE “nomoreshoegaze” LP
ALUMINUM “Distant Noise”
AXIS: SOVA “Fever Days”
BABEHOVEN “Wave Has A Place”
BAD BRAINS “Pay To Cum”
BIITA HOUDEI “Peach In The Briar”
BILLBOARD STYLE “Dropped”
BILLIAM “Human Body Units”
BRAIN TOURNIQUET “Sinking Deeper Into Madness” LP
BUSH TETRAS “Fess Up”
C.O.F.F.I.N “Gettin’ Down”
CATHERINE ELICSON “Figure”
CHASTITY BELT “Designs" / "To Decide"
CHE NOIR “Urban Essence” (feat. The Uce)
CLAIRE CRONIN “Before The End Of Time”
CULT CRIME “Final Dose / Just Like A Knife”
DAZY “Ugly”
DEAD GOWNS “New Blue”
DEADY “Systematic Slaughter”
DISFEAR “Early Graves”
DISSIMULATOR “Neon Metropolis”
DOWNTOWN BOYS “Can’t Hardly Wait”
DUMMY “April Limousine / Alluvial Fan”
EMILY A. SPRAGUE “Rising”
FASHION CHANGE “Ego Trip”
FINE “Sometimes I Rush”
GASH “Holiday Time”
GENA “Lead It Up (KAYTRANADA Remix)”
GREG FREEMAN “Loser’s Prize”
GRUMPY “Queens”
HANNAH COHEN “Music and Dreams” (Robert Lester Folsom cover)
HEAVENS TO BETSY “My Secret”
HOLY MOTORS “God Is A Feeling”
INDEX “Dissolve”
JULIA JACKLIN “If I Had The Hand of God”
KOLEŻANKA “Hook, Line, Sinker!”
LAMBRINI GIRLS “Bang Bang Bang”
LAND OF TALK “4:44”
LILY KONIGSBERG “Free Byrd”
THE LOSERS “Somebody Kill Me” EP
LUGUBRIOUS GARMENT “Transient Wounds, Spiritual Wilt”
MIA JOY “Comet” (feat. Peel Dream Magazine)
MÖRTUAL “Eclipse of Dominion”
THE OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL “Timewaster”
OMNI “Wire (Demo)”
OUTER HEAVEN “The Burden of Being” (feat. Rivers of Nihil)
PAPER JAM “Skyscraper”
PARDONER “Don’t Slouch”
PART COMPANY “Into The Water”
PATTER “1 2 3”
PET FOX “Avoidant”
PROTOMARTYR "Exalted Eagles"
PUBLIC FIGURES “Push My Buttons”
RAKIM, MASTA KILLA, & KURUPT “Rock Ya Body” (feat. Daz Dillinger, Ghostface Killah, & Raekwon)
RETAIL SIMPS “Portal To Miami”
SEN MORIMOTO “Chewing Gum”
SHARP PINS "How Can I Explain What She Does To Me?"
SNOOPER “Grand Prix”
SONG PEOPLE “The Cone”
SOUR WIDOWS “Choke Chain”
SPIRAL XP “Blue Earth”
STEF CHURA “The Concrete”
STRAW MAN ARMY “Striking Home”
SYSTEM SHOCK “Hardcore Mania” EP
THEY ARE GUTTING A BODY OF WATER “The Rook”
THIS IS THE KIT “Skim A Stone”
TONER “Return II Hammer”
TROPICAL FUCK STORM “Moscovium (Live)”
TWICE EYES “Bright Memory” EP
UNIFLORA “Jack and Annie”
UNITY “Comes Back To You / Was There Ever Unity?” LP
V.V. LIGHTBODY “Two Swans”
VAN VEEN “Psychic Lunch”
VICTORYLAND “The Ugliest Girl on the Beach”
WEDNESDAY "June 2 (Early Version)"
WESLEY & THE BOYS “Euro Tour Tape ’26”
WIDOWSPEAK “Live on KEXP”
THE ZOMBIES “I Love You (Mono Remastered)”
Consider this the official “you might consider this biased, but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t include it warning.” I’m not going to share too much of my written thoughts, but just know that I believe in the music released by Exploding In Sound Records with all my heart (or I wouldn’t bother doing it).
There’s a new Krill record coming out next month, and that’s reason to be excited. Very excited. The last time I watched Krill play live I had the biggest smile plastered on my face from start to finish. Their upcoming album is a proper return, equally profound and ridiculous, a classic Krill record that eschews some immediacy instead unfolding with repeat listens in a way most dazzling. Aside from that, Prewn recently released a KEXP session, and there’s little that needs to be said beyond simply watching and witnessing the magic of Izzy Hagerup’s music. It’s been said that Prewn is a once in a lifetime artist... and she’s really just getting started.
There’s a new smash hit single from Pet Fox as well (in the ‘extended listening’ section) and Bimbo released an exceptional full length debut. Feel free to check it all out. I can’t recommend it enough.