Edmonton singer-songwriter Billie Zizi is sharing her first new music since 2016, the dreamy and transcendent “A Picture of a Picture,” a song which Zizi wrote early on in the pandemic as she pondered the “ephemeral nature of existence.”
Co-produced with close friend Austin Parachoniak, “A Picture of a Picture” couples pedal steel guitar careening high to exemplify the searching nature of Zizi’s gentle vocals, along with emotional and experimental guitar playing by Parachoniak.
“It’s about searching for the lost memory of love and finding it only in fragmented shadows,” Zizi explains of the song’s themes.
“Like a ghost, longing paces the imprint of the heart and lives in the recesses of one’s mind, dull and intractable, a diffused grief – AKA when you break up and you can barely remember their smile but you’re longing for that ecstasy in the sunshine, that young love feeling, oblivion.”
For over 15 years, with his heart on his sleeve, Mike Evin has been writing immediate and disarming piano pop songs with adventurous melodies that live inside you. Joyful new single, “Dancing To Sir Duke,” encapsulates the wide-eyed spirit of his music and comes in tandem with the announcement of his 7th album, Something Stirs When You Sing, out August 23rd.
Produced by Chris Stringer (Timber Timbre, Abigail Lapell), “Dancing To Sir Duke” is vibrant, soul-infused and chock full of handclaps and doo-wop vocals. The song is inspired by his childhood days discovering music on his Fisher Price record player.
Following 2023’s Split with Chad VanGaalen, discordant art-pop songwriter Astral Swans (Calgary’s Matthew Swann) is back with Split 2 – a 7’’ with garage legend Julie Doiron to be released on June 14th via Swann’s own Stoner Bird Records and on lathe cut vinyl via Red Spade Records. Ahead of that, Astral Swans is sharing “The Coward,” one of his two experimental tracks on the EP.
“The Coward” is a “weird one” for Swann, playing on different valences of what the word means, contrasting synthesized and live recorded instruments in a rumination on – among other things – suicide; how those that go through with it are often labelled with the term.
Toronto indie pop singer-songwriter Liam Barrack is following up his January single release (“Empty Spaces”), continuing a string of releases which embrace pop production while mining the complexities of Barrack’s inner world.
With only a handful of releases under his belt, Barrack has already amassed over 500k streams, fueled by organic Spotify discovery/playlists and fan-created YouTube content from his dedicated followers.
His angsty yet upbeat new single “Lucky” is an introspective blend of indie pop rock which grapples with themes of uncertainty.
“‘Lucky’ is about feeling simultaneously very fortunate but also very scared of when your luck might run out, and the process of living in fear of the future; making it hard to live in the present,” explains Barrack.
Vicky von Vicky delves into themes of love, loss, and life experiences, expressing themselves with candidness, vulnerability and a big serving of humour. Their distinctive sound draws inspiration from punk, grunge, classic rock, as well as soul and hip-hop.
Following the release of two albums in 1998 (self-titled) and 2000 (Farmers & Artists), the band took a hiatus in 2001. The band reunited in 2019, and now they are eager to unveil their Broken Chairs EP on June 14th.
They offer a taste with the new alt rock single, “Freak Me Out,” which follows a person through a traumatic event as they begin to feel the effects of it.
