Listen Up
Pop and house to rock and beyond in this week’s music
Miss Grit: Nothing’s Wrong
“Nothing’s Wrong,” the latest single from Miss Grit (aka Margaret Sohn), is at once dreamy and haunting. The track opens with creeping guitar and laidback percussion, progressing into Sohn’s gentle vocals and shimmering instrumentation. It continues the artist’s inventive lyricism that, for their debut album, Follow The Cyborg (out 24 February), depicts a non-human machine’s path to freedom with pertinent resonance.
Indigo De Souza: Younger & Dumber
From North Carolina-based recording artist Indigo De Souza’s forthcoming album, All of This Will End (out 28 April), comes the thoughtful, honest and emotional lead single, “Younger & Dumber,” along with an official music video that was directed by De Souza and features collaborative costume design by her mother, Kimberly Oberhammer (who also created the album’s artwork). For the video, in which De Souza wears an otherworldly mask designed by Henry Shearon, the artist took psilocybin as part of the creative process. “I have a very specific way of dancing when I’m on mushrooms,” she says in a statement. “The movements feel like electricity rising up from the earth through ancient networks of mycelium. It feels like the trees and plants are moving my body for me and I am just surrendering.”
Nicholas Allbrook: Jackie
As a first taste of Manganese, Australian multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Nicholas Allbrook’s forthcoming solo album, the lead single “Jackie” is a shimmering, nuanced track that invokes the ’80s and ’90s. “This song is about my friend (whose name isn’t Jackie) who died in 2021,” Allbrook says in a statement. “She was fantastic and the news left me with familiar feelings of guilt and regret and ‘Why didn’t I do more or know better?’ I don’t usually get hit with creative bolts while running, but by the canal once in London I was struck with the hopeful image of her rowing away from the Earth that had been so hurtful and hard, on a black lake surrounded by stars, finally finding peace and silence.”
jite: isolation
Over a chill house beat and sparse guitar track, recording artist jite gets vulnerable with dreamy, gentle vocals in her debut single, “isolation.” With pretty melodies and layered harmonies, the singer reveals her inner psyche with an intimacy on par with bedroom pop. The result is buoyant yet melancholy, personal yet completely affecting.
King Isis: 4leaf clover
Oakland, California-born singer-songwriter King Isis follows their first single, “4leaf clover,” with the new cut, “in my ways.” With an easygoing melody and fuzzy guitar, the indie track is equal parts angsty and bright. It’s “about being stuck in a cycle of your own creation,” says the artist in a statement. “You don’t quite know how to get out of it just yet and you’re not really trying. It’s willfully ignoring shadows, but it’s ok cuz we’re dancing.”
Listen Up is published every Sunday and rounds up the new music we found throughout the week. Hear the year so far on our Spotify channel. Hero image courtesy of Indigo De Souza
