There’s a rare kind of intimacy that only a truly honest songwriter can summon, and with Selene, the UK-based artist Shayan Regan makes a quietly powerful entrance into the conversation. The EP from this singular singer-songwriter is not just a collection of songs—it’s a deeply personal transmission from the heart, dressed in the delicate shimmer of acoustic textures and cosmic overtones.
On their latest offering and second record of the year, REAL PERSON, experimental electronic trio Occurrence have crafted an album as intimate as a handwritten letter and as sprawling as a fever dream. REAL PERSON takes a novel approach: each track is a sonic representation of an actual person who’s shaped the band’s life and creative trajectory. It’s a bold, immersive work that not only pushes the boundaries of what electronic music can sound like but also how it can feel.
E.G. Phillips has always felt like an artist born from another era — one where music wasn’t just a soundtrack to life, but a carefully composed narrative thread connecting myth, memory, and meaning. With his latest EP, Tricks of the Light, Phillips delivers a masterclass in lyric-driven, chamber-infused songwriting that feels at once timeless and startlingly modern. It’s an elegant and emotionally rich collection that not only confirms his strengths as a wordsmith but reveals a newfound depth as a sonic architect.
In a world of pristine, polished indie rock releases, Cope & Drag’s “Heaven Vs Halo” is a gloriously ragged outlier — a poetic meditation on mortality dressed in the dusty denim of jangly guitars, atmospheric grooves, and vocals that feel equal parts sermon and streetwise sneer. It’s the kind of song that makes you lean in, not because it’s begging for attention, but because it’s carrying a secret worth hearing.
There are albums that feel like a collection of songs, and then there are albums that feel like worlds created. Tears of the Sea, the ambitious, ocean-spun concept album from Watercolored—the artistic moniker of singer, producer, and composer Itai Bauman—is unmistakably the latter. It’s a record that doesn’t simply invite you to listen; it quietly demands you surrender yourself to it, to drift into its depths and lose track of where the shoreline might be. And the reward for doing so is one of the most original and immersive listening experiences of the year.