“A Summer Day on Mercury”

There’s something quietly explosive about Mercury, the latest single from Bud Kelsey. Recorded solo in a single summer day inside an old funeral home apartment in Boone, North Carolina, this track feels like a one-man time capsule cracked open, with all the ghosts of past selves, broken bands, and half-said goodbyes echoing inside.

Built on warm layers of analog soul and gut-punching honesty, Mercury is a genre-fluid swirl of alternative country and indie rock, with Southern grit and West Coast shimmer coexisting in harmony. Fans of Big Thief, MJ Lenderman, or The Lemon Twigs will feel right at home here, yet Kelsey’s voice, both literally and creatively, feels unmistakably his own. There’s a looseness in the groove, but every element is deliberate, grounded in rawness without ever sounding careless.

It’s easy to imagine this track pouring out of him in a single sitting, vocals arriving first like a journal entry set to melody, then swelling into a soundscape that’s simultaneously intimate and expansive. With its homespun production and emotionally grounded performance, Mercury doesn’t just sound like a turning point for Kelsey,it feels like a declaration. A reset. A map drawn in real time as he searches for his own North Star.

Put simply, Mercury isn’t trying to be big. It’s just trying to be real and in doing so, it hits like something massive.

Tragedy in a Glance — Scott Yoder’s Haunting New Heartache

There’s something deliciously fragile about Scott Yoder’s latest single, Never Be Another Day. It doesn’t shout. It lingers. It sighs. It stares out the window of a rainy Seattle loft with mascara slightly smudged, wondering what could’ve been if just one more word had been said, one more moment seized.

Built on a pulse-like thrum and Yoder’s dreamy, near-haunted vocals, the track unfolds like a half-remembered dream, or a feeling that passes before you can name it. It’s intimate, but vast. Solo in execution, yet universal in ache. You can hear the bedroom walls it was born between, but you also hear echoes, as though someone whispered their regrets into a canyon and this song is what came back.

What makes Never Be Another Day stick is that subtle tension between glam and gloom, that shadowy romance that’s always been Yoder’s signature. It’s velvet with a tear down the seam. His introspection doesn’t feel performative; it’s not diary confessional, but more like the sound of someone trying to break through their own shell, lovingly, hesitantly.

If you’ve ever had a moment slip away, a glance, a maybe-love, a fleeting what-if,  this track gets it. Yoder doesn’t just sing about longing; he sounds like longing. And that’s what makes this song not just memorable, but quietly devastating.

Letting Go, Drenched in Moonlight

Deaf Echo’s latest single “Batman” doesn’t swoop in like a hero—it lingers like a ghost. The Los Angeles indie-rock duo, made up of Amir Hammoud and Jesús Omar Lopez, delivers a track soaked in vulnerability, where brooding guitars and melancholic vocals meet in a beautifully raw emotional standoff.

From the opening chords, “Batman” casts a shadow—slow, haunting, and strangely comforting. Hammoud’s voice feels like it’s walking barefoot across memories, every word dipped in quiet pain. He sings not to be heard, but to be understood. The lyrics touch that gnawing space between love and self-doubt, where you want someone to stay but feel like they’d be better off without you. It’s the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t scream—it just breathes heavily in the background of your day.

Lopez’s guitar work adds the perfect tension—delicate when it needs to be, aching when it should be. There’s a cinematic quality here, like a dim-lit drive through Los Angeles at 2 a.m., questions hanging in the air like fog.

Deaf Echo proves with “Batman” that indie ballads don’t need to shout to make an impact. They just need to be honest. And this track? It’s brutally honest in the softest, most unforgettable way.

Let it play. Then let it haunt you a little.

Sunlight, Memory, and Melody: A Quiet Triumph

There’s something about MAHUNA’s Forever Is Mine that feels like stepping into a sun-drenched memory — one of those moments that doesn’t just stay with you, but reshapes the way you look at time itself.

Born from a Belfast childhood memory and rekindled by watching his son play in the morning light, this track is gentle but deeply resonant. From the first note, you’re wrapped in its melodic softness — a slow, steady pull that feels like it’s leading you down a quiet path you didn’t know you needed to walk. The production is tastefully restrained, allowing space for emotion to swell between each chord.

There’s no rush here. No noise for the sake of being heard. Just a reflective hum of life unfolding, of love held close. MAHUNA’s vocals carry a kind of weathered tenderness — the kind that comes only from real living, from moments observed rather than performed.

What makes Forever Is Mine hit so hard is its quiet confidence. It doesn’t shout to be remembered. Instead, it lingers — like the smell of toast on a Saturday morning or the look in your child’s eyes when the world is still new.

In a music landscape full of flash, this is a rare, golden thread. A reminder that sometimes, the softest songs hold the heaviest truths.

What’s the story behind your latest song/album?

“Burning” came out of a time when I was really scared and angry about a lot of things in my own life and in the world. One part of that was a doctor with a particular knack for making me feel like a broken piece of machinery. That inspired the second verse. But more generally the song is about how isolating it can be to be angry, to be grieving, especially if the people around you aren’t feeling the same way. It also has a lot of fire imagery. I wrote it during wildfire season, when the air smelled like smoke and the sky was dark, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire that burned my neighborhood when I was a little kid.

Is there a specific moment in your career that felt like a turning point?

Starting to record and release my songs two years ago was a big moment for me. I’ve been writing songs and playing them for myself my whole life, but I’d mostly thought about it in terms of my own personal entertainment and emotional processing, and sometimes I’d perform them, but that wasn’t really where the songs were coming from. It’s been really fun to start to think of the songs more as an object I’m creating, and to think about how someone else might experience those songs.

Who or what has been inspiring your music lately?

A lot of the songs I’ve been writing recently have been inspired by my friends and family. Some of these songs sound like love songs, and they are, but not romantic love. Others, like “Ernestine” or “For Rosalie” are really clearly songs of support. Those are my favorites, the songs I’ve written for specific people, to tell them how much I love them and how proud I am of them.

What was the first concert you attended?

My first concert was “The Indigo Girls.” I went with my best friend when we were 14 or 15. They were amazing! There’s a little reference to that hidden in “Ernestine,” a song I wrote for my best friend, along with references to Our Poem (Christina Rossetti’s “The Goblin Market”) and a lot of other shared experiences.

What’s next for you—any exciting projects or goals on the horizon?

Yeah, I have some new music coming up! I’m working with a producer for the first time, which is really fun. I think that’s going to help me get closer to the sound I really want for these songs, but it’s also just been so much fun to have someone to talk to about the songs. She really gets what I’m trying to do with them, and I love those moments where I can feel that shared vision start to take form.

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Riding the Storm Within: CS Hellmann’s “Waves Waves” Is a Thunderclap of Raw Emotion

CS Hellmann’s Waves Waves doesn’t just hit your ears—it hits your gut. From the moment the first riff surges forward, there’s an electrifying energy that feels like you’re being swept into a storm of inner conflict, grit, and liberation. This Nashville-born artist taps into something primal and haunting, turning a deeply personal reckoning into a sonic experience that’s both intimate and cinematic.

Produced by Jared Corder at the secluded Polychrome Ranch studio in East Tennessee, the track captures the natural wildness of its environment. Every guitar lick, recorded in raw, one-take bursts, crackles with life, giving the song a pulse that’s almost feral. There’s a clear thread of influence from the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Nick Weaver, but Hellmann doesn’t imitate, he reshapes. The track evolves from shadowy, Manson-esque verses into a dreamy, Radiohead-like pre-chorus, before roaring back with explosive power.

What sets Waves Waves apart is its introspective fire. It’s not about heartbreak or blame; it’s about confronting yourself. That tug-of-war between the subconscious and conscious plays out in the dynamics, the textures, the grit of Hellmann’s voice, fighting, pleading, rising.

It’s indie rock with teeth. It’s blues-drenched soul stripped to its bones. Waves Waves is an awakening wrapped in distortion, swagger, and soul.