Palm Beach, Florida-based singer-songwriter Brit Drozda shares “Flowers From Heaven,” a deeply personal and soulful pop-folk tribute born from the loss of her only brother and longtime musical collaborator, Virgil Price. Blending acoustic warmth with an evolving full-band arrangement, the song transforms profound grief into a hopeful meditation on connection, remembrance, and the signs that remind us the people we love may never truly leave us.

In the depths of her grief, Brit found herself scrolling through old text messages, searching for anything that might make her feel close to him again. There, she discovered two video messages Virgil had sent containing the beginnings of an unfinished song.

Music had always been central to their relationship. The siblings began writing together in high school and later reunited creatively at Davidson College, where Brit sang lead in Virgil’s band before the two eventually formed their own project, The Prices. Discovering his unfinished song offered Brit an unexpected opportunity to collaborate with her brother one final time.

She tried repeatedly to finish it, but nothing felt right. Then, during one of the daily walks she had begun taking along a beach the siblings frequented during high school, something changed.

“One day, I stumbled upon a red rose that had washed up,” Brit recalls. “It was still fragrant. I thought to myself, and said out loud, ‘Are there flowers in heaven?’”

The phrase immediately struck her as a song lyric. Brit wrote it into her phone and turned around to retrace her path along the shoreline. As she walked back, two long-stemmed hot pink carnations washed up at her feet.

“It was as if Virgil was responding to my question,” she says. “I have seen signs from him and felt his presence as I’ve moved through life after his passing. These signs make me hopeful that we are still connected and that he is at peace.”

That experience became the emotional centre of the song, allowing Brit to approach Virgil’s unfinished music from a place of hope rather than grief alone. Written on her brother’s piano and incorporating the piano part he originally created, “Flowers From Heaven” became both a tribute and a final collaboration between two siblings whose relationship had always been intertwined with music.

Continuing to explore the emotional complexities of relationships with striking honesty, Montreal singer-songwriter Libby Ember shares “Shoes,” a vulnerable and melancholic indie-folk single about realizing you may be the only person still trying to move a relationship forward. Stripped of drums and built around an understated arrangement, the track places Libby’s words firmly at the centre, capturing the exhaustion that comes from being ready to take the next step while someone else remains standing still.

Inspired by a relationship where Libby felt increasingly responsible for creating progress, “Shoes” transforms that imbalance into a simple but resonant metaphor. Throughout the song, putting on her shoes represents more than getting ready to leave the house; it becomes an expression of willingness to show up, put in the work, and actively pursue the life and relationship she wants.

“I decided to name the song ‘Shoes’ despite the fact that I don’t repeat it very often in the song, since the shoes are a metaphor for my efforts,” Libby explains. “If I’ve got my shoes on, it means I’m ready to go out and work for what I want or work towards bettering a relationship.”

Rather than dramatizing that disconnect, “Shoes” sits quietly inside it. The song captures the vulnerable realization that wanting a relationship to move forward is not enough when the effort required to sustain it has become one-sided. In keeping the emotion restrained, Libby allows the frustration, sadness, and honesty of that realization to emerge naturally.

That intimacy extends into the production. While Libby’s music often balances indie-folk songwriting with dreamier pop textures, “Shoes” deliberately pulls back. The decision to leave drums out of the arrangement gives the track a lowkey, exposed quality, creating space for the lyrics and vocal performance to carry its emotional weight.

“We decided to keep this song more lowkey with no drums because it felt really deep and vulnerable,” Libby says. “The focus really is on the words that I’m saying.”

The song also has roots in Libby’s ongoing music studies at Concordia University. Before arriving at the version listeners hear today, she produced and recorded an early demo for a production class alongside her friend Amy Lavallée. Although none of that original recording appears on the finished single, the process helped establish ideas that would eventually inform its final direction.

With its sparse production and unguarded perspective, “Shoes” further sharpens the qualities that have come to define Libby’s songwriting: emotional specificity, conversational honesty, and an ability to find revealing metaphors within seemingly ordinary details.

Prince Edward Island singer-songwriter Shane Pendergast shares “Jack Pine,” an introspective yet uplifting folk song inspired by the rugged resilience of its namesake tree. Rooted in earthy imagery, live instrumentation, and Pendergast’s deep connection to the landscape and literary traditions of Prince Edward Island, the track finds beauty in adapting to difficult surroundings without losing sight of who you are. It’s the title track from his upcoming fifth album, Jack Pine, set for release on October 23rd, 2026.

The song takes inspiration from Pendergast’s longstanding fascination with jack pines: hardy, unconventional trees capable of growing in barren and unforgiving ground. Their ability to bend, adapt, and assume unexpected forms offered a natural reflection of ideas that have increasingly found their way into his songwriting.

That connection is also rooted in the work of legendary Prince Edward Island poet Milton Acorn, whose writing about the tree particularly resonated with Pendergast. “The Jack pine grows to any shape that suits the light, suits the winds, suits itself,” Acorn wrote, capturing the same rugged individualism that drew Pendergast to the image.

Throughout the song, the Jack pine becomes more than a piece of the Maritime landscape. Its bent branches and ability to withstand difficult conditions offer a metaphor for resilience, adaptability, and the tension between yielding to outside forces and holding onto something essential within yourself.

That imagery reflects a broader evolution in Pendergast’s songwriting. “Embracing the rugged and earthy aspects of life has become a part of my songwriting in recent years,” he explains. “Getting your feet in the mud, celebrating unconventionality, meeting a character who gives you new perspectives so you don’t get stuck in your old ways.”

Musically, “Jack Pine” carries that organic philosophy into the studio. Like much of Pendergast’s recent work, the majority of the track was recorded live off the floor, allowing the natural chemistry between the musicians to shape the performance rather than attempting to construct it piece by piece. “We all got in a groove together that I think is tangible in the track,” Pendergast shares.

Adding another distinctly PEI voice to the recording is acclaimed singer-songwriter Catherine MacLellan, who contributes backing vocals to the track. “It was an honour to have Catherine MacLellan come in to record some backup vocals,” Pendergast says. “She has the most beautiful and smooth voice, could sing you the phone book, as they say.”

The song’s connection to Pendergast’s artistic world extends beyond the forthcoming album. He also hosts The Jack Pine Folk Club in Prince Edward Island, a gathering dedicated to folk music and poetry that shares its name with both the song and record. Together, they reflect his growing interest in creating spaces where music, literature, landscape, and Maritime storytelling can coexist.

Montreal-based producer, songwriter and composer JoJo Worthington shares “Ever Ender Star Infinity,” a sweeping alt-folk anthem that turns romance into something celestial. Dark, dreamy and consumed by longing, destiny and connection, the track draws together spirituality, stardust, fantasy and the enormous persistence of desire to capture something relatively unfamiliar within her catalogue: a love song.

“‘Tu as une bonne étoile.’ You have a good star,” JoJo explains. “Meaning, you’ve been blessed and there is someone watching over you.” It’s the first single to be shared from JoJo’s upcoming EP, BAPTIZED II, set for release on November 6th, 2026.

That idea stretches back to conversations about space and spirituality, and the idea that everything is fundamentally connected. Fascinated by the fact that the atoms within our bodies are assembled from material that predates the Earth itself, JoJo began folding the language of stars, space and elemental matter into the song.

The song’s fantastical language also emerged from another passions – Magic: The Gathering. While opening a package of Dragon Shield card sleeves, JoJo came across the description “Emme: God of Ender & Ever.” The phrase immediately captured her imagination, recalling the duality of “Forever Evermore” from her 2022 BAPTIZED I EP and eventually helping shape “Ever Ender Star Infinity.” Other cards, including “Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn,” provided further fragments for its lyrical universe.

Musically, “Ever Ender Star Infinity” finds JoJo unexpectedly embracing pop instincts she has spent much of her career pushing against. Rather than keeping that immediacy contained, however, she blows it outward into something vast, pairing the song’s melodic core with layers of distorted guitars and the expansive production sensibilities of co-producer William Crann.

“Ever Ender Star Infinity” marks the next chapter in a much larger story. The track forms part of BAPTIZED II, the second saga in a concept project JoJo has been developing for the last six years. Following BAPTIZED I, the forthcoming release continues a spiritual narrative that will ultimately culminate in the full-length album ARMOUR OF GOD, bringing together material from both chapters alongside new songs.

Within that journey, “Ever Ender Star Infinity” feels like a significant arrival. Spirituality has long permeated JoJo’s songwriting, but here the search for connection becomes tangible and deeply human. The divine and romantic begin to overlap: atoms, stars, fantasy and faith all become different languages for expressing the same connection.

For an artist whose work has so often occupied the space between earthly and celestial worlds, “Ever Ender Star Infinity” turns JoJo’s gaze outward toward infinity only to find something profoundly personal staring back.

Ahead of their forthcoming debut EP, Victoria, BC duo Miss the Heart share “Don’t U Dare,” a sexy and cheeky single that wrestles with the temptation to fight dirty without surrendering to it. Pairing a playful sense of provocation with the duo’s emotionally charged alternative pop-rock, the track captures the internal battle between wanting to hit back at someone who crossed a line and refusing to let their actions dictate your own.

“Don’t U Dare” was born from a conflict in which someone hit below the belt before attempting to drag vocalist Kiarra O’Connor down with them. Tempted to retaliate in kind, O’Connor instead found herself confronting a more difficult choice: whether momentary satisfaction was worth becoming someone she didn’t want to be. The song draws its tension from that push and pull, transforming the impulse to fight fire with fire into a declaration of where the line gets drawn.

“I was very tempted to play their game and hit them right back where it hurt,” O’Connor explains. “The song came from that internal battle where I wanted to fight fire with fire, but ultimately chose not to let someone else’s actions turn me into someone I didn’t want to be. It’s about drawing a line in the sand and not going there.”

That restraint doesn’t make “Don’t U Dare” any less provocative. The chorus plays with layers of whispered vocals beneath O’Connor’s full performance, creating an intimate counterpoint that gives the track its teasing, almost conspiratorial quality. The original plan was to whisper the chorus entirely before the duo landed on a balance between the two approaches, allowing temptation and resolve to seemingly coexist within the vocal itself.

The track emerged through a burst of spontaneity. Miss the Heart were originally preparing to enter the studio to record previous single, “Know Me Better,” when O’Connor came up with the chorus to “Don’t U Dare” just weeks before the scheduled session. The idea arrived so quickly and insistently that the duo changed course entirely, pushing “Know Me Better” months down the line so they could capture the new song first.

That same instinct carried into the recording process. Drummer Michael Voytash helped shape the song’s guitar solo by experimenting with pedals, while a chord change in the final chorus was written spontaneously in the studio, giving the closing stretch another unexpected lift. Those details reinforce the song’s playful volatility, with the arrangement seemingly capable of changing direction as quickly as the emotions behind it.

“Don’t U Dare” also expands the broader exploration of feminine rage at the heart of Miss the Heart’s forthcoming debut EP. Rather than treating rage as a single emotion, the duo uses each release to examine a different response to the experiences that provoke it. On “Numb Me Out,” their first song written and recorded together, the realization of living within a misogynistic world moves from hopelessness and the desire to escape toward defiance and reclaiming power. “Know Me Better” turns betrayal by narcissistic personalities into an explosive refusal to be underestimated or manipulated. “Don’t U Dare” approaches that same emotional territory from another angle entirely, capturing the moment when anger presents a choice: retaliate in kind or refuse to let someone else determine who you become.

Together, the songs reveal feminine rage as something far more complicated than anger alone. It can be exhausting and hard-hitting, empowering and cathartic, or, as “Don’t U Dare” demonstrates, unexpectedly sexy, cheeky, and teasing. By allowing each song to inhabit a different stage and expression of that experience, Miss the Heart is building a debut EP around the contradictions of finding your voice, drawing boundaries, and taking your power back without prescribing a single way to do it.

For O’Connor, writing from that perspective has offered a way to move beyond the surface-level emotions that can sometimes dominate pop songwriting. By turning real experiences into something playful, cathartic, and unapologetic, Miss the Heart continues to find different shades within the same emotional world.

Award-winning singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Kate Schutt releases “Moonsick,” an ethereal jazz-pop reverie inspired by one of the most unforgettable moments in Austrian writer Christiane Ritter’s 1934 memoir A Woman in the Polar Night. Blending timeless songwriting with luminous adult contemporary arrangements, the single captures a transcendent encounter with the Arctic landscape, where moonlight becomes so overwhelming, so beautiful, that the boundary between self and nature begins to dissolve.

Drawn from Ritter’s account of overwintering in the remote Svalbard archipelago, “Moonsick” centers on a night after months of darkness and relentless storms when the sky suddenly clears, revealing an immense full moon suspended above snow and ice. The brilliance of the landscape leaves Ritter spellbound, unable to tear herself away from the frozen wilderness despite the danger surrounding her.

“She loses all sense of self in the magical light,” Kate explains. “It is so bewitching that she wants to lose herself. The song is about this dissolving of self, the desire to dissolve into something so brilliant, so elemental, so bright, so pure.”

The title perfectly encapsulates Ritter’s extraordinary emotional state. More than simple admiration, “Moonsick” describes complete surrender to wonder – a rare moment where perception, imagination, and reality blur together beneath an Arctic sky.

That fascination with moonlight also places the song within a much older musical tradition. From “Moon River” and “Moonglow” to “Paper Moon” and “How High the Moon,” generations of songwriters have found inspiration beneath the night sky. Rather than imitate those classics, Kate set out to write something that sounded “newly old-fashioned”: a song that feels timeless while quietly revealing itself to be unmistakably contemporary.

“When I write a song like ‘Moonsick,’ I try to imagine someone like Ella Fitzgerald singing it,” she says. “What kinds of songs would those great vocalists like Ella, like Billie Holiday, like Sarah Vaughn, be drawn to want to sing if they were alive today?”

That philosophy shapes every aspect of the recording. Rather than relying on modern production trends, “Moonsick” unfolds with understated elegance, allowing space, melody, and musicianship to carry the emotional weight. Glenn Patscha (Bonnie Raitt, Ollabelle) creates an otherworldly harmonic landscape through his shimmering keyboard performance, while Adam Levy (Norah Jones, Lizz Wright) delivers a lyrical guitar solo that feels as timeless as the song itself. Dan Rieser’s nuanced drumming adds delicate swing and sparkling texture, giving the recording an effortless sense of motion without ever disturbing its dreamlike atmosphere.

Kate’s connection to Ritter’s memoir stretches back more than a decade. The instant she finished reading A Woman in the Polar Night, she knew two things: she had to see the Arctic with her own eyes, and one day she would write music inspired by Ritter’s remarkable story. Those ambitions eventually led Kate to Svalbard in both 2016 and 2024, where standing inside the same vast landscapes transformed admiration into lived experience.