Slow Burn Elegance – Lil’ Red & The Rooster Shine on Latest Single “Melancholy Mood”

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Lil’ Red & The Rooster slow the pace and turn up the elegance on “Melancholy Mood,” the fourth single from their forthcoming album 7.

With a tip of the hat to blues greats T-Bone Walker and Dinah Washington, this track is a smoky and slow burning gem dripping with class, control and emotional finesse.

Jennifer “Lil’ Red” Milligan delivers the vocals with a velvet gloved hand, allowing every word linger in the air like perfume in a dimly lit club. There’s pain here for sure, but it’s the kind of pain worn like a tailored dress – graceful, knowing and timeless. Her phrasing moves with the same unhurried confidence as a singer who understands what it means to have restrain.

Pascal Fouquet’s guitar work is pure vintage cool. His tone is warm and articulate, never showy. It’s just the right bends, the right space and the kind of touch that makes the blues feel intimate and eternal.

Bobby Floyd’s B3 organ swells beneath the track with a soulful subtlety, while Jean Marc Despeignes (bass) and Pascal Mucci (drums) keep things locked in with a hushed, heartbeat rhythm section that lets the emotion breathe.

As part of 7, “Melancholy Mood” feels a lot like a candlelit centerpiece. A moment of reflection that invites listeners to lean in closer. It’s not just a love letter to classic blues, but a confident entry in that lineage, re-imagined with the Rooster’s signature “retro modern” touch.

In a world that often moves too fast, “Melancholy Mood” is a reminder that sometimes the deepest feeling comes in the quietest swing.

Lil’ Red & The Rooster’s upcoming album 7 is a rich blend of gospel, blues, retro soul, and pop jazz rooted in a distinctly 1960’s vibe. Featuring seven original tracks, including an instrumental and a gospel blues opener, the album explores themes of freedom and soulful transformation. With Grammy-nominated Bobby Floyd on B3 and piano, 7 is both elegant and gritty, nostalgic and fresh.

The full album drops August 22, 2025, with singles released every three weeks along the way!

Find out all about Lil’ Red & The Rooster on their Website

Video Voyageur: 3Qs with Forester

Edmonton punk rockers Forester channel late-night longing and the raw edge of memory in their latest single, “Daredevil Youth.” Fueled by adrenaline, angst, and aching nostalgia, the track is a shout-along anthem to the reckless abandon of being young, alive, and utterly unbreakable.

Honest and unpolished, “Daredevil Youth” doesn’t try to dress youth up in sentimentality – it drags it through the mud, slaps on a crooked grin, and raises a glass to everything that shaped us, scarred us, and made it all worth it.

“This one is quite literal,” says pianist Keenan Gregory. “It’s an anthem to our younger years, and being wild and free. The time we’ve spent playing music together has left its mark on each of us – it’s been formative.”

1Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 
While there has been an abundance of new amazing artists sharing their stories with the world, I also feel that visual media has become an underutilized artformm, carelessly thrown over the music like wrapping paper as if it were meant to be discarded. Personally, with visuals I always try to either push the song’s narrative further, or attempt to tell another side of the story entirely. It’s another chance for us to communicate with our audience and this song in particular felt like it needed that visual exploration. For us it ended up paying homage not only to the band’s previous members, Ben and Sean, but also to all the bands that we’ve formed over the years. 

2.What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)? 

The inspiration is pretty on the nose. As the band was soaking up the nostalgia we took many trips down memory lane. Luckily me and a few others have been documenting our journey over the years. The moment we decided this song would be a single, it felt like the most appropriate time to use that footage. 

3.What was the process of making this video?

A song’s chorus traditionally signals a change in perspective or narrative. It’s always important to me to select footage that matches that change. The entrance into each chorus was selected very carefully. Same goes for each transition into a new section. Other than that, the process was quite simple. I would review and assemble the footage while being mindful of the overall flow. It was however more emotionally charged than I expected. Some of the shots may seem silly and frivolous, but they represent moments in my life where my sides were absolutely splitting from laughter. It’s fun to look back on these memories, but the emotional toll comes when I recognize my distance from these moments. 

Malia Rogers Unveils Shape-Shifting Debut EP Chameleon, Anchored by the Ethereal Glow of ‘Indefinitely’

Nova Scotia raised, Ottawa-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Malia Rogers unveils her debut EP, Chameleon, featuring the vast and heartfelt centerpiece, “Indefinitely.” Chameleon merges her East Coast roots with folk, bluegrass, and Celtic traditions to explore themes of identity, growth, self-compassion, and enduring connection. With a storytelling voice rich in vulnerability and nuance, the six-song collection offers a layered portrait of transformation – pairing past hurts with their healing counterparts.

Indefinitely” offers a barefoot love song for the deeply known – a sweeping meditation on partnership, evolution, and unconditional devotion. Built on rhythmic acoustic textures, lilting mandolin, melodic strings, and a heartbeat of bodhrán, the track captures the feeling of the tide coming in – calm, powerful, and enduring. “I told my producer Neil Whitford that I wanted it to sound like the tide,” says Rogers. “There’s ocean imagery in the lyrics, and as a Nova Scotian living away in Ontario, the water makes me feel like I’m home. So does the love this song is written about.”


Written on the seventh anniversary of her relationship with now-husband Matthew, “Indefinitely” reflects on the idea that we become entirely new people over time – and how rare it is to evolve in tandem with another. 

Superstar Crush Embrace Baroque-Pop Maximalism and Romantic Chaos on “Fire Escape”

Hamilton, Ontario baroque-pop quartet Superstar Crush unveil their darkly romantic new single, “Fire Escape,” a vampirical, stampeding whirlwind of unrequited love and poetic disarray. Equal parts chaotic and cinematic, the track is their first new music since 2024’s Crushed to Meet You EP, and the latest preview of their debut full-length, due summer 2025.

Written during a spell of writer’s block and sparked by a melody tapped out on a plastic windowpane, “Fire Escape” embodies the band’s flair for dramatic imagery, magnetic hooks, and gloriously off-kilter structure. Anchored by a three-way vocal interplay and a wall-of-sound production that nods to Springsteen, Broken Social Scene, and Arcade Fire, the song builds to a psych-rock outro, complete with glockenspiel flourishes and cinematic string swells.

Lyrically, “Fire Escape” drips with disheveled longing and literary references, from RAW Magazine comic covers to Japanese and French romance films. Written in another friend’s vocal range as a songwriting experiment, the track demanded collaboration: “We all had to sing it together just to hit the notes,” the band jokes. The final result is uniquely theirs – a jarring, electric portrait of emotional freefall.

Produced by Tyler Kyte (Dwayne Gretzky), the song features a haunting violin arrangement by Helen Faucher, written so late in the process the band nearly forgot it existed until she brought it to life in the studio: “It was like déjà vu,” they say. “We just hoped it worked, and it did.”

Andrew Spice Embraces Fury and Freedom on Cinematic New Single, “Rage Stage”

Canadian indie singer-songwriter Andrew Spice continues on the momentum of his acclaimed comeback single, “High Park,” with a scorching new track, “Rage Stage.” A blistering gothic pop ballad laced with defiance and theatrical intensity, “Rage Stage” is a furious reckoning with betrayal and a radical embrace of righteous anger as part of the healing process.

Written by Spice and produced by JUNOnominated collaborator Matthew Barber, “Rage Stage” builds from a whisper to a snarl, combining searing lyrical vitriol with sweeping, genre-bending production. Spice’s haunting vocals anchor the track with raw vulnerability, channeling grief into catharsis.

Too often, we are rewarded for being complacent in the face of injustice. Anger can actually be our best friend when it motivates us to fight back for the right cause. “Rage Stage” is about embracing my own fury, standing up for myself, and conquering an enemy.Andrew Spice

The Allure and Honesty of Gun-Shy Butterfly’s Debut Single “Dark Side”

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On their debut single, Philadelphia duo Gun-Shy Butterfly – the collaborative force of Julie Exter and Andrea Tarka White – make an unforgettable entrance.

With “Dark Side,” they summon the ghosts of ‘90s alt-rock and grunge not as a nostalgia act, but as a vehicle for urgent and lived truth. It’s gritty, melodic and emotionally unfiltered – a track for anyone who has been dismissed, diminished or erased and decided, finally, to stop apologizing.

Listen here:

From the opening bars, “Dark Side” makes its mission clear. A thick wall of fuzzed out guitar crashes forward, underscored by relentless pounding rhythms. Exter and White keep the structure lean, the parts tight, but the sound feels much bigger. Their vocals cut through the distortion with sharp, melodic urgency, the kind that makes you sit up and pay attention. Harmonies buzz, crackle and scorch and linger like smoke in the wake of a personal firestorm.

But what elevates “Dark Side” beyond a well-executed homage to Veruca Salt, The Breeders, or early Hole is the emotional precision. There is no coyness or artifice. Just clarity. And rage. And the slow burning strength that emerges when you finally accept that sometimes the only way forward is straight through your own wreckage.

At the heart of “Dark Side” is a searing narrative of loss and self-assertion. Andrea Tarka White, who penned the lyrics, pulls no punches in describing the song’s origin. It was a time when she lost everything – friends, community, her social identity – all in the fallout of a betrayal that left her isolated and angry. But rather than shrink from that anger, she leaned into it. She chose the more honest choice:

“Dark Side is about a moment in time when I lost absolutely everything: my friends, my social life, and my sense of self. People had to choose between me and a lying, cheating man, and they chose him. I was so angry, not just that I lost everything, but that he somehow didn’t.

At that moment realizing how bifurcated everything felt, him or me, right or wrong, dark or light, it changed something in me. I realized that love isn’t about being positive all the time. Or being nice. It’s about embracing all of who I am and moving forward. Which sometimes means standing up for myself and leaving people behind.”

In that spirit, “Dark Side” becomes more than a breakup song. It’s kind of like a cultural exorcism. It speaks to a wider exhaustion shared by many women (and others) who’ve been told, explicitly or otherwise, that survival must come with a smile, that pain should be polite, and that rage is somehow unseemly.

Gun-Shy Butterfly torpedoes that notion. Here, darkness is not weakness – it is armor. It’s clarity. It’s the fuel for transformation.

The title alone is a challenge to binary thinking- good/bad, victim/villain, light/dark. A butterfly that flinches but never stops moving. That duality threads through the song’s DNA and defines the band’s ethos.

And the DIY ethic behind the track only deepens its impact. Much of “Dark Side” was recorded in Exter’s basement, where raw takes became the backbone of the song’s visceral sound. Guitar tones were captured on the first try. An impressive feat that speaks to both musicians’ instinctive command of their instruments and their refusal to over-process the realness out of their work. Final vocal tracking was completed at The Daisy Corner and The Gradwell House, with mixing by Dave Downham and mastering by Kim Rosen (Knack Mastering) providing a final sheen that never sacrifices grit.

Gun-Shy Butterfly also offers something refreshingly rare in the current music landscape: a voice of women in midlife who are still making, growing and loudly refusing to disappear. Both Exter and White are mothers in their 40’s, navigating parenthood, work and creative life in tandem.

“Dark Side” is a song for anyone who has been gaslit into silence. For anyone who has walked away from everything they knew in order to reclaim who they are. For anyone who has learned, sometimes too late, that self-respect isn’t always gentle. And that’s okay!

Keep up with everything Gun-Shy Butterfly on the Website

Stream music on Spotify and Apple Music