Toronto-based singer/songwriter and producer Lyle Kam channels sonic inspiration from artists like Lauv, Jeremy Zucker, and Charlie Puth. Now, he unveils a fresh batch of music featuring his trademark introspection about love, loss, and belonging.
Primarily self-produced,blurry eyed serves as a time capsule of when things in his life were just a bit blurry; uncertain. This album is a collection of thoughts and emotions when he was still figuring himself out and determining what he wanted. To have a crush, fall in love, and have it fall apart, while learning about the responsibilities of being an adult. Stream in full here.
With an emphasis on nostalgia, “tokyo” captures the heartache of holding on to someone who is slowly slipping away. Retro synths and elements reminiscent of Japanese city pop make the song feel warm, as well as vibrant and lively.
The success of his debut EP Folly, featuring the Tik Tok viral single “Unlove, ” led to more than 4 million streams and over 70 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify. He hopes to shine a light on Asian-Canadian artists and inspire others with his message that nothing is out of reach with enough passion and hard work.
Both Lesley Pike’s songwriting and production skills have progressed throughout the crafting of her new, two-volume album, WILD. WILD (Vol. 1) finds a new resilience for the Toronto and London, UK based Pike, who mined her own vulnerability to craft these complex songs.
“What we feel deep down, we know. What we feed will grow.”
“Wild,” the album’s title track, is an organic and airy piece of folk pop which reflects on children’s sense of abandon and the freedom which Pike has found within herself. It’s a song about taking the time to reflect and really trust in oneself.
Formed in late 2021, Velvet Beach are an independent band from Toronto. Originally formed by members of Newcomer, Matias Gutierrez and Martin Camara were then joined by Sean Stover (Silus, The Honeycomb Flyers) and Meagan Aversa. Existing somewhere between shoegaze, dream pop, and new wave, Velvet Beach strive for authenticity without forgetting some of their core influences such as The Cure, Beach House, and Slowdive.
Their second single, “Home (Is It True?),” is a dream pop tune that feels like the beginning of a love story but whose lyrics evoke melancholic images of doubt and uncertainty.
Lead vocalist Matias Gutierrez was inspired to write the song after reading an article about the effects of the pandemic on the lives of independent artists in North America. He sympathized with the feelings of frustration and helplessness particularly through his own experiences during the pandemic and feeling like he wasn’t in control of his own life.
The single artwork is actually a childhood photo of guitarist Sean Stover, following the band’s theme of childhood photos from their first single, “Youth.” The album centers upon how we cope with feelings of frustration, helplessness, and not feeling in control of your life. Remembering ourselves as kids acts as a foil to these feelings of our adulthood by reminding us of the wonder we experienced as children towards even seemingly mundane experiences like swimming in a lake or laying in a field.
Vancouver based jazz and blues songwriter Eva Schubert is sharing The Feel of Your Love, her new album which is a sultry, sometimes hypnotic collection of songs that have the power to effortlessly shift the colour of your mood.
The album’s title track is a languid meditation on desire, creating a slowburning world of downtempo jazz for listeners to sink into.
“Songs get bound up with our memories, emotions and experiences. They can take us back to moments we have lived, and serve as carriers of emotions we have forgotten. It’s a kind of magic, and I am always trying to cast that kind of spell,” explains Schubert.
Classically trained vocalist, singer-songwriter, and owner of award-winning French education company, Les Petites Pommes, Mary Clements has created a warm and personal invitation in the form of her debut album, Come With Me.
The album’s indie pop and folk influenced arrangements compliment songs focused on connection, with Clements reflecting on stages of her life when she was trying to figure out who she was alone, experiences with anxiety, as well as her decision to go all in on her relationship and marry her husband.
The vocally powerful, piano and guitar driven “Possibilities” is what Clements refers to as a “funeral for all those opportunities that could have been pursued but died once a path was chosen.”
Its lyrics speak to the pressures that we have all been faced with when making big decisions that can change the course of our lives, such as moving to a new city, pursuing a relationship, or altering one’s career path.
“To me, there’s nothing more special and powerful in life than feeling connected to each other so [listeners] have given me a great gift. Together, I hope we can create and multiply more of these moments in the world,” Clements expresses.
Dyatlov Pass is an 8 – song historical concept album by Welcome to the 21st! about the mysterious fate of eight college – age students and their guide who died while on a winter trek in the USSR’s Ural Mountains in February 1959. The students were found over time after they disappeared, with varying injuries, and no one knows exactly what happened. It remains an open inquiry to this day. The theories as to what happened include an avalanche, a military test gone awry, and some even believe a malevolent supernatural intervention.
The album follows the 20 – something nature travelers from meeting up before they left ( Hang on to Yourself – Song 1 ), to the early part of their voyage through a peaceful winter environment ( Sing to the Moon – Song 4 ), with hints of warnings along the way ( Warning Signs – Song 3 ). The middle of the album tracks the group’s eventual demise near a frozen mountain pass ( Dyaltov Pass – Song 5 and Lost but Found – Song 6 ), to the search and recovery teams that looked for them ( Boots in the Rain – Song 7 ) and who have sought for years to determine what actually happened ( Misleading Clues – Song 8 ). Band Info: The album was written and conceived of by Bob Blumenfeld (Guitars, from Texas, US) and Touanda (Vocals, from Manchester, UK), who met online through AirGigs. The rest of the instrumentation was mainly performed by, and mixed and produced by , John Dufilho a multi – instrumentalist, drummer, and long – time established indie music producer from Dallas, Texas. Bob’s other bands include The Disappearing Act and Lowdog. John is best known for his work with his band Deathray Davies.
Robert Blumenfeld of the band shares:
“A few years ago, my good friend and former bandmate, Mark Mendel, gave me a nonfiction book about the Incident at Dyatlov Pass, a Soviet-era Russia unsolved mystery. If you haven’t heard of this, which most Americans haven’t, in February 1959, a group of eight students and their guide went missing on a winter trek through the Ural mountains. Search and rescue teams later found their empty tent pitched on a mountain side, sliced open, and a few frozen bodies, without shoes, laying some distance away. It took several months to find all the bodies and it has taken over 60 years to piece together what might have gone wrong. No one knows exactly what happened, and the forensic evidence discovered afterwards, for a lack of a better description, is really weird and creepy.
I originally thought I might write a book or play about the Dyatlov mystery, but as much as I think one day I’ll write about history, it turns out I am better at songwriting than being an author. In 2018, I was commuting back and forth between El Paso, where I worked, and the Dallas area, where I had moved with my wife. I had more time to write songs that year, my brother Dan had just built a baritone guitar for me, and that guitar inspired a slew of new songs. One of those songs just came to me, fairly fully formed for me, with lyrics – and the song “Dyatlov Pass” was born.
The idea for a “concept album” came a bit later, during Covid. I wanted to keep developing new material during the early days of the “lockdown” and reached out to Touanda, who I met on an online song-writing platform, about helping me write the song “Lost But Found” about the students who never made it back from their trek back in 1959. I sent Touanda the rough mix of the song and the idea, and she did her own research on the subject and turned a draft of the song right around in a day or two, giving us the song Lost But Found. Two songs down, and the idea of a historical concept album was on its way.
So, the inspiration for the album is- besides me being a history buff – the true story of the Mystery of Dyatlov Pass. The album is arranged as a chronology of the ill-fated trip, starting with the group of 20s-something boys and girls meeting up, eating and drinking around a campfire before they left (Hang on to Yourself). The album midpoint is the last night of the trip for the trekkers, with them being lost but found afterwards. The last two songs take the point of view of the search and recovery teams that spent months to find all the bodies and years trying to figure out what happened to them.
The third member of the band that put this album together is John Dufilho, a multi-instrumentalist, producer and engineer in Dallas. John took the rough mixes Touanda and I were working on and turned them into full arrangements, giving us the opportunity to complete our Dyatlov Pass project.”
Modern Mystery 
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