Heather Avalon is a 22-year-old independent singer-songwriter living in Toronto, ON who has been singing since she could speak and writing since the young age of six. Her mother, Allyson Morris, is a Toronto jazz musician who shaped Heather’s life through the art of music. Starting to play piano when she was seven followed by guitar at 10, and Heather would often perform at local bars alongside her mom while she was growing up. 

Over the past three and a half years, she has been in and out of the studio writing, recording, and creating as much as possible. Two years since her last release, Heather is coming back even stronger with her new single, “Use Me,” inspired by past heartbreak. Despite consistently making a lot of indie/bedroom pop music in her early days of recording and releasing, she wanted to take the turn from polished pop to a more high energy, rough, rock sound which is exactly what can be heard on “Use Me.”

“Use Me” was recorded with Heather’s best friend and producer Ethan Surman (later including more friends on background vox) which allowed her to really be vulnerable and comfortable in the studio and throughout the recording process. 

Singer-songwriter Tara Van of Toronto is sharing a blend of chamber folk and pop entitled “Things I Wanna Say,” a horn inflected and subtly percussive dance with the vulnerability that can arise when your feelings present themselves before you’re necessarily ready to share or feel certain about them.

Produced by Mark Calderone, “Things I Wanna Say” glides along gently, evoking the feeling of a summer breeze as Van explores the feeling of trying to protect yourself along with the playfulness and competition between partners during the stand off of “who exposes themselves first.”

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 

‘Things I Wanna Say’ was born out of an experience where I casually said ‘Love you’ to a relatively new partner when I was leaving the climbing gym. Both of our eyes kinda bugged out for a second and I proceeded to go home and freak out. That had never happened to me before, just blurting the words out like that. I felt deeply uncomfortable and exposed. I also felt confused about whether I did in fact love them or not. Never before had my mouth done such a complete hijacking. The song expresses the vulnerability of exposing yourself before you are ready to do so and the anxiety associated with trying to navigate complicated emotions.

This song felt like a bit of a departure and I wanted to celebrate that with a video presentation. Moving to video with my previous single ‘Glow’ was a big step for me because it was a lot more exposure and it really felt like putting myself out there, which was terrifying. With ‘Glow’ because it’s such a feel-good empowerment track I think it was much easier and it was a good gateway into storytelling through video. With ‘Things I Wanna Say’ I was a lot more vulnerable. The song itself is all about vulnerability and I really wanted to express that in the video, which required me to let people into very private moments and let them be a fly on the wall. That was very scary to let out into the world but I think I had the confidence to do it because of doing ‘Glow’ first, all of the personal growth and development I have undergone in recent years and because of the incredible artists I’ve been working with. It takes a lot of trust to expose yourself in that way in front of the camera, when I was younger and doing creative things like this I would fully dissociate and just be a body performing in a room. Putting yourself into your performance is the most important piece for connecting with an audience but also the hardest thing to do, especially if you have had traumas in your life that taught you to withdraw into yourself like my past with severe school bullying and abusive relationships. Meeting my friend and collaborator Mark Calderone and before that my other wonderful friend and producer Malory Torr have been game-changers for me. I think in artistry who you surround yourself with is so important. The video came out as beautifully as it did because of the deep trust and confidence I feel in the professionalism and friendship of my two collaborators on this video, my producer Mark Calderone and Keston Martinez of Kesteeze Media who I actually met and was good friends with back in high school. There is a lot of competitiveness, hostility, manipulation and exclusivity in the arts mostly due to scarcity culture and I really wanted no part of all of that. All I’ve really wanted was to be able to create in a safe space with like-minded people and it took time to find those people and also for me to feel comfortable and confident enough to share myself. I’ve always had a very rich internal world and I’m trying to let it touch my external world now.

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

The visuals with the song are captured in very private moments like the bath and half nude in bed. This is important to the message of the song because the listener is taken into the artist’s inner world, these are moments that were not meant to be shared with others. The video also has a lot of partial nudity which speaks to how exposed you feel after showing a piece of yourself before you were ready to and how vulnerable you now feel. The staircase also has a kind of message itself as you are trying to understand your own emotions and are divided in your feelings. At the beginning of the video you are close to the top of the stairs feeling seemingly pretty confident in your feelings but then you start unravelling and descending the stairs. You then go to the bath to self regulate(which is in reality one of the best ways I have found in my life to relax and self regulate). From the bath you are then kind of taken into a bit of a fantasy, rolling around in bed in lust and internal struggle. The return to the bath is returning to self soothing and regulating. The final moment of sinking into the water symbolizes cleansing yourself and quieting your brain. Nothing quite like going under water to quiet the noise and chaos of life.

3.What was the process of making this video?

We shot the video in one afternoon and we were lucky enough to have the space become available for us to use. I had an initial idea with the bathtub being the centerpiece but like with the last video for ‘Glow’ it was very much in the moment, collaborative and experimental. Mark, Keston and I all threw ideas out there and tried different things out and mostly had a lot of fun! We used a few different cameras and many different angles to get all the footage and once we set things up really I just freestyled to the lyrics same as with ‘Glow’. It was pretty easy for me to get into character because I’ve been seeing someone again recently so all the feelings felt very fresh.

Toronto indie band Oba first crossed paths in high school, but it wasn’t until after graduation that they began jamming together seriously. During their college years, they all lived together, playing shows, writing songs, and, honestly, just hanging out. There was probably more hanging out than anything else, but that’s what built the foundation of the band’s bond.

Their latest single, “Could Have,” is a layered and dreamy piece of swirling indie rock. A collaborative and organic track, the band formed together naturally to tackle the feeling of “what could have been?” with poignant songwriting. It captures the feeling of reflecting on the past, knowing things could have unfolded differently, and feeling haunted by the lingering ghost of what might have been.

Kristen Anzelc is a dynamic songwriter and vocalist who immerses herself in music and pop culture. Her artistic journey began early, propelling her to become a Top 10 finalist in Johnny Wright’s “Search for the Next Super Group.” Demonstrating her passion for songwriting, Kristen co-wrote a song that earned the artist she helped write for a coveted spot in the semifinals of Eurovision 2018.

Kristen is excited to release her upcoming debut EP and is now sharing its first single, the melancholic and resilient, “Scars.” Proudly funded by FACTOR Canada, this project marks a significant milestone in her artistic evolution. After taking a break from music, she feels that the timing is finally right. As a big fan of horror movies and Halloween, it feels serendipitous that her return to music aligns with her favourite time of year.

Sleepkit is a band who can genuinely be described as mind-expanding; from the nucleus of their songwriting to the texturally-ornamented arrangements, they manage to imbue each aspect of their music with a sly veneer of otherness. Sprung from the minds of songwriters, singers & co-founders Ryan Bourne (Chad VanGaalen, Ghostkeeper, Plant City Band) and Marie Sulkowski (Texture Twins), Sleepkit’s repertoire showcases a band whose serious understanding of the pop song is buffered by beautifully detailed texture and a penchant for the slightly skewed. 

Bolstered by the addition of drummer Eric Hamelin (Alvvays, Joyful Talk, Ghostkeeper) and multi-instrumentalist Joleen Toner (Crystal Eyes, Plant City Band), Sleepkit are sharing their sophomore album, Camp Emotion, a nuanced and emotionally unarmoured refinement of their singular brand of experimental pop. Produced by Scott ‘Monty’ Munro, a prolific producer and multi-instrumentalist known for his work with Preoccupations, Chad VanGaalen, Lab Coast, and Ghostkeeper, Camp Emotion actualizes their idiosyncratic art-pop vision in a shimmering opus that explores the outer edges of song creation – functioning as well as a dancefloor soundtrack as it does a hazy, late-night headphone session through inner space.

The music behind “Camp Emotion,” the LP’s title track, came out of a late-night solo campfire session where Bourne was jamming on a little Yamaha Portasound keyboard. “The dubby feel of the demo reminded me vaguely of “Ghetto Defendant’’ by The Clash, so I asked Hamelin if he’d be our Allen Ginsberg,” Bourne explains. “He recited these great automatic phrases – partially addressing his son Sonny – into this giant old sampler Monty had gifted us, which we then messed with using varispeed and delay until they sounded totally demented.” The original campfire recording book-ends the track.

The album is an honest document of where we were at personally, collectively and musically – a really free exploration of emotion, psyche, spirit, tone, harmony and song craft. We’d tossed around calling it ‘Spectral,’ as a reference both to mental health stuff we’d experienced and the spectrum of visible light (with a nod to the paranormal), but landed on ‘Camp Emotion’, which seemed to evoke all of that but also sounded like a culty summer camp for neurodivergent adults… so it’s a kind of catharsis and meditation on our inner and outer worlds, for better and worse, with a specific devotion musically to the weird and the beautiful. 

Though each song on ‘Camp Emotion’ stands on own, the album is meant to be enjoyed in one unbroken sitting. The songs run one into the next with a few second break at the halfway mark, like sides of a mixtape – a little reprieve from the fragmented, attention-eroding mode in which we tend to consume media and, more and more, art itself. Long live the LP! 

 – Ryan Bourne

As obsessed with pop culture as he is detached from it, Toronto singer-songwriter and filmmaker David Jane brings a versed insight to the contemporary perspective, writing songs that are grounded in disconnection, uncertainty and desire. His voice is as honest as the thoughts and emotions he writes about. 

Following the 2020 release of David’s debut EP, Welcome to Today, he discovered new found inspiration in his lingering passion for film and enrolled at the Vancouver Film School. There, he found an amalgamation of community, creativity and adventure, fell in love for the first time and met many kindred spirits. Upon his return, David wrote, directed and produced his first short film, Apnea, which will officially premiere at Toronto’s acclaimed Blood in the Snow horror festival next month (November 2024).

Personally, however, the return home came with many new challenges. In Vancouver’s uncanny aftermath, David returned to a home that no longer felt like home, as if his life in Vancouver was left stranded outside of time. In reconnecting to the world and to himself as a person, however, David reconnected with himself as an artist as well, and, to process this transformative experience – the love, adventure and loss – he turned back to songwriting.

Brand new single, “Garden Out Back,” paves the way for a new set of songs that showcase a moment lost in time, reminiscing in hues of melancholic beauty. Inspired by David’s year in Vancouver and the slow fade ending of a relationship that began there, it begins by chronicling the helpless sense of futility in a long distance relationship before exploding into a desperate yearning to return to that lost time.

“Garden Out Back” marked my second collaboration with producer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Arion, perhaps best known for his solo project Mute Choir, and what’s been so great about Sam is that he’s able to create these deeply contemplative, ambient sonic atmospheres within the typical acoustic, somewhat traditional/folk-inspired structures I gravitate towards. The end-product then becomes this mix of traditional acoustic, lyric-focused songwriting that still centralizes the vocalist and the words while seamlessly pairing that with a very modern, contemplative, atmospheric soundscape. – David Jane