Scottish indie-pop band wojtek the bear, fronted by Tam Killean, formed in 2016 and released their debut album, a talent for being unreasonable, via Scottish Fiction, in 2018, followed by heaven by the backdoor in 2021 via Last Night From Glasgow. They have since played across the UK and Europe. Their third album, shaking hands with the NME, was released in April 2024 and, on 22 May 2026, they returned with a stunning new album, i don’t think you want to hear this, again via Last Night From Glasgow. Staying true to their tradition of outdoing themselves, this release sparkles with understated elegance and the band’s trademark wit. Recorded at Beetroot Studios in Airdrie, the band worked closely with acclaimed producer Bill Ryder-Jones (Swim Deep, Yard Act, The Wytches) and engineer Stuart MacLeod (Sister John, The Bluebells, Brontës) to bring the collection to life.
Julian Elorduy has been making music since he was fifteen, moving from the noise-soaked chaos of Mayyors to the jangling indie-pop of Fine Steps and, later, the more solitary reflections of Pious Fiction as Julian Never. With this first solo work, Elorduy demonstrates an indomitable creative spirit and an uncommon courage in subverting the genres from which he avowedly draws inspiration. Pious Fiction is a work that expresses great love for the past, but not subjugation to it. His new album, Everyday is Purgation, released in February via Mt. St. Mtn. Records, “awakens on the other side of a Dark Night of the Soul drawing on the writings of mystic, St. John of the Cross, stripping away comforting narratives in order to see what remains with a clearer, more ascetic eye”. It’s Julian at his most exposed, shaped equally by the underground that raised him and the melodic pop that continues to haunt him.
A Lilac Decline is the anagrammatic musical pseudonym of visual artist Cecilia Danell. Originally from Sweden but resident in Ireland for two decades, her debut album The Mountain Rages (Rusted Rail, 2017) was recorded via one microphone on borrowed and found instruments. Whilst there were flashes of electricity on her debut, her follow-up Shelter From the Shadows (2020) found A Lilac Decline going electric, Telecaster in hand, as her sophomore album was shot through with glimmering and shimmering six string serenades. A Lilac Decline’s third album, Eternity Bores Me was released on May 1st 2026, while her label Rusted Rail entered its 20th year of releasing music. Having blossomed into a fully fledged three piece band centred around songwriter Cecilia Danell and rounded out by bassist/producer Keith Wallace (Loner Deluxe) and Brian Kelly (So Cow) on drums, the new album finds A Lilac Decline further evolving their shoegaze and dream pop stylings whilst also displaying flashes of their handmade and homespun indie-folk roots.
Husband and wife Carl and Kat Mann are Wiltshire based duo Shapes Like People. Carl is originally from Kent, U.K., and Kat from Wellington, New Zealand. Carl Mann is the lead vocalist and guitarist of The Shop Window and co-wrote Kylie Minogue’s Ocean Blue. His intention at first was to record demos to pitch to Kylie, but as the project developed, he loved the sound of his wife Kat’s guide vocal on the demos. So much so that they decided to turn the project into Shapes Like People. Their first album, Ticking Haze was released in 2025 and praised as a lush mix of jangle-pop and Americana, with a shoegaze twist. Firmly committed to continuing to make music together, Carl’s masterful guitar driven melodies and Kat’s layered vocals are the driving force behind their new twelve track album Under The Rainbow released in April 2026 on Jangleshop/Subjangle.
Taking their name from a coastal flower, Golden Samphire Band is a new project from brothers Mik and Rich Hanscomb and fellow Sussex seaside dweller, Hannah Lewis. Having worked together on tracks for the brother’s previous album as Junkboy (2023’s Littoral States), the three resolved to move forward as one with a set of songs that expand on those earlier ideas—maritime suburbia in all its mythical and marvellous mundanity. This time, however, they approach it through a cycle of home-recorded, informed psych-folk-pop-pocket-symphonies. Their debut album, Dream Is The Driver, released on Wayside & Woodland, was recorded at home between 2024 and 2025, with the band handling writing, production, and much of the engineering themselves. The band itself describes it as “psychogeographically-informed” music, meaning it draws heavily on place and environment, particularly the Sussex coast. Across its nine tracks, the tone is reflective and atmospheric, focusing on small, everyday experiences elevated into something slightly surreal or poetic. At times (I dare to say) it recalls a 1960’s psych-folk band gently flirting with dream pop. The title track comes from a phrase used by Rich’s pen friend’s young son to describe pictures of bullet trains he drew from his home in Yokohama. Upon seeing these pictures, Hannah developed the idea into a meditation on movement: municipal transport passing by trees, as well as on aspiration, self-actualisation, and the search for creative agency in what can feel like an artless, screen-mediated world. The result is a suite of songs that are the culmination of three friends’ shared interests and intersecting lives along the Sussex coastline, while also expressing a sense of hope and a beautiful tomorrow. After all, in seaside towns, surf’s never really up…
Indie Sunset in Rome 