Sassyhiya are real-life as well as musical partners Kathy Wright and Helen Skinner. Shortly after meeting at a Rollerderby game (where Kathy was skating for the amazingly named Ultraviolent Femmes), the couple had their first date at an Austra show in 2011 and have been bonded in music ever since. A mixture of Television and The Sundays, Sassyhiya are the sweet spot between post-punk and indie pop. They know their way around a melody but still keep it wonky. Their influences range from the Breeders and Broadcast to The Go Betweens and Dolly Parton. After Helen finished playing bass in Boys Forever and Basic Plumbing (much missed Veronica Falls musician Patrick Doyle’s final projects), the couple joined with friends Bart McDonagh and Mark Amura to create the cult South London LGBTQ+ band Barry. As Sassyhiya, they released an EP in January 2022, Gum demos, which was written, played, recorded, and mixed themselves at home in Peckham over lockdown. A second EP. Live at Paper Dress Vintage, followed in November 2022, showcasing the band’s new live line up featuring Pablo Paganotto (of Punching Swans) on drums and Neiloy Mookherjee on guitar. They have recorded a live session for Resonance FM and were featured on an episode of cult YouTube music programme Cutscene TV. They have also been included on compilations for Loud Women and Related Records. They have shared bills with the likes of Fat White Family’s Brian Destiny, Big Joanie, Mr Ben and the Bens, Cable Ties, Fightmilk, Breakup Haircut, Lande Hekt and Snoozers. Their debut album, Take You Somewhere is out now via Skep Wax.

Charlie Kaplan is an independent songwriter from New York, a muisc writer and the bassist in New York art pop/soft rock trio Office Culture which just released its fourth album, Enough, in October. As a solo artist, Charlie had three LPs and two EPs out, all via the Glamour Gowns imprint: Sunday came out in 2020, followed by Country Life In America in 2023. Eternal Repeater, Kaplan’s latest solo album, which came out on November 1st, is a great folk rock work, and was produced by Nico Hedley.
About the album Charlie said: “My third album, Eternal Repeater, centers around mankind’s entropic inclination to cruelty and fear. To my ears, each successive song radiates out from the most private paranoias to, by the end of the album, the terrible form these atoms take in aggregate: mass panic, prejudice, demagoguery. I found this theme in the eerie mode of music I was writing, which recalled the spooky, northern English folk that seems to ooze out inevitably from heavy music from Pink Floyd to Ty Segall. I decided to put together a playlist of sounds like these to illustrate why my ear led me to paint this picture, one that combines both tempting sweetness and an abiding darkness“.

Bell Monks (Jeff Herriott and Eric Sheffield) create slow, dreamy, haunting music. They call their music sleepy rock, blending lush sonic textures with slower, mostly traditional song structures. The Onion’s AV Club, back when they still had a Madison-focused section, fairly accurately referred to the band as “combining the minimalism of Brian Eno’s ambient work with the gloomy songwriting of Low“, though experimental composers like Morton Feldman and John Cage were equally on their mind when the duo first started working together more than fifteen years ago. Eric and Jeff cherish the creative aspects of the recording process, often finding songs in the studio; recording and mixing become tools to conjure aural magic, almost like sleight of hand, through the misdirection of multi-tracking, layering, and the subtle use of processing techniques they’ve developed in their academic careers (both are music professors). Inspiration for their music regularly comes from their natural environment – the birds, the sun, the trees, and the landscape. Jeff routinely walks in the parks near his home in rural Wisconsin, spaces that have served as lyrical inspiration for much of their recent music, both in the specific description of visual environments as well as the philosophical sensations that these spaces conjure. For their new album, Watching the Snow Fall, Bell Monks have partnered with Wayside & Woodland Recordings, a label that is focused on “a psychogeographic approach to the exploration of music, photography, field recordings and landscape.” In some small way, this music invites people to slow down and take a break from technological onslaught, perhaps so they might notice more of these kinds of spaces themselves, or at least to enjoy the sound of some cool synthesizers.

Edinburgh-based Gurry Wurry is the solo project of Scottish “indie-psych-pop pedlar” Dave King. He’s featured on BBC 6 Music, Triple R, Apple’s New In Alternative, Hype Machine’s Top 10, and Tom Robinson’s Fresh on The Net; been acclaimed by the likes of The Skinny, Snack Magazine, Clunk and Is This Music; opened for indie darlings Florry and Dent May; and been championed by the BBC’s Roddy Hart and Vic Galloway. Having been an avid record collector for over two decades, he’s now sharing his own highly original and thoroughly enjoyable sonic output: In March last year, his homemade debut Not As Bad As It Sounds came out (and made Vic’s 2023 Albums of The Year). The follow-up Happy For Now was recorded with indie legend Rod Jones (Idlewild, Hamish Hawk) and is an ode to caring less. Or trying to. The vibe sits in a half-dreamt world where a California breeze blows through the streets of Leith. A world where Randy Newman digs The Beta Band. And Steely Dan go lo-fi. Where Kraftwerk share a writers’ room with John Martyn and Thelonious Monk. It’s as eclectic as you’d expect from a guy who’s been collecting records for the last 25 years. A sort of warm, woozy, anaesthetic pop for times of trouble. An alternative medicine. In the words of The Skinny, ‘the good kind of weird’.