After making their debut in 2023 with Sunset Sea Breeze (Meritorio / Paisley Shirt), Whitney’s Playland, the duo of Inna Showalter (Magic Fig, Blades of Joy, Modern Charms) and George Tarlson (Grandma’s Boyfriend) have fleshed out the band to include drummer Evan Showalter (Blank Square) and multi-instrumentalist Paul DeMartini and have returned with Long Rehearsal, a short and sweet three-song 7” EP set to be released on June 20th, 2025 via Dandy Boy Records (Oakland, CA) and Meritorio Records (Madrid, Spain). Their sound has evolved with the additional accompaniment, and this brand new batch of songs make for a fuller actualization of Showalter and Tarlson’s brand of Bay Area jangle pop. While these new songs recall the first album’s distinct style, they diverge from their bedroom pop introduction. Long Rehearsal sees the full band performing together for the first time on a record since expanding into a four-piece. The trio of tracks bridges the divide between jangle-pop and crunchy 90’s alt rock, plumbing the depths of tonality and mood. The whole thing is anchored by Inna Showalter’s delicately determined voice, which might help you forget about your trials and tribulations for a brief moment. The result is a more polished production but still keeps in touch with the band’s lo-fi roots. All three tracks were recorded at the band members’ San Francisco, El Cerrito, and Santa Rosa home studios.

If you have been following TRISTE©, we’re sure you know Logan Farmer quite well (and you love him very much). He is a singer-songwriter and producer based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Combining elements of traditional folk, psychedelic, and ambient music, Farmer has released five full length albums since 2013, under the moniker Monarch Mtn., slowly earning him a devoted cult following. Still No Mother, out in 2020 on Western Vinyl, was the first record under his own name: eight magnificent songs, expression of his personal and evolved folk and the result of a deep sound research and refined arrangements. Farmer’s vision of folk is decidedly peculiar and modern. His second album, A Mold For The Bell was out in 2022, again on Western Vinyl with eight songs that beautifully lean on the vulnerability and turmoil of the human soul, the dignified failure, the kindness and generosity that sometimes almost goes as far as self-harm. Today Logan Farmer announced the release of his new EP, Butchers, where the songwriter’s understated folk is embellished with elements of dreamy Americana and trip hop textures, sharing its haunting and magnificent title track. The EP will be out, via Western Vinyl on May 23rd.

Lila Tristram, musician, fiction writer, artist and teacher now based in Wiltshire is a friend of TRISTE©. We fell in love with Black and White Memories Ignited by the Scent of Springtime Explode in Colour released in December 2022 as a collaborative project with The Last Dinosaur’s Jamie Cameron,a nd followed her since. After the intimate home, recorded, produced and mixed by herself and released in 2023, Lila got hidden for two years in a remote countryside studio, put together a 5-piece band and emerged with an elegiac indie-rock record, emerge with an elegiac indie-rock album, the release of which is, at the moment, not yet announced. In the meantime, while the wait for the announcement of her new album becomes more and more feverish, Lila released some songs from the album: Sounds Like Easter, and Baby were both premiered here, and Closer was also presented on TRISTE©. In 2025 Promising and Matha May came out and now we have Overtake, a new, song from the yet untitled album, that will be available on all major streaming platforms from tomorrow, May 16th, but that we have the honour and opportunity to have here on TRISTE© as an exclusive premiere.