Editors' Picks

North-east native Sam Fender is a young man with the world at his feet. From being named one of the BBC’s Sounds of 2018 to winning the Critics Choice Award at the 2019 Brit Awards, he and his debut album Hypersonic Missiles have been hoovering up accolades like they were as scarce as petrol. And with good reason too, Hypersonic Missiles was a gem, a record that, despite its youthful stance, in many ways bellied the tender years of its creator, a smart and accomplished collection that couldn’t obviously be bettered.

Having scored the biggest hit of his career to date alongside Nonô with 12 million+ streams for ‘Sorry’, TCTS again teams up with the Brazilian vocal sensation for their brand new ‘Off My Mind’. The track represents his first release under a new deal with Insanity Records. 

One of the greatest bass players in modern times has returned with a new single coming from her Grammy-winning magnum opus, 12 Little Spells, titled Formwela 10 which showcases once again the rawness of her ideas, and the beauty of her talent.

Coming out strong with a slightly-more-accessible second single, Invisible Monster, from their upcoming fourteenth album A View from Atop of the World, Dream Theater prove that thirty years of legacy have done nothing but refine their chops and their songwriting skills.

Dublin indie grunge trio HAVVK attracted attention with their self titled EP in 2016, and it’s follow up She Knows in 2017, before their debut album Cause & Effect, a stunning record that explored some big themes, brought their music to a wider audience. New album Levelling landed this week and, I’m delighted to report, keeps the fury and frenzy alive, while being just as lyrically intriguing as its predecessor.

Comprised of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker, indie rock minimalists Low have been enchanting fans with their vocal interplay and drop dead gorgeous musical arrangements since the early 1990s. Up until relatively recently though, their formula remained largely unchanged, until their 2015 album Ones And Sixes signalled a significant change in direction as they incorporated new sounds and began working with producer BJ Burton. 

Australian singer, songwriter and record producer Matthew Victor Kopp, otherwise known as Running Touch, first rose to prominence as the guitarist for, and founding member of, nu metal band Ocean Grove in his homeland roughly a decade ago. However, Kopp struck out on his own in the mid noughties, releasing a string of singles and an EP, A Body Slow, in the years that followed.

Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier, better known as Andrew W.K., was one of the big breakthroughs of the early noughties alternative revival. His single Party Hard was a mainstay of rock club nights up and down the country, while the album that spawned it earned rave reviews and featured in many critics ‘album of the year’ rundowns, and gained a solid following, partly fuelled by the (at the time) controversy over the cover image of the blood-stained star himself.

As one of the defining musicians of the 1990s Britpop era, Graham Coxon had absolutely nothing to prove. However, that hasn’t stopped the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from producing a huge range of solo material away from the band with whom he made his name. And that material has been as varied as it has been rewarding, from the folky garage rock of The Sky Is Too High and the indie classic Happiness In Magazines, to the predominantly acoustic The Spinning Top and beyond.

The British heavy metal titans, godfathers of power metal, and one of the strongest forces in rock are back with their first new single since their latest album, 2015’s Book Of Souls, titled Stratego, from their upcoming album Senjutsu.

Johnny Flynn is a man of many talents. From carving out a reputation (and rightfully so) as the UK’s premier folk artist, to starring on the stage and silver screen, and racking up a huge amount of awards wins and nominations over the years, there’s seemingly very little the South African born superstar can’t turn his hand to. 

Las Vegas four-piece Imagine Dragons are an intriguing outfit. They are, by almost every modern metric that matters, one of the most blisteringly successful bands of the last decade. Billboard ranks their singles Believer, Thunder, and Radioactive as the three biggest rock songs of the 2010s in the US charts, they were Spotify’s most streamed outfit in 2018, and they’ve surpassed 20 million album sales worldwide. And yet, they just don’t seem to have been welcomed into our consciousness in the same way acts like The Killers, in many ways the band that paved the way for their success, have been.

Anyone who has set for inside a club on indie night at some time in the last decade will be familiar with The Vaccines, the London five-piece having carved out a name for themselves as one of the leaders of the current generation of dancefloor-filling, guitar-wielding pack of bands that also includes the likes of The Wombats, The Kooks and The Courteeners. 

For a band who have continually reinvented themselves over the years, from the young androgynous punk upstarts who gave us Generation Terrorists, to the virtiolic The Holy Bible era, and the Britpop conquering albums Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the Manic Street Preachers 14th studio LP The Ultra Vivid Lament still carries with it a big surprise.

London’s own Oscar Lang had an alarmingly busy 2020. Despite the Coronavirus pandemic torpedoing live music, Lang saw his stock rise considerably, releasing not one, not two, but three EPs – Overthunk came first, then Hand Over Your Head, before Antidote To Being Bored rounded out an incredibly, and surprisingly, productive year.

American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and photographer Faye Webster got what was, by any definition of the phrase, a big break when, at the end of last year, none other than former President of the United States of America Barack Obama picked her track Better Distractions for his end of year ‘best of’ list. 

Having carved his name into the list of the last decade’s biggest indie troubadours with his smash hit Another Love (520 million plays on Spotify and counting), a song that will play long into the night at weddings up and down the land for years to come, Chichester singer-songwriter Tom Odell could have ridden off into the sunset, his future and legacy secure, safe in the knowledge his music is loved by many.

Twenty-two-year-old singer songwriter Claire Cottrill – known better as Clairo – began posting her music online around six years ago, quickly winning fans with her unflinchingly honest and real stories. 2017’s lo-fi track Pretty Girl, and it’s accompanying homemade video, proved to be something of a breakthrough, wracking up close to 80 million views on YouTube to date, and leading to her penning a deal with Fader Label, who dropped her debut album Infinity in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim.

If you were looking for a measure of quite how successful The Killers have been in the UK, how completely we’ve taken the Las Vegas outfit to our hearts, then the fact that Mr Brightside, their defining, signature hit, recently passed 280 weeks in the UK top 100 is it. By that metric, it is the most successful song ever released here, and it’s not even close – Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, itself a chart behemoth, is it’s nearest rival with a paltry (by comparison) 166 weeks in the top 100.

For now, Jake Bugg arguably remains Nottingham’s biggest recent star, but he should be wary because hot on his heels in Chloe Rodgers, the latest breakthrough act to emerge from the city’s burgeoning underground scene.

Northumberland-born singer Jade Bird’s self-titled debut album was chock full of gorgeous acoustic guitar and Americana-influenced vocals and songwriting. It reached the top ten of the UK albums chart, and topped the UK Americana chart, making Bird a rising star in the field of contemporary country music. And so, when she decamped to New York and Nashville to work on a followup, it seemed likely that Bird would continue in a similar vein. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

Finneas’ newest single, The 90s, is a harmonious lament with plenty of production tricks and polish expected in a Finneas track.

When the then seventeen-year-old Jake Bugg burst out of the Nottingham suburb of Clifton and onto the Glastonbury stage a decade ago, with his tales of teenage life told in his distinctive and entrancing drawl, he was an almost instant sensation. As the hype built and his songs filled the airwaves, he seemed to be on the verge of becoming the UK’s defining indie star of the decade, a new Gallagher brother for the Snapchat generation. 

In one of the most ambitious and unexpected collaborations of all time, Earth Wind & Fire, Lucky Daye, and Babyface put their talents together to rework and modernize the first’s classic song “Can’t Hide Love” under the new name “You Want My Love”.

RINI’s newest single, Red Lights, not only serves as a wonderful neo-soul song, but might be one of the artist’s greatest song.

The progressive rock gods are back with their first single, “The Alien”, from their upcoming album “A View from the Top of the World”, with a new heavier edge and clear progression from their latest effort “Distance Over Time”. 

In a new fun twist to pop punk, We Are Scientists did a wonderful job bringing new life to the genre in their newest single, “Handshake Agreement”.

A bit of pop, a bit of folk, a bit of rock, and a whole lotta Finneas, the young artist’s newest single, “A Concert Six Months From Now” is a beautiful journey that takes you through just about every emotion one might face in the midst of a pandemic-induced confinement.

All good artists evolve, and The Weeknd has shown in the last couple years that the sky truly is the limit when it comes to his musicality. In a continuation of the 80s inspired sound from After Hours, his newest single “Take My Breath” is a deeper exploration into the sounds that brought an entire generation to the dance floor every weekend.

Sounding like a true and proper progression of “Ouch”, Matt Watson, shows his improvements in both his songwriting and production in his newest single, “Bored”, released with his first music video as a solo artist.

In a surprise new single, Motionless in White returns to their roots with “Timebomb”, a true metalcore masterpiece through and through.

Three years after her last album with a whole new sound, MARO is back stronger than ever, alongside musician NASAYA, with I SEE IT COMING, a poppier song, all the while maintaining the elegance she’s exercised consistently in her career.

In a perfect blend of catchy harmonies, groovy rhythms and floating chords, Elko brewed a wonderful late-summer banger with their newest single, “Pretty Little Lies”.

London-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Cat Burns has enjoyed a truly meteoric rise over the last year and a half. When lockdown first hit in the Spring of last year, Burns had just started out posting clips online, mainly through Tik Tok. Within a year she’d amassed well over half a million followers, had been signed by RCA Records, and was the face of a Tik Tok advertising campaign. Not bad work for someone who had been rejected by several labels before embracing the social media platform. 

At the start of this review, it’s only fair that I make a disclosure: Chinatown by Bleachers, featuring none other than Bruce Springsteen, was one of my very favourite tracks of the last year. A real lockdown record, with its haunting vocals and infused with a sense of yearning, it captured the essence of a difficult period. When lead singer and frontman Jack Antonoff and Springsteen crooned “I wanna find tomorrow”, it felt like they were talking to us all and our hope of better times to come.