motel void

SPRING COLOURS – FEMUR IN THE DUST (WHO TOLD YOU THERE’S A BETTER LIFE!?)

Spring Colours are a chiptune, emo and noise-pop outfit from Toronto, Ontario. Their maximalist style combines effect-heavy guitars, noisy yet nostalgic synthesizers and emotive lyrics with catchy hooks and high-energy performances. They released their debut LP, The Courage Cloak, this year, selling out their release show at Toronto’s Underground before heading out on an East Coast Canadian tour.

My currently perhaps favourite band, Hop Along, haven’t been particularly active lately, but the more I listen to Canadian band Spring Colours, the more I find myself thinking that they could be a very solid ‘replacement’. That fantastic combination of rawness, energy, catchiness, chaos, intelligence and melody – it’s all there. This is what real music sounds like to me at its very best.

HOW STRANGE IT IS – TOUGH LUCK

How Strange It Is are a four-piece band from Portland, Oregon, rocking and rolling since 2021 – and definitely not appearing here for the first time. I really love the video they made for this track, which seems to take place somewhere among the forests and coastline of Oregon. It reminds me a little of my favourite film Old Joy.

The song itself is brilliantly written. It starts out gentle and captivating, before suddenly breaking into a frenzy of guitars around the two-minute mark. The vocals are particularly interesting here – this is far from straightforward rock. Instead, it is a carefully constructed yet completely natural-sounding track where something is constantly shifting and changing. There is always a little surprise around the corner, which makes the whole thing incredibly engaging.

IAN THE IDIOT – YOU DID EVERYTHING FOR US TODAY

Ian the Idiot is a Los Angeles-born-and-raised independent artist who has been writing and recording songs DIY for more than 15 years, starting as a kid in his dad’s garage. He currently lives in Hawthorne, California, with his wife and two children, while working a day job at some corporation somewhere.

I had never heard of Ian before, but his single You Did Everything for Us Today immediately caught my attention with its lovely early Alex G atmosphere and genuinely beautiful production. Ian has a very sweet, smooth vocal, and he knows how to create a proper earworm of a melody. There is something incredibly comforting about the whole track, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on whatever he releases next.