Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

Paula Kelley is a composer and a vocalist and guitarist for the band Drop Nineteens. Her latest solo record, Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out, is out now on Wharf Cat.

Paula Kelley

Music

Paula Kelley (Drop Nineteens) and Andy Sherriff (Chapterhouse) Enjoy the Moment

Through the exhaustion, it persists. Gnaw’s glowing power-pop draws deep from a tired tension: a perpetually shifting negotiation between ‘90s alt-rock romanticism, fuzzed out upon machine-gun drumming; pummeling riffs mangled through digital processing and noise; tales traversing lingering memory and motion, mesmerized by hypergaze-influenced joy rushes. Brandishing a heavy palette of power pop immediacy — equally indebted to indie rock contemporaries like Momma and Slow Pulp and ‘90s grit a la Hole and Smashing Pumpkins — the EP’s four serrated songs thrill through life’s pushes and pulls. 
On their debut EP, Inside a Machine That’s Glistening, the three-piece draws from that weighty palette to weave four songs that glow amidst the grit. There’s a curious, yet never overbearing darkness to them: confessionals channeled through Daniel Lim’s serrated guitar work, dancing between Tara Tan’s cautious, whispery vocals. Navigating a spectrum from sheer wonder (“Star”) to fear (“Gash”) and fatigue (“This Is My Life”), Tan’s personal stories shift from dreamy to dramatic. Meanwhile, drummer Zakhran Khan’s fine-tuned rhythms rip into these sincere questions, at times accelerating to torrents of catharsis, while at others simply adding to moments triumphant.

Gnaw

Mood Board: Gnaw’s Inside a Machine That’s Glistening

Christian Stadsgaard, also known as his solo moniker Vanity Productions, has become a crucial figure in the contemporary Nordic electronic and experimental music scenes in the past decade.
Standing at the helm of the label Posh Isolation with Loke Rahbek, Stadsgaard is responsible for one of the most consistent and compelling labels to both define and elaborate the many productive sides of the underground in the last decade. As a performing and recording artist his work with Rahbek as Damien Dubrovnik was a critical project in the contemporary noise milieu throughout the 2010s. More recently his collaborative work with Jonas Rönnberg (Varg2™) and Isak Hansen as The Empire Line has gained significant notoriety.
However, it&#8217;s in Vanity Productions that the full breadth of the emotive intensity of Stadsgaard&#8217;s work is expressed. His collaboration with the seminal artist Merzbow in 2019 led to his Coastal Erosion album for iDEAL Recordings, prefacing a recent series of works that take their cues from minimalist composition.
The latest Vanity Productions record, The Vanity Project, is out now on Northern Electronics.

Vanity Productions

Vanity Productions and Varg2™ Want Real Anti-Culture to Come Back

Groupie is a Brooklyn-based band known for turning introspection into kinetic, cathartic sound. Their music fuses the emotional edge of punk with the immersive textures of shoegaze and dream pop — sharp, shimmering, and unafraid of vulnerability. Groupie has become a mainstay in NYC’s indie scene with a sound that merges dream pop sheen and punk urgency. Since the release of their debut album Ephemeral in 2021, they have shared the stage with indie greats like Warpaint, Silversun Pickups, Neon Trees, and many more. Led by bassist and frontwoman Ashley Kossakowski, a queer, first-generation daughter of Polish immigrants, and joined by drummer Aaron Silberstein, and guitarists Eric Rubin and Eamon Lebow, the band’s evolution from the raw immediacy of their debut Ephemeral to their upcoming sophomore album reflects a sound fully in bloom — cinematic in scope, but deeply human at its core.

Groupie

Introducing: Groupie’s “Swan Song”

Accessory is the solo recording project of Chicago based Jason Balla (Dehd, Earring). The debut Accessory record, Dust, is out now.

Accessory

Mood Board: Accessory’s Dust

Podcast

James Graham (The Twilight Sad) Talks with Rachel Goswell (Slowdive) on the Talkhouse Podcast

Marissa Nadler is a musician, painter and animator based in Massachusetts. She has recorded seven studio albums. Follow her on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/marissa_nadler/?hl=en" target="_blank">Instagram</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/marissanadler" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MarissaNadlerMusic/?fref=ts" target="_blank">Facebook</a>.
(Photo credit: <a href="http://www.ebruyildiz.net/">Ebru Yildiz</a>)

Marissa Nadler

Gracie and Rachel and Marissa Nadler Feel At Home Together

Over the course of the last two decades, Detroit&#8217;s ADULT. (Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller) have been perhaps one of the most fervent proponents of a dark, dance aesthetic that harnesses the perverse aspects of the late &#8217;70s analog dystopian post-modernism.

ADULT.

Mood Board: ADULT.’s Kissing Luck Goodbye

ESYA is the solo project from Glasgow-based musician Ayşe Hassan, of Savages, Kite Base, and 180db. Her debut album Chasing Desire merges Hassan&#8217;s signature bass playing with electronics to create a unique blend of industrial pop, and is out now on AOK Records.
(Photo Credit: Neeq Serene)

ESYA

Hear First: ESYA’s Chasing Desire

Hannah Lew is a filmmaker, musician, and visual artist in San Francisco. Her film work has screened at the San Francisco Video Festival, Theatre Arteau, the Red Vic Theater, Artists Television Access and SFMOMA. She received both the Leo Diner and Robin Eichman Awards in 2009 for her films Stoplight and Over the Hill. She plays bass and sings in the bands Grass Widow, Cold Beat, and Generation Loss.
(Photo Credit: Sean Hewitt)

Hannah Lew

Hannah Lew and Chris Stewart Just Want to Connect

Jason Williamson. Singer for Sleaford Mods. Married with a kid. Nottingham, UK. <a href="https://twitter.com/sleafordmods" target="_blank">@sleafordmods</a>

Jason Williamson

Your favorite musicians, filmmakers, and other creative minds one-on-one. No moderator, no script, no typical questions. The Talkhouse Podcast offers unique insights into creative work from all genres and generations. <a href="https://pod.link/Talkhouse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Subscribe now</a>, and explore more illuminating shows on the <a href="https://talkhouse.com/category/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Talkhouse Podcast Network.</a>

Talkhouse Podcast

Jason Williamson (Sleaford Mods) Talks with Andrea Arnold on the Talkhouse Podcast

Pictish Trail, the alias of Scottish pop sensation Johnny Lynch, has resolutely furrowed his own path, steadily creating a unique catalogue of recordings and performances, while eschewing the blueprint of the predictable singer-songwriter in favor of something untidily intriguing. 
(Photo Credit: Stephanie Gibson)