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5. Haylie Davis Just Wants A Rainbow Is That Too Much To Ask?

Hailing from Los Angeles, Haylie Davis’ debut album, Wandering Star, doesn’t arrive until next month, but she’s already making quite the impression. Listed in Rolling Stone’s “The Future 25” list, Haylie’s take on classic Laurel Canyon folk has been winning fans in all the right places. Ahead of Wandering Star’s arrival on Fire Records, this week Haylie shared the latest single from it, Give Me A Rainbow.

Perhaps obvious from the title, Give Me A Rainbow is about everyone’s favourite meteorological phenomenon, as Haylie explains, “when you’re at your lowest point, a rainbow can be the difference between hope and hopelessness”. Musically, the track feels like an update on some lost 70s folk recording, Haylie’s timeless vocal delivery singing out atop the warm amble of the bass and bright guitars that bring to mind Crosby, Stills & Nash. As Haylie ponders seasons, sunshine and the ebbing nature of a relationship, she might be treading familiar musical ground. Yet, as she sings, “I know that I will always love you, like the breath of spring loves winter too”, the sheer clarity of her voice makes it a long way from a pastiche. Whether you see her as a natural heir to Karen Dalton or Joan Baez, a contemporary to Shannon Lay or Joan Shelley, or just a new voice on a journey of her own, Haylie Davis is definitely on the path to very special things.

Wandering Star is out June 5th via Fire Records. For more information on Haylie Davis visit https://linktr.ee/Hayliedavis.

4. Forget Honey – Wojtek The Bear Is Much More Into Amber

Formed back in 2016, Wojtek The Bear have been popping up on these pages regularly ever since, releasing three albums of increasingly ambitious indie-pop, showcased most recently on 2024’s Shaking Hands With The NME. Later this month, the band will return with their new Bill Ryder-Jones-produced record, I Don’t Think You Want To Hear This, landing on the Last Night From Glasgow imprint. Having previously shared the Gerry Love referencing, Kylie’s Put A Curse On Us, and the claustrophobic French Blue, this week the band shared the final taster of their upcoming album, Fly In Amber.

From the opening ticking drum through to the trumpet flourishes of the chorus, Fly In Amber continues Wojtek The Bear’s recent dalliances with retro-pop ambition that, added to their Scottish roots, are bound to draw an avalanche of Camera Obscura comparisons. The Technicolour musical explosion sits in vibrant contrast to the subtle melancholy in vocalist Tam Killean’s delivery as he sings of a protagonist unable to enjoy the moment as she’s stuck in the familiar glow of the past, “she puts the beat into Beta Max, she keeps time with an hour glass, she sleeps in a bed at night with her artefacts, she’s in love with a time that’s past”. It’s perhaps fitting that a song about being stuck in a fictional golden age comes with its own retro shimmer. For all the pop touchstones Wojtek The Bear hit here, they still feel deliciously out of step with the modern age. Timeless pop songs beamed in from the past that glisten all the brighter in the here and now. Forget the album’s title, surely everyone’s going to want to hear this?

I Don’t Think You Want To Hear This is out May 22nd via Last Night From Glasgow. For more information on Wojtek The Bear visit https://wojtekthebear.co.uk/.

3. Hannah Cohen Strikes Gold

Although she’s been releasing music since 2012, last year marked something of a return for Hannah Cohen, as she released her first album in six years, Earthstar Mountain. Recorded at Flying Cloud, the recording studio she co-owns with producer Sam Evian, Earthstar Mountain was, “an ode to curiosity”, which will keep Hannah on the road for pretty much the entirety of 2026. With UK dates in August to promote, this week Hannah shared the first material since the album’s release, in the shape of her new single, Golden Chain.

Continuing the accidental theme of this week’s songs sounding like they’re piped in from another era, Golden Chain sounds like something you’d hear in an old Hollywood film. I’m picturing Hannah on stage in some moneyed establishment, singing her blues away as a half-listening audience of courting couples indulge in Martinis in sharp suits and sparkling gowns. Thankfully, if you’re reading this, you probably don’t have such high-end distractions, so you can just revel in the cutting devastation of Hannah’s songwriting. Here, to a backing of barely there guitars and wavering, almost aquatic strings, her voice is left to carry both melody and meaning, eviscerating a partner who blew a good thing by chasing cheap thrills, “I wanna matter more to you, than those internet girls you do, than the late night liquor and the booze and the endless chasing of your youth”. While the primary emotion here is white-hot rage, there’s room too for a little sadness for what could have been, “the illusion of what I thought we had was good, and you threw it all away”. The song ends with little resolution; as the music starts to almost stagger, drunk with feeling, and Hannah becomes almost wordless, simply repeating, “you do”, like a record stuck in the groove with nothing left to say on the matter. While, as a stand-alone single, it could easily be lost to time, in many ways, Golden Chains is a fitting track to appear between records, a slash-and-burn farewell to a past that leaves only the future to look forward to, the sound of Hannah Cohen moving on with real style.

Golden Chain is out now via Bella Union. For more information on Hannah Cohen visit https://www.thehannahcohen.com/.

2. Mother Knows Best For Atta Boy

Friends and musical collaborators since high school, Atta Boy have been making music together for the best part of 15 years. While they’ve freely explored other endeavours, they’ve often found themselves coming back to their desire to make music together. Four years on from their last album, Craf Park, Atta Boy are currently gearing up to release their fourth album, Silt, produced in band member Freddy Reish’s own Los Angeles recording studio, The Pink Feather. With the record set to arrive at the end of next month via Diamond City, this week Atta Boy shared the latest single from it, Oh Mama.

With lyrics penned by vocalist/guitarist Eden Brolin, Oh Mama is a song rooted in the maternal bond, as Eden explains, “I could say a billion things about why I think my mom is the shit, but as far as the song goes, I just wanted to paint a picture of how grand I see her love and her motherhood“. Despite it being a distinctly personal reflection on the mother-daughter bond, Eden is quick to point out it’s more universal than that, “this idea can be applied to anyone whose support feels like relief and respite when life is sideways. I think it’s a testament to how meaningful and necessary human connection is”. Musically, Oh, Mama is Atta Boy at their most sonically ambitious, sitting somewhere between Why Bonnie and Illinois-era Sufjan Stevens, as Eden’s stunning vocal drifts across a cloud of nebulous brass and subtle punches of drums. On first listen it would be easy to mistake this song for something quite sad. Eden’s vocal possesses a sort of aching quality that’ll do that to any song, yet if you scratch the bark the feeling here is much more positive, a sort of unintelligible admiration for the person who’s been there since day one making it all make sense, “oh mama, you’re an oak tree, in the summer you are shady the leaves sing, when I’m lonely”. A beautiful tribute to motherly love that suggests that with Silt, Atta Boy are more than ready for their moment in the sun.

Silt is out June 26th via Diamond City. For more information on Atta Boy visit https://weareattaboy.myshopify.com/

1. The Hobknobs Are Always Easy On The Ear

A brand new coming together from a couple of familiar musical brains on the thriving Dutch indie-scene, The Hobknobs is a collaboration between Yaël Dekker, singer with The Klittens, and Lewsberg’s Arie van Vliet. Their debut album, Helmets Off, which they describe as, “an honest attempt at honesty”, will arrive at the end of next month, and this week they shared the first taster of it, Easier Listening.

A song about dimming your light, Arie says of the track, “Easier Listening is about people who consciously choose to be less intelligent, in order to be able to understand so much more”. Fitting for a song about making yourself more accessible to the wider world, it’s also a song the band describes as, “the most poppy song on Helmets Off”. While it’s undeniably approachable, Easier Listening isn’t a pop song in terms of anything that would ever be a chart hit, more the sort of breezy lo-fi expression that would have had the crowd at the much missed Indietracks festival eating out of the palm of The Hobknobs hands. Arie goes full Stanley Brinks with his sing-speak vocals, as the guitar bounds along like energetic puppies, the drums don’t move beyond a metronomic tick, and Yaël adds a wonderful dash of melodic contrast. The duo seem to take an almost observer’s position, objectively people watching as their subjects shape-shift and dumb down to try and find a place to fit in, “no need for a deeper analysis, there’s a whole new world to discover”. A wonderful combination I never knew I needed to hear, like their biscuity namesake, just one blast of The Hobknobs is never going to be enough, so someone stick the kettle on, and I’ll put it on repeat.

Helmets Off is out June 26th via 12XU. For more information on The Hobknobs visit https://thehobknobs.bandcamp.com/

Header photo is The Hobknobs by Katja Kahana