Listen: You & Me by Retro Kid

Retro Kid is the musical pseudonym of producer Jake Juba. Based out of Copenhagen, Retro Kid constructs tastefully arranged pieces of electronic music, blending ambience and hints of pop to create abstract-yet-emotive sound collages.

In his latest single, You & Me, Juba has made a dedication to his girlfriend, Gry, and the challenges they experience as new parents. In the face of the multitude of practical paper cuts that come with being a parent, the song is a reminder of the bonds that connect the couple, and their new family.

As a song, You & Me is centred on a simplistic melodic refrain, the sort of thing a parent may hum to a newborn, in fact. Around that melody, Jake leverages the trademark Retro Kid sound to construct layers of textural detail. Synths bubble, hi-hats splash and cut-up vocals tumble, like the snatches of thoughts as you go about the messy experience of loving and parenting.

You & Me is taken from Retro Kids’ forthcoming EP, IYKYK (Right?), which itself is set for release in November. As Jake describes in his own words, “The EP explores the journey into my 30s, capturing the real-life transitions of becoming a dad, buying a house, and even mowing the lawn”. If you know, you know…

Listen: Never Loved Somebody by Kylie Rothfield

Hailing from the US, Kylie Rothfield signed her first publishing deal back in 2015. Since then, she has been making music and touring, with Never Loved Somebody representing her latest release.

On her new single, Rothfield depicts a relationship tinged with a sour sense of apathy as she sings of loving someone incapable of reciprocating her emotional investment. Kylie’s vocal is undeniably the start of the show here, as she transitions from intimate narratives in the song’s verse to a rousing crescendo of a chorus. Where the performance is heartfelt and hurt in Never Loved Somebody’s quieter moments, Rothfield drives her message with a sense of self-assurance as things build.

Beyond Rothfield’s impassioned vocals, Never Loved Somebody is surrounded by deftly performed and carefully produced instrumentation, creating a rich and timeless aesthetic. This is particularly the case in the song’s final minute, where Rothfield’s delivery flies above a bridge that basks in a more rock-oriented sound, before descending into a final round of that rousing chorus.

Overall, Never Loved Somebody is nothing less than a powerhouse of a performance — emotive, dramatic, and yet intimate.

Listen: From A Chiringuito by OK Doomer

Despite basking in the kind of widescreen production stylings more commonly found among artists of the American Midwest and West Coast, OK Doomer is the musical pseudonym of South London born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lou Doyle. Following on from debut single Rivers Cuomo, named after the Weezer lead singer, OK Doomer is back with his new single, From A Chiringuito.

Recorded across London and Hamburg by Tonmeister Hannes Plattmeier, From A Chiringuito is designed to ‘unfold like a time-lapse’. Opening with a softly repeating piano chord, the song unfurls beneath Doyle’s earthy vocal. Scattered percussion creeps, like plants pushing through cracking tarmac, testing for weakness. Guitars come to the fore, before receding once more, and Doyle sings of dilapidated houses and satan.

The whole piece feels like a natural step forward from Rivers Cuomo, which was atmospheric rather than cinematic. The resulting evolution, here on From A Chiringuito, lands the listener somewhere between Thom Yorke, Stufjan Stevens and Bon Iver. It’s a tantalising vision of where OK Doomer might go, given the breadth of a full album.

Listen: Your Favorite Girl by Country Girl

With summer, both seemingly feeling relentless, and yet inevitably drawing to a close, I continue to find myself basking in a series of sun-kissed slices of melody.

The latest of these perfect-for-summer records is Your Favorite Girl by Country Girl, a record that basks in its scattershot percussion and hushed vocals. Those voices evoke the feel of a perfect, soft kiss, as the lyrics depict the experience of directing our movie scenes in our heads, the construction of a movie narrative of our latest crush.

Raised in New York and now biased in Brooklyn, Country Girl was homeschooled in preparation for studying classical composition at Juilliard. Insulated from the impact of popular culture, his influences instead came from the likes of Maurice Ravel and Steve Reich. On Your Favorite Girl, the debut single for Country Girl on the FADER label, Country Girl combines his classical upbringing with contemporary pop sensibilities. The result is modern, yet also has a touch of 90s Britpop to it, with echoes of Teenage Fanclub and James, whilst simultaneously evoking the Country Girl’s own environment, as he describes the song as:

‘The very essence of sticky New York summer, an exploration of those little moments when your heart bursts out of your chest, when you have to pour a whole bottle of water on your head and you don’t even feel cold when it hits.’

Your Favorite Girl is a little perfect capsule of summer fancy: apply liberally like sunblock.

Listen: Make Believe by St. Anthony Mann

We are in the middle of a bit of a sustained heat wave in the UK, which is a little rare for August. Typically, as soon as the schools break up for summer at the end of July, the weather turns wetter. Instead, I find myself regularly trying to keep my newly laid turf alive as the sun beats down.

As a result, I’ve found myself leaning even more heavily into the kind of warm synth sounds, falsetto vocals and skittering percussion that I love so much, and that always feels even more perfect in the sun. It’s into this headspace that St. Anthony Mann’s Make Believe arrives.

With the kind of vocal that sounds like fruit that has just reached peak ripeness whilst still on the vine, Make Believe combines an emotive performance with thick and glossy synth melodies and choral harmonies. The effect feels simple and restrained, yet only happens as a result of a careful combination of layers. This beguiling sense of complexity and simplicity perhaps stems from the song’s creation, with the song starting as a simpler acoustic song before mutating into something more energising:

‘This song started out as a soft acoustic piece, but somewhere the arrangement itself went down a different path and came up with all this energy behind it, which was exciting. At that point, it all came together quite naturally. Later on my good friend JT Bates (Bonny Light Horseman, Big Red Machine, Taylor Swift) did some arranging of the drums and percussion sounds after I had recorded the initial guitar-stutter track.’

Hailing from St. Paul, Minnesota, Mann starting making music in high school, with finger-style guitar and experimental alternate tunings. Having spent time in the Midwestern plains, he returned to Minnesota and started recording music under the moniker St. Anthony Mann.

On Make Believe, Mann is inspired by the notion of transition and change as we head down paths unknown, as explained below:

‘This song, for me, is about that point of transition as you step onto a new path or a new journey. (…) A portal or a doorway has always symbolized a new beginning, and folks often might feel some trepidation before the path, as what lies ahead is the unknown. This song meditates on both sides of that decision; those who spend all their time in a sort of liminal space and those that decide to walk the path into the unknown.’