Category Archives: Track of the day

Track of the day
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Start the week with some atmospheric German indierock. Today’s track of the day comes from KOJ – Jenny. Catch them on tour in Germany and the UK in April/May.

“Jenny” is the second single off the new album “HOME” coming Spring 2020 via Long Branch Records. The band say:

Jenny was written in our home studio and it was a very intuitive and collaborative process. The three of us started jamming randomly at the beginning of a songwriting session and it just sort of came together. Beray Habip, our producer and engineer, coordinated the whole thing and guided us through the process of making the song. In a way Jenny came out of thin air, but then again this is one of those songs that seems to have been waiting somewhere in the collective subconscious just to be written. Basically it only took us one day to write the entire track and record a demo version. It was such a wonderful feeling to listen to Jenny at the end of that day, realising that ‘wow, we really did this!’. We then took the demo to Toolhouse Studios to record the final version of the song.

So, the song is called Jenny, which originally came from ‘Jennifer Lawrence’, which was the working title for the track. The song has a line about a silver lining, so we thought of ‘Silver Linings’ and about Jennifer Lawrence. We had started this weird habit on previous songs of temporarily naming the songs after celebrities, before committing to a proper song title. We created quite the line-up with names such as Pamela Anderson or Scarlett Johansson, before renaming them for the album. Jennifer Lawrence became Jenny and stayed this way, because the name also has a very personal reference and connection to the theme of the song.”

Find KOJ on soundcloud bandcamp facebook instagram

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NEW YEAR NEW Dream Nails

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Our favourite punk witches Dream Nails are kicking off 2020 with their hotly-anticipated first studio release, ‘Text Me Back (Chirpse Degree Burns). And it’s sounds amazing! A perfectly captured punk parcel giving us a tantalising taste of what’s to come from their album this spring!

We caught up with the ‘Nails (Janey, Lucy, Mimi and Anya), on the road today heading off on tour …

We are mega-excited to hear your first studio-recorded release! Tell us more.

This summer we took a Dream Nails holiday up to Liverpool to sit in a hot studio with Tarek Musa from Spring King and lay down ten beautiful tracks for our first full-length LP. It was a magical, albeit intense, process and we’re really proud of what’s come out of it!

Congratulations on signing with Alcopop! Records. What made you feel they were the right match for you?

They really respect our DIY ethics, the importance of our connection with our fanbase and respect us having 100% creative control. We just clicked! We love some of the bands signed to Alcopop! like Happy Accidents, Peaness and Cheerbleederz so it’s nice to get an invite to the punk family dinner table. 

So the hot gossip is that ‘Text Me Back’ was inspired by two of the Nails being ghosted by their Glastonbury festival crushes … what messages would you like to send those heartless ghosters now?

One says: “Thank you for being our completely oblivious romantic muses. What can we say, we’ve learned and grown but sometimes even now when our phone bleeps, we jump out of our skins.”
The other says: “Mate you were off your nut.”

You’re off on a megatour with Anti-Flag, and have an album on the way … any more exciting plans for 2020 you can tell us about? 

Antiflag is awesome, we’re currently in Lisbon about to go and sample some nata. Then we’re going to Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and some other cool spots. We will be embarking on a headline tour running up to our album launch show in London on April 23 at Oslo, Hackney!  Catch us all around the UK!

Now you’re starting to break through the DIY ceiling and share your witchy pop with a wider audience – what advice would you give to fledgling DIY bands who want to follow in your footsteps? 

When you commit to being in a band, commit to regular rehearsals. Once you unlock that magic, you’ve got to keep the momentum going! And get some merch as soon as you can. Our Hex the Patriarchy patches are pretty much the only way we can pay for our rehearsal studio in the first place!

Catch Dream Nails on tour:

JAN (supporting Anti-Flag)
08 Lisboa, Portugal – RCA Club 
09 Madrid, Spain – Caracol 
10 Vitoria, Spain – Kubik 
11 Zaragoza, Spain – Sala López
12 Barcelona, Spain – Estraperio
14 Milan, Italy – HT Factory 

APRIL

10 Cardiff, UK – Wales Goes Pop!
11 Leicester, UK – Shed
23 London, UK – Oslo – Album Release Show
24 Bristol, UK – Louisiana
25 Reading, UK – Are You Listening? Festival
26 Southampton, UK – Heartbreakers

Plus more to be announced.

Connect with Dream Nails:

Facebook  |  Bandcamp  |  Instagram  |  Twitter  |  Spotify  |  iTunes

Track of the day

Oh! You Pretty Things: Pollen – track of the day

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Today’s track of the day comes from Oh! You Pretty Things from Charlotte, NC. ‘Pollen’ is the grungetastic lead track from their EP ‘N is for Nostalgia’ which they’re launching 28 December.

The band is powered by Callie Wolfe (lead vocals), along with Joseph Conde (guitar/keys), and Paul Swanson on bass. Callie tells us her lyrics “deal with very personal subjects ranging from bullying (from both sexes), failed relationships and friendships, and the struggles of mental health, among others”.

Find Oh! You Pretty Things on Facebook Instagram

Track of the day

Elucidate: Panic Room – track of the day

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Today’s track of the day is ‘Panic Room’ by Reading’s Elucidate. We instantly warmed to this indie-rock band, and the song is highly relatable:

Panic Room was inspired by the feeling of not being sure that you’re making the right decision and feeling like the safest option is to just give up rather than power through. We think everyone has felt like this at some point, and we wanted to write something that resonated with all those people who don’t feel like they can do it or want to give up.

Find Elucidate on instagram

Track of the day

Katie Graham: Fallen – track of the day

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Kicking off the week with some fab new music from Preston’s Katie Graham – ‘Fallen’. One to watch.

Lancashire’s Graham released her debut EP aged just 18 in 2016. Her musical career was paused in late 2017 after becoming unwell and later diagnosed with intracranial hypertension (pressure on the brain), forcing her into a brief hiatus and putting life very much on hold. 

With her health now firmly under control, Katie is ready to make up for lost time and begins with the release of her musically defining new EP ‘Last Summer’. The ideas for the project were shaped whilst Katie travelled across Europe following a break up, with many of the tracks written whilst she stayed in different cities across the continent. 

“The EP is called Last Summer because it’s when I started experiencing a lot of the things I’ve written about in the songs,” Katie explains; “it was a time for me to really try and figure out what I wanted, who I wanted to be and what music I wanted to make. I get a lot of my writing influences from my friends lives and what’s going on with them and I find it a good way to release some of my own thoughts and emotions too. I’ve suffered with mental health problems since I was a kid which I think a lot of people understand and writing for me is just one way to help me get some of the cooped-up thoughts out of my brain!”