melt exclusive:
VILLAGERRR
“It just can all feel a little bit funny… It also just feels like, with the carousel imagery, it kind of reminds me of a carnival or something. The songs span a pretty wide sonic palette, I feel like. And there's so many different people playing on it, so it just feels like a big, messy thing. But in a good way.”
Read Above: Steeped in the same rawness that earned Mark Scott’s earliest, bedroom-recorded releases their initial admiration, Carousel is, in a way, a realized version of these sounds. With an accompanying band composed of Zayn Dweik (drums), Cam Garshon (bass), Alec Cox (guitar), and Henry Schuellerman (pedal steel), Scott’s trademark premeditation and delicacy is brought to rest in absolute perfection in its live incarnation.
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MELT Exclusive:
True Green
True Green, the brainchild of novelist and songwriter Dan Hornsby, recently released the follow-up to their 2024 debut, My Lost Decade, in the form of a tumbling, character-extracted, 13-track extravaganza: Hail Disaster, out via Spacecase Records in March of this year.
Ahead of True Green’s stop at the intensely intimate Dissonant Works space in St. Louis (with local acts Matt Daisy and Huck on the bill) I spoke with both Hornsby and close collaborator Tailer Ransom about character-building, growing from My Lost Decade, and both of their intentions in working on Hail Disaster.
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Mount Zero — Swapmeet
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A dive into the tastes of New Jersey punk band best dressed ghost.
Artist profiles
Spacemoth has served as the experimental playground for instrumentalist and songwriter Maryam Qudus since 2020, and in that time she has developed an otherworldly sound— one that has expressed itself in both a resolute darkness and a cosmic playfulness. But the thread of creativity, of a desire to explore and experiment, goes all the way back to her childhood. Her latest record Inward Eye, in many ways, represents the culmination of these efforts and experiences.
Spacemoth
Void Comp, the alternative electronic project of Edmonton-based songwriter David Julé, began simply as an exploratory pursuit. But as he continued his sonic experimentations, and continued to etch out his distinct style as a songwriter, he struck upon something tantalizing: a synth-filled mixture buoyed by his prowess on the electric guitar and rounded off by his textural approach to his vocals. The result, as exemplified on his debut album Passerby, transcends even the experimental strictures of the genre that he occupies.
Void Comp
Neptune’s Core has been making waves since their first appearances on the local Chicago scene back in the late 2010s, when each member of the band was at some point in their journey through high school. But as time has gone on, their vision of what the band could be has become more and more ingrained in their collective creative identity, and as they prepare for the release of their debut album Pivot, each member is well aware of the weight this next step carries.
Neptune’s core
When Violet Beller and Anakeesta Ironwood first met at the University of Miami, they knew immediately that they would click as friends. Their similar musical and creative affinities ensured it. But what they didn’t know was the coiling twists and turns that their original sapling of an idea would take on, incorporating member after member from their scene until rug, as a sprawling, seven-piece indie band, came to find its complete form.
RUG
Although pop-punk may be the appropriate genre label for Australian duo Cry Club, it’s far from an accurate depiction of their sound. The release of their newest album, High Voltage Anxiety, simply was the next step in the logical sonic process that has guided them since they first began collaborating as university students, and in its searing punk tones and earnest theatrics, the project is the most honest and upfront in their growing discography.