Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Public Circuit Shares Muscular Remix of “Damager”

Rising New York-based electro punks Public Circuit — Ethan Beaumont (vocals), Sean Holloway (drums) and Nelson Fisher (electronics) — exploded into the scene with 2024’s full-length debut Lamb, which they supported with sold-out shows across 30 states, including a run across the domestic festival circuit with sets at New Colossus Festival, Hopscotch and MACROCK.

The trio’s sophomore album Modern Church was released last September through Á La Carte Records. The album saw the band swapping the pretense of retro-revivalism for something much sharper, darker — and entirely their own. Sonically rooted in the trio’s newfound sense of collaboration between each other, the album’s material features angular electronic instrumentation and raw percussive rhythms bathed with the high gloss ache of sophsitipop. 

Thematically, the material is overtly religious. But it’s used as an analogical tool to explore sexual identity, the fleeting faith of society and the illicit repercussions of unresolved trauma. And much like its immediate predecessor, the new album continues a run of material deeply influenced by New York’s constant feed of noise and relentless energy. 

Today, the New York-based trio announced the April 28, 2026 release of Modern Church R//MIX//S. The trio recruited Brooklyn music scene friends Lip Critic, shower curtain, Grumpy, The Wants, smush, ideasforconversations and Crate to rework Modern Church album tracks. “We wanted to put out the remixes to not only highlight all our amazing friends who make amazing music, but also to revive these songs into all the different worlds we believe they belong to exist in,” the band explains.

Modern Church R//MIX//S‘ first single sees Public Circuit remixing their favorite song off Modern Church, “Damager.” Clocking in at 94 seconds, the original version is a punchy, club friendly bit of industrial synth pop. Their remix gives the song a muscular and swaggering thump that’s one-part old school hip hop-driven 808 and one-part 80s industrial club music.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Denver’s Dead Pioneers Share Furious Ripper “No Kings”

Denver-based punk outfit Dead Pioneers — Josh Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar), Shane Zweygardt (drums), Algiers’ Lee Tesche (bass) and acclaimed indigenous visual and performance artist and activist Gregg Deal (vocals) — can trace their origins back to when Deal and his family relocated to Colorado after a 17 year period in the Washington, DC area.

Deal, who is a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is a visual and performance artist and activist, whose work frequently includes exhaustive and detailed critiques of American colonialism, society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals and performance art, Deal critically examines issues within Indian Country such as decolonization, stereotypes and appropriation among others. His work has been exhibited at cultural centers nationally and internationally including at the Smithsonian Institution and the Venice Biennale. 

During his time as Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum, Deal created the 2020 performance piece, The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy, a deeply personal one-man show that explored themes of music, personal experiences and meaningful connections. A grant allowed Deal to expand upon the project, incorporating original music written specifically for the performance. That performance piece led to the creation of Dead Pioneers.

The Denver-based punk outfit have long paired a proud DIY ethos with a mission to champion the rights of marginalized communities, including Black, Brown, Asian, LGBQT+ folks and workers. Their work frequently sees them boldly and unapologetically confronting the social, political and cultural issues that are central to modern life in the United States — a focus that’s central to their identity.

The band self-released their 2024 self-titled, full-length debut. Clocking in at 22 minutes, with only one of the album’s 12 songs exceeding three minutes, the album’s material is a breakneck and furious roar that manages to cover a huge amount of ground. The album caught the attention of Hassle Records, who signed the Denver-based punks and then re-released the album.

Their sophomore album, last year’s PO$T AMERICAN was written in February 2024 and recorded that year. The album forecasted the turmoil of the last Presidential election and reflects on the fears, unease and disillusionments of modern life. “The title PO$T AMERICAN reflects a collective disillusionment with the so-called American Dream,” Dead Pioneers’ Gregg Deal explains. “It critiques capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy while imagining a path toward unity beyond those oppressive systems.” 

The album’s material saw the band balancing minute-long punk rock rippers, impassioned explorations of modern-day America and spoken word interludes. The shifts in form and tone don’t distract from the material’s central themes while sonically, the album draws from the likes of Rage Against the Machine, Chuck D, Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, IDLES, Black Flag, Rollins Band, Dead Kennedys and others.

Although written and recorded before the results of the 2024 Presidential election, the album’s material eerily presaged the mood and state of life in the United States in the early months of 2025, evoking the fear, uncertainty, the bitter divisiveness, the racist scapegoating, the gaslighting, the gross incompetence, the greed, the oppression, the bullshit and buffoonery we’ve had to face on a daily basis for 15 months now.

Following their first, sold-out European Union and UK headlined tour earlier this month, Dead Pioneers will be releasing their third album Wagon Burner. Slated for a June 26, 2026 release through Hassle Records, the album as the band’s Gregg Deal says is “more collaborative,” while being heavier, harder and much more accessible with a focus on mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. The album features guest spots from Cheap Perfume on “Nazi Teeth,” The Interrupters on “Never Alone” and Sleaford Mods on “The Worst Among Us.”

The album’s material acknowledges that things are bleak but the band rises up to our miserable occasion, casting an empowering light deep into the gloom.

Wagon Burner‘s second and latest single “No Kings” is a furious, galloping ripper that sees the band delivering a series of much-needed haymakers against America’s techno-fascists, Christo-fascists, White Supremacists, genocide apologists, bootlickers, racists and the Trump-Epstein class, as well as similar movements across the world.

“Last summer there were protests all over the United States called ‘No Kings’, in opposition of the current administration, the policies they’ve been implementing, and the rights they’ve been taking away from citizens,” the band’s Gregg Deal explains. “While the issues are obvious, it’s important that we all say it out loud. It’s important that we show up and make our opinions known, that we won’t allow our inherent rights to be trampled upon for the benefit of the Epstein Class.

“Not unlike ‘Nazi Teeth’, ‘No Kings’ is meant to bring the points home,” he continues. “ICE, rights being taken away, mass shootings, greed over life, demonizing immigrants, black, brown and queer people, widened economic gaps by the Epstein class, and the sincere frustration Americans feel over this. While this is happening, we realize that the right-wing politics coming out of the United States is emboldening conservative right-wing politics all over the world. We are against dictators, authoritarian regimes, Nazis, fascism or any other power structure, political, social or otherwise that seek to take away the rights, freedoms or lives of human beings trying to live their life. To that, we keep it simple: NO KINGS.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 56th Birthday, Pasemaster Mase!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates De La Soul’s Pasemaster Mase’s 56th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Pulpitos Return with Propulsive and Dubby “Squidler”

Berlin-based electronic duo Los Pulpitos features two acclaimed electronic producers:

  • Lima-born, Berlin-based producer Felipe Salmon, best known for being one-half of Dengue Dengue Dengue, an act known for meshing elements of electronic music, cumbia, reggae and psychedelia. 

  • German electronic innovator Dirk Leyers, known for his solo work, as well as with groups like Africane 808, Closer Musik and Format01. 

The duo released their debut EP Octopean Union last year. Building upon the project’s growing profile, their highly anticipated full-length debut, Tentacletek is slated for an April 17, 2026 release through Crammed Discs. The album will include the previously released “Mola Mola,” and the album’s latest single “Squidler.”

“Squidler” is a dubby club banger that seemingly channels a synthesis of Kraftwerk, Between Two Selves-era Octo Octa and LutchamaK anchored around skittering, reverb-soaked beats and shimmering synth stabs. The new single is playful, propulsive and immersive, evoking an underwater, tropical house club.

According to the duo, the track gallops fluidly on a seahorse down the Aquabahn straight to Detroit.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Kathryn Mohr Shares Brooding PJ Harvey-like “Doorway”

Oakland-based artist Kathryn Mohr creates music that exists in a liminal space of auditory dissociation. Drawing inspiration from lost items washing up on the shores of San Francisco Bay, Mohr’s work thematically touches upon the ephemeral nature of humanity, the warping of memory and how one’s trauma changes one’s experience of the world.

Mohr’s sophomore album Carve is slated for an April 17, 2026 release through The Flenser. The album was written over the course of five years and recorded over several weeks in a single wide in the Mojave Desert. The Oakland-based artist explains that her sophomore album explores how memory exists outside the body, embedded in places and landscapes.

The album’s material is shaped by her first return to the Southwest since a childhood road trip when she was five — and by the experience of moving through terrain that holds deep emotional weight, long after its origins faded. Thematically Carve considers how intimacy feels after years of isolation and what it takes to carve out a life that allows for trust, presence and feeling than mere survival.

Some of the album’s songs were written much earlier, during a prolonged period marked by emotional distance and apathy. During a four year period, Mohr was working through unprocessed childhood memories and trauma, and their long-term impact on her ability to connect with others. While the work was slow and difficult, it involved a fundamental reshaping of how she related to herself and to the outside world.

Mohr explains that the album took form after a difficult tour that ended in Joshua Tree. She pointed her car into the desert and drove alone, crisscrossing the Mojave Desert on dirt roads. Months later, she returned to record the album, working along with an acoustic guitar, a field recorder and limited supplies.

Following that period, she began to allow for intimacy and connection. The time she spent working on Carve didn’t create isolation, as much as mirror it. Working alone, out of an old, western-themed jail AirBnB, the physical enclosure reflected the emotional conditions under which much of the album had been written — distance, restraint and long stretches of stillness. For the Oakland-based artist, love wasn’t experienced as an escape or as a respite, but something inseparable from impermanence and the awareness of loss. The tension felt between connection and inevitability sits at the core of the album’s material.

Carve‘s third and latest single “Doorway” is a remarkably PJ Harvey-like tune that sees Mohr’s accompanying her crooned, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics with buzzing and chiming guitar. The result is a song that captures the inner world and thoughts of its narrator with a woozy, uneasy and desperate precision that feels deeply lived-in.

“Doorway” was written in a Mojave Desert single wide, and as Mohr says, the song “…wrote itself really. The riffs came to me one after another and the lyrics were originally a stream of consciousness and me randomly reading from my notebook.”

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 73rd Birthday, Chaka Khan!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Chaka Khan’s 73rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Damon Albarn!

JOVM’s WIlliam Ruben Helms celebrates Damon Albarn’s 58th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 82nd Birthday, RIc Ocasek!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Ric Ocasek.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Paris-Born, London-Based Allix Shares Slickly produced, Hook-Driven “Motion”

Alexandre Allix is a Paris-born, London-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, whose work is rooted in retro-inspired textures paired with contemporary production. He is the creative mastermind behind the solo indie electro pop project Allix, which sees him creating music that explores urgency, emotion and intensity.

The Paris-born, London-based artist’s latest single “Motion” is a slick and deftly produced, hook-driven bop that — to my ears, at least — channels the likes of The Weeknd and 80s synth funk while showcasing a seemingly effortless, swaggering pop star delivery.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Chenzo V Returns with Anthemic “Mechanical Boy”

Chenzo V is an emerging New York-based creative director, producer and artist, whose music sees him drawing from and blending elements of alternative rock, post-punk, New Wave, synth pop and industrial electronica. 

Deeply rooted in classical performance and visual art, the emerging New York-based producer and artist writes, produces and directs every release himself, building immersive multimedia worlds. Thematically, his work touches upon identity, illusion and transformation.

Late last year, he released “Midnight,” an arena friendly ripper that showcases his ability to pair rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with broodingly cinematic soundscapes and lived-in lyrics.

His latest single “Mechanical Boy” is a woozy blend of industrial electronica, electronic rock, alt rock and synth pop that further cements his growing reputation for crafting remarkably catchy hooks and rousingly anthemic choruses while seemingly drawing from Muse and Radiohead.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, George Benson!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates George Benson’s 83rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 54th Birthday, Large Professor!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Large Professor’s 54th birthday.