The High Line in monochrome (mostly).
Photography: The High Line in Monochrome (mostly) 7/20/26
The High Line in monochrome (mostly).
Throwback: Happy 65th Birthday, Martin Gore!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Depeche Mode founder Martin Gore’s 65th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 61st Birthday, Slash!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Slash’s 61st birthday.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm Shares Woozy and Soulful “Night & Day”
Over the past handful of years, Roskilde-born, London-based singer/songwriter, producer and JOVM mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm has built a catalog of contemporary R&B rooted in neo-soul, jazz and understated groove that includes 2020’s Like Sand and 2023’s A Good Life, albums that have received applause from Billboard, NPR, Complex, COLORS, NYLON, The Line of Best Fit, Wonderland and a list of others. Dahlstrom has also received co-signs from BBC 1Xtra, The Joe Budden Podcast and
others.
Adding to a growing profile both nationally and internationally, she has collaborated with Odeal, Jay Prince, Kofi Stone and Braxton Cook.
The JOVM mainstay’s highly-anticipated third album MARIE is slated for a September 18, 2026 release through her own JFH Records. The album also arrives at a moment when life for the JOVM has become much fuller, busier and infinitely more complex. Since the release of 2020’s debut, Like Sand and 2023’s A Good Life, Dahlstrøm has become a mother of two, while continuing to a build a life between London and Copenhagen.
Written over the previous two years between London, Copenhagen and Los Angeles, the Danish-born artist’s third album draws on deeper jazz influences, live instrumentation and a close-knit international cast of collaborators including Butcher Brown’s Corey Fonville, Los Angeles-based pianist and producer Elijah Fox, Cuban percussionist Eliel Lazo and her longtime collaborator and romantic partner Dan Diggas. The result is reportedly one one of the JOVM mainstay’s warmest and most personal work to date.
MARIE will feature the previously released “Frostbite” and the album’s latest single “Night & Day.” Built around an atmospheric and woozy production featuring skittering beats, a supple bass line, vocodered warbling synth beneath Dahlstrøm’s easy-going yet soulful delivery, “Night & Day” speaks of love and romantic relationship in a lived-in, realistic fashion, admitting that relationships require work and intention to make them last. But that work is often worth it.
New Audio: Hayley Law Shares Self-Assured, Hook-Driven “Circle Back”
Hayley Law is a Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based actor, singer/songwriter and producer, who initially wrote, produced and recorded under the moniker Hayleau. She has since retired the moniker and project, saying “Hayleau was a version of me that I really love. Softer, shyer, and still trying to figure herself out through everyone else’s voices. I think that name became a little too shaped by perception, expectation, and who people thought i should be. Coming back to Hayley Law felt like reclaiming myself and deciding I don’t want anyone else molding who I am anymore.”
Performing under her own name, the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist has crafted a sound and approach that sees her blending pop, R&B and pop rock with diaristic storytelling. Her work lives between vulnerability and control in a way that’s intimate, nostalgic and quietly disarming, pulling listeners into moments that feel as impulsive as they are intentional.
As a completely independent artist, Law has built her career on her own times while amassing over four million streams across the DSPs through purely organic growth and without chasing trends or traditional industry pathways.
Alongside her music career, Law has played roles in globally distributed Netflix projects and studio films, including Riverdale, Altered Carbon and more. She’s set to star in Jackie! Zhou’s FLYOVER.
Building upon a growing profile, the rising artist’s highly-anticipated Law, Jesse Boykins III and Melo-X co-produced Last Summer is slated for an August 14, 2026 release. The album sonically is a blend of sensual alternative R&B-influenced diaristic songwriting and early 2000s pop punk, creating an album of material that’s intimate, emotionally unguarded yet cinematic. Across the album’s run-time, Law effortlessly moves between softness and control, exploring desire, performance, heartbreak, ego, femininity and the versions of ourselves we create to be loved. But the star of the show is Law and her voice: vulnerable without being self-pitying, confident without false armor and deeply self-aware of the contradiction of wanting intimacy while trying to remain in control.
The album will include the previously released album title and opening track “Last Summer” and the album’s second and latest single “Circle Back.” Subtly channeling hook-driven, late 1990s and early 000s R&B — think Brandy, Monica and the like — “Circle Back” is built around an atmospheric production twinkling keys, a soaring string sample, skittering beats and glitchy, DJ scratches beneath Law’s self-assured, self-aware delivery. The song’s narrator spends the song’s runtime recognizing that this love interest is probably just a fling — and that fling needs to back off a bit and just enjoy things for what they are.
“Have you ever had a fling that just moves sooo fast? By the time you come up for air, you realize you’ve spent 3 days with the person and aren’t even sure you see it going anywhere,” the Canadian-born artist explains. “That is ‘Circle Back.’ I wear my heart on my sleeve and fall quickly and this song is my reminder to check in with yourself. Not every fling turns into a relationship. And having two/three weeks of something HOT is awesome.”
New Video: JOVM Mainstays Elephant Stone Returns with Jangling “I Got A Pill”
Brossard, QC-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rishi Dihr has spent the past two decades blurring the lines between Western pysch pop and Indian classical tradition. What began back in 2006 as a quest for trasncendental sound has evolved into a singlar, self-contained vision. Operating out of his Montréal home studio, Sacred Sounds Dihr has estalbihed himself as studio autuer, producing, engineering and mixing his band Elephant Stone‘s increasingly complex and cineamtic output.
The JOVM mainstays — Dihr (vocals, bass and sitar), along with longtime members Miles Dupire (drums), Robbie MacArthur (guitar) and Jason Kent (keys, guitar) – will be releasing their 10th albun, ASHA on August 28, 2026 through Elephants On Parade. Limited edition signed and hand-numbered vinyl is avaialble for pre-order through Little Cloud Records. Named after the Elphant Stone frontman’s late mother, Asha translates to “hope” in Sanskirt — and is meditation on grief, hope, and the friction between sorrow and the darkness of our time.
While the band’s reputation has long-been built on airtight pop craftsmanship and spiritual exploration, their most recent work psoesses a new, raw intensity forged through Dihr’s lengthy history collaborating with The Black Angels, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beck and hte psych rock supergroup MIEN.
Elephant Stone remains at the forefront of the modern movement, constantly deconstructing the past to find something visceral, haunting, and undeniably human in the present.
ASHA includes the previously released “Everything Evil,” “Fascists Killed Yer Rock ‘N’ Roll,” and its third and latest single “I’ve Got A Pill.” “I’ve Got A Pill” is a jangling and deceptively upbeat tune that asks the listener to cede control; to take that pill to forget their pain; to take that pill to stop thinking so goddamn much and let someone else do the thinking . . . But just underneath the sweet wooing is something unsettling and menacing.
Elephant Stone frontman Rishi Dihr explains, “It’s about demagogues, the populist playbook. Leaders who feed on people’s fear and offer an easy fix. The pill. Take it and your problems go away. Except it doesn’t work like that. It’s control dressed up as relief.”
Directed by Adam Traynor and featuring handcrafted puppets by Diablo Puppets, the accompanying video manages to embody the song’s false promise of escape, the video follows Futzy, Radis, and Mascot in a surreal world that involves a mind-bending trip into Fraggle Rock-styled world that quickly turns into a paranoid nightmare.
“The lyrics to ‘I Got A Pill’ woo and warn all at once,” Adam Traynor explains. “I wanted to put the sweetness of that voice into the mouth of a Tony the Tiger-type mascot with a special breakfast gift for kids that would be sure to kick off a trip into a sugary Wonderland, a cardboard Oz, an awe-inducing game-world of artificial colours, a Dark Crystal quest for power, a Soylent Green feeding frenzy.”
Throwback: Happy 85th Birthday, George Clinton!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the legendary George Clinton’s 85th birthday.
New Video: Josh da Costa Returns with Shimmering “Shireen”
Los Angeles-based artist Josh da Costa was a fixture in the early 2010s Brooklyn scene. Covering music back then, it seemed as though anyone could start a band or a project — and just about everyone did. And they all played at hundreds of now, long-shuttered venues like Cameo Art Gallery, Glasslands, 285 Kent, The Palisades, The Grand Victory, Trash Bar and countless others. da Costa’s first band Regal Degal toured with Real Estate and DIIV and opened for The Pop Group. (Unsurprisingly, I wrote about Regal Degal on this site back in 2013. Yes, this site’s early days y’all.)
When Regal Degal split up, da Costa relocated to Los Angeles. The old Craftsman house he shared with Geneva Jacuzzi, Shags Chamberlain, James Ferraro and Daryl Johns was a paradise for “freaks and friends,” as well as artists and musicians, who constantly wandered in for a jam session or for a hang. At the time, he played drums with Drugdealer and MGMT and he formed CMON, who released an album through Mexican Summer. (I saw CMON open for Jorge Elbrecht back in 2018! So I’m familiar with da Costa and his work.)
The party came to an abrupt end when the Craftsman burned down “in a blaze of glory,” set alight by a serial arsonist and the pandemic forced CMON, much like countless other acts, to cancel a big tour. da Costa’s serious relationship also ended. But for him, it wasn’t all disaster: his friends supported him after the fire, he met someone new and the pandemic meant that he finally had the time to revisit music from his adolescence and “get deep into some of the great I’d had lying around for years but overlooked.”
da Costa’s full-length debut, New Wave Graveyard is slated for a Friday July 24, 2026 release through Stones Throw Records. He imagined the album as a “greatest hits from a parallel universe, classic songs from an alternate reality.” “Instead of trying to hone in on one specific vibe or sound, I went through my own taste and record collection and tried out different approaches — as if I were more than just one artist,” he explains. While drawing from different styles and genres, the album’s material is anchored in how he crystallizes these very different approaches into something singular distinct, crafting a stylish record that defies easy categorization.
If you’ve been lucky to catch da Costa DJ around Los Angeles or have caught his Confusing Mix radio show on NTS, the album’s album overall aesthetic won’t come as a surprise. As a DJ and radio host, he has an uncanny knack for finding curious records from all over the place — music from Brussels-based micro-labels, Flying Nun Records favorites and left field post punk — and blending them in a way that somehow makes perfect sense.
Written over the course of several years, New Wave Graveyard was written during a transition period, a time when da Costa was “getting close to people and getting torn between the types of pleasure and discomfort all of that brings. Breaking people’s hearts, but mostly your own. And remaining excited about not just falling in love, but staying in love.”
Much like countless others, da Costa was drawn to LA’s “movie magic, bizarre music, sleazy sexy glammy druggy outsiders, and this blown-out bad vibe flipside to the California dream” – which interestingly enough, also describers New Wave Graveyard in a nutshell. The titular new wave graveyard is both a literal place (da Costa sometimes drives by his old burned-down house, which is still vacant) and a vibe, an elegy to forgotten fantasies and faded memories.
Nothing lasts forever: Bands start and break up. Friends flame out and lovers leave. Treasured spaces vanish. But the album reportedly bottles the sensation of being there, where the magic and cool shit happened — even if that place is completely imagined. It’s a celebration of strange people met once, but never forgotten, of shows and parties you attended and those you wished you had, of being young and earnest, and a little bit weird.
New Wave Graveyard will include the previously released, shimmering electro pop ballad “96 Year Old Girl” and the album’s last pre-release single, “Shireen.” “Shireen” is a a bit of XTC and Flying Nun Records-like jangle pop, anchored around a shimmering 12 string guitar and da Costa’s unerring knack for crafting a remarkably catchy hook. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Shireen” sounds as though it could have been released in 1983 or so — but with a subtly modern production.
Directed by Ambar Navarro, the accompanying video for “Shireen” features da Costa as a sort of unseen narrator to an 80s teen movie that quickly turns into a campy horror movie featuring a blood-thirsty vampire/werewolf.
Live Footage: Smag På Dig Selv’s Performs “Total Full Power Extreme Nuclear Confusion 2000” at Better Company
With the release of their full-length debut, 2024’s SDPS, Copenhagen-based jazz punks/acoustic techno trio Smag På Dig Selv (SPDS) — Oliver Lauridsen (tenor sax), Thorbjørn Øllgaard (baritone sax, bass sax, vocals) and Albert Holberg (drums) — firmly […]
New Video: C.O.F.F.I.N. Shares Bruising and Anthemic Ode to Pessimism “Think Bad”
Hilariously named, acclaimed and rising Sydney-baseed metalheads/pub rockers Children of Finland Fighting in Norway (C.O.F.F.I.N.) — Ben Portnoy (lead vocals, drums), Abijah Radio (lead guitar, vocals), Aaron Moss (guitar, vocals) and Steven “Kosty” Kostogiannis (bass, vocals) — through relentlessly curiosity, work ethic and commitment to their craft has risen from a Manly Beaches, Australia upstart outfit to become one of their homeland’s most respected contemporary rock bands.
Since their formation, C.O.F.F.I.N. have shared stages with Amyl and the Sniffers, Viagra Boys and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, helping them develop a reputation as one of Australia’s integral, and must-see live acts. And building upon a growing profile, 2023’s Australia Stops earned an ARIA Award nomination for Best Rock/Heavy Metal Album, along with a National Live Music Award for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Album.
The rising Aussie quartet have spent years refining their craft, and understandably, their work began to focus on important social issues like climate action, indigenous rights, gender politics, and more. The sheer power of their musical response to the social injustices we face today has become a key element that C.O.F.F.I.N. fans across the globe have recognized and love.
The Aussie quartet’s fourth album, the Declan Mehrtens-produced Out in Oslo, which features vocals co-produced by Frenzal Rhomb‘s Jason Whalley is salted for a September 18, 2026 release through p(doom) records. The album reportedly captures the band at their most expansive and refined: While retaining the grit and energy that they’re known for, the album sees the band broadening their sonic palette with a greater sense of dynamics, richer textures and some of their most adventurous songwriting to date. Thematically, the material explores ideas around Australian identity, community, environmentalism, injustice and their homeland’s connection with the rest of the world.
Out in Oslo‘s latest single “Think Bad” is a bruising ripper that channels Highway to Hell-era AC/DC, built around enormous riffs, thunderous drumming, raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-shout-along worthy hook and chorus. But the song is underpinned by a hilarious irony — negativity can sometimes be good for you. As the bards and philosophers from the Shaolin remind us, “you gotta protect your neck!’
“’Think Bad’ describes the use of negativity to fuel forward motion. It’s about using hard thoughts as a compass, reminding yourself that not everything that feels good is good for you, while at the same time, understanding that the combined weight of cynicism and reckless behaviour can make the greatest losses,” C.O.F.F.I.N.’s Ben Portnoy explains.
Directed and edited by the band’s Ben Portnoy, the accompanying video follows the band as they goof around at a local amusement park while dressed as cowboys.
New Video: Allegories Returns with Menacing “They’ll Never Suspect Us”
Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — will be releasing their newest album, By accident, On purpose on October 16, 2026.
The album will include the previously released, broodingly atmospheric and introspective “Honestly, that’s enough honesty” and the album’s latest single “They’ll Never Suspect Us.” Continuing with a gorgeous and broodingly atmospheric production, “They’ll Never Suspect Us” is underpinned by a gleeful and downright giddy sense of malice.
Arguably, one of their darker songs lyrically to date, “They’ll Never Suspect Us” reframe the classic murder ballad into something more detached, swaggering and unsettling with a narrator who imagines the act — and then rubs the prospective victim’s face in the fact that no one will care about their demise. It’s a song perfect for those true crime shows many of us love watching, including yours truly.
The accompanying video was shot on VHS tape and includes tape fuzz, wavering and undulating imagery and more.
New Video: John Glacier Shares a Breezy and Hypnotic Banger
Rising Hackney-born rapper, producer and poet John Glacier released her full-length debut, last year’s critically applauded Like A Ribbon. Like A Ribbon featured a seamless blend of rap, electronic music, post-punk, ambient textures and experimental songwriting, showcasing the rising Hackney-born artist’s uniquely diaristic, stream-of-consciousness approach while quickly establishing her as an artist operating within her own lane.
The success of Glacier’s debut has also helped to catapult her into a new stratosphere within music and elsewhere. Since her debut’s release, she made her debut in British Vogue, appeared on the cover of Hypebeast and starred in Prada‘s Spring/Summer 2026 global campaign alongside Hunter Schafer, Damson Idris, Carey Mulligan, Nicholas Hoult and the cover of HommeGirls. Her reputation as a fashionista has been further cemented with collaborations and appearances with leading houses — including Burberry, Alexander McQueen, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Lacoste, Gucci, Bogetta Veneta, JW Anderson and Fendi.
Musically, she has collaborated with a growing and eclectic list of artists across different genres, including Blondshell, MJ Cole, Montell Fish and dj gummy bear, Jadasea and Jamie xx.
The rising multidisciplinary talent is building upon a rapidly growing profile with the Take A Daytrip co-produced “Bond Girl,” the first bit of new material since last year’s Like A Ribbon. Bult with a breezy yet propulsive pulse and tweeter and woofer rattling low end paired with dense layers of twinkling and oscillating synth melodies beneath Glacier’s coolly swaggering delivery, “Bond Girl” is a hypnotic, club friendly banger that channels Ibiza with a pop-leaning accessibility. “Bond Girl” to me captures a bold, rising artist, who’s about to put the game in a chokehold — and in her own terms.
Directed by Léa Ceheivi, the accompanying video for “Bond Girl” is fittingly inspired by classic spy thrillers and stars the rising Hackney-born artist as a stylish and enigmatic secret agent, who’s both a heroine and a villain. Effortlessly maneuvering through a world of intrigue and excess, she continually find sways to evade, outsmart and triumph over rivals and others attempting to take what’s hers.
Throwback: Happy 72nd Birthday, Larry Levan!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 72nd anniversary of the birth of house music pioneer Larry Levan.