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VISSIA – Place Holder
VISSIA Finds Beauty In The Fog Of Love’s Aftermath
On Place Holder, VISSIA turns heartbreak into something hushed, close, and unguarded. “The Kind of Good” is the album’s most intimate ache: a live-off-the-floor folk performance where washy electric guitar and a reverberant vocal seem to hover in the room like a thought you can’t quite shake. The song doesn’t reach for neat closure. Instead, it stays with the uneasy middle—missing someone, resenting the loss, and wondering if you were already drifting before the breakup arrived.
That tension gives the track its force. VISSIA sings with the kind of restraint that makes every phrase land harder, tracing guilt, doubt, and the need for space without sanding down the mess. It’s tender but never tidy, the sort of song that remembers love as weather: beautiful, disorienting, and hard to leave behind.
Baldy Crawlers – Hatred?
Baldy Crawlers Keep Humanity in View on “Hatred?”
Baldy Crawlers’ “Hatred?” lands like a bruise that never quite fades: acoustic guitar, cello, and three-part harmony circling a song about the cost of being told to hate. Born from a photograph of soldiers and a prisoner, it doesn’t lean on outrage so much as recognition, catching the shared misery in every face. That restraint gives the track its force. Martin Maudal’s project, shaped by a Berklee-trained luthier’s hands and a rotating cast of LA players, folds contemporary folk into borderlands color, with echoes of Americana, Latin-jazz, and protest music’s older, steadier pulse. The result feels spare and human, but never small. As the first single from Fais Toi Plaisir, “Hatred?” suggests a band interested in tension, empathy, and the stubborn act of keeping someone’s humanity in view.
Michael Cohen – River of Secrets
Michael Cohen Names the Darkness on “River of Secrets”
Michael Cohen’s “River of Secrets” arrives like the hush before a confession, turning the seventh? no, ninth? track on Living in Dadeland into the album’s emotional fault line. What began as a spare, intimate tune swells into something richer and more haunted, with Riccardo Mazzaglia’s acoustic guitar and bass giving the song its slow-burn gravity. Cohen keeps the pulse low and the tension high, letting the lyric move from newly won safety to the darker realization that secrets have their own weather.
There’s a literary pull here, but the song never feels academic; it moves like a memory you can’t quite shake. After eight revisions with mastering engineer Alan Douches, the track finally balances clarity and weight, and that balance is the point. “River of Secrets” feels like the moment the story stops romanticizing the dark and starts naming it. It’s a careful, bruised piece of work, and one of Cohen’s most revealing.
TRUV – You
TRUV Holds a Mother’s Wisdom Close on “You”
TRUV’s “You” lands like a handwritten letter left open on the kitchen table: intimate, unguarded, and quietly devastating. Built by songwriter Lynn Dresel and producer Derrick Ong, the Singapore duo folds melodic rock and modern alternative instincts into a home-studio recording that was captured in a single day, which only sharpens its emotional edge. Lynn wrote the song for her mother just before her passing, and the track moves through the many roles a woman can hold with grace, strength, and a little ache.
What makes “You” resonate is its refusal to overstate. It leans on feeling, memory, and the kind of wisdom that stays with you: “We are the authors of our lives.” In TRUV’s hands, that line becomes more than a sentiment; it’s the song’s spine. The result is music that doesn’t chase catharsis so much as earn it, offering solace without losing its human scale.
Dan Fraser – Suppose I could
Dan Fraser Turns a Love Letter Into “Suppose I Could”
Dan Fraser’s debut original single, “Suppose I could,” arrives like a handwritten note set to melody: intimate, unguarded, and built from real life. Written for his wife Rachel when he thought they might never end up together, then recorded at Woodbury Recording Studios as a wedding gift and first dance song, it carries the glow of classic love songs without ever feeling borrowed. Fraser played nearly everything himself, with Russ Simpson on piano, and that hands-on detail gives the track its pulse — part old-school singer-songwriter craft, part quietly earned confession.
For an artist long known around Thaxted and through JDS for heartfelt live sets, this is a small-scale breakthrough with real weight. The unexpected publishing deal from Arty Records only sharpens the story: a deeply personal song opening the door to a wider audience. With a full album on the horizon, Fraser sounds less like a newcomer than a lifer finally stepping into his own frame.
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