Site favourites Vanishing Twin make a welcome return with Archives, their fifth record to date, following 2023′s Afternoon X. With Cathy Lucas in rural France and Valentina Magaletti and Susumu Mukai in London, the trio traded songs and instrumental fragments in a virtual studio, turning distance into a shared creative hive. Band leader Lucas puts it when explaining the album title: “gathering material together, riffing with it, turning it around on itself, trying to put the pieces together and create a story with it”. Last month the trio unveiled two singles from the album, the title track and ‘’Bring Me The Axe‘. Last week they revealed the third glimpse, ‘Sugar Stone‘. All three tracks are a delectable taste of their shapeshifting sound that will be stuck in your head all day long.

Capitol K returns with ‘Ħabbata’ (knocker), a collaborative single with vocalist CHILD – improvised using primitive technology inside a hilltop bunker, and set to a hard electronic drum and minimal bass. CHILD voices the hypnotic melody in Maltese, a rare Semitic language evolved from Siculo-Arabic, delivering an invitation: “Day after day / The day is knocking / How will you greet today?” We’re hoping this pairing has plenty more magic tucked away, because if they come back with anything even close to this, you already know it’s going to be quite something.

Experimental artists Wu-Lu and POiSON ANNA have teamed up for a new EP called Bakerz Dozen. This nine-track project moves across alternative, hip-hop, trip-hop, and R&B, showcasing the duo’s natural chemistry and unique style. Both artists have crossed paths with names like Damon Albarn, A$AP Rocky, Dean Blunt, and black midi, and you can feel traces of those worlds in their work, not copied, but absorbed and reshaped into something distinctly their own. Take in Bakerz Dozen below.

Following the international praise for their 2024 debut album Where Did You Go?, Sandman Project return with Hearts Forever, the first album entirely composed, arranged and produced by guitarist, composer and bandleader Tal Sandman. Rooted in psychedelic groove, Middle Eastern musicality, funk, jazz and desert rock, it is a record driven above all by a wider spiritual belief in music as a force for connection. Listen to the lead track ‘Katara‘ and look out for the album, set for release on October 23rd via Batov Records.

Singer-songwriter Shir Frum describes This Is The Cake, her second album on Raw Tapes, as “a lot of openness and rawness, covered in very elegant wrapping paper” — 11 tracks of intimate folk that’ll resonate with fans of Jessica Pratt or Leonard Cohen. Frum writes of deeply relatable, deeply human battles here: depression, health, love, family. Much of the album was written and recorded at home: “I like to make music where I cook or bake,” she says. Unwrap this cake; it’s all yours. Listen below, and devour the elegant instrumentation topped off with Frum’s rich vocals.