These Fresh Faves were picked by our readers over the weekend – and reviewed by Fresh On The Net’s Poppy Bristow this week. You can hear all these tracks in a single Soundcloud playlist here.

BAND SPECTRA – It Starts Again

What better way to kick off the week’s Fresh Faves than with Band Spectra’s brilliant, unpretentiously empowering It Starts Again? ‘Just keep walking, just keep moving, just keep dancing,’ recites Sheffield’s Jade Cook over a pulsing rhythm lightened by the dainty gleam of kosmische keyboards. As fresh and invigorating as a run through warm, light morning rain, it would surely do Neu proud.

Robert Manning, the man behind Band Spectra, states that ‘Recognising the frustrating lack of visibility and significant barriers faced by disabled musicians Band Spectra is a celebration, a vector of awareness towards disability and diversity within today’s music industry’. It Starts Again is the first track taken from their upcoming EP, and if the other tracks sparkle half as much as this one, we’re in for a real treat.

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DJ COUNSELLING – It’s Perfectly Clear Right Now

The spacey sensibilities linger on into DJ Counselling’s It’s Perfectly Clear Right Now, a small but addictively catchy psychedelic electronica confection. Between its eerily woozy Gary Numan-esque synth samples, its smartly skipping drum loop, and the chopped-up vocal snippets sprinkled over the top, everything falls into place perfectly. The music’s repetitive simplicity belies the mesmerising depth it achieves with only a few ingredients, enticing you towards the ‘repeat’ button again and again.

DJ Counselling is London-based producer Ash Arnold, and It’s Perfectly Clear Right Now is taken from his upcoming album, Alt​-​Mobeat, written entirely during a three-week stay in Berlin. This track was conceived in one of the city’s art galleries – appropriate for such an imaginative and transportative piece.

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INVISIBLE SQUIRREL – Insomnia

Also sounding a little like it exists in the space between sleep and waking is, as the title suggests, the wonkily funky Insomnia by Invisible Squirrel. Built over a languid, playfully strutting chord procession picked out in organ and synth, flavoured with slap bass and crowned with a confident, bluesy vocal, don’t be surprised if this one worms its way into your head and keeps you up at night.

The enigmatic Squirrel is a London-based ‘remixer and original artist’ who claims, ‘No personality to bother with. It’s all about the bop’. What we do know, however, is that Insomnia is taken from their album Sonder, released all the way back in December 2021. If this has whetted your appetite for more, then what are you waiting for? Get yourself on down to the links below.

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JULIET – Guided

Time for a vivid shot of buoyant pop-rap from London-born Norwich resident JULIET. Co-written with Max Ovenden in late 2023, Guided hits the ground running with a house-tinged beat before breaking into a brightly strummed modern rock chorus, giving JULIET plenty of space to declaim fluent, hopeful filled verses about a personal future she’s clearly right to feel good about.

‘I chose to put this song out on my 20th birthday,’ says JULIET about Guided, describing the song as ‘another sign to focus and look after you’. It’s a whole self-care manifesto in under two minutes, and with JULIET already putting out work as assured as this, we shouldn’t be surprised if she’s ruling the world by age 30.

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LEMONADE SHOELACE – Think!

Also going heavy on the tasty hooks is Lemonade Shoelace, a ‘psychedelic project’ from Belfast’s Ruairí Richman. He’s graced us with Think!, a song as floaty and bubbly as you’d expect from the undertaking’s whimsical 60s-style name.

Although you can trace a straight line from the innocently crystalline melody to the sunshine-pop likes of the Beach Boys, it’s sweetened even further by a myriad of retro-futuristic electronic touches until the result suggests Tame Impala ram-raiding the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. With his eye-popping album artwork and distinctive image, all bucket hat and alien sunglasses, Richman’s work looks to be a treasure trove for fans of easy-going, feel-good contemporary psychedelia.

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LONG ISLAND – Homewrecker

There’s plenty of perfect pop on offer in this week’s Fresh Faves, and Homewrecker by Huddersfield band Long Island is no exception. A bittersweet three-and-a-half-minute radio-ready rocker, it’s just polished enough as it folds chilly electronics, flurrying guitars, and peppy handclaps into its mix.

You could imagine Homewrecker – released as a cathartic antidote for everyone going through heartache on Valentine’s Day – soundtracking the end credits of youth TV dramas for years to come. The band implore you to ‘get screaming that chorus with us!’ and there’s no doubt that their run of upcoming gigs will see that request thoroughly fulfilled.

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PLATINUMMIND FT. MARINA FLORANCE – 1974 (That’s How It Was In Those Days)

Our next track is nothing less than a collaboration between two of our very own moderators here at Fresh On The Net. Accomplished producer Del Owusu, aka Platinum Mind, whips up a lush, dreamily evocative backdrop from gentle folk guitar, easy listening synth-strings, and scampering drums while singer/songwriter Marina Florance (who conceived the idea for the song) guides us in her warm spoken vocal through quietly poetic memories of taking the bus.

Whether your own experience matches Marina’s or not, 1974 (That’s How It Was In Those Days) is a thing of joy, especially when Del enriches the backing with the ding-ding of recorded buses. Like a more sophisticated Lemon Jelly, it’s practically guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Platinum Mind:
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Marina Florance:
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SKINNYBOY TUNES + MACHINA X – Raindrops

As soon as Raindrops cloudbursts into life with a splashy, twinkling pitter-patter, you know you’re getting another evocative sound painting from eclectic, imaginative Norwich producer SkinnyBoy Tunes. But just as on our last track, it’s the vocalist who wrote the lyrics, and Machina X delivers her words in an understated but passionately theatrical gasp redolent of Kate Bush. It’s as if she’s wondering aloud at the rain falling around her.

The synthesised music is a perfect match to the imagery in its crisply glittering, pointillist beauty. As SkinnyBoy’s soundscape subtly, hypnotically grows layers, with a river-like bassline here and keening misty sweeps of electronic sound there, by the time you’ve done listening you may well be feeling fully cleansed and refreshed yourself. Magical stuff.

SkinnyBoy Tunes:
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Machina X:
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THE BUOYS – Guard My Heart

Should you be hankering for something a bit more guitar-driven, The Buoys (a playfully ironic name seeing as they’re an all-female band) are here to deliver it in spades with a rousing, soul-searching indie rock number which would sound equally at home on a vast stage or in the back of a pub. As the Sydney rockers switch from reliably motoring through the verses to conjuring chiming waves of sound from their instruments, the angst-ridden lead vocals take flight.

The Buoys are already showing a wealth of promise, having supported bands as prestigious as the Dandy Warhols, Arctic Monkeys, and IDLES. On the strength of this, and with Australian rock continuing to take the world by storm, it shouldn’t be long before they find a whole new audience.

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TRINKET – Silver Thread

Brooklyn indie band Trinket draw the week’s Faves to a tuneful, thoughtful, upbeat close with Silver Thread. While the melodic guitars jangle away in rickety style under a silvery vocal, there are hints of 80s and 90s student-pop favourites the Sundays and 10,000 Maniacs in its unobtrusive but affecting wistfulness. Its delicate tune and scruffy production contrast as nicely as summer sunlight through Venetian blinds.

Silver Thread comes from the EP New Hobby, of which the lead songwriter says, ‘I had just gotten fired from a really terrible job, and was unemployed and really had time to throw my all into Trinket. Having that time to work on this band and record these songs felt like such a gift’. Going by this song, we should be very grateful that the band chose to pass that gift on.

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PS from TR: If you’ve submitted a track that hasn’t been picked for the Listening Post, our team has definitely listened to it and there’s no need to send it again: feel free to send us an even stronger track another week. The same goes if you were picked for the Listening Post but didn’t feature in our Fresh Faves.

But if we’ve recently featured you in our Fresh Faves – or on my BBC Introducing Mixtape – please wait three months before sending us another track, so we have space to help other deserving artists… For more info see Robinson Has A Good Old Moan.