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.

Message from Del

It’s the summer break! Thankyou everyone for your support since I took over the reins. Any artist is welcome to send me a track for my show to here, please send me an audio file and bio clean radio edits only! We will be back on 2nd September. Have a good summer break!

Poppy? You’re up.

ABOUT-FACES – Heaven Sent

Barbecues, holidays, the Olympics, and of course, all the music festivals you can ask for. It’s our last Fresh Faves before the summer break, and what could be a more fitting send-off than this gleaming, radio-ready new offering from a band making their first steps onto the scene?

‘We’ll play [Glasto] next year’ indie quartet about-faces joke on their Twitter feed, and it already seems inevitable that they’ll be future festival favourites. With Heaven Sent’s thrumming guitars and synths bursting into little sonic firework displays as the song builds to a roaring singalong, they’ve given us an expertly crafted nugget of angsty pop certain to make the crowd go wild.

Official | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | YouTube

ADANNAY – Love Her Anyway

South London singer-songwriter Adannay says that ‘Love Her Anyway narrates the complicated, painful, nuanced and joyful aspects of my own coming-out story. […] I wanted the song to evoke the fear and anxiety of that moment but also the defiance, freedom and self-respect that comes with you standing in your own truth.’

How appropriate, then, that this complex web of emotions should be crystallised in such a self-assured, soulful setting. Adannay delivers the thoughtful lyrics in a warm, precise voice over a jazzy backing as intricate and delicately sparkling as an array of fine jewellery, breaking into a wonderfully celebratory conclusion. They add that ‘the wider context of the song is about the intersections of queerness and Blackness – particularly for those with a Caribbean background’ and Love Her Anyway fulfils that mission in endlessly listenable style.

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ALAS DE LIONA – Violet

As we slip towards the blissful languor of summer’s dog days, here’s a song to match the mood while cutting it with a much-needed airy draught of free-floating freshness. On Violet, Alas de Liona’s gauze-light vocals slide to and fro over a measured dream pop backing of soft shuffling drums and hazy guitar, conjuring the high July refreshment we all need.

Alas is originally from the Mojave Desert and now resident in Scotland, where she’s been seen supporting indie favourites such as Hamish Hawk. Violet is the second single from her album Gravity of Gold, to be released on 13th September, and although the leaves may have begun to fall by then, if the rest of the music matches this in quality it’ll be just as welcome.

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FRANK AND LOUIS – FAT MAN

Enola Gay. 99 Luftballons. Two Tribes. Back in the 80s, at the height of the Cold War, you couldn’t move without tripping over a jaunty pop song about the horrors of imminent nuclear annihilation. But now that those fears have crept grimly back into public consciousness, why does the hit parade no longer reflect our atomic obsessions?
Australian teenage brothers Frank and Louis are here to rectify the dearth of contemporary nuke-pop with FAT MAN, an astonishingly accomplished and sunny earworm which laughs in the face of oblivion. In keeping with its new wave precursors, the melodic bassline hints carries a hint of New Order at their most optimistic, while they sing ‘we’re all going out tonight’ – dark humour with a light coating. If this is the way the world ends, things could be a whole lot wors

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GRUBBY – Second Flow

The genre of drum and bass has been kicking around for a good thirty years now, and as broad as it is, it has such an immediately distinctive sound that you might be forgiven for thinking nothing new can be done with it. But if you’re London producer Grubby? Not so.

With Second Flow, he proves there’s more than enough life in the old breakbeats yet, rustling up a stimulating, spark-spitting grab-bag of skittering rhythms, ice-cool synth droplets, and blood-warm bass. As a feathery vocal skims over the top, the result recalls 90s techno classics while seeming to belong securely to the future. No mean feat!

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LEWISLAND – Checkmate

We’ve got another London-based artist up next, although the well-travelled Lewisland was born in Lagos and raised in Italy. He matches this international upbringing with an adventurous ambition to ‘redefine modern Afro-funk’, and on Checkmate – tightly wound, subtly politically minded, but bountifully joyful – he may have gone a substantial way to achieving that goal.

Bounding along with quiet confidence courtesy of funky bass, jazzy brass, and indie-infused Afrobeat guitar, the song tells an irresistible tale of desire and power which could apply equally to a skewed romance or a political struggle. It’s taken from the brand new album GOLD DIGGER, which ‘touches on Corruption, Greed and Hope backed with infectious grooves’. If that’s caught your ears (and how couldn’t it?) why not check out the links below?

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MACKWOOD, ANAIIS & QUINN OULTON – Habits

Whether your tastes run to R&B, soul, jazz, acoustic guitar, or Boards of Canada-style electronica, Mackwood, Anaiis & Quinn Oulton have come along to elegantly scratch almost every musical itch you might have in the space of a single song. Within the four minutes and thirteen seconds of Habits’ runtime, we get hints of all these genres, and yet the tone stays consistently laid-back.

Producer Mackwood says of Habits, ‘It’s the first release featuring my own band playing live, and the resulting production blends these delicate folky textures into a rave type of environment’. He cites ‘classic jazz and fusion tones, Underworld-y rave sounds, and left field soul like Dijon and Noname’ as just a few of the ingredients going into this thrilling patchwork of sound.

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MT. MISERY – Lunch Break

If your sweet tooth for indie pop is half as big as mine, then you’ll definitely want to give Hartlepool’s Mt. Misery a listen. Despite the comically mopey band name and lyrics dwelling on the dreariness of office life, Lunch Break is a chiming, charming, compellingly catchy little gem, brimming over with enough wit and good cheer to brighten up any free hour at work.

‘It’s half past twelve and I’m getting tired / My mind a bowl of soup’ the frontman sings in loveably mousy Belle & Sebastian tones, but such a cathartic sentiment might just give you back the pep you need, especially when it’s set over a bouncy bed festooned with more hooks than Velcro. An unmitigated delight.

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SKETCHDOLL – Sierra Echoes

‘Progressive, eclectic, funky’ is how London and Kent band Sketchdoll describe themselves, claiming to combine ‘funk-rock, progressive-pop, and jazz-fusion’. Sierra Echoes might not betray many of those influences, but it shows just how far their broad palates reach.

The driving, rushing sense of adventure in the song’s insistent rhythm, lead singer Sinziana’s yearning vocal, and the ragged-edged but expertly slick electro-acoustic production all add up to a country-rock concoction which reflects the band’s ceaseless curiosity in both style and substance. It’s their second single of the year, coming out ahead of new album Afterwildlife, and off the back of this they should expect a plethora of new listeners joining them in their journeying.

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THE SHOP WINDOW – Beyond The Stars

The week’s Fresh Faves draw to a catchy close thanks to multi-county band The Shop Window. Beyond The Stars sees them whipping up a swirl of bright post-punk melody aimed as squarely at the heart as it is at the indie disco dancefloor, refracting ghosts of summers past through the sweetening lens of nostalgia.

Beyond The Stars is taken from their new and hugely ambitious happy-sad double album Daysdream. Lead singer and songwriter Carl Mann cites ‘The Smiths, Close Lobsters, The Stone Roses, Felt, The High, The Dentists, Cosmic Rough Riders, Teenage Fanclub, Mercury Rev, Spiritualized, Slowdive, Ride, Depeche Mode, The Cure and Asteroid No.4’ (phew!) as influences. With Beyond The Stars, they may have taken the first step towards earning a place of their own among those legendary names.

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PS from Del: 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 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.