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.

A word from Del: Thanks to everyone for submitting a track this week. If you’d like to be featured on my show on Islington Radio
drop me an audio file and a bio to del.owusu@gmail.com – CLEAN radio edits only! Thankyou!

ADAM HOPPER & THE WIMPS – The Butterfly

As October shades into November, we may be fast approaching the dark, chilly depths of autumn, but Adam Hopper & the Wimps are already looking forward to summer through this utterly charming little jolt of scruffy-sweet indie-pop. Recalling the do-it-yourself, unapologetically guileless ideals of Sarah Records and C86, The Butterfly bounces along on a shimmering, sticky jangle of guitar while the lyrics speak of burrowing into your cocoon until the time comes to emerge.

Although the sound is sunny through and through, the message of huddling down into the warmth couldn’t be better suited to this point in the year. But one thing’s for sure – no matter when or where you’re listening, it’s absolutely irresistible.

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BIRD – The Tides (Radio Edit)

Staying in nature for the time being, we turn our attention now to the sea. Taken from the soundtrack to the award-winning short film Wider than the Sky, which is written by Bird (Janie Price) herself and named for an Emily Dickinson quotation, The Tides boasts an understatedly awe-inspiring sound that is spacious and expansive enough to match the short’s evocative title.

Opening with an ebb and flow of breezy strings which would make Percy Faith proud, the song settles into an elegant lope which serves as the perfect bed for Bird’s coolly intimate vocals, her creative confidence and sophistication indisputable. It may be a radio edit, but it has the sweeping feel of an epic.

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COUPDEKAT – Cdjs

Katherine Reilly, AKA Coupdekat, first graced the Fresh Faves back in 2021 with the effervescently witty and effortlessly catchy Lost In Translation, and she’s treated Faves fans to a couple of equally sparkly pop bangers in the years since. It’s a delight, then, to see her come our way again with another chiming confection of electropop tailor-made to hit you in the feet and the feelings alike.

The soft thumbprint synths of Cdjs suggest early Hot Chip’s gently melancholic make-and-do pop, flavoured with a now-retro scattering of 90s record-scratching and weepy disco-drama strings. Topping it all off, she sets an ICT-as-failing-relationship metaphor to a criminally catchy melody, fusing emotion and machine like a one-woman Kraftwerk. What’s not to love?

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COURTEOUS THIEF – New Day (Acoustic)

Something a little bit more stripped-back now courtesy of North Wales singer-songwriter Courteous Thief, who comes bearing a message of hope on New Day. ‘Keep your head up high,’ he sings in a subtly ragged, rootsy croon while his acoustic backing bounds along with all the optimism of the lyrics. Fully worth taking to heart now the hours of light are so much shorter.

Courteous Thief certainly knows his way around an acoustic guitar. He’s busked in Galway and Sydney and supported beloved artists ranging from Turin Brakes and China Crisis. Having already made it onto the British Airways inflight playlist, if he keeps on at this rate, he’ll be conquering the charts in no time.

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GARDNA X JAYAHADADREAM – Fine Art

This is a real treat. Fine Art marks a meeting of two brilliant MCs, Bristol’s Gardna and Cambridge-based Jayahadadream, who match each other’s witty, head-spinning flow with impeccable confidence over the whoosh, swirl, beep, and pulse of a richly textured drum-and-bass backing. Bristling with puns, metaphors, and wizard-level rhymes, their swaggering patter gets the neurons firing as much as the music gets the body moving. Who needs their morning coffee when this is on the cards?

Gardna has already become something of a legend in his hometown of Bristol, with its long history of incubating musical talent. Jayahadadream is on the up and up too, having already drawn huge crowds at Glastonbury this year. Will Fine Art be the breakthrough they deserve? The only thing I know for sure is that it’s more than good enough.

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ROSIE BERGONZI – Lazy Daze

Next up, we find the restlessly creative Rosie Bergonzi in her element as she delivers a beautifully atmospheric piece on the handpan, an instrument which she fell in love with ten years ago and has since gone on to master. Lazy Daze is an ideal showcase of her skills not just as an instrumentalist but as a composer, building a dual mood of comfort and tension as she dances around the scales.

Taken from her upcoming album Seasons of Handpan, Rosie says the song ‘reflects the moodiness of autumn, curling up and finding peace in tranquil grooves’. What better way to usher in November, when advancing night is matched by glowing indoor warmth? It’s a brightly burning candle of a composition, a wonderfully wrought light in the autumn darkness.

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SOLA GUINTO & FAFFI – ARMAGEDDON

The California-raised, Manchester-based Sola Guintocompares her music to ‘a kaleidoscope you got off of the dark web that shows you not only all of the colours of the rainbow but also all of the colours only the mantis shrimp can see’. This collaboration with Dutch producer Faffi bears that promise out in formidable style, blitzing the senses with banging-donk beats and totally-wired hyperpop vocals reminiscent of Superorganism.

The lyrics of Armageddon seize onto the existential threat posed by climate change, forcing you to look the possibility of impending doom squarely in the eye. But its pop-anthem chorus and ironic sense of humour don’t so much sugar the pill as give it the nerve-frazzling tang of a candy sour. The end times have rarely sounded like so much fun.

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SUSY WALL – Fred’s Song

At under two minutes, Fred’s Song may be small, but it’s a thing of perfectly formed beauty. Singer-songwriter Susy Wall, originally from Wales and now based in the Black Country, wrote it in memory of her beloved father. Gliding by on the lilt of piano and cello, Susy’s voice is delicate, soft, and precise, infusing the heartfelt lyrics with all the reflective feeling they ask for.

The result is an incredibly touching and thoughtful tribute. The love and care that’s gone into its writing radiant, brimming with emotion that shines all the more brightly for its restraint. It may be a deeply personal song, but its tremendous warmth reminds us all to let our loved ones know how much we appreciate them and, in a month marked by remembrance, that’s a message we all need to hear.

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VANESSA VAN NESS – S(he)’s A Rake

According to sensational British-American songwriter Vanessa Van Ness, S(he)’s A Rake is ‘about the age-old situationship of wanting someone who will ruin you, but pursuing them anyway’. Fusing Hopscotch-bounce percussion, tropical bird calls, flourishes of brightly plaintive Afropop guitar, and menacing synth-bass throbs, the song lances through genres to masterfully capture that queasy-delectable mix of desire and fear. Her murmured contralto vocals are the icing on the rich, bittersweet cake.

Vanessa previously appeared on the Fresh Faves with the incredible True True Shot, a smoky, cinematic ballad likening a town-destroying storm to a drug epidemic. If she keeps on releasing music of this quality, it’s not likely to be her last appearance, either. Definitely one to keep your ears out for.

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The week’s Fresh Faves draw to a quiet close with this gentle ballad from Birmingham folk-rock five-piece Wooden Dog. The Wheel begins with a carefully picked acoustic guitar before opening out to accommodate piano and percussion, unfurling with the feeling of a stripped-back anthem. The mood is matched by the soulful, sorrowful vocals – ‘I want to take a drive with you, feel your warmth next to my skin’.

Its sense of passion never goes over the top, but by the time the song ends, it’s built up a sense of time-slowing enormity despite the sparse production. As we retreat indoors and turn our minds to our families and loved ones, The Wheel serves as a moving ode to the human connection that helps get us through these dark months.

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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.