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

A WORD FROM DEL: Hello everyone! Big thankyou to all the artists who submitted tracks in the full inbox and also extra special thankyou to those who found time to come and vote this weekend..

I would like to make an appeal to everyone who make the faves. As you can tell, the faves aren’t decided by one person, and I’d love for you to be actively involved, we open the listening post early on Fridays purposefully for this reason and keep it open until 6pm on Sunday evening, please help your fellow artists – it’s not a competition – we purposely ask artists not to tell their friends to come and vote for them as that would defeat the point of what we do here. If you can come and check out the first listening post when we return and vote for your favourite 5 tracks that will be helpful.

Shares and likes are nice, but if we rely on just shares and likes alone we wouldn’t be able to function. I will tag you on social media as a reminder of course. Thankyou!

If you choose to share this, please tag the correct instagram accounts, @fotnblog and this week’s reviewer which is myself and my handle is @platinummind

Onto the faves!

AMA ADEM – Butterflies

Ama Adem is back with a cracker of a track that incorporates indie vibes with soul, the rhythm is off beat and that is what adds to the charm of the track- I will touch on that again shortly but I wanted to comment on the lyrics – this is a song about a breakup and shows that Ama has moved on – it’s a brutal commentary as she says that she’s lost the butterflies she used to get around her romantic interest and that person has lost the camouflage that they wore around her so she could see them for who they really are. She blamed herself but looking back it wasn’t her fault and she can see that now.

It’s a bittersweet song and it’s the perfect breakup tune. Now about the rhythm section there’s a part of the song that I love – it’s at 2:33 when things drop back to just guitar and vocals building up and my favourite bit starts at 3:24 – the way it’s just her vocals and drums… BANGER!

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CLAMBER – Collaborate

First of all working the word collaborate into a song title?

Kudos.

CLAMBER make their debut on the faves with a beauty of a track that has an almost soulful falsetto, this is all based around an indie soul track that starts off on guitar and vocals passed through – I’m assuming – a phone filter until when the drums come in.

There are some warped sounds in there combining synth strings and the ever present guitars, it gives me that feeling that Clamber are influenced by neo soul just a touch but the groove isn’t that loose, it’s got a great feel to it and it resonated with both our team and our listeners for it to top the votes this week.

Our Tony very kindly sent me a review he wrote for his fantastic blog fifty3fridays where he first came across them at the Haslemere Fringe. They are a band from London and specialise in indie pop,

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DUTCH CRIMINAL RECORD – Summers Past

We have jangly guitars! We have a song reminiscing about past summers! Well given that we are on the cusp of the end of the summer this is perfect for it. Now Dutch Criminal Record are south coast based and have probably seen some good ones in their time given their location.

They reference old tech too, Gamecube and PS2 which made me chuckle as people would consider that retro – hey I still remember space invaders in the arcades at Brighton what do you know about that huh??

Anyway this is quite an introspective song, that makes you think of days you can’t get back again. With all the tech we have now it’s easy to capture but once upon a time it wasn’t that easy. This has that hazy sepia feel around it and that’s not a bad thing!

Dutch Criminal Record have been fresh faves in the past, and they are no strangers to the team they are based out of Chichester on the south coast of the UK.

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EMILY MERCER – Do You Get It Now?

Emily Mercer brings us a ballad that’s mainly piano led, but what got me was the chord progression – it was so beautiful! I actually sat down to play the keyboard along with it just to work what I was hearing.

This song has piano, bass, guitar and flute plus some really lovely string arrangements to go with it. This song could easily be in an Apple TV show sync. GET ON IT!

Now why do I say this?

The song is about encouragement, we are put in the about Emily’s friend thinking about giving everything up, but Emily doesn’t do the whole thing of talking her out of it she becomes the still small voice in her friend’s head making her see the bigger picture and that’s the idea, when you’ve thought things through it makes you see things a little clearer.

I love this song.

This is my track of the week.

Emily Mercer is no stranger to the faves, with quality songs like this I’m not surprised. Emily is from Manchester, and writes songs for people who think about things they said in 2016.

I thought I was the only one who thought about things I said 10 years ago.

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GRADY KINNELL – Talk It Out

This is a demo? Really? I’d say it’s the finished product. Anyway, Grady Kinnell brings us a track that’s guitar led, it’s a great ballad showing off Grady’s vocals – I reckon he’s got some good things ahead of him. I love the chorus where he goes into his higher range the falsetto is pretty sweet!

Lyric wise he’s singing about talking through problems but having to fight through walls and defences but the plot twist is that it’s him that’s putting up the walls even though he’s wanting to talk it all out. We’ve all been there!

Anyway, having done some deep diving he’s 21 years old and from Scotland, and has had the distinction of winning a competition through STV to support Marti Pellow at the Kelvingrove Bandstand. Now I’m not surprised by this as Grady has that pop soul quality in his voice. I wish him luck in all he does. In fact, he’s my one to watch.

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GÜDNESS – We’re All Good

I like the way that this starts out, with the analogue synth, before going to a guitar driven track with a solid back beat which has toms featuring prominently. The bassline is driving it and I love that, it’s not staying in one place. It’s very melodic, the whole track is a shuffle, and that’s not something that’s present in indie rock at the moment.

This has a fuzzy hazy feel to the song in general, like mid nineties indie rock – it’s funny to think of that as retro now, so I refuse to do that, but this makes me think of summers in the 90s gone by.

Gűdness are a band from Leicester, they formed in 2023 and are best friends and have had the nod from BBC Introducing in the Midlands.

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KARL BY THE SEA – In A Perfect World

Karl By The Sea comes to us with a nice acoustic number that builds on different things! It really surprised me instrument-wise because it start off with just the vocals and then ends up with timpanis!

We’re bringing the timpani back.

Not quite like sexy back Justin you’re safe son.

On a serious note this is based around two chords, and around that we are treated to various layers of vocals as well as random sounds thrown in and it really is something to behold on several listens it just whisked me away and I love it.

For this reason Karl is my one to watch. Karl by the sea is not by the sea but actually from London and declares himself a digital fossil. This could be taken in many ways. A fossil from our past or his future?

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LIDIACHUU – Not Another Word

This starts off very fragile with the vocals sounding having a bit of “Really? Not again” air given the way the lyrics are – It opens with:

Now there’s a hundred people
Talking to me that I don’t know
I try to shoo them all away with
a lifeless hello.

It references the buzz word of social media in 2026 – engagement in the lyrics and that made me shudder as people have to jump through hoops to get that nowadays. Quick plug – Neil March and Sherry Sahayraj have written a book about ethical marketing and promotion for independent artists – definitely something to delve into if that’s something that you need tips on.

Anyway this track is indie rock but it goes full on riot grrl combining spoken word over a vocal that ends up on a scream and the sound that you get when you unplug an instrument.

Brilliant.

Lidiachuu is 16 years old from the UK there’s no other information on her that I can find but she’s very active on TikTok!

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SAM SCHERDEL – Kyoto Snow

Sam Scherdel is an artist that I’ve been keeping an eye on for quite a while and he’s back with a cracker of an indie rock track. He’s got a pleasingly raspy voice, he’s earned the moniker of the Yorkshire Springsteen as a result, but he’d need to go through a lot of cigarettes and several bottles of whiskey and a messy divorce and teenagers that hate him to get that tone….

This song is very catchy – festival ready – big drums and bass, acoustic guitar that you could see Sam out on the thrust stage with people jumping and down as he performs it. That chorus is catchy as hell!

Sam Scherdel has been going since 2022, and has seen festival and arena support slots, and love from BBC Introducing.

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TOTAL JOY – Shining Light

To close out the faves I had the feeling of a really retro vibe kind of like the merseybeat guitar bands of the mid 60s but having a bit of a Monkees influence in there too. I love the harmonies and I wonder if Total Joy have taken a leaf out of that era’s playbook and gone back to the baggy paisley shirts and bell bottoms of the 90s but made it more cleaner. This reminds me a little of the Inspiral Carpets which isn’t a bad thing, it’s the psychedelic feel too. It’s made me feel all nostalgic.

Not old.

Nostalgic.

This is a nice note to finish the faves on, and one thing I’d like to note is that the inbox has taken on a decidedly international feel which I’ve got no problem with – a couple of weeks ago we had someone from New York City and now we have Total Joy from Amsterdam. Total Joy is the alter ego of Bert Van Der Elst and he specialises in psych pop.

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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.