There’s a specific type of loneliness that comes with being into someone who parties too much, and Phoenix, AZ’s pop artist Junk Dior captures it perfectly with his new single “When We’re Both Apart” – check it out on YouTube here:

While sonically, it’s a sunny — if not euphoric — delivery of unbridled optimism, the lyrics tell the other story. Amid layers of beats, synth, soaring vocal harmonies, and rap/talk, the song tells the story of a ‘party princess’ who continually evades the narrator, giving him time only in the spaces between one party and the next — even if the party only happens to be on TikTok. And she keeps her weekends to herself.

Tabla master Ritesh Das and his JUNO Award-nominated musical collective, Toronto Tabla Ensemble, have turned the tables on technology with their innovative, colourful new single and video, “Spellcheck”.

The first release from the group’s upcoming eighth album, For the Love of Tabla, “Spellcheck” gets its name and inspiration from everyone’s favourite, frustrating smart phone feature… Autocorrect.

Check out “Spellcheck” on YouTube here:

“The title is a joke,“ Das reveals. “If you try to type out tabla on your phone, spellcheck changes it to table. I get messages all the time from people asking: ‘Where can I buy a new table?’ I tell them to go to a furniture store.”

Singer/songwriter Marty Zylstra comes out swinging with the first single from his highly anticipated second album, Boom Chicka; “Rattle The Glass”.

Check out “Rattle The Glass” on YouTube here:

With an electricity that pulses through gritty instrumentation, coupled with a sense of timelessness to deliver a sonically melancholic experience, the track’s musical craftsmanship and a spiritual self-awareness guide the follow-up to Zylstra’s deeply personal 2018 album, The Dragonfly and the Spider.

Boom Chicka and the songs within it are a love letter to the sights and sounds of the anti-war and peace movements of the 1960’s Flower Power era. While his influences are clear, as the album channels legends like Lennon and Brian Wilson, in particular, Boom Chicka was carefully crafted and conceived as a sole artistic vision with no details taken for granted.

Seamlessly fusing dancehall with pop, multi-talented artist and Wyomissing, PA-based Ozzie Lovin gets “Lost In You” in a new single. Check out “Lost In You” on YouTube here:

Looking to take the pop genre back to the basics — love — Lovin’s unique blend of dancehall and late-pop elements is delectable start to finish. After realizing the allure music had, Ozzie Lovin found heaven in music production and, after honing his craft over the past four years, audiences are treated to this, a truly authentic listening experience; it's his distinct and honest lyrical composition in “Lost In You” that really sells this song.

“As I personally watched the world around me crumble, I used music to escape a lot of what I was experiencing,” he shares. “I started writing and putting my words to beats I made, and could not believe how much it assisted the healing process.

June Garber has released a new video of the classic “Windmills Of Your Mind” in advance of the album release concert – check out the video here on YouTube:

The album release party is Thursday, September 16, 2021 @ Paradise Theatre, 1006 Bloor Street West in Toronto - Doors 7pm • Concert 8pm

Tickets available at https://bemusednetwork.com/events/detail/869

June Garber will be joined by Attila Fias (piano), Sam Pomanti (keyboards), George Koller (bass), Steve Heathcote (drums), Ted Quinlan (guitar) and Colleen Allen (flute and reeds), as she celebrates the album’s September 17 release of Off the Carousel. This album, arranged and produced by Lou Pomanti is her fourth and is distributed by Vesuvius Music.

The new single from Toronto singer/songwriter/producer Brandon Glazer is the title cut of his forthcoming album Because Of You, and if the album is anything like this track it will not disappoint.

Check out “Because of You” on YouTube here:

With his unlikely yet unforgettable combination of vintage Country Rock and glossy up-tempo Pop, Brandon is breathing new life into modern music. Acting as his own producer on the project, he incorporated modern production techniques, to push his sound into bold new musical territory.

Sometimes just knowing an experience is in your rearview is enough to roll down the windows, turn up the tunes, and cruise along with zero cares... And with its laid-back tempo and smooth vocal harmonies, Canadian rock five-piece The High Loves and their new single “Sometime”  captures that very freedom of knowing a relationship is over and, hey, you did all you could.

Check out “Sometime”  on Spotify here: open.spotify.com/track/4G9RUSOZu3q63wodwOJTfn?si=6d8bebe3351347e0&nd=1

Appearing on the alt-rockers’ forthcoming EP, Too Much Of A Good Thing, out this Fall, “Sometime” was one of those songs whose inspiration came out of nowhere. “I was just practicing my guitar one day when the song in its entirety just popped into my head,” guitarist Noah Mockton says. The lyrics were imagined as a goodbye letter to an ex. “It's about being okay with change,” he adds, “and letting someone you love go.”

This simmering late-summer heat is no match when it comes to heating up the room like Latin-pop artists MellyQueen and Skyzz do on their fresh track, “Lento y Pegadito”:
Check out the YouTube here:

Driven with poppy composition, enticing vocalizations, and some undeniable musical magnetism, the two Toronto-based multi-talented artists soar beyond the stratosphere with their newest single — and first collaboration.

“When Skyzz and I met, we shared a great connection and an overall chemistry,” MellyQueen recalls. “We really wanted to create a song that captured that fun, heartfelt, and feel-good energy we share off-camera.”

While the term “Hookup” is 21st-century parlance for fleeting romance, singer-songwriter Lara Taubman’s new single of the same name wastes little time evoking the groovy ‘60s and ‘70s with a funk-infused bassline and crystal vocals reminiscent of Grace Slick.

The song opens with a question: “Was it just a hookup, didn’t you feel my heart” that then becomes a harmonizing hook — taking us on a psychological journey of the morning after.

Free love, in this case, isn’t so freeing. The narrator’s lover assures her there will be no regrets, and then she, presumably, never hears from him again. The song is personal, inspired by a time when Lara was waiting for a text from a man she had recently hooked up with. “It’s about the risky high dives I took in my intimate relationships, gambling with hope as my best hand,” she said.

As Lara sat facing the dread that this particular hookup wasn’t what she had hoped it was, she decided to use it as creative inspiration. “I wrote the song in one sitting,” she said. “Driven by that first line and a mountain of yearning, despair and anxiety.”

Check out “Hookup” on YouTube here:

“Man I Love” combines Mena's past musical influences, in conjunction with a spiritual and emotional connection to Indigenous culture. The combination of “Southern Rock” with Indigenous influences, satisfies a longing for those with Native ancestry. As such, “Man I Love” presents an inspirational step toward the cutting edge sound of this accomplished performer.

“Man I Love” relates to not only the loss of love, but loss of friends to suicide,” as Mena explains. “I put the pain into song.”

Expressed beautifully, and with deep emotion, is the understandable sense of loss of not only what was, but what might have been.

Players on the track include Producer Mark Muir, who also played guitar and bass, Roy Nichol (April Wine) on drums, Pamela Cumming plays the violin, Duncan Gillis is on the flute, and Steve McAlear added Native percussion. The track was engineered by the  world-renowned Ron Nevison.

https://soundcloud.com/gerry-young-684327208/mena-hardy-the-man-i-love-radio-edit-1

Set to inspire a magical dance of nature spirits celebrating the change of seasons,  award-winning Canadian group ViVA Trio have released their stunning first foray into folk music with new single, “Solstice Jig”.

As the latest preview of their forthcoming concept album, “Solstice Jig” offers a light hearted, upbeat tune featuring star violinist Vasil Popadiuk alongside Trio members Anna Bateman, Erin Fisher, and Katya Tchoubar. Inspired by Irish jigs, Enya, as well as a series of Canadian and Celtic folk artists, the song lilts with pagan, celtic magic and nature-inspired lyrics.

Check out “Solstice Jig” on YouTube Here:

“We’re dipping our toes into the deep traditions of folk music, and loving it!” Anna shares.

“‘Solstice Jig’ is a more let-your-hair-loose kind of track for us,” Erin adds.

There is something about Theo Ogundipe that is worth getting to know... And with one listen to this multifaceted indie-soul musician’s new single, “Y” that notion is easily confirmed.

It’s easy to tell that “Y” is rich with emotional vulnerability, easily explained in that Theo Ogundipe has always “been a lover of music and a musician at heart.”

Check out “Y” here on YouTube:

Ogundipe’s fusion of several genres including soul, hip hop, indie, and RnB is inspired “by his life growing up in the diaspora” — referring to his home Nigeria in West Africa, and his transition to the United Kingdom as a child. Citing influences like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and Motown, it becomes clear where Theo Ogundipe's mind is when writing music.

From the page to the stage, fantasy has become reality for Canadian roots-rock band Downtown Exit, and this, their intimate, acoustic cover of Neil Young’s “After the Goldrush”.

Watch and listen to “After the Goldrush” on YouTube here:

Until now, Downtown Exit has solely existed as the fictional 1970s-era band, Levi Jaxon and The Downtown Exit; it’s the moniker #1 best-selling author Glenn Dixon created for his new book, Bootleg Stardust.

Also a musician and songwriter, Dixon and his real-life band of top notch, Calgary-based musicians and songwriters, usually known as the Barrel Dogs, wrote and recorded seven songs as a soundtrack for the book — including this era-faithful cover of Young’s classic, and its timeless message.

Classically influenced and a compelling listen, Canadian orchestral pop-rock band Daniel Monte have unveiled their newest video and single from their debut LP, Familiar; “S.O.S. and Send” is available now!

Mostly inspired by Beethoven and Brahms, the Toronto-area group are known for taking special care incorporating classical music elements into their songs — and hard-rock style “S.O.S. and Send” lands no differently.

“There’s a little nod to Bach in the violin solo section,” lead singer Daniel Monte reveals. “I played a G minor arpeggio figure going down the range of the violin, which was also famously used by Bach at the beginning of the Presto in G minor.”

It’s a witchy world of rumours, stories, gossip, and telephone games. And for Canadian indie sensation Astrid Tanton, it’s about clearing everything at once on this, her new single and video, “Jury” — available now.

Fresh from her breakthrough debut EP, From My Eyes, “Jury” comes from a place of learning and hurt, the Toronto-based artist explains. Her message is ageless — there is their version, your version, and... Somewhere in the middle is the truth.

And Tanton isn’t afraid to expose it.

“There’s a reason people always say there’s two sides to a story,” she says. “People will twist and tell a story to benefit themselves.

“‘Jury’ explores that relationship of being placed as the ‘villain’ or the ‘bad guy’ in a story.

“The concept behind the ‘Jury’ video follows myself and ‘the jury,’” Tanton continues, offering a behind-the-scenes take of her visual counterpart of the track. “The jury represents not only people who are being told a one-sided story, but the intrusive thoughts that can follow you when you are constantly being painted as the bad guy.

Check out “Jury” on YouTube here:

Heavy percussion and a groove-saturated bass line set psych-rocker Rise Carmine’s latest single up as the sexy, 70s-esque low-fi electric gem it’s destined to be; “Be The Only One”.

The latest to land ahead of the Toronto-based artist’s forthcoming debut, No Coup For Anyone, the release’s GRAMMY-winning powerhouse producer Dave Schiffman’s (Weezer, PUP, Vampire Weekend) craftsmanship is on full display: a tightly woven intro, a crushing hook, and a sizzling fade, magnificently mingled with frontman Liam Colbert’s smart lyrics, and incendiary vox.

“Be The Only One” is a staring competition; look away and you might miss what’s to come next from the full EP.

Check out “Be The Only One” on YouTube here:

Sometimes the best things about summer are the most simple: the smell of dew in the grass, a charge in the night air, and infinite stars in a clear sky. And Nobeton, ON’s singer-songwriter Matt Morson captures these modest joys, and more, with his new single “Tailgate Patio”.

Get up and dance to “Tailgate Patio” on YouTube here:

or

Give a listen on Spotify here:
https://open.spotify.com/track/2OaHfH398zUmNDn7gJjSAf?si=077aa934c0544422&nd=1

Canadian rocker Kevin Towill may have planted his roots in the punk community, but it's his expressive, electric guitar-laden new EP, After The Party Is Over that showcases the depths of his ability to bend genres and colour outside the lines.

Check out After The Party Is Over on YouTube here:

Kicking off with lead track, "The Contemporary American Dream", the Calgary-based artist's move to write a solo album followed Towill's decision to re-prioritize his '9-5' life, shifting focus from working solely at a gig he picked up when his former punk outfit, The Reckless Heroes, disbanded in 2017 and gravitating back to music. 

“Music was far too important and self-identifying to abandon completely,” he explains; knowing that music was a lifeline to the air he breathes, Towill set out to lay the tracks of his breakthrough solo project.

Diving even deeper into his realest, rawest, and most realized artistic self yet, Canadian contemporary pop, R&B and soul artist Ezra Jordan releases his new single, “dollarama”.

“This song was written during one of my lowest points during the pandemic,” Ezra shares. “I was suffering from a pretty significant depressive episode, my plans to move to LA had been derailed, and I had lost my job and moved back with my parents.

“I took stock of my life, my relationships, my friends, and my own self-image, and tried to figure out where this empty feeling was coming from.

“Out of that, I wrote ‘dollarama.’”

Check out “dollarama” on YouTube here:

While Canadians were largely at loose ends self-isolating during the lengthy series of pandemic-related lockdowns, prolific folk singer/songwriter James Gordon hunkered down and got busy creating his 40th album, When I Stayed Home.

That’s right; Four. Zero.

And the timely 13-track full-length release also features Gordon’s powerful musical response to the national residential school tragedies with the song, “We’ll Bring You Home.”

Listen and watch the poignant single “We’ll Bring You Home” on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/5D4cAXqSjZg

The arrival of COVID-19 — and the fear, uncertainty, and disruption it brought with it — initially affected Gordon, like many of us, negatively. Since the Guelph, Ontario based artist has toured all over the globe relentlessly since his twenties, being stuck at home was depressing… At least, for a while.