Watercolours

Australasia is taking over my dreams,  Australia and New Zealand have reigned supreme with their musical exports this year for me, as demonstrated by the new one from New Zealand's Watercolours; which is placed in the most perfect position between dream and pop. Sliders sort of sounds like a breath of fresh air and you should take a listen right here:

MAUSI

However I phrase this, I'm not going to make this track sound anywhere near as good as it actually is. Basically, MAUSI have recorded this Knowles inspired hybrid-cover of Losing You and Say My Name, and it turns out it's actually pretty incredible. It's summery, it's uplifting, it just works. Take a listen below:

Magnifik

If you're in the mood for some summery pop that'd fit right in at the best pool party ever, then you should take a listen to Magnifik's rather playful take on the much-hyped Lorde track, Royals . Download for free below:

Zebra Safari

This is literally perfect. I just heard it for the first time and for a brief moment I felt like I was the only person in the world. The original was pretty beautiful as it was, but this remix is faultless. Stream & download below:

Belle Ville

It's Sunday evening, I'm watching the sun turn from orange, to pink, to purple, I have a glass of half price wine in my hand and I'm listening to this. Life isn't so bad is it? Motionless is taken from Danish duo Belle Ville's Inside Outside EP, stream below:

PLOY

So the best day of the best day of the year (pancake day) is drawing to a close, Valentines Day is a complete no-go for me and so now I'm just waiting round for that precious summer sun to touch my skin. Yeah it's 4 months away but listen to this track by Ploy and imagine you're surrounded by cocktails, it kind of works:

Pretty Heart

I gathered my first post of the new year had to be a special one, something to set the tone & point us all in the right direction. So here we have Toy, touching on the darker side of bedroom pop in the most beautiful sense, I'm pretty positive Pretty Heart will be turning a few heads this year.

For some amazing free downloads, you can also check out her bandcamp here

Ranvir Bassi

Ranvir Bassi's music seems like the most perfect form of escapism - completely disjointed, completely surreal, completely alluring. Take a listen below:

Erika Spring

You may have heard of Erika Spring already, being one part of Au Revoir Simone it comes as no surprise that the first cut from her new solo project is so wonderfully catchy. But this isn't just a nice piece of swirling synthpop accompanied by a pretty voice, production is tight and the track has a denser feel to it than that of previous Au Revoir stuff. I'm excited to hear the rest of this, Erika is set to release her self-titled EP on July 10th via Cascine but for now you can stream/download Hidden below:

ghostandthesong

It seems like Matthias Kanik's project ghostandthesong already did the whole blogging circuit thing a couple of months back but somehow I completely missed it. So I was pretty pleased to find a message about it in my inbox today cause otherwise I'd have been out of the loop on some pretty great music. His latest EP is called Escapes and is out via the brilliant Bad Panda Records. It's nice and poppy with a pretty experimental edge - surrealistic-pop I guess? It's a really interesting example of the lesser known music scene in Berlin at the moment too. Playing below is the equally surreal video to my favourite cut from the EP 'Ou Inme'.

The whole EP is freely available to download by clicking here.

Frank Ocean

So Frank's announced he'll be releasing a new album July 17th via Def Jam, and yesterday he put out 'Pyramids' - just under 10 minutes of proof that pop R&B can still sound cool, mainly cause there's no sign of a David Guetta bass line. Apparently the guitar solo at the end of the track is John Mayer? Listen & download below:

Seapony

Seapony first stole my heart when I heard this:



So if you're looking for an upbeat summery fix, you can't really go wrong with this band. The below track is called 'What You Wanted', it's taken from their upcoming second album Falling which is set for release this September via Hardly Art. Simple and catchy melodies accompanied by melting vocals, sometimes it's all you want.

Computer Magic

So much happened yesterday - it was my 20th birthday, the queen jubilee'd her way through the day and one of my favourite Brooklyn girls Computer Magic put out a new song. It's called Everest and it's one of the most comforting things I've heard in a while - it's quite spacious and floaty sounding and so it makes a super nice change to the repetitive spell of house music that's been going through my head for the past 2 weeks. It's also free to download below, thanks for the birthday present CM: