From a Dutch delta road trip to a Birmingham apartment tribute, via London, Nashville, and Atlanta: five artists using folk’s oldest tools to get somewhere genuinely new. We bloody love them all.

Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard – Travelin’ Heart

Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard have made an excellent Americana-tinged indie stunner: organic, wide-open, and very difficult to sit still to.

“Travelin’ Heart” began as a voice memo captured on a phone during a road trip along the East Coast, which is both the origin story and the instruction manual for how to listen to it. The track has a fantastic driving groove; built on acoustic guitar, mandolin, and pedal steel, the latter recorded across multiple locations before the whole thing was mastered in Nashville, and the geography of that process bleeds into the sound itself. Verses have a lovely close-knit kind of intimate and feel close-miked; while the chorus opens out into something much bigger. The standout is definitely the vocal but there’s a lovely craft across the whole track, and it’s the kind that makes emotions hit right where they need to.

Joseph Turner writes from the Dutch delta town of Hellville, which sounds implausible but turns out to suit him. His background is in rock bands, and that lineage sits just under the surface of his songwriting: the pop hooks are real, the country-leaning instincts are genuine, and the occasional noise when it feels right is deployed without apology. The Dudes of Hazard are a rotating cast of collaborators, longstanding and newly met, who step in for both recording and live work. For fans of Noah Kahan and Zach Top, this is exactly the kind of modern folk-rooted indie that earns its comparisons. A great track.

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Fiona Amaka – Love that fills my world (acoustic version)

Fiona Amaka’s acoustic reimagining is a stunning transformation, turning a rock staple into something intimate, warm, and entirely its own.

This is an orchestral folk reworking of a track that already had an audience, and what makes it work is the confidence of the conversion. The arrangement strips away the drive of the original and replaces it with something that just breathes in a different way. It’s much slower, more spacious, and the kind of vibe that makes you sit with each lyric a little longer than a rock arrangement would allow. Understandably, it has picked up new followers and social engagement precisely because it does not feel like a stripped-down version of something better. It feels like its own complete thing, which is a very impressive feat.

Fiona Amaka is a London singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose 2025 run of singles covered more ground than most artists manage in three years. “No Daylight” and “Cowards and Shadows” leaned into her soulful indie-rock side; “Honesty (Psalm 139)” introduced a spiritual dimension; the chirpy indie-pop of “Desert Flower” earned significant radio play and confirmed her as a genuinely versatile artist. Her influences run from Stevie Nicks to Smashing Pumpkins, which tells you something useful: this is someone who knows exactly how wide the space between delicate and loud can be, and is entirely comfortable anywhere inside it. It’s fantastic.

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Tree City USA – Open Waters (Acoustic Version)

Tree City USA have made a genuinely moving acoustic tribute here, it’s bare, honest and completely beautiful

“Open Waters (Acoustic Version)” was recorded by Danny Hammons in his downtown Birmingham, Alabama apartment, banjo replacing lead guitar, and the DIY vibe is all there in best possible way. The track is a tribute to Jordan Sheldon, a skateboarder and drummer who died in May 2008, and the stripping back of the arrangement is the point: what remains is the melody, the words, and the specific fragile quality that comes from a recording made in a home space at close range. It’s sparse and honest in all the right ways; and the lyric of “shine on my friend, i’ll see you when it’s over” genuinely hits hard.

Tree City USA emerged from Birmingham’s hardcore scene in 2007 around guitarist/vocalist Seth Mitchell and keyboardist/synth player Danny Hammons, who wanted to find quieter territory. Their 2009 debut single “The Resting State” was recorded with Joseph McQueen at Echelon Studios, the same facility known for work with As I Lay Dying and Jimmy Eat World. This return, built around loss and memory, is a beautifully worthy one. It’s touching stuff.

Audra Watt – Any Day Now

Audra Watt’s “Any Day Now” is a brilliantly realised opening statement: warm, jazzy, and sharp enough to land its message without feeling like a lecture.

“Any Day Now” leads off Watt’s ‘Start Late’ album, and it earns that position. The track is built on jazzy chord progressions with a muted trumpet sound, giving it a 1920s character that sits comfortably inside a contemporary pop framework. I wish I could record vocals this crisply, Audra’s vocal just sounds beautiful, and it serves up the song in style. This should be on every ‘easy listening’ radio station, cos it’s crafted so well, and the musicianship has a real quality to it.

Audra Watt is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter whose sound sits at the junction of pop, country, and a vintage jazz sensibility that surfaces in chord choices and arrangement texture rather than pastiche. “Start Late” is a project built around a specific argument: that your own timeline is valid, and that self-reinvention does not require a particular age or circumstance. It’s a lovely concept, and one that I share a belief in, especially when the music sounds as good as this. A great single.

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Jeremy Parks – The Tourist

Jeremy Parks makes “The Tourist” a gorgeous indie folk meditation on memory and distance: the kind of song that finds something true in a photograph and refuses to let it go.

“The Tourist” is about the complicated light that nostalgia throws: the way an old photograph can reveal something you never noticed at the time, and make it suddenly matter. Parks wrote, produced, and performed the track himself, bringing in Niel Brooks for mixing, mastering, and bass, and Dillon Napier on drums. The result is a genuine indie folk stunner; a beautiful vocal, lyrics and distant guitar work, before things unfold into a tasteful full band arrangement that should be all over the radio. It’s got a lovely groove to it too, occasionally slowing to a shuffle before a rhythmic crescendo, with handclaps, at the end.

Jeremy Parks is an Atlanta-based multi-instrumentalist who takes on songwriter, producer, and performer roles simultaneously, which is a particular kind of creative pressure that tends to either flatten a record or sharpen it. On the evidence of “The Tourist,” it’s definitely making things exciting. His connection to the material is immediate, the kind that comes from writing about something you have genuinely thought about rather than something that seemed like a good subject. For fans of new, introspective indie folk with a beautiful production aesthetic, this one might just be your new favourite. A great track.

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London to Stockholm to Dublin to Whitechapel: four indie rock acts with very different reference points, all of them making music that earns its place in the room. Let’s jump right in🤿

Monday’s Monsoon – Something New

Monday’s Monsoon have made something genuinely excellent with “Something New”: a string-laden London indie track that was mixed at RCA Studio B in Nashville and sounds every bit as good as that pedigree suggests.

“Something New” moves through a really lovely emotional arc: the hesitation of stepping into a new relationship when the last one did real damage, and the point at which that hesitation breaks. What distinguishes it sonically is the production journey it went on: tracked in London with four string-playing collaborators, mixed at RCA Studio B in Nashville, the same room where Elvis Presley’s recordings were mixed, then mastered at Metropolis Studios in London. Not bad, huh? That is a serious chain of facilities for an independent release, and the result justifies it, because it’s a really lovely piece of music. The vocal being the standout, and the strings carry emotional weight without softening the song’s edges. It’s got a tasty kinda patience to it too; feeling like it knows exactly where it’s going.

Monday’s Monsoon are a London band whose touchstones sit firmly in the atmospheric end of British rock: Elbow, Fink, Radiohead vibes. Richard Jupp, Elbow’s former drummer, has praised their writing as “really well written” with lyrics that are “really sentimental, really intimate,” which is a useful endorsement from someone who knows what that tradition demands. They made their Bristol debut at Mr Wolf’s in March 2026 and play The Castle in Whitechapel on 22nd May. The momentum is real, and we’ll be keeping an eye on this lot.

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Arn-Identified Flying Objects and Alien Friends – Bells of Silver

Arn-Identified Flying Objects and Alien Friends have made a superb piece of melodic pop rock: warm, generous, and one of the most quietly affecting things you will hear this month.

“Bells of Silver” comes in all George Harrison with lovely, strummed guitars and the melodies to match. It’s produced beautifully, it’s clear there’s a genuine craft to this. It’s one of those tunes where the pre-chorus feels like the chorus because it’s so good, but then the actual chorus comes in, and we’re soaring. And aside from the horrible fade out – I hate fade outs – it’s brilliant. Echoes of The Beatles run throughout, but it’s The Beach Boys-esque backing vocals that send this one to the moon. Brilliant.

Arn-Identified Flying Objects and Alien Friends have been on our radar for a couple of singles now, and this is definitely is the standout so far. Working from Stockholm, he has channelled decades of melodic pop-rock listening into something that wears these influences clearly without really being defined by them. It’s a beautifully put together track, and definitely worth your ears this month.

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The Sunday Shamans – Where You Begin

The Sunday Shamans have written a brilliant piece of psychedelic indie rock with “Where You Begin”: descending Beatle-ish chord sequences, real emotional weight, and a chorus that sticks.

“Where You Begin” is structured around descending chord sequences that consciously echo George Harrison’s approach on “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” and the band are upfront about that nod. What they do with it is the interesting part: the production is brilliantly crisp, and the the psychedelic reference is a starting point rather than a destination. Best of all is the lyric, which examines how you come to understand what another person has contributed to your life only in retrospect. Not your average girl meet boy indie track really. The guitar work is also brilliant, managing to be kinda present without overbearing, and I’ve not met too many guitarists who really get that.

The Sunday Shamans are a London band who have been friends since school. The lockdown period pushed them properly into the studio, and they have since released three EPs and excitingly are building toward a full album called “Together in Past Lives,” of which “Where You Begin” is an little preview. The concept of past lives, whether across multiple rebirths or simply the versions of yourself that existed before a transformative relationship, is threaded through the project, and this track is one of the clearest expressions of what that means in practice. A fantastic single, and we can’t wait for more.

Sean MacLeod – Light Up the Sun

Sean MacLeod delivers an excellent summer pop single with “Light Up the Sun”: melodic, optimistic, and built on the kind of harmonic instinct that only comes from a real songwriter.

“Light Up the Sun” is released separately from MacLeod’s album “That’s When the Earth Becomes a Star,” which arrived on 5th May 2026, functioning as a standalone piece designed to welcome the season rather than serve the record. And the result? Well, it does that job brilliantly. The melody is fantastic, the arrangement keeps its pop instincts clean and uncluttered, and then the chorus hits. MacLeod’s keen ear for a big chorus is definitely at work here; making it memorable without it being to heavy. This is an artist who has spent long enough writing songs to know when to let a hook just be a hook.

Sean MacLeod is an Irish songwriter and founding member of Dublin band Cisco, who we’ve been lucky enough to interview on this very blog. His solo catalogue now runs to multiple albums and numerous singles, drawing on the Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, folk, classical, and elements of the avant-garde while keeping melody and harmonic structure at the centre. A sixth album of experimental music, “We Don’t See What We Don’t See,” follows shortly. For a man releasing at this pace, the quality control is remarkable. A brilliant single.

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