Soulful, dramatic and emotionally serious: this week’s rock bops run from blues-soaked swagger to symphonic crescendos to a Pride Month courtroom Americana single, all of them built to last.
Sarah Brunner – Miss Kentucky
Sarah Brunner’s “Miss Kentucky” is a brilliant queer Americana single: a voiceover from Justice Kennedy’s Obergefell ruling, Bear Creek Studio production, and a songwriter who has been performing for fifteen years and knows exactly how to land this.
“Miss Kentucky” exists because Kim Davis filed a 2025 petition to the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the ruling that legalised same-sex marriage in the United States. It’s an impressive and important backdrop, to a song that’s delivers that message fantastically. There’s a quiver in the vocal which I love, and it’s a rolls along in real style. “Loving her is my freedom” is the line that gets me every time. Fantastic.
Brunner is a Michigan native based in Seattle who has been performing solo and with The Hipocrats for over fifteen years. Her songwriting moves between acoustic Americana, folk and country through a queer lens, and the depth of her live experience gives “Miss Kentucky” the authority of a performer who knows what a room feels when a song is doing something real. A brilliant, important single.
Midnight Miles – Call on Me
Midnight Miles serve up a gorgeously gritty, open road, Montréal blues-rock anthem
“Call on Me” was recorded with live-band energy and the sonic vocabulary of The Black Crowes and The Faces clearly in mind: blues-soaked guitars, a vocal performance that earns the classic rock comparison rather than simply invoking it, and a chorus constructed for maximum memorability. It’s one of those tracks that reminds you why rock, with a great band, and an even better vocal, is the best. There’s a touch of the vintage, placed carefully alongside modern textures.
Midnight Miles are a Montréal-based rock band who have built a growing following across Québec through festivals, clubs and independent releases, developing the live-band tightness that gives “Call on Me” its authority. The result is a project committed to authenticity and real musicianship rather than production gloss. We really love this single, and will keeping a close ear on what they get up to this year.
Neil Valmonte – Down on the River
Neil Valmonte’s “Down on the River” is a big-hearted arena rock anthem built that deserves to be sung by crowds of people
“Down on the River” began as a melody and lyrics captured on a phone with a single acoustic guitar, then expanded into a full live instrumentation arrangement in Valmonte’s home studio. The results are genuinely epic, and it’s got the energy of a huge Queen track, with a chorus that soars high into the clouds. The subject is personal and introspective but the arrangement is deliberately outward-facing, designed to make the individual feeling collective. By the time of that last chorus, it’s lighters in the air territory.
Valmonte is a solo producer, songwriter and musician from Westport, Connecticut, working entirely independently from his basement studio. He views his releases as starting points rather than finished products, actively inviting covers and remixes that allow other artists to reshape the material: the collaboration the song calls for in its lyric is the same collaboration he is extending to anyone who wants to take it somewhere new. “Down on the River” is fantastic, and I’m really excited to hear what Valmonte does next.
Roan Grevel – Anna
Roan Grevel’ delivers an epic and excellent alternative rock debut: written on Réunion Island twenty years ago, refined across two decades, and worth every year of waiting.
“Anna” is the song Roan Grevel always knew his solo career had to begin with, written twenty years ago on Réunion Island and refined over the decades into its definitive version. The track jumps in and moves between delicate melodic instrumental passages and heavy distorted walls of sound, drawing the emotional biography of a specific person: a woman disillusioned by betrayal and emotional exhaustion, who longs to resist but cannot find the weight to lift. The vocal has a touch of that genuine grunge spirit, unpredictable and tense, and the production builds with a touch of Nirvana, which we really love. By the time the chorus hits, we’re soaring.
Grevel is a French singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Réunion Island who spent twenty years as a lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist across multiple rock outfits in his local scene before stepping out into a solo career in 2026. That accumulated stage experience runs through “Anna” as a quality of earned conviction: this is not the work of someone discovering what they want to say, but of someone who has been working toward exactly this for a long time. A great single.