So of course I was thrilled when Charlotte agreed to answer a few fairly random questions ahead of those shows. She gave us such detailed and considered answers that I present the answers below word for word.

If you want to know what it would sound like to hear Radiohead covered by Lucinda Williams, hello!

Q&A

Where are you from originally? What was your childhood like?

I was born in Kettering, Northants and I’m still a Midlands-based woman to this day. I was one of those kids who was always outside; skateboarding, off on bike rides, building dens, playing football. My sister and I spent a lot of time with our Grandparents too, and my favourite part of my childhood were the caravan holidays. I would give anything to just have one day with them again.

How did you get started in music as a career?

I started off playing local shows! Open mic nights, small gigs in pubs, pub gardens, small festivals and I slowly started to grow outside of my hometown. By the time I was in my early twenties, I was able to open up for bigger bands and musicians passing through my local music venue, which was The Cookie in Leicester. It was there I really learned my chops. Little by little, that network became bigger and I was able to move onto bigger cities, open for bigger artists and started to headline my own shows. I just haven’t stopped playing shows. I guess this way would be considered pretty old school these days, but it really worked for me. If it wasn’t for being able to play live as much as I did back then, I don’t think any of the cool stuff which has happened to me would have happened at all.

I’m a fan of Lucinda Williams. Is she one of your main inspirations or are there others?

Lucinda is amazing, I love her story and her grit. I’m always pushing for that slightly grittier, more alt roots sound which she has. My other main influence is Radiohead.

Tell us about your Netflix syncs. Being on a show seems to be really important now, especially for indie artists. Any tips?

I’ve been fortunate to have a few over the years which I’ll be honest helps the moneyflow. It started off with an old song of mine ‘Fire’ being on an advert for Sky. Those royalties helped me move out of my Mum’s house at 28 and into a little cottage with my partner. Then I had a few syncs on the BBC and F1 which all contributed to new guitars, amps and pedals and just eased off the pressure a bit. The Netflix one was the most fun, but surprisingly the worst paid. A song called ‘Babywoman’ landed onto Selling Sunset which is a really funny real estate series, and that came with a lot of new listeners. Syncs are interesting, some can move the needle and others not so much, and they’re really sought after. My biggest tip is to make sure you’re finding music supervisors and production companies from some of your favourite shows, make a spreadsheet, learn how to send a short but succinct email describing who you are, what your music is about and what you’re up to. I always feel like the people working for these shows care more about the message and the sound than other types of people in the industry, so telling the story is important.

You’ve been building an audience for ages but it seems 2025 was a big year for you. What is your reply to anyone saying things like ‘overnight success’?

I would say there’s no such thing. The amount of time it takes to become good at anything is longer than you think and if you’re in it for life, you’ll always want to become better. Sure, some artists or bands get what they want quicker, but who is to say they’ll still be doing it in 10 years? There’s really no rulebook to doing this any more. I’ve always found people have paid the most attention when I’ve been brave by changing something up musically or made a bigger statement in some way. You don’t just have to keep doing it, you have to keep getting better and that only takes time.

Tell us something about your UK tour this month. Any favourite venues? Any new ones for you?

I’m playing 3 headline shows at Kitchen Garden Cafe in Birmingham, Eagle Inn in Manchester and Morocco Bound in London. The reason I’m playing these shows is to play new songs, so I’ve chosen these venues for their intimacy. I want to be able to speak candidly with the audiences about the stories behind some of the new songs and where the second album is taking me - musically and personally. KGC and Morocco Bound are both new to me, and as much as I love returning to previous stomping grounds, getting a new venue under your feet adds a bit of spice, and I like spice.

What’s your favourite venue you ever played or would like to play?

I would love to play Birmingham Symphony Hall some day; I’ve seen some of my heroes play that room. My favourite venue which I have played is either The Lexington in London or Hare and Hounds in Birmingham.

What does 2027 look like for you?

2027 is a little bit unknown and it depends on when my second album will be released. After this September tour, it quietens down for me as I buckle down and finish it, and I’m expecting I’ll be back out playing shows from next Spring and gearing into a very busy late 2027 and 2028 promoting the new album. I’m looking forward to being quiet for a bit, focusing on the music and then gathering myself for the next chapter.

You played Cottingham Folk Festival recently. I grew up in Hull - how did you find playing there?

I did and I loved it! I love playing towns over cities. You get a much better sense of community and people are just really into what comes through, I feel like you get looked after a bit more and most of the time the load-in and parking is so much easier. Ha!

Which album or track do you recommend for any new listeners?

Like A Hurricane or Dolores.

Which other UK-based indie artists inspire you or do you recommend?

I’m a big fan and friend of YVA - I just think she’s the best writer with the best pipes in the world. I also admire Wyldest, Alexandra Leaving, Penfriend, Katie Malco and Kelli Blanchett.

Charlotte Carpenter’s tour kicks off THIS SUNDAY so head over here to grab a ticket! Otherwise you can find her in all the usual places including Instagram and TikTok.

Welcome To The Dream

My favourite of the new ones was the first, Welcome To The Dream. This is when the party is just getting going. Kick off your shoes, chillax. This is the best place on earth. But is that lady in the middle really human? She’s either on drugs or a robot. Oh no, is it too soon to leave? Even this banging optimisitic opener is tinged with warning signs.

Welcome to the Dream of California!
Come on, swim the seas where I was born-ia!
Kick off your shoes, kick off your blues,
But baby, I should warn ya-
Things ain’t all they seem

Ramblin’

Ramblin’ runs it a close second. It called to mind Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel. I love it. It’s a great chuggin’ driving song. Not too slow to open up the V8 on the dark desert highway.

Howdy stranger? Are you lost? Where’s home?
Hop on in, I’ll take you anywhere you need to go
Scoot in the back, I bet there’s room if you squeeze
Go on now, meet the gang, watch your head, mind your knees

The lyrics tell a similarly cautious tale as Welcome to the Dream. It turns out that the lady offering lifts to handsome strangers is perhaps a little beyond her prime. She does a good trade in innuendo with a wink and she still feels twenty-three. But she calls her gang the bad luck club. The ones who fell on hard times, and are trying not to show it. When you’re in with the in crowd, they’re great. But if you slip there’s no safety net.

Say It In My Skirt

This was the first song I heard that had not yet been released as a single, and I loved it immediately. It’s slow and swingy and reminded me of an early Tarantino soundtrack, maybe something from Jackie Brown. It clearly had a big sense of humour but I am still not completely sure what the title means and that’s absolutely fine.

The title is partly a reference to the famous photo where Marilyn Monroe’s skirt is blown about by an air duct. (Turns out the gust was caused up by a train passing underneath.) It was a promo shot for the movie Seven Year Itch. The song itself is playful. The singer is certainly interested in this guy but she is anticipating disappopintment.

Don’t you know ‘bout me? I’m a kinda
Sweet like summer wine kinda girl
Steal you like a crime kinda girl
Consider this is your sign
But you better make it worth my time

Take Me Into The Sunshine

This is a really chill soul vibe. There is a vague drug reference: what’s that on your tongue? Can you give me one? TMITS looks and sounds like the perfect summer single. Fewer words than the previous song, more space. There are moments in all the fun when I feel like it is Niina herself doing the talking:-

I left town on my own
Felt no love at home
Then I heard some music play
From the San Francisco bay
So I hit the road and came to stay

There’s always something exciting about the moment when a musician decides to make a career in music, and maybe this was Niina’s. It sounds so simple the way she tells it. Sometimes they make this decision aged 4 or 5 and never deviate, like Stevie Nicks. Sometimes they’re 15 or 20 and they don’t know how brave they are being when they take that first plunge.

Right On, Hollywood

A simple but effective story about a stripper making it in the neon side of Hollywood, shaking it in her heels. I see this one as a character in a movie, surviving the ordeal only by taking more pills. It’s a dark and slow one, very much a nighttime song.

Snake on down the hills then it’s right on Hollywood
Shake it in your heels, that’s the deal
If you can fake it then you probably should

Life and Times of a Wannabe Rockstar

This one is notably slower and quieter than everything else so far. Taken in the album sequence, it is perfect as the last song on Side A. The notion of sleeping in your denim and staying awake for the sunrise is both captivating and nostalgic. Weren’t we all hoping to do something like that, at least once? I remember sitting on the harbour wall at Majorca with a few mates aged 18 and waiting for the sun to come up. I’m afraid to say I was so tired that I didn’t feel it was worth the wait, but at least we did it. We were there, and I do still remember it decades later.

The blind are leading the blind
But the wind in your hair’s a fairly good sign
We dig in the dark but we know what to find
You were already late to begin

This is not an aspirational song as much as a haunted warning. I don’t think that an up-and-coming rock star is the same thing as a ‘wannabe’ one. The wannabe is the one who is more performative than authentic, more about the fame than the music. There is something hollow about the wannabe rockstar, and this song brings that idea to life.

My Side B review is coming soon… meanwhile you can catch Niina on her website here and you can find her links here and email list here.

Soft country boy, illinois royalty
Banging on the drums and moving to the beat
You play me like a fiddle, hope you like the tune
’Cos now I’m all wrapped up in you

I have noted previously how much energy Kitty Coen puts into her videos. Just when you thought you knew a song… I imagined a sailor racing his pickup truck around town, full of girls as he makes the most of some brief shore leave. Well, that’s still valid. But the video is completely different in its own brilliant way.

I spent a week in France flopping around in 100 degree heat next to a cornfield. There is something uniquely terrifying about cornfields. You can’t run through them, especially if a vampire is chasing after you. It says the South. It says horror, maybe True Blood and Sookie Stackhouse. It says… imminent death. What it has never said to me until today is… blood-soaked cheerleader, or bride of Dracula.

He’s lucky like an 8 ball
Holy like Saint Paul
And sweet like sugar cane
Stoned but kinda funny
Cute but kinda bummy
He knows I like it that way

That’s my favourite verse… cute but kinda bummy? I think I know exactly what she means, and it’s hilarious too. Coming back to the video, Kitty specialises in a sort of David Lynch blank look but in this video, in her cheerleader fit, she brings her bubbly smile too. And just when you think she’s genuinely laughing, it glazes over. Blank looks are scary but not as scary as fixed grins. This is a truly terrifying three minutes if you watch it on a big TV at full volume in the dark. Promise me you will do that.

If this is the last piece of action from Conversations with the Moon, I’m okay with that. First of all, the video ends with a ‘to be continued…’ and I believe the next song will be Psycho From Texas, which surely means the horror will return.

If you want to do some homework, the song title is borrowed from the 1975 B-movie starring someone called John King III. The film has a complex back story… was it re-filmed in 1978? Are there two versions? And who is the scream queen Linnea Quigley? Excuse me, I am running out to grab the Betamax from Blockbuster to try and answer all these quesions before the song itself comes out later this year. You can presave the song here!

I have written about Kitty’s videos before and you can find the best bits, with a couple of Q&A interviews, down at the bottom. You can start here to begin your Kitty Coen enchantment. Her Insta is here and the videos are here. Join her mailing list here.

Stella Prince

I was already familiar with Stella’s music and in particular her haunting Gen Z Folk voice. She sounds great on her studio songs but seriously took my breath away in real life. She began with her recent cover of For What It’s Worth.

Stella played many of her best-known originals and all of them sounded so great live. In particular, The Replay, Two Faced, Ruby Boots and What’s Mine really stood out. Stella also played a number of unreleased songs from her upcoming album. She let us know that Everything is one of her favourites in the lyrics and storytelling.

She entertained a full-house audience with other famous songs through the decades including unique covers of Stevie Nicks’ Landslide, Joan Baez’s version of Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, John Mayer’s Slow Dancing in a Burning Room and a haunting version of The Carpenters’ Top of the World. The afternoon was due to finish off with Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now before a loud crowd demanded a (genuinely unprepared) encore.

We democratically chose to have Stella play a final original song and she chose At Seventy which came with a touching story. Stella had seen a waitress in her 70s at a diner with flowers in her hair. Although the two did not speak, the waitress had a huge impact on Stella and she imagined the long life she might have had up to that random meeting.

Stella’s new album is coming soon and she played us the title track, Good Luck Is Hard To Find. I am very much looking forward to hearing the rest of the album!

Stella is in England right now and you can catch her on Wednesday at Green Note and at Long Road Festival on Friday at their Front Porch, as well as on her own website.

Marta

Marta has packed a lot of life into a few short years. Her family is Polish but she grew up in Nashville before relocating to London’s Bohemian Notting Hill. Although she calls herself a songwriter first, she can really sing and performed brilliantly to open our afternoon at Green Note.

My Kind of Radio is from Marta’s first record. Make It Work was up next which was written aged 16 although it is on the forthcoming EP due later this year. I found Wrong Kinda Right to be extremely catchy and Marta let us know that it had its debut at the historic Bluebird Café in Nashville.

Overstay was up next, the first song written for the new EP. Don’t we all over-think and over-stay, keeping people close for longer than we should? But this isn’t a harsh song about cutting people loose, it’s really a more gentle idea about how through our own good nature (and against our gut instincts) we sometimes keep people in our lives too long - surely it does both parties a disservice to stick with a relationship long after the fun has stopped?

Just before Unlove You, Marta said something that resonated strongly with me even though I’m a prose writer rather than a songwriter. It is that she finds it hard to communicate face-to-face and instead finds it easier to communicate through her music. It’s the same for all writers. We can think of the right words only after the moment has passed, and by then it is way too late.

The set ended with If I Never Loved You, which was really enjoyable and also quite rare because it doesn’t appear on the upcoming EP. So nearly all of Marta’s songs at Green Note were unreleased, and about to hit your favourite streaming service later in the year. They all went across really well with this discerning audience which convinced me the EP is going to do very well indeed.

You can find out more about Marta on Instagram and TikTok.

Charlotte Shaw

This was a thoroughly international afternoon. Charlotte Shaw hails from Perth in Western Australia and has turned her back on guaranteed scorching summers to try her hand living in London, where she has been based permanently for just over a year. Her British guitarist Freddie Bennett reminded me favourably of cricketer Alastair Cook, although my bus had just taken me past Lord’s cricket ground... I surprise myself sometimes at my own thought-processes.

I really loved Charlotte’s song Sometimes, during which she occasionally called to mind the iconic Dolores O'Riordan. Overthinking was written on her return to London last year and Bye Boys is one of her biggest singles with a video shot during a very long day in Greenwich in and around a famous pub, The Pelton Arms.

Charlotte duets with Freddie on Until the Next Day. She finished with Why which has already featured on BBC Introducing even before its release, and it was a strong end to a very likeable and strong performance that won over the audience. Why partly relates to the idea that you can meditate and journal your way to inner peace all you like, but you cannot fully prepare for the impact of a new and unexpected crush walking into the room.

I’m known to have a soft spot for Australian musicians, not least Kate Miller-Heidke, Georgia Mooney, Zoee Byrne and Isabella Richardson, and Charlotte is really bringing her A-game to her London music career!

You can find more about Charlotte on her website as well as Instagram and TikTok.

It turns out that Queen Anne’s Katie Silverman had been busy making a micro-drama of her own. Known provocatively as Cleavage, it refers to a different sort of cleavage to the one you are probably thinking of. The idea of separation between yourself and your creative persona. The splitting or cleaving of the two led to a memorable storyline on her socials recently. I have helpfully collected all the episodes so far below.

Just before you enjoy that, Katie Silverman also popped onto my big screen too, featuring as a student in High Potential, one of my current favourites on Disney Plus.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

To be continued...?

There is much more on Queen Anne, the best band you have yet to hear, on Instagram and on their own website. You can also buy and stream on Bandcamp. Queen Anne were picked out by 1883 magazine as a 2026 artist to watch.

Irreplaceable

The opening song is about a young girl called Vivienne who got married young and had three children. She is beautiful with pretty eyes. Tough and sweet when she needs to be. It all sounds perfect. Vivienne is the girl who is irreplaceable. She’s a role model for all women who prefers pearls over diamonds.

I’ve been listening to darker music this year so I was conditioned to expect a ‘but’ coming... but it never did. This is a simple song, a hymn to a best friend. Vivienne might have flaws but this song is not about that part of her. A strong start to a wonderful album. It was the first single released from this album, quite some time ago in 2024, and it has been a privilege to watch Emma’s career develop throughout 2026.

Countryside

Countryside is a little brighter and faster. A first person song about a love affair with an Amarillo cowboy. I don’t know how he coped when he had to move back to Detroit but he was not a true cowboy anyway. Nothing really matters except tobacco in the pastures. It was too much. She jumped on a Greyhound and went back south to the countryside.

I always thought I was a ‘town mouse’ (my daughter’s phrase) but a month of city living is enough for anyone, especially in this heat. I think we all need both. The countryside is a good place to create, but there are more stories to write about in the city. Yes, better to get home to Carolina. You can always spend a weekend in Detroit if you miss it that much.

Just Don’t

This one is just Emma and her guitar, at least at first, and really showcases her voice. After I heard Soul Horse a couple of months ago I thought she sounded like Natalie Maines in places. Here she is more controlled, more measured. This is a sad one about sinking boats and moving on. It has more of a swing to it, a gentle tune but with dramatic, sad lyrics. She’s tired of all those little things he tries to win her back but in the end he’s a just another big liar.

Highs and Lows

This one grabbed me immediately with loud drums and guitars. It’s a nighttime song. The singer’s mood is blue but she understands that the downs are just another part of life. The tears need riding out. You can’t have an up without a down. This might be the least country song on the album. I really like it. It feels like we’re blowing away the cobwebs from the somewhat melancholdy song before. It’s a proper driving song.

Secrets Are Safe

The singer is someone you can talk to who will actually listen. You can tell her anything and she won’t squeak. This is a really nice, cosy song. Even if you only ever hear these five songs you will become a convert to Emma’s world, but do check out the Soul Horse review below as well.

Emma is an incredible singer, of course, but her songwriting brings with it a certain wisdom. She’s been into music her whole life but she started pursuing music seriously in 2017, when she would have been only ten or eleven years old, shen she joined Ellington Studios in North Carolina. In 2022 she auditioned for and won a place at a workshop at The Electric Jane with the artist development agency, PCG.

She also has a varied life outside of music. She’s training to be a firefighter and EMT and is at agricultural college. And she’s a keen baker too! Where does she find the time?

You can read more about Emma’s journey on her website. As you would expect, she is active on Instagram and TikTok.

I’ve always loved Little Things for its Tom Petty-style intro and MC said that she enjoyed the experience of writing that song. They had only three months to write the debut album in Los Angeles. She told us that Bad is one of her favourites and that it is seriously popular in Germany. The northern Europeans have always been mad keen on American pop-rock music. If you want to know where to start your Miller Campbell journey, Bad is a good place. It showcases MC’s range and control, the way the song simmers along before boiling over in the chorus. There is something so clear in her voice, even at its loudest.

I want the night, I want the tide and sea
To pull you in closer and cover me
No river deep, or burning heat
Nothing’s gonna stall your way to me

All Night was one of the first songs written for her self-titled debut album and helped MC to set a course away from more traditional country. Certainly Miller’s early singles such as Your Turn to Cry around five years back were traditional country, and they’re great to listen to, but her first full-length album is much more towards pop-rock.

Miller has a good number of songs I have described as sad-angry love songs. Sometimes she starts off sad and wistful and gets progressively angry as the song unfolds. Sometimes it’s the other way around. But there is a complexity there that will keep you playing the songs over and over.

The song I learned the most about was Self Medicated. It was used on the soundtrack of a 2024 movie called Afraid, alongside some big names including Goldfrapp. MC described it as an AI robot movie. You can catch it on Netflix if you want to see what happens when a household AI assistant goes rogue. Whether or not that helps you decide to watch it, it is certainly topical.

There were two covers in the set. Miller’s sound is partly inspired by the Bangles and she has released Hero Takes A Fall as a single before but I had not seen her play it live. I didn’t detect any flickers of recognition in the audience... were there no Bangles fans there?

Contrast that to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, which fired everyone into spontaneous action. A group to my right cheered as soon as it began and the group to my left sang large sections of the song. As I’ve been putting the finishing touches to my own book about the band, it was a timely reminder of the Mac’s appeal across the generations and across the decades, exactly fifty years since the song was first recorded. And by the way, Miller did a brilliant version and seemed to really enjoy channelling Stevie Nicks.

One of the confusing things for an artist is that the songs don’t always get released when they are written. Her new single, For You, has only been out a couple of weeks and I enjoyed it live here for the fist time, though it was actually written right at the start of the work on the last album. She also played Side of You and Problem from the upcoming second album, which should be with you in the autumn.

For You is really strong live. Every so often I reflect on the live experience, even the hi-fi experience as contrasted to the streamed AirPod music experience. There’s no point trying to figure out if one era was better or worse than another. Things just are, or they’re not. But listening to Miller’s vinyl on the turntable with the walls of the house vibrating, followed by the live show that evening, is surely music at its best. For You was also a solo Miller on guitar for the first half of the song. That voice again. There’s nowhere to hide in a small venue with only an acoustic guitar and it is clear that both Natalie Shay and Miller Campbell have enormous careers ahead of them.

If music is best live then that is partly because it becomes a communal experience, like watching a movie at a cinema. The audience ranged broadly in ages and tastes. We were all drawn together for a couple of hours for a collective experience. I’ve grown to love these smaller venues in the year I’ve been writing this Substack. They are so different from the arenas. You get to really hear the artist as well as hear from them about their writing process or where and when a song emerged.

This was Miller’s final show of the tour that has taken her from Ireland to England, Sweden and back to England. The pro musician’s life involves a lot of travel and a lot of late nights and I wrongly assumed a week back in the log cabin in Montana was in order. Instead, Miller somehow managed to write a song yesterday and was out of bed early to record a demo of it at Rak Studios near Regent’s Park in London before catching a late flight to Seattle for a west coast tour!

You can catch Miller Campbell on August 11 at Madrona Playfield in Seattle and a lunchtime show the very same day at the Symetra Center. She regularly plays in and around Bigfork, Montana where she has been based for the last several years. She posts regularly on both Instagram and TikTok. Her own website is here.

Natalie Shay

I had spent the morning spinning a few Natalie Shay tracks from her latest EP, ATMOSPHERE. I knew she attended the BRIT school and had been pursuing a music career since her early teens. As I took my seat I was completely unaware that I was next to three members of her fan club. Only later did I see they were all wearing bright yellow branded T-shirts. It was a heartwarming sight. A first for Natalie as well: it was her first time performing in the Pizza Express basement. She exuded bouncy energy and asked a lot of her guitar.

She introduced Like You Boy as her most-streamed song, expressing surprise at its appeal. Something all writers find difficult is to predict which words will resonate the most, which songs or which stories. You just don’t know, but she was surprised that a quieter acoustic song had done so well. Hate To Say It also stood out. Natalie wrote Taking It Out On You aged 14 and she said it was the nearest thing in her discography to a country song.

Natalie Shay is a wonderfully engaging live performer, full of humour and energy and it would be great to see one of her own headline shows. She certainly found a few new fans in this audience!

You can learn more about Natalie Shay on her website, Instagram and TikTok.

Pizza Express Live

This was also my first time at Pizza Express Live and I want to take a moment to recommend it. It’s a great way to experience live music if that’s not something you normally do. A year ago I certainly found it daunting to watch live music on my own for the first time in years. The Pizza Express venues give you a familiar environment, you don’t have to order food if you don’t want to, and you get very (very, very) close to the music. It was the most chilled of all the venues I have been to and helps you plot a course through the smaller venues like Moth Club, the Water Rats or the 100 Club, and up towards Oslo or Bush Hall. Sometimes watching a movie or listening to music on your own lets you focus more on the experience in front of you.

In Secret Garden, we’re in a minor key right from the start. She’s been living with the lights down low, and not for the first time. The singer finds it hard to open up to new relationships and is aware of this trait. If she’s going to let you in, it has to be 100% commitment. It’ll be worth it, but it feels like she holds all the power. The decision is hers alone. Doubts must be left at the door.

In the second half of the song there are clear dance-floor vibes. It calls to mind the best ‘90s dance and rave bangers. Slow dancing, yes, but there is a definite dance groove. For fans of Dancing with the Stars it is also giving Argentine Tango. Or the Paso Doble, with the woman as the cape. But in Zoee’s version she is the matador, barefoot. Zoee has said the following about Secret Garden:-

"Secret Garden is about trusting someone enough to hand them the key. It's sensual and vulnerable. We all have parts of ourselves we keep hidden, but the song is about that magical moment when you finally let somebody in."

I really enjoyed Butterfly Efffect last summer. It was the record I turned to when in need of cheering up. Even True Crime was sort of funny. The first three singles of 2026 have all been a little sadder, more reflective, sometimes nostalgic. Some might say these songs cover more adult themes, that they’re more grown-up somehow. But surely adults don’t have to be sad every day?

You can pre-save all of Zoee’s music here and follow the rest of her journey.

It is Triton V8 that Chloe releases today. Before we listen, it might be worth mentioning that a Triton V8 is actually an engine, not a vehicle. To add to the confusion, British fans are more likely to think of Triton classic motorcycles. I’m already starting to regret that hour on Google. Maybe she does mean the motorbikes?

British country music fans have had to educate themselves on all manner of vintage vehicles. The car that sprang to mind first was the Chevrolet El Camino: it’s a car from the front and a truck from the rear. The Triton meanwhile is designed for Ford trucks and other utility vehicles and one can imagine it guzzles gas like it’s going out of fashion [It is. Ed.] while sounding like July 4th fireworks.

There’s a Colorado cowboy
Sitting in Durango
I wonder how quick he is

Today’s song is inspired by life on the road as a working musician. Maybe the third or fourth thing I learned about CK is that she does a lot of miles. There is no way to exaggerate this. She drives a lot of them herself and appears to be on the road every week. I am given to understand she recently flew back from Finland, surely a 10-hr flight, then jumped in a car without sleep to travel to the next gig, pausing only for a shower. Even if this is only half right it is impressive.

No hard act to follow
Gonna keep my act in line
When the miles become tomorrow
I’m alone again each time

There are a lot of words in Triton V8. One of its attractions is that you figure out another line every time you listen. It has a steady rhythm that would be just as good on a train ride as a road trip. And yes, she’s still swigging and swallowing Coors Light to help the nights pass, possibly with a little grass.

Daredevil

Chloe has also recently announced an October release date for her second album, Daredevil, in which she appears in a sort of Evel Knievel jumpsuit. I think she is about to be fired out of a cannon. It is available for pre-order already and she has this to say about the meandering journey it has taken her on.

"Daredevil is a product of my consideration of fear. These songs come from my own leaning into and up against it, acknowledging joy and abundance in its negative space. I made this record independently, a labor of love and severe will made possible by the support of my friends and family. Being a songwriter, touring musician and especially an unsigned independent artist for all of the last decade has felt akin to what I can only imagine it is like to be a stuntman shooting oneself out of a cannon into an unknown abyss and hoping to stick the landing. I remain challenged and humbled endeavoring forth in this industry, and do so with gratitude. This album is a reflection of my life as I currently feel it, looking fear in the eye and holding tight to as much thanksgiving for this life’s offerings as I can grip.”

I found this striking because the very last thing I associate with CK is fear. Where other musicians sing about being in a bar at 4am in a low place, worrying about the future and dwelling on the past, Chloe exudes fun and hijinks, japes and painful laughter. The nearest she got to a bar song was the unforgettable Coors Light, and that is also funny as hell. Every silver lining has its cloud and alas you will have to wait a few more months for the rest of the album, but it will be worth the wait.

Chloe Kimes has a wonderful way with words and knows how to put a catchy tune together. Her website has all the information and I hardly need to mention is on tour right now. Chloe is a regular on both Instagram and TikTok. And she is completely independent so head on over to Bandcamp to pre-order her sophomore album, Daredevil.

It was summer-time music, typically bright, loud, upbeat and Californian or at least somewhere a lot sunnier than northern England. The video sealed the deal: Miller was having such enormous fun blasting out these songs that I immediately bought into her music. Her voice is just so loud and clear somehow. She’s a natural.

I knew Miller had spent the winter working on a new album, only her second, and I was keen to hear more. Then, a few weeks ago, she released the first track off that album, For You. I understand it was written a while ago, alongside some songs from her self-titled debut album but it feels darker, sadder. There is often a wistful melancholy behind Miller’s songs.

Sometimes when I’m driving all alone again,
I get in my head
Sometimes when I see the city lights in bed,
I remember when the lights just felt like ours
When we said goodbye
Oh you’re still the only one on my mind

Her songs are lively and bright and are best played very loud. But they often speak of separation, of distance, or heartbreak. It’s a kind of sad angriness that makes it more believable and totally human, totally her. She’s annoyed but still sad while also preparing herself for another round.

For You captured my imagination rightaway, not least because she chose to put a famous London bridge on the cover. Not ‘the’ London Bridge, of course (this has caused confusion in America in times gone by) but Tower Bridge, the one with the famous roadway that lifts up for boats. It’s a winter song, a winter photograph, and it just grows on you the more you listen. It is achingly sad, almost haunting, and the perfect song for a city snowstorm.

Every night I told you all my pretty lies,
It would buy me time
From falling back asleep without you waking next to me,
I think of when
The lights just felt like ours

Miller was one of the first artists to really latch onto my writing last year, and we would message every couple of months. When I heard she was coming to London this month for a short tour of the UK, Ireland and Sweden, the first thing I did was buy a ticket for the Holborn show on August 5th. The second thing I did was try to get hold of her for a short chat. I just asked the most obvious questions I could think of that I had not seen answered anywhere else.

What do you enjoy most about touring in the UK?

Miller: “I love touring over there so much because I think UK audiences tend to dive deeper into the music. They always ask more questions about the lyrics and the meanings behind songs. They look up the catalogue. They seem really involved when they go out to see an artist. It’s a lot less of a passive experience when I play there.”

Why did you choose London’s Tower Bridge for the artwork on For You?

Miller: “I chose Tower Bridge for the artwork because I love the iconography of it. I took that photo when I was in London on my very first tour run. And so it was winter, it was cold, it was gray. And I was just kind of like scrolling through and this is exactly what I was writing about. And I didn’t really realize it. That feeling of just... you’re alone but with a lot of people around you.”

What can you tell us about the second album?

Miller: “So you know that For You is the first single. The second single is a cover of a Radiohead song called Let Down… I’m so excited! The rest of the record is going to roll out through the fall and winter. It’s ready to go.”

Are you all ready for the tour?

Miller: “It’s going to be a really intimate, fabulous show. It’s a presentation of the album and a really great preview of what’s to come. And it’s your chance to get to see it up close and personal versus on some of the other tour runs. It’s a different type of venue. I’m going to bring a trio for sure.”

Miller was calling from her log cabin, I kid you not, deep in the Montana hills, or woodlands, or… just imagine wilderness. She lives in the middle of nowhere and seems full of energy, happy and relaxed there. It’s the perfect antidote to life on the road and in the big cities.

The London gig will be Miller’s only London headline show in 2026 and it will be an intimate evening at the air-conditioned (phew!) Pizza Express Live venue in Holborn. She is performing as a trio, so you will get the full pop-rock Miller Campbell experience. I have seen her live at Bush Hall doing a solo show and that was seriously impressive. Her voice really shines in that context, but I am beyond excited to see her with the band this summer.

Miller Campbell posts regularly on both Instagram and TikTok. Her cover of Let Down is out soon!

Known to gossip with full moons and greet the rising sun, Los Angeles native Niina Soleil has a heart that beats in one long love letter to California. An architect of technicolor dreams, Niina is liquid sunshine splashed with country twang. She is a go-go-boot-wearing siren with an imagination as vivid and doomed as a tarot reading. She resuscitates the lilting melodies of seventies pop with vocals that transition seamlessly from melancholy to playful, sincere to chiding.

Gossiping with the moon! Hello Kitty Coen fans! This one is for you. And my algorithm thinks there are similarities with Cat Burns and Donna Missal too.

Although the new album is not quite out yet, there are several singles to plot a course by. The title, CALIFORNIALAND, immediately called to mind that long-forgotten housing development called HOLLYWOODLAND. Perhaps you have heard of it?

Music should be about the music, of course. We all agree on that. The music needs to be A1 to cut through the noise these days. (Is that A-One or AI? Ed.) But when an artist brings a look, a persona and a ZFG attitude it really helps, and just one reel from Niina convinced me that she is the full package.

There are a few contemporary artists that really sell an attitude, not least Kassi Ashton and Cyrena Wages. They bring the music, of course, but they bring that little bit more somehow, the icing on the cake. The coke on the mirror. This might be the land of the Valley of the Dolls, that iconic Jacqueline Susann novel.

My favourite of the new ones was the first, Welcome to the Dream. This is when the party is just getting going. Kick off your shoes, chillax. This is the best place on earth. But is that lady in the middle really human? She’s either on drugs or a robot. Oh no, is it too soon to leave? Even this banging optimisitic opener is tinged with warning signs.

Welcome to the Dream of California!
Come on, swim the seas where I was born-ia!
Kick off your shoes, kick off your blues,
But baby, I should warn ya-
Things ain't all they seem

Ramblin’ runs it a close second. It called to mind Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel. I love it. It’s a great chuggin’ driving song. Not too slow to open up the V8 on the dark desert highway.

In Life & Times of a Wannabe Rockstar we have a moment of reflection. A quiet opening with only an acoustic guitar, this one really shows Niina’s range. And yes, you need both eyes, it’s not Nina.

Sleep in your denim and stay up for the sunrise
Empty bellies sing elegies of last night
We're crawling into the light
Life and times of a wannabe rockstar

Every song has something different to offer. I was drawn to Happy Pills, partly through my own experiences with such. The last of the new ones, actually the most recent to be released, is Tequila Tears. This is a darker, Amy Winehouse vibe.

I tell him, "Listen to yourself and take a hint-
It wasn't like she was some saint, can't you admit
That she was cruel to you?"
But he just sighs and rolls his eyes.
"She was the devil,
But I could never tell her no."
Tequila tears begin to roll

You can catch Niina on tour right now! Well, in August. Tickets here. Her full website is here and you can find her links and email list here.

A friend recommended him to me and I am really glad they did. Cameron offers something different, and his recent album CRK arrives at the perfect moment to help us calm down and cool off in the hottest summer for half a century.

Cameron Knowler’s main focus is the guitar, and typically an acoustic guitar, and making the guitar the star of the show. As well as playing his own instrumental music, he plays as a sideman based out of Nashville, although he spends a lot of time over in LA too.

His journey is as fascinating as it is unusual. Cameron grew up in a desert town in Arizona, famous for growing nearly all the lettuces in the whole of the USA (I know!) and a high school that used to be a prison. It sounds like the perfect starting point for a road movie, or possibly a horror movie.

One of Cameron’s key inspirations was Norman Blake, a legend in roots and folk music. Cameron also teaches and talks eloquently about the guitar in various podcasts and YouTube videos. It feels like the guitar is the anchor for his musical life but he is also a keen student of its history and future.

“Pure musical expression pulling from over a hundred years of American folk history but still feels unburdened by the past and looks sharply towards the future of what the guitar can be. Everything you want from an instrumental guitar record is all here.”
– Hayden Pedigo

As regular readers of the Vibes will be aware, I tend to focus on the lyrics and the story behind a song. Without a song to write about, I have found the writing process to be more lateral and pleasurably challenging. Can an instrument tell as good a story as a poem or song lyric? I argue that yes, it can. Knowing about Cameron’s desert upbringing and watching his tutorial on George Riley Puckett, another legend, helps me understand his approach.

One problem I have always had with punchy songs, especially with drums and electric guitars, is that they can sometimes be a little too engaging. It surely isn’t healthy to blast Born in the USA out of a convertible car stereo in July, fun though it might sound. There’s no way you can keep below the speed limit.

So often, especially when driving at night, I will turn to BBC Radio 3. It might not be very famous in Tennessee but it provides a mix of more mindful music from the old classic orchestras to roots and folk music, but it’s nearly always instrumental.

At college, one of my room mates was an avid fan of John Williams. My friend was a pretty solid guitarist in his own right and went to every John Williams concert he could find. If you are thinking, as we all did, that it’s the guy who wrote the music for Jaws and ET you would be entirely wrong. It didn’t appeal to me back then, but it really does now in our overloaded, over-stimulated black mirror world.

There’s something extra special about guitars. The best ones are handmade, a process I learned a lot about last year when covering Regina Ferguson and Emmanuelle Pickett’s documentary about the making of Regina’s Ren Ferguson guitar called Lucky. I found out that a guitar maker is a luthier.

The guitar was the one instrument we all wanted to play when we were teenagers, and there is still something magical about it. It is an inherently analogue instrument in a digital world. You can’t get an AI robot to play one, unlike the keyboard or synth. It is heartening and inspirational to find, in Cameron Knowler, a Gen Z artist so committed to the future (and the history) of the guitar. It is the absolute antithesis and antidote to all the claptrap we are forced to listen to about doing things the artificial way.

Cameron is clearly a gifted guitarist and I’ve really enjoyed playing his music over the last week or so. If you’re quick there is still time to catch his UK and Ireland tour this week!

Cameron Knowler is also a prose writer. His writing can be found at Acoustic Guitar Magazine and Fretboard Journal. Click HERE for an in-depth interview with Cameron on the Fretboard Journal podcast. His instrumental music can be found on Bandcamp.

I always hate July
So slowly creeping by
And suddenly it ends
And it’s August again

The thing I like most about traditional country songs, which are often a little slower and with a swing to them, is that they showcase the lyrics and storytelling. Whatever you think of July, you might well have changed your mind by the end of this song. Does it feel like the year is running away from you? We’re past half-way now. Have you planned Halloween? Any thoughts about Christmas?

My clothes don’t seem to fit
And I can’t get over it

I can just about remember when we had a different climate. Summer here used to be August, really, the main month of the school holidays. But now it is June that is nice, July is too hot and August is basically autumn. In a world without air conditioning (you guys never can get your head around that!) then anything over 30 degrees is monstrous. Because it always comes with crazy humidity. And 30 here is really 86 in Texas! We have had several days nudging 100 with humidity around 50% or higher.

Maths lesson over. There are more serious matters at hand. We just doubled our stock of fans. To 2. Like I said, no AC except in the cars. Some people have gone for a drive just to cool off.

And this skin don’t feel like mine
There’s way too many lines
I pass the mirrors by
So I don’t see what I look like

I didn’t much like July when I first heard this song, and now I truly hate it. But what is KC’s favourite month? Surely she would hate January too?

Katrina Cain is absolutely brilliant and brings unexpected takes on modern life to the party. She has her own website and is (still reluctantly!) available on Instagram and TikTok. My personal preference is always the email list.

If, like me, you thought Erewhon was Nowhere spelled backwards and the name of an 1872 novel by Samuel Butler, you would be wrong on both counts. As everyone knows, Erewhon is in fact the store in Los Angeles for all manner of groovy goods, not least toiletries and beauty. They also do a line of ready-to-go drinks, so I’m told, and cannot open new outlets fast enough to satisfy demand. Sort of a Whole Foods Market on steroids, althought not steroids because they’re not natural.

Armed with this knowledge, Anna’s latest song makes perfect sense.

Anna May told us: “When I first wrote Crying at Erewhon, I wanted a recording that reflected the analog echo and golden-brimmed recordings of LA favorites like the Mamas and the Papas, the Carpenters, and the Beach Boys… to really give the song the glistening glow that it deserved, but I decided that it would be too dated and I wanted the song to sound like something brand new. I think that it totally does.”

For someone who hardly ever visits California, I enjoyed the name checking of various areas and neighbourhoods. Places I have heard of before, places I have not. Whereas an Anna May song will typically be more universal and not tied to place, this one is the complete opposite. Were it not such a sad vibe you can imagine a licensing deal.

Anna shows us that it is possible to be sad and angry but also funny at the same time. She cannot understand, and I share her confusion, why men seem to be singularly unequipped for adult relationships. I generally take the easy way out and just say that it must be American men who behave this way, that British men never would.

Perhaps this one is a little more like The Cliff than Fireflies and Buffalo. By that I mean there is more of the humour, slightly more literal lyrics. It’s a little bit shorter than her average at only six minutes. I’ve been listening for weeks and I can say it grows on you very much. I still smile when it comes on.

Anna is so busy touring that she doesn’t have long to mourn the loss of another relationship as she cradles another smoothie. There is always another plane ticket waiting to be used in the drawer. This is one of my favourite Anna May songs because although she might be sad, she can still come out with funny sarcasm. She might be down for now, but she hasn’t been knocked out.

Anna May thinks deeply about the world and her music, and performs so often it is tiring just following her on Instagram. You can catch up with Anna May on her own website and on all the usual streaming services. Anna is also active on YouTube.

When I first saw the title of this one I really did believe it would be a light-hearted summer song. I was naive. I now realise I don’t want or need a light song from CW. I’ve always been into Stephen King and David Lynch. You might compare this one to Lana Del Rey but there’s no need. There are a few indie contemporary artists who appear happy and bubbly IRL but deeply dark in their music like Zandi Holup and Kitty Coen. Their sadness makes us happy.

As you might expect, this is no ordinary day trip. As far as I can make out, this is a different sort of trip altogether. There are hints of drugs and insomnia. She’s married now, but she’s still crazy AF and she knows you wouldn’t want it any other way. We were born to be wild... words that sound familiar somehow from a classic song about biker gangs.

We got drunk by design
Bored with the everyday
Planning a great escape

“Kisses drippin’ off me like wine” is a great line. The singer is known to be a fan of red wine, and (heaven forbid) has been known to put ice cubes in it. I’m told that is all the rage now. Not fully chilled red wine as such, but certainly not summer room temperature either, which in this heatwave would be as hot as black coffee. If you’re not putting the red in the fridge you’re missing a trick.

Writers of all kinds find their heads full of one too many thoughts. In that sense writing becomes an impulse, a way to explore and dilute the voices, to reduce their volume. Cyrena sometimes labels this as being ‘heady’, someone with too much going on upstairs to be quite the full shilling.

What has been thrilling over the last year has been watching her explore these characters and personas not only in her music but also on socials and even here on Substack. If you think you have a house guest or two in your head, imagine what it would be like with a full village fete going on up there. Or a picnic from Alice in Wonderland.

These songs are harder to write about than Vanity Project, Cyrena’s brilliant debut album. There’s rarely a neat, tidy story that explains itself. They’re deep and difficult, dealing with big feelings. There is talk of death and something like betrayal. There is love, but the dark sort. The life or death sort. The Catherine Earnshaw sort.

A little bit of empathy
Just a touch insanity
Baby we were born to be wild

The vocal delivery is deliberately muted, unusual for a CW song, and it makes me wonder if the singer is even alive. Could she be a ghost? She sings about the past. But what of the present? Did everyone make it out alive?

You can stream Daytrippin in all the usual places and find out more on CW’s website. You can presave sophomore album Miss Melancholia! here.

It was always written as a country song, but I first put it out in a different direction. After playing it live over time, the audience reaction has been really consistent. People kept asking for the original version, so I decided to finally release it properly.

This version is a stripped-back folk ballad built around the idea of “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and it features a collaboration with folk/singer-songwriter Ed Tattersall, who brings a really special tone to the track.

There was a lot for me to dig into with this one, because of course I went straight away to listen to the earlier single. I loved them both at first listen, and I love nothing more than following different versions of a song as it evolves through time.

See this girl, she's a woman
Trying hard to make her mark
Don't tell me I'm too young to understand it
I've been down to hell and back

There is a lot of sadness in the song, and perhaps more so in this new country version. I found the saddest idea to be that there are so many people in the world she will never have the time to meet all of them. That’s one of the things that separates a prose writer from a songwriter: that same thought fills me with dread! I’d much rather have a DM parasocial friendship than stumble out into the real world, eyes blinking against a hot sun.

There are so many people out there to meet
There are too many lives that I could live
And so few hours to spend my days
Don’t be fooled by all the numbers
Or by all the words that I write

This makes it even more surprising that I actually ran into Pien IRL at Lil Nashville, Chiswick a few weeks ago. She was sadly not performing that day but there are several opportunities to catch her live this summer. And yes, Pien is her real first name!

Pien is an Indie-Americana artist based between London and the Netherlands, and she would definitely appeal to fans of Ella Langley, Suki Waterhouse, Fleetwood Mac and Kacey Musgraves. So basically everyone in the world, including you. I am also a new fan of Suki Waterhouse, who played the ‘sort-of’ Christine McVie character in Daisy Jones and the Six.

You can get tickets to see Pien this summer here. You can catch her in London several times as well as Isle of Wight, Chichester, Hertford, Worcester and others. Her website is here. You can of course catch her on Instagram and TikTok too!

Back in 2008, before Spotify and before Netflix really got going, HBO ruled the airwaves. I was not a father and not a husband and if you wanted anything other than BBC you had to get something called a satellite dish because where I live cable TV was never a thing.

2008 was the year we bought our first house and it was in Buckinghamshire and it came with a pre-loaded satellite dish. In a dark, wet and grey country like ours, there was only one thing to do and that was to get Sky. Shortly after that, when F1 moved to Sky, it became an essential part of our home entertainment.

At exactly this moment in history, HBO had decided that Charlaine Harris’s vampire novels, totally unknown in the UK, deserved a bigger audience. They cast the ethereal Anna Paquin as Sookie Stackhouse and put together the most terrifying opening credits I have ever seen, in which maggots eat a dog carcass. We gulped. This was our sort of thing.

True Blood had all the glamour, sex, death and music you could ever wish for and it deserved its enormous audience. It might be the only TV series I ever bought the soundtrack for and of course, this being 2008, it was on CD. We still have the disc in the loft but I immediately ripped the CD onto my hard drive and put it on something we called an iPod so I could listen on the move.

In the days when people actually bought music as a physical object, we really used to listen hard. Speaking only metaphorically, I wore that disc out. There was no plastic left on it, it was just that rainbow piece of foil left.

On that disc was a catchy song called The Golden State that became my favourite. I had never heard of John Doe but it turns out that he had an enormous acting career, the longest-running show of which was Roswell, which fit into my UFO-heavy early 2000s very well. I was still Paul Charles back then and not quite sure if aliens had arrived or not. Now I know they have not.

Roswell came at the end of the linear TV era when US studios thought a series was 20 or 25 episodes. Which means that although the show lasted only three years, there are no fewer than 61 episodes. That would be six or eight seasons now.

Anyway, nobody here knew who John Doe was but his song on True Blood was a duet with a similarly anonymous singer called Kathleen Edwards. I loved that song so much I began digging and I bought her third album, Asking for Flowers. She just had something special.

What that was is harder to describe. What Kitty had was a certain look at life that seemed very English. Full of wry humour, quiet humour, sarcasm and cynicism. The very title, Asking for Flowers, says a lot. What kind of a relationship is it when she has to ask him to buy her flowers? It calls to mind a more recent song, Gas Station Flowers, by Zandi Holup, another girl with an eye for the humour that can hide in despair.

The Cheapest Key is a musician’s song, in a way, but is just as accessible. It is also full of a certain kind of humour. It starts of with a simple ABC of how terrible her guy is. F is for... yes, you guessed it. But then comes a line that stuck with me.

Here comes my softer side
[WHOOSH!]
And there it goes...

The narrator is a hard woman, ballsy, strong. But she has her limits and this jerk is on the way out. It’s brilliant and remains my favourite on the whole album, closely followed by I Make The Dough.

This week, I played Sure As Shit while cooking and my wife asked if it was Joni Mitchell. Edwards can do any kind of song. I like the catchy-angry songs with some drums, but she does the girl-guitar acoustic thing brilliantly too.

A couple of years later, Edwards released her fourth studio album, Voyageur. What I had no way of knowing was this. Over in Nashville, a sixteen year-old singer-songwriter called Isabella Richardson was at the record store to buy Voyageur. Not Voyager, you understand, but Voyageur. The u makes it more French, more interesting, or maybe more Canadian. It might even mean something slightly different.

Voyageur was a bigger deal than Asking for Flowers. This was 2012, the year the Olympics came home to London and no lesser authority than the BBC wrote a review of Voyageur which you can read. It was the year she appeared on Letterman, and not for the first time.

It might not be an exagerration to say that Voyageur changed Issy Richardon’s life. She was the age my daughter is now, so I can imagine a little of her reaction. Back in those days, our teen days, music was the most important thing. We watched a lot of movies and TV shows but music was diffferent. Music was the only thing you could put on in your bedroom. Only the rich kids had bedroom TVs. Music was something you could control, independently of your parents, and with headphones they had no idea what you had on.

This is how important Kathleen Edwards was to the young Issy Richardson.

Oh myyyyy!! I first heard of her when I was 16 years old in Nashville, TN. Her album Voyageur is a masterpiece that I was undoubtedly striving to live up to as an artist ever since. It’s not only been in my top five albums but it’s linked to every moment in my life happy or sad (big moment or small). I always go back and listen to it when I want to feel like coming back to me. She somehow captures this essence that is indescribable. Lyrically and musically!

Fifteen years later, Voyageur is still in Issy’s top five albums and still her inspiration as a songwriter. Just think about that! I will ask what her other 4 albums are and come back to you. Issy also disclosed that she wants the song Sure As Shit to be played at her wedding.

As I came to learn this year, Isabella would leave Nashville for LA and begin what looked like being an enormous commercial music career until the pandemic sent her back home to Australia. That must hurt, at least a bit, but the end result of everything was that Issy ended up in Buckinghamshire near me. I know! Nashville, California, Australia... Buckinghamshire.

Had Isabella stayed in LA she would have had competition up the wazoo. It is very difficult to get noticed and to stay noticed in that town. But I can assert without fear of contradiction that she is the biggest star in the small town she lives in today. I cannot name the town in case that guy from First Aid Kit, her debut EP, catches up with her.

As I listen to Voyageur for the first time, I wonder whether Empty Threat spoke loudly to Isabella. It is about whether the singer, a Commonwealth expat, will move to America. When Isabella heard this, she had already made that leap, a leap that would not remain an empty threat for Edwards either.

I loved Billionaire, Edwards’ latest studio album, when it came out last year, but I was only streaming it at the time. This year I bought it on MP3, the year I kicked Spotify off my phone and plugged in my NAS hard drive with all those old CDs still on it. Such a device will cost you about $250 but will last fifteen or twenty years and you can still stream to your phone using Plex. It becomes an asset you can pass down, and when you reach my age, passing stuff down becomes more of a live issue.

I had the idea to write this piece when I saw Kitty’s viral reel about her frustrations with social media. A new friend of mine, Katrina Cain, with her angelic voice so pure that it caused the judges to spin around on The Voice, has been posting about the evils of social media as well. My generation will never understand why your generation thinks social media matters in any way.

Algorithms and the data behind them is my day job. The last thing I need at home is to be worrying about how many views my post got, and what % of them were men or were aged over 40. Nobody cares. It’s not that deep, guys.

Let me try to explain what is deep though.

For the best part of 20 years I have been buying and playing the music of Kathleen Edwards, and so has Isabella Richardson, even though we lived in different worlds at different times. This means, I am certain of it, that there are thousands upon thousands of men and women of all ages, all around the world, playing the music of Kathleen Edwards.

This won’t show up on any social media dashboard because many of the albums came out before streaming. My Kitty Edwards collection does not sit on a server owned by Daniel Ek in the Mojave Desert, destroying the cactus and drying out what little water there is or killing the lizards and killing the dreams of teenaged singer-songwriters. My music collection lives on a windowsill in my house. It has a little blue light to tell me it is working, and I can play the stuff on my phone and on my Sonos and in my car.

This is the real music business, and this is real music for real music fans. It is not often I finish a piece with a tear in my eye but I need Kathleen Edwards to read this, and to understand how important she remains to me and countless others she will never hear from.

You can catch up with all the Kathleen Edwards music here.

Stella is sometimes referred to as an old soul, which is a phrase the comes up a lot but is rarely this well-deserved. If you read to the end you can watch her perform For What It’s Worth (the Stephen Stills protest song from 1966 that is at least as relevant today) in a guitar factory. She loves the 1960s, she loves the guitar, and she loves Joni too.

This is what she said about her new single:

“I wanted to record my own version of For What It’s Worth because I truly believe it is the most timely song for 2026. It resonates not only with me, but everyone in my generation - Gen Z - as a wake up call to where we are in these wild times. It’s as relevant now as it was in 1966. And recording it in Laurel Canyon 60 years after its original release made it all the more full circle.”

Stella Prince often claims to have chosen a career in music at the age of only four, and first performed in public aged 5. I admire the focus and honesty. She’s not defensive about it, like a British person might be. It’s a simple fact. The difference between Stella and the rest of us is that she stuck to her goal, even through all the inevitable setbacks. I first wanted to be a writer around nine or ten but got totally fed up with the submission process in my twenties and started self-publishing, got a day job. Stella just motored through all of that doubt, and her determination is paying off. You can watch her chatting about her career on the video below, which starts with a live performance of For What It’s Worth.

One reason Stella wanted to do a Q&A with us is that she is coming back to London in August. She’s doing not one, not two, but three shows at the atmospheric Green Note in Camden. One of those is an afternoon slot if it’s a bit of a journey or, like me, you prefer to be in bed with the cocoa by ten. And if you prefer festivals, you can find her at the brilliant Long Road Festival in Lutterworth.

Stella answered so many questions in our rapid fire Q&A that I have split them into sections. Enjoy!

Q & A: Touring

Favourite thing about London/UK? Their incredible appreciation for music. Lainey Wilson always says she could sell out her UK tour years before she could do that in the US.

When were you last in the UK? In June 2025. I played Folk in the Garden in London.

Where else do you enjoy touring the most? I have done the classic Southwest run 3 times- and it’s my favorite. I’m doing it again this summer. San Diego to Seattle and back down. And I love Europe.

Q & A: Music

Lyrics or music first? Always music. Every melody has a personality.

How long have you been a pro musician? Since I was 4. I started voice lessons at 4, and performing publicly at 5.

Are you from a musical family? Not at all! I am the only musician in my family. But my parents are very creative (a painter and a writer).

When did you first decide to make a career/life in music? When I was 4 I knew this is what I had to do. I was just born with this. I wanted an agent, a manager, everything. At 4.

Favourite single so far? The Replay.

When is the album coming out? September 2026.

Do you find it easy to separate the music from the business side? In this day and age, no. As an independent artist, you have to handle so much of the business side yourself. A lot of my time is spent creating graphics, making travel plans, etc. It really goes hand in hand.

Q & A: Misc

Is Stella Prince your real name? Sure is! Born with it!

Star sign? Gemini.

Do you think you live up to it? I am a Gemini through and through.

Favourite thing about Laurel Canyon? It feels like a time capsule from the ‘60s.

Tell me about your small local business partnerships? Yes, I am so excited about this! I have partnered with 7 different local small businesses to do meetups and meet and greets on my summer tour.

As we mentioned, Stella is on her way to England! You can book all her worldwide tour stops here including Green Note, London and Long Road Festival, UK. You can watch her perform FWIW below, and there’s an interview at the end.

Lilly Winwood had become a fascinating musician for me. I had been drawn to her original songs by the cover she did of Higher Love with her dad. That was recorded years ago, when she was still at school, but I only heard it around December 2024.

Steve Winwood has been a constant presence in my life not only through that song, played everywhere on heavy rotation throughout the ‘80s, but through his song High Life, and especially when Warren Zevon covered it. It turns out that Steve Winwood could only write hit records beginning with the letters H and L. [Not true. ‘Back in the High Life Again’ is its full title. Ed.]

You can read a longer account of my year in music below.

Another early highlight of my year in music was discovering Lola Kirke, just a few weeks before her movie Sinners came out. I warmed to Lola for the same reasons I had warmed to Lilly.

Although Lilly grew up in England and sounds British, Lola was born in London and is the only one of the Kirke sisters to sound American. But with two British parents instead of one, Lola understood British humour and could do a pitch-perfect middle-aged English lady of the manor accent: her mother.

Better yet, both of Lola’s parents come from old English money and are descended from the aristocracy. I quickly began to associate the Kirke sisters with the Mitford sisters. I read Lola’s book, also then new out, Wild West Village. For a while, I might have been clinically obsessed. I met her on Thanksgiving in London and she signed my book. I believe the only way to experience her album Trailblazer in full colour is to read her book while you listen.

However the most surprising aspect of my reading and writing about those two is that it allowed me to follow the dots to other musicians. It was through Lilly that I met Cyrena Wages. Lola brought me into contact with Chloe Kimes, a singer so talented and tasteful that she recognised me in London. My brother has never forgotten that day. Lola also introduced me to Willow Avalon and… Katie Pearlman.

It was February 2026 when KP messaged me out of the blue. I don’t know why she chose that day or why she chose me, but I was surprised. My writing had focused on people at the beginning of their journey, people perhaps well-known in their local areas who had day jobs, or who were starting to tour nationally in America, possibly planning their first UK shows.

Katie Pearlman was not someone I expected to hear from. She has written songs for Sabrina Carpenter and Kelly Clarkson and I could not believe she wanted me to write about her upcoming album. The more I played her music, new and old, and the more I read her Substack and researched her life, the more admiration I felt.

KP’s bio is a line from the Edie Brickell classic What I Am and she identifies as Lilith Fair. I remember Lilith Fair first-hand, not through the thrilling Disney+ documentary. I am old enough to have seen Sheryl Crow play for just 400 people in Manchester.

Like Lola, Katie is Jewish. the -man suffix on a family name is a dead giveaway, like Dettmann. Many Jewish-German families ditched the duplicated N to make themselves look less German... really odd when you think about it too long. Improbably, and absolutely not amusingly, one of my ancestors was Hermann Dettmann.

The reason people sometimes ask me to write stuff for them is presumably the same reason Katie’s songs resonate across continents and across generations. I really do my homework, I dig deep, I look beyond the obvious, and certainly beyond the music. What fascinates me is a good story.

That story might be found in the lyrics, like in a good ole country narrative song like Goodbye Earl, another thing I remember from the first time around, before the Chicks were called the Chicks. A great story might be found in the backstory of the songwriter too, and the people who affect me the most deeply are when those two things happen at the same time. That’s what authenticity means to me.

The thing about Katie Pearlman, and Lola actually, and so many of the musicians I write about is that they don’t understand how great they are. All artists are affected by doubt and guilt and anxiety at some point, and some more often than others. The current phrase is imposter syndrome but it has existed for centuries.

If writing is a hobby, this frees you up from some of the fear of failure. Not all of it, but you know you’re not going to starve, even if they write reviews such as my favourite one-star review. Three words: not a book.

At some point in the early ‘00s I made a conscious decision that my writing career was not worth starving myself for. I had a job offer from a top London consultancy at the very moment in history when everyone wanted to be a management consultant and they even made a drama series out of it, House of Lies with Don Cheadle.

I travelled the world and saw the Record Plant, Sausalito, where they recorded Rumours, on expenses. It was the right decision for me, but it inevitably stalled out my writing. Anyway, most male writers are over forty when they first get a novel published. What do you know about life at 21, really?

So I know some of what it means to be a professional artist. Imagine how much more deeply the fear of failure would strike if you depended on your music to eat! This is why I love writing about pro indie musicians. It’s their balls. They live a life I bottled out of.

Over the last few months, listening to Katie Pearlman’s new music, and trying to figure out how I will write about it when the time comes, I have been very severely struck by the range of emotions and styles she manages to cover. I started to realise a while ago that most pro artists can sing in virtually any style. Yes, they all choose one style for their own albums, and generally try to stay in a lane that makes sense to their audience. But quietly, behind the scenes, they can all sing any genre you can imagine.

I admired Katie because she might write for famous people who are essentially pop stars, but in fact she canned her own pop album after it had been recorded. This needs to be dwelt upon.

I have chucked books and many other projects for the same reason, because I lost faith in the output. Sometimes I have released a book that I lost belief in just to get it off my mind. Recording an album involves a fuckload more money than writing a book and it involves lots more people. Not only the musicians but the producer, the mixer, the candlestick maker. Katie had to find the resolve to tell her whole tribe that this album was going in the bin because she could no longer connect with it emotionally. I am shaking my head with awe as I write this. The sheer balls!

What I can tell you is that KP’s new music, her full-length debut album in fact, will not be going in any bin. I am sure she is slightly more excited to share it with you than I am, being so late to the party. Sometimes, though, a latecomer falls hardest of all. But I fully endorse this message and strongly recommend that you play some Katie Pearlman this very moment. If you don’t, your friends will, and you’ll be a step behind the curve yet again. Don’t be that person. Tell your friends: the album of 2026 is this one.

You can listen to Katie Pearlman’s music in all the usual places. You can dig a little deeper here and I strongly recommend her Substack, below. As you might expect she is on Instagram and TikTok.

hi it's me katie.

writing. thinking. music. musings. magic.

By Katie Pearlman

I was vaguely aware of the format but did not realise it was modelled on a successful night in Nashville that has run weekly for years. An all-female line-up sings one song each in succession, and then at the end they all sing a female-written cover song as a group. This group chose Dry Spell by Kacey Musgraves and had a lot of fun singing the yups! Never has a yup sounded more Yorkshire.

One of the best things about these showcases is getting to discover new artists, and of the four below I was previously aware only of Issy Richardson. All of the artists impressed me and they were all so different. It looked to us like all the girls had become fast friends, especially for that group song at the end.

Vic Allen

One of the best things about this format is that the singers have time to talk about the context and inspirations behind each song. Inevitably, most of the songs were about the different ways men can disappoint women. Present company excepted, obvs… Anyway, Vic Allen anchored the show and introduced the format. She has played here several times before and helped everyone relax into proceedings.

Vic played us Falling in Love, her new song out on 26 June which you can presave here. She told us it was really about falling for London again after she returned before Christmas from a spell in Nashville. Is there anywhere better than London at Christmas? She also sang Brighter, and one written when she realised that she tended to write a song about every single relationship in her life called Ended in a Song.

I really enjoyed Suitcase, written during lockdown and a celebration of her love of travel. Vic is currently based in London so I hope to see her play live again as she gears up for her album release later this year. You can still support her crowdfunder here.

Mabes

Essex-based Mabes introduced her first song, Too Young to Love, about her first long-term relationship. A really moving tribute to a relationship that began when both were teenagers and became challenging as they grew into adults, and grew apart. Her song Danny was written in character about a war hero, an idea inspired by her love of Laura Marling. She also played Slow Drowning and America, a song inspired by a writing camp in Nashville. Mabes has an upcoming single you can presave here called Ready To Go.

Fascinatingly for me, as a writer, is that Mabes was drawn to poetry before music and picked up a guitar as a way to share her words. If teenagers are still finding poetry relevant then there is still hope!

Marianne Leigh

Marianne is originally from New Zealand, about as far as anyone can travel, and it was certainly worth the journey. She brought a lot of fun and energy with her and I really enjoyed her quirky take on the key moments of her life so far. She sang clone, her new single due out on Friday 12th June which you can presave here. Memory is a little hazy on some of the song titles but I think she also sang Good Man, Who Says Exes Can’t Be Friends and Crazy Love.

There’s a growing catalogue of Marianne’s music for you to stream but one that stood out to me was the phrase shouted in my earhole every Yorkshire evening of my childhood: shut up and eat your dinner. Where I’m from, dinner happens at lunchtime.

Isabella Richardson

One reason I chose this particular Sunday to visit Lil Nashville was to watch Issy Richardson play. I had been reviewing her recent EP, The Waiting Room, and decided these songs had to be seen live.

Just before Isabella sang her first song, a pint of Guinness arrived. The look on her face was that of a parched desert traveller who has misplaced their Stanley cup and started wondering about the mechanics of drinking piss. I wrote down: Not Guinness Zero. It turns out that Guinness is the perfect liquid to lubricate vocal chords! No, I didn’t buy it either.

Issy was just as funny and friendly as I expected, and you can read my thoughts in detail below.

You can find out more here about Vic Allen, Mabes, Marianne Leigh and Isabella Richardson and stream all of them in all the usual places! They are all very much worth following. Do try to see one of them near you.