In an age where music videos often feel like afterthoughts, True North's "No Exit Wound" arrives as a powerful reminder of what happens when song and vision are conceived as one. Tones Thorburn's debut single for his new Auckland-based project doesn't merely announce itself through sound—it manifests as a complete artistic statement, where the self-directed visual component proves every bit as compelling as the groove-driven soul-rock that inspired it. Here is an artist who understands that great songs deserve great cinema, and vice versa.

Few fifteen-year-olds can distill the particular ache of outgrowing friendships into three and a half minutes of deceptively buoyant indie pop. Ava Valianti's latest single "Distant" arrives with the kind of emotional sophistication that would be impressive in an artist twice her age, wrapped in production that's clever enough to make you dance while your heart quietly breaks.

C-TrYp's "From Time to Time" arrives as a curious temporal anomaly—material conceived in the dying embers of the last millennium, finally emerging in 2025 not as nostalgic cash-grab or cynical retro pastiche, but as something far more intriguing: a genuine archaeological dig into the songwriter's psyche, unearthed after decades of dormancy and presented with the weathered authenticity of aged whiskey.

There's something deliciously forward-thinking about Pompeya's approach to indie pop—the band who burst into international consciousness with their irresistible hit "90" have returned with "Awesome," the first instalment of what promises to be their most ambitious project yet. This EP, released on April 11th, serves as the opening salvo of a two-part album, with the second half due in August, and it finds the band refining their already considerable songcraft into something approaching perfection.