The west of Ireland has always harboured a particular gift for the kind of songwriting that refuses to announce itself too loudly. From the windswept romanticism of the Connacht coast to the DIY rehearsal rooms of Leitrim and Galway, there has long been a tradition of music that carries its emotional intelligence quietly, tucked underneath surfaces that glitter rather than declare. Fair Green, the project built around singer-songwriter Harry Bouchier, slots into that lineage with a debut single that is, to put it plainly, better than it has any right to be.

Picture the scene: a bedroom studio in Simla, Colorado, a man alone with a guitar, a broken heart, and — crucially — a synth wizard on the other end of the line. This is the crucible from which "Erosion" emerges, blinking into the grey February light like something that has been buried for years and only now dared to surface. Evan Zorn Von Berg, frontman of the gloriously-named Rubbish Party, has given us not merely a song but a small, perfectly-formed wound.

Perth has never been mistaken for Memphis or Muscle Shoals, but Paul Frazer Clarke — a composer with more than three decades of accumulated scar tissue and hard-won craft — seems entirely untroubled by geography. His new single *Visions of a Changing World*, lifted from the 2024 album *Backstories From A Soundtrack To Life*, arrives with the unhurried confidence of a musician who has absolutely nothing left to prove, and is precisely more interesting for it.

Some artists write about darkness from a comfortable distance, peering over the edge with the safety rope still firmly attached. Yasmin Bruce — the UK alternative artist who records and performs as Bruce Kelly — writes from inside it. *Bipolar High* is not a song about mental health. It is mental health, distilled, electrified, and made into something that hums long after the track ends.