Confession, as any pub bore or Sunday-paper columnist will tell you, is cheap. Dignified confession, the kind that tidies nothing and still leaves the listener feeling looked after, is a rarer commodity. James Crowley, a London songwriter who has spent years in the quieter corners of the indie-folk scene, delivers it across four songs on *Imprint*, an EP that opens its ribcage without ever begging for sympathy.

Restraint is the hardest thing to sell. Rock and pop have long rewarded the big gesture: the key change, the stadium chorus, the guitar solo flung skywards like a hat at a graduation. New Sunday, a band from Hafnarfjörður whose members have never occupied the same room, have built something sturdier on a different principle. Their fourth single, "Here I Am Meant To Be," shows that restraint, practised with conviction, can hit harder than bombast.

Pop-rock has always been the genre of the slammed door. It is the sound of someone gathering their coat, their dignity and a few choice words, then leaving in a cloud of overdriven guitar. Lana Karlay, a Geelong high school student with a Spotify count already past 41,000 monthly listeners, has made one of the more convincing slammed doors in recent Australian pop. It runs three-and-a-bit minutes and arrives on 11 September.