Some guitarists announce themselves with a riff. Others do it with a scream — six strings bent to breaking point, volume weaponised, subtlety be damned. Filip Dahl does neither. The Norwegian composer and multi-instrumentalist announces himself, on his latest single "Flying High," with something considerably rarer and considerably more difficult to manufacture: *authority*. From the opening bars, this is a man who has absolutely nothing to prove, and that certainty — worn as lightly as a well-broken-in leather jacket — is precisely what makes the record so arresting.

The Devil, as any self-respecting theologian or rock drummer will tell you, has always had the best tunes. Charlie and the Moonshine appear to have taken this dictum rather literally. Their debut single *El Diablo* arrives like a confession extracted under candlelight — breathless, damned, and far too beautiful to resist.

The blues has always understood loneliness, but it took an Australian indie-rock outfit to properly articulate the peculiar isolation of our hyper-connected present. Clay Brown & the Trouble Round Town's latest single "Satisfy Your Mind" arrives with the weight of Jeff Buckley's ghost on its shoulder and a message that feels urgently necessary: put down your phone and remember who you are.

There's something wonderfully perverse about following up one of the year's most critically lauded concept albums with what amounts to a three-minute bar-room knees-up. Yet that's precisely what Ken Woods and The Old Blue Gang have done with "Oh Denise," a single that arrives like a shot of bourbon after a philosophical dissertation—bracing, unapologetic, and entirely necessary.

The Bateleurs have returned with *A Light In The Darkness*, their second full-length following 2022's well-received *The Sun In The Tenth House*, and the Lisbon quartet sound positively rejuvenated. The departure of guitarist Marco Reis and subsequent arrival of Ricardo Galrão has clearly injected fresh creative lifeblood into their blues-rock veins, his distinctive fretwork adding textures and tensions that push the band beyond mere reverence for their Seventies influences.

Rock'n'roll has always been a religion for the faithless, a doctrine of salvation through volume and sweat. Wagner the Band's single "Don't Stop Movin'" operates as both sermon and sacrament, a three-minute exorcism of doubt delivered with the kind of feral conviction that made rock matter before it became background music for supermarket aisles.

Six years of silence can either sharpen a band's focus or dull their edge entirely. For Crimson Brooks, the St. Petersburg duo who've spent the better part of a decade refining their garage-rock blueprint, the extended hiatus appears to have concentrated their sound into something more potent and unforgiving.

There's something deliciously anachronistic about Eoin Shannon's "Highs & Lows," an album that arrives in 2025 sounding like it could have been unearthed from some forgotten corner of a 1960s recording studio, dusted off and presented to a world that has largely forgotten how to croon with genuine conviction. The Cork-based vocalist has crafted something that feels both timeless and slightly out of step with contemporary sensibilities—and that's precisely its charm.

After the focused brevity of "Gravity Sessions," Joseph Demagore has unleashed his most ambitious and sprawling vision yet. "God of the Dead" finds Rosetta West expanding their sonic palette to breathtaking effect, transforming their decades-long journey through America's musical underground into something approaching high art.

Twenty years into their journey, this Greek trio delivers a meditation on heartbreak that sidesteps both cynicism and saccharine comfort. Nick Anastasakis has crafted something genuinely affecting here—a song that acknowledges the messy realities of failed relationships whilst refusing to surrender to bitterness.