Calling a seventy-seven-minute, fifteen-track collection an "EP" is the first act of mischief on Katie Noir's second record. The second is releasing it less than three months after a twenty-three-song debut. A cynic would expect leftovers: B-sides, offcuts, the sound of an artist clearing the shed. *The Aftermath EP* is nothing of the kind. It is a sequel with a sharper pulse, written by someone who has just discovered that strangers can hear her.

The first thing to go is the beat. Within seconds of "In the Silence of the Hills" opening, you notice what isn't there: no kick drum nudging you forward, no hi-hat ticking away the seconds like a nervous colleague. Moon and Aries, a duo whose records have usually carried at least a ghost of trip-hop pulse, have taken the drums out and left the room to breathe. It is a brave subtraction, and the single is the better for it.

Pop music has never been short of songs about perseverance. They tend to arrive with a key change and a fist in the air, shouting encouragement at a listener who didn't ask for it. "On My Way" takes the opposite route. It begins almost in a whisper, and it's far more persuasive for it.

Debut albums usually arrive with a manifesto under one arm. *Cinder of a Fading Dream* arrives with a box of charred keepsakes. Chosen Undead, five musicians from Hainburg who only became a band in 2024, have built their first record from the wreckage of an earlier project and an album that never got to exist. They sifted the ashes, kept what still glowed, and bolted it to new material. The result is gloriously, unapologetically heavy, and more emotionally literate than the genre usually bothers to be.

Roadside shrines, rain-slicked tarmac and weeping pianos have furnished the tragedy song since the days of the teenage death disc, and most of them move the listener about as much as a cold cup of tea. So it is to Elias Dream's credit that "Goodbye, My Love", released on 13 August, arrives with a pulse, a plot and a conscience.

Berlin has spent decades exporting austere minimalism: the kick drum, the sparse loop, the hushed nod towards restraint. LUNA14 have released a debut single that treats restraint as somebody else's problem. "Zero Gravity" is a gloriously overstuffed pop record, made by two people in a small living room, and it sounds like it was built to be heard from orbit.

Optimism is difficult to do well in pop. Pitched too high, it curdles into the motivational poster. Pitched too low, it sounds like a shrug. Brandon Archer's new single, the title track of his forthcoming album, finds the narrow ledge in between and sets up a comfortable chair on it.

The compilation album has a shabby reputation, and usually deserves it: a hurried shuffle of old favourites, a couple of scraps to tempt the completists, a contractual obligation with a sleeve. *Elf* is a different animal. Its title is German for "eleven", the number of tracks Roland Wälzlein, who records as Fish And Scale, has chosen from his musical journey so far and set beside brand-new pieces. He has hung them the way a good curator hangs a retrospective, so the older work looks freshly lit and the new work looks as though it has always lived there. The result is cohesive, atmospheric and, not to put too fine a point on it, rather wonderful.

Some songs announce themselves with a fanfare. This one arrives like a confession made after midnight, when the pretence has worn off and only the truth is left standing in the room. "Holding on to You" is Ersin Secrin at his most unguarded, a ballad built not on spectacle but on the ache of knowing better and doing it anyway.

Berlin has given us plenty of cold, clinical electronic exports over the decades, but Oskar Brandt's debut single arrives from an entirely different tradition: the swelling, string-drenched confessional, built for widescreen and delivered with the nerve of someone who has nothing left to lose. "Now or Never" is not a cautious opening statement. It is a gauntlet thrown down, and Brandt clears it with room to spare.