New Music Roundup: Dial Up, Bria Salmena, Backxwash, Camilla Sparksss, and more
Photo Credit: Matthew Tammaro
March arrives with its usual meteorological identity crisis, but the sonic landscape remains gloriously unambiguous—weird, wild, and uncompromising. This week's standouts spans cosmic egg punk, neoperreo-infused black metal, and whatever gloriously haunted alchemy Blackwater Bolylight is brewing. Grab your headphones and prepare for systematic earhole bliss; the algorithm won't feed you this stuff unless you know where to look.
First up is Toronto/LA’s Bria Salmena with a defiant anthem that serves as the cornerstone of her forthcoming solo debut Big Dog (March 28, Royal Mountain/Sub Pop). After years lending her talents to FRIGS and Orville Peck's backing band, this declaration of artistic independence feels both earned and essential. Crafted with longtime collaborator Duncan Hay Jennings, "Hammer" transforms personal struggle into universal resilience—"you are a hammer" and "you are a big dog" functioning as mantras when faced with our “current global dumpster fire”, Salmena shares. The accompanying Matthew Tammaro/Rebecca Cianfrini directed video amplifies this transformation through visual metaphor. If you’re looking for more, be on the lookout for the forthcoming album and check out her other project God’s Mom.
Calgary's egg punk provocateurs Dial Up return with an extraterrestrial allegory that's equal parts bizarre and brilliant. The track chronicles two alien civilizations—the sugar people and the gold people—locked in some cosmic standoff that feels oddly relevant to our terrestrial squabbles. "This may not be the last time you are seeing them," the band cryptically warns. Consider us appropriately unsettled and excited. Dial Up will be playing a single release show in Calgary, AB on March 7, 2025 at the Palomino with Non Ultras, Bugswallow, and Parisian Orgy. The event is co-presented by REVERIE Magazine in celebration of our next print issue hitting stands. I wonder who our cover feature could be? You can find tickets here.
In the meantime, check out the delightfully deranged new track below.
Polaris prize winner Backxwash shares a second single from Only Dust Remains, out March 28 via her own independent label Ugly Hag, where she continues her sonic evolution with remarkable precision. While previous single "WAKE UP" sprawled across seven minutes, "9th Heaven" delivers equal emotional voltage in a concentrated four-minute dose. The track's sample-heavy architecture and breakbeat influence touches on mourning, reflection, and authenticity from one of experimental hip-hop's most vital voices. Backxwash will perform a hometown show in celebration of the release in Montreal this April, with additional 2025 performances to be announced.
Camilla Sparksss, the Swiss-Canadian electro-noise provocateur returns with a track the french would call "coquine" - playfully mischievous from first note to last. Sharp synths, bouncy bass, and hip-hop beats coalesce into something both cheeky and sweet, on single “I Like The Noise”, setting the tone for her forthcoming ICU RUN album (september 12, on The Camper). Born Barbara Lehnhoff in -27 degree Kenora, Ontario (where she casually had a PET BEAR), Sparksss continues building on her impressive cross-media résumé that includes post-punk outfit Peter Kernel, composing for European theater, and creating award-winning audiovisual work.
Los Angeles quartet Blackwater Holylight released a new single, unfolding like a cosmic origami across nearly seven minutes, gradually evolving from ethereal atmosphere to skull-crushing heaviness. Singer/guitarist/bassist Sunny Faris describes the song, “'Wandering Lost' came to us in pieces throughout a handful of weeks in Los Angeles. The four of us intentionally wanted this song to have multiple parts to tell a story that takes you on a journey throughout. This song is very special to us because it represents us as musicians individually and is a perfect reflection of what we’ve created as a group. It’s a song about wandering through the chapters of life, curiosity, and the connection we all have to each other through the unknown of how it will all unfold." The song deftly toggles between Sarah Mckenna's mournful electric piano, Mikayla Mayhew's amplifier-worshipping guitars, and Eliese Dorsay's seismic drumming. It's the lead single from their upcoming EP If You Only Knew, out April 18 on Suicide Squeeze, which promises to continue their exploration of power through vulnerability. Another highlight worth checking out from the EP? Their recent cover of Radiohead’s “All I Need” from In Rainbows which leads into the otherwordly, yet heartbreaking through-line of the track.
Nine years after their last release, the experimental outfit Pyramids returns with this first glimpse of Pythagoras - perhaps the most genuinely unexpected fusion of 2025. Founder Rich Loren Balling has evolved their already boundary-pushing shoegaze/black metal hybrid by incorporating reggaeton and neoperreo elements, arguing that extreme music ultimately becomes "so dense and noise-rich that the brutal transitions into bliss." Vocalist Emy Smith's haunting delivery adds ethereal dimensions to this mathematical collision of blast beats and dembow rhythms, creating something simultaneously hypnotic and destabilizing. After citing Karol g and Rosalía as inspirations alongside Darkthrone, we are witnessing either the birth of a brilliant new subgenre or the most gloriously confounding experiment of the year. Pythagoras, named after the ancient Greek philosopher, will be out via The Flenser on May 2nd (home of Chat Pile - who we recently interviewed by Reverie here). Listen to their new song “Fools Gold (Mi Vida Ha Ido Pa Atras)” below.
Spawned from a spectral bike ride through Calgary streets, Kue Varo and the Only Hope’s “Now’s The Time” meditation marks the first installment in an ambitious tetralogy exploring destruction/revelation/creation/preservation cycles. Varo describes the single as "maintaining that sense of freedom that comes with losing everything," a sentiment that feels particularly poignant in our age of perpetual collapse. Their alchemical quartet—completed by bob quaschnick, matt doherty, and easy HD—continues to evolve from their critically acclaimed album Cowboy Witchcraft days into something elementally powerful.
All seven sonic aberrations and more have been added into our perpetually-mutating Sounds of Reverie playlist. Save it, follow it, share it with friends still trapped in the recommendation purgatory that streaming services present. Your ears deserve better algorithms than the ones currently harvesting your listening data, anyway.