Hello world,
Here’s your latest FP Picks update and we’ve got 10 great new tracks from Alexandra Leaving, Brain Leak, Panda Bear & more. If you like what you hear please follow and share this playlist, it helps us keep doing our thing by getting the algorithms on our side. Also please support the artists featured in any way you can!
Until next week
Helen (Futureproof) x
Joni – Things I Left Behind
American-born, London-based songwriter Joni has shared the melancholic title track of upcoming album Things I Left Behind, which explores themes of growth and loss, featuring a shuffling drumbeat and swirling guitars produced by Jackson Firlik. “It’s a reflection on how we’re all made up of the things we’ve lost and left behind. People. Places. Experiences,” Joni explains. “While writing the lyrics, I was having all these vivid images from my past rush by, almost like lights when you’re driving in a tunnel. Little things and big things. Scraping my knee as a kid. Falling in love for the first time. Losing love. Taking mushrooms and calling my childhood best friend. Lying on the grass at night. It’s painful to realise you can’t hold onto these things physically, but ultimately comforting to know that they sort of become you and you carry them along in some way.” A tranquil & captivating slice of indie-pop – loving it!
Alex Spencer – Wake Me Up
Manchester singer-songwriter Alex Spencer has dropped the highly infectious new single Wake Me Up – a track of youthful optimism which perfectly encapsulates the experiences of being young (good and bad). The song is bittersweet as Alex sings about having a dream of his homecoming queen, but in reality it being too good to be true. With its catchy guitar riffs, relatable lyrics and high energy, you’ll be nodding your head to that chorus for sure! Alex is already well-known in his home town and embarks on his first UK headline tour in April – grab tickets fast for this talented songwriter cos his live performance is rumoured to be electrifying.
Nell Smith – Anxious
Nell Smith recorded an album for Bella Union in 2023 when she was 15 years old. A few years before that, she had been “discovered” by Wayne Coyne at a Flaming Lips concert, and they eventually teamed up to record a collection of Nick Cave covers in 2021. Tragically, in October of 2024 Nell was killed in a car accident. She was 17 years old and on the verge of releasing that album she had recorded “with the help of Doritos, Fizzy sweets, Coca Cola.” “It is still very painful when I realize Nell is gone,” the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne shared in a statement. “I keep thinking I’ll check my text messages from her. I’m sure she has a new drawing or new piece of a song or a new photo of her cat… and then I remember she is gone.”
Panda Bear – Ends Meet
Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) has shared woozy, reggae-inflected new single Ends Meet, taken from forthcoming album Sinister Grift. It features instrumental contributions from Lennox’s Animal Collective bandmates Geologist and Avey Tare, alongside vocals by Maria Reis and Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede. Recorded in his Lisbon home studio alongside Animal Collective’s Josh “Deakin” Dibb, the record sees Lennox playing most instruments himself. “Working on this record felt like a sacred and warm return,” Dibb explains. “Noah and I first started putting music down to multitrack cassette in 1991. 32 years later and working in the same fashion, two friends alone in a room searching for sounds and feelings that move us, I am very proud of what we created together. Sinister Grift feels like the songwriter I’ve known for over 30 years but also feels like some sort of new chapter for Noah.”
Goat, MC Yallah – Nimerudi
The tribal-masked Swedish psych-rock party-starters Goat have always been funky without quite wandering outside the bounds of their chosen genre. Goat have long specialized in fuzzed-out, percussive acid rock, taking clear inspiration from funk and Afrobeat. On new single Nimerudi, they do their own repurposing, reworking their sound so that they can collaborate with MC Yallah, a Kenyan-born rap veteran based in Uganda. The result is a fun, propulsive pan-genre experiment that sounds like something that could’ve come out of the sample-happy early-’90s underground. Goat’s tracks lean into their funky-breakbeat tendencies, and MC Yallah attacks the instrumental with serious energy.
Horsegirl – Frontrunner
Captivating new single Frontrunner sees New York-via-Chicago trio Horsegirl take on a more subdued approach, combining their knack for ’90s-inspired indie rock with a warm, ’70s singer-songwriter ambiance. It recalls the innocent, mundane moments spent with someone you love: “In the morning/ When you’re sleeping/ I can’t wait and I can’t wait to compromise.” Taken from their forthcoming second album Phonetics On and On, the track video is directed and edited by the band and depicts them searching for one another in various locations throughout their hometown of Chicago. It’s an album that balances upbeat tunes with slower, catchy melodies: vocal murmurs and delicate harmonies are layered atop light acoustic strums as warm bass tones ring out beneath, evoking traditional folk structures in songs such as Frontrunner.
Alexandra Leaving – Hold The Sugar
Toning down the energy somewhat compared to her previous output, West Midlands’ finest Alexandra Leaving kicks off 2025 with Hold The Sugar – an insightful tale of self-realisation & boundries with a hymnal feel that closes lyrically on an epiphany of understanding. The melody pushes & pulls rhythmically as the song lurches from intimate musings through to full on euphoria – and in the process giving the arrangement an all consuming dynamic. Produced by Jack O’Hea (who produced Leaving’s 2023 indie-pop gem Conversation Killer), here’s an artist who’s busy crafting her sound (& songwriting) through a prolific release schedule. Alexandra Leaving is going nowhere – she’s just arrived!
Brain Leak – Trying
Manchester’s Brain Leak release their debut single Trying – an open-hearted guitar lead indie track laying bare songwriter Tara-Gabriella Engelhardt’s battle with her attachment issues. Engelhardt states: “Trying is a song about attachment and the extreme emotions that can come along with it. I feel things very deeply and the song instantly expresses that I don’t just feel a standard emotion, I tend to feel the amplified version of it. I remember writing the song almost in one go after a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, where I’d talked about the feeling of being on a seesaw. I didn’t know how to just stay in the middle, didn’t have a clue what balance felt like, without a crutch. Challenging emotional situations without any kind of crutch was very unnerving and felt completely alien.” Raw and honest lyrics with stunning vocals that fluctuate between calm and manic make for an irresistible tune from this talented songwriter, definitely one to watch.
Katie Gregson-MacLeod – Teenage Love
Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod has shared poignant & tender new single Teenage Love, which began as a poem written during a trip to LA, exploring the complexities of reflecting on early relationships. “Teenage Love honours the small but mighty part of me where anger resides,” Gregson-MacLeod explains. “I wrote the majority of the song over two years ago, making sense of some new resentment I was feeling on behalf of a younger me. As a teenage girl, there is a feeling that ‘angry’ is the ugliest thing you can be. Only in hindsight did I realise the power anger would have given me back then; a power that I thought I would land on in the pursuit of appearing ‘mature’ or ‘patient’.”
Louis Dunford – Billy Flynn of Bethnal Green
It might have been out a while but, having heard this one on John Kennedy’s XPosure Daily this week, we had to add it here! A witty, captivating tune that you can’t help smiling too. Louis Dunford stated: “Billy Flynn is a true story about a boxer that my dad was friends with growing up. The interaction at the bus stop took place between the two of them a couple of years back. When he told me about it, I thought the story was too good to be true, so I decided to turn it into a tune. ‘Billy Flynn’ is a fictional name me and my friend Bea Munro came up with when writing the song to protect the real Billy’s privacy.” Infectious and heartwarming with fantastic lyrics – we’re loving this total earworm!
You can check out the whole playlist here. Please follow the socials below for our weekly updates and share about the place!
