"Video Age is the project of Ross Farbe and Ray Micarelli, longtime friends from their early years coming up in New Orleans’ DIY scene. Together, they use a host of vintage synthesizers to craft music that taps into a vein of early ’80s synth-pop. Previously, they released a more guitar-driven debut in 2016 called Living Alone. Now they’re about to return with their sophomore outing, with the fitting title of Pop Therapy.

They’ve already previewed the album with lead single “Hold On (I Was Wrong).” It was a slick, funky track, and it clues you in to the nature of Pop Therapy: Video Age’s new music is all rubbery grooves with a dusty sheen, and it makes them one of those bands looking back to the early ’80s who are also sort of hard to trace to any actual antecedent there. As it turns out, their inspiration for Pop Therapy did come from some less-than-customary sources, McCartney II and Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly among them.

Today, they’re back with another new song from Pop Therapy. It’s called “Lover Surreal,” and the band described it as a “dance ballad about an imaginary love affair. Someone is reaching out into the void, patiently waiting for love to respond.” It is indeed a slightly dreamier composition than “Hold On (I Was Wrong),” a gauzy piece of yearning that does line right up with the way we perceive the era Video Age are drawing from." -Stereogum

True Blossom formed in 2017 from the thriving Atlanta underground synth-pop scene. The band released their debut album Heater, a sweet and strange collection of disco, city-pop, and classic indie, last year on Citrus City Records. They followed that with a series of tours up and down the east coast.

Their second album, In Bliss, arrives October 23rd, again on Citrus City. Its surface is all sophistication and light - red lipstick, brushed steel, and lace, but an eerie sadness hangs over the whole affair. Though bits of new wave synth and disco percussion shimmer and glow with warmth, the gloom never quite lifts.

In Bliss was recorded in Atlanta by Damon Moon at Standard Electric Recording Co. Founding members Sophie Cox, Nadav Flax, Adam Weisberg, Jamison Murphy, and Chandler Kelley tracked most of the instruments before Jamison left to attend graduate school in Maryland. Newest member Bonnie Hardie joined the band during the sessions, and her vocal harmonies can be heard throughout.

"Jackson MacIntosh might be in love—he just can’t quite tell. The Montreal musician, best known as the bassist for the indie rockers TOPS, is now launching himself as a solo singer-songwriter, and his latest track, “Can It Be Love,” is all about the uncertainty of a budding romance. MacIntosh’s downtempo pop is a far cry from MacIntosh’s work with TOPS: His soft croon is so languid he sounds half-asleep; percussion comes courtesy of a tinny drum machine, the melody a few light splashes of keyboard; and even when the spartan song adds a flourish of guitar in its last 30 seconds, it’s in the form of a very leisurely solo.

MacIntosh’s yearning and confusion will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time on the road. “Can It Be Love” was the last song he wrote for his forthcoming album, My Dark Side, and it was inspired, he recently explained, by that “classic musician’s dilemma” of having to be absent when what you want is waiting at home. The song captures that melancholic longing quite beautifully: “When you’re in Barcelona/I’ll be in Calgary” he sings, plaintively. “I won’t be alone but/If your phone’s on I’ll call you and check in and see/If it could be love.” Though it may be unfortunate for his romantic prospects, MacIntosh’s solo career is off to a very promising start." -Pitchfork