Release Roundup: Phoebe Rings, Ladi6, MOKOMOKAI, Mild Orange, Princess Chelsea, BUB, Pickle Darling + More

What initially began as a slow 2025 for local music has transmorphed into a year of non-stop significant Aotearoa releases. Revisit our past seven days news coverage of Geneva A.M., Lake South, Calla of Ursa, Jay Clarkson & The Containers, and We Will Ride Fast, then dip into new / recent tunes and more below from Phoebe Rings, Ladi6, MOKOMOKAI, Mild Orange, Princess Chelsea, BUB, Pickle Darling, HIGH ALTAR, and Paul Cathro.

Scroll down and scope out the UTR Roundup Playlist, a rolling weekly playlist keeping you in the loop with every new release we've featured on the site over the past month!

Are you an Aotearoa artist / imprint releasing something new soon? Let us know — send your info including links to editor@undertheradar.co.nz.

Tāmaki Makaurau's Phoebe Rings celebrated the launch their impatiently awaited debut album Aseurai with an Auckland Town Hall performance on Saturday night, supporting Japanese Breakfast. Out now via US imprint Carpark Records (also home to The Beths and Hans Pucket), earlier singles 'Mandarin Tree', 'Drifting', 'Get Up', 'Fading Star' and the title track sound like good-natured mates sharing sonic space on the record with dream / city / sophisti / boogie-pop friends of the future. Founder Crystal Choi shared, "Aseurai means around you in the atmosphere, hard to reach, fading away, it’s a poetic expression. You wouldn’t say it in normal conversation, but I like that."

Multi award-winning icon of Aotearoa hip-hop and neo-soul / R'n'B, Ladi6 (Verse Two, Sheelahroc) launched her first new studio long player in seven years Le Vā late last week. She'll be embarking on a hot ticket nationwide release tour encompassing eleven headline dates with band from 19th June onwards. "Le Vā explores that sacred space between us – the seen and unseen, what we carry and what we release. This project is both a farewell and a becoming."

Making major waves in Aotearoa hip-hop with back-to-back long players WHAKAREHU (2023) and self-titled (2022), Single of the Year 2025 finalists MOKOMOKAI — Manu (Eno x Dirty) with producers DUSTY & GHOS — now unleash album number three PONO! (translating as "true, honest, or sincere"). "Back in the day, when we were younger, if someone was telling you something and you thought they were lying, you’d say, ‘Pono?’ — and that was always kind of the truth indicator."

Raised in Ōtepoti and now based in London (making touring to their overseas fanbase much more of a viable proposition), Mild Orange inject a touch of country-rock shimmer into their new single 'Silver Star', the lead cut from their forthcoming long player The//Glow — out in full on 8th August. 2025 is looking like a big one for Mild Orange, they're getting their ducks in a row for a whopper forty eight date tour of USA, Canada, UK and Europe starting in September. 'Silver Star' is dedicated to frontman / producer Josh Mehrten's "newlywed wife, reflecting the excitement and challenges they lead together choosing to live on the road less known".

Currently making like a modern day town cryer, letting all and sundry know about her forthcoming Midwinter Ball (themed: SWORDS AND SORCERY - Fantasy on The Big Screen), Taite Music Prize winner Princess Chelsea delves through the mists of time back to last year. Experience Special Agent Dale Cooper aka Princess Chelsea and The Dream Warriors' momentous Live Tribute To David Lynch, performing four songs co-created by the surrealist US cinema maestro, live to a sold-out crowd at Tāmaki Makaurau's The Civic Wintergarden in August 2024.

The buzz about BUB's debut long player Can't Even seems to be snowballing, as more people get hip to the emotively scorching fuzz-crunch / new wave pop excellence locked within. The video for album highlight 'Another Girl' finds leader Priya Sami with metal baseball bat in hand stalking the streets, ready and willing to strike down Janus-faced fakers with maximum prejudice.

Pickle Darling summons an intimate, lo-tech kind of pop grandeur with 'Massive Everthing', the Ōtautahi bedroom pop star and video game designer's latest single via California imprint Father / Daughter Records. "Maybe the first kind of ‘pop’ song I’ve ever made. And I think the most lyrically direct too, there’s no poetry or cleverness to it, I felt strongly about clear communication this time. I love Robyn, Ray of Light-era Madonna, Cher, Donna Lewis, I love those kinds of ‘empathetic’ pop songs that feel like a hug from a friend."

Aotearoa's free heavy psych stompers HIGH ALTAR, aka Taipua Adams (Terror of the Deep, The Perms) and Brendan Moran (Vor-stellen, Hasselhoff Experiment, The Subliminals), lock in and throw down a walloping slab of riffage on 'angles of incidence' — reminding this listener of the improvisational overload of P.S.F. Records heavyweights of yore.

Released at the start of NZ Music Month but certainly still worthy of the spotlight, Paul Cathro's (Ha the Unclear, Alizarin Lizard) latest single 'Throw Me Back' is a fish out of water jangle-pop earworm, angling for your love in the lead up to new album Catapult out this Friday — recorded with bandmates Joshua Worthington-Church, Charmain Keay and Jamie Hannah.