Release Roundup: Lorde, The Beths, Nadia Reid, Scarlett Lashes, Belladonna, Blair Parkes

Revisit this week's coverage of new Aotearoa releases by Ringlets, Erase Everything, Carnivorous Plant Society and Jeff Parsnips, then scroll downward for fresh local highlights from Lorde, The Beths, Nadia Reid, Scarlett Lashes, Belladonna, and Blair Parkes.

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! Only including tracks available on streaming services of course.

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

Indisputably Aotearoa's biggest pop star, Lorde unveiled her first new album in four years today, and is most likely currently being bombarded by every music media outlet on the planet. Co-produced by Lorde and Jim-E Stack, Virgin gestures past the sunshine baggy-pop reflections of 2021's Solar Power to the post-Robyn world-conquering heights of her Silver Scroll-winning Melodrama.

The Beths' new single 'No Joy' is so zippy and angular it verges on post-Devo egg-punk with trash can drums, boisterously upbeat while sparked by Elizabeth Stokes' firsthand experiences with anhedonia. Counterintuitively fun and relatable (the group traditionally love a contradiction), the song foreshadows The Beths' just-announced upcoming record Straight Line Was A Lie via ANTI. The accompanying clip directed by Frances Carter is a colourful delight. "It's about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI. It wasn't that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn't like the things that I liked. I wasn't getting joy from them. It's very literal."

Sharing her latest long player Enter Now Brightness in February, UK-based Aotearoa songwriting star Nadia Reid unfurled standalone new ballad 'Moment By', ahead of her summer return trip to her homeland. "Songwriting will forever remain a mystery to me, but what I can say about this song is that it was the first time I’d sung without my guitar, so there was a bit of power behind it. Was this my Adele moment? There is the ever-present question of why and how, looking towards the past, and facing the future. Nostalgia in song form."

When I see a new Scarlett Lashes single is out I listen, this is the rule. Not only great advice but also straight up great, 'Fake It To You Make It' is a late nite minimal wave / hypnagogic club-pop groover, giving us a timely morale boost to keep on keepin' on. "Anxious thoughts can at times overcome the bad ass queen and Scarlett has to tell herself the world won’t crash if something goes wrong. We all fall on our ass at some point in our lives and sometimes you gotta take a deep breath, count to ten and dance your thoughts away."

Belladonna resurfaces four years following her 2021 Total Eclipse of My Brain EP (co-written with Shannon Fowler aka Tom Lark) with new single 'Driving Home For Christmas', the lead track from a forthcoming debut album produced by Chris Armour. "I wrote driving home for Christmas shortly after my flat burnt down. I moved to a new house and nothing seemed stable. I found comfort in returning to a relationship, much like returning to your hometown over the holidays. He’d come over and we’d sit on my bed and listen to the neighbours trees creaking. It was the familiarity that I was craving at the time, but I knew it would never be enough."

Ōtautahi's prolific shed-pop maestro Blair Parkes delivers lovely Beach Boys harmonies and loping shoegaze stomp on lonely is a killer / for your love, a two song taster of a forthcoming album with Miss Mercury.