Release Roundup: Amamelia, Troy Kingi feat. MĀ, Greatsouth, Emmanuelle, Ex-Partner + More

Revisit last week's coverage of Dick Move, Babe Martin and Martin Sagadin, check out our affordable UTR merch range for Christmas prezzy options HERE, then dive into more new / recent local highlights from Amamelia, Troy Kingi featuring MĀ, Greatsouth, Emmanuelle, Ex-Partner, ROC///OPT/, deadforest x Dera Meelan x AP, and PONZ.

Scope out the UTR Roundup Playlist below, 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, which has been an increasingly controversial topic in recent months.

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

Getting the drop on Aotearoa's upcoming sunny season is Amamelia's trip-hop / big-beat bop 'Summerlong' — featuring Van Staden & Böhm bandmate Madison Van Staden on vocals — putting pep in your step as you bound along Great North Road past Bunnings in asphalt-melting heat on your daily quest for a lunchtime coffee. We're looking forward to the Naarm-based, Tūī-award-winner's forthcoming new long player, arriving next year via Sunreturn. "Honestly, when I started writing this song I think I was just feeling really homesick. I was trying to tap into that kinda wistful Tāmaki Makaurau summer feeling. I think Summerlong is about that tension of just being here now but wanting forever to come, wanting to kind of escape to something beautiful and distant. There is a lot of Yamaha CS10 synth on this song and even more Roland RS09 String Machine. There’s loads of hand percussion and a generous smattering of spring reverb from an old hi fi reverb box I got on ebay."

After eight famously wide-ranging album releases in his monumental 10 10 10 Series — "10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years") — Troy Kingi's latest single sounds unmistakably and assuredly like nobody else, even when he hands the mic over to Aotearoa Alternative Awards 2025 Te Tohu Kaipuoro Toa Favourite Solo Artist winner MĀ. 'Afters' is the solidly grooving second track revealed from Kingi's forthcoming hip-hop inspired Night Lords, out on 28th November.

Papakura songwriting innovator Greatsouth combines taonga pūoro instrumentation, South Pacific field recordings and punk attitude on powerful new strummer 'Hellhole of the Pacific'. "When listening to this waiata, I want you to envision a Māori battalion soldier, uniform tattered, washed up on the shores of Aotearoa. As the soldier walks from the tātahi ki te ngāhere, the forest begins to change around him. Trees felled, smoke plumes, and gravel becomes stuck between his rugged boots. The place he once called home, no more... Let’s normalise using our traditional instruments and practices in all forms of music. Māori indie rock, Polynesian punk, all of it ki te ao."

Storifying one’s own life in sound, Ex-Partner's new album Lore-Core is a low key triumph in Tāmaki Makarau neo-gothic post-electronica song-craft — celebrated in style with last week's release party at Audio Foundation. Standout singles 'Treatment-Resistant' and 'Kids, It Makes No Difference' hit hard and cut deep. "Cursed images of ancestral weddings, enmeshed flesh and tree-shaped birthmarks sit alongside lovesick soldiers and lusty mayors."

Whanganui's king of club-rattling electronic experimentalism — amidst stiff competition in the river city — ROC///OPT/ reemerged with the depth charge low end and glistening synthetic spires of 'var' via PATTERN RECOGNITION.

Launched with minimal fuss last week, Tāmaki Makaurau cult artist Emmanuelle's Type B could be the finest locally crafted collection of emotive-rock anthems you'll hear this year or next. Type B sensibly resists the allure of watered down Alex G emulation (which seems to have captured emo songwriters en masse), instead leaning hard into a post-Y2K alternate reality — way better than the first time around, where world-class choruses and mall-punk melodramas rule.

'No I.D' is a bass-bin pounder from the trio formation of Tāmaki Makarau ZIPS kings deadforest, Dera Meelan and AP, sporting killer lines aplenty — "No small talk at the barbers / Ask what I do / I just say construction." Keep ears peeled for the forthcoming aw true? yeah nah EP out on 12th December.

Now based halfway across the globe in London, Tāmaki Makaurau electronic dance artist PONZ aka Lauren Pondes launched her debut album When It's Late in tandem with a video for opening club mover 'Hideaway'. The new clip is a vibes-drenched cityscape directed by Rebekah-Jane Shingleton and Zac Emerson, made with support from NZ On Air.