Release Roundup: Elliot & Vincent, Shayne P. Carter x NZSO, Bic Runga, The Paradox Princess, CCTV, Reb Fountain + More

Is today the final Friday for major local releases in 2025? If so, then we're concluding with a doozy — it's quite unbelievable to see commentators already rolling out their end of year lists with more than a full month remaining. Peruse our UTR merch range for affordable Xmas gift ideas HERE and scroll downwards for a smorgasbord of fresh tunes from Elliot & Vincent, Shayne P. Carter x NZSO, Bic Runga, The Paradox Princess, CCTV, Jonathan Bree featuring Princess Chelsea, Dudley Benson, Aro, and Reb Fountain.

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.

Currently on tour supporting Boston alt-rock gods Pixies, guitar / drums duo Elliot & Vincent — Elliot Finn and Vincent Cherry — sound on the brink of major success with their impatiently awaited debut Love Montage EP. Three refreshingly crunchy noise-rock nuggets, smouldering with dark energy and laissez-faire style, preceded by mood-setting horror-core intro track 'To the Flesh'.

Subject of director Margaret Gordon's superb rockumentary Life In One Chord, Dunedin legend Shayne P. Carter's new collaborative album with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra REforms feels both destined to happen and long overdue. One glance at the track listing and this listener immediately jumped to track three to hear Carter's Dimmer debut single 'Crystalator' in all its squalling glory with full orchestral accompaniment, which must have been wild to witness live. Indeed, the new record showcases: "Classic songs like Randolph’s Going Home and If I Were You spar with new numbers like Left To Defend. Guitar and orchestra do battle on the mighty Crystalator."

Bic Runga occupies a parallel realm to local kosmische travellers Half Hexagon on her minimally grooving new single 'Red Sunset' — the title track to her just announced new album — a third knockout release in a row from the Aotearoa music icon. Co-producer / co-songwriter Kody Neilson directs the accompanying video, a ruby-tinted vision amplifying the post-disco tune's enviable style.

HELLFIRE BURNS OUTSIDE THE PARTY is a new album from The Paradox Princess, an eight track club inferno of speaker-blasting digital hardcore electronica and razor sharp MC prowess. Head along to the release party this Saturday at NiceGoblins HQ and / or catch The Paradox Princess during the coming weeks, at the T & M Christmas Extravaganza plus Ōtepoti's Femme Fest 2 (get tickets HERE). "Words can’t describe how crazy it feels to have this finally out. Made in the depths of Ōtepoti till here in my new home Tāmaki and you can hear that shift take place as I move towards the raves for sanctuary. After my first this was suppose to be transform into more confident and extreme display of my queer self. It’s an anarchistic party that takes on the horrors of the world."

Explosive on stage and on the airwaves, Tāmaki Makaurau punks CCTV maintain their reign with pitiless and scathing new anthem 'Watch' and on the nose B-side 'No Barons'. Busy this summer, CCTV are playing a release rager tonight at NiceGoblins HQ with Fishing and bFM chart-toppers Castlegarden, letting rip at Grrunk Festival in Galatea in early December and supporting the capital's DARTZ at Whammy Bar on 24th January (get tickets HERE).

Aotearoa's king and queen of warped sophisti-pop, Jonathan Bree and Princess Chelsea duet together on 'Live To Dance' — a sensuously pulsing, gothic-tinted, electronic pop tapestry, launched with immaculate risqué visuals directed by Marc Swadel and Bree himself (in fact a loving homage to Duran Duran’s 'The Chauffeur'). 'Live To Dance' is in my opinion a solid local example of an aesthetic I like to call Arthouse Pop, which I'm currently researching / seeking to pin down further (think: Annie Lennox, Shakespears Sister).

It's been a prolific week for 2023 Taite Music Prize winner Princess Chelsea, who contributes a vinyl-only B-side to the first official new release from Dudley Benson since 2018's Zealandia. 'Pūrerehua' (waiata of the butterfly) is Benson's effervescent electronic-pop rendition of a work by Hirini Melbourne (Ngāti Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu), recorded and released on the occasion of the song's 50th anniversary. Available in a strictly limited 7" edition, also including a remix by Princess Chelsea and artwork by award-winning painter Ayesha Green (Ngāti Kahungunu, Kai Tahu), move fast to order 'Pūrerehua' direct from Benson HERE. "The artists who came together to make Pūrerehua recognise the ongoing threat both to te reo, and the rights of the indigenous people of Aotearoa. Like Hirini, we won’t tolerate this, and believe that making music and artwork can be an act of resistance in itself."

Aro's 'Puna Ora' is an exuberantly jangle-driven lead single from the Te Tiriti-based duo's forthcoming concept album Tāwauwau, out this March. "The song is about awakening that inner puna ora, that living spring inside us that connects us to our tūpuna, our tamariki, and to something beyond what we can see."

2021 Taite Music Prize winner Reb Fountain shared a tender and festive-themed fundraiser single 'Christmas in Wellington', "adapted from Steve Earle’s ‘Christmas in Washington", released in support of MusicHelps. You can do you bit by purchasing the track digitally HERE. Fountain is also playing the limited capacity Freidas Festive Fundraiser at Tāmaki Makaurau's Freida Margolis on 7th December helping KICK BACK — a youth development and social justice community who offer food, shelter, love and support to homeless youth. Snag a ticket before they all run out HERE.