Release Roundup: The Sour, DC Maxwell ft. Bonnie Prince Billy, Sogg ft. David Kilgour, Dion Lunadon, WHO SHOT SCOTT, JHL + More

A rare Thursday roundup before the Easter weekend, affording us the opportunity to include some stray recent releases amidst the new crop. Scroll downwards for new and recent Aotearoa highlights from The Sour, DC Maxwell ft. Bonnie Prince Billy, Sogg ft. David Kilgour, Dion Lunadon, WHO SHOT SCOTT, JHL, Dalyan RD aka LION DIXON, lucky pollock, Chainmailer, and Total Violation.

The Sour are the all-wāhine grunge-punk super-collective of Lani Purkis (Elemeno P), Jessie Booth (Ekko Park), Jana Te Nahu Owen (Somme) and Tam Matchett (Demons of Noon), delivering highly catchy fuzz-rock goodness on their new single 'Your God & Mine'. Look out for their debut Daughters EP launching in May, aka NZ Music Month / Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa.

Unjustly snubbed by his (former) hero, UK pop superstar Robbie Williams, Naarm-based Aotearoa songwriter DC Maxwell valiantly clambers back onto the bucking bronco that is rock and roll. Maxwell's new single 'Half Real' is an impassioned strumming duet with no less than Bonnie Prince Billy, aka Louisville luminary Will Oldham (Palace) — reassuring listeners of time's healing powers, whilst cycling through empty suburban streets in the video co-directed by UTR alum Jess Fu.

DC Maxwell revealed just how this significant collaboration came to be in his must-read e-newsletter DC Maxwell Dispatches. Here's an excerpt: "Will and I recorded this song while I was in Los Angeles finishing off the songs that would become The Singer. I saw that Will was in town playing a show (he usually lives in Kentucky) and cold emailed him a scratchy phone recorded demo of the song. There must have been something in it, because he said yes when this no name New Zealander asked him to sing with him. When we later found out that our recording studio was literally a two minutes walk from where he was staying it felt like fate..."

Multiple generations of Ōtepoti noiseniks converge on Sogg's magnificent cover of 'Point That Thing Somewhere Else' by The Clean, which in fact features the legendary David Kilgour on guitar!

Aotearoa garage-punk king Dion Lunadon (The D4) has dropped 'Dead Or Alive', the grunty as hell lead track to his forthcoming Rare Gems Volume One, bundling "rare and unreleased studio tracks recorded between 2016 and 2026" — out on 24th June via Beast Records.

WHO SHOT SCOTT's relentless release schedule shows no sign of slowing down with new rap banger 'FAST CAR', delivering flow state information overload with directorial partner in crime Connor Pritchard.

Soon jetting to China for a debut four date tour, Aotearoa avant-electronic club artist JHL's latest single and video 'Everything you want' will rescramble your synapses in the best way possible. Note: "FLASHING LIGHTS AHEAD".

Always generating a "heck yeah!" from this listener whenever they drop a track, Tāmaki Makaurau hip-hop artist Dalyan RD aka LION DIXON's back catalogue remains impeccable with frisky new heater 'Don’t Look UP!'

lucky pollock is the ambient alter-ego of Ōtepoti synth-punk beet-wix. Refresh your aural palate with a time-warping wash of new age-adjacent reverberations, snappily entitled 'soothe me'.

Generating enthusiastic chatter amongst local Bandcamp deep divers — a rare platform where non-algorithmic discoverability still flourishes — Plumelaying is a sonically beguiling debut collection from Tāmaki Makaurau's Chainmailer. Melting down and reforging elements of hip-hop, avant-folk, devotional neo soul and lo-fi pop-rock, this five track EP is very much worth a close listen.

Released over a month ago yet still utterly demanding of your attention is SPEED DEALERS, the pedal to the metal, breakneck debut assault from Te Whanganui-a-Tara thrashers Total Violation — featuring studio contributions from Daif King of Stälker and dORKWIND. Don't meet them alone in a darkened alley, or you may experience 'SADISTIK EXEKUTION'.