Release Roundup: Hun Lynch, Mainard Larkin, Frau Knotz, Reb Fountain, The Beths, HINA, The Veils + More

Scroll downwards for new and recent Aotearoa highlights from Hun Lynch, Mainard Larkin, Frau Knotz x Keanu Raves, Reb Fountain, The Beths, HINA, The Veils, Hominid, Esteem Engine, and Hori Holocaust / EndoplasmicRectomyosis.

Entrancing audiences across the motu (and beyond) with SRN chart-topping, trip-hop adjacent sonic excursion 'Conan', Hun Lynch (aka Hannah Lynch) elevates our Friday with her debut album Sycophant via Noa Records — sounding to these ears a high water mark release of 2026. Recorded and self-produced at the artist's home in Tāmaki Makaurau, Hun Lynch shared insights into Sycophant's creation and kaupapa over on Instagram. "This took me ages guys, I’ve been so patient. I made it entirely at our house over a period of a few years. Most of it is about the immense confusion of this life and the desperation to find a good way to do it! Called it Sycophant for many reasons but in brief it’s joyfully pointing to the self betrayal that we are all undergoing to keep this machine ticking along! Fluctuating between feelings of grandiosity and insignificance! All the turmoil of playing a part in the current world! Thinking about it all the time! Touching wood when you think of anything cos it’s chaos out there and it’s chaos in here too! It’s also an expression of devotion to my family, my friends and everyone I know and don’t know."

Mainard Larkin evidently has hits up his sleeve as the Tāmaki Makaurau songwriter shares 'One Headlight', the eminently hummable third single from the forthcoming Lil' Chief Records debut album Rattlesnake Boy. Written with Shannan Fowler (Tom Lark), 'One Headlight' arose from Larkin's own interior battles, expressed visually as a Scorsese-esque black and white stoush directed by Alexei Foster. "I started crying, but Shannan was so caring and kind. We went back to the studio and I wrote those lyrics: ‘I'm not a loser, I'm giving my best / I've given it all, given the rest.’ That was exactly how I felt - I was working so hard through therapy and just trying to survive the gnarliest stretch of my life."

Ngāmotu New Plymouth's electronica ambassador Frau Knotz serves up a deeply zoned and delicately dubby techno rework by Keanu Raves of 'Left Eye Lunar' — from her brand new Digital Plastic Surgery (Special Edition), featuring SRN recent favourite 'Victory Dance on ZR3 (Amamelia Remix)'. "I’ve long been drawn to Keanu Raves’ crisp production skills and his minimalistic, industrial tracks. It’s been 10 years since I lived in Berlin and first discovered techno, so to team up with a fellow Berlin-dwelling kiwi was special to me. I listened to his remix for the first time in my Nissan Cube on the way to work. It blew my mind (and my car’s tiny mind also). I love how he has turned my leftfield original into a banger with a sinister evolution and an in-your-face thumping beat."

Finalist for the 2026 Taite Music Prize for 2025's How Love Bends (winner announced next week), multi-award-winning Aotearoa songwriter Reb Fountain is already prepping us for a new bundle of tunes. Launching her seven song SMOKE SIGNALS EP on the first day of NZ Music Month / Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa, experience director Lola Fountain-Best's gently hypnotic visuals for the propulsive 'SUNDAY SCHOOL' — part of a series of "vignettes" for a clutch of advance singles — and look forward to even more on 1st May.

Touring the globe non-stop following the monumental success (howsoever you choose to define it) of their latest album Straight Line Was A Lie, Aotearoa's The Beths shared a lovely new video directed and edited by Frances Carter, for their bicycle advocating ballad 'Til My Heart Stops'.

Ascendant Tāmaki Makaurau songwriter HINA aka Amy Boroevich (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Raukawa) revealed her debut album Descending Dreams will be launching on 31st July — produced by Navakatoa Tekela-Pule, "refined with" James Milne (Lawrence Arabia), and recorded with a formidable cast of instrumental contributors. An angelic figure roaming the spaces of Kāhui St David’s on Khyber Pass Road, HINA self-directed the video for her radiant new pop-ballad 'South Pacific Sun'. "The opening ocean sounds were recorded at my local beach, where I’ve been going since I was a child. To me, the music has a quintessentially South Pacific flavour. But this song isn’t about the ocean, not really. It’s me asking for balance, calm, safety, and permission to exist. It’s about emotional homelessness, living inside someone else’s world. This song is hope entwined with early self-abandonment, still believing peace is possible but already disappearing to find it."

Finn Andrews follows his soaring recent single 'Lungs' with a return to balladic intimacy, pondering nature's powers with the piano-driven elegance of 'Aurora' — foreshadowing The Veils' new album Fragile World and winter Aotearoa release tour. Director Alexander Gandar provides Aeon Flux-like minimal visual accompaniment. "This song was written as it was being recorded, which is a very rare thing for me. The day we made it, there was a huge geomagnetic storm over parts of New Zealand, and the pictures of the aurora that followed were in all the papers. Sometimes things are so beautifully simple."

Also engaging with celestial bodies is 'Sun Spots', an intricately rhythmic and playfully percussive, ear-tickling new single from Te Whanganui-a-Tara electronica artist Hominid — from the forthcoming PLAY FIGHTING EP out on 7th May.

Esteem Engine's Esteem Engine (midi) is a carefully assembled two tune collection, existing somewhere between wonky electronica, fun and energising avant-prog-funk, and cosy synth textures.

Staunchly touted as "only the most disgusting collab to hit Aotearoa", Splih is a heroically aggro, mind-mincing and politically infuriated eight track aural assault, from local grindcore / goreslam propagators Hori Holocaust and EndoplasmicRectomyosis.