Now Listening: Ambient dub, mood pop, alt rock, joyous club

Davis Galvin – Prism (Delphinium elatum) (Music To Watch Seeds Grow By 2025)

Could this be the spiritual successor to DJ Sprinkles' Midtown 120 Blues I have waited 15-ish years for? Possibly, maybe. This hour-long swaddle of deep, dubwise bliss arrived in January from Pittsburgh producer-DJ Davis Galvin. It's their first proper LP after nearly a decade of EPs, mostly Bandcamp-only—and it's extraordinary. I might call it an "ambient dub" or "deep house" record for short, but from those foundations, it unfurls like a flower: "Music To Watch Seeds Grow By," after all. The album's first beat drops three tracks in, on "Grasshopper (Solo)," amidst Rhodes-like keys and strummed guitar. After an intermezzo, four tracks arrive in two pairs: "Prism," a healing swirl of beneficent synths, bleeds into "Matched Pair of Hemispheres," jazzy and insistent; the half-time bass groove of "Marine Layer" leads into the full-on dubby swing of "Naming It," the album's only club-floor heater. Essential listening.

ex_libris – 001 & 002 (self-released 2025)

Some artists just do their own thing. Dutch producer Dave Huismans has always operated outside the bounds, first as 2562 and then as A Made Up Sound, his technoid-leaning outlet. After a seven-year absence, Huismans is back with two new EPs and a new alias, ex_libris. Huismans' productions were always just as rewarding to listen to as they were to groove to, and I'm thrilled to report that nothing has changed. Fundamentally, these records are designed for the club—throbbing kick drums and rollicking basslines fully present and accounted for—but club music is rarely this dusty and organic, like techno records buried in soil and left to overgrow with moss. Amidst oblique samples, off-kilter hand drums clatter, while expansive melodic swaths tug at the heartstrings. Judging by the tracks' numbered titles ("#3," "#8," etc.), these are selected from a larger batch—more will arrive soon, I hope.

sachi's mirror – room to receive (Cone Shape Top 2025)

Last year, Cone Shape Top, an Oakland-based record shop and project space (and Thoughts of a Certain Sound's first interview), launched their own label. Their latest release, by sachi's mirror, aka Bay Area violinist Shaina Pan, is a short, sweet, marvelously fine burst of ethereal string-led mood-pop. Pan is an accomplished chamber musician and also plays in the punk-ish outfit Juicebumps; solo, she melds wistful songwriting with experimental sound design. Her violin playing is versatile and intricate, whether it's the plucked abruptions of "Rupture & Mend" or the arcing melodies of "Hold The Pattern." But it's her voice—tender, soft, pensive—that makes these songs so haunting, so potent, and so eminently repeatable. My only complaint, as such, is that it's too short: five songs, 18 minutes, and it's done. But then I just listen over, and over, and over again. File under: "Most remarkable debut releases of 2025."

Roomer – Leaving It All To Chance (Squama 2025)

As I get older, I've learned to simply embrace how much I adore a perfectly crafted pop song. "Chance," the lead single from Roomer's debut album Leaving It All To Chance, is a perfectly crafted pop song, and I listened 20 or 30 times in a row, maybe, when I first heard it. The whole record, though, is a treat from start to finish. Roomer, a trio from Berlin, operate in a contemporary lineage of "Euro-style alt rock"—think counterparts like bar italia, Double Virgo, even Yves Tumor. It's a particular sound that hits me, an American millennial, with laser-guided nostalgia rockets, like I'm hearing "Black Hole Sun" for the first time again. Roomer are more delicate than their peers, even when the guitar tone is ripping, because singer Ronja Schössler's voice sounds like yearning. She, and the folksy twang present throughout, soften the record's edges. It's lush, it's longing, it's lovely.

schuttle – BH008 (Bakk Heia 2025)
Jorg Kuning – BH007 (Bakk Heia 2023)

It's a preciously rare thing to hear club music that sounds genuinely novel. Since discovering Manchester label Bakk Heia Records several years ago, I've become quietly obsessed with producers and co-founders Jorg Kuning and schuttle, whose wonky, wobbly, technicolor sound design is unlike anything else I've heard. Each occupies their own lane: schuttle dabbles in lower tempos and breakbeats, while Kuning plays with electro and synthetic vocals. Tonally, they're distinct, too: schuttle wields acid squelch while Kuning is all-in on rubberized clank. But both have much in common—really, they're two of a kind. Both artists' productions are bright, playful, and unabashedly joyous, a glorious reprieve amongst the stodginess of so much self-serious dance music. Listen to schuttle's "Kitchen Sync" or Jorg Kuning's "Quirl" and you will feel happy to be alive—grateful for the squirrelly, silly, brilliantly constructed tech-house in your ears. Sometimes it really is as simple as that.