Best Australian and New Zealand Music of the Week: PNAU, Kaylee Bell, Grace Cummings and More

Indie-pop rising star Greta van den Brink shares her long-awaited debut album This Wasn’t Planned.

“This album feels like a collection of moments where I was trying to figure myself out in real time,” the Aotearoa singer-songwriter explains.

“A lot of the songs came from chaos, heartbreak, desire, loneliness, or wanting to escape something. I think This Wasn’t Planned is really about growing into yourself through all the messiness and unpredictability of life, and learning that sometimes the unplanned things end up shaping you the most.”

PRINS and Jujulipps are a dream duo on new collaborative single “Subliminal”.

“Wanted to celebrate NZ Music Month by joining forces with another powerhouse woman in the industry,” PRINS wrote on social media. “Have always loved Jujulipps’ energy and edge, so this one felt like a natural fit.”

In other PRINS news, she’s stepping into a major new touring cycle.

She announced this week that her world tour will take her to the US, Europe, Australia, as well as her home country later this year.

Grace Cummings marks her new album announcement with its lead single.

Before Bloodhorse! comes out on August 14th via Virgin Music Group, listen to “My God” below.

“Lyrically, this song is about hatred, jealousy, rage,” Cummings explains. “The ‘God’ here is the dark forces that are wrapping around us, that we scroll through, the toxic energy that binds us together in this modern world, and the fear we feed it every day.

“‘My God’ describes a false God I wish I wasn’t subscribed to, but am. I don’t want to talk about phones or whatever, but…that God lives in there. It’s not what I believe in, but we all subscribe and are hooked to it. And I use the word ‘God’ in my music because it’s the biggest word there is. I don’t know what it means, but I feel it in a lot of things.”

Canberra-based punk band Sonic Reducer share “Rosebank”, another taste of their new EP.

Before their Living Room EP comes out on June 19th, listen to their new post-punk ballad below.

The track arrives following a stellar run of shows supporting Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers and Genesis Owusu on their respective national tours.

Kaylee Bell finishes NZ Music Month on a high note with the release of not one but two singles.

Double single “Me for Me” and “Once in a Lifetime” were both performed live for the first time at the historic debut concert at Ōtautahi Christchurch’s brand-new One New Zealand Stadium, where Bell played alongside Six60, Synthony, and more

“Once in a Lifetime” was created so that Bell had “something to mark the night — something that would outlive it.”

“The song and the video together are a time capsule — a moment in time we can hold onto forever,” she says.

Previously described by us as “the type of unpretentious, if-you-know-you-fucking-know, resolutely DIY band that rewards discovery,” Cindy return with new single “All the Nice People”.

The song is “a tribute to all the people who have supported us as a band,” vocalist Gloria Florence says. “[T]he people who come to our shows and bring the energy, the other musicians who work with us, our friends and whanau who offer their time and attention.

“It’s an incredible feeling to be on stage performing but it’s also very scary and intense — it’s not possible to do this alone.”

“All the Nice People” is set to feature on the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland punk band’s forthcoming album, which is slated for release later this year.

Yung Milla is feeling high on love.

New single “Higher” is about “that moment when love hits and you’re suddenly spawning dopamine on repeat,” according to a press release.

Listen to the Afro-fusion hip-hop anthem, which is the NT rapper’s first true love song, below.

“Higher” is the first of two single drops from Yung Milla’s debut EP, set for release later this year.

Australian emo is in a healthy state thanks to bands like Deadshowws.

The alt-emo four-piece share debut album You in colour., which is “the culmination of a year of procrastinating and hating yourself for it,” according to the band.

Following their album release, Deadshowws will celebrate You in colour. along the east coast of Australia in June, playing shows in Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Wollongong, and Brisbane.

They’ve previously supported bands like Basement and Trophy Eyes.

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland artist Omega Levine continues his return with “Sweet and Sour”.

The song follows the recent drop “All Things New”, his first official single in six years.

“Sweet and Sour” features strong Pacific representation through guests INF of SWIDT and ANKA, alongside AIRPORTS, made with NZ On Air Pasifika support.

“This record represents real life. The sweet moments, the messy moments, the tension, the love and everything in between. Growing up Samoan in Aotearoa, music always carried emotion and storytelling,  and this song naturally came from that space,” Levine says.

Aotearoa indie stalwarts The Broken Heartbreakers are back with new single “How Long Is Too Long”.

The tender single leads their forthcoming fourth album, Imagine If We Could Just Keep Driving, out on July 17th via Nadia Reid’s Slow Time Records.

Otepoti Dunedin-based songwriters Rachel Bailey and John Howell make up The Broken Heartbreakers, who Reid says “are such gifted writers, observers, singers, and players.”

Lottie McLeod marks her new EP announcement with new single “Sunburnt”.

“Sunburnt” is about a fleeting relationship, filled with tongue-in-cheek lyrical observations by the Brisbane-based singer-songwriter. It’s the lead single from The Boat House EP, which McLeod will release on September 25th.

“‘Sunburnt’ is about a person I was seeing for not even a month, I felt such a strong connection with this person but I also hardly knew him,” McLeod explains.

“I had just gotten back from a beach day with my mum, a little sunburnt — I’m a sucker for metaphor. I liked this guy. A LOT. Talking everyday, dates, future planning, dinner with the parents. Our last date was the closest I had ever felt to him — I spent the night and the next morning he asked to go to breakfast that weekend, where he ended things.

“I was so disappointed and confused, I really wanted to know him on a deeper level, see his ugly side, have some sort of future with him. He never gave me a chance to show him how beautiful it could’ve been, but I knew it was something I just had to let go because there was nothing to hold on to.

“There was this self reflection at the time, asking myself ‘why would I try to win back a stranger…  That would be silly!’ — I wrote this song instead.”

Mia Wray shares “Isn’t It Funny”, her second single of the year so far.

The song follows the ARIA-nominated singer-songwriters biggest support slot to date, backing up the one and only Ed Sheeran on his ANZ stadium tour.

“This song is about two best friends slowly outgrowing each other — how someone can go from feeling like family to becoming a complete stranger,” she explains.

“Xavier Dunn and I wrote this song together, and I was drawing from personal experience around that kind of loss… that strange feeling when you run into someone you once did everything with and feel that painful throb in your chest because you miss them deeply, but also know that if you sat down together today, you’d barely recognise each other anymore.

“Sometimes love is still there, but the connection isn’t — and they no longer belong in your life the way they once did.

Heartbreaking stuff…in some ways, I think losing a friend can hurt even more than a romantic breakup. There’s no clean ending to hold onto — just a slow grieving of someone who’s still out there, living a life that no longer includes you.”

Ammonita are yet another promising new Ōtepoti Dunedin band, and this lot are grungy.

The monumental “Walnut”, their debut single, combines battering drums, distorted guitars, and a memorable lead vocal performance to exciting effect, the five-piece’s interplay already belying their career infancy.

“The song is about the pain of a long-distance relationship,” they explain. “We all wrote this song together, with Paige ‘Sumner] drawing the meaning of the song through her personal experiences and projecting that into the lyrics.”

Ammonita, made up of Paige Sumner, Zoe Eckhoff, Iván Fernandez, Mason O’Connell, and Karl Young, have been building up their reputation around Dunedin’s live music circuit before unleashing their first song. 

Melbourne singer-songwriter Angus Legg announces his debut EP with its final single.

“Like I Never Left” is the final preview of the forthcoming A Long Time Gone, out on June 25th via Community Music.

Legg’s new single is a companion piece to his previous release “12th of May”, finding himself on the other side of a momentous move overseas, returning to familiar surrounding and hoping everything is just as he left it.

“’Like I Never Left’ is about coming home, carrying the quiet uncertainty of whether ‘home’ is still waiting on the other side,” as he explains. “In this story, home isn’t a place, it’s a person.

“Where ‘12th of May’ captures the day I left — full of grief and uncertainty — ‘Like I Never Left’ lives in the return, holding onto the blind hope that what you had might still be there.”

Joe Mungovan ponders the emotional merry-go-round that is modern life on new single “Melodrama”.

Produced by Robby De Sa (MAY-A, The Veronicas), the song finds Munogvan drawing influence from the likes of Gorillaz, Kasbian, and DMA’S.

“I think ‘Melodrama’ came from feeling overwhelmed by the world and how performative everything can feel now,” Mungovan shares.

“Everyone’s chasing something, selling something, escaping into something… but underneath all of that, I still think people just want to connect and feel loved.

“The song’s kind of sarcastic and cynical on the surface, but there’s also this genuine message in there of ‘be kind and good to one another,’ because at the end of the day, that’s really the only thing that cuts through all the nonsense.”