Our regular look at artists worth paying attention to now.
Three acts with new music, growing momentum and a reason to get on your radar before everybody else catches up.
– WORDS BY JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
UNTITLED (HALO)
Los Angeles quartet untitled (halo) are making some of the most interesting guitar music coming out of the city’s underground right now. Ariana Mamnoon, Jack Dione, Jay Are and Nicholas Noneman draw from shoegaze, electronic music, hip-hop and the restless experimentation of their local DIY community, pulling everything into songs that change direction without warning but somehow retain a remarkably strong pop instinct.
Their self-titled debut arrives November 6 through Dirty Hit, following several years spent building their own community through parties, performances and independently organized art events. Recorded in their Glassell Park studio, the album explores how memories, personal identities and relationships are constructed and reconstructed over time.
Recent singles give some indication of how far they’re willing to stretch things. “aimee lou wood freestyle” brings fragmented electronic production into contact with distorted guitars, “easy rider” takes a more direct approach with its fuzzy guitar hooks and communal vocals, while the newly released “sex” pushes toward dance music with breakbeats, abrasive synthesizers and Mamnoon’s drifting vocal delivery.
There’s an appealing lack of obligation to any particular musical tradition here. untitled (halo) seem interested in what happens when different sounds collide, and their debut could introduce that curiosity to a much wider audience.
STAR MOLES
Photo by Louise Sullivan
Philadelphia songwriter Emily Moales has a gift for making the ordinary sound completely extraordinary. Recording as Star Moles, she writes about missed trains, difficult relationships, disappointing jobs and the minor indignities of everyday existence with an imagination that can transform a mundane inconvenience into something approaching a biblical catastrophe.
Her album Highway to Hell, released earlier this year, is full of these wonderfully peculiar observations, delivered through loose piano arrangements, warm guitars and melodies that owe as much to classic songwriting as they do to the more eccentric corners of contemporary indie music. “The End,” “Factory Train” and “Control Freak” reveal a songwriter capable of moving between humor, vulnerability and genuine emotional weight without making any of it feel forced.
Star Moles have now signed to Dead Oceans, with Highway to Hell receiving its first vinyl release on December 4. New single “Born Again,” recorded with longtime collaborator Kevin Basko, examines the uncomfortable distance between youthful expectations and the working lives people eventually inherit, wrapping those thoughts in an irresistibly easygoing rock arrangement.
With a headline tour planned for early 2027, Moales is beginning to reach listeners well beyond the Philadelphia scene that nurtured her. Her songwriting has enough personality to make that expansion feel entirely deserved.
FRANKIE ROSE
Photo by Esme Rogers Smith
Frankie Rose has been an important figure in American independent music for nearly two decades, first through her involvement with Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts and subsequently through a solo career that has moved steadily from guitar-driven indie rock toward increasingly ambitious electronic pop. Her latest album, Hila, may be the most absorbing expression of that evolution yet.
Released September 18 through Born Losers and Night School Records, the self-produced album explores grief, memory and the strange psychological territory that follows personal loss. Dedicated to her brother Michael, Hila finds Rose working with darker electronic textures, enormous synthesizers, insistent rhythms and melodies that retain the immediate appeal of her earlier work.
“Cant Be Wrong” carries the momentum of her more dance-oriented recordings, while “Manifest” introduces an imposing industrial pulse. Elsewhere, “Rainman” and the title track bring saxophone and atmospheric electronics into arrangements that feel expansive and deeply introspective. By the time “Velvet Refrain” closes the album, there’s a sense of movement toward something lighter, even if the questions raised across the record remain unresolved.
Rose has spent years refining a musical language that is unmistakably her own. Hila suggests she’s still finding new ways to use it, making deeply personal music without sacrificing the physical excitement of a great pop record.
