News

The acclaimed singer-songwriter, Nick Waterhouse, releases final single "(No) Commitment" ahead of new album The Fooler out April 1, an immaculate record that offers up new riches and fresh perspectives with every spin.

The Fooler is a song-cycle of sorts, the arc of the album telling a tale of a city and its denizen, partly a farewell to and reclamation of a version of Waterhouse’s past existence framed by a city that is part dream, part reality and part potential. A place filled with 45s produced by people like Bert Berns or released on Scepter, Wand, Atlantic and Verve and heard on the jukeboxes in iconic San Francisco institutions like Tosca, Specs and Trieste in North Beach.

Of the single, "(No) Commitment," Waterhouse explains: "The party is on the third floor: all the hallways are dingy and the steps’ runner threadbare. You hear the music blaring through the walls from the stairwell corridor. Behind a decayed blue door it’s all the same faces as the last long barroom you’d passed through. The same words, the same patterns, the same concerns. They’ve played out on screens almost as much as they’ve hung like smoke in these leather and denim realities. Heavy, hairy heads hanging down to hear words from slouching corner bound figures… Tune in, like a radio antennae, to the din of the room, the chatter and the laughter and the poses, the murmur and rumble of dingy apartment rooms crammed full of these hanger-outers. The double bass turns everything slow motion and descends, the hard hand of the drummer pushes his stick into his ride cymbal in time with the snare.. a bell tolls with the lowest piano hammer of your mind."

See Cool Hunting for more about the single.

Jonah Yano releases "strawberry!"  Roaming through the vast, snowy streets of Toronto, Jonah lyrically explores the connection he still has to his Japanese heritage singing "strawberry is the cloth that i am cut from...who’d have thunk i’d leave out with the lump sum." Co-produced with Monsune and the first song he recorded for his upcoming LP, Jonah says he was inspired by “kraut rock” which is defined by the era’s long droning heavy guitar riffs and static chord progressions. He also says it's the loudest song he's ever made. Recording the album between Tokyo's Red Bull studios, a log cabin in Nagato, Toronto's Studio 69, and his own home, 'souvenir' (out Father's Day, June 21st, via Innovative Leisure) features collaborations with his father Tatsuya Muraoka, BADBADNOTGOOD, and Jacques Greene. Read more about Jonah's collaborations, his identity beyond art, and embracing personal subjects via Cool Hunting.

Cool Hunting has premiered the latest single off Hanni El Khatib's forthcoming album FLIGHT (due out May 15th). The song, DUMB, is based around an 808 bass sound and vocal sample and is produced by Leon Michels of El Michels Affair. Check the interview and the song up at Cool Hunting.

As Hypebeast reports "with a well-orchestrated mixtape already under his belt, Yano’s sound has been shaped by soulful vocal deliveries with a distinctive wistfulness that reflects his modern indie milieu — the artist has shown a natural affinity for producing a dynamic range of sounds like slow-burning ballads, jazzy electronic tunes and quaint lo-fi performances.  Rolling off as the last track on souvenir, “Shoes” reflects an emotional reunion with Yano’s father, Tatsuya Muraoka."  And as Cool Hunting reports "the intensely personal single will appear on Yano’s forthcoming debut album, souvenir, out 19 June."