site I FB I IG I X I youtube Hello Mary have spent the last several years refining their intricate alt-rock sound and musicianship.  The culmination of this work -  done in the studio, at practice and on the road - is reflected on the New York City-based band's new album Emita Ox  Since forming in 2019, the trio of Helena Straight (guitar/vocals), Stella Wave (drums/vocals), and Mikaela Oppenheimer (bass) have risen to prominence with their fuzzed-out tracks that invoke alt-rock, shoegaze, and post-punk with a dark whimsy. Having toured with American Football and Silversun Pickups, they’ve built a reputation for their ripping live performances in a time where virtuosic young rock bands are few and far between. Now, they follow up their acclaimed 2023 self-titled LP, which Rolling Stone called one of the year’s “sharpest, noisiest debuts,” with their most audacious project yet: Emita Ox, arriving September 13 via Frenchkiss Records. On Emita Ox, Hello Mary push harder into heavy distortion and psychedelic dreamscapes, as they build out their singular universe of gutsy strain of rock. The LP’s labyrinthine production reflects how the band’s musical tastes have expanded from Elliott Smith and Radiohead to encompass experimental post-rock acts like Black Midi and Swans. “This album encompasses a lot of our inspirations,” says Oppenheimer. “It also shows what we're like as a trio, collectively.” The project reveals the band leveling up as musicians and composers. Recorded in early 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina, the band played all the instruments on Emita Ox and produced it alongside Alex Farrar (Indigo De Souza, Wednesday, Snail Mail). The members’ contributions to the songwriting and production bleed into each other, but the album is a showcase of their individual strengths: Straight’s ethereal vocal melodies and gritty guitar riffs, Wave’s emotive vocals and knotty drum patterns, and Oppenheimer’s diabolical basslines and experimentation with electronic production. “We map out all the sections beforehand, we like to write intricate parts that complement each other,” says Wave. Featuring songs that span from 2018 to 2023, Emita Ox is also a document of Hello Mary’s past five years together growing up as bandmates and their arrival into young adulthood. First meeting as teenagers in 2019, the band became fast friends through the pandemic—a global crisis that made coming of age feel even more weighty and complicated. “This album represents a period of time that’s very meaningful to us. The songs are related to things that we all know about, even if it’s not out on the table for everyone else,” Wave explains. “The songwriting and recording process was a very heavy time that I will never forget.” Even if the lyrics touch on serious topics, the band maintains a core sense of play and exploration: jamming is their way of working through these feelings in a way that’s “easy and fun,” Straight says. Created amid these emotions of frustration and camaraderie, Emita Ox sees Hello Mary ruthlessly diving into a thrilling sound of catharsis. On “0%,” Wave launches into piercing screams for the first time. Oppenheimer says that her bandmate’s intense shrieks “makes the song full of energy and really exciting to play,” especially in the song’s breakdown which ends in a cacophony of noise and vibraphone. Meanwhile, “Down My Life,” which Straight says she wrote after “one of the saddest experiences” of her life, features her angelic vowels on top of warped piano and menacing bass. The band even veers towards prog-rock on songs like “Footstep Misstep,” where complex instrumentation and Wave’s dynamic vocals evoke a world in between fantasy and nightmare. The LP’s title, Emita Ox, is referenced in “Three,” whose lyrics sound plucked from a fairy tale. “‘Three’ was written after I’d been in a creative rut that lasted a couple months,” says Straight. “I wasn’t focused on getting any message across. My intention was just to write a full song, whether I ended up liking it or not."Though it doesn’t have an intended meaning, the imagery of the girl Emita and her ox is fitting for the band: Oxes are strong and resilient, and much of Emita Ox’s subject matter reveals Hello Mary’s perseverance, as they choose to move through life’s burdens instead of getting beaten down by them. But oxes are also dependable—much like how they see each other and their relationship. “There’s the lyric that goes, ‘Woke to the hands of three/Stitching and fixing me,’” Wave says to Straight, quoting her own words back to her. “I always picture me and Mikaela with you.” It’s a testament to how they’ve witnessed each other’s heartaches and mended each other back up—through their music and their friendship. Bleary Eyed FB I IG I youtube I spotify I bandcamp Bleary Eyed was formed in 2015 by frontman Nathaniel Salfi (guitar & vocals), now joined by Margot Whipps (bass & vocals), Pax Martyn (guitar), & Charlie Libby Watt (drums). Since their inception in the DIY scenes of DC and Philadelphia respectively, the band has taken many artistic turns. Through that experimentation, they’ve had time to grow into the sound they were always meant to make, filling a unique space in the shoegaze genre with their sample-heavy hazey computer pop atmosphere. The band presents both a positive yet outside energy with relatable lyrics with stacked harmonies from Whipps and Salfi over densely layered sample filled instrumentals. The songs teeter from more pleasant pop songs to heavier fuzz tracks sometimes blending elements from both styles. On their most recent self-titled EP, a collection of four songs that combines an ethereal shoegaze shine with some of their post-punk roots, Bleary Eyed the EP possesses a certain shimmer. “I could write shit that’s really esoteric” says Salfi. “But I want to write stuff that’s fun and warm for people to enjoy too.” That aforementioned warmth has always been Bleary Eyed’s golden string, the thing that has led them through the labyrinth of life and back to the sense of community and undeniable love that defines their origin story. You listen to the EP, and you feel it too, whether it’s the way that Whipps and Salfi’s voices effortlessly complement each other’s or the sense of light that permeates the release. It’s been there all along, through all the different versions of the band but this time they really got it. However, it was only by waiting that Bleary Eyed could have a self-titled so radiant, and that’s worth all the time in the world.” Blimp IG Stemming from the Los Angeles underground, noise rock quartet Blimp treads the sonic valley between contemporary pop and the avant-garde, careening toward a hopeful sound simultaneously familiar and new. Blimp came together in October 2022 and recorded their first EP, Egg, shortly after. A self-funded, raw display of controlled chaos and harmony, Egg was produced and mixed with the legendary Steve Fisk (Beat Happening, Unwound, Car Seat Headrest), in Seattle WA.