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Casper Skulls

casperskulls.bandcamp.com

Known for their studied sound and supercharged live performances, Casper Skulls have been hailed by the likes of FADER, MTV and Billboard. On the back of their live shows opening for Thurston Moore, The Julie Ruin, PUP, and Charly Bliss, they’re one of the most exciting emerging Canadian bands.

There was already a palpable distance between the scrappy young noiseniks who first turned heads with their debut single, “King of Gold,” in 2015, to 2016’s artfully buzzing Lips and Skull EP, and then a year later the more contemplative and confidently nuanced full-length, Mercy Works.

On Knows No Kindness, their sophomore album to be released in November 2021 by Next Door Records, Casper Skulls become the otherworldly outfit hinted at in Mercy Works, on 2018’s “O My Enemy,” and last year’s Françoise Hardy cover, “Ou va la chançe.”

KNK functions as a collage of memories that have shaped singer Melanie St-Pierre from her youth in Northern Ontario through to adulthood in Toronto. Each song tells a story of an experience that has affected the course of her life.

There’s a new depth to the arrangements here, realized with an arsenal of ethereal effects, illustrative percussion, cinematic guitar noise, and vividly on-point singing and songwriting, picking up melodically where SOCAN Songwriting Prize-nominated devastator “Lingua Franca” left off.

Casper Skulls have been ready for their closeup for a while. With KNK, they’ve gone and made an album that’s simply too good to neglect.

- Ben Rayner

The Ape-ettes

theape-ettes.bandcamp.com

The Ape-ettes, made up of Julie Katherine Houle (guitar), Melanie McDonald (drums) and Andrée St-Onge (bass), are a scrappy rock-garage-psych-pop trio who sing in French and English. Their self-titled album, released in June 2017, has short driving songs like “Bless this Mess” and “Tu m’aimes – tu? (même pas proche).” In its review, Ride the Tempo wrote: “The bouncy sounds of Sudbury’s The Ape-ettes is a colourful delight, and there’s also a slight riot grrrl edge to the surfy garage rock.”

Barry & The Bananas

barryandthebananas.bandcamp.com

A new fun project by Dylan Kelly, Mark Scherzinger, Kyle Ormsby and Keegan McDonald - they are bananas!