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Today Vivek Shraya is back with a new remix of her song "Quitter" off her 2023 record Baby, You're Projecting, which turns 1 in just a few weeks! 

"Quitter Remix" features Vancouver-based musician Kimmortal lending some vocals and a verse to the song that even ID's the album. 

With this remix, Vivek gives the album and song a bit more love.

"Quitter" was one of the last songs she wrote for Baby, You're Projecting. She says, "I knew by then that I was writing a break ups album, but it wasn't until I watched the Alanis Morissette documentary that it hit me that I hadn't really allowed myself to be angry in my songwriting. I was so consumed with being fair to the other people I was writing about that I didn't realize I was muting my own emotions." 

Having been a fan Kimmortal since they played a show together (with Vivek's band Too Attached) years ago, and having Kimmortal sing back ups on Baby, You're Projecting, she wanted to put out an "official collab." 

Vivek said, "I genuinely believe that collaboration is the fuel of life. There is nothing one artist can do that two artists can't do better, and this collab is a testament to this fact. Kimmortal really takes this track to a new level and I've totally forgotten about the original version!"

Kimmortal says: "When I was writing for 'Quitter' I was thinking about past dating experiences I’ve had where my energy was not reciprocated and where I felt like I was treated as if I was disposable. 'Quitter' feels like an outlet for that rage and also a way to claim that power back. It was also such a fun experience to get the chance to sing in duet styles with Vivek!"

Listen to the single on streaming or Bandcamp.

“This Is The Part that’s too Hard to Explain” is the invigorating first single off Future Star's next album, It’s About Time! Out on Mint Records on July 5, 2024.

Future Star is a Vancouver-based bedroom pop star who has been releasing catchy keyboard music with “sweet and comically candid lyrics” (Discorder) since 2016. With influences that include musical artists like Arthur Russell, Magnetic Fields, and Kero Kero Bonito, and visual artists such as Lynda Barry, Future Star has built a reputation for creating intimate live performances "loaded with understated significance and beauty" (Exclaim!).

Their most recent two albums, When Will The DJ Of Luv Grant Me My 1 Request (Kingfisher Bluez, 2021) and All Of These Songs Are About You (None Of These Songs Are About Me) (self-released, 2021), tell a satisfying story of queer longing and loneliness transformed into love and joy.

Turning a song about the vulnerability experienced in childhood into a cathartic bop is no easy feat, but Future Star manages to pull it off in “This is the Part That’s Too Hard To Explain”. This is a song about hiding from understanding things, not asking for help when we need it, and the forgiveness we can offer ourselves and those around us when the smoke has cleared. A reminder to handle the "little guy" inside of you with care and compassion.

Listen on: Streaming and Bandcamp

About the record

While dreaming about houses that have been torn down and shows that happened in venues that don't exist anymore, Future Star explores the space between now and then with their upcoming album It's About Time!. A retrospective on seven years of songwriting, It's About Time! reminds us that a moment can go on infinitely, a memory can be shared, and something might have changed when you weren't looking.

Recorded and produced by long time friend Andromeda Monk, the album is at times minimalistic in texture with upright piano and voice, and at times lushly arranged with additions of synthetic strings, flutes and drum machine. Breathing naturally and comfortably, like a body at rest, it invites the listener to breathe naturally and comfortably, because everything is going to happen no matter what.

Maybe a song can be like a body, and their cells can replace themselves after a certain period of time. Maybe a story can be like a person that takes time to realise who they are. Maybe a city can be livable and you don't need to move to Montreal, or the suburbs.

Our cells turn over, the wick burns shorter, and maybe when the light hits just right and everything comes into focus, you will make the next best decision you've ever made.

RIYL: Magnetic Fields, Kimya Dawson, Arthur Russell, Frankie Cosmos, Chris-A-Riffic

Follow Future Star

Website • Instagram • Twitter • Facebook • Bandcamp • Spotify • Apple Music

Today Non La releases "Hurtful," the lead single off their sophomore album Like Before. 

"With this song I wanted to capture the nuances of non-monogamy," says On. 

"However, I think I ended up expressing this feeling that is familiar in every relationship, romantic or not: that there could be some new, exciting distraction that threatens what you have. The song starts relaxed, but as the anxieties grow bigger, the song swells until the music implodes. It ends in chaos." 

Listen to the song now.  

Coming out of "an 8 year music video retirement" to direct the music video for "Hurtful," Owen Ellis creates the uneasy feeling of ominous tension at a live show, where a concert goer walks the line between stalker and super fan. Check out the video on YouTube!

About the album 

Like Before is a 12-track alt-pop meditation on long term relationships, the difficulty of recognizing care in routine, and the struggle to do better than whatever maladapted form of love your parents were modelling. Despite the universality of these themes, Non La brings a specifically queer focus to the genre including tracks discussing meeting your partner in a bathhouse and how/if to ever tell your family (“Dark Room”), and the conflicting insecurities (“Hurtful”) and reassurances (“Like Before”) that arise from non-monogamy.

Pre-orders of the LP, cassette, and digital album are available on Bandcamp and the Mint web store.

Please join us in welcoming Non La to Mint! 

Non La is the solo project of queer, Taiwanese-Vietnamese musician DJ On (Thee AHs, TV Ugly), dedicated to queer storytelling. On released his debut album Not in Love with local label Kingfisher Bluez, and the album was named one of the most anticipated Canadian album’s of 2020 by Exclaim! Magazine.

We're very happy to be releasing music from Non La starting with a cathartic new single called "Homes" - out today! Stream the single wherever you listen to music.

On said, "The song is about the complex feelings at the end of a relationship. Though I have hurt and resentment I feel for the other person, I still hope that things could turn around and that the relationship could be somewhat repaired." 

The technicolour music video depicts moments of queer joy, love, and tenderness. Watch it now. 

Faith Healer fans, the long wait is over. It's been 6 years since the band released Try ;-) and today we're happy to share that their forthcoming record The Hand That Fits The Glove is coming out October 13 on Mint!

Faith Healer quietly crystallizes on their new album The Hand That Fits The Glove, reshaping their already approachable pop sound into something even more immediate and invigorating. 

With their 2017 album Try ;-), the duo of Jessica Jalbert and producer/multi-instrumentalist Renny Wilson began stripping away some of the ‘60s chamber pop influences that had informed the earliest Faith Healer material, and these eight new songs continue expanding outward in new directions. It’s a multi-colored assortment of richly-detailed songwriting that feels surprisingly straightforward, knowingly concealing its complexities always just beneath a sheen of composed cool.

The evolution that brought Faith Healer to this point has been ongoing since the project’s earliest days. Jalbert and Wilson had been working together since the time when Jalbert was still performing under her own name in the early 2010’s, transitioning to the Faith Healer moniker on 2015 album Cosmic Troubles and their creative partnership truly solidifying with Try ;-). Those albums were built from the ground up with an insular design, with sole contributors Jalbert and Wilson adding overdubs and sculpting the sound. The core Faith Healer duo expands their membership for the first time on The Hand That Fits The Glove, inviting additional musicians into the picture and filling out the sound with a live band feel. Players from various intersections of Canada’s indie circles played on the album, including contributions from long-time Faith Healer collaborators like Jenni Roberts (who’s also done some time as a touring musician on runs with TOPS and Calvin Love), Mitch Davis (a solo artist with work out on Arbutus), Conor Donaldson (sometimes drummer for Mac DeMarco), and Ross Nicoll. Jalbert and Wilson worked intermittently with different personnel in different settings, meticulously refining songs over time until they were dialed in with precision.

The end result is an album that flows effortlessly and remains refreshing and bright even when gliding over rough emotional edges. Waves of airy synths and understated shifts in arrangement steadily build on “The Game,” pushing along the song’s insistent hooks as it grows into a woozy sparkle. Some of the soft psychedelia of the band’s earlier work resurfaces on tracks like the pulsating glow of “I’m A Dog,” the tripped out rocking of “Stranger,” or the distant groove of “Green Velvet,” with the live band playing adding a breathable, open-air quality to deftly architected song construction. The overpoweringly catchy “Another Fool” presents one of the most controlled examples of Faith Healer’s perfectly-metered sound, bringing together the smooth atmospheres of Montreal chill with the less aloof but equally sophisticated breeziness of late-’90s lounge pop acts like Saint Etienne or the Cardigans. Jalbert approached the lyrics to these songs with a heightened intentionality, trying to inspect the substance of every line. Themes of frustration, pointlessness, and world-weariness rise up and recede, always counterbalanced by the optimism and ornate production of the music.

Even in the album’s most electrified passages, Faith Healer never overplays their hand. Throughout its various turns in mood and presentation, The Hand That Fits The Glove feels consistently cool-headed and congenial, with Jalbert and Wilson guiding us through every carefully considered step of the journey. It’s an album that instantly takes the temperature in the room down by a few degrees, and one that will inspire repeat listenings in hopes of keeping its particular and revivifying vibe going just a little longer.

Pre-order the record on the Mint web store and on Bandcamp! 

You know Neko Case, and you know Carolyn Mark, and we’re excited to introduce you to our latest signing, Nora Kelly Band!

Nora Kelly formerly led the post-punk band DISHPIT before embracing country music during COVID, and the band was born of jamming by the train tracks of Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood. People flocked to listen and sing along–until the cops chased them off.

Nora Kelly Band first caught our attention when they released the song “Hymn for Agnostics” off their Perfect Pig EP. Today Nora Kelly Band shares their new single "Lay Down Girl" and announce their debut album, Rodeo Clown, which arrives August 25 on Mint! 

Rodeo Clown was written by Nora Kelly, produced by Kelly with Ethan Soil, and mixed by Pietro Amato (The Luyas/Belle Orchestre).

Going clown-mode runs deep with this first single and accompanying music video. When people think “clown” they think funny, or maybe creepy, but always of that painted smile. For a song about overcoming one’s tendency to people please, a painted smile makes for the perfect metaphor. Watch the video directed by Gabie Che.

“The lyrics to this song were direct advice that I was giving to myself, to stop being a ‘Lay Down Girl’,” notes Kelly. “To stop staying put, acting sweet and putting everyone else first. Other people’s approval had been my priority for so long that over time my connection to what I liked and what I wanted had become weak. The lyrics are advice to this former self, with a chorus that chants, ‘I’ve been a fool…I’m going back to school, but this time my education’s gonna be ‘bout myself.”

Listen to "Lay Down Girl" on DSPs

Pre-Order Rodeo Clown 

Follow Nora Kelly Band
Instagram | Facebook | TikTok 

Listen
Bandcamp | YouTube | Spotify | Apple Music | TIDAL | SoundCloud 

Spoiler Alert!

If you are one of the millions of people watching Yellowjackets right now, you may have already spotted Necking playing the song "Big Mouth" off their debut record Cut Your Teeth at the 8:19 mark of Episode 205: Two Truths and a Lie. 

Shot at Grandview Lanes on Commercial Drive, our very own Necking grabbed a few moments of screen time, appearing as the performing act at a bowling alley while their song played through the entirety of the scene. 

Multi-disciplinary artist Vivek Shraya has a body of work that crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, and film. Among her list of accomplishments is an impressive catalog of music—including the Polaris Prize-nominated Part-Time Woman with Queer Songbook Orchestra (2017) and Angry by her band Too Attached (2018), which CBC described as one of “Canada’s most incisive, radical and galvanizing albums.” 

After twenty years of releasing music independently, Vivek will make her label debut with Baby, You’re Projecting, a visual album which comes out on Mint Records on May 12, 2023. Unlike her previous musical offerings, which were more sonically compartmentalized, Vivek endeavoured to create a genre-fluid album. Inspired by great female-fronted pop records (including janet. by Janet Jackson, Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album, and Lemonade by Beyoncé), Baby, You’re Projecting holds the breadth of Vivek’s sound and style in one space. Ranging from house to hip hop to country, Vivek’s singular voice and songwriting holds the record together and resonates in every genre. 

Produced by and co-written with frequent collaborator James Bunton (Donovan Woods, Ohbijou), Baby, You’re Projecting is a break-up album that explores Vivek’s tenuous relationships with men. The danceable “Good Luck (You’re Fucked)” is an empowering pop anthem for women and femmes clapping back at male fragility. The swelling ballad “He Loves Me Until He Hates Me” exposes the underbelly of male affection against a backdrop of sharp strings by Drew Jurecka (Dua Lipa, Rose Cousins). And the twangy “Colonizer” circles around the unique complexity of being in an interracial relationship. The record also features performances by Alanna Stuart (Bonjay), Christine Bougie (Bahamas, Amy Millan) and Kimmortal. 

Baby, You’re Projecting is being co-released with a 12-minute film titled “He Loves Me Until He Hates Me,” set to songs from the record and directed by award-winning cinematographer Gabriela Osio Vanden. Taking inspiration from 90’s classics like The Bodyguard and erotic thrillers, the film creates a meaningful (and playful) look at the unpredictability of masculinity—how it can fluctuate in insidious ways within a relationship, how one can be worn down in this type of power dynamic, and worse, how that can turn into lateral violence towards other women.

Tracklist

1. Quitter
2. Sinister Sister
3. Baby, You're Projecting
4. He Loves Me Until He Hates Me
5. I Miss My Friends
6. He Doesn't Listen To Me
7. Hate Club
8. Good Luck (You're Fucked)
9. Colonizer
10. I Have To Forgive Myself
11. Cut Me Out

Baby, You're Projecting is out on Mint on May 12, 2023 and will be available digitally and on vinyl. Pre-orders are now available here.

Declaring their resolution to party down in 2023, Miesha & The Spanks are hitting the town with a fresh coat of lipstick, a dapper bolo tie and a vibrant new single, “It’s My Year,” the first single off their forthcoming album titled Unconditional Love In Hi-Fi. 

Doin’ it all for the glam, the Calgary-based duet smashes through the subterfuge of self-doubt like a house of mirrors. A John Hughes movie come to life, Miesha’s siren to banshee self-actualization manifests in an array of fervent guitar riffs and the rhythmic method of Sean Hamilton’s cardiac-arrest-reversing percussion.

Recorded at the world-renowned National Music Centre (Calgary AB) under the capable ears of producers Daniel Farrant and Paul Rawson, this new single and its accompanying video cast a golden glow of optimism over the future.

Flourishing alongside alt-rock show ponies Wet Leg, Alvvays, Fleshwater, Black Mountain and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Miesha & The Spanks are set to shatter expectations in 2023. It’s a new era, and Joan Jett and Cyndi Lauper are the preeminent deities of divadom. Get primed to unpack your hot pants and freestyle your way through the roaring twenties. The sparkling single, “It’s My Year,” pops the cork on endless possibilities with sassy, coquettish vocals and a decadent carpe diem vibe.

Shouting out her rebellious philosophy with an impressive hardcore energy, Miesha’s mindset clears the calendar with an affirming blast of radio-rock. Flashy dips and double-proof highs swirl in harmony as the pair shimmers and shimmies through every grungy note and impassioned chorus.

Another tantalizing banger that teases more from their forthcoming full-length album, “It’s My Year” unveils a provocatively adventurous side of Miesha & The Spanks’ anthemic indie rock jams, while breaking out the first scrappy-yet-danceable hit of 2023.

Watch the music video | Stream the song

Words by Christine Leonard