LITM Rock Picks Tunes featuring A WOLF LIKE ME, Launch Control, YEARN, Michellar and Scott Yoder!
1. A Wolf Like Me – 4:49
With "4:49," A Wolf Like Me sacrifices high shine in favor of emotional texture, providing something all too rare in modern music: honesty and no spectacle. The song unspools with slow-burning elegance, wearing its wounds in dignified silence. There is no hurry here, no hook in pursuit, only lived-in narrative from someone who has obviously trod a couple of hard roads and made a mental note or two along the way.
There's terrific bittersweet beauty in the production, a nostalgic flashback to Melbourne's indie days, with gentle guitar melodies and warm, analogue sound that leaves you feeling as though you're rifling through a box of old photos. What is compelling, naturally, is the sense of isolation infused in the song: It doesn't grab your attention but rather earns it by simply being honest.
4:49 is a music set journal entry, a contemplative break from the cacophony of life. If you want a song that sits with you, not shouts over you, this one's a quiet success.
2. Launch Control – Plastic Fruit
If anxiety were soundtracked, "Plastic Fruit" could be it, and we're saying that as the ultimate compliment. With this latest release, Launch Control slows the punk speed and serves up dread at a slow, bubbling boil instead. This isn't music that gets punched in the mouth; it's music that whispers in your ear and compels you to wonder everything you ever believed was true.
From hesitant acoustic strums and siney vocals, "Plastic Fruit" slowly builds into a nightmare crescendo, complete with texture-filled static and a spoken word bit that falls like a gut-punch diagnosis. It's creepy. It's intimate. It's softly apocalyptic.
Where their previous work was raucous and loud, this song dials back the volume to turn up the discomfort. By the time the whole band comes thundering in, it's not a revolution, it's resignation. There's no conclusion here, just acknowledgement. A song that sounds less like a record and more like a slow, coherent dream dissolving. Briliantly unnerving.
3. YEARN – "Midnite Mine"
YEARN's "Midnite Mine" isn't a song, it's a message from the void within. Lily Minke Tahar's audio alter-ego weaves lo-fi soundscapes with the secrecy of a whisper and the creeping horror of a half-forgotten dream. Ditch structure and sheen; this is gut instinct over professionalism, sorcery over technique.
Constructing from the shoals of fever dreams and the spectres of late nights, "Midnite Mine" is all cracked mirrors and strobing lights. Glitched percussion clangs like possessed machinery, with jazz-inspired melodies drifting in and out like incomplete recollections. Her voice? Smoke wafting through an empty chapel—half tender, half terrifying.
There’s something deeply raw in the way Tahar approaches her art. You’re not just hearing a song, you’re witnessing a becoming. “Midnite Mine” lives in that strange, sticky place between breakdown and breakthrough. It’s music that doesn’t just bend genre, it warps reality. For the brave listeners craving something real, strange, and soul-deep, YEARN delivers.
4. Michellar – “Ave Maria”
Michellar's "Ave Maria" is a name that sounds familiar, but this isn't a grandma church song. This one is a rich, layered reinterpretation, half devotion, half drama, synching hallowed tradition with smooth, contemporary Latin pop.
From the initial harmonies, there's a feeling that something sacred is happening. Not in the religious way, necessarily, but emotionally, this track has purpose. The rhythms beat like a heart, consistent but alive, propelling you through a sound prayer that's both personal and communal at the same time. And when guest vocalist Lloyd Miller joins the fray, the atmosphere thickens with velvety tones and spiritual urgency.
“Ave Maria” balances reverence with reinvention. The production is pristine, the lyrics grounded in identity and pride, and the groove? Pure fire. This is sacred pop done right, faith-forward, fiercely feminine, and boldly unforgettable.
5. Scott Yoder – “Feather Light”
"Feather Light" drifts like a dandelion seed on the breeze, tenuous, ephemeral, and sublime. With this song, Scott Yoder introduces listeners to a realm of yearning that's as lyrical as it is intimate. Spawned by Kahlil Gibran's Broken Wings, the music embodies an anguished fragility that is ageless.
Self-recorded and intimate, the track embraces imperfection. Yoder’s vocals waver like candlelight, and the production is soft-focus, like something you’d overhear playing in the background of a memory. His theatrical flair is present, but it’s reined in, this is flamboyance draped in tenderness.
"Feather Light" conveys a particular pain: the type of love that touches your life for a second and then is gone, leaving behind nothing but questions. And still, despite the sadness, the song shimmers with warmth and enchantment. It's nostalgic without being despairing, romantic without being foolish. In a world that sometimes insists upon roaring declarations, "Feather Light" reminds us of the subtle strength found in soft goodbyes.
Follow the playlist for all new artist updates!
If you would like to submit your music for playlist or review consideration, please submit here.