What music are you listening to?

Sweets - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A new offering from one of my YouTube favourites, Natalia Sarsgård

Released today with her new band, Heaven's Guardian, this is Wall of Shame.

Petulia - The Kooks

Golden Brown - The Stranglers

With their new album Phantoma looming in 2 days, Vancouver power metallers Unleash The Archers dropped another single from it today.

The Funeral - Band of Horses

New album today from Anette Olzon, who fronted Nightwish from 2007 to 2012. Rapture is her third solo album. She has also recorded in a couple groups since leaving Nightwish and works as a nurse as well as being a professional singer.

Continuing with music that has a Nightwish connection, another new album today is the debut album from Finnish supergroup Crownshift. The NW connection is the group's bassist Jukka Koskinen, who has been Nightwish's bassist since 2021.

A few posts up, I posted about Unleash the Archers' new album. Their lead singer, who goes by Brittany Slayes on stage (real name is Hayes), has also been doing some work with Ayreon and Star One, projects of Dutch musical wizard Arjen Lucassen. From Ayreon's new DVD (from a concert last Fall), here's Brittany with The Fate of Man. It's an incredible performance from all concerned, but Brittany really stands out here. She packs a fantastic, and rather unique, set of pipes and is probably edging into my top 5 metal singers now. The two backup singers are actually great singers in their own right (the one further from the camera is the sister of my beloved Floor Jansen), making this one hell of a performance vocally.

American rockers Halestorm dropped a live album and video of their concert at Wembley Arena from last December. And having listened to the whole thing yesterday, you can see why they sold out. Brilliant performance, especially from lead singer Lzzy Hale, who co-founded the band in 1997 with her brother Arejay.

First song I'm sharing is a solo performance by Lzzy.

And a full band number. Lzzy and Arejay were 13 and 10 respectively when the band started and their father played bass for the first couple years. While Roger Hale no longer plays bass, the band remains a family business with Lzzy singing and playing rhythm guitar and piano, Arejay on drums, and Lzzy's partner Joe Hottinger on lead guitar.

And for a change of pace, Lzzy has now stepped in as lead singer of eighties hair metallers Skid Row. Yep, Lzzy Hale is belting "18 and Life" this year.