On This Track: Midweek Listening #7
- Raven
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Five new discoveries moving from dark alt-rock and folk-pop to jazz, melodic punk and post-electronic grooves.
Five releases, five very different ways of dealing with what happens when life gets complicated. This week's On This Track: Midweek Listening 7 moves from Autumn Luz's unsettling “Tattered” to Riley Max looking back on a difficult first year at Harvard, before Knats take a jazz track into DnB territory with corto.alto. Burntmill Ghosts turn self-doubt into melodic punk, while Mike D 5D closes things out with a record that seems determined not to stay inside any one genre.
Autumn Luz - “Tattered”
“Tattered” has a strange tension to it from the beginning. Autumn Luz's soprano voice sounds almost too clean for the music surrounding it, while the bass keeps stalking underneath. The rhythm is built around what the band calls a “breath beat,” with the bass drum acting like an exhale and the snare like an inhale. It gives the song a physical quality that fits its subject matter. Luz wrote the track out of a period of desperation, frustration and anger, and the lyrics keep circling around the contradiction of wanting someone close while also wanting to be free of them. “You can't un-kiss me now” is followed by “please uncuff me,” which makes the whole thing feel less like a straightforward breakup song and more like somebody trying to get out of a situation that has already left its mark. The video takes that feeling even further, placing Luz in an eerie industrial setting, bound to a bed with bright red rope. “Tattered” is the first glimpse of her upcoming album "Moments" and it gives you a pretty good idea that this won't be a record interested in keeping its darker feelings at a safe distance.
🎧 Stream “Tattered” by Autumn Luz on Apple Music
Riley Max - “Year One”
Riley Max wrote “Year One” during her first year at Harvard, at a point when she was dealing with vocal problems as well as other mental and physical health issues. There was also the less dramatic but very real shock of suddenly being responsible for her own life. She wasn't sure when she would feel like herself again, musically or otherwise. That makes the song interesting to hear now, because it has become a document of a period that Max has already moved through. The music video adds another part to that story. Max combines live-action footage with stop-motion animation she originally created for a class, and the animated section is now being shown at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. It says something about the way she works that the video didn't stay a side project. She liked what she had made and found a way to turn it into another form of storytelling around the song. Max is studying Art, Film and Visual Studies alongside music, and she is now planning a stop-motion thesis. “Year One” feels like a small example of how those different interests are starting to meet.
🎧 Stream “Year One” by Autumn Luz on Apple Music
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Knats – “Never Gonna Be A Boxer (corto.alto Remix)”
Knats' “Never Gonna Be A Boxer” already had plenty going on. The corto.alto remix pushes it somewhere else entirely. Liquid DnB basslines and breakbeats now run through the track, with ambient synths and distorted fragments of drummer King David-Ike Elechi's line “I ain't never gonna be a boxer” cutting through the mix. The original instrumentation hasn't disappeared, though. It has been warped and rearranged until the track feels like both versions at once. I like the fact that this collaboration also connects two different northern scenes: Knats come from Newcastle, while Glasgow's corto.alto bring their own jazz and electronic background into the remix. It feels fitting for a band that has never seemed particularly interested in staying inside one genre. Their album "A Great Day In Newcastle" has just been shortlisted for the 2026 Mercury Prize, but the more interesting part of Knats is what sits behind that recognition: a band writing about working-class life, regional identity and the realities of growing up in the North East while still making music that can move in several directions at once. The remix gives “Never Gonna Be A Boxer” another one.
🎧 Stream “Never Gonna Be A Boxer (corto.alto Remix)” by Knats on Apple Music
Burntmill Ghosts - “The Mirror”
There is something appropriately uncomfortable about a punk song called “The Mirror”. Burntmill Ghosts use it to talk about those moments when you don't like what you see, or when you find yourself putting on a version of yourself just to get through an awkward social situation. The band's answer is pretty simple: stop pretending. Musically, the New Jersey trio keep it in melodic punk territory, with Pete Vincelli's vocals carrying the song's frustration without turning it into a big speech. The video might be the more unusual part. It was filmed inside bassist Ian Egloff's old colonial-era house on the Jersey Shore, which the band says is genuinely haunted. A haunted house is an almost suspiciously good location for a song about appearances, hidden parts of ourselves and confronting what looks back at you. “The Mirror” was recorded with The Bouncing Souls' Pete Steinkopf at Little Eden Studios and is the first look at Burntmill Ghosts' second album, due in 2027. Their debut "Old Records" was full of stories reaching into history; this time, the band seems to be looking much closer to home.
🎧 Stream “The Mirror” by Burntmill Ghosts on Apple Music
Mike D - “Make It Stop”
Mike D's "Thank You" is probably the hardest record in this week's selection to put into a neat category. The 13-track debut moves through post-electronic grooves, industrial noise, breakbeats and hooks without settling anywhere for very long. “Make It Stop” is a good entry point because it shows how far the project has moved from the sound people might expect from Mike D. Earlier singles from the album have already included smashed industrial beats, analog synth noise and acid-rock textures and the whole record seems to treat genre boundaries as something to ignore rather than follow. What makes it more interesting is that this isn't just a studio experiment. Mike D is taking the record on the road with a live band that includes his sons Skyler and Davis Diamond, alongside Eddie Ruscha, Will Graefe and Milo Ruscha. "Thank You" arrived on August 28 and the North American tour started almost immediately afterwards. By the time the European dates arrive later this year, including Cologne on November 1, the project will have had plenty of time to turn these strange studio combinations into something that works in a room full of people.
🎧 Stream “Thank You” by Mike D on Apple Music
Five releases, five completely different starting points. Autumn Luz turns emotional conflict into something dark and physical, Riley Max looks back at a difficult year through music and animation, Knats let a jazz track collide with DnB, Burntmill Ghosts turn social discomfort into punk, and Mike D refuses to make the genre question easy in the first place. That's what keeps Midweek Listening interesting: the connection between these releases isn't necessarily how they sound. Sometimes it's the story behind them, the people making them, or simply the strange decision that makes you stop and listen.
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