Mix Tape 39

Plenty of awesome new selections in Mix Tape 39, give it a spin…

Marking a bold and self-assured return to pop, multiplatinum global superstar Hilary Duff releases her highly anticipated new single Mature via Atlantic Records – her first new music in a decade. Co-written by Duff, her husband and GRAMMY®-winning songwriter/producer Matthew Koma (Britney Spears, Pink), and hitmaker Madison Love (Halsey, Ava Max), the sardonic, shimmering track arrives as a piece of autofiction inspired by romantic misadventures in her formative years.

“‘Mature’ is a little conversation that my present self is having with my younger self,” says Hilary. “The two of us are reflecting on a past experience and sending love to each other. It’s a chuckle, a wink, and a sense of being grateful that we are sure footed in where we landed.”

Rapidly-rising indie darlings, FVNERAL, have teamed up with pop-rock icon, Ben Lee, to release new single friendly fire in celebration of Trans Awareness Week. friendly fire is the second offering from FVNERAL since announcing the additions of Madeleine Powers (aka RAGEFLOWER) and Ben Siva (aka jnr.). It comes fresh off the success of Lee’s national tour for the 20th anniversary of his 2x Platinum and 3x ARIA award winning album Awake is the New Sleep.

Described by Ash McGregor as a “queer supergroup”, FVNERAL is a collaboration between trans non-binary songwriter/producer Tay Blunt – whose discography (Stand Atlantic, Birds of Tokyo, Mokita) has clocked more than 15 million streams – alongside Madeleine Powers and Ben Siva, whose respective solo projects have garnered significant critical acclaim in their own right.

On the meaning behind friendly fire, Tay describes that in order to come out to themself as a trans non-binary person, the final hurdle they had to overcome was one they were holding in front of themself. “In many ways, the person the song is being sung to is me. It’s really asking myself why I find it so difficult to set myself free from my own internalised transphobia and begging myself to let the part of me that holds this hurt begin to heal.”

For Tay, the song also provides a sense of closure in regard to their former self. They continue, “although I’ve recently changed my name to Tay, there’s a line in Ben Lee’s verse (which he recorded a while back) where he uses my old name. As soon as I told him about my new name, he wanted to re-record it, but after thinking about it, I decided that keeping it provides a real sense of closure. It allows me to farewell the part of myself that will always be attached to that name. It feels liberating to break the cycle that my old name kept me in.”

Dry Cleaning share Cruise Ship Designer, the second single from their new album Secret Love, out 9 January 2026. The new track follows lead single Hit My Head All Day and arrives alongside a music video featuring the band’s Lewis Maynard performing a dance routine choreographed for the track by BULLYACHE. Cruise Ship Designer is a classic Dry Cleaning pop song sung from the perspective of a nautical entrepreneur who has deluded himself that his work serves society, its perky careerism also channelling some of XTC’s Making Plans for Nigel.

Vocalist and lyrcists Florence Shaw elaborates, “The song is about a cruise ship and hotel designer who’s skilled and paid well, but who doesn’t believe his role has real worth. He tries to enjoy it, and invests himself in meeting the challenges of the job.”

Charli xcx releases House. featuring John Cale of The Velvet Underground. The video was directed by Mitch Ryan.

House is the first taste of Charli’s album written for Emerald Fennel’s highly anticipated Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

“I got a call from Emerald Fennell last Christmas asking whether I would consider working on a song for her adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I read the script and immediately felt inspired so Finn Keane and I began working on not just one but many songs that we felt connected to the world she was creating. After being so in the depths of my previous album I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite. When I think of Wuthering Heights I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.

A few years ago I watched Todd Haynes’ documentary about The Velvet Underground. As many of you know I’m a huge fan of the band and was really taken by the documentary. One thing that stuck with me was how John Cale described a key sonic requirement of The Velvet Underground. That any song had to be both “elegant and brutal”. I got really stuck on that phrase. I write it down on my notes app and would pull it up from time to time and think about what he meant.

When working on music for this film, “elegant and brutal” was a phrase I kept coming back to. One day whilst on tour in Austin, Finn and I went to the studio and wrote the bones for a song that would eventually become House. When the summer ended I was still ruminating on John’s words. So I decided to reach out to him to get his opinion on the songs that his phrase had so deeply inspired, but also to see whether he might want to collaborate on any.

We got connected, we spoke on the phone and wow… that voice, so elegant, so brutal. I sent him some songs and we started talking specifically about House. We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do. And it was… well, it made my cry.

I feel so lucky to have been able to work with John on this song. I’ve been so excited to share it with you all, sitting quietly in anticipation.

Love you all, let’s fall in love again and again <3″ – Charli xcx

Indie pop-duo Cat & Calmell return with their third single of 2025, Pop Music Feat. Cult Shφtta. The release of Pop Music comes alongside the announcement of their highly anticipated mixtape LIVE LAUGH COOL STAR, slated for release on November 28.

Cat & Calmell are having fun with expectations on their latest single, Pop Music, a title they admit is a cheeky nod to irony. “We just thought it’d be funny to name a track that’s objectively our least ‘Poppy’ song, Pop Music,” they laugh.

True to its name, Pop Music pushes against the boundaries of what pop is “supposed” to sound like. “Pop isn’t defined by one sound, it’s just whatever’s popular,” the band explains. “Any limitations people put on what a pop artist can do are self-imposed and arbitrary. We just wanted to make something fun and do whatever we wanted, and kind of poke fun at the whole idea.”

Lyrically, Pop Music is an anthem of manifestation and self-belief, a confident, tongue-in-cheek celebration of future success and bringing your crew along for the ride. “It’s about how we’re gonna blow up, spoil all our friends, and take everyone with us,” they say. “Even though it’s full-on and hectic, it’s actually a super positive song. Writing it was such a confidence booster — it’s basically our manifestation track.”

The stark contrasts that fuel Telenova’s music almost tore it apart. Deeply personal themes and the quiet presence of faith run through songs that marry addictive pop melodies with dark, eclectic beats. It’s the kind of alchemy that could only emerge from a trio of complicated personalities with diverging beliefs and values. Yet from that creative friction comes something singular — THE DEEP, the commanding first single from their forthcoming sophomore album THE WARNING, out February 27, 2026. The band also announce their biggest national tour yet for May 2026.

There’s a direct connection between the tension in Telenova’s music and the people who create it. The light and the dark, the sky and the dirt: these aren’t just sonic motifs of THE WARNING but reflections of the band’s reality. THE WARNING strips away their cinematic mystique to reveal raw, chaotic, yet deeply human truths. Gritty, uneasy, vulnerable — the sound of three people holding together as their world fell apart, finding unity despite their differences.

“This record is the closest we’ve come to showing what’s really happening beneath the surface,” says frontwoman Angeline Armstrong. “There’s faith, fear, anxiety and awe – all at once.” Edward Quinn sees the album’s core as “accepting imperfection – pushing through insecurity and still creating something that feels alive.” For Joshua Moriarty, THE WARNING was a reckoning: “Either you confront what’s broken, or you disappear into it. This record was us choosing to confront it.”

Solrise Records / Virgin Music Group’s Nashville-based Australian country mainstay Morgan Evans is treating fans to a Beer Back Home in the all new single’s official music video, out everywhere now.

Filmed on location in Sydney and Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia during Evans’ return to his home country last month, and captured / directed by Peter John, the official video captures Evans’ weeks-long trip from his perspective.

The three-minute clip intersperses footage of Evans making the journey from Nashville to Australia, reuniting with family and friends, and surprising fans with a pop up performance at his favourite hometown pub, The Ship Inn, with singalong performance clips throughout.

Sampa the Great releases her brand new single Can’t Hold Us via Loma Vista Recordings, marking the beginning of a new era for the Zambian musician and rapper. The track is included in EA FC 26 and will be dropped into in-game playlists from now. Can’t Hold Us is also accompanied by an official visualiser directed by Iggy London.

The song was first teased on a live performance in Brixton last month with legendary streamer DJ AG. Sampa also this week announced a free block party in Lusaka, Zambia for November 22nd. The party will be hosted in conjunction with the Lusaka Thrift Market, a creative collective who put on monthly pop-up themed fashion and art youth events in the centre of Lusaka. Any profits from the event will go back into the local creative community. In September, Sampa also released an exclusive new track GOAT for the soundtrack of new film HIM.

As she embarks on a new era, Sampa finds herself reimagining Zamrock – that daring fusion of rock, funk, and African rhythm – through her own lens, merging it with hip-hop, poetry, and soul to create Nu Zamrock, a form both ancestral and futuristic. “Zamrock is my sound,” she says. “It’s my voice. Being Zambian, being loud, being defiant — that’s what Zamrock is.”

Can’t Hold Us stands as a declaration of that awakening: a fierce statement of arrival that fuses the raw energy of rock, hip-hop, soul, and Zambian rhythm into a sound that’s entirely her own. “This is the declaration track. I’m saying: I’ve stepped into my power, into my sound, into my purpose. I’ve claimed this thing — Nu Zamrock — as something of my own, something I’m shaping in real time. And in this new form, with this much clarity and drive? You can’t hold us. You can’t stop us. Not anymore.” Radiating confidence and creative freedom, Can’t Hold Us captures Sampa’s evolution into an artist fully in command of her voice, her heritage, and her moment.

Six time Platinum-selling indie artist Cavetown (Robin Skinner) returns with NPC, the fourth single from his forthcoming album Running With Scissors, out 16 January via Futures Music Group / Virgin Music Group. The track finds Skinner transforming exhaustion into empathy and the constant motion of life on tour into reflection. Rooted in restless travel and quiet introspection, NPC reimagines Skinner’s childhood imaginary friend, Mr. Nobody, as a mirror of his adult self, always moving, never home. Written mid-tour, the pop-punk-leaning song channels the dizzying pace of modern life into an anthem of self-awareness and gentle dissociation, balancing raw honesty with the melodic warmth that has made Cavetown one of Gen Z’s most beloved storytellers. “This song came from a place of feeling detached from my own story,” Skinner shares. “It’s like I’m watching someone else play my character sometimes, traveling, performing, doing all these things I love, but wondering who’s really steering the ship.”

Tasmanian alt-pop force Lasca Dry reveals latest release Messy Mind – a hazy, hypnotic dive into love at its most chaotic and magnetic. Built on cinematic textures and raw emotion, the track captures that dizzying state where desire and disorder blur into one.

“Messy Mind feels like driving through smoke – you can’t see where you’re going, but you keep following the feeling anyway. It’s about love that’s messy and magnetic — connection, chaos, and the part of you that still wants to stay tangled,” says Lasca.

Paired with a Saltburn-esque 90s-inspired visual, the single’s video amplifies the track’s tension between beauty and suffocation. Laced with red ribbons and dreamlike imagery, it’s both alluring and unsettling, a visual metaphor for love’s irresistible pull.

“I wanted the clip to feel like a dream unraveling — soft and beautiful, but a bit suffocating too. The red ribbons became a symbol of that push and pull — connection, chaos, and the part of you that still wants to stay tangled up,” she explains.

Sri Lankan, South African-born, Melbourne-based artist Ecca Vandal is a fearless sonic shapeshifter that fuses punk, hip-hop, jazz, soul, trip-hop and electronic influences into a sound that’s as explosive as it is unmistakably her own. Today, she shares her new single MOLLY, which arrives with a music video directed by Ecca Vandal and Richie Buxton shot in Ballarat.

Ecca and Richie are the masterminds behind all of Ecca Vandal’s visuals to date, creating the vibrant and electric world that Ecca’s sonics live in. MOLLY follows her Alternative Press cover story that was released last week, where Ecca spoke about her specific sound that’s shaking up the conversation and hints at a forthcoming full length project to come.

Speaking about MOLLY, Ecca shares, “There’s the surface meaning, the chaos, the high, that kind of bliss that comes from forgetting things for a while, from turning the volume down on the world. But underneath all that, there’s something quieter going on – the feeling of being cut down, sometimes broken into pieces, and then slowly finding your way back, getting up again, rebuilding yourself bit by bit.”

Tokyo-based, Sydney-raised electronic-pop artist JOEY SACHI has returned, with a bright new EP titled RISE set for release on December the 4th – marking a striking new chapter in her musical career.

Having spent much of 2024 building consistently off the foundations laid the previous year, Sachi’s music has displayed a clear talent for crafting cinematic and atmospheric sonic playgrounds. Her blend of influences, varying from artists like Jamie xx to Sabrina Claudio and Kenya Grace has mesmerised new audiences on singles including Reverie and 7 Seconds – here, she brings us new goods in the fittingly titled single, grace.

Produced by collaborator AKINAT, grace came together for Sachi in an effortless way. Recorded in Tokyo, Sachi describes the track as being “a good old fashioned love song” – musically, it weaves around the lyrics in a charismatic and haunting way.

“…an ode to someone who changes the way you see the world. I wanted it to feel like a deep breath out, an easy kind of love and listen. It’s a quiet promise to look at your life differently, even shift perspective… to ‘see the beauty’ in every little thing.

I wrote it in a single day. Unlike other songs in the past when I’ve constantly refined or reharmonised… with this track I barely changed a thing! As always, I brought it to my producer AKINAT, who has this innate understanding of the direction I want to take my music. He took my raw demo and transformed it into something that felt fresh and alive.” JOEY SACHI

Rising star in the new wave of world-class soul and R&B, Australian-based artist, creative, and ARIA nominee BOY SODA has released a new version of his critically acclaimed track Lil Obsession featuring American singer, songwriter, and producer Ambré, via Warner Music Australia, listen HERE. The release arrives with a cinematic Los Angeles-shot music video.

Speaking of working with Ambré, BOY SODA said, “Ambré and I connected naturally online and we’d started talking about making music. This was before SOULSTAR the album was out so I sent it to her to see if she connected with any other tracks. We ended up gravitating to Lil Obsession again and now the remix exists. I think she’s such an important artist and is so generous musically and emotionally, so sharing this song is truly an honour.”

Following a year of back-to-back smash hits, Adelaide singer songwriter aleksiah returns with her most vulnerable track to date Faker. Under the guise of upbeat pop, the track unpacks aleksiah’s complicated relationship with intimacy, destigmatizing a touchy topic with her trademark knack for satire.

Faker looks at a topic that is often glamorised by pop music through a new lens, offering comfort to those who may be holding on to shame and embarrassment. Overwhelmed by the response to Clothes Off, which speaks on sexual shame and negative body image, aleksiah was empowered to share more of her story. Faker sees her commit to unlearning years of bad habits surrounding sex in order to let go of expectations and reclaim physical intimacy on her own terms.

She explains; “Faker is by far the most intimate song I’ve ever written, in more ways than one. Many people struggle with the concept of sex, and there are so many songs written under the guise of blaming someone else for failing to get you “there” but not many for the opposite, and how you can feel like you need to apologise for it. It’s something I struggle with, even from the first time I started my journey with my own body, and like a lot of people I blame myself for my own shortcomings (pun intended). I worried about hurting someone’s feelings, so I was notorious for “faking” that moment.

For a long time, I thought I was broken, so I wanted to write a pop song that was honest and brash in the way it talks about not being able to get to the big O, and truthful about how sometimes it’s not them, it’s you. In true aleksiah fashion, I wanted to make it fun and poppy with uncomfortable and no-filter lyrics. Whether it’s because you’re scared, you’ve never experienced it before, you’re on medication that affects your sex life, or you’re just not ready to be that vulnerable and open with your body, it’s ok, we are not broken, and we can still have fun.”

Since making their debut in 2024, Adelaide indie-punk outfit DROPSINK has wasted no time in establishing themselves as a force to watch. Building solidly on sonic foundations that take inspiration from Australian genre greats including DZ Deathrays and Violent Soho, DROPSINK have pushed themselves into confident new territory as musicians – perfectly represented on their latest track, impressions (she said).

The new single from the band, following on from previous releases Animal and Care At All, shows the fun chemistry that exists within the group, while also demonstrating a passionate approach to songwriting – particularly when it comes to navigating some, sometimes, hard to understand topics. ‘impressions (she said)’ is a track DROPSINK describes as “focusing on recovery from addiction and social anxiety, and the implications that come with these things.”

Through the song, the band offers the listener an opportunity to view an emotionally locked in element of the band and their art;

“‘impressions (she said)’ was written as we welcomed Simon [Banaag, bass] into the band. Welcoming a new member allowed us to expand our sound, making production more dynamic, as well as adding backing vocals to our music. ‘impressions’ is the first of a fresh direction of song writing which DROPSINK have taken, drawing from a new set of influences and focusing on meaningful lyric writing and a heavier aesthetic.” DROPSINK

Freya Ridings is back. Following a string of stunning summer shows, including a captivating sold-out date at London’s Somerset House for their Summer Series, the London songstress returns with new single Wicker Woman.

Written by Freya and recorded with Jennifer Decilveo at Beach Tree Sound Studio in LA and the first cut from her forthcoming album, which arrives in 2026, Wicker Woman is a rich battle cry of resilience; a song to turn up loud and sing with your whole chest. It taps into Ridings’ Celtic heritage, evoking vast windswept landscapes and primal rage, yet beneath its anger lies a strong family bedrock.

“‘Wicker Woman’ is a raw feminist breaking point – bone, blood, and roots ripped from the soil, set alight in a fire that cannot be ignored,” Freya says of the track. “It’s an unashamed, euphoric celebration of reclaiming primal feminine power, a return to the core of who we are, and an ode to the forgotten women and gods who came before us.”

After igniting a groundswell of new fans and momentum with TOP OF THE HILL, their biggest release to date, one of Australia’s most exciting new bands South Summit return with a major sonic pivot in their electrifying new single WE ARE out now via G.Y.R.O.

Where TOP OF THE HILL soared with bright melodies and coastal warmth, WE ARE dives into deeper territory – a gritty, production-heavy anthem that fuses reggae spirit with West Coast hip-hop energy, signalling a confident new chapter for the Perth-based five-piece.

“WE ARE is about moving through life without listening to the norms of society. When we come together and have each other’s backs, we won’t fold to anything,” the band share.

Built on bold rhythms and a commanding hook, the brand-new track explores the power of unity and the strength of self-belief; what we can achieve as one, and the potential of each person when surrounded by likeminded people. It’s raw, fearless, and reflective of South Summit’s evolution as artists unafraid to experiment.

“Fans can expect energy and a bit more grit in this one compared to ‘Top of the Hill’. We love to keep our fans on their toes and give them something new with every release. This song reaches a new era for us – and it’s the perfect time to express that.”

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