ifitbeyourwill Podcast #209 • Hello Shark

On this episode, Lincoln Halloran talks about the return of Hello Shark after ten years away, the personal experiences behind The River, and finding his way back to songwriting. We get into the early DIY days, sobriety, old friendships, and how time changes the way we see ourselves and the people around us. An honest conversation about making music, looking back, and figuring out what comes next.

https://fatherdaughterrecords.com/collections/hello-shark

Since emerging from Vermont's DIY underground in the mid-2000s, Lincoln Halloran has built a body of work distinguished by its startling intimacy. Across a string of beloved records, his songs have occupied a rare space, full of details drawn from lived experience and transformed into something larger. His writing has always been less concerned with resolution than observation: half-remembered encounters and emotional afterimages that remain long after a moment has passed. "In Hell" embodies that gift. Written as an attempt to create a more overtly pop-minded, jangle-driven song, the track glides forward on bright guitar lines and an understated melodic ease. Father/Daugther Records

linktr.ee/helloshark

Sophie Noel • after the sun hit the roof • 2026

https://sophienoelmusic.com/

the national honor society • To All The Paths That Never Crossed • 2026

 

D.B. TAIT • “Before you go” • 2026

As the latest artist to appear out of the fertile musical soil of Ontario’s Prince Edward County, D.B. Tait makes a powerful first impression with his debut single, “Before You Go.” A haunting cosmic country ballad with echoes of Jason Molina and MJ Lenderman, the song is a preview of a full-length album entitled Losing Timethat is sure to establish Tait as a vital new voice within the alt-country world.Tait explains, “I wrote ‘Before You Go’ as a song about knowing there’s something difficult coming, in any sort of relationship, whether it’s romantic or platonic, and the anxiety and stress that comes with waiting to have that sort of confrontation—almost like waitingto hear if you got a job or if you made the cut on a sports team, but on a more personal and even existential level. The anticipation of that confrontation can be a real struggle sometimes

Link iconBefore you Goffm.to/dbtaitbeforeyougo

Chris Acker • "Tinned Fish and Natural Wine” • 2026

“Caught someplace between Jerry Reed and Gram Parsons, Famous Lunch is a world ridden hard, put away wet and full of fragility, boundless, unpredictable love and one-liners that’ll make you cry, laugh and puke—in that order.” — Paste

“Acker’s dual strengths are his songs’ easy, approachable pacing and his everyday poetic one-liners. To the former, his jangly, acoustic-driven tunes are as comfortable as well-worn jeans that have never seen a spin cycle. To the latter, lines…build vivid scenes at an impressively low word count.” — No Depression

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #208 • WHY?

With WHY?’s new album, Oh Golly / Yes Lord, on the horizon, Yoni Wolf reflects on decades of making music that refuses to sit still. Moving between alternative hip-hop, indie rock, sampling, and richly layered arrangements, WHY? has built a catalogue that rewards listening to the whole record, not just the individual song.

Yoni talks about the long, sometimes uncertain process of making an album: four-track experiments, finding a record’s shape, sequencing songs, and working with collaborators who help bring ideas to life. We get into the self-doubt that follows a finished record into the world, why positive feedback doesn’t always quiet the inner critic, and the moments when music connects with someone who needs it.

It’s an honest conversation about songwriting as a way of documenting a life, making peace with uncertainty, and carrying on regardless.

https://whywithaquestionmark.com/

Code Pie • September 7-8, 2019 • 2026

ACTRESE • "Nowhere” • 2026

 

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ACTRESE has just released her new single, "Nowhere". Written, composed, and produced entirely by ACTRESE, "Nowhere" is a bilingual, guitar driven litany about failed attempts, missed chances and never ending obstacles standing in the way of you and your dreams - ‘I hate it gets me nowhere / When I try anything at all’ ACTRESE’s haunting vocals spell out as the song opens with a piercing electric guitar and buzzy synth which only intensify as we go on.

Savanna Ruth • "Creatures of Habit” • 2026

 

Instagram

"As we wrote and recorded the album, baseball imagery and themes naturally found their way into the songs, so Scott suggested 'The Baseball Diaries,' and really encouraged me to lean into it. I like that it subtly evokes 'The Basketball Diaries' in the same way Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville' nodded to 'Exile on Main St.'—not as a direct imitation, but as a reference point that helps frame a deeply personal body of work.

DARREN HAYMAN • I’M YOUR TEAM • 2026

“Britain's most incisive songwriter." – THE GUARDIAN

”The thinking person's indie pop legend, and unaccredited national treasure.” – STEWART LEE (THE SUNDAY TIMES)

“The former Hefner frontman follows a set of Oulipian constraints to produce a set of typically affecting meditations of love, life and mortality.” – THE QUIETUS

"Darren Hayman has always been something of a niche and cult figure, but music as good and as important as this should be heard by far more than a cult audience.” – DIY

“Musically, it’s melodic electropop willfully reluctant to be tied to any reference points. Maybe Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Ballad Of Lucy Jordan’, for its quietly bubbling synths and domestic angst? Or a more humane Momus?” – ELECTRONIC SOUND

https://linktr.ee/darrenhaymancatalogue

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #207 • Heavy Gus

Formed in California’s high desert, Heavy Gus make fuzzy, grunge-soaked indie rock that balances scruffy guitar noise with unexpected flashes of melody, humor, and tenderness. On their forthcoming second album, the trio revisit the loose, live-wire approach of Notions, but life has changed: Dorota Szuta and Stelth Ulvang are now navigating parenthood alongside the creative intimacy of being partners and bandmates. New singles “Super Soaker” and “Past Lives” reveal two sides of that tension, one sticky, volatile, and loud, the other reflective and bittersweet. Heavy Gus leave the contradictions intact.

https://www.heavygus.com/

Arborist • Looking For Love • 2026

The album was engineered by longtime collaborator Ben McAuley (Van Morrison) and mixed by Jimmy Robertson (Anna Calvi, Beth Gibbons, Fat Dog). The results are staggering, devastating and uplifting in equal measure, calling to mind albums such as Songs Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co., The Divine Comedy’s Regeneration, The Blue Nile’s Hats and Wilco’s Ode to Joy, as well as early-70s records from John Cale, John Lennon and Bill Fay. 

So Faint • Begin Again • 2026

So Faint is the collaborative project of Lyn Heinemann and Hannah Georgas, born from a chance encounter in a Vancouver recording studio and shaped by a decade-long friendship. After years on separate paths, with Lyn stepping away from bands, but still writing music for herself and Hannah building an acclaimed international music career that has recently seen her join Broken Social Scene for their latest LP Remember The Humans, the two reunited in 2023 to create the music they’d been quietly missing.

website

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #206 • Julia Holter

Julia Holter has never been content to leave a song alone. Across a career spent blurring the boundaries between experimental composition and pop, she has built elaborate musical worlds, then found ways to unsettle them. On Materia, that impulse turns inward: old ideas are revisited, familiar structures loosen, and music becomes something fluid, open to revision.

On this episode of If It Be Your Will, Holter traces the path from her early experiments and studies in composition to the increasingly expansive, emotionally intricate records that followed. We talk about orchestration as a way of thinking, the strange relationship between control and intuition, and what changes when you stop treating a composition as a finished thing.

A companion to Something in the Room She Moves, Materia finds Holter continuing to question how music takes shape — and what might emerge when you return to it with fresh ears. Our conversation moves through creative uncertainty, the long life of an idea, and the possibilities that appear when you let a piece become something you didn't originally imagine.

Sometimes the most revealing way forward is to take things apart.

https://juliaholter.com/

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #205 • SHEAL

What if the things that scare you are also the things you need to move through?

On this episode of If It Be Your Will, SHEAL — the musical project of Toronto-based songwriter Sheilagh McNab — talks about stage anxiety, trusting her instincts, and learning to make room for both solitude and connection. We trace the path from Courage Again to golden hours and the new home-going chapter, exploring how motherhood, memory, and the quieter moments of everyday life find their way into her songs. It’s a conversation about letting go of old expectations, finding your footing, and figuring out what it means to feel at home in your own life.

https://www.instagram.com/sheal.music

untitled (halo) • easy rider • 2026

Born, in part, from a feeling that there was a “lack of a scene or music in LA, longtime friends and band members Ariana Mamnoon, Jack Dione, Jay Are, and Nicholas Noneman had already spent years moving through LA’s DIY community, absorbing its overlapping histories before eventually finding one another. That shared history has become part of untitled (halo)’s identity, the culmination of years spent contributing to, and being shaped by, the scenes around them.

Disgrace • Drive Away • 2026

“There is darkness, confusion and regret but there is also a horse to drive away on,”the band’s singer Daniel Bluer explains. “It might be a mistake but it is certainly exhilarating in the moment.”

https://orcd.co/driveaway

Nadia Faye • drift • 2026

Website

The light, rich, dreamy world throughout the video is sharply contrasted by scenes of solitude and darkness, suffocated by her own desire. Fayes adds, "I think this concept highlights the emotional center of the song, unfulfilled longing."

This Is The Kit • Ghost Coat • 2026

The concept of home haunts This Is the Kit’s tender, thoughtful seventh studio album, Ghost Coat. “I was interested in exploring our relationship with home,” says frontwoman Kate Stables. “Where home is, or was, where we come from, where we’re going. Sometimes it’s just where you put your bag down, especially for someone who travels a lot. Maybe it’s less to do with a place, and more who you’re with – people that make you feel like you’re at home.”

thisisthekit.co.uk

Gem Club • Emerald Press • 2026

iamgemclub.com