today’s pop picks span a lot of ground: a cinematic synthpop turn toward hope, a berlin duo who keep their bio as short as their ambitions are big, a decades-deep house and rap fusion built entirely on its own terms, and an ambitious space-pop survival story mixed by serious industry names. four tracks, four very different worlds.
how i feel – aurealis
aurealis channels a rare, hopeful warmth into a gorgeous slice of cinematic synthpop
how i feel is warm, melodic synthpop built around that vulnerable moment of realising a relationship might actually be something lasting. i really like the bright electronic production wrapped around lyrics that swing between certainty and hesitation. it’s a real turn toward optimism after some of aurealis’ darker recent material, and that shift in tone suits them. the accompanying music video follows a golden-hour drive toward someone loved, and it matches the song’s sense of anticipation perfectly. it’s a genuinely gorgeous listen.
friend of the blog aurealis is a solo, studio-based artist working behind a mask, building cinematic synthpop and electronic-pop rooted in storytelling rather than live performance. each release comes with its own distinctive visual world, and how i feel continues that pattern with real emotional clarity. it’s nice to hear this project lean toward hope, we all need a bit of these days. a brilliant single.
thank u for making this aurealis 🌅
when you are mine – cataclysmiic
cataclysmiic brings decades of unfiltered, no-autotune rhyming to a genuinely infectious house-rap hybrid
when you are mine pairs uptempo house and electronic beats with rapid-fire hip hop rhymes, and there’s a real commitment to authenticity running through it, no auto-tune, no trend-chasing, just skillful rhyming over carefully built production. the lyrics lean into themes of pure, exotic love, delivered with the kind of lyrical intensity you’d expect from someone who grew up on twista. it’s a genuinely energetic listen that refuses to sound like anything else out right now.
cataclysmiic is a charlotte, north carolina based artist who’s been fusing uptempo house and rapid-fire hip hop since 1998, building an archive of more than 500 songs from a home studio stacked with serious gear. when you are mine marks the start of a bigger project to finally share decades of unreleased material with the world. that’s a lot of history to finally start unpacking.
thank u for making this cataclysmiic 🎤
throw me a line – lunarover
lunarover turns a plane crash survival story into a genuinely hallucinatory space-pop triumph
throw me a line tells the story of a plane crash survivor adrift at sea, clinging to debris and asking the desperate question “am i enough?” underneath it all. musically it matches that disorientation with spacey production, a mesmerizing rotating synth groove and disintegrating synthesizers, before a sped-up guitar arpeggio floats through the dreamlike outro. mixed by alex newport (at the drive-in, death cab for cutie) and mastered by chris longwood (george clinton, khruangbin), it’s polished in exactly the right places. it’s a genuinely immersive, ambitious listen.
friend of the blog lunarover is an emerging artist from silver spring, maryland blending vintage synthesizer sounds with influences like st. vincent and alabama shakes. throw me a line is their most ambitious work yet, and the production pedigree behind it backs that claim up. we’re properly curious where this genre-bending sound goes next.
thank u for making this lunarover 🛟
rise up – cosmic anxiety
cosmic anxiety builds rise up into a genuinely fierce queer revolution hymn
rise up is a dark, political electronic banger built around a deliberate nod to rage against the machine’s killing in the name, a fitting reference given how directly the song wears its politics. eli wrote the words “rise up” almost by accident while hunting for a vocal melody, and immediately knew it needed to become a queer, leftist revolution hymn. the friends-recorded “eat the rich” chant at the end, sent in as phone recordings, gives it a properly communal, diy edge. it’s a genuinely fierce, urgent listen.
friend of the blog cosmic anxiety are a berlin based project formed by eli and gasher in october 2025, a deliberately more political follow-up to their previous act, clash clash bang bang. rise up was recorded at studio greenskull in berlin, with gasher building the beat on a synthstrom deluge groovebox and eli learning to scream for the first time. their debut gig lands september 12 at a queer festival in berlin. all the artwork was made without ai, just two photos run through blender.
thank u for making this cosmic anxiety 🤖
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