Fire Talk 2025: A Year In Review
Here’s a look back at all of our 2025 releases !
into a pretty room — lots of hands’ debut on Fire Talk Records — exists in the tear-stained early mornings of adolescence, just as the sun makes its first appearance over the horizon and thoughts of the night before begin to subside. A collage of reworked demos, freewheeling session standouts, and swatches of instrumental electronics, into a pretty room offers a touching rumination of grief and loss, growing up and letting go.
Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden, the core duo behind lots of hands, first connected in a Newcastle school music program at age 16. Following years of cultivating a dedicated fanbase across 3 self-released records, into a pretty room marks the duo’s first truly collaborative effort, with Dryden often trekking the vast northern English countryside to write and record in Woodhouse’s bedroom studio. Between pints of beer and rounds of Fortnite, the two slowly chipped away at into a pretty room.
into a pretty room
lots of hands
i can’t be alone tonight
set dressing
set dressing is the newly-announced side project of Mandy, Indiana, represented only by an avatar. set dressing’s debut EP i can’t be alone tonite (out digitally April 11th) soundtracks a venture into the dark unknown, combining cinematic synths, 80s-inflected percussion and striking samples to create its singular introductory statement. i can’t be alone tonite presents an extension of the distinct world building displayed across i’ve seen a way, Mandy, Indiana’s acclaimed debut which was named one of 2023’s best albums by The New York Times, The Guardian, Loud & Quiet, Crack, DIY and more. i can’t be alone tonite marks the beginning of an unsettling journey, but it’s an adventure led by those familiar with treks toward uncharted territory..
Cola — the trio of guitarist/vocalist Tim Darcy, bassist Ben Stidworthy, and drummer Evan J Cartwright — return with their new single/visualizer, “Mendicant.” Following the release of their “striking” (FADER) sophomore album, The Gloss, “Mendicant” sees Cola take a medieval turn. “Mendicant” is anchored by a whistle and uilleann pipes line, plus Darcy’s signature delivery. “Good god!” he exclaims at the jump, breaking into lyrics that wonder “what was that the pope just said?” and reflect on “breaking regs and breaking norms” — all from the perspective of a humble mendicant. The instrumentation that supplements Darcy’s character analysis is as reliable as ever. Woodwinds rise, guitars swell, and drums flit; Stidworthy and Cartwright’s contributions provide a kinetic launchpad for Cola’s next chapter.
mendicant
cola
one million three love songs
bnny
There are one million ways to approach love, one million ways to experience love, one million ways in which love shapes both the course of our lives and how we choose to navigate that course. On her second album, Bnny’s Jessica Viscius looks love square in its many eyes and describes, with self-awareness and humor, not only what she sees, but what it makes her feel. Deep romantic love, breathy lust, generous self-love—and their opposites, self-loathing, resentment, disappointment—all make appearances. Like a sheet being draped over a clothesline, channeling Mazzy Star and mimicking the soft, gauzy, fresh feeling of realizing you’re able to begin it all again with a new person. Recorded in Asheville at Drop of Sun and produced by Viscius alongside Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, Snail Mail), One Million Love Songs is Bnny’s revelatory second album. Out April 2024 on Fire Talk.
Danger in Fives isn’t a reintroduction; it’s a reminder. Throughout the record, Wombo not only enhance their formula, but routinely perfect it. Maintaining the confidence of their last full-length, 2022’s Fairy Rust, Danger in Fives reconnects with the intuition that led their wild experiments on the 2020 debut LP Blossomlooksdownuponus. The elements central to Wombo remain true, and are only strengthened across a near-decade of crafting mesmeric rock.
danger in fives
wombo
the bedroom
why bonnie
The Bedroom collects three newly-recorded acoustic reworks —including today’s “Fake Out - Bedroom Version,” and a demo of a new composition. With nothing more than Howerton & her guitar, “Fake Out - Bedroom Version” version doubles down on her "poignant lyricism, which flips from vulnerable to assured on a moment’s notice" (Pitchfork). Stripping back the production on this newly-recorded track puts Why Bonnie's "massive hooks" (Paste) on full-display, giving the space for her “tender songwriting” (FLOOD) to command full attention.
“Do you still believe it?” John Ross asks that question after journeying through the wreckage. The genesis of Dulling The Horns goes back to late 2022, when Ross began workshopping new material during soundcheck on the ILYSM tour. Last summer, Wild Pink decamped to western Massachusetts to reunite with engineer Justin Pizzoferrato. Ross decided to record Dulling The Horns live in the room, in an effort to capture Wild Pink’s onstage style — rawer, grainier. Gone are the glimmering atmospherics and studio affectations of recent Wild Pink outings. Instead, Ross’ voice is haggard against the humid distortion coating every song. “I wanted to make economical songs,” Ross explains. “Music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking.” If before, Wild Pink took notes from Springsteen and Petty, they’ve now entered their Crazy Horse era. On Dulling The Horns, you can hear him rediscovering the fire in real time. Tropes discarded along the roadside, songs pulled from the formative DNA of rock music, all filtered through years of messy fog. “There is no answer to these problems,” Ross says, having eventually yielded. But as far Dulling The Horns is concerned, there’s at least one path forward: Burn it all away, and keep moving. The album was mixed by Alex Farrar in Asheville NC, mastered by Greg Obis in Chicago, IL.
dulling the horns (deluxe)
wild pink
words from a wishing well (deluxe)
shower curtain
Shower Curtain is the New York quartet fronted by Brazilian-American artist Victoria Winter (vocals/guitar), alongside Ethan Williams (guitar/vocals), Sean Terrell (drums), and Cody Hudgins (bass). Self-produced by Winter and Williams, words from a wishing well sketches early adulthood experiences in swirling layers of guitars. Winter wrote its tracks across her first few years of living in New York City, and they exist within a conversation between one’s own intuition and that of the universe. Channeling the sludgy distortion of 90s shoegaze and grunge, words from a wishing well establishes Shower Curtain as a standout in the city’s latest crop of bands.
On Kassie Krut’s self-produced, self-titled debut EP, their approach is deceptively simple. With a constrained palette and a penchant for repetition, they find a world of opposing textures and timbres: electric and acoustic, synthetic and organic, smooth and frictive, terrestrial and celestial. Their scratch-made sounds melodize the hard-edged noise of daily life—car alarms, notification chimes, dial tones, feedback—setting it against stutter-step high hats, pots-and-pans percussion, and tensile bass tones that thrash around in the head like a rubber ball.
kassie krut (expanded)
kassie krut
wild guess (reissue)
robber robber
Wild Guess is the inscrutable debut from Burlington, VT quartet Robber Robber. For all its nods to indie rock predecessors and the eclectic music scene that fed into it, Wild Guess feels more like an attempt to translate imagery into sound. "Post-punk, shoegaze, and krautrock are all part of [Robber Robber's] arsenal" (FADER), with each genre chopped and screwed to "conjur[e] images of drunken adventures turned alarming mysteries" (Pitchfork, Best Rock Albums of 2024). Everything is driven by sheer curiosity and loose creative parameters, and it's a chaos evident in what Robber Robber create. In even their most polarizing musical moments, you get the sense that these are gut reactions being expressed, that truth is the grist of the overflow.
Recorded with Benny Yurco (Grace Potter) and Urian Hackney (The Armed, Rough Francis, Iggy Pop), Wild Guess presents the most fully-realized version of Robber Robber to-date. Capturing the tangible group dynamic Robber Robber have cultivated on-stage, WIld Guess elicits myriad responses, with many declaring: “This band is doing the Lord’s work” (Bandcamp).
Following her critically acclaimed 2024 album 'Keeper of the Shepherd,' Hannah Frances rises from the elegy of her decaying roots to reach through the tangled canopy of limbs toward a life and love beyond rupture on her new album 'Nested in Tangles.'
Weaving avant-folk, progressive rock, and jazz—composer, vocalist, guitarist, and poet Frances cascades between the deft intimacy and the expansive magnificence of her interior world with the lucidity and incisiveness of both fire and water. Anchored with her signature vocal prowess and percussive polyrhythmic fingerpicking that she established on Keeper of the Shepherd, Frances evolves and challenges her own narratives and musicality opening with the titular instrumental piece that veers into spoken word poetry leading into “Life’s Work” which was co-produced and arranged by Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear, along with “The Space Between.”
nested in tangles
hannah frances
mistake (deluxe)
lots of hands
Deluxe version of lots of hands debut album “mistake”. 'mistake' is the debut LP from lots of hands, the Newcastle-upon-Tyne duo of Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden. The first foray into lots of hands' signature blend of electronic and ambient palettes with traditional indie rock and folk song structures, 'mistake' sets the foundation for the cult following of lots of hands' subsequent releases.
