Ahoy friendos. Welcome to a brand new segment I’m calling “Singles Shootout”. It’s called that because I’ve found some recent singles and I’m shooting them out. Isn’t it neat how things mean what they’re called?

On today’s block is three local acts who have released music in the last week (some literally today!) that I’d like to shine a spotlight on. Let’s get right into it.

LONELY FOREST - ABANDONED YESTERDAY

We’ll start off with one that requires a disclaimer: I have a casual working relationship with the folks in Abandoned Yesterday - we’ve played a show together (last December), and this single was submitted by them for my critique. No compensation of any kind has been received or offered by either party and, as always, I have no intention of giving a good review based solely on our status as peers in the Vancouver scene.

So thank goodness it’s a good song because that would have been a REALLY awkward conversation.

The band’s available output to date includes two other songs: Dead and Buried and Broken Promise (not including some demos - including one of this song! - on their Bandcamp page which I’ve been told is going to be updated soon). While these are both good, high-energy songs, I do feel like from a production standpoint they were lacking in terms of impact and dimensionality.

Interestingly, the same producer and mastering engineer who worked on those songs worked on this one, and it’s definitely a step up. The mix is deep and wide, well-balanced, and lead vocalist Lynette Rafuse’s clean vocals shimmer beautifully amidst cascading guitars, with a solid rhythm section grounding the mix and keeping it moving. The atmosphere created here is very nice, playing well on my HD600s, and my production complaints are minimal (I feel like the drums might be a bit too oversaturated). The music video, shot and directed by the band’s own Jeff Arsenault, lives up to the moodiness of the track, and the shot composition from scene to scene is very well done. I don’t envy poor Mykal Storey who had to haul their drum kit out into the middle of the woods.

It’s a very nice track - a vibe I honestly wasn’t expecting from this band - and well worth your attention. Abandoned Yesterday are a band worth watching; every release is an improvement on the previous, and I look forward to seeing what they have to offer in a full release. Link to the music video below.

Peep the music video here.

MISSION STATEMENT - YESSE

The bio for this project has only this to say:

equanimity solutions

This, plus the minimal corporate-Memphis-esque album art grabbed my attention immediately. There’s clearly some investment being put into the aesthetic of this release, with a lore drop in the album description that hints at a larger overarching theme, but none of that matters much if the music itself isn’t very good, does it?

I’m happy to report that the music is, in fact, good. While the advance single for this release was the glitchy, squelchy Paper Trail which is certainly a fun head-bobber, the track that hooked me in is the title track Mission Statement. It’s just on the verge of being classified as a lo-fi-hip-hop-beat-to-study-to (and I could definitely see a budding producer tossing some lyrics on top of the main loop) but there’s more than enough going on in the track to elevate it beyond background music.

While the firm and arresting bass carries the tune - at times seeming to playfully spar with the off-kilter percussion - the funky melodic content brought in by the psychedelic guitar sends it into spacey territory, reinforced by the well designed ear candy sprinkled throughout. It definitely rattled my subs a bit, but only enough to make it genuinely fun to listen to, and over the course of a few dedicated spins I found I couldn’t help but groove along with it.

This was an easy pick to feature. Give it a whirl at the link below.

Go get funky with it.

NEW REALITY FT. COUP D’ETAT - SUFFERING UNSEEN

My honest reaction to hitting play on this one was a prolonged “yo” that wouldn’t have been out of place in a kabuki production. This band knows how to kick off an EP, and following the screeching feedback and punishing opening riffs comes a genuinely memorable motif that says - to me, anyway - that this is real shit.

That isn’t a backhanded compliment, by the way. I’ll be the first to say that while I love death and death-adjacent metal (the band classifies this as evilcore) the genre opens itself up to some pretty piss poor songwriting. This is far from the case on this release - Suffering Unseen shows that their writing chops are as solid as their playing chops; and do they ever have chops. I’m genuinely surprised this isn’t on something like 20 Buck Spin.

The lyrics are appropriately despairing and one line in particular really resonated with me:

Living for something
Isn’t what it used to be
Everyone lives a lie
No one can make up their mind

Said lyrics are delivered expertly by an individual credited only as “Sky”, with additional vocals provided by Freyja Internicola. Neither of the two are bullshitting their performances - the commitment to the intensity is fully on display - and the mix is, dare I say it, excellent. Cody Baresich at Circle A Studios definitely knows what he’s doing with this genre, and the band has brought him their A game to work with.

What else can I really say about this one? It’s a home run for me.

Yooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

BONUS - 3T3 2026-04-11A BY 3T3.CA

This one’s a bonus for all my fellow freaks out there who love ambient / generative / aleatoric music, which I know is not most of you, which is why I’m not making this a primary recommendation.

I know nothing about this project - it came up in a search for “recent releases” from the Vancouver area and I was intrigued, as I often am, by the “ambient” tag and well-designed album art. The song 3t3 2026-04-11a is what autoplays when you load the page, and since it’s not the first track on the album I assume this is the one the artist wanted me to listen to.

And they chose well. It’s ambient music, and it’s 20 minutes long, so if you’re expecting… you know, traditional song structure, you’re not going to get it. It’s exploratory, unhurried, improvisational, and that’s right up my alley. I really enjoy the soundscape being created here. But what REALLY caught my attention was the project’s main pitch:

Evolving improvised soundscapes shifting with the seasons. Each album contains three sessions. Only the three most recent albums remain available - older albums are removed as new ones arrive, embracing the essence of wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence.

And, yeah, only the three most recent releases are available - this one and two from February of this year. So just looking at the Bandcamp page gives me no conception of how long this project’s been going on for - but a quick domain name check of their website (which only has the most recent release) shows it was registered a little over a year ago. They have a Bluesky, but it’s as cryptic and uninformative as anything else.

So this whole thing has me saying “Neat!”. Maybe you’ll think it’s neat, too. If you do you better hurry and grab this one because it’s three more releases away from going away forever.

Get it while you still can.

So that’s been three (plus one bonus) tracks, all from local bands, that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to this week. It’s a decent mix of genres on display - a good representation of the varied pool of talent we’ve got in this scene - and I can heartily recommend each one.

But this is a shootout, isn’t it? Which means we have to declare a winner.

And the winner of this week’s Singles Shootout is…

…you! Because now you have three (plus one bonus) great tracks to listen to, three local acts to follow, and one solid reminder that there’s so much cool shit being made in the independent scene.

Have a great week, y’all. See you in the next one.