Weekly Discover 68 — The Static Between Heartbeats

Discover 68 every week doesn't knock. It pushes the door open with its heavy boots on concrete, dragging the smell of last night's beer and the faint burn of ash still on denim. Broken speakers make a static sound, which then snaps into focus. A single acoustic guitar, its strings worn thin, plays a melody that tastes like dust and second chances.

We finished 67 with a clear dawn. Forget that. Dawn isn't as good as people say it is. This one starts in the bruise-colored hours after, when folk Americana wakes up with a groan, its voice ragged and its hip-hop heartbeat pounding under its ribs. Not polished. Not beautiful. Just true—your fingers are bleeding on the frets, and your words are spilling out like secrets you promised to keep. You lean in because that's all you can do.

Then the room tips. The electronic pop fills the cracks, neon and glitchy, city rain falling on tin roofs. The synths don’t shine; they stutter, pulse, remember every blackout. The hero does not walk into this storm. The storm walks into him. Rap tumbles through—tight, breathless, every bar another brick in the wall you’re tearing down with your teeth. Concrete under your nails, static in the throat, ash in your mouth. It’s not a verse. It’s a dare.

Weekly Discover 68 concludes as it began: with static fading, concrete cooling beneath your feet. Beer, ash, static, concrete as you’re standing there when the music ends.

Plug in. Allow it to scrape you clean.

Not all fires will warm you.

Some fires will forge you.

AMELINA - "Step by Step"

The ambiance of growing up, one heartbeat at a time with every note.

There's this moment in "Step by Step," when the piano rings like one note, holding on through that quiet moment right before the drums lift the room again. It feels like the sound of someone taking a deep breath, squarely in between their big leaps. That someone is AMELINA, a 12-year-old pop-rock artist who turns the messy, beautiful, chaos of youth into a cinematic experience.

Originally from Russia, currently residing in Spain, AMELINA has learned early on what many adults are still trying to master: how to start over. Moving to a different country where most everything felt static and translation — the buzzing of a different language, the rhythm of a new sky, the smell of salt and concrete. Out of that distorted uncertainty came music, bright chords, meaningful lyrics and the steady heartbeat of someone trying to figure things out step by step.

The new single embodies exactly that feeling. This is more than simply a song; it is instead a self-portrait rendered in sound: piano like sunlight glinting through glass, lines from the guitar that shimmer, then bite, and a chorus that opens wide enough to fill a gym with dreamers. It is the song that you hear once, and find yourself humming days later, a melody that sticks with the same evidence of hope.

“Step by Step” lives in much of the same emotional neighborhood as early Avril Lavigne or Olivia Rodrigo — that sweet spot of youth and rebellion, where the voice still sounds innocent, but the lyrics have already experienced change. AMELINA has a brightness in her voice that shifts through the mix, a confidence that still carries wonder. There is grit in her phrasing and a slight flutter that reminds you she means it all.

And that’s what makes her special. While most pop feels polished to perfection, AMELINA leaves room for realness. You can almost hear the air between takes, the small human moments — the laughter before a line, the breath before a chorus. It’s that imperfection that turns her music into connection. Because we’ve all been there: lost in translation, finding our footing, learning to trust the process.

"Every goal is attainable, little by little. Trust me, I know," she sings, and it's hard to argue with her. The tune rises like the dawn - piano to rhythm, delicate to uproar - before it explodes into a straight-up pop-rock anthem that we can all imagine being played on a playlist called Teen Beats or Pop Rising.

Still, beyond the algorithm and the aesthetic, what "Step by Step" actually offers is heart. It feels like a song designed for the montage of a coming-of-age film as youngsters run down the sidewalk in their sneakers, sunlight twinkling from the leaves of the trees above while they laugh through everything that's difficult. Step by Step is AMELINA's journey, but it's also everyone's journey.

At age twelve, she writes with the insight of someone double her age - not because she's trying to rush, but because she's paying attention. To the static. To the hope. To every little victory that builds a dream.

And maybe that's the real message here: change doesn't have to look like the fireworks we see on the 4th of July. Sometimes it only needs a piano, a beat, and a next step.

Sonny Siminski isn't performing—he's inviting you in.

Sonny Siminski's Giveth has a certain familiarity to it that welcomes you before the first note even settles. Sounds of static buzzing, the gentle rattle of guitar strings, and a voice that sounds like it's just over your shoulder telling you a secret — it is the sound of someone who has spent a life just strumming, painting lines, and experiencing the hum of life itself.

Sonny is a quiet force in the uk acoustic rock scene. With his two eps in 2025, Giveth and Expert Introvert, he suggests that music isn't just performance, its an outcome, an exploration, an honest expression. Giveth is recorded at home on a cheap multitrack, exposing a rawness with an aspect of restfulness. Warm guitars, purposeful drums, and voice that expresses grit as well as buddles of fragility create a lived experience. You will hear the texture of the cement floor in your bare feet, the smell of fixing dust, and the sticky testament of beer from a late night hangout. It is not a record all about rushing, but a record with breath to it.

If there is one moment that stands out, it is Wishful Thinking. The song settles into memory, floating with an echo of sunlight through fog; the guitar notes descend like a whisper of quiet revelation; the vocals prod into the static to emerge with acute tenderness. It is a song which does more than sound; it creates space for your own thoughts and again, the ached triumphs which creep into the day.

Sonny’s writing style might make the mundane feel extraordinary. “Music is my first-aid kit.” he says. “It's how I process the mundanities of life; it's how I process the trials and tribulations of experiencing life. I take what often doesn’t seem sensible — an emotional outburst, an otherwise stray thought — and obsessively stitch it together until it speaks.” It is this obsessive stitching, this seemingly arcane process that makes his music feel legitimate. There are no shortcuts, nor is there a pretext of pseudo-hooks. Each track is a small tale of experiences, breakdowns, and connection.

Following years in bands and re-adjusting post-lockdowns in 2025, Sonny's year of self-examination, stepping up as a soloist, and that kind of thing, is finally on its way. Expert Introvert, which is a split album in the sense that it has both Sonny's take on Bass and Drums alongside his own compositions emphasizes more a heavy, collaborative narrative, which is a lovely contrast to the raw warmth of Giveth. Now with a little help from Producer Simon Willey (Brian Ferry, Prince, Damon Albarn), Sonny is expanding on these foundations to somewhere new. "I want to integrate the whimsical nature of the home-recorded stuff with studio-level technical polish." He explains, "At last, this is all the music I've been hearing in my head for a long time, now it can exist fully in the world."

Sonny Siminski is not after charts. He is after resonating - in the concrete, in the ash, in the quiet of your own life. Giveth and expert introvert are more than EPs. It is an invitation to be with Sonny in the music for once, to feel it, think about it, and find bits of yourself that are sewn into every string, every drum hit, every whisper of a lyric.

We are talking human, acoustic rock with a heartbeat, warming the listener up for what's to come - and you are going to want to be there when it arrives!

The Verdict: 9.2/10

Steel & Velvet – People Just Float

There comes a moment in music when the world halts. Concrete streets lose their life to the ash light, ice in the beer bottle, and static monks beneath the skin. Steel & Velvet's new EP, People Just Float, accomplishes this—is nuanced, methodical, and unfussy. It is the space between notes, the flow of human breath and wooden body of an acoustic guitar lighting an unfamiliar room.

After their 2023 debut, Waiting for Some Warmth, Johann Le Roux and Romuald Ballet-Baz return with six tracks that are not so much an EP but a passage deep into intimacy. With Jean-Alain Larreur's guitar playing on the Diogenes song and Jade Le Roux's vocals on two songs playing a role, People Just Float feels like a secret reserved for cabin dwellers among the thick trees that occupy the human heart. And Loïc Moyou's short film captures this precisely: shadows, sun-kissed openings, and the suspended stillness of making discoveries.

At the heart of it all is the story of Joshua, a solitary man whose encounter with a terrified woman in the woods serves as the through-line for every song. It is a timeless and immediate story, told with acoustic guitars that chime gently, vocals that ache and then reach, and arrangements that are minimalist but not sparse. It's the story of feeling Joshua's reluctance, his awe, the brush of leaves against skin; all magnified by the stark precision of Johann's voice.

Many of the tracks, such as Lake of Fire, are master classes in vocal prowess. There is an honesty, a back-and-forth between vulnerability and strength, that pulls one in. Romuald's guitar character displays both intelligence and restraint. Orphan's Lament, originally a Robbie Basho piano composition, is re-forged in deft fingerstyle guitar and, depending on where one is in the world, the sadness becomes urgent, corporeal. The band also expands to do covers of songs by Cash, Dylan, Nirvana, and the Pixies, reinterpreting artistic imports to a dialed down folk-rock, but the fire remains. Every chord and whisper of melody remains purposeful - alive in its own right.

The essence of Steel & Velvet is closeness. In their live shows, Johann does not use amplification, as he is interested in the human rhythm of a space, the organic reverberation of voice and wood. People Just Float represents this ethos in the studio: nothing is fancified, nothing is extra. The listener is in the room, the wood, the cabin—with Joshua, seeing the world hold still. Textures—beer, concrete, ash, static—latch on in musical notes. The piece takes the refrain of sound and refrain of motif and turns it into a pulse; a rooting in what it means to feel human.

It is folk rock with bone and sinew, gentle but resolute. People Just Float does not shout. It invites, pulls, and cradles. It is the kind of music that is with you after the last note, not due to demands you give your focus, but because it holds the memory of living, loneliness, and connection on one continuum. Steel & Velvet haven’t just returned—they have thickened, broadened, and made space for the listener to float with them.

In brief: this is acoustic rock at its most stripped of artifice. Best song? Lake of Fire—haunting vocals; wailing guitar. And the film unspools behind it, so the music becomes a mirror held up to a world we’ve known but never noted.

YDAVID Steps Out, Steps Up: “No Maybes” Marks a Bold New Chapter

A sense of static fills the environment. Concrete roads thrummed with a new brand of energy. Somewhere between the freak out of the news and the pulse and freedom of a Friday night, YDAVID — once known as YamYam, has dropped “No Maybes.” It’s not just a song you can hear, it’s something you can feel.

Over the past decade, David Halb from Ljubljana, Slovenia has been the drummer, keyboardist, and producer behind bands Sphericube, Werefox, Lollobrigida, and MDA; challenging the boundaries of Slovenia's alternative music community. He’s played stages where the air smells like beer, sweat, and anticipation. This time, the script is flipped: David is the front person, presenting himself as a vocalist, with his lyricism and his vision.

“No Maybes is the moment I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try my hand at writing lyrics and singing," says David. “I wanted to rip off the band-aid — what happens next will inform how I’ll go about the creative process of writing future music.” And that outcome? Infectious dance energy embedded in subtle psychedelia, built on innovative production and the type of groove only an iconic Slovenian bassist like Jani Hace can produce.

The track is a prism of textures: heavy electronic drums thundering like city pulsating at night, bright melodic synths catching and lifting the mood, and a funk continuously propelling your every step, every move, every sway. English words are an invitation to international ears, but the song unquestionably bears the mark of YDAVID; a tension between experimentation and intimacy.

And then, the visual world. Directed by Inan Sven Du Swami, the AI music video is an exploration of absurdity and dreams, a “post-truth” playground where reality is tender and the headlines and nightmares converge. It is dizzying, exhilarating, and wholly YDAVID; a reflection of the chaotic, beautiful, and sometimes incomprehensible world we live in.

Music-making has always been an exploration for YDAVID. As he reflects, “when I’m creating, I don’t really think about who is going to listen to it — what’s important is that the sounds articulate the feeling I want to have.” With “No Maybes”, that philosophy has never been louder. Every beat, every synth beat, every vocal phrase is an invitation: step with him into this brave new chapter, where the rules are unsaid, and the adventure is all.

For those who have ever felt torn between safety and possibility, “No Maybes” is a reminder that occasionally the jump is worth more than the landing. And, as YDAVID demonstrates, leaning into your own voice can create waves that carry far and wide beyond the first note.

No Maybes is out now on all digital platforms.