The Pretty Flowers – To Be So Cool
Sure, living fast and dying young must sound like a winning strategy. Hell, it certainly will get you out of a few uncomfortable, otherwise unavoidable gatherings, and you certainly won’t need to worry about paying any kind of insurance.
However, there’s a lot of stuff that you’ll miss, and none of it is tremendously exciting, sure, but it is something. More than anything, you won’t get the chance to stand up to life by doing something outrageous, and that fills your heart with joy.
Running to join the circus may be a few eras too late. However, there’s a bar in every town, many people who need to walk through its threshold and live music always makes whatever is happening feel better. The Pretty Flowers are on their way to it.
You see, The Pretty Flowers are on their own adventure, but they’re not in any hurry to have it end too soon. The energy-filled “To Be So Cool” is just as much a song about reckless friends as it is a celebration of life during a period of hardships. The band says that it is reflecting the societal upheavals of 2026 in the U.S., and if this is the one good thing to happen out of all of this, at least it’s got a good chorus to it.
Ringing – want2want2
If you’re lucky to be living in a Western country, and you haven’t accumulated colossal debt, it’s as easy to drift through life as it is to allow the Top 40 radio station to float off somewhere in the background without noticing any of the songs.
That’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a fantastic mid-afternoon dream transformed into a full existence. It’s a thing that grabs hold of you and won’t let go without ever giving any hints for years and years that you’re stuck.
Objectives, much like the great pop songs that deserve your attention, are things that yell into your ears until they become unbearable. They are things that make you pay attention, much like Ringing’s music does.
In fact, “want2want2” feels purposely designed to be a little too loud when the distortion pedal is activated and a little too quiet when murmured vocals become the focus of the track. Ringing’s blend of alt-rock and shoegaze is meant to get your attention, as are the song’s lyrics about figuring out the pattern of your life and searching for a way to break through it. Some songs just float on by, but this is not one of those.
