The algorithm gets a stare-down on Arabella Lucia’s ‘Unpretty’. Her alt-rock take on TLC’s 1999 classic comes with crashing drums, thumping bass, burning guitar work and a vocal edge that turns self-doubt into a live wire. The subject remains painfully recognisable: beauty standards, internalised judgement and pressure to resemble somebody else’s preferred image. For anyone who has watched a filter make a familiar face feel insufficient,...

Resilience doesn’t sound like thunder – it crackles like dry leaves underfoot or hums over wires in the dead of night, waiting. In "Lightning In A Bottle," Eli Annina reaches out to this elusive voltage, siphoning its essence into three minutes and some change of atmospheric perfection. The Finnish-born, UK-based songwriter doesn't plead or break; she breathes, swims, and leaps, turning a migration into...