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When Bega teenager Felicity Dowd saw the havoc wreaked by the NSW bushfires a year ago and the rebuilding since, she decided to do more than talk about it – she’s putting her musical talents to use. The award-winning songwriter penned ‘Blue Skies’ prior to the bushfires in response to all the natural disasters that Australians had lived through including drought, floods and cyclones.

“It was written about natural disasters in general, and little did I know what devastation would occur so soon after,” she said. “After seeing the fires come down the coast and the rebuilding, the song really grew in meaning for me.”

The Year 12 student had been waiting for the right time and song to go into the recording studio to lay down her debut single and, following the bushfires, Felicity decided the time was right. It’s not just about getting her new music out there, either – Felicity is raising money for Cobargo Community Bushfire Recovery Fund through the sales of the single.

“I lived in Cobargo for five years and seeing what they went through, the town has a lot of meaning for me,” she said. “I have lots of friends who live there who were impacted by the fires, it was the first place I ever busked and Cobargo Folk Festival was the first place I ever performed.”

At the 2020 Tamworth Country Music Festival, ‘Blue Skies’ won the 2020 Tamworth Songwriting Association Talent Quest (Youth Category), and Felicity used the prize money towards the recording of the single. The talented artist added to these wins in 2021, taking home the John P Toomey Commemorative Award for Youth Songwriting at the Tamworth Songwriters Association Awards for ‘When the Party Is Over’ and the Garry Koehler Commemorative Award also at the TSAs for Novice Songwriting for her new single, ‘Blue Skies’.

“I contacted Rod Motbey from Tracking Dog Studios because I knew he grew up in Cobargo and still had family connections in the town,” she said. “I explained to him that I wanted to use my song to raise money for Cobargo and he was more than happy to help.” The single also features session musicians from the US.

In the year ahead, Felicity plans to use ‘Blue Skies’ to raise as much money as she can to help the people of Cobargo to rebuild their lives, and she wants to play more gigs, more festivals and is looking to record another song, as well as studying for her HSC and is part of the prestigious Talent Development Project. After graduation, Felicity plans to study journalism while continuing pursuing her music that walks the line between folk and country.

“I have always loved travelling to folk and country music festivals and have found my passion for playing and writing through these genres,” she said. The talented singer-songwriter has some high-profile mentors in her corner, including Golden Guitar winner Lyn Bowtell whom she met while studying at the junior course of The CMAA Academy of Country Music in Tamworth in July 2018.

To increase the impact of the story of Blue Skies, videographer Kyle Wilson has produced a video clip for the song.

As a follow up to their 2020 EP, Canto a Babalú Ayé (Remixes), DJ Reitt & Shanara have put together a selection of new remixes of their track “Saxo Mambo”. Teaming up with Cuban DJ/producer Eslan Martin, the four track EP offers an avant-garde fusion of Cuban electronic music. As for the inspiration behind the song, “Saxo Mambo pays tribute to one of the most popular Cuban rhythms and the renowned singer Benny Moré”, explains DJ Reitt.

DJ Reitt & Shanara are a Cuban house duo. DJ Reitt is a pioneer of the fusion of Cuban and electronic music and is a large supporter of Latin House in the Cuban scene. He is the creator of valuable platforms such as Space for Electronic Culture and created the 2019 Habana Ciudad Electrónica festival. Vocalist and bassist, Shanara, has acted as arranger and composer in a wide variety of styles such as: Bolero, Danzón, Bachata, Pop, in addition to dabbling in electron music styles such as house. She has participated in different festivals on the national scene such as Cuerda Viva, Las Voces Human, Eyeife. In 2018 she was selected to join the Childish Gambino band in the short film “Guava Island”.

Award winning singer-songwriter Dean Lewis returns with his brand-new single, ‘Falling Up’, the lead single from Lewis’s hotly anticipated second album. Emotive, impactful, relatable and impossible to forget, it’s a masterclass in what the songwriter does best: connect.

The official video for ‘Falling Up’ will premiere globally tomorrow on Dean Lewis’ official YouTube channel at 7:30 (AEDT) here. Dean will join fans from 7.10am AEDT for a live Q and A before the video is revealed.

In a period when we’re all stuck in shrinking rooms feeling isolated, when claustrophobia – actual, social and otherwise – is real and widespread, ‘Falling Up’ is the perfect song for the times.

In writing the song Lewis keyed into lifelong feelings of frustration and anxiety. “I always thought I would be happy when I finished school or when I passed an exam, or I got a job or a promotion or if I went travelling and then I was like – ‘ooh, now I have a record deal, what if I have a big song? Then, I had a big song, and I was on the road for three years and when I stopped, I realised it had all passed me by and I was actually less present and more anxious and stressed than ever. I looked back on my life and at all of these points along the way and I realised that I’ve never felt any better, it’s always been onto the next thing, always moving.”

The lyrics paint a picture of a man in despair: “I’m alone in the spotlight / And the walls are caving in / And I thought I’d be happy / But I’m barely breathing.”

“Those lyrics are about being online and focusing on that one negative comment in a sea of good,” Lewis explains. “You feel the negativity and it affects your life and I took it on, and I found myself feeling more and more anxious and isolated. I really struggle with that.”

Suffice it to say that ‘Falling Up’ is a bold sign of things to come. It is, once more, a jaw-dropping encapsulation of the rare skills of Dean Lewis: to make the personal universal, the singular relatable, and the inner thoughts the most accessible.

The three-time ARIA and APRA award winning Lewis went from unknown to world-wide recognition with the release of his 2019 #1 ARIA Album A Place We Knew. Accredited Platinum in Australia, the LP produced a number of local and international smashes including his debut single the 7 x Platinum ‘Waves’, the monster global hit and 10 x Platinum ‘ Be Alright’, and the 3 x Platinum selling singles ‘7 Minutes’ and 2 x Platinum single ‘Stay Awake.’ His debut album is also GOLD in the USA, Silver in the UK and platinum+ in 8 other countries. Waves has also reached Gold status in the US. But it was ‘Be Alright’ which would drive Lewis’ career even further, catapulting his music to the world stage and contributing to his music accumulating over 4.8 billion streams globally.

‘Be Alright’ spent 5 weeks at #1 on the ARIA Singles Chart, 8 weeks at #1 on TMN Hot 100 Radio Chart and earned Dean entry into the prestigious APRA AMCOS ‘Billion Streams’ Club, winner of the 2018 ARIA Video of the Year Award and becoming Apple’s Up Next Artist. It was voted as #6 on triple j’s Hottest 100 and was the 4th highest selling single (2nd Australian Artist) in Australia for 2018. Globally, ‘Be Alright’ is triple platinum in the USA and it hit #1 on Billboard’s emerging artist chart and has been accredited Platinum + in 23 other countries.

A Place We Knew in its first week, skyrocketed #1 on the ARIA Album Chart, was chosen as triple j’s feature album and debuted #1 iTunes Singer/Songwriter Album Charts. Around the world it debuted #18 on the Billboard Top 200 in the USA, as well as a Top 5 Billboard Pop Album and it reached the Top 10 in New Zealand (#7), Top 20 in Switzerland (#11), Canada (#15) and Ireland (#20) and Top 30 in Norway (#25), Belgium (#30), Netherlands (#21) and Top 40 in Germany (#32), Sweden (#37) and the UK (#37). The multi-selling album won Dean the 2019 ARIA Album of the Year and Best Male Artist Awards as well as the 2019 APRA Awards for Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year and Outstanding International Achievement Award.

Touring locally and overseas, Dean has performed at International Festivals such as Reeperbahn Festival,Lollapalooza, Great Escape, Isle of Wight, the Main Stage at Splendour In The Grass and events such as the Australian Open Tennis, AFL Grand Final, 2019 Melbourne Cup Carnival. He sold out his 2019 Australian National Tour as well as his USA Tour, performing over 200 shows in that year. Dean was the first artist to perform live on The Project Australia and appeared on US shows Ellen, Jimmy Kimmel, Good Morning America.

Maroon 5 stands out as not only one of pop music’s most enduring artists, but also one of the 21st century’s biggest acts. To date, the universally renowned Los Angeles band have achieved three GRAMMY® Awards, over 75 million in album sales, 400 million singles worldwide and earned gold and platinum certifications in more than 35 countries. The band won over fans and critics alike with the hybrid rock/R&B sound they introduced on their debut album, Songs About Jane and their double platinum album, It Won’t be Soon Before Long. Maroon 5 went on to release studio albums, Hands All Over, which featured the anthemic “Moves Like Jagger,” and Overexposed. The band’s fifth studio album, V, debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart and featured the #1 hit singles “Maps,” “Animals” and “Sugar,” helping the band set a record for the most #1’s by a duo/group in the Top 40 chart’s 20-year history, with 11 in total. The music video for the album’s GRAMMY- nominated single ” Sugar ” has notably logged 3+ Billion views to date and is the 13th most viewed video on YouTube. The song has also reached over 1 Billion Spotify streams.

Maroon 5’s 6th studio album, Red Pill Blues (222/ Interscope) features the global hit single “Girls Like You,” which reached #1 at Top 40, #1 at Adult Pop, #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. The track also claimed the #1 position on iTunes and Spotify, all while accumulating over 1.2 Billion Spotify streams and almost 3 Billion YouTube/ VEVO views; notably becoming the most-watched video on VEVO in 2018. The band’s latest hit single “Memories” has also surpassed 1 Billion Spotify streams and amassed over 650 million Youtube views.

Maroon 5 ha s over 45 million monthly Spotify listeners, and have played over 120 concerts in 30+ countries selling over 6,750,000 tickets worldwide.

Following her release of Sunshine early in 2020 (#12 on the Australian Christian Music Chart), Every Need (#9) and her beautiful Christmas release Wake the Earth, Anna releases WALKIN’ ON THE WATER a song that speaks to the confidence and joy we can experience when we boldly ‘step out of the boat’ in faith.

This is a fun, upbeat song with a retro-pop vibe. Sure to lift the spirits and have you humming the melody, long after the song has stopped.

“Sometimes I get stopped in my tracks and I become aware once more of how good life really is when I trust in God. Walkin’ On The Water is a celebration of God’s love and what freedom we can walk in when we trust God enough to take a step out of the boat, taking our eyes off the busyness around us and placing our focus on Him.
God doesn’t promise us an easy life, the storms will still come, but He will always be there with us in the middle of it, to lead us through, and that’s worth celebrating!” Anna Waters

Brisbane artist WASHINGTON covers Powderfinger classic hit ‘My Happiness’. The song is features in an ad to celebrate Brisbane and includes Megan performing at Fortitude Music Hall.

After running in Brisbane last year, the ad will now be launched in Melbourne and Sydney and online targeting across the nation for the month of March. The original song was just voted the No. 1 song of the decade on Double J’s Top 100 songs of the Decade.

Last year, Award winning WASHINGTON received glowing reviews across the country with the release of her third studio album, Batflowers. The LP was chosen as one of the Best Australian Albums of 2020 by The Guardian, is shortlisted for the AMP Awards, Rolling Stone Readers Award and won the 2020 ARIA Award for Best Cover with She Is Aphrodite Adam Dal Pozzo. (Adam was also behind all the visuals for the live show). Megan was also one of the finalists for Double J’s Australian Artist of the Year and most recently announced, the song Batflowers is shortlisted for the prestigious Vanda & Young’s Song Competition

The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2: “The Housebuilding EP” – a special release in response to popular demand that includes fan-favourite “The Housebuilding Song” is available now to stream online and purchase as a beautiful, limited-edition blue sky vinyl.

“The Housebuilding Song” which plays during the epilogue chapter of Red Dead Redemption 2 is the headliner for the EP, but it also features for previously unreleased tracks from musicians David Ferguson and Matt Sweeney – previously unreleased as part of The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2, that is, including the original score vinyl for the game.

“The Housebuilding EP” features five songs from Red Dead Redemption 2 by Nashville’s David Ferguson and NYC guitarist, composer, and producer Matt Sweeney.

You can buy The Music of Red Dead Redemption 2: The Housebuilding EP on popular music digital download platforms including iTunes, or stream now on Spotify, Apple Music, and more.

The physical vinyl release is now available at both the Lakeshore Records Online Store and the Rockstar Warehouse in very limited supply.

An epic tale of honour and loyalty set in the dying days of the outlaw age, Red Dead Redemption 2 follows Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang as they rob, steal and fight their way across the rugged heartland of America in order to survive. Following a botched robbery in the western town of Blackwater, the gang are forced to flee and with federal agents and the best bounty hunters in the nation massing on their heels, deepening internal divisions threaten to tear the gang apart, leaving Arthur to make a choice between his own ideals and loyalty to the gang who raised him.

Told across the deepest and most expansive Rockstar world to date, Red Dead Redemption 2 is Rockstar’s first game built from the ground up for new generation hardware, and seamlessly blends gameplay and storytelling in a completely new way to deliver the experience of living as an outlaw in a notorious gang.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the highest-rated game of the PlayStation 4 generation with over 250 perfect scores and more than 175 Game of the Year Awards, having achieved the single-biggest opening weekend in the history of entertainment**. With over $725 million in worldwide retail sell-through during its first three days, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the second-highest grossing entertainment launch of all time next to Rockstar Games’ previously released title, Grand Theft Auto V, which achieved over $1 billion in retail sell-through in three days

London based, Australian singer/songwriter TIM WHEATLEY delivers his new 5 track EP

Featuring the singles ‘Sex With Strangers,’ ‘Lying Low’ and the new focus track ‘Little Rebels.’

Tim is currently in London, enduring a bitterly cold winter as well as the uncertainty (and despair) of Covid-19 across the UK.

Through it all, Tim has been able to remain creative and hopeful of better days ahead. And ‘A Night Without Shakespeare’ really does underline Tim’s knack for penning atmospheric, indie-folk songs.

Tim Wheatley has worked with some of the most exciting and acclaimed local producers and mixers including Michael Badger (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, You Am I, Amyl & The Sniffers) and the ARIA award winning Steven Schram (Paul Kelly, San Cisco). This EP brings together Tim’s ability to capture life’s candid moments, light n’ shade, indie and pop. Enjoy!

Self-producing artist and composer ivee is a London solo pop act, debuting her single ‘Paris In The Winter’ on February 25th 2021, as the first half of her double single ‘_substance_abuse’. Born Niki Poplonyk in Poland, ivee moved to London aged one. After having the opportunity to live in Brno, Czech Republic and Milan, Italy as a young girl, she decided to pursue music in secondary school. She later attended the BRIT school for college to further study her passion, where she was spotted by Little Cousin Records who signed her for her debut release.

ivee took an interest in music from an early age, learning to play the drums and taking piano lessons as a girl in Italy.

After returning to England, she auditioned and got a place at her secondary school with a drum kit scholarship, where she initially aspired to be a DJ, after watching Martin Garrix explain his ‘Animals’ production on YouTube and getting inspiration from the 2010’s EDM music scene.Soon, this passion turned into a desire to perform and produce her own songs, where she has total control over sound design, marrying her prodigious talent on the drums with perfect chord progressions and samples to create the ideal complement to her raw and personal lyrics.

Her music is the pop blend of future RnB and hybrid trap, influenced by musical role models like Post Malone, The Weeknd, Flume and LDN Noise. Carefully chosen chords, flaunt trap and hip hop drums, which are strung together with future bass transitions and sound design. Despite the uplifting seeming lyrics in the 90’s pop inspired single ‘Paris In The Winter’, the underlying meaning behind them explores a darker theme of how drug usage feels, where her second single ‘_substance_abuse’ (featuring K-hip hop artist Villain) acts as a sequel, exploring the inevitable tragedy of coping mechanisms. These two tracks announce ivee as a stunning new artist to watch in 2021.

You Am I release new single from forthcoming studio album

“Edinburgh, Galway, Nashville, Ulladulla / Breakin’ my heart / In four places.”

The lines are from The Waterboy, released today via Caroline Australia, the first taste of new music from You Am I’s forthcoming 11th studio album. You Am I fans know how many great songs Tim Rogers has written since the band released their debut album Sound As Ever in 1993. This one is right up there with them.

The Waterboy is a song about inspiration, being lifted up by a song, wondering if and how there was still a way to find a way forward in music. The conclusion is there for all to hear in the song – “Ventricle, aorta, muscle and blood / Building a heart in four places”.

Rogers says: “On the Waterboys album Modern Blues I found a Mike Scott song called I Can See Elvis. It just killed me, I couldn’t stop listening to it. Mike is a big-hearted person, he really puts it all out there and I like that. I was on the New South Wales south coast listening to a Scottish guy living in Ireland singing about Elvis and that led to the four places line.”

Rogers sent the song to You Am I guitarist Davey Lane, who says: “The first time I heard the song it hit me right in the guts. It packs such an emotional punch.”

The band was separated by the pandemic, with Lane and Rogers in Melbourne and bassist Andy Kent and drummer Russell Hopkinson in Sydney. They couldn’t meet so they moved things forward the only way they could. Rogers and Lane recorded a demo of The Waterboy in Melbourne to send to their bandmates.

Kent and Hopkinson recorded parts in a Sydney studio and what they sent back was like a shot of adrenaline. Rogers says: “What they did was very different to what I had imagined for the song and made it so much better.”

He continues, “The Waterboy began as a folk tune set to fingerpicking but when peak “pining” for our band hit I imagined being in a room together and changed the whole feel of the toon. Typically, what Russ, Davey and AK came back with eviscerated all my daydreamin’s and replaced them with jumpin round the room enthusiasms.”

With their Enmore Theatre, Sydney show confirmed for Thursday April 15, the band is understandably excited about playing live again, after a Covid induced layoff of some 18 months or more. As Rogers says, “Who wants solo fingerpickin when you have thunderous friends? Not this ol’ showgirl. I felt my heart being replaced. In all four places. 3000 plus shows and there’s a lotta memories but the reason you wake up is for the NEXT one. I’ve day dreamt and night tussled thinking about this show in ways that have ruined three sets of linen. We wanna be together. Come join the band.”

Andy Kent concurs: “The Enmore Theatre stage holds some very special memories for us as a band. So to be able to put 2020 well behind us all and step back out there to share a night of loud rock and roll with our strong, faithful and beautiful audience is something we are very much looking forward to. GBTFLoU!”

And with the prospect of their new album dropping later this year, Hopkinson says: “There is a reason why this band has been together for a long time and it’s not just because we are really good friends. We’re resilient to the things that go on outside the band, for better or worse.

“There was an idea that we would be able to be together at some point to finish the record. Fate had a way of making sure that didn’t happen. Yet we’ve made an album since the last time we were all together in a room, made the best of the situation to create this piece of art.

“It has been a cathartic experience which is what we all needed after a year when those have been few and far between if you are a touring musician.”