We’re back with a great selection! This week, dive into brutally honest alt-folk, a meditative opus from a Polish drumming legend, a truly unique sound world from an Italian duo, and so much more. Let’s get into it.
Konrad Ciesielski
Let’s kick things off with a renowned drummer’s debut solo album. Hint: it doesn’t sound like anything you’d expect from that introduction – and that’s a good thing.
While “Koniec” may be a debut record, it certainly doesn’t feel like one. There’s something truly alluring about this project that feels like a release of pressure, and a clearing of the air. Konrad Ciesielski, long a seismic force in Polish post-metal, steps out from behind the drum kit and into something quieter, stranger, and far more personal. The result is a cinematic, slow-burning landscape where rhythm doesn’t command but breathe, and sound becomes a form of meditation.
Drawing from ambient, contemporary jazz, experimental electronics, and filmic sound design, “Koniec” feels akin to the emotional widescreen of GoGo Penguin, Portico Quartet, Hidden Orchestra, even traces of Massive Attack – but it’s unmistakably Ciesielski’s show. Each collaborator becomes a flicker within it: Jan Galbas’s piano anchoring “Out of Gravity”, Gabriela Wasilewska’s half-spoken ache in “Miscommunication Land”, Dawid Lipka’s spacious trumpet on “Taganana”, Patrycja Tempska’s saxophone weaving quiet tension. The word cinematic gets used far too much these days, and should really be reserved for records just like this one – a record that builds a world, and invites the listener to get lost in it.
Despite its shifting voices, “Koniec” holds together as a single breath. It’s calm, aware, and courageously introspective. Who would have thought that a post-metal drummer would put together one of the best meditative albums of the year?
Alastair Bentley
Alastair Bentley’s new single “Box Office” oozes with the kind of understated confidence that comes from knowing exactly where you come from and what you want to say.
The Halifax-born singer-songwriter has only a handful of releases to his name, but he’s already carved out a space defined by melodic clarity, wry emotional detail, and a voice that feels both unguarded and instantly familiar. Growing up in West Yorkshire, Bentley absorbed the region’s natural lyricism and folds it into a sound shaped by voices like Paul McCartney, Beach House, and Mac Demarco – while keeping everything distinctly his own. “Box Office” feels like the meeting point of all those influences: a cinematic slice of indie storytelling delivered with soft-focus warmth, a subtly addictive hook, and one of the catchiest drumlines of the year.
There’s an intimacy to Bentley’s writing that suggests he’s just getting started, and the foundation he’s building is already compelling. “Box Office” is another step toward something quietly special – we’re suggesting you keep an eye on him.
David Keenan
Irish singer-songwriter phenom David Keenan has always written like someone trying to map the distance between the ordinary world and the one just behind it – the world where stories, symbols, and ghosts still breathe.
“Modern Mythologies”, his new album out today, is his most fearless attempt yet to reconcile those two realities. Written over three turbulent, transformative years, it reads like a personal scripture: addiction recovery, childhood hauntings, devotion, renewal, and the strange poetry of modern life all woven into one continuum.
The record’s centrepiece, “Incandescent Morning,” glows with spiritual voltage, featuring six minutes of carnal reverence and unfiltered honesty. But across the key tracks (“Poison Water,” “Amelioration,” “We Live We Learn We Love”), Keenan is equally as compelling in the shadows. The entire record feels like journal entries sung at full volume, an unflinching look into Keenan’s head.
Produced with Gavin Glass, Peter Baldwin, and Cian Synnott, “Modern Mythologies” feels like a turning point for the chart-topping artist – now, he’s stripping everything back to rebuild on truth. The Irish singer-songwriter scene is thriving right now, and David Keenan’s proving that he’s a crucial part of it.
Dryadic
It seems like brutally honest songwriting is a theme this week, as Dryadic’s new single “Ghosts” serves as a quiet reckoning: piano-led, spectral, and unwavering in its honesty.
The UK alt-folk trio have built their reputation on transforming personal myth into shared ritual, and here they deliver one of their most affecting pieces yet. Frontwoman Zora sings with a kind of luminous vulnerability, naming shame without letting it own her. “Naming the pain — but refusing to be held hostage by it,” she says, and the track feels like exactly that: a breaking of the vicious cycle.
Around her voice, the band constructs a cinematic folk landscape: bowed double bass, restless percussion, violin lines that feel half-lament, half-spell. Fans of AURORA, Daughter, and Florence + The Machine will find the same mixture of fragility and fire. The production here is immaculate – it really does sound like you’re sitting in the studio with them as they perform.
Onstage, Dryadic have long been a word-of-mouth force; “Ghosts” distills that live tension into something intimate and fiercely hopeful. It’s a song that haunts, but also heals. For any and all fans of alt-folk or any adjacent genres, you may have just found your new favorite track.
Lauren Akosia
Renowned UK-based actress Lauren Akosia is getting into the music space. And, on “Let It Go“, she sounds like someone who’s been here all along.
Already a gravitational force in Mr Loverman and Whitstable Pearl, she treats her musical debut not as a detour but as another lens for her storytelling instincts. Over JODÉ’s Afro house pulse, built from South African house textures and Afrobeat shimmer, she animates the track from the inside, shaping its lift and release with the same emotional clarity she brings to the screen.
What’s most impressive is how naturally her voice settles into this world. JODÉ’s production is all kinetic surfaces – punchy synths, soft-edged progressions, a groove built to travel – and Mz Orstin’s rhythmic intuition sharpens every contour. But it’s Lauren who gives “Let It Go” its center of gravity. She arrives fully formed, expanding her creative orbit without losing the precision that made audiences pay attention in the first place.
OneNamedPeter
OneNamedPeter has finally returned with “Passing for Human”, a record that feels less like a comeback and more like a reawakening.
After three years of quiet (essentially an eternity for an artist who usually moves at a faster, instinctive pace) Peter wondered if the muse had slipped out the back door. Clearly, that muse never left. These songs arrived in a rush, carrying him from the riff-driven surge of “Go Down to the River” to the bare, disarming intimacy of “Skytherapy,” and finally the soft-lit lullaby “While You Sleep”.
What makes this album compelling is Peter’s refusal to pin it down. Genre becomes almost incidental: he calls it “new-different-original-heartfelt,” which feels as accurate as anything. As a solo architect of his entire universe – writing, performing, producing, filming, designing – he embraces the solitude of Latitude 50.89 North, Longitude 0.058 East (Sussex, England) like a creative engine. The result is an album that doesn’t ask to fit in; it simply insists on being felt. Definitely check this one out.
Did we miss anyone? Let us know!
The post Magnetic’s Artists to Watch Roundup: Konrad Ciesielski, Alastair Bentley, Dryadic, and More! appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.