Cold Gawd och Soft Blue Shimmer (US) +18

COLD GAWD (US) Cold Gawd is the flag under which California-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Wainwright creates stormy, wounded shoegaze music born of open tunings and R&B melodies. Inspired by these sounds, Cold Gawd presents a refined, modernized take on the genre. Wainwright cites the thematic common ground between shoegaze and R&B as a central muse, both obsessively fixated on love, lust, and longing, in forms alternately grandiose and minor key. SOFT BLUE SHIMMER (US) It’s rare a band name directly encapsulates its sound, but Soft Blue Shimmer couldn’t be more fitting for the trio out of Los Angeles. On their newest album Love Lives in the Body, released in November 2022 on Other People Records, the group’s floaty and hazy instrumentation glistens alongside emotionally-charged lyrics.