Release Roundup: Phoebe Rings, RNZŌ, The Bemsha Swing, Michael Llewellyn, Frog Power, Necronimocon

A short crammed week at UTR HQ results in a snappy roundup for YOU (hey that rhymes) this sunny Friday. Scroll downwards for new and recent Aotearoa release highlights from RNZŌ, Phoebe Rings, The Bensha Swing, Michael Llewellyn, Frog Power, and Necronimocon.

Are you an Aotearoa artist / imprint releasing something new soon? Let us know! Send your info to editor@undertheradar.co.nz.

Kawerau-raised rising rap heavyweight RNZŌ declares that RNZŌ SZN has begun on his new album of the same name, and who would dare claim otherwise? Special guest stars on the 18 year old artist's assured debut include fellow zips Church & AP, deadforest, and man2much.

Inspired in part "by the 1980 Korean campus songwriter festival," Phoebe Rings vocalist and synthesist Crystal Choi shared just in time a new Korean version of 'January Blues' — featured on the Tāmaki Makaurau dream-pop group's recently reissued debut EP via Carpark Records.

Reactivated after nearly a decade, Tāmaki Makaurau post-punks The Bemsha Swing aka Shane Warbrooke and Brian Purington (Swallow The Rat) plus drum machine pals ponder artful imperfection and friendship with their new single 'Kintsugi Kids'. "It’s fucking great having friends. The kind of friends where time and distance don’t matter at all, where you can stand in the sum of your broken state and have them cement the pieces back together with solid gold. Don’t let capital force your circle to be used as a weapon against you, maintain your friendships away from employment".

Michael Llewellyn unveiled 'Down By The Packs', a stately and deeply felt new ballad from the husky-voiced Te Whanganui-a-Tara-based songwriter's forthcoming second album I’M GORGEOUS. "I wrote the song one evening nearly five years ago. My mother was very sick at the time, and for me the song embodies her quiet, determined tranquility. She passed away nearly two years later so I hold this song close".

Ōtepoti underground pop artiste frog power hops into the already clown-like year of 2025 with catchy new DIY nugget 'juggalo' — yowling "I oughtta knowww / Where the juggalos kick back relax in the city..."

Venturing further into Aotearoa's subterranean depths, Necronimocon are "black metal from Auckland, New Zealand" — dispensing three tracks of grimly atmospheric and forbidding hellscape brutalism on the six-piece's inaugural offering to the metal gods.