Crooked Words #6 (Adelyn Strei, Anastasia Coope, David Moore, Tenderness)

tom johnson

26 Nov 2025 — 3 min read

Adelyn Strei - "Onto the Ground

Released to coincide with the one-year anniversary of 2024's excellent Original Spring LP (Mtn Laurel Recording Co), Brooklyn-via-Wisconsin songwriter Adelyn Strei has shared a brand new single, produced by Bon Iver instrumentalist Mike Joyce.

Shared as a "response song to the last single released almost ten years ago under her previous moniker, Adelyn Rose", Onto the Ground is as beautifully textured and detailed as we've come to expect. Carrying the same kind of subtle but engrossing magic that has underpinned her work over a number of years, Adelyn's voice gently shaped not to exist in the space alongside the instrumental backdrop but to be a part of it too.

Fully of gentle musical flourishes that elevate the whole thing, the song is equally adventurous in its lyricism, that paints something poetic and widescreen: "Out on the new horizon a star is reaching out," Adelyn sings. "And when I stand to reach out to it, and I want to hold on, my hands just fall through air."

Listen below, and grab a download via Bandcamp.

Anastasia Coope - DOT [EP]

New York's Anastasia Coope has followed up last year's Darning Woman LP, with a new six-song EP, DOT. It's released on a new label that Coope herself setup after the release of last year's full-length and it finds her digging even deeper into the silvery underlayers of the avant-garde world she's previously explored.

Pitched as a "new musical language built from the gorgeous and the mundane", the new EP carries a mesmerising sheen. Coope's layered voice seemingly takes on a variety of characters, split personalities that sometimes drift, often simmer, before scurrying away into darker corners. There are little flashes of someone like Cate Le Bon, in the psych-pop thread that runs through the heart of the EP, but it always feels very much like we're inhabiting Coope's own abstract and enticing world.

All of which makes for something wholly fascinating; a bold new step but also a timely reminder to jump back into last year's full-length effort. Check out DOT EP via Bandcamp, it's out now.

David Moore - Rush Creek

At a Jake Xerxes Fussell show in Edinburgh a little earlier this year, Jake paused between songs to speak to a man in the front row. "Is that a Bing & Ruth t-shirt?", Jake asked. It was, and the two of them had a brief chat about the project, Jake telling us all to listen to Bing & Ruth before carrying on with the show.

To bring you all up to speed, Bing & Ruth is a NYC-based instrumental project led by the pianist David Moore, who you might also know from last year's wonderful Cowboy Sadness record. Through Bing & Ruth, Moore has released a handful of gorgeous records over the past decade and, to second Jake's recommendation, you really should spend some time with them if you need a beautiful distraction from this sometimes-less-than beautiful world.

All of which is a roundabout way to say that Moore has announced a brand new solo album, Graze The Bell, to be released at the end of January via the excellent RVNG Intl. label. Formed of nine new songs, the album is described as Moore’s first widely shared solo piano album.

Lead single 'Rush Creek' is suitably moving. The gentle swell of it all makes it feel like a fuller ambient piece, but it is simply and purely an evocative (solo) piano composition, one that mirrors the rolling nature of the actual creek that David lived beside for a year or so and inspired the piece.

It is, too, a beautiful introduction to what will undoubtedly be a wholly poignant and powerful release.

Tenderness - Database Blues

There's a brand new single out in the world today from Tenderness, the swooning, romantic-pop project from Katy Beth Young (Peggy Sue, Deep Throat Choir). Every bit as engaging as what's come before, the new single is taken from the forthcoming LP, True, which is out March 13th via Amorphous Sounds.

Young's voice remains a thing of wonder, the richness of its sound balanced wonderfully with the open-hearted display of the words it holds. The forthcoming album is said to present a 'sideways' look at love, grief, and technology and all three of those elements feel present here; all wrapped up inside a gorgeous, sub-three-minute ballad.

"Database Blues is a country song set in the world of streaming algorithms and re-read text messages. When I wrote it, I was thinking a lot about how technology and romance can feed and battle each other at the same time. Sending a song to a crush is obviously one of life’s purest joys but what does it mean when the algorithm plays it back to you later? Can you still call it a sign? I was an MSN Messenger teenager so there have always been screens in my romances - screens as a connector and amplifier as well as a barrier, and 'Database Blues' is me owning up to my own complicity in that."