The Friday Dispatch
Jensen McRae, Sunny War, Perfectly Imperfect's Tyler Bainbridge, Housewife and more
Jensen McRae writes folk that feeds the soul
Announced just this week, Jensen McRae is set to release her second LP, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! a masterful collection of folk-pop that might just be her most personal and mature to date.
McRae’s first viral moment happened entirely by accident when she joked on Twitter about how once all was said and done, Phoebe Bridgers would probably release some painfully specific but also absurd track about hooking up in a parking lot waiting to get vaccinated. After some early traction, McRae followed it up with an early snippet of what said song would sound like. It caught, with Bridgers herself even sharing the clip. “When that happened, no one knew who I was,” she explains. “I’d never experienced that much attention on anything I’d done, so I felt very scared and overwhelmed and overstimulated. That was both incredibly gratifying and incredibly terrifying.”
McRae masterfully grabbed hold of the opportunity like a speeding train, taking that notoriety all the way through to her 2022 debut, Are You Happy Now? Now working with Indiana-based label Dead Oceans, she’s bringing full circle a prophecy that started with a retweet. Her second record, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, picks up the coming-of-age story that Are You Happy Now? started. It chronicles two significant relationships she had back to back, both of which began and ended just as McRae’s first album was taking off.
“I think the only thing that made sense was to pause for a second and do emotional inventory and try to figure out how this very tumultuous two-year period impacted me and the things I learned from it,” she says.
This week, The Murder Capital released Blindness; Yuki Dreams Again unveiled his first solo project, Star People; Saya Gray put out her debut proper with SAYA; and there’s a new Paris Texas EP They Left Me With The Sword. Art d’Ecco gives us Serene Demon, Tim Hecker released Shards - compiling his TV and film work - and the vinyl release of the Cindy Lee record finally dropped.
The positive nihilism of Sunny War
Sunny War – born Sydney Ward – was destined to play the blues. “My grandma took me to see B.B. King and I saw Bo Diddley when I was a kid. My whole family is really into blues. Blues and gospel, that’s just what I grew up listening to,” she says. Just as her career has already stretched much further than blues singers of the early twentieth century, so too has it meandered into other genres, other modes of working and writing.
“Punk rock is the other side of me. I listen to a lot of trap music. I like a lot of electronic music. Then I also really like bossa nova. I listen to a lot of country. I listen to reggae. Well, only old reggae and ska. I listen to a lot of soul music. If it’s good, I fuck with it,” Ward tells Best Fit. Her string of full-length albums mirror this broad tapestry of taste; while 2018’s With the Sun is sparse and to-the-heart blues songwriting in the traditional mode, 2021’s Simple Syrup adds splashes of jazz to this near-perfected template and 2023’s Anarchist Gospel salutes her Nashvillian roots with a nod and a wink to country.
These songwriting aspirations speak to the inherent humility at the core of Ward’s music, her eagerness to collaborate and to willingly vacate the spotlight at particular moments. Her new album, Armageddon in a Summer Dress is out today and contains such an array of open-hearted and open-minded collaboration that it feels near-maximalist when compared with her bare-bones early recordings. These songs, Ward says, are “just a reaction to what we’re all going through right now, I think universally. … I feel like everybody I know, we’re all just giving up. We just don’t give a fuck anymore.”
Desk Notes: Tyler Bainbridge
Tyler Bainbridge is the creator of cult hit newsletter Perfectly Imperfect and its sister platform, PI.FYI. He’s also occasionally a DJ and a photographer. Tyler joins us this week to give a little tour of where all the mailer magic happens and the stuff that makes his space his own.
“This photo was my profile picture when we launched the social network part of Perfectly Imperfect (PI.FYI) and became a sort of "MySpace Tom" esq meme among our users. It was taken in December 2023 on my Contax T2 with a self timer. I like to take photos of myself sometimes. It helps me contextualize the present. Last Summer I tried to change my pro pic on the site and there was an uproar, so I'm stuck with it forever now.
1) Very, very early prototype of what would become the PI.FYI app that launched in January 2025. This photo was taken during a period where I wasn't seeing much sunlight. Most of my time was spent at this desk building the app. The monitor is a Mac Studio Display and I love it.
2) The painter/writer/artist/visionary Brad Phillips makes bizarre and funny merch on his website. This mug says Yoko Ono under a picture of Princess Dianna. Not sure why, but I like it. Always gets a laugh.
3) Multi-parter here.
Above: my badge from when I worked at Facebook. I was laid off in 2023 and this badge reminds me of what NOT to build with PI.FYI.
Left: photo booth pictures of Jennie and I in the Roxy theatre.
Left 2: the original stencil from when we spray painted the PI logo. This logo was inspired by an old Teenage Fanclub band t-shirt I found on eBay.
Right: a friend gifted me an original city plan map of my exact block in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn.
4) I had the Chaos poster from this guy Liver Ideas who runs a brand called UDLI Editions. I eventually paired it with a serene painting of a farmstead I found on the sidewalk. I'm constantly bouncing between these two mindsets. The thing in the middle is a piece of mom-core "Perfectly Imperfect" art from a Home Goods.
5) Empty bottle of Bourbon next to more stencils that we used to make the spray stars across our site.”
We were sad to hear about the passing of Rutherford Chang last week. The creator of the iconic The White Album Project, Chang was fascinated by the material deterioration of mass-produced records and collected 3,417 second hand copies of The Beatles’ self-titled 1968 LP, more commonly known as The White Album (almost three million vinyl copies of the iconic record thought to be in circulation).
“It’s an art piece, but I did actually buy all these records,” Rutherford said in 2017. “I’m not trying to make a statement about their culture. I’m participating in certain cultures as an insider outsider. I guess that’s what cultural anthropologists do.” Rutherford also fanatically collected other objects from everyday life: "I have every receipt I’ve received arranged chronologically from the past twelve years," he told The Creative Independent.
The introduction…
Housewife – aka 22-year-old Toronto musician Brighid Fry is cutting through the noise with “pop-tinged indie rock for sad queer people who listen to a lot of 90s music and really like Sally Rooney” (her words)
How you started playing music… Three-year-old me was obsessed with classical music and I spent a year begging my parents to get me a violin. I started violin lessons at four and started teaching myself guitar and piano not long after. I have been writing songs and playing music nonstop since. I realized I wanted to pursue being an artist professionally and was lucky enough to go to an arts high school that gave me a lot of freedom and support to pursue that. I took two weeks off school at 15 to go on my first tour and the rest is history.
Classical composer who you’d most like to go to the pub with… It has to be Tchaikovsky. I’m actually not that into classical music, more Baroque and Romantic. I was in a choir and sang in the Nutcracker ballet so his music has a special place for me. He also just seemed like a weird dude and I think he’d be interesting to hang out with.
Best childhood memory… My parents absolutely love music and would volunteer at multiple folk/music festivals every summer. I would say those are some of my best memories- spending the whole weekend camping and listening to music and running around with my friends in rain boots (for some reason there would always be rainstorms during most of these festivals).
What’s the one thing that gets you out of bed… I love sleeping and being in bed an unhealthy amount. I’ve even written a song about it. I do love a good almond croissant though. Or a date-almond smoothie. Basically anything with almonds.
Housewife’s latest single, “Work Song,” is out now via Submarine Cat Records.
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community — one from the past, another from the present. This week, Best Fit’s Larry Day on Tami T’s High Pitched and Moist (2019) and rEDOLENT’s dinny greet (2025).
Tami T’s first/only record was an instant favourite of mine when it dropped almost exactly six years ago, and it remains in regular rotation sounding as fresh and exciting now as it did then. The Gothenburg native explores gender conventions, trans identity, sex, friendship, love, and just about everything else across 15 songs of experimental dance-pop splattered with Scandi bubblegum and techno. High Pitched and Moist is emotive from start to finish, and Tami’s processed bluntness only adds to the authenticity that oozes from the artificiality of the noise itself. It hits especially hard on a personal level. It was the soundtrack to the (difficult but ultimately fine) birth of my firstborn. The earth-shattering and profound sense of communal loneliness that gushes from tracks such as “Trans Femme Bonding” absolutely crushes you when walking empty streets at 3am, whether you directly relate to the lyrics or not.
dinny greet, the debut album from BBC Introducing Scottish Act of the Year nominee rEDOLENT passed me by when it was first released, but the title track has wormed its way into my daily listening like few tracks ever have. There have been days where I’ve listened to nothing else but that song on repeat. Like the rest of the record, it’s a summery, janky, hopeful, gritty, and wry electronic pop masterpiece with a deeply Scottish gloss that explores mental health’s modern nadirs. It’s nostalgic and futuristic in equal measure; it urgently needs more ears locked in. Ignore the fact the song titles all look a bit like MSN screen names circa 2003, dinny greet is seriously compelling stuff.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists. Leading the selection this week are new tracks from The Null Club, Witch Post, Maria Somerville, Rachella Wred, Carriers, and coverstar Brandon.
“If you're not hated, you're not an artist. It goes with the territory. You want to be pushing people's buttons, you want to be challenging them, you want them eager to hear what you're going to do next.”
love this ❣️