DEBBY FRIDAY SHARES OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR NEW BREAKBEAT SINGLE “BET ON ME”

DEBBY FRIDAY’S NEW ALBUM, THE STARRR OF THE QUEEN OF LIFE,  AVAILABLE AUGUST 1ST, 2025 VIA ROYAL MOUNTAIN RECORDS (CANADA) AND SUB POP (WORLDWIDE)

WATCH / SHARE “BET ON ME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BET ON ME” HERE

PRE-ORDER THE STARRR OF THE QUEEN OF LIFE HERE

NEW HEADLINING, NORTH AMERICAN SHOWS FOR 2025 ALSO ANNOUNCED, TICKETS HERE

“Throughout the record, Friday oscillates between extremes, at times soft and coy, at others harsh and direct, but she's always loved playing around with duality. On the album's first single, 1/17, Friday is in a trance, her voice gentle and melodic as she sings an ode to her lover. On Lipsync, she's boldly confident, spitting matter-of-factly over ricocheting beats.” CBC Music

Photo Credit : Lucy Mahoney // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Debby Friday is sharing the official video for “Bet On Me”, a new single from The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life. “Bet On Me” is a pulsating alt-pop breakbeat anthem that echoes with ambition and conviction. Part battle cry, part lyrical confessional, it’s a genre-blending manifesto where Friday’s falsetto floats atop glitchy, propulsive production - an ode to the thrill and terror of chasing greatness on your own terms.

As for the “Bet On Me” visual, it continues The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life narrative thread from each of the preceding singles and was filmed at Toronto’s Massey Hall, was co-directed with frequent collaborator Kevan Funk, and stars Friday. Debby recently chatted with Rolling Stone about the new album. 

Of the track, Friday says, “Life can be so dizzy and it’s easy to spiral into living a reality that you don’t actually want. This song is an ode to intuition and raw self-belief, to betting on yourself.”

WATCH / SHARE “BET ON ME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BET ON ME” HERE

“Bet On Me” follows the release of the electro rap track “Lipsync”, dance pop single “All I Wanna Do Is Party”, and the anthemic and salacious jam “1/17”, and is another fantastic entry in The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life’s universe. 

The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life will be out August 1st, 2025, worldwide through Sub Pop and in Canada from Royal Mountain Records. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com in the US, MegaMart 2 in the UK and EU, Royal Mountain in Canada and your local record store will receive the following limited color vinyl versions: the Sub Pop Loser editions on Graphite (US) and Bio Light Blue (EU/UK), and Royal Mountain’s edition on White (Canada) (All vinyl colors whilst stock lasts!). 

Hot off her EU and UK tour supporting SPELLLING, Debby Friday is announcing more North American headlining shows in the fall of 2025. The new shows include Montreal’s Osheaga Festival as well as two album listening parties for fans in Toronto (July 31st) and Montreal (August 3rd). A full list of dates can be found below and tickets can be found HERE.

WATCH / SHARE “LIPSYNC” HERE
BUY / STREAM “LIPSYNC” HERE

WATCH / SHARE “ALL I WANNA DO IS PARTY” HERE
BUY / STREAM “ALL I WANNA DO IS PARTY” HERE

TOUR DATES
Jul. 31 - Toronto, ON - Standard Time - (Album Listening Party)
Aug. 03 - Montreal, QC - Osheaga Music and Arts Festival (2 pm)
Aug. 03 - Montreal, QC - Le Système - (Album Listening Party - 8pm)
Sep. 25 - San Francisco, CA - California Academy of Sciences
Oct. 30 - Brooklyn, NY - Public Records
Nov. 07 - Los Angeles, CA - The Moroccan Lounge
Nov. 14 - Mexico City, MX - Corona Capital Festival
Nov. 21 - Chicago, IL - Schubas

PRE-ORDER THE STARRR OF THE QUEEN OF LIFE HERE

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT DEBBY FRIDAY

"The Toronto-based vocalist and producer Debby Friday won the Polaris Music Prize for her sharp 2023 debut album, Good Luck. She returns with the euphoric electro-pop single ‘1/17,’ a dance-floor confessional that shows off yet another side of her multifaceted talent. “I swear you’re a sign,” Friday sings in an airy atmosphere punctured by percolating synths. The track builds layer atop gauzy layer until it explodes in a burst of club-ready catharsis." - The New York Times

"The song brings back some of that old PC Music feeling. It’s a euphoric, unapologetically cheesy trance-pop confection. As synth-bloops whirl all around her, Friday chants, “Poetry and nude selfies, love the way that you know me.” It feels like it’s heading toward a climactic beat-drop…the drums do eventually arrive, and that moment is awesome. Friday co-directed the bare-bones ‘1/17’ video with Kevan Funk, and it makes a great case for her as a performer." STEREOGUM

“Last time we heard a single from Debby Friday, the Toronto artist was commanding girls to the dance floor on a minimal club track co-produced by Detroit rascals HiTech. She’s in a totally different headspace on the hyperpop ballad ‘1/​17,’ singing about love and sensuality over bubbling synths which eventually give way to a euphoric trance finale.” THE FACE

 “It’s a banger” [“All I Wanna Do Is Party”] BROOKLYN VEGAN

“...fully three-dimensional in intent and tone, it finds Debby Friday severing herself from the past. Carnal and exultant…”  [“All I Wanna Do Is Party”]  CLASH

"Brooklyn drag queens and music directors of upcoming all-female action films: There’s a new irresistibly catchy, dark-pop song for your consideration." [“Lipsync”] NYLON

"The song is a bubbling electro-rap cut with half-spoken words from the Toronto-based songwriter, going full rave banger during the chorus. It almost makes me—who never wants to dance—wanna dance."   [“Lipsync”] FLOOD

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THE STARRR OF THE QUEEN OF LIFE TRACKLISTING:
1. 1/17
2. All I Wanna Do Is Party
3. In The Club feat. HiTech
4. Lipsync
5. Alberta
6. Higher
7. ppp (Interlude)
8.  Arcadia
9. Leave.
10. Bet On Me
11. Darker The Better

DEBBY FRIDAY ONLINE
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SKINNY DYCK RETURNS WITH NEW SINGLE, “GROUND FLOOR”

WATCH / SHARE “GROUND FLOOR” HERE
BUY / STREAM “GROUND FLOOR” HERE

SUMMER FESTIVAL DATES CONTINUE JULY 11 - FULL DATES BELOW

SKINNY DYCK’S LATEST LP, EASYGOING, OUT NOW VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS

BUY / STREAM EASYGOING HERE

Photo Credit : Heather Saitz // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

This summer, Skinny Dyck - the playful performing artistic alias of Western Canadian artist Ryan Dyck, is heading out for a run of festival dates in Western Canada. Following on the heels of his latest album, Easygoing – which was recently nominated for The Western Canadian Music Award’s Recording of the Year – the celebrated songwriter is sharing the new single, “Ground Floor”. 

On the track, Dyck says: “What are the custody rules around shared dogs? Do the courts usually favour the primary caregiver or is a 50/50 arrangement more conventional? I get wanting to hold on to your hound but it's gotta be inconvenient. This one isn't for me, I'm generally scared of dogs, I know a guy though! It was a really fun and smooth two-day recording session. The ‘studio’ windows were open and we invited in the street, in the same way the ‘Ground Floor’ guy leaves the screen door unlatched to make his world feel bigger.”

WATCH / SHARE “GROUND FLOOR” HERE
BUY / STREAM “GROUND FLOOR” HERE

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MORE ABOUT EASYGOING
Recorded in basements and ad-hoc studio environments by Skinny and his co-producer Aladean Kheroufi, the album's diverse textures are well-balanced by twangy guitars and steel alongside less expected elements like synth hooks and congas. There is a pleasing straightforwardness to the music of Skinny Dyck. His voice is clean and clear (and usually nestled in a bed of lush reverb), the songs are held together with spacious instrumentation and smart, tasty hooks (including Dyck's signature pedal steel work), and the band is right on the money, everything in its right place and not a note wasted. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as Kheroufi (a multi-faceted musician and songwriter in his own right) applied some of the old school, minimalist recording techniques he picked up while interning at Daptone Records years ago, and he has been at the core of Skinny's live band (alongside drummer Clayton Smith) for the last handful of years. So when Dyck and Kheroufi (along with main album drummer Cameron O'Neill) hit the basement to lay down these songs, it was as easy as slipping into a pair of old jeans. And that sprightly, jazz-inflected lead guitar work comes courtesy of Winnipeg's Austin Parachoniak, who helped bring a whiff of Merle Haggard's '80s band to the mix. 

WATCH / SHARE “OUT OF CONTROL” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “LESS STRESS” HERE

Easygoing had its finishing touches applied by the prime candidate for the role, celebrated mix engineer Mark Nevers, whose credit list is a veritable who's who of fresh, forward thinking songwriters and bands that exist in the between-genre sphere. Artists such as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Silver Jews, Calexico, Andrew Bird, Bill Callahan, and Lambchop have benefited from Nevers' touch, a blend of his trusted ears and vintage analog gear. As a mixer who began working in the traditional Country & Western scenes and slowly gravitated to the more expansive world of indie music, Nevers was a fitting choice for the job.

WATCH / SHARE “CAN’T CHANGE THE COLOUR OF YOUR EYES” HERE

And this notion of “country but not” courses through Easygoing in a pretty tangible way, its success partially measured by how unnoticeable it is. Take “Nosedive” for example – what might be one of the album's more traditional “boots kickin' up dust” kind of song features a deeply psychedelic spoken word outro, with enigmatic vocals bubbling through a thick web of analog delay; it's truly a unique blend of approaches – and it works. Elsewhere, things continue to pair nicely, with conga drums undercutting sparkling lead guitar and the occasional synth flourish, and “Lean In” features a delicious bass line that sounds as if it was plucked straight from a vintage James Jamerson-played Motown track. The combination of the band's cool chug and Dyck's classic songwriting moves on title track “Easygoing” recall the endless-horizon feel of classic War on Drugs, another band who've managed to successfully infuse the familiar with  a jolt of something new.

BUY / STREAM EASYGOING HERE

SKINNY DYCK ON TOUR
Jul 11 - Vancouver, BC - Good Stank Stampede
Jul 12 - Duncan, BC - 39 Days Of July
Jul 13 - Hornby Island, BC - Fossil Beach Farm
Jul 27 - Calgary, AB - Calgary Folk Music
Aug 2-4 - Canmore, AB - Canmore Folk Festival

SKINNY DYCK ONLINE
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VIVEK SHRAYA REVEALS NEW SINGLE / VIDEO FROM UPCOMING LP

WATCH / SHARE “AM I DOING ENOUGH?” VIDEO
BUY / STREAM “AM I DOING ENOUGH?” HERE

NEW MODELS DUE OUT OCTOBER 9, 2025 VIA TWIN FANG RECORDS

PRE-SAVE NEW MODELS HERE

“...Shraya relies less on words and more on conveying an emotional journey through sound and vocoder-assisted voice, bending and stretching across every moment to take up space….What follows isn't a literal scream or cry, but Shraya's own sonic synthesis of meditative coos colliding into a bombastic end, leaving listeners with a sense of catharsis that can't really be put into words.” — Melody Lau - CBC MUSIC (on “When I’m Overcome”)

Photo Credit : Paul Mpagi Sepuya // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, multi-hyphenate artist Vivek Shraya reveals the new single, “Am I Doing Enough?”, from her upcoming album, New Models, out October 9, 2025 via Twin Fang Records. “In the past four years, ‘Am I doing enough?’ is the question I have asked myself the most,” says Shraya. “Some of this questioning likely comes from the very real contemporary pressure to be optimizing at all times. But it’s hard to feel like any act or gesture is adequate when witnessing rights being taken away or mass death. 

“Or is this response a cop-out, a way to not engage and feel safe? When I look around right now, I’m troubled by the every-man-for-himself, hunker-down mentality we seem to have adopted. This song is me expressing the ache of forever falling short. It’s also a plea for us to consider that we all could be doing a little more to make the world a better place.”

The new single arrives with a video from director Julia Hendrickson. “I wanted to explore the quiet dynamics of emotional support,” says Hendrickson. “This piece is about the difficulty of asking for help, the tension of interdependence, and the strength it takes to show up for someone else even when you’re unsure of your own stability. In the repetition and shared weight I hope there’s a sense of tenderness, care, and struggle.”

WATCH / SHARE “AM I DOING ENOUGH?” VIDEO
BUY / STREAM “AM I DOING ENOUGH?” HERE

Photo Credit : Sarah Melvin

MORE ABOUT VIVEK SHRAYA AND NEW MODELS
‘When I’m overcome with feeling / I have to break free from words and just sing.’ An inveterate writer, Vivek Shraya knows that fewer words can carry more weight. These first lines of her new album, New Models, serve as both a thesis to the transcendent sonic experience to come, as well as an invitation to leave the burden of self-assuredness at the door. Don’t overthink—just listen. Just feel.

New Models is “me grappling with the state of the world over the past four years and eventually realizing that language, particularly English, had become so contorted and weaponized that the only way I could grieve, rage, and find comfort was to let go of it,” says Shraya. “How do you express the horror and helplessness of witnessing progress being rapidly undone—in words—when all you want to do is scream or cry?”

Shraya has dedicated much of her impressive artistic career to incisively articulating culturally loaded issues. Whether through her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men (which Vanity Fair called “cultural rocket fuel”), her award-winning play-turned-CBC show, How To Fail As A Popstar, or her provocative visual art and installation work, Shraya has challenged the status quo by transcending her personal experiences into daring artworks. But it is music that first drew Shraya into the arts, and it’s on her 11th solo album, New Models, that Shraya redefines her musical trajectory with a bold display of boundary pushing done right.

This collection of hypnotically textured songs allows each listener to come to their own conclusions about the heavy subjects she conjures. Dread, disconnection, uncertainty—all are invoked through Shraya’s sparse, cutting lyrics, but it is her wordless vocal chanting that cuts the deepest. “How do you express—in words—the horror and helplessness of witnessing progress being rapidly undone,” Shraya explains, “when all you want to do is scream or cry?”

For New Models, Shraya joined forces with long-time producer-engineer James Bunton (Donovan Woods, Celeigh Cardinal, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson). Shraya and Bunton connected a decade ago, when Shraya realized the notion of the self-producing “solo genius” was profoundly flawed, and her and Bunton have grown to share a deep bond and a common language, with Bunton producing most of Shraya’s recent music, from Part-Time Woman, her album with Queer Songbook Orchestra (2017) to her previous full-length album Baby, You’re Projecting (2023, Mint Records) and the subsequent duet versions of songs from that album with Jann Arden and Donovan Woods.

WATCH / SHARE “WHEN I’M OVERCOME” LYRIC VIDEO
BUY / STREAM “WHEN I’M OVERCOME” HERE

For Shraya, the key to their partnership is that Bunton really challenges her: “the challenges and questions he poses are always different with each project, which keeps things fresh.” For this project, Bunton pushed Shraya to experiment considerably on her own before the two started actively collaborating. “I found this quite difficult and lonely,” Shraya admits, “but in the end, this resulted in a kind of exploration and play that I haven’t tapped into since my 20s. There was a two-week period where I spent every evening demoing from 6pm–11pm, and it was such a generative and joyful experience!” By the time Shraya and Bunton were sharing project files back and forth, building upon one another’s ideas, the distinctive sound of New Models was set. “An exciting part of the process was letting the songs themselves reveal to us where they were supposed to live production-wise,” says Bunton, “instead of letting any of our predeterminations get in the way.”

Overflowing with creative freedom, New Models presents each song as its own world in which listeners can get lost. “Apathy Crisis”, for instance, transforms into a maximalist, glitchy soundscape—à la SOPHIE—only to dissolve into an intimate voice and synth pairing for an intimate send-off: ‘how do you sleep at night? / ‘cause I can’t sleep at night.’ Haunting songs like “We’re in Pain” and “Groomer” burst with off-kilter percussion and bending synths. All the while, electronic vocal gymnastics make Shraya’s passionate voice feel infinite. The music sounds as searching as the themes it touches upon: “Am I Doing Enough?” carries, as Shraya puts it, the “ache of forever falling short,” and the stunning “Moral Panic” ends with Shraya repeating the mantra: ‘We can’t go there / There’s so much to feel.’

Vivek Shraya’s artistic practice has long been unrelentingly honest. She has never shied away from difficult feelings, whether harassment – her graphic novel with Ness Lee, Death Threat –  professional jealousy – as she explores on her podcast, I Won’t Envy –  or chronic pain – as in her new short film, Bodyrebuilding. What’s special about New Models is its insistence on moving through all the feelings possible. While no answers are uncovered, a deep desire for reconstruction and reconstitution glimmers. As Shraya intones, “everything works, until it doesn’t”—but just as crucially, “Everything hurts, until it doesn’t.” - Sam Boer

VIVEK SHRAYA TOUR DATES
July 10 - Vancouver, BC - Indian Summer Festival
Jan 30 - Calgary, AB - Jack Singer Concert Hall w/ The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra

PRE-SAVE NEW MODELS HERE

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NEW MODELS TRACKLIST
01 When I’m Overcome
02 Apathy Crisis
03 We’re In Pain
04 Groomer
05 Breaking Our Pattern
06 Moral Panic
07 Am I Doing Enough?
08 I Don’t Know Where I’m Going

VIVEK SHRAYA
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