In case you missed it: Five EPs to catch up on
With a new album dropping week after week, and a constant stream of new singles every day to draw your attention away, it’s easy to miss out on the humble EP.
The little cousin to the full record, this is the remit of the up-and-comers as artists on the rise typically start here with a scattering of smaller projects. These are introductions, sometimes offerings that first announce their emergence or first show what they can do. Or, with a smaller, neater run time, they’re often time capsules capturing a particular moment in an artist’s life or telling a particular story.
They’re all too often foolishly shrugged off. People underestimate them and think they’ll just wait around for an LP instead, but in the world of rising stars, some of this year’s best songs sit on a four- or five-track EP. Allowing audiences to lock in at an earlier point, an artist’s EPs trace their development as they build towards an album, crafting their sound and finding their voice. They’re exciting, interesting and often times, more interesting than the polished and perfected records that might come later.
In the busy final quarter of the year, as album releases keep on coming, carve out some time for the smaller projects and make sure to catch up on these five EPs that might have passed you by.
Five EPs to hit play on today:
Nell Mescal – ‘The Closest We’ll Get’
When Nell Mescal returned in early 2025 with her new single ‘Carried Away’, it felt like something had clicked into place. Her 2024 EP, Can I Miss It For A Minute was good, great even, full of strong storytelling that balanced poetry with to-the-point feeling, but if anything, it was overdone, too polished.
On The Closest We’ll Get, Mescal has clearly learnt the vital lesson of less is more, and with a voice like that, so gorgeously rich with a staggering range, she shouldn’t be crowded. In terms of lyricism, nothing has changed but simply sharpened. There’s less beating around the bush as Mescal herself sings in the opening track, “Come on, be brutal, cut out the middle man”, and then follows her own advice.
Tracing a doomed love through the dawning that it won’t work, the EP is a showcase for her songwriting once more, but now with the correct backing, bringing in more Irish folk influences but mostly just leaving it alone, letting it be simple and letting her voice shine.
Westside Cowboy – ‘This Better Be Something Great’
If you’ve managed to miss all mention of Westside Cowboy, I’m not sure whether to ask you what rock you’re residing under, or be envious of it. What I wouldn’t give to see the band live for the first time again, or hear the opening howl of “Westside Cowboy!” before the drums kick in on ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’ once more.
The band beat out the competition and won the coveted Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition earlier this year, granting them a set at Woodsies. Proving their power there as well as at gigs and festivals around the country, the promise the judges saw is delivered tenfold on this debut EP. It seems to cover all shades of indie, but for a stand-out, look towards ‘Shells’ and the way it builds from something tender to something huge.
Lucy Darke – ‘Earthly Delights’
Some will claim that Lana Del Rey launched a million copycats, but in reality, the importance of an artist like Del Rey was that she granted permission for soft-singing girls with poetry to pour out. She opened the door for the cinematic, sentimental girls to flood in, and they did, with Lucy Darke as one of the newest.
Cemented in the Brighton scene, Darke’s debut EP is gothic and luscious, sounding like it should have been made in a four-poster bed with white lace draped over it and the walls all painted deep red as candles burn and drip. Her voice is like a siren calling you in, and by the time you reach the final track, ‘Whitecliffs’, you’d be convinced to dive in.
The Orchestra (For Now) – ‘Plan 76’
I caught The Orchestra (For Now) in Brighton back in the summer and spent the whole set with my jaw dropped open, hypnotised. Singer and keys player Joe Scarisbrick is mesmerising enough as he seems to lock in so intensely, it would be easy to spend the set just staring at him, but as the band, who really do sound like a full orchestra, spring to life, your eyes are pulled elsewhere, split between the various guitarists, violinists, cellists and more.
In total, there are eight of them, which doesn’t even seem like that many, but the depth of sound they can create and the way they move as a unit through these tricky and tripping melodies is masterful. Go see it live, but their two 2025 EPs, Plan 75 and Plan 76 capture it with just as much intensity.
Sofia Isella – ‘I’m Camera’
Journalists love to call something gothic or eerie or dark when in reality it’s just slightly moody. On the flipside, though, Sofia Isella’s EP, I’m Camera, is genuinely worthy of the title as there’s something nightmare-inducing here, something that makes you shiver, especially if you look at the visuals, but it’s captivating that way.
On the EPs opening track, Isella sings about her muse as this almost demonic spectre that haunts her. “I put a pen to paper like putting a gun to my head / No human body permitted to treat me the way I beg / I beg her to,” she sings about the sacrifice of art, putting it brutally and violently yet seductively.
From that moment on, there’s the sense that the project is less Isella’s doing, and more the result of this unknown force that seems to speak through her, spitting on the savage ‘Dog’s Dinner’, pleading on the panicked ‘Josephine’ and laughing on ‘Orchestrated, Wet, Verboten’.
