Prehistoric Friends – Wisdom Tooth

(Yetts Yeti) ●●●●
More Casiotone for the painfully alone, or something like that, as Yetts o’ Muckhart by way of Glasgow’s finest tease their self-titled debut album – due next year – with a second single therefrom. Lush, mournful fiddles slum it with dreamy budget keyboards to a sloping beat, as Liam Chapman sings in his Tim Smith ex-of-Midlake kind way about growing pains and procrastination. There’s a graceful plaintiveness to Prehistoric Friends’ songs that gets right under your skin.

Atom Tree – Clouds EP

(Hotgem) ●●
We’d tip this trio as Glasgow’s next band most likely to 'do a Chvrches’, but then Chvrches came out of nowhere like a breath of air minty fresher than the rest, and for all its lovely cascading crescendos, Atom Tree’s latest EP of similarly choppy electro-pop with added John Hopkins piano ambience and xx gloom feels a touch stock. Singer Julie Knox might well have a fine yearning voice, but mixed in the timid middle-distance as it is, it’s hard to be certain.

Mourn – Silver Gold

(Captured Tracks) ●●●●
The first Spanish signings to Brooklyn’s consistently on-it Captured Tracks are disgustingly young Catalonian punk quartet Mourn, and they describe themselves rather brilliantly as ‘four nerds playing music and shit at the doors of hell’. Whatever that means – and you get a decent idea from this three-minute cudgel of brittle PJ Harvey guitars and ghostly wailing from dual frontwomen Jazz Rodríguez Bueno and Carla Pérez Vasecho-y – we’ll have plenty of it, thanks very much.

Hookworms – On Leaving

(Domino) ●●●●
Six-minutes long in its full album version, shadowy Leeds psychedelic rock five-piece Hookworms’ latest single sets the template for the kraut-gaze menace to be savoured on their new album The Hum. Organs wheeze and drone, guitars howl with feedback, the drums sound like they could walk through walls. Singer MJ’s yelped vocals are cloaked in echo and all but unintelligible save for the runic phrase ‘I figured it out’. Horizontally driving gloom for dark, wet winter nights ahead.