Kevin Bronson on March 9th, 2023

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Here’s a big batch of mellow: A roundup of singles from Scott Goldbaum, Mae Deline, Miya Folick and Photo Ops …

SCOTT GOLDBAUM, “Laundry List”

Scott Goldbaum released his first solo EP in December. “Protector” (see “Drive Too Fast” and “Mourning Coffee”) is exemplary of his songwriting and guitar finery. An in-demand side man and a veteran of bands such as Forebear and Wise Cub, Goldbaum returned this week with “Laundry List,” a tender song about being away from a loved one. “This song explores the intensification of feelings between two people when they’ve been a great distance apart,” he says. “Considering Molly [his wife and violinist Molly Rogers] and I are both touring musicians who are often many thousands of miles and time zones apart, you can imagine my authentic connection to the source material.”

MAE DELINE, “Black Hole”

Native Midwesterner Madeline Spooner matriculated toward an avant-pop, trip-hop-inspired aesthetic during her first few years in Los Angeles before switching things up and pursuing a more mainstream pop sound under the name Mae Deline. “Black Hole,” her first release in 3 1/2 years, is a graceful pop song with production dialed back and Spooner’s voice dialed in. It’s the first of a batch of music she wrote during a time she battled a triple-whammy: a break-up, her father battling a serious illness and the pandemic. “This song was inspired by a past relationship that wasn’t meeting my emotional needs. … I felt pushed away and kept out and the pain of that rejection felt catastrophic,” Spooner says. “I was ashamed of the magnitude and force of that feeling; a feeling of abandonment I’ve carried since my childhood. I saw in my mind this ‘Black Hole’ inside myself that was going to destroy the very thing I feared losing.”

MIYA FOLICK, “Mommy”

The follow-up to singles such as “Get Out of My House,” and “Bad Thing” (the highlight of last fall’s “2007” EP), “Mommy” is the latest from Miya Folick’s new album, “Roach,” out May 26. “‘Mommy’ is maybe the most intimate song on my record,” Folick says. “It’s about heritage, memory and family. I think there’s an ache in the song that exposes the gap between my limited understanding of my parents and the full richness of their lives. The first time I played this song live was at the Echo, and my mom showed up — not joking — with a jar of honey for me, to soothe my throat (you’ll understand this anecdote when you listen to the song).”

PHOTO OPS, “The Dream Is Done”

Songwriter Terry Price introduced, “Burns Bright,” his new album as Photo Ops, in February with the video for “You Must Not Need a Friend at All.” “The Dream Is Done” is the album’s next ethereal missive, a still life set in motion by his imaginative piano and lyrical imagery. “The overwhelming sense of being around people after being isolated for so long is one of the main themes of the record,” Price says. “Going to the park just to see people, and feel like a human being. Using imagery to convey the strange nature of the passage of time. The shadows’ shape changing as weeks go by. Being inside for a long time then suddenly going out into the sun. Saying goodbye to the past, your own sense of who you were, are, and are becoming.” The video for the song was directed by Bliss Braoudakis. The album is out April 28.