The latest release on Bournemouth based label, Devil Town Tapes, is the new single – wyd – from singer/songwriter, omes. The track is lifted from the upcoming EP, boy, which will be released on 28th June, and at just one minute and thirty seconds long is an ironically warm slice of melancholic lo-fi pop. In preparation for the EP’s release, we caught up with omes to find out what provides his inspiration. There are his Sound & Vision picks:

Three favourite albums:

There’s too much choice to pick all time favourite albums, so here are some I’ve listened to a lot this past year –

My First Love Mends My Final Days by Mathew Lee Cothran

I love the sound of this record! I’m a big fan of MLC’s lyricism, the whirring and swelling of samples and keyboards, his ability to tease a groove from simple chord progressions, which is especially inspiring to me. I listen to the song Sports Bar from this record all the time. It evokes (in me at least) feelings of alienation and hiding in plain sight, which I find consoling.

Pussy Willow by Kitchen

This is one of the sweetest, most well rounded records I’ve ever heard. Full of slow builds and perfectly crafted soundscapes. I love the strings and guitar playing on this record and the soft vocals… it reminds me a lot of the kind of indie folk I listened to a lot as a student (Bowerbirds, The Microphones, Sufjan Stevens).

Three Tigers by Vivi Milne

Vivi Milne is very talented, her songs sound so unpretentious and spur of the moment and she has a wonderful ability to tease these beautiful sideways melodies out of her voice and instruments. I always feel like there’s this great tension listening through this record, Purple Lips is a song I listen to every day.

One favourite film –

Wendy and Lucy by Kelly Reichardt

I really like long, slow films where not a lot happens. This film is about a woman and her dog travelling across the country to Alaska to find work but she has no money and her car breaks down somewhere in Oregon. It’s full of things I love; shoplifting, dogs, depression, poverty, Michelle Williams, parking lots, lonely old people, lonely young people, sleeping in the car and crying down the phone.

One favourite book –

Bipolar Cowboy by Noah Cicero

I had never read something so raw before. It is reminiscent of old books of Japanese and Chinese poetry written by monks. Filled with loneliness, heartbreak and poverty, the feeling of longing in this book broke my heart. I read this after a break up and cried a lot, I feel like Noah must’ve been crying a lot when he wrote this. A lot of it is set in Nevada and talks about the Grand Canyon and it gives you the sense of the great, cavernous emptiness the author feels inside him. It makes me want to run naked into the forest, climb into a river like a stone to be washed over until I disappear.

One song that’s important to me –

Velvet Waltz by Built To Spill

When I was 15/16 years old, I had just moved back to the UK after living in Malaysia for four years; I didn’t really have any friends at my new school and spent a lot of time alone. I think around this time is when I bought my first guitar and started learning it. I somehow started listening to Built To Spill and was so into them I bought all their CDs. I think this is my favourite song by them just because I remember blasting it a lot in my room and singing the refrain incredibly loudly to the annoyance of my family.

boy is available to pre-order on cassette now through Devil Town Tapes’ Bandcamp page.