OKLAHOMA CITY – Ahh, springtime. It’s a season of love, of intimacy, and of the beauty of nature on full developing display.
Of course, just as nature can turn dark and dangerous in a matter of moments, so too can that springtime love quickly mutate into something loaded with intensity or bursting with regret and self-loathing.
And those are the kinds of springtime love songs we’re diving into today.
From songs of freedom following a bad relationship like blooming after a hard winter to tracks of torrential toxicity and swirling energy on par with Oklahoma’s severe season, these recent singles from OKC locals are bound to get stuck in your ears as surely as the pollen is getting stuck in your nose right now.
Colliding – ‘Daylight’
Some of the newest newcomers to hit the scene of late, but they’re already proving their mettle with a refreshingly aggressive take on gazey, hazey modern indie-rock and a last-minute name change thrown into the mix just before dropping this track (they were Ice Blink until just a few days ago.)
On their debut single, they’re smearing together 90s grunge, 80s post-punk, fuzzy shoegaze textures, and maybe even some shades of Brit-Pop all into a compellingly hypnotic and heaving hard rock stomp, while singer Ember Hawkins drops images of a clearly obsessive, dependent love, brilliant but dangerous, like staring right into the sun.
But the moment you think “is “Daylight” is heading toward a simple ending – when everything falls into a quiet bit of airy dissonance – is actually just the calm before the storm, with the band bashing back into a true finale with a level of deep, roaring intensity that escapes so many other acts their age.
“Daylight” by Colliding is streaming now.
Bella Burns – ‘Medicine’
Funky, soulful R&B breakout Bella Burns dropped this firecracker of yearning and self-destructive infatuation just weeks before her head-turning Gray Street Stage set at last month’s Norman Music Festival, and it set the tone for the kind of grooving emotional intensity that fans could expect.
Burns belts out a too-common tragic tale of doting love left unreturned, playing a woman that’s hurting, pleading, and even scheming to see her affections properly requited.
It’s all dark and smoky, with a crushed, crunchy backbeat of deep-pocket drums beneath dive bar funk guitars and intriguingly fleeting and fluttering piano lines.
In a track as infectiously fresh and sultry as this, it’s easy to miss all the feeling at its heart. Luckily, Burns is already a pro of emotive, melodic storytelling.
“Medicine” by Bella Burns is streaming now.
Alan Edward Murphy – ‘Wind Blowin’
Don’t be fooled by the whimsical synths and electronic glimmers that carry this track through its opening moments, OKC-based singer-songwriter Alan Edward Murphy still very much deserves his “folk” tag.
“Wind Blowin” is a tale as old as time, an emancipation anthem of breathing free following the kind of relationship you rip your own heart out for just to see the other party walk all over it.
But in classic folk fashion, Murphy sings it all with the breezy ease of one that ‘s kicking off the dirt and walking on, still hurt, yes, but still rolling, too, like hopping a train out of town and leaving it all behind.
It’s all very “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” but a little less sarcastic, a little less venomous, and a lot more playful, thanks in no small part to all those synths and blips swirling around the acoustic picking.
“Wind Blowin” by Alan Edward Murphy is streaming now.
Confined to a Singular Form – ‘Coyote’
Alright, so this one actually dropped in February, but who cares? Who can even keep track of the seasons anymore?
“Coyote” is a massive track, a six-plus-minute epic of densely layered adult-contemporary funk-rock, but carrying some real bite and bile beneath the surface with its dark, unforgiving look into the psyche of the worst kind of entitled, self-loathing abuser.
Musically, it’s all about a foot-tapping, driving beat holding down a swirling, ping-ponging cascade of production, with little lead flourishes and a liquid bassline dancing around above an unyielding, glistening sequencer pattern.
But lyrically, it’s something way darker, a racy, vulgar, first-person account of a rakish and entitled user of women, a guy that sneaks around to get his way quickly and selfishly in secret because he can’t bear the reality of how disappointing he knows he is.
It’s a character teetering on the complicated line between self-loathing and self-centeredness that seems to be the crux of so much hyper-modern, internet-addled confusion in masculinity right now, and “Coyote” is a pointed and unapologetic skewering in which even the character himself knows he’ll “never learn.”
Taking that and dressing it up in something that sounds sprawling and metropolitan is wonderfully effective, twisting an instrumental that could be the catchiest and most creatively produced pop-rock track in some time into an unsettling portrait of what goes on behind the eyes of the most innocuous minds.
Confined to a Singular Form have actually had (ironically?) a few forms, with a long stint as a deeply atmospheric, often ambient/post-rock act, so “Coyote” is something of a rebirth into a new persona of layered, orchestrated, stage-ready storytelling, and I’m here for it.
“Coyote” by Confined to a Singular Form is streaming now.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is the owner and Editor in Chief of Oklahoma City Free Press. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly two decades and served as Arts & Entertainment Editor before purchasing the company from founder Brett Dickerson in 2026.
He is also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
