One of the buzzier new acts in the Japanese shoegaze/dreampop world has been Tokyo’s Kurayamisaka, who stormed onto the scene with their remarkably confident and evolved 2022 debut mini-alubm kimi wo omotte iru. Picking a standout track from the five and a half options is hard – opener “theme” is just a one-minute build-up, but is interesting enough that it could have been nurtured into its own fully-realized song – but I’ll go with the one they made a proper video for, along with a couple clips of the same song that convey some of the energy and excitement of their live performances.

There’s yet to be a proper follow-up release, but the band have remained in the “Active” column with a 2-song EP last Spring and another new track last month that hint at if not new musical directions, then broader ones.

And you know you’re a Japanese act of note when you’ve got someone making a YouTube video of themselves playing along with one of your songs, or in the case of this user, every one of their songs from the EP. Impressive!