HYPERSPACE: Best Discoveries of the Week – Episode 144
Hey Space Travellers,
Are we ready for another incredible episode of Hyperspace?
Episode 144 landed, fasten your seatbelts and get ready to depart!
Amara Fe – “Reborn”
Let’s start this episode with a bang! Amara Fe‘s debut album literally kicks the door down with purpose here. “Reborn”, her debut album released last year, isn’t just a first step; it’s her re-introduction on her own terms. After years of writing in the shadows, she scrapped the idea of pitching songs to the “right people” and decided to “be” the right person instead: producing, shaping, and voicing the project herself.
Her roots run deep: from family jam sessions in Tulsa with her uncle Eugene and Rene, to stories of her grandmother writing for Minnie Riperton, but she doesn’t treat that history like a museum piece. She flips it into something modern, soulful, and crazy relatable.
“Reborn” leans into real life, imagine messy relationships, self-worth, joy, and the kind of lessons you only learn by living them. It’s confident without being cocky, personal without being preachy, and made with the kind of intention mainstream music’s been missing. If she set out to bring heart and fun back into the mix, well.. mission accomplished.
Joyce Lopez Jose – “Echoes”
“Echoes” feels like stumbling into your own thoughts and finding a melody already waiting there. Joyce Lopez Jose makes her debut with a track that doesn’t shout for attention, but lingers, glows, and quietly sticks to your skin. Born in the Philippines and now rooted in the UK, she pulls from personal writings and turns them into something tender and beautiful.
Her voice is soft but loaded with feeling, floating over production that feels almost weightless. There’s a steady pulse underneath it all that keeps the song moving forward, even when the lyrics sit in memory and longing. It’s the kind of track you play on late-night drives or when you’re zoning out on a rainy walk, just letting it loop because it feels like it already lives in your head.
This single doesn’t try to be bigger than it is. It’s intimate, modern, and honest enough to hit you without warning, and that’s exactly its power.
Freya Magee – “Forget Yourself Not”
Freya Magee is here, and she’s not just dropping another track; she’s sketching out entire moods in fluorescent light. “Forget Yourself Not” feels like a 2am conversation you half remember the next morning, equal parts haze, heartbreak, and clarity. The Melbourne-born, London-based songwriter takes her indie-folk roots and drenches them in synth sheen, electric guitars and drums that never sit still.
Her vocals are soft but sharp, carrying that tired frustration you only get from someone who says everything at midnight and forgets it by noon. The track has a sort of cinematic vibe, shimmering one moment and spiraling the next, like she’s soundtracking a breakup you’re still trying to define.
What makes the track hit is its contradictions: dreamy textures tangled up with restless energy. It glows, it stings, it floats, everything tied perfectly together. This single is literally the confrontation that follows her previous debut track: pointed, poetic, and quietly furious. This is a beautiful single that cannot go unnoticed.
Casey McQuillen – “Wedding Date”
Fresh off arena tours and quarter-million-strong crowds, Casey McQuillen drops all the glitter and hits straight at the bruise with her single “Wedding Date”. This isn’t a love song, it’s a looped memory dressed in silk and champagne. The track plays out like you’re watching someone else’s perfect ceremony while quietly reliving the one that never had a chance. You can practically see the string lights, hear the cover band, and spot two ex-lovers trying (and failing) not to orbit each other again.
Casey’s voice carries that soft kind of heartbreak, the kind that already knows how the story ends but dives in anyway. The lyrics are soaked in déjà vu: long-distance calls, late-night confessions, and that gut-punch line, “I know the end before we begin”. The production stays delicate but has its powerful moments, letting the emotion do the heavy lifting.
This single is for anyone who’s ever been the almost, the what-if, the person someone keeps reaching for even when they shouldn’t. Bittersweet, intimate, and dangerously relatable.. Casey nails it.
Bill Barlow – “By Special Request”
When an artist lets their listeners pick the tracklist, you already know the music means something. “By Special Request” feels less like an album and more like stepping into Bill Barlow’s private vault of fan favorites: 18 tracks chosen not by algorithm, but by the people who actually live with his songs.
Barlow leans into what he does best: emotional storytelling draped in R&B warmth, bluesy grit, and those quiet lyrical punches that sneak up on you. Some tracks really hit hard, others glide with that wry smile he’s known for, the kind that stings and soothes in the same breath. You can hear his advertising past in how polished the flow is, but the heart behind it is all poetry and lived-in truth.
The sequencing isn’t random either: it moves like a memory road trip, bouncing between reflection, ache, resilience, and little sparks of wit. It’s familiar, but never stale; timeless without trying to be retro.
Barlow didn’t just give fans what they wanted; he showed exactly why they asked.
