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Pick Three Chords - Episode 18 (2026)

Episode 18 - Our first on JAM Radio! Including some debuts, a few returning artists, and a bit more piano featuring this time round.

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Dinosaur Death Pose   

Chasing Ghosts

This is my favourite song from DDP's debut album No Sign of Life, inspired by the end of the world as we know it. I had the rare chance to witness a live set recently, and what a sound! They have loads of energy on stage (and plenty volume). From the band: « Chasing Ghosts goes way back to before we were even an official band. Daryl, our guitarist, practically knocked it out in 25 minutes flat while waiting for John, our singer, to drop by and track vocals for a totally different demo. But as soon as we jammed on it, we both fell in love with it on the spot and completely ditched the original song. Honestly, I couldn't even tell you how that other track went! Fast forward to now, and it's turned into a total fan favourite, plus, playing it live is an absolute blast. It definitely takes a ton of inspiration from bands we love, like Rise Against and Coheed + Cambria. »

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Released: May 25
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Nicola Madill   

Breathe

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Released: Jun 25
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Michelle Cameron   

Deal Breaker

This song has a chorus I find myself singing at random points - and the whole track has an intriguing feel to it. From Michelle: « Deal Breaker was written after a breakup from a long term relationship. The writing happened really naturally and quickly since it all came from the heart. It was my first single I've released so the production was a learning process. I didn't know what 'my sound' was so there was a lot of experimentation and things that didn't work but thankfully my collaboration with Ian Schouten really helped and eventually we figured it out and got it to where it is now. The song was originally written on guitar but we thought it best to be played on piano in the end and the synth texture you hear at the start of the song that plays throughout is actually my voice. I do feel it is an earlier work in terms of songwriting skill. Although I think that's because of what I'm writing now and how excited I am moving forward with other projects. I have an EP called The Last Written Letter that is due for release in February. Deal Breaker is the first song from that EP. The Last Written Letter is all about heartbreak but hoping the other person is doing well. It's a way of saying goodbye and closing that chapter of my life. »

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Released: Sep 25
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Osmara   

The Deep Red

I've seen Osmara play a few times, and really enjoy watching them - always lots going on. This track features a bit more piano, plus several textures from voices and instruments along the way that work well together. From Osmara: « This is a song about relationships and personal reflection. Written in 2023 it took us till 2025 to get it to the point where we/ Keir in particular, were happy with it. We experimented with it a lot, trying and failing to make our friends a choir. We learned a lot about our group dynamic and the recording process over the six months it took us to get it finished. Each part of the song plays its own role in building the overall atmosphere, allowing the song to develop naturally while keeping that raw, live-band feel at its heart. Playing with tension and creating these more atmospheric soundscapes is definitely something we'd like to experiment with more in the future. The track features fellow Dundee musician cue the sun on saxophone. Deep red is a reflection of the musical chemistry between us and our love for creating music that doesn't sit neatly in one genre. »

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Released: Oct 25
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Footloose Bruce   

Feelin'/Love Come My Way

I've been enjoying all the tracks on The Root Notes, Footloose Bruce's debut album. The raw sound draws you in to the music, and they are all catchy tunes. About this one he says: « More often than not, the music came first as I started playing guitar long before I started singing or even writing lyrics. It's a pretty simple syncopated motif in D that has a bassline in the guitar melody and some pedal notes - the whole thing moves to A for the chorus minus some riffage. The song is about being lonely, and understanding that love conquers loneliness, without mistaking fleeting physical interaction (shaggin'!) as love, and arguably that makes loneliness more lonesome. It's the opening song on the album. Musically it was inspired by The La's Son of a Gun and Pearl Jam's Even Flow. I quite like the weird minor pentatonic with major harmonies sound that a lot of 90s music has, grunge in particular. So I thought I'd try my hand at that. I demoed it at home with Mikey (Michael Evans of Denara) on Cajon on 24/11/24, tracking some other instruments/ideas I played myself before getting 'the take' of us playing it live with acoustic guitar, vocals and cajon 17/4/25 then overdubbing the rest myself. I was learning how to mix and master as I was recording the album, hence the time delays. I didn't like the master on the computer so I mastered this song (and the entire album) to a four track cassette recorder which I preferred the sound of. Random bit of trivia, I edited the chatter before and after the song into the 'solo' section of the song. If you listen closely, you can hear us blether and Mikey say 'Shamone' before the final chorus. »

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Released: Aug 26
From: Fife
Heard: Live

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Evie Laing   

A Place In This World

Been really enjoying this song lately - I've been singing along to the chorus like several of the tracks here . . . From Evie: « A place in this world is a song straight from the heart. Written for those around me who have had my back and got me through some tough times. I wanted it to reflect my gratitude and how grateful I am for these people. There's a line in the song that says 'Back Yourself' Somebody said this to me once and it stuck with me and I knew I wanted to include it in a song. I love to tell personal stories when writing as I feel like they can be more relatable to a listener and connect them to the music more. »

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Released: Jul 26
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Rhuari Campbell   

Weary Traveller

We featured a track from Rhuari on episode 16 last year, and there's even more great stuff on the new album out this year. It was recorded while travelling around the country in a campervan, between playing gigs across Scotland and England. Rhuari says: « The idea came to me while travelling to Inverness last winter. My van died a few weeks prior and I was using public transport to get to gigs. I was booked on a bus to Inverness and had a change over in Perth which I missed so I quickly bought a train ticket. The first verse came to me while I was sat in that beautiful train station on a freezing winters day. Over the next few days in a BnB, I finished the song. I then recorded it, like the rest of the album, in the back of my 'new' van with a single usb mic and a laptop. »

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Released: Oct 26
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Edenbank   

Maybe One Day

Another artist we featured last year - Edenbank have more new music out this year. I've seend them play live many times, and their original stuff just keeps getting better! About this one they say: « We wrote Maybe One Day about a year ago. It started with a guitar idea, melody and lyrics from Ashley, and then John took the guitar part and we worked together to build the song. It's a bit of a milestone for us because it's the first original Edenbank song where John takes the lead on a verse. We really liked the idea of telling the story from two sides. As with all our music, Maybe One Day is entirely self-produced. We love having the freedom to develop our songs together, shaping not just the writing but the sound and production too. The song is about finding the person you've always hoped for, having so much of what you thought you wanted, but still sometimes feeling that little hollow space inside. Questioning yourself, wondering why you can be drawn to darker places even when life is good, and perhaps even questioning whether you deserve the happiness you've found. But there's also a tenderness to it. Maybe the things we see as our flaws are actually the things that make us lovable to someone else. It's not about love magically fixing all our insecurities, but about the possibility that someone can love us, including the bits of ourselves we haven't quite figured out how to love yet. »

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Released: Sep 26
From: Dundee
Heard: Live

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Kurnel Fist   

Stellar Reflections

I like to end these shows with a long song, and at 8 minutes this one certainly fits the bill! It's got loads of great instrumental evolution before the vocals arrive. Kurnel Fist say this: « Stellar Reflections is a prime example of how we usually write. We started out with a 20-minute jam, pulled out one riff from it that we all really liked, and then just let nature take its course. Structure-wise, it's a heavy, lengthy instrumental that builds until the vocals come in towards the end, so when that single chorus finally hits, it feels more like a total release of built-up pressure. Lyrically ('try to behold my power / learn to embrace, all seeing / let it all go, sad to see'), looking at how the song comes together, those sparse lines touch on themes of hyper-awareness, surrender, loss, and the discovery of being a small cog in a gigantic wheel. Recording-wise, we tracked the drums over at DM Studios with Mark Harris, and then recorded all the rest of the instrument layers and vocals ourselves at home. »

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Released: Mar 26
From: Dundee
Heard: Online

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