The track

Third Flame is the NovelGrooves project for the early-2000s nu-metal revival that nobody asked for and everybody secretly wanted. The production is thick: distorted guitars, a rhythmic foundation that hits like a hip-hop beat wearing a leather jacket, and a hook that earns its capital letters. It's one track, but it's enough to establish the project's identity: loud, physical, and entirely unapologetic about what it is.

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The track

Soft acoustic textures, a vocal that stays close to the mic, and a chorus built on the simplest possible idea: we're one. The production stays out of the way. River & Ash is the NovelGrooves project that writes alternative and indie music with the warmth of a campfire and the patience of a songwriter who isn't in a hurry to get to the hook.

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The track

A warm, mid-tempo piece with acoustic guitars and a vocal hook that takes its time to arrive. The lyric is about as direct as indie songwriting allows: love as architecture, something you build rather than something that happens to you. Clean, unhurried, and exactly what the project was designed to do.

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The EP

Two versions of one piece. The first leans into the acoustic foundation; the second gives it a little more room, a little more atmosphere. It's a small release that captures the whole River & Ash identity in one idea: music for people who want their indie to come with warmth, not irony.

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The track

Acoustic guitar, a vocal that sits low and warm, and a lyric about the simplest possible scene: two people, a fire, and the decision to stay. Sadie Harlow is the NovelGrooves persona for the kind of country songwriting that doesn't need a truck or a dirt road to work - just a melody and something worth saying.

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The track

The production pulls back to almost nothing. A lonely chord pattern, a vocal that sounds like it's been recorded at three in the morning, a drum part that arrives late and never gets bigger than it has to be. There's no chorus reach, no pop release. The hook is just the word "depression" repeated like somebody trying to say it out loud for the first time and seeing if the room collapses. It doesn't.

The story

This is the pivot of the entire Aron Veer project. Up to this point, the character is a soft-pop romantic - chasing girls in Miami, dreaming about California, writing love songs in honey locust trees. Depression is the moment that whole world cracks open. The verses describe what most people never put in a pop lyric: the floating-above-your-body feeling, the friends who stop calling, the gap between how you look and how you actually are. And then, in the bridge, comes the line that turns the track from a confession into a horizon - the sun comes after the rain.

That line is not a coincidence. The album that follows Depression in the Aron Veer catalogue is called After the Rain. Depression is the rain. After the Rain is what's on the other side of it. Listen to them in order.

The lyrics

The track moves in two halves. The verses live in the smallest, most specific details - feeling broke, feeling unseen, hoping somebody notices and being terrified that they will. The chorus turns those details into a single weight: the rain in my head again, the weight of the world. The bridge then borrows a piece of folk wisdom and repeats it four times, as if saying it enough times will make it true. By the last chorus, you're not sure whether it has - but you're sure the character is going to find out.

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The album

Five tracks, all in the soft-edged modern pop register that Aron Veer does best - clean acoustic foundations, room for the vocal, hooks built for the second listen. The production stays uncluttered throughout: no track is trying to out-grow the next one, and the album moves like a single afternoon rather than five separate moods. Reference points are familiar - Harry Styles in his quieter mode, John Mayer when he's not showing off, a touch of Niall Horan's commercial warmth - but the writing has its own pulse, slightly more direct, slightly less polished, slightly more in love.

The story

To understand After the Rain, you have to listen to Depression first. That single is the rain - the moment the Aron Veer character admits things are not okay. After the Rain is what happens on the other side of that admission. Not a triumphant comeback, not a redemption arc - just five songs about being open to somebody again, with all the small foolishness that comes with it. Miami, Bentleys, California honeysuckle, the question of whether you're brave enough to make the first move. The character doesn't pretend the rain didn't happen. He just decides to keep going.

It's the most cohesive piece of writing in the Aron Veer catalogue, and the clearest statement of what the persona is for: pop songs that take small feelings seriously without ever taking themselves too seriously.

1. First Move

The album opener and the thesis statement. A character who's done overthinking, watching somebody about to walk away, deciding to say something for once. The pre-chorus turns it into a small dare - we could play a pretty little game - and the chorus is just the question repeated until somebody answers it.

2. Don't Change

The Miami track. A pickup-line of an opening verse, a Bentley in the pre-chorus, and a hook that's secretly the whole point of romantic pop: don't change a thing about you. The production rides a single relaxed groove from start to finish - confident enough to never need to switch gears.

3. Keep It To Myself

The most internally conflicted song on the record. The character is falling for somebody and trying not to admit it - to her, to himself, to the listener. The chorus circles the same admission three different ways before finally landing on it. The most quietly Harry Styles moment in the Aron Veer catalogue.

4. Honeysuckle

The brightest track on the album, and the one that most fully cashes in the After the Rain premise. California, an aeroplane the next morning, the air full of honeysuckle, and a chorus that promises everything. If the album has a single, this is it.

5. How Do I Get To You

The closer, and the most fragile thing on the record. Where the rest of the album is confident - Miami, Bentleys, Californian air - this one drops the swagger entirely. A character looking at somebody across a room and realising he has no idea how to actually reach them. A quiet ending to a warm record, and exactly the right place to leave the Aron Veer story until the next chapter.

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The track

Built around a relaxed acoustic groove and a vocal that sits high in the mix, Good Days keeps the production deliberately spare. There's room for the hook to breathe, for the rhythm section to shuffle in without ever taking over, and for the kind of melodic turn that wants to be hummed back the second time around. It's the sound of a writer figuring out which direction the project is going to go - and quietly committing to all of it.

The story

Every persona on NovelGrooves starts somewhere, and Good Days is where Aron Veer begins. It's not the biggest moment in the catalogue, and it isn't trying to be - it's a calling card. The voice, the phrasing, the warmth, the ease: everything that the later releases would build on is already in place here. Listen to it after After the Rain and you can hear how the character was always heading toward those Miami nights and California afternoons.

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The EP

Where the early Aron Veer single Good Days leaned into clean modern pop, Honeycomb takes a small detour through Americana territory. The arrangements are sparser, the imagery more rural, the pace deliberately slower. It's still recognisably the same writer - same warm vocal, same patient phrasing - but with a different set of references showing through. Three tracks, no filler, the kind of EP that fits inside a single afternoon.

The story

If the rest of the Aron Veer catalogue is about chasing somebody, Honeycomb is about staying put. The whole EP turns on a question that pop music doesn't ask very often: what if you're already where you need to be, and everyone else is wrong about what that should look like? It's a small statement, told quietly, and it gives the project a centre of gravity that the later romantic pop tracks bounce off.

1. Honeycomb

The title track and the philosophical anchor of the EP. A man whose father hid from history in a hayloft, whose teachers told him he'd amount to nothing, decides he's perfectly happy hanging in a honey locust tree. The chorus refrain - I ain't got no place to go, and that don't matter to me - is the whole project distilled into eight bars. Defiantly small, deeply settled.

2. Road Song

A short instrumental-leaning interlude that bridges the EP's two vocal pieces. Acoustic textures, room tone, the sound of somebody not in a hurry to get anywhere - exactly what the title suggests.

3. This Life

The closing statement, and a kind of mantra. Built almost entirely around one phrase - there's no hurry in this life - repeated until it stops being a lyric and starts being advice. Where Honeycomb told you why the character is staying put, This Life tells you what it actually feels like.

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