Sometimes, you just have to let things go and while it can be uncomfortable, it can also be incredibly liberating – and the Embrace boys are championing this philosophy superbly in Avalanche, their ninth studio album and their first release in four years. When you stop anticipating the big moments and let it flow, the need to have your life figured out swiftly fades away. It becomes about the small things – the ones you’d otherwise miss. The name of the album is a metaphor for the force of feeling when the little moments all snowball together and how it’s important to celebrate those smaller imperfect moments of life as opposed to being laser focused on the ‘big picture’. It was conceived on the idea that life doesn’t pause for permission; it keeps on…
Category: indie-pop
Hit That Perfect Beat: The London Records Story is a double-CD companion to a podcast of the same name, charting the history of the label from the early 1980s, after the British branch of Decca Records was acquired by PolyGram. Though the label was reopened in the 2010s, the compilation stops in the early 2000s, bringing highlights from more than 20 years of hit releases.
The set starts out in the new wave era, with a few classics like Bananarama’s enduring “Cruel Summer” and Bronski Beat’s queer anthem “Smalltown Boy,” along with U.K. hits by acts drawing from folk (the Bluebells, Hothouse Flowers) and soul (Total Contrast, Carmel). Bronski Beat appear again with the compilation’s namesake tune, and leader Jimmy Somerville’s…
Having a solo project has been Josh Conway’s dream since he was a child. Between then and now, he has found international acclaim with The Marías, of which he is the drummer, primary producer and co-writer of nearly all of their material. With this outfit, Conway broadcast his distinctive production style, blurring bedroom-pop and dream-pop hallmarks with psychedelic undertones. There is an ethereal, understated and cohesive quality to The Marías, whilst still retaining a penchant for pop capacity and heterogeneous production. As many listeners of Conway will likely have come from The Marías’ fanbase, there will be trepidation about how similar it may sound, how far he will drift from the band sonically, or whether his production style works without his band.
Nicholas Krgovich and Joseph Shabason’s shared musical journey began in 2020 when, along with Chris Harris, they released Philadelphia, one of that year’s best and most highly acclaimed albums. In the six years since, the pair have joined forces with a series of other notable collaborators, including M. Sage and, most recently, Japanese avant-pop heroes Tenniscoats. Four Days in June, though a Shabason and Krogovich album by name, sees the pair enlist a wide range of musicians, including fiddle and banjo player Sam Amidon, guitarist Thom Gill, bassist/keyboardist Bram Gielen and drummer Phil Melanson. Krgovich sings and writes the lyrics, while Shabason plays synth, piano, sax and flute. The result is an album of subtle, often delicate layers, borrowing…
Meltt is a psych-ish rock band from Canada that is set to drop its third album, Pathways, on June 12. The 13-song album is preceded by the release of no fewer than eight singles, the earliest of which, “Hesitate,” dropped almost a year ago, in July 2025. All eight were collected in the order of appearance on the “In Good Time” single, the last one released on May 28 of this year.
There’s a method here of giving each single the chance to capture the attention of the non-album-oriented public before releasing the complete album, a strategy the band began experimenting with for the rollout of Eternal Embers in 2023. If album-oriented folks tilt their heads in anti-climactic wonder, well, that’s too bad. They’re not a big part of the music-streaming…
Arguably the worst fallout of the American Democratic Party’s decade of humiliation and ineptitude was the 2016 release of Le Tigre’s “I’m With Her”. To fashion the aesthetic and soul of art-punk into an establishment worshipping, pro-Hillary Clinton ‘anthem’ has banished the genre into the deepest reaches of musical hell since; every set and record must now begin with an apology and a land acknowledgment. Like a trip to KFC after eating rotten chicken, even the sound of a punk timbre over a synth has given me nausea to this day. 2026 may be a year of rekindling, as La Sécurité joins Mandy, Indiana in going ornate and reckless with the genre.
Whereas the latter’s Urgh is a masterpiece of industrial sound design and ultra-propulsive…
Slippers‘ cozy brand of indie pop is baked to perfection on their second album Slippers 08. Madeline BB is the writer and singer, and drummer too, and she’s got the whole thing figured out. It’s never a bad idea to mix together intimate C-86 noise pop, woolly Elephant 6-sounding indie, and hooky, pocket-sized power pop, especially when the songs are short and focused, the guitars are crisp and jangly, the rhythm section plays with economical punch, and the vocals have best friend warmth. BB’s lyrics feel like that same friend telling you about her hopes, dreams, problems, and feelings; it’s so small scale and intimate that it’s impossible not to be drawn in right away. She never overstays her welcome musically, keeping the songs very short and never…
When Joan As Police Woman released Real Life in 2006, it felt like the arrival of a fully formed solo artist rather than a debut in the usual sense. Joan Wasser had already lived several creative lives as a violinist, band member, collaborator and arranger, and the album gathered those histories into a poised, intimate set of songs about grief, love, survival and the possibility of carrying on. Twenty years later, Real Life Evolution returns to the same ten songs with a different kind of knowledge. The title is well chosen. These are songs that have aged, travelled, stretched, tightened and changed emotional weight through performance.
A clear sign of that evolution is the running order. The original album began with ‘Real Life’ and ended with ‘We Don’t Own It’. The new version…
Dea Matrona have returned to the limelight with their sophomore album Hate That I Care. Written, self-recorded and self-produced entirely on the road, this 12-track body of work vocalises the 10-year history of Mollie McGinn and Orláith Forsythe – from busking on the streets of Belfast to opening for The Beaches, and every story in between. Hate That I Care represents the intrusive thoughts that haunt every listener; the self-reflection, the self-assessment and the choice to stay silent or do something with that self.
Immediately, the feeling of nostalgia is ignited. The beauty in this album is the pure ’80s rock and alternative sound at the core of every song, reminding listeners of The Cranberries or Fleetwood Mac. The title track, ‘Hate That…
…featuring a previously unreleased demo, alternate versions of much-loved album favorites and a cover from the sessions for their seminal debut album.
Light Upon the Lake is the moseying debut album of Whitney, a septet built around the core songwriting team of Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek, both formerly of Smith Westerns. Often surprisingly intimate for a seven-piece, the group makes subtle use of instrumentation like brass and strings to flesh out without symphonizing their country-tinged indie pop.
The melancholy opener, “No Woman,” begins with cushiony keyboards and a short brass fanfare before Ehrlich — who doubles as the band’s lead singer and drummer — introduces his misty, double-tracked falsetto. He appears…
…four new tracks: new single ‘Should’ve Known Better’ joins unreleased songs ‘Perfect 10’ and ‘Hypothetical’, plus an acoustic ‘Lesbian of the Year’.
The Beaches have been slingshotted to a level of fame seen by few bands this side of the border, with their 2023 smash “Blame Brett” now sitting pretty at well over a hundred million streams on Spotify alone. They’ve been on the cover of Exclaim! and featured on the Freakier Friday soundtrack, as well as playing prestigious festivals and exponentially larger shows — stateside and beyond. The Toronto-based four-piece undeniably have more eyes on them than ever for the release of their third studio album, No Hard Feelings.
At 11 tracks, No Hard Feelings is full of…
It seems obvious and trite to say that Liz Lawrence‘s fifth album was one that she should never have had to write. The story behind Vespers is a heartbreaking one – in the summer of 2024, Lawrence’s sister Jessie suddenly died following an accident while on holiday in Ireland. For the next few months, Lawrence was understandably plunged into a kind of creative inertia, until six months later, the songs for Vespers were written over a period of three weeks.
The result is an album that couldn’t be more different to Lawrence’s last record – the funk-pop behemoth that was Peanuts – but one that’s likely to stand as one of the most beautiful, affecting and life-affirming records you’ll hear all year. As grief is, sadly, the most universal of…
Originally from Northern California, singer and songwriter Haylie Davis dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles in 2019 to focus on music. Her affection for lyricists like Gram Parsons and Joni Mitchell as well as the soft, warm sounds of ’70s singer/songwriters and the Laurel Canyon movement soon resulted in collaborations with acts like Drugdealer, Sylvie, and Sam Burton under the solo moniker Lady Apple Tree. She eventually left that persona behind and used her own name to record her solo debut album with associates including Burton. The resulting Wandering Star was tracked partly at Los Angeles’ famed Valentine Recording Studios (Bing Crosby, the Beach Boys, Lana Del Rey) and partly at Love Magnet, the Highland Park garage studio of…
This debut record by one-half of prodigious London duo Let’s Eat Grandma plays like an exercise in catharsis, especially after the pair’s last album, 2022’s Two Ribbons, was so palpably shrouded in grief. Rosa Walton’s casual forays into working by herself have already resulted in an unlikely streaming hit, ‘I Really Want to Stay at Your House’, via the soundtrack of videogame Cyberpunk 2077, and have now bloomed into a full-length album that sparkles with the sense of what it is to have a good time.
This is the kind of ’80s revival pop that seems to be slowly edging its way back into fashion, as it tends to cyclically; opener ‘Heart to Heartbreak’ is a glittering paean to the freedom of single life and, like most of the songs here, is…
As any of Montreal devotée knows, Kevin Barnes has long been known to make diaristic and compelling hay out of chronicling the unfiltered nuances of his personal life. As the long-running musical project enters its 30th year of existence, Barnes has remained true to form, continuing to evolve while navigating the murkiest waters life has to offer.
Emerging out of great personal upheaval in Barnes’s life, aethermead, of Montreal’s 20th album, recalls the beauty-in-the-breakdown immediacy of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? mixed with the garage-y jangle of Lousy With Sylvanbriar and Cherry Peel’s homespun intimacy-but, remember, the last band that you’ll ever hear truly repeat themselves is of Montreal.
The Pale Fountains make a strong claim for being one of the great “lost” bands of the first half of the 1980s on this career retrospective — The Complete Virgin Years — which gathers up their two albums (1984’s Pacific Street and 1985’s …From Across the Kitchen Table), all the singles and B-sides, plus a healthy number of extended versions, rough mixes, and demos.
The group were equally inspired by the mystical garage rock of Love and the sophisticated craft of Burt Bacharach while sharing the smooth production of contemporaries like the Style Council, the psychedelic shimmer of Teardrop Explodes, and the take-no-prisoners approach of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Their songs — like quite a few bands of the day — were full of fretless…
Colin MacIntyre, the man behind Mull Historical Society, is enjoying a productive streak of late – and as his MHS series continues he moves behind the lens for inspiration. The idea of writing a song cycle with contributions from a range of authors dates right back to early classical music, yet MacIntyre is successfully updating it with pop flavourings, modern settings and a refreshingly wide geographical scope. The previous instalment in this series, 2023’s In My Mind There’s a Room, successfully got its authors to picture an important room; this one goes to personal depths by asking 12 authors and poets for their thoughts on a photograph of personal importance.
Settings range from China to Gaza, from Botswana to Glasgow, and yet common ground…
Fall of 2023, Andy Hull & Robert McDowell took up residency at Union Chapel in London for 3 nights of unprecedented, intimate duo performances spanning the history of Manchester Orchestra. Andy’s voice paired with Robert’s meticulously plucked strings, eerie instrumentation, & understated harmonizing echoed against the gothic walls & stained glass windows of the chapel. A liturgical experience of introspection & sound community, transforming their most beloved songs into an iconic piece of music.
Recorded live during the band’s sold-out three night residency at London’s historic Union Chapel during the fall of 2023, the sweeping 21-track collection is a raw, vocally-centered liturgical experience of introspection…
Although My Precious Bunny, the solo project of Penelope Isles’ Lily Wolter (and her mother’s nickname for her), predates her noise pop band, it remained a collection of in-progress ideas until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Leaving Brighton and sheltering in place at her family’s home in Penzance, Cornwall, she didn’t have much to do except go surfing, write songs, and make demos. When her brother – Penelope Isles co-leader Jack Wolter – then became busy with recording the full-length debut of his own reanimated solo project, Cubzoa, Lily took the opportunity to record My Precious Bunny’s debut album with childhood friend Allister Kellaway (Last Living Cannibal, Eera). With songs inspired by a recent breakup as well as her childhood, the resulting…
…Featuring two acoustic, warm takes of her songs “Champ” and “I Just Do!”, an emotional cover of Charli xcx’s “I Might Say Something Stupid”, and a new original track “Sweetness”.
Throughout the early 2020s, singer/songwriter Rebecca Harvey made a name for herself under the music alias girlpuppy with her moody blend of midtempo indie rock, floatier dream pop, and sparer intimacy, including on her debut LP, When I’m Alone. That album was produced by Sam Acchione (Alex G, Tomberlin), mixed by Slow Pulp’s Henry Stoehr, and released on Royal Mountain Records. For the darker, heavier-textured follow-up, she adds washes of shoegaze, grungier alt-rock, and catchy 2000 indie pop/rock for her Captured Tracks label debut.