Not only had the Bats been making records for over forty years when 2025’s Corner Coming Up was released, but their quality had never dipped even a little. Every record has featured intricate guitar interplay, chugging rhythms, melodic bass lines, Robert Scott’s wistful lead and Kaye Woodward’s supportive harmony vocals, and songs that don’t go for big gestures, instead zeroing in on the tiny moments that meld together to make or break a heart, or build a life.
This record has exactly the same amount of those things that all their previous records have, though now the specter of age has started to creep in around the edges. Not that they sound old in any way, but more that the weight of their catalog have grown to the point where they…
Category: indie-pop
In May, Dua Lipa introduced a special guest at her Sydney gig: Kevin Parker, who duetted with her on a version of ‘The Less I Know the Better’, the biggest hit Parker has ever released under the name Tame Impala. The pair have a longstanding creative relationship – Parker co-produced and co-wrote most of Dua Lipa’s last album, Radical Optimism – but nevertheless made for quite the study in contrasts. She was resplendent in a glittering lace catsuit, stiletto-heeled boots, a fake fur stole draped over her shoulder.
Lank-haired, clad in a baggy multicoloured cardigan and a string of wooden beads, Parker looked not unlike a man who had arrived onstage direct from a very long night up at Glastonbury’s stone circle.
If it had been released any other year, The Telephone Numbers’s 2021 album The Ballad of Doug would’ve been an indisputable highlight of the jangle pop genre. It has all the requisite qualities: winsome vocal melodies, delivered with scruffy sweetness; silvery electric guitar strings, strummed ‘til pillowy soft; a strolling pace and sun-dappled vibes to balance the melancholy.
It’s terrific, but it didn’t get the attention it deserved — not because of critical indifference, necessarily, but because 2021 just happened to be a loaded year for jangle pop, with top-shelf releases by Ducks Ltd., The Umbrellas, Teenage Fanclub, Chime School, Quivers, Massage, The Reds, Pinks & Purples, and The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness, to name just a handful.
…The deluxe album feature acoustic versions of every song from the original release as well as bonus covers of Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun.”
If Winona Fighter had nothing else going for them, they’d still have an all-time great celebrity pun band name.
Their chosen handle is immediately memorable, the right amount of goofy and ties the band to an enduring and endearing public figure. But what really puts the name a cut above the Chet Fakers, Joy Orbisons and Been Stellars of recent music history is that the Winona Fighter moniker also speaks to the abundant, not name-based positives the Nashville trio do have going for them.
My Apologies to the Chef, the band’s debut…
It’s been three years since Girlpool, the DIY indie-rock duo fronted by Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad, went their separate ways. Though their breakup was amicable, their disbanding is still deeply felt. The two built a niche yet passionate following since their start, emerging with compellingly lo-fi and small-scale ambitions on 2014’s Before the World Was Big and 2017’s Powerplant before evolving into more serious and exploratory territory on 2019’s What Chaos Is Imaginary and 2022’s Forgiveness. Keeping everything glued together was Tucker and Tividad’s ironclad bond as vocalists, songwriters, and friends. Even when Tucker transitioned in 2017 and his voice subsequently dropped, such a change managed to give even greater…
…contains 12 new songs written, recorded, and produced by Keery and Thein at Electric Lady Studios while they worked on ‘The Crux’, and completed months after the album’s release.
Musician and actor Joe Keery stakes his claim on the pop world with his third album as Djo, 2025’s swoon-worthy The Crux. The album, which follows 2020’s Twenty Twenty and 2022’s Decide, once again finds Keery indulging his pop passions while offering a fresh creative window on his persona as the loveable former high school jock-turned-righteous cool dude Steve Harrington on Stranger Things merely hints at.
Just as Keery’s trademark mullet and devilish smile as Steve conjure a kind of ’80 throwback charisma, his music as Djo has an equally evocative…
With his score for Yorgos Lanthimos’s gothic fantasies Poor Things and Kind of Kindness, Joscelin Dent-Pooley (aka Jerskin Fendrix) has proven that his skills in sonic storytelling are excellent. His quirky and elaborate instrumentals capture the restless nature of the former’s protagonist, Bella Baxter, a woman with the transplanted brain of an infant, who explores the good and bad of the world.
Composed largely between the artist’s film score work, Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire is an attempt to soundtrack Dent-Pooley’s own life story. Raised in the West Midlands, the songs are infused with references from his formative years, restoring the memories in detailed lyrics on the opening ‘Beth’s Farm’: “We kiss beneath the apple tree…
Flock of Dimes – the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and producer Jenn Wasner – releases her third album, The Life You Save, worldwide on Sub Pop Records.
Across the last few decades – whether it be as Flock of Dimes, as half of beloved duo Wye Oak, or via one of her many collaborations with Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso, and a sprawling list of other musical juggernauts – Wasner’s extensive catalog displays her gift for balancing authenticity and directness with an unmistakable left-of-center sensibility. Her songwriting has always found her as a keen-eyed observer, a deeply empathetic and thoughtful storyteller with a skill for probing memory, heartbreak, and unhealed trauma, a shroud of syncopation or off-kilter guitar taking…
Solo projects are uneasy ground. It can be marred with identity crises or feeling like a watered- down edition of what you’re temporarily splintering from. It can also be fantastic and welcomed, but rarely both. In the case of María Zardoya, of the acclaimed quartet The Marías, it is absolutely the latter. An excursion to upstate New York in January of this year catalysed bringing Not for Radio, a fresh solo project, to life. Surrounded by nature with collaborators Sam Evian and Luca Buccellati, Melt materialised quickly and in real time.
In short, Melt is stunning. There’s an analogue, in-the-room type tonality to the project, every echo or scratch or vocal inflections cutting through the mix in a way that is melancholic and entrancing. ‘Not the Only One’ may be the cut…
It’s been six long years since California native and multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte released new material as Jay Som. In the interim, we’ve swapped Swiftie friendship bracelets, filled up on viral TikTok dances and taken in too many risqué “Juno” poses to count. The landscape of modern pop music has become defined by multi-million PR campaigns, social media gimmicks and high-octane live performances — which is all fine and well, but where did all the bedroom pop go?
Jay Som returns with her third full-length album just in time. Belong is a shimmering follow-up to 2019’s Anak Ko, and sees Jay Som open up her circle to new collaborators in exciting ways. This particular bedroom, it seems, has bunk beds occupied by creatives…
“And you’re off into the burning blue” songwriter Dave Benton sings on “Ponies,” the centerpiece of Trace Mountains’ fourth full-length album Into the Burning Blue. Decorated with retro textures and violet flowers, the album begins with the crackle of a fire, as if something is burning and hatching into a new form. As Benton grappled with the end of an 8-year romantic relationship, songs were pouring out of him in quick succession, often urgently before he had logically processed the emotions himself.
Collectively, the songs are imbued with a spectrum of weighted emotions, but the blue continued to burn, with each song adopting its respective hue – a violet reclaiming of passion, a deep sea blue of sorrow, the sky blue moments of relief…
Alice Cohen has manifested throughout alternative music history in improbable ways, from MTV-era new wave with The Vels to Michael Stipe-produced grunge to 2000s hypnagogic pop.
Her latest album, Archaeology, might be her most revealing work yet, which feels almost paradoxical given its prominent use of instrumental tracks. The record seeps through the accumulated layers of a 13-year Brooklyn residency, where her apartment has become something like an archaeological site. Cohen plays her father’s old Yamaha drum machine live rather than programming it, maintaining a tactile connection to family history.
The songs bathe us in both intimacy and mystery, and when Cohen removes words entirely, something within the sonic shapes…
…includes three discs consisting of the original album, live tracks from Samia’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert, the band version of “Is There Something in the Movies?” and tracks from her cover/remix album project titled ‘The Baby Reimagined’.
A native New Yorker and daughter of professional performers, Samia Finnerty had acted off-Broadway and appeared on prime-time TV by the time she released her first angsty guitar and piano songs as a 20-year-old in 2017. After rising through the touring ranks with opening slots for the likes of Cold War Kids and Soccer Mommy on the strength of early songs, Samia makes her full-length and Grand Jury label debut with The Baby.
Recorded with a trio of producers, including members of Hippo Campus, the album…
dodie’s latest album, Not for Lack of Trying, stands as an intimate and tender follow-up to her 2021 debut, Build a Problem. Soft piano and muted guitar strokes thread throughout the record, accentuating her wistful vocals. The production is immaculate, but many of the songs follow a similar arc: gentle strumming on acoustic guitar swelling into a fuller sound of strings and vocal harmonies. Over time, this predictability undermines the album’s impact, especially in the slower second half.
Amid this, ‘Smart Girl’ establishes itself as an early highlight, an emotional rollercoaster with intense and explosive string tremolo. ‘Tall Kids’ is a melancholy ballad where dodie’s emotive vocals reach their peak, accompanied by a pulsing undercurrent of warm piano.
Leading up to the release of her debut album, singer/songwriter Kate Bollinger issued no less than four EPs, signing with Ghostly International for the fourth, after her gentle, jazz-inflected pop attracted the attention of Kanye West, resulting in a songwriting credit on his Donda LP.
For her full-length coming-out (also on Ghostly), she not only remains loyal to a crafted, sophisticated, and soft-footed presentation but maunders even further into soft, pillowy textures, including a vocal delivery sometimes so gossamer as to barely uphold the melodies. She also takes her EPs’ 1960s and ’70s singer/songwriter inspirations to the next level with help from contributors including Matthew E. White, Sam Evian, Adam Brisbin (Katie von Schleicher,…
…The new edition has been fully remastered and includes unreleased live tracks, plus the lost single ‘Don’t Leave Me Alone’.
Supergrass have a hard time coming down from their musical highs. Every time they release a giddy, irresistible pop album, they repent on the next record, crafting a moodier response. This happened with their 1995 debut, I Should Coco, which engendered two hangover records: the sprawling, ambitious, yet thrilling In It for the Money and its hazy, unfocused 1999 Supergrass, which, despite the instant glitter classic “Pumping on Your Stereo,” was so scattered it sounded as if the guys weren’t sure if they wanted to be a band at all anymore. They sprung back with 2002’s Life on Other Planets, a truly wonderful pop album…
…The British rock icons offer a slightly expanded edition of 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, pairing a 2014 remaster of the album (which initially came with additional bonus material) with a bonus EP of new unplugged mixes of four of the album’s tracks (plus a non-album B-side, “Acquiesce.” The group’s songwriter/guitarist Noel Gallagher and Callum Marinho built these new versions from the original multitrack recordings in Noel’s London studio.
After the much-hyped blockbuster Definitely Maybe (1994) established the Manchester band (led by the volatile brothers Noel and vocalist Liam Gallagher) as England’s hottest new rock outfit, Oasis sought to go even bigger with Morning Glory, swinging for the fences with their songcraft…
Growing up in Inverkip, Scotland, sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi learned to play multiple musical instruments, and in their mid-teens, they decided to start their own band when none of their peers were as into the ’80s and ’90s indie pop of C-86 and Sarah Records as they were. With younger sibling Eva singing lead and playing guitar, and Grace preferring drums, they dubbed themselves the Cords. The duo’s first proper show was an opening slot for the Vaselines in Glasgow in the latter half of 2023, and they quickly sold through pressings of a debut cassette single and later a flexi-single in 2024. Indie pop tastemakers Skep Wax (U.K. and Europe) and Slumberland Records (U.S.) signed on to release their debut album. Produced by Jonny Scott…
Have you ever become so immersed in a piece of art that you never want to leave its world? On their fourth full-length, Canadian electronic duo Purity Ring are drawing on a specific variation of this sensibility, conjuring up an anime and video game-inspired conceptual stunner that will grasp your heart in the palms of its gentle hands.
But fear not, casual fans of anime and games. Even if you haven’t watched a Studio Ghibli film or played a Zelda or Final Fantasy game, the emotional language of ‘purity fing’ will fill you with the same sense of poignant satisfaction.
Along with their warm characters and compelling narratives, the literal worlds that these works of art exist within are often heart-stoppingly beautiful: colourful, magical and…
Previously, Carmarthenshire-born Cate Le Bon has interspersed recording with learning carpentry in the Lake District and taking pottery classes in Los Angeles. She made mugs for people ordering 2013 album Mug Museum.
Her new album, however, was preceded by the end of a relationship, by heartache and ill health. But if this suggests a tormented record, it’s not there in the music, which is a sweetly meditative expanse, coloured with effects units – a warm bath infused with rare essences of chorus, reverb and perhaps Le Bon’s EarthQuaker Hummingbird pedal, where the product information promises “choppy sawtooth tremolo”.
Opener ‘Jerome’ leads into the reverberant studio-verse of the Cocteau Twins.