Toward the end of “I’ll Let You Finish,” the rollicking opener of his second record Fire from the Hip, Finn Wolfhard does something unexpected. After affecting a nineties indie rocker drawl and doling out charmingly rambling lyrics, the twenty-three-year-old singer/actor finishes the song by singing Kanye West’s infamous interruption of Taylor Swift’s speech at the 2009 VMAs. It’s an odd moment, one that would come off as a pretentious cop-out in another’s hands. And in a way, it does have a quality of randomness for its own sake, but Wolfhard somehow makes it work. Part of that is due to how much crackling personality he suffuses into the song itself, but Wolfhard’s recontextualization of that soundbite offers a strangely compelling parallel to his own difficult…
Category: indie-pop
Forty-two years into a career that has quietly defined the underbelly of American neo-psychedelia, Seattle’s The Green Pajamas return with When Fever Let Me Dream. Led by the ever-prolific singer-songwriter Jeff Kelly, the band delivers a record that feels like a lucid, late-night transmission from a bygone era-yet it remains completely timeless.
When Fever Let Me Dream captures the band at their most atmospheric. Heavily indebted to the experimental studio sorcery of the Beatles’ Revolver and the pastoral whimsy of early Pink Floyd, the album floats seamlessly between melodic baroque-pop and hazy, nocturnal rock. The brief opening instrumental “Intro: Pastyme With Good Companye” immediately sets…
Fabienne Delsol does modern garage psych as well as anyone; her handful of solo albums have been mysterious, magical delights full of drama and intrigue; it’s no wonder that one of her songs ended up on the soundtrack of Killing Eve. Any music coordinator looking for a song that combines the hooky pop of French ye-ye, the guitar and keys swirl of psychedelia, the stomp of Freakbeat, and the sweetness of the beat group era would do well to pick any one of her songs.
There are plenty of fine examples of Delsol at her best on her 2026 record Indigo Red. Co-produced by Ed Deegan and Delsol herself with a crack band of contributors (Thomas Gardner, Carwyn Eliis) on board, the record sounds typically good, coated in reverb and echo but still cracking…
The duo of multi-instrumentalists Courtney Carmichael and Nikki St. Pierre, sundayclub started out in rural Canada as a way to process the emotions of growing into adulthood, having relationships that fade, and self-discovery. Framing their yearning, bittersweet songs in a shimmery, classic dream pop sound perfected by Carmichael’s gentle, airy vocals, they soon landed on Paper Bag Records (with help from the Weakerthans’ Stephen Carroll, who heard them and passed their music along to the label’s A&R) and based themselves in Winnipeg. Produced by Carmichael, St. Pierre, and Kris Ulrich (Boy Golden, Field Guide), the SUNDAYCLUB LP begins with the brief introductory track “Tune In,” which, while not fully orchestrated, establishes their dreamy, longing…
Parts & Labor were mainstays of the American noise-rock underground which flourished during the 2000s, and even if they never received the major critical acclaim or cult following of someone like Lightning Bolt or Black Dice, they toured constantly and released a sizeable discography of powerful, risk-taking records. Most significantly, they stood apart due to the way they combined freewheeling noise, triumphant melodies, and muscular drumming in equal measures. After making a few diversions such as a fully electronic EP and an attempt to make grindcore pop songs, they released their most accessible effort, Constant Future, before calling it a day around the band’s tenth anniversary in 2012. Dan Friel released solo electronic efforts which continued…
Before delivering their first album, South London-based Ebbb made waves with their live sets and a debut EP that merged seemingly divergent sounds such as rich, ’60s-inspired vocal harmonies, arty synth pop, and diverse, kinetic rhythms, many inspired by the underground club scene. Still evolving with their debut LP, Shallow Hits finds the trio — German producer/instrumentalist Lev Ceylan, Scottish drummer Scott McDonald, and English trained tenor Will Rowland — evoking the wistful, crystalline harmonies of the Beach Boys and the unpredictable electronic-organic textures and song structures of experimental pop groups like Animal Collective and Young Dreams alongside a wide range of mathy, pop, and U.K. jungle-informed rhythms.
The Temper Trap conjure an elemental love on their fourth studio album, the shimmeringly moody Sungazer. The follow-up to 2016’s Thick as Thieves, the album is the Australian band’s first LP of new material since going on hiatus in 2018. It also arrives on the heels of singer Dougy Mandagi’s own solo project, the Blood Moon EP, which found him recording in Berlin and exploring a more electronic sound. Also during his time away from the band, he deepened his Indonesian roots, settling in Bali with his family. All of this experience informs Sungazer which finds Mandagi and his bandmates reinvigorated, leaping with abandon into the soaring falsetto and guitar-based balladry that made 2009’s Conditions and their 2012 eponymous album so compelling.
…features new cuts ‘Emotionally Unavailable’ and ‘Medication’, as well as rarities ‘Dirty Looks’, ‘Sharpening Knives’ and ‘Overload’. The deluxe release is rounded out by a collection of demos and early mixes of tracks from the original album.
The story of Suede has never been one of steady linear progression, but even so, 2022’s Autofiction sent their needles zigzagging all over the charts, a tectonic reboot that shifted the direction of their already impressive comeback era.
Antidepressants plugs into similar post-punk energies – Killing Joke, The Chameleons, The Cure – but as the PiL-like title track’s untethered jolt and jeer shows, Suede’s emotional safety catches and musical circuit breakers are very much off.
Through a background chatter of mechanised…
Panda Bear is a team player. He’s been a part of Animal Collective since its inception, lending his distinctive vocals to indie anthems like “My Girls” and “Summertime Clothes.” He crossed over into the mainstream via Daft Punk’s hypnotic “Doin’ It Right,” on a journey that led to his first (and only) Gold-certified record to date. Essentially, the man born Noah Lennox is the secret ingredient that word got out about — and ever since, everyone’s been eating good.
For the last 15 years, Panda Bear has been steadily bonding with another prolific collaborator in Spaceman 3’s Peter Kember, a.k.a. Sonic Boom. That partnership eventually blossomed into 2022’s Reset: a kaleidoscopic, crystalline dismantling of vintage pop that served as…
Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman released Other People, Other Wedding Songs via Secretly Society. The album collects stripped-down acoustic versions of wedding songs originally written for David Levithan’s novel Songs for Other People’s Weddings, in which protagonist J composes wedding songs as a service to couples.
These 17 tracks were originally distributed exclusively via QR codes inside that book to enhance the reading experience. Due to high fan demand, Secretly Canadian officially compiled these tracks for streaming platforms and a special limited-edition vinyl release.
Several of the tracks appeared in fuller arrangements on Lekman’s 2024 album Songs for Other People’s Weddings; here they are…
With time and experience always comes a sense of knowing, and CASTLEBEAT built his new album around this idea. After releasing his debut album, CASTLEBEAT has spent the last decade working on his record label, spirit goth. CASTLEBEAT II feels like a landmark project he’s been leading up to, revisiting sketches of songs from his debut, and giving them a second life.
CASTLEBEAT, a.k.a. Josh Hwang, returns to his roots on this new record, but expands it further. The indie dream pop artist stays firmly rooted within the genre, with guitar riffs in “This Takes Time” feeling unmistakably 2016, while tracks like ‘Table and Chair’ add elements of electronic drums and layered production that bend far beyond the constraints of genre.
It is almost 10 years that the trio of Adrian Blake Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn, known to those that have already caught up with them as Bandits On the Run, have been operating, with a slew of independent releases.
Judging by the sound of those the New York trio should have already made quite a name for themselves, and maybe Rough Magic, will do that for them.
Not only is their take on the folk pop/rock combination one of the more inventive at the moment, but their concept of rotating lead vocals and rotating instruments is not a gimmick but serves the full purpose of their music and has both sense and purpose.
You can hear vast musical knowledge oozing…
Congratulations, the new album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Ungerleider, is the result of the casual playing of his demo tracks in the home of musicians Jenn Wasner and Alan Good Parker. Wasner, a member of Flock of Dimes and Wye Oak, kept asking Parker who was singing those songs on their Los Angeles stereo, and it turned out Parker was playing demos by the Virginia-based pianist he had met when they were touring with Natalie Prass. Ungerleider had recently moved to Los Angeles, and Wasner, who fell in love with these tracks, vowed to help Ungerleider put these songs together for an album.
In addition to co-producing Congratulations with Ungerleider, Wasner also sings and plays a variety of instruments on the record, as do…
Pressing play on Spacemoth’s new album is like stepping into a ‘90s Magic Eye painting: Everything suddenly becomes 3D, jumping off the page in a blur of motion. Infectiously catchy from the get-go — all Day-Glo synth splodges, fuzzed-out guitar, boxy drum workouts, and strawberry bubblegum basslines — Inward Eye is both instantly gratifying and wrapped in deeper meaning. At its heart, it’s a paean to journeying — on the road, inside your mind’s eye, and to other cosmic dimensions, all while you ponder things like “Do We Exist?” and how to communicate through a paper cup.
That Maryam Qudus wrote most of the record in the back of a tour van while traveling across the U.S. with psych rockers La Luz makes sense. Who hasn’t felt their most creative when…
“My Ice Queen” immediately makes its case. A mid-to-low tempo chugging rhythm underpins choppy guitar, a contemplative, distant vocal and a general air of disassociation. Brief sections of the song feature – albeit muted – guitar mangling and feedback. The lyrics tell of a “heartbreak machine, coolest girl you’ve ever seen.” Icy? Absolutely. Then take the similarly restrained “Life Goes on,” so hazy a rumination it seems to have materialised from the mists enveloping Venus.
It isn’t all so crepuscular. “Song for John” – seemingly an elegy for John Lennon – has a gentle bossa nova sway. It’s small-combo, guitar-centred pop at its most lean, most understated. Elsewhere, the airy “Even if” is yet another arresting example of the sometimes buoyant but mostly…
Everything Pearl & the Oysters have released since their 2018 debut Canned Music has been delightful and that remains the case on their album from 2026, Monkey Mind. Their brand of pop music — which mashes up soft rock, space age pop, ye-ye, city pop, and cocktail jazz — remains as fresh as ever, and the duo of Joachim Polack and Juliette Davis took extra pains to keep it that way. They recorded quickly with producer Jonathan Rado, putting the music directly on tape and keeping the overdubs to a minimum.
One listening would never know as it sounds as blissfully smooth as ever, the electric pianos, flutes, harmonies, and gentle vibes coming together like a sonic hug. The band duo needed a real one during the making of the album as they…
On her previous album, Tasha was a rush of color in motion. The Chicago songwriter was fast approaching the end of a video game level and the inevitable change of map, power-ups, and co-players. She spoke then of her Saturn return — a stage of meteoric change you go through in your late twenties, when everything you know about yourself is reframed. She sang to old friends — sharing beach wine with Nina; eulogizing her late collaborator Eric Littmann — but also looked forward, asking the world: What’s next? She called the album All This and So Much More. She knew what was coming — her fourth full-length, You Are Spring!, arrives at the So Much More part.
First things first, Tasha left her native Chicago for an even bigger world — New York,…
Yes, the new Chanel Beads record is called Your Day Will Come (2026), which is the exact same title as the project’s previous LP, Your Day Will Come (2024). As a press release notes, the repetition is about challenging record industry norms, but it’s also a way of evoking “the duel between certainty and doubt” that mastermind Shane Lavers wrestled with during the record’s creation.
Or, to put that last part more plainly, the difference is a matter of intonation: “I’m Ron Burgundy?” versus “I’m Ron Burgundy.” So, which punctuation is Your Day Will Come (2026)?
Like its predecessor, the new album was recorded in Lavers’ small Brooklyn studio with the help of his frequent group of collaborators including singer Maya McGrory, violinist Zachary Paul…
The iconic backdrop of California – from the Hollywood hills to its gnarly mountain trails – has always been a particularly evocative source of inspiration when it comes to art, so it’s not all too surprising to learn that Joe Newman, frontman of alt-J, felt so drawn to its confines for his first solo foray. His first venture proper outside of the band since their formation almost 20 years ago now – under the moniker of his former screenname JJerome87 – The Canyon is a bold offering that comes dripping with a sultry California spirit. Opener ‘Mr Alligator’ swaggers to life in a bluesy manner, before ‘Green Velvet’ hazily saunters in, bathed in the kind of enveloping warmth that only Los Angeles could help conjure up. An assembled cast of session musicians and…
Were the Watchtowers is the final recorded work of the Sadies singer-guitarist Dallas Good, completed before his unexpected passing in February 2022. It’s jointly credited to Good and Richard Reed Parry (of Arcade Fire).
…The 9-song album features guest appearances from Margaret Atwood and Neko Case, while other contributors include Kurt Vile, Yo La Tengo, Jim Jarmusch, John Doe, Jon Spencer, Scott McCaughey and Gary Louris. Closing cut “Not in the World” features the aforementioned fan choir, with more than 500 contributors.
…Parry explained that Were the Watchtowers was written and recorded over the course of a decade, and further explores the “cosmic, psychedelic Americana sounds” heard when Parry…