The Smashing Times do one thing and they do it really well; make catchy, jangling guitar pop that sounds like it was recorded in the bottom of a well. Inspired by other fidelity challenged bands like Guided by Voices, Television Personalities, and Times New Viking, they add some freshness to the bloodline. Their 2019 debut cassette EP Come Along with Me is full of hooky, heart-felt pop tunes that sacrifice crisp, clear sound in favor of immediacy, but don’t submerge the singing and playing in so much clatter that the emotions are blunted. Much of the album has the autumnal wistfulness of the Byrds at their most elegiac, only recorded on a beat box instead of a state-of-the-art studio. All seven songs on the record all dig deeply into this mood…
Category: indie-pop
…features two brand new songs, alongside “New Desire,” as well as a rework with John Glacier and remixes from various artists including Jacques Greene, Nosaj Thing, Lil Silva and Oscar Farrell.
Arlo Parks has long made a home in vulnerability and poetic lyricism, and on Ambiguous Desire, she doubles down on that instinct with confidence. The album is full of psychedelic textures, punchy basslines, and dreamy vocals that blur together into something hypnotic but anthemic.
While the coherence of the record sometimes lends itself to monotony, the darker sonic undercurrent, coupled with a newly found more intricate and explorative sonority, has a sensation of quiet and dreamlike absorption.
Across the whole record, Parks’ vocals are…
Over the years, Imperial Teen’s brand of high-sass, joyfully brash power pop has kept rolling on without losing any of its potency. The group began in the ‘90s as an outlet for the more melodic tendencies of songwriters Roddy Bottum and Lynn Perko-Truell to contrast the aggressive sounds of their other bands Faith No More and Sister Double Happiness, and over time they grew into an identity of their own.
Their seventh studio album All Over You arrives as part of an established pattern at this phase of Imperial Teen’s lifespan, one where the band- members all live in separate cities and don’t get together often, but put together a new album in intervals of six or seven years, checking in on where they’re at personally, as a group,…
London-based songwriter Kamran Khan is no stranger to the inner workings of the London indie scene of the last decade. Through such escapades as his previous works with BBC Radio 6 acclaimed act Pencil, and widely respected solo project entitled Fake Laugh, Khan has built a fantastic rapport with indie lovers in the capital. For these reasons, Khan’s newest output, his debut album entitled I Came from Nowhere & Nowhere Is Where I Am Going promises great things. His first record under his real name, Khan admits that “With this album, I felt I could draw a line — and put my own name to it for the first time”, which adds a profoundly personal aspect to the record, which deals with a collection of personal traumas Khan has battled with throughout his…
Benny Sings embraces home and family on his sweetly intimate 2026 album, 22 Durnham Dew. Named after a recently renovated house where he has settled with his wife and children, 22 Durnham Dew finds Dutch singer, songwriter, producer Tim van Berkestijn (aka Benny Sings) in a good place, drawing inspiration from his home-life while still digging into the lyrical and dancey, ’70s-style pop his fans love. There’s a relaxed vibe to the album, even as Sings digs into his influences.
The opening “You Love Me” in particular grabs your attention with its Commodores-inspired R&B groove. Similarly evocative, the title track brings to mind the kind of warm, singalong style Paul McCartney mastered on his solo work in the ’70s. Equally compelling, cuts…
On Starcleaner Reunion’s warm, fuzzy debut, space is the place. Cooper Edens’ 1979 book The Starcleaner Reunion is an illustrated children’s adventure about a dandyish, top-hatted cohort – the starcleaners – who attempt to restore the darkened night sky with nothing but soapy water and self-belief. It’s the kind of obscure IYKYK story that sticks with you deep into adulthood, all hand-drawn starscapes and galactic whimsy, and so it makes complete sense that the book’s Goodreads page alludes to a “ballet in the works.”
When you name your band, you don’t necessarily want people to dissect it at every opportunity. Sometimes you just pick a few words and crack on. But Starcleaner Reunion just so happened to pick the perfect name to evoke their music.
…remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road. A 2CD deluxe edition offers an interesting selection of bonus tracks (20 in total) including previously unreleased David Kosten mixes of some album tracks, unheard demos and BBC live sessions and recordings.
Starsailor was already a critic’s darling in the band’s native England during mid-2001, and the group’s painfully melodic debut, Love Is Here, poised the band to rise in the shadows of Doves, Coldplay, and Travis. Starsailor, however, isn’t as polished as its counterparts, but that’s not to say Love Is Here isn’t a beautiful piece of work. It’s less lilting than Coldplay’s Parachutes, and frontman James Walsh’s aching vocals shape his angularity as a singer/songwriter. Starsailor is…
After Gary the fibreglass gorilla (and the wildly successful 2024 album named after him) took indie icons Blossoms far and wide, for their sixth studio effort the band have opted to shift their focus to something a tad closer to home. Named after the local moniker for Stockport Town Hall where frontman Tom Ogden tied the knot, Songs From The Wedding Cake sees the band addressing the many elements of love and loss (the latter being of a no-claims insurance bonus, rather than a relationship, mind you…).
Recorded live to tape by the five-piece with Shawn Lee (Young Gun Silver Fox) on production duties, Songs From The Wedding Cake sees Blossoms further straying from synth-pop to go full force with rollicking guitar and bass…
The idea that an album could be made piecemeal, in different countries, via the internet, would have been inconceivable forty years ago. Such technology would have seemed strange; stranger still might have been the idea that the traditional method – that is, recording a series of songs in one place during a set period of time – is far less viable these days. The logistical demands of creative practice in 2026 mean a piecemeal approach is an all-too necessary solution for many artists. Studios and practice spaces are expensive to rent. It’s difficult to organise a group of busy people (who may not have made music their full-time profession) into one place to record. Vanishing Twin’s excellent new album, Archives, was created in a so-called “virtual studio space”,…
Following the much-loved Library Music: Volume One (2022), and hot on the heels of this year’s critically acclaimed After the Rain, Strange Seeds, London group The Leaf Library return with a second journey through the margins of their catalogue. Gathering together rare recordings, compilation tracks, limited edition releases, collaborations and hidden gems from their ever-expanding musical world, Library Music: Volume Two is another vibrant and varied collection of electronic indie pop, in all its guises.
Far from a conventional odds and ends collection, the double LP compilation reveals another side of a band who have always treated the spaces between albums as places to explore. These are the moments where ideas stretch out; there…
Originally released in September 1996, ‘Coming Up’ represented the creative and commercial peak for a rejuvenated Suede… some debut indeed for new band members guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboardist Neil Codling. A UK No. 1 album which spent just shy of an entire year in the album chart, the vivid, electrifying ‘Coming Up’ spawned five UK Top 10 singles – ‘Trash’, ‘Beautiful Ones’, ‘Saturday Night’, ‘Lazy’ and ‘Filmstar’. Elsewhere, grimy glam stompers met elegiac ballads and stadium anthems… and 30 years on, ‘Coming Up’ still packs all its original punch.
For the anniversary, Coming Up has been expanded into an all-encompassing 5CD edition, in Deluxe 7”X 7” packaging. On CD1 ‘Coming Up’ has been newly mastered from the original…
Even some of the most obscure musical movements have their lesser-known players. One such example is the incredibly unseen group the Catburgers, a band from Edinburgh, Scotland who existed in the margins of the C-86 scene during the late ’80s, playing sparingly and recording a few times without ever officially releasing any music in their time. Galashiels represents the Catburgers album that never was when they were first active, recorded in 1989, shortly before they disbanded the following year, and then mixed in 2025 by Archie Moore from tapes that had sat in storage for decades. Like many of their peers of the time, the band’s sound sat in a conflicted place between melodic rock and punk abrasion. As the story goes, the band began in a burst of inspiration…
Titled simply 3, Penelope Isles‘ third album and first in five years follows the release of both Jack and Lily Wolter’s debut solo albums, with Jack recording under the moniker Cubzoa and his sister going by My Precious Bunny. Perhaps expectedly, both projects reflect characteristics of their band’s tender, psychedelic sound, although Cubzoa’s Unfold in the Sky leaned further into experimental realms for its lush, other-worldly sound, whereas My Precious Bunny’s A Moment in My Eyes landed in a more personal, dream pop-oriented space. These qualities come back together for 3, although it’s a bit quieter, more reflective album than their previous ones. Relatedly, it’s their first LP to be recorded live in the studio, and their first as only a trio with drummer Joe Taylor…
A tenth album often serves as a way of resetting the clock, rediscovering something that has been misplaced or set aside, slowing down, reconnecting with ways of working that were there from the very beginning but may have gradually faded into the background over the years.
For Anthony Gonzalez, I Wrote You a Letter became exactly that; a return to instinct. Written from demos begun in the summer of 2024, the record grew from a desire to rediscover the immediacy of M83’s earliest work, the bedroom recordings, the imperfections, the freedom of creating without expectation.
Twenty-five years after M83 first emerged from the south of France, that impulse feels surprisingly radical.
Low-key supergroup Railcard are an indie pop lover’s dream ensemble. Not only does Rachel Love of the incredibly influential 80’s guitar pop band Dolly Mixture play guitar and singer, Ian Button of the criminally overlooked Papernut Cambridge plays drums and sings, and Peter Momtchiloff — legendary guitarist of Tallulah Gosh and Heavenly — holds down the bass job. Add in trumpeter/keyboardist Rachel Bennett, who has played with the brilliant Trash Can Sinatras, and it’s almost too much. How could a group with such an impressive CV live up to the expectations? Without a problem judging by the string of lovely EPs that incorporated Northern Soul, girl groups, and space age bachelorette pad music into the charmingly sweet melodies and chiming guitars.
Best-known for the giddy throwaway pop of ‘Wake Up Boo’, Merseyside outfit The Boo Radleys influences spread much further, as even a cursory listen to their sprawling 1993 masterpiece, Giant Steps, will attest.
Older, wiser, and without original songwriter-in-chief Martin Carr, the Boos have been back tearing up stages for the last few years, with original members Simon ‘Sice’ Rowbottom (vocals, guitar), Tim Brown (bass) and Rob Cieka (drums) rolling back the years, alongside a couple of touring members to bring the average age down.
In Spite of Everything finds the band doing what they do best, crossing genres without a by-your-leave as they embrace searing guitars (‘Affected/Rejected’)…
After landing a record deal on the strength of early EPs, ’90s alt-rock and 2000s indie beneficiaries Slow Pulp delivered a well-received full-length debut, Moveys (2020), before expanding their sound on the follow-up, Yard (2023). Both albums were produced by the band’s guitarist, Henry Stoehr, and featured lyrics primarily by singer/guitarist Emily Massey. Their third album, Melodie, finds the Chicago/Madison group continuing to grow in other ways, including having Stoehr taking a larger role in songwriting and sharing production duties for the first time with Massey and an outside producer, Elliot Kozel (Rosalia, MØ, Indigo De Souza). The album opens with a pair of drum-less, brooding reflections steeped in ennui, “Yellow and Green”…
Dragonflies spread their dark sonic wings on their 2026 debut album. A collaboration between singer/guitarist Dhani Harrison and producer Nigel Godrich, Dragonflies showcases the duo’s love of spacy, electronic-tinged psychedelic rock. It’s a sound they’ve both explored in various ways on their own, including on Harrison’s own solo albums and Godrich’s acclaimed work with Radiohead, Beck, and others. It was while working on his 2023 album Innerstanding that Harrison reached out to Godrich for some advice and the two struck up a friendship. Working at the producer’s Brixton studio they developed a process where Harrison would supply vocals and guitars and Godrich would rework the tracks, utilizing electronics, tape loops, and his deep soundboard acumen.