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…
Category: indie-pop
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.
…includes 3 bonus early demo versions.
Toronto duo Ducks Ltd. wasted no time issuing their mission statement on debut album Modern Fiction. The first sound on opening track “How Lonely Are You?” is a wall of bright multi-tracked guitars firing off a barrage of nervous, ever so slightly melancholic chords. It’s jangle pop excellence from the first few seconds, opening up into a powerful but compact rush of simple drum machine rhythms, melodic basslines, and layers of smart vocal hooks. The song is here and gone in less than three minutes, beginning an album of thoughtfully constructed tracks that take notes from some of indie pop’s best artists.
Over the course of Modern Fiction‘s streamlined runtime, Ducks Ltd. channel…
The Suncharms are a band with an interesting history. They date back to 1989, and called it a day in 1993, but not before releasing a couple of EPs. In 2015 they reformed, and since then have released two albums.
…their third album Darkening Sky unfolds as a luminous exploration of reflection and sonic patience, a record that balances emotional immediacy with the quiet assurance of seasoned musicianship. From the opening track, “Midnight Train,” the band establishes a world of expansive indie-pop textures, Matt Neale’s guitar shimmering over a subtle rhythm section, while the trumpet’s late entrance adds a warm, unexpected depth that hints at the album’s willingness to bend conventional forms. The song evokes…
The songs simply had to come out. Annie Taylor recorded their third album between the band’s U.S. tour and a run of European shows. In keeping with its title, Out of Scale’s songs are characterized by intense emotions, chaotic relationships and big dreams.
At times we can hear singer Gini Jungi’s suffering. All the hurt and struggles. Sometimes her voice floats longingly over Tobias Arn‘s guitar riffs. But when Michael Mutter‘s bass and Daniel Bachmann’s drums kick in, it’s clear that these new songs will get the crowd moving.
The band met in a bar in the Swiss mountains after a snowboarding session. Fast forward a few years and they are now well known for their live shows, having already played SXSW…
It’s only been three years since Feeble Little Horse last released an album—2023’s excellent, blown-out Girl With Fish—but between the canceled tour, a standalone single, and sporadic activity online since then, it feels like the wait has been far longer. Alas, that ends very soon; Feeble Little Horse are releasing their new album, Bitknot. The band hasn’t shared any further information about the LP, so this comes very close to qualifying for “surprise release” status.
Feeble Little Horse embrace the D.I.Y. nature of the Pittsburgh music scene, from the gauzy, more immediate sound of their live performances to the extra attention they pay and the flourishes they add to their recorded output. They were formed in 2021 by guitarists Sebastian Kinsler…
In a recent column for the New Yorker, writer Kyle Chayka details a “lo-fi rebellion” against the aesthetics of tech-driven uniformity: “Anything that appears too smooth these days is suspicious,” he says, citing a recent Weezer tour poster featuring the “Cool S,” the universal sigil of our shared humanity, as a counter-example. Chayka’s subjects primarily operate in the visual worlds of marketing and design, but it’s easy to identify sonic parallels. The kids are selling their turntables and buying guitars, saving rock’n’roll, and banging their heads until they incur nerve damage. In the face of A.I. homogeneity, the human —embodied, subjective, flawed—is in.
MASK, a new collection of songs from Aaron Maine’s indie pop project Porches…
Between their 2021 debut full-length In This Town and 2025’s Whispers in the Speed Machine, Ohio band The Laughing Chimes moved from a shiny, jangly type of pop into slightly darker waters by adding a post-punk edge to their sound. Between these two albums, however, the band was working on new material that was a little closer to the sunny pop of their earlier work, demo’ing song ideas on cassette four-track.
Behind Your Blue Fields collects some of these lo-fi sketches from this in-between period, offering documentation of their development from the vantage point of insulated home recordings and exploring what it might have been like if these happier songs had been worked through to completion for their second album.
Bleachers return with their latest album everyone for ten minutes, continuing the project’s evolution under the direction of acclaimed singer, songwriter, musician, and producer Jack Antonoff, an eleven-time Grammy Award winner. Over the past decade, Bleachers have cultivated a passionate global fanbase, celebrated for high-energy live performances and a strong sense of connection with their audience.
everyone for ten minutes is the inevitable culmination of a lifetime of devotion to bands for the six members of Bleachers and, ultimately, finds each one at their creative peak. Despite the moments where it briefly peers into darkness, it’s essentially an optimistic record that feels lovestruck and hopeful, leaping from…
Future Islands are an emotionally charged synth pop group, known for their dexterous melodic touch, stately momentum and impassioned delivery. Over the past twenty years they have travelled a rare arc, from promising newcomers to best-kept secret, from cult favourites to heroes of the genre. As they reach this remarkable milestone, they resist the obvious move.
Instead of a ‘best-of’ compilation victory lap, Future Islands present From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth – an immediate and accessible collection – half of which has never appeared on streaming services – comprising alternate hits, rarities, and fan favourites that showcase the band’s palette and bring further colour to their uniquely universal appeal.
In 1981 a teenage Martin Kennedy watched Steve Kilbey and The Church play at a strange hippie festival in Australia. They were outliers at this festival and he fell in love with their look and sound. He recorded their set on a walkman, and the songs helped spark the beginning of his music career.
Just a year before, an equally fresh-faced Steve Kilbey formed The Church in Sydney, the very beginning of their public life as accidental hit makers. Forty five years later Martin and Steve find themselves working together on their ninth (add a bunch side projects to this epic side project and they’re about 20 albums in) studio album Things We Did On Earth. It’s always so simple: Steve calls Martin: hey we’re touring…
Life is rarely linear, and the record reflects that push and pull between highs and lows. While in Goa in 2023, Jon McClure – the fabled Reverend – experienced what he describes as an “unexpected moment of contentment”- one of the album’s brief emotional peaks, a fleeting sense of stability that soon gives way to grief and upheaval.
The album emerges from a period of profound personal change, following his father’s death after a sudden lung cancer diagnosis. Alongside navigating grief, McClure was also diagnosed with ADHD, which he cites as key to understanding his lifelong emotional extremes.
Musically, that shift is immediate. The record moves towards a more live, roots-driven sound steeped in soul, a clear pivot from…
Mia Rocha writes music for herself. Releasing songs under the moniker Mia Joy, the Chicago-based artist is the daughter of a poet and a musician, and since a young age, she was encouraged by her father to channel her feelings into music as a way of understanding them.
Taking the advice, she wrote her debut ethereal dream-pop album Spirit Tamer over the course of several emotionally tumultuous years. It captures Rocha’s inner loneliness, cultivates healing, and creates a safe space where she can work through her darkest moments.
“The beginning of writing this album was an incredibly low, dark period and it was also a period where things were just pouring out of me,” she said in a recent episode of Jessica Risker’s…