The release of Mitski’s concert film The Land and its accompanying live album last autumn consolidated her status as a kind of art-school Taylor Swift: glancingly elusive but still capable of grand emotional spectacle.
Recorded with her live band, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me showcases Mitski’s gift for cutting vintage musical theatre stylings and half-lit Americana with acerbic art-pop, the jaunty list-song ‘Rules’ or the chaotic evil ‘Where’s My Phone?’ almost sharing a theatrical moment with current-day David Byrne.
‘That White Cat’ simmers with jarring anger at parasitic forces who seek to commodify and consume while ‘Dead Women’s disturbing Lana Del Cohen transmission features the lyric…
Category: indie-rock
Having honed his live chops over many years not only as a solo artist, but also with the celebrated groups The Frames and The Swell Season, Glen Hansard is rightly regarded as a masterful live performer. Recorded over two nights last year in Berlin’s Funkhaus – an historic former radio facility – Don’t Settle (Vol 1, Transmissions East) draws from all stages of the singer’s storied career, making for a powerful and spellbinding listen.
The record kicks off with the title track, which builds from atmospheric ballad to stirring rocker, with a notably streak of defiance: “When they pin you to the corner / Pay no need to their dronin’ on”.
Filled with apocalyptic imagery, ‘Down On Our Knees’ is a driving, intense number with echoes of Joy Division, while the haunting…
…Alongside an acoustic rendition of album standout “Surviving You,” ‘Nested in Tangles (Deluxe)’ features an extended dance mix of “A Body, A Map,” Mary Lattimore on the newly expanded “Beholden to the Birds Murmuring Above,” as well as a voice and trombone rework of its title track.
Following her critically acclaimed 2024 album Keeper of the Shepherd, composer, vocalist, guitarist, and poet Hannah Frances returns with Nested in Tangles.
…In her winding constructions and gleefully lush arrangements, once again assembled with close collaborator Kevin Copeland, the Vermont-based singer-songwriter evokes many generations of proggy, jazzy indie rock far too sophisticated…
With members from various groups in the Melbourne indie rock underground on board, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Season 2’s first album, Power of Now, would be a low-key, off-kilter delight. The band – which features drummer Carolyn Hawkins (Parsnip, School Damage, and Chook Race), bassist Charlotte Zarb (the Snakes, Phil & the Tiles), guitarist Matt Powell (also Phil & the Tiles), keyboardist Claudia Serfaty (Stroppies), and guitarist Freya McLeod (herself) – whip through a half-hour of jangling indie pop gems, angular post-punk mood pieces, and jittery bedroom punk rockers along the way to making a record that stands with the best work of the groups they are associated with. The songs are all quite catchy, sometimes in a sideways…
The seven-piece psych-rock outfit Evolfo returns with the most relaxed, mind-expanding album of their career, Of Love. The Ridgewood, Queens-based players sifted through hundreds of hours of jams developed in their new studio to piece together the thirteen swirling tracks presented here.
The group, Ben Adams – Guitar, Synthesizer, Vocals, Matthew Gibbs – Guitar, Vocals, Ronnie Lanzilotta – Bass, Dave Palazola – Drums, Kai Sorensen – 12-String Guitar, Rafferty Swink – Keyboards, Sound Manipulation, Vocals, and Jared Yee – Saxophone, took the last few years to build a studio and work out their relaxed, hive mind jamming style. Produced, engineered, and mixed by Swink, Evolfo took full…
Indie singer/songwriter Rae Chen began releasing his intimate, dreamy music under the pseudonym tofusmell in the early 2020s. He was still based in his home state of Florida when Hardly Art signed on to release his project’s debut EP, the home-recorded Humor, in 2023, although he soon relocated to Winnipeg, Canada.
Featuring 12 songs in all, his full-length debut, All My Time, fleshes out his sound with help from outside producers while staying true to key influences Sufjan Stevens and Elliott Smith. Six of the songs were recorded with Keiran Placatka (Field Guide, William Prince) in Winnipeg, and four others were tracked with Paul Larson in Los Angeles — the latter group feature a more invigorated, live-band sound. Suggesting Stevens with…
Doug Gillard’s formidable body of recordings is as impressive as it is voluminous, encompassing his work as a key member of such notable combos as Guided by Voices, Nada Surf, Death of Samantha, Cobra Verde, and Gem, as well as an array of noted collaborations with the likes of Richard Buckner, Neko Case, Bill Fox, and The Hold Steady. Parallel Stride is the Ohio-bred, New York-based singer/songwriter/multi- instrumentalist’s fourth official solo album.
Although he’s well established as a luminary of the American indie-rock community, Gillard’s musical sensibility is firmly rooted in the time-honored old-school virtues of catchy melodic craft, emotionally resonant lyrics and emotion-charged performances. Parallel Stride standouts…
There’s no two ways about it – in terms of inventive, kaleidoscopic music, there’s few groups that get close to The Junipers. From 2008’s ‘Cut Your Key’, they burst onto the scene marrying the sounds of the deep-cut psychedelic 45s from your collection, to the joyful pop of Wings-era McCartney, Gilbert O’Sullivan and Emitt Rhodes, with the toytown symphonies of Curt Boettcher, Brian Wilson and Mark Wirtz.
Without all the fuss of fanfare, their albums wouldn’t so much get released, but rather, emerge from whatever multicoloured world The Junipers reside when they’re hatching up new music. People will tell you they’re just some good blokes from Leicester – but when these records appear, it feels more like they’re hanging…
White Fence has been many things since the project first oozed out of songwriter Tim Presley’s mind in the early 2010s. It existed as crumpled lo-fi renderings of Presley’s psychedelic pop songs on the earliest albums, sometimes dissolving into sound collages or bizarre excursions into experimental home-recording techniques. It was cleaned up for later albums, tucking the sonic strangeness into more formalized production but remaining stylistically and subjectively out-there on outings like the synth-drenched 2019 album I Have to Feed Larry’s Hawk.
Orange is the first White Fence album since 2019, and it represents some of the most straightforward tunes in the band’s winding catalog, with analog production and backing…
There’s an air of celebratory nostalgia around Metric at the moment. Last year, the Canadian quartet played their 2009 album Fantasies in full on tour and that seems to have lit a bit of a creative spark. The band’s 10th studio album, Romanticize the Dive, sees them reunited with Fantasies producer Gavin Brown, and even saw them return to the legendary Electric Lady studios in New York. From the outset, Romanticize the Dive seems like a return to Metric’s roots. While there was much to enjoy on Formentera and its 2023 sequel, you did sometimes long for that intoxicating spark to be lit again.
Opening track ‘Victim of Luck’ immediately seems to recreate that energy with a chiming guitar riff from Jimmy Shaw, while lead singer…
Coming on twenty into their run as one of Austin’s most consistently inventive rock bands, White Denim’s 13 feels less like a reset and more like a snapshot of everything they’ve learned how to do and how comfortably they can shift between those ideas. The band has always pulled from a wide range of influences, but here that approach is pushed even further. It’s a dense, groove-focused record that draws on rock, funk, soul, country, and more. The result is a record that moves quickly, sometimes abruptly, but rarely loses its footing.
“(God Created) Lock and Key” sets that tone early. The song shifts through a few different sections without warning, moving from tight, controlled guitar lines into looser, more unstable passages. It feels deliberate rather than chaotic…
In the process of burgeoning Chicago duo Friko (singer/songwriter/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger) playing out in support of their electric debut LP — including a 2025 tour with the Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse — they added guitarist Korgan Robb and bassist David Fuller to their official lineup. This four-piece version of Friko then headed to Los Angeles to record their sophomore album with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sleater-Kinney, Mogwai). While the band had been very hands-on in all aspects of preparing their debut, including co-producing, Congleton asked the now road-tested Friko to just “do their thing” and let him do the rest. The resulting Something Worth Waiting For is, if anything,…
Alternative pop-rock outfit, CHROMA, have put out their newest record 25 Forever. The Welsh trio decided to take a different approach when it came to the writing of this record. Where their debut album, Ask For Angela, was a commentary of social-political issues, this record takes on a more personal approach as they look back and discuss life lessons most people will experience in their 20s. From relationships to mental health to existentialism, CHROMA have created something honest that gives off the vibes of talking about these same topics with a close friend, all against a soundtrack that you’ll find yourself dancing along to albeit unintentionally.
This is clear from the very start with opening track What! that opens with feedback…
Even on the first 30 seconds of Prism Shores’s debut EP the Montreal quartet’s preternatural gift for great guitar jangle is apparent. It’s all there: Crisply arpeggiated chords played with hints of echo and distortion, plus a heaping helping of melancholy — catchy, comforting, a cozy jacket with its collar upturned on an overcast day.
Thirty seconds does not a catalog make, of course, and Prism Shores have been gently pushing their sound outward ever since. Their debut full-length, 2022’s Inside My Diving Bell, added a bit of post-punk heft by turning up the rhythm section, while last year’s excellent Out from Underneath found the band building a sturdier wall of sound by bringing in additional voices, synths, and strings for texture, and some crunchy shoegaze swirl.
…this Record Store Day, April 18, 2026, Merge Records is reissuing ‘Words of Wisdom and Hope’, the 2002 album by Teenage Fanclub and Jad Fair. Includes two bonus tracks that were originally part of a limited 7-inch single “Always in My Heart” and “Rock Me Tonight.”
The line of musicians waiting to work with Jad Fair goes around the block. But you can see the line move; such is the prolific nature of the subdued dude. Words of Wisdom and Hope is, not surprisingly, exactly the sum of its parts. Teenage Fanclub is probably the purest pop act to get involved with Fair, and the result is easily the most straightforward album to have his name on it in some time, possibly ever. Please note, though, that this doesn’t mean it’s particularly…
Out on his own after making music with bands like Veronica Falls and Ultimate Painting, James Hoare has gone further down the rabbit hole in pursuit of the most understated, most intimate version of melancholy guitar pop possible. Under the name Penny Arcade Hoare plays his tender tunes softly in front of a tape machine, though really it sounds like he’s on the bed right next to you the listener the whole time.
His first record under this banner was 2024’s Backwater Collage and it was lovely in its preciseness and calm, mixing catchy melodies and production that never reached the red on the dials. Taking that sparse template and breaking it down even more, 2026’s Double Exposure is just as true and blue, even more so at times.
Winston Hightower is indisputably punk. That’s not just because he’s been a touring bassist for hardcore bands like Soul Glo, Minority Threat, and Twompsax. The Columbus-born musician first began self-releasing his music over a decade ago, and across countless releases — most of them hard to find these days — Hightower’s career so far has seen him subtly incorporate post-punk, rap, and jazz into his ramshackle indie pop. He’s accrued the type of vast, elusive catalog that seems requisite for a DIY legend in the making. Judging by his songs, he’s an outsider, but he’s also a deeply connected player in the Midwest’s underground scene. His fringe appeal and defiant spirit together position him to be a celebrated cult favorite in the future. A few decades from now,…
Despite its sound owing much to late-‘90s alternative – and that it’s coming two years on from her initial breakthrough – there’s something so beautifully ‘now’ about Little Miss Sunshine, this debut full-length from Eaves Wilder. Not the ‘now’ that one might imagine rapacious, cartoonish A&Rs to seek – that’s already been and gone, despite their efforts, if it even existed. But a ‘now’ that, among other things, has digitally-literate teens metaphorically crate-digging in a way that’s seen many a veteran act performing to audiences younger than their biggest hits; Olivia Rodrigo using her stage as a pseudo mixtape, Hayley Williams spilling her own guts across new material, and acts like Mitski, Wolf Alice and Wet Leg crossing over into pop spheres…
It’s been seven years since we last had a solo album from Joseph Arthur. But it’s not as if the singer/songwriter, perhaps most famously known for his single “In the Sun” (featured prominently in the satirical teen comedy, Saved, about Christian fundamentalism starring Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin) hasn’t been busy. Quite the contrary, as Arthur gets set to release an ambitious three album project created and honed over a six year period.
You’re Not a Ghost Anymore will come out in three separate musical movements: Faith, Heart and Fight. Arthur describes the records as “states of being” written across “collapse, recovery and return”, as opposed to three separate musical genres.
On his fourth album as Broken Chanter, Glaswegian singer-songwriter David MacGregor takes the title and thematic inspiration from Arpita Singh’s striking turquoise-blue etching of the same name, exploring and comparing an idealised world view (depicted by Singh) against the looming shadow of our increasingly dystopian reality.
On album opener ‘This Future Is Bright and I Don’t Want It’, grumbling bass, punchy drums, and drilling, intertwining guitars (from regular collaborators Charlotte Printer, Martin Johnstone, and Bartholemew Owl) create a mid-tempo post-punk backdrop for MacGregor’s emotive Scottish brogue – a must-listen for fans of Frightened Rabbit.
Across the rest of the record, the collective…