In the late ’80s and early ’90s, The Darling Buds made a trio of very fine albums that flirted with noise pop, dance rock, and trip hop while ultimately coming across like first-class guitar pop. Since their return in the late 2020s they’ve continued making fine music, first with the Evergreen EP in 2017, now on 2026’s Same Sun/Same Sky. The band are in fine form, sounding tight and energetic with guitars that alternately jangle and bite. Andrea Lewis Jarvis’ voice doesn’t sound like it has aged a day; she presides over a batch of peppy rockers and swooning ballads like she’s been doing it non-stop for decades. As nice as it is that everything sounds really good, what’s even better is that their songwriting is on par with what it was in their prime, and maybe even…
Category: indie-rock
Philly’s Mopar Stars do a nice job stripping some great old alt-rock for parts, then rebuild them into something sleek and sporty. Their first full-length album, 2026’s Official Researchers of the NJ Devil, welds together the hooky power pop feel of vintage Teenage Fanclub, the beery, bleary, and wistful sound of the Replacements, and the chunky chord change rock of early Bob Mould. There are also traces of Built to Spill, Urge Overkill, Redd Kross, Bitch Magnet, and Matthew Sweet in there for good measure. What could have just been a fun game of spot the influence becomes something less obvious and more impressive as the sticky hooks, heart-felt vocals, and witty lyrics begin to pile up. Songs like “Only Bar in Town” and “Everyone Wants What I Got” don’t just sound…
Who needs a style when you’ve got the songs? We’re living in a musical landscape mediated by algorithmic overlords, in which listeners often seek to be soothed by (possibly evil) ambient tones, burrow deeper into (often frictionless) aesthetics they already like, and passively consume (AI-generated?) tracks suited for various lifestyle functions. People of taste have been decrying the public’s preference for familiar slop over challenging, adventurous, hard-to-categorize art from time immemorial, but in the music world, the streaming era has intensified the primacy of vibes over tunes. Mallory Hawk’s Chinook flies in the face of that conventional wisdom.
…Chinook is named for the helicopters that dotted the sky during Hawk’s childhood in…
Rock music and the world of nature may not seem the most obvious bedfellows, but for Jonathan Meiburg’s Shearwater they go hand in hand. Meiburg’s band are, after all, named after a type of seabird, and the trio’s back catalogue demonstrates their skill in exploring humanity’s relationship with the Earth. The fact that he’s also a qualified biologist and published author only adds weight to the band’s worldview.
Shearwater’s 11th album is possibly their most painstakingly constructed to date. Recorded over four years while travelling across three continents, The New World saw Meiburg assemble an ensemble including Shahzad Ismaily, Leo Abrahams, regular collaborator Thor Harris, and Malian musicians Mamadou Kouyate (ngoni),…
Welcomer’s Miles Sutton observes the world from a remove, delivering even intimate scenes from an ironic remove. Most of the time, he’s only half singing, through the verse injecting conversational lyrics with the barest tinge of melody.
Yet in the chorus, Sutton reveals a fascination with pop: the arrangements bristle with hooks and billow with strings, multi-voiced singing and rock instruments.
This is Sutton’s first full-length album as Welcomer, following a self-titled EP in 2022. The Wellington, New Zealand artist enlisted producer and engineer Jesse Austin-Stewart for this one, working with him to develop layered but buoyant orchestrations for these songs, which glisten and shimmer with trebly picking, swoops of…
The lo-fi, melancholic slowcore of Duster proves a magical fit with the atmospheric, pleasingly pastoral sampledelica of Dirty Art Club; they teamed together under the name Sooj to make the excellent Crusher. A drifting, meandering, and hazily trippy album, it’s made up of songs that are a soundtrack for staring out the window on a cloudy day wondering where it all went wrong. Or perhaps accompaniment for a long bike ride in the autumn haze of a late afternoon, twisting and turning down unknown streets losing oneself in the music. So, a lot like a Duster album, but somehow even more so. The lovely samples and washes of sound Matt Cagle (aka Dirty Art Club) fits between the strums, thrums, and croons of Clay Parton and Canaan Amber (aka Duster)…
Josh da Costa imagined his solo debut album New Wave Graveyard as a “greatest hits from a parallel universe, classic songs from an alternate reality.” He says, “Instead of trying to home in on one specific vibe or sound and capturing it over the course of, say, a month of my life, I chose to sort of chameleon my way through my own taste and record collection and try out different approaches to songwriting – as if I were more than just one artist.”
Anyone who’s witnessed Josh DJ around LA or checked out his Confusing Mix radio show on NTS will be familiar with his curious blends of music – Brussels micro-labels, Flying Nun favorites, and leftfield post-punk – and how they all somehow make sense together.
Remastered at Abbey Road, Ask Me Tomorrow (1995), Out of Tune (1998), Excuses for Travellers (2000), Spoon and Rafter (2003), and Puzzles Like You (2006) are available on standard black LP and CD, as well as in a 4AD exclusive slipcase featuring all five albums on clear vinyl, complete with an 8×10″ print. Ask Me Tomorrow features newly updated artwork with photographs by Colin Gray, while all of the other albums retain their original artwork.
Born from the ashes of Slowdive in 1995 by former members Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, and newly acquired drummer Ian McCutcheon, Mojave 3 began by recording six sparse, acoustic, vocally-driven tracks that stripped away the swirling guitar distortion that had once cloaked…
Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open album is receiving a special deluxe reissue for its 20th anniversary.
Eyes Open, originally released in April 2006, marks Snow Patrol’s fourth album. It features six singles, including “Hands Open,” “Set the Fire to the Third Bar,” “Open Your Eyes,” “Shut Your Eyes,” as well as the Top 10 hits “You’re All I Have” and “Chasing Cars.” The LP was the best-selling album in the UK at the time of its release, selling over one million copies. It also hit No. 9 on Billboard’s Top Rock Albums chart and is certified 8x Platinum.
“Chasing Cars,” the alternative rock band’s most iconic and biggest single to date, peaked at No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune also earned nominations for Best Rock Song at the 2007 Grammy Awards…
All the Beauty is Pete Yorn’s new album, arriving via Shelly Records. The 11-song release marks his third full-length collaboration with Jackson Phillips of Day Wave, continuing a creative partnership that has shaped Yorn’s recent run of records.
Built around Yorn’s signature mix of alternative rock and melodic indie songwriting, the album expands on the breezy, guitar-driven sound the pair established on Caretakers and Hawaii. The title track, released ahead of the album, sets the tone with a focus on staying present and recognizing moments of beauty in everyday life.
The record was produced by Jackson Phillips and Pete Yorn, with Phillips also handling engineering and mixing. Across its 11 tracks, All the Beauty balances understated arrangements…
Sydney’s Body Type — Sophie McComish, Annabel Blackman, Georgia Wilkinson-Derums, and Cecil Coleman — are a band who clearly don’t believe in hanging about. Two early EPs preceded their sparkling debut album, Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising, in May 2022, then, before anyone had quite caught their breath, Expired Candy turned up just over a year later in June 2023. Since then, though, the quartet have taken some time out, focusing on life and various side projects, which meant the wait for album number three, Tally, has stretched to a whole three years. By Body Type’s own hyperactive standards, that’s practically a My Bloody Valentine-sized gap.
But it’s been worth the wait. Tally is an album that fizzes with ideas, bristling with sly wit…
The Strokes’ stock is pretty high in 2026, definitely higher than it was in 2016, and maybe even 2006. This year marks the 25th anniversary of their classic debut, Is This It? Their recent tour, the band’s first in 20 years, saw them light up a multigenerational audience of young olds and old youngs. Their standing isn’t only based on nostalgia either: Though the last Strokes album, 2020’s The New Abnormal, got a little lost in the Covid malaise, its standout hit, “The Adults Are Talking,” has as many Spotify streams as “Last Nite.” Meanwhile, the biggest indie band around, Geese, is undeniably post-post-Strokes, even if the band members were still in their strollers back when Julian, Albert, Fab, Nick, and Nikolai owned the night. Not a bad legacy to keep rolling into…
Robyn Hitchcock has spent nearly six decades as a singer-songwriter and raconteur, thrilling fans with his wry, whimsical and often surreal view of the world. Now in his seventies, he returns with his 25th solo album, The Confuser, and it does not disappoint. Recorded in his adopted hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, the album features an excellent supporting cast, including Jeremy Fetzer on guitars, Todd Bolden on bass, and Eric Slick on drums and percussion. It was recorded by Brad Jones and includes guest appearances from Gillian Welch and Hitchcock’s former Soft Boys bandmate Kimberly Rew.
“When I decompose I will be part of everything,” announces Robyn Hitchcock on ‘I Am This Thing’, marvelling at the fragile wonder…
…Bonus CD featuring 4 extra tracks.
London trio Mary in the Junkyard cheekily dub their sound “weepy chaos rok”, but they often summon something far more: an intricate magic weaved from vocalist and guitarist Clari Freeman-Taylor’s poetic, observational eye and freewheeling arrangements, equally informed by wiry math-laden contemporaries and elegant classical stylings. After a tireless couple of years and adventures stateside (a two-month tour with Wet Leg included), Mary in the Junkyard have gone from courting Corsica buzz to counting fans in Marina Abramović.
Facing their long-awaited debut upon this new foundation, Role Model Hermit opens self-reflexive: “It is yours babe, you deserve it,” Freeman-Taylor pronounces on ‘Mantra III’,…
If you make an album that sounds different to what you’ve done in the past, listeners will complain that it doesn’t sound like your previous work. If you make an album that doesn’t stray from the path, however, listeners will then criticize you for not having any new ideas. It’s getting harder and harder to please anyone any of the time, let alone some people some of the time, so what exactly is the solution? On their third studio album, Vancouver-via-Vernon’s Mock Media might have perfected their masterplan: sound like everybody and nobody else simultaneously.
While plenty of bands will be afraid to leave their comfort zone out of fear that they’ll create something misaligned with their established sound, this is a band that already existed…
Swapmeet is a collective of four singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalists (Venus O’Broin, Maxwell Elphick, Jack Medlyn, and Josh Doherty) from Adelaide, Australia, who had experience in other bands before coming together around the time they graduated from high school. They enjoyed a steady rise throughout the early 2020s, from a band that made records as birthday gifts for friends to becoming a touring act and being named Best Emerging Artist at SXSW Sydney. On the strength of their 2024 debut EP, they became the first international act to be signed to Los Angeles indie label Winspear, home of similarly heartfelt, overcast acts like villagerrr, Slow Pulp, and runo plum. Their debut album, Mount Zero‘s understated mix of lo-fi, Midwest emo, and dreamy…