Indie Rock
Song of the Week: BROCKHAMPTON and Danny Brown Call Out the Haters on Return Single “BUZZCUT”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, BROCKHAMPTON make their epic return with the help of Danny Brown. “BUZZCUT” marks the first official release from BROCKHAMPTON, the sprawling 13-member hip-hop group, since 2019. After dropping a series of limited-time songs throughout 2020, the band have now made an official return with the assertive single, along with some help from Danny Brown. The undercurrent of the track is one of frustration, focusing on false dreams, haters and detractors, and dysfunctional family dynamics. Member Kevin Abstract leads the first verse and c...
Bloc Party’s Kele Announces New Album The Waves Pt. 1, Shares “Smalltown Boy”: Stream
Bloc Party founder Kele Okereke has announced a new solo album. It’s called The Waves Pt. 1 and it’s due out May 28th via his own label KOLA Records/!K7. To celebrate the announcement, he’s shared a single from the record dubbed “Smalltown Boy”. Stream it below. This is his fifth album under the name Kele, following his 2019 full-length 2042 and his musical soundtrack Leave to Remain from that same year. According to a press release, he created the record entirely on his own while holed up during quarantine. Most of the tracks draw their influence from film scores and classical music, while the lyrics seeks to transform the traditional topics of pop music into meditative passages. “We were due to start working on my second musical with the Lyric Theatre but when the lockdown...
Julien Baker Brings Us Close to Little Oblivions at Nashville’s Analog: Review
Got Enough Gas: There’s music that makes you think and music that makes you want to move, and there’s Julien Baker. The songwriter has an uncanny talent for considering the underlying motivations for her own feelings and actions, and the result is often visceral music that hypnotizes the attention of the listener and prompts self-reflection, sometimes feeling deeply difficult and deeply healing at once — which is maybe part of the point. Baker released Little Oblivions last month and received instant praise for its bold and self-conscious digs into complex questions of addiction, survival, mental illness, and second chances. The album marked an evolution for Baker’s music into a fuller band sound, after she probed the depths of acoustic alt-folk in her first two albums and united her talen...
The Decemberists Announce Three Livestream Concerts to Celebrate 20th Anniversary
Grab your earbuds and climb aboard because The Decemberists are setting sail on the world wide web. Today, the beloved indie folk group have announced a series of livestream concerts to celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band, after their previously announced anniversary tour was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was with truly heavy hearts that we announced the cancellation of this summer’s tour,” wrote frontman Colin Meloy in a letter to fans. “We really had hoped that we’d be able to play in front of you sweaty, singing thousands when we postponed the dates initially — and while there is every reason to believe that this pandemic may soon be a strange and bitter memory (yay vaccines! yay science!), it just isn’t wise to gather together in our sweaty, singing multitudes *qui...
UV-TV Get Lost in a “Distant Lullaby” on New Song: Stream
Now that spring is underway, there’s no better time to listen to UV-TV, a jangly indie rock band living in the heart of Queens, New York. Their music sounds like you’re driving to a party with your best friends, the windows are down, and that perfectly warm-yet-cool summer breeze is blowing all around. It’s hard to capture such a nostalgic feeling in music, but UV-TV manage to pull it off, and their latest track “Distant Lullaby”, out today, is no exception. Stream it below. From its opening drum crash onwards, “Distant Lullaby” is a radiant burst of power-pop joy. There’s some loose riffs, shoegaze guitar tones, comforting vocal harmonies, and a cowbell nestled into the background. It’s the “ba ba ba” vocal coos that steal the show in “Distant Lullaby”, though, but maybe that’s just becau...
beabadoobee Teams with The 1975 for Our Extended Play EP, Shares “Last Day on Earth”: Stream
Our new music feature Origins provides artists the opportunity to give fans unique insight into their latest track. Today, beabadoobee envisions the “Last Day on Earth”. Before the pandemic hit, beabadoobee was set to tour with Phoebe Bridgers and Dirty Hit labelmates The 1975. While that trek obviously never got on the road, the UK-based songwriter still managed to link up with 1975’s Matty Healy and George Daniel to collaborate on the follow-up to her excellent debut album, Fake It Flowers. beabadoobee is now previewing that effort, cleverly titled Our Extended Play EP, with the new single “Last Day on Earth”. Fans have long known of the mutual appreciation between bea and Healy, and the pair have been teasing their collaboration for some time. Our 2020 Rookie of the Year and T...
Manchester Orchestra on Life, Death, and the Afterlife
Kyle Meredith With… Manchester Orchestra Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher | Radio Public | RSS Manchester Orchestra masterminds Andy Hull and Robert McDowell sit down with Kyle Meredith to unpack their new album, The Million Masks of God. Together, they discuss how its themes of life, death and the afterlife were inspired by the passing of McDowell’s father and why the record plays like a seamless, rock opera. They also digress on their process of giving into jams, and detail what the plan is for the live version when the time comes to return to the stage. Kyle Meredith With… is an interview series in which WFPK’s Kyle Meredith speaks to a wide breadth of musicians. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Fr...
Madi Diaz Shares New Song “New Person, Old Place”: Stream
Nashville-based songwriter Madi Diaz has shared a new song, “New Person, Old Place”, and an accompanying video directed $ECK. Watch it below. Over a sparse acoustic guitar-driven arrangement, Diaz describes the process of moving on from a breakup. “You used to be able to dictate each feeling inside my head / Drag me through every trauma over and over again,” she sings. “Cause if I was crazy then I’d still be yours I’d always come back / You used to be able to, now you don’t do that.” In a press statement, Diaz elaborated on the process, saying “This was a moment I realized I wanted to start to learn how to do it not better, not worse, but just different… and then something shifted. Something in my heart finally knocked loose and I was breathing deeper. It’s hard as hell, breaking patterns ...
Low Cut Connie Announce Covers Album Tough Cookies: The Best of The Quarantine Broadcasts
Philadelphia rockers Low Cut Connie have announced a new compilation, Tough Cookies: The Best of The Quarantine Broadcasts, collecting cover songs recorded during the band’s twice-weekly live streams. It will be out on May 19th digitally and on vinyl. As frontman Adam Weiner explained in a press statement, the 23-track LP pulls from his Tough Cookies live stream project with guitarist Will Donnelly, which celebrates its one-year anniversary this month. It contains just a fraction of the more than 500 covers they have performed during the broadcasts. “Two weeks into quarantine, we ‘went live’ in my spare bedroom in South Philly to cheer up our fans. There was no script, no plan, just a couple schmucks trying every form of entertainment to try to lift people’s spirits,” Weiner said. “Now a y...
Warpaint Cover “Paralysed” for Gang of Four Tribute Album: Stream
As previously announced, Gang of Four co-founder Andy Gill was working on a retrospective of the band’s album Entertainment! before he tragically passed away last year. To carry on his work, Gill’s widow Catherine Mayer organized an impressive tribute album in his honor featuring cover songs by a wide range of artists. Today, she’s sharing one of her favorite cuts: “Paralysed” as played by Warpaint. For their contribution to The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, Warpaint use their trademark take on atmospheric pop to give “Paralysed” a haunting vocal performance, speckled guitar work, and one slinky bass line. Warpaint’s bassist, Jenny Lee, produced the track, which may explain why it has a similar feel to her solo album right on!. In a press release, L...
Alice Phoebe Lou Releases New Album Glow: Stream
Alice Phoebe Lou is back with her new album, Glow. Stream it via Apple Music and Spotify below. Glow is Lou’s third studio album and follows 2019’s Paper Castles. The 12-track effort includes the previously released singles, “Dusk” and “Dirty Mouth”. It finds the Berlin-based singer-songwriter embracing newfound vulnerability through her lyrics. In a statement, our former Artist of the Month detailed how falling in love and then having her heart broken during 2020 inspired the record, writing, “I used to feel quite self-conscious about writing love songs, but now I like the idea that your music can be a friend to someone, and make them feel as though they’re being related to. This album simply poured out of my heart and my subconscious, and there was no stopping the lovestruck nature ...
Alex Lahey Shreds on Cover of Faith Hill’s “This Kiss”: Stream
Australian indie rocker Alex Lahey has shared her own take on Faith Hill’s classic 1998 hit, “This Kiss”. Stream the cover below via Amazon Music. For her version of the country pop ballad, Lahey slightly speeds up the tempo and replaces the acoustic guitar with an electric. The cover transforms “This Kiss” into a straightforward rock tune and it absolutely shreds. “For years, I’ve had this big idea of doing an indie rock cover of Faith Hill’s ‘This Kiss,’ Lahey shared in a statement. “Two key changes, that iconic chorus, a million vocal harmonies — what more could you want? It was such a treat pulling this together with my mates Oscar and Jess as we navigated the depths of Melbourne’s lockdown last year and I’m so stoked that Amazon Music are putting it out perfectly timed with ...
