Indie Rock
Song of the Week: Haviah Mighty Channels Her Jamaican Heritage on “Obeah”
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, rapper Haviah Mighty channels her Jamaican Heritage on “Obeah”. Multiculturalism asks us to acknowledge and embrace the diversity within our own communities. Most of us try to live out that idea, recognizing that others experience the world (even the same community) differently than us and draw from different sources and traditions to cope with the daily challenges that we all face. That’s the crux of “Obeah”, the latest song by hip-hop artist and 2019 Polaris Prize winner Haviah Mighty, who our own Wren Graves describes as “one o...
Alex Lahey and Gordi Join Forces on New Collaborative Single “Dino’s”: Stream
Australian indie rockers Alex Lahey and Gordi have teamed up on a new collaborative single. It’s called “Dino’s” and it comes with a cinematic music video that brings the song’s lyrics to life. Stream it below. For nearly three years now, Lahey and Gordi have been steadily chipping away at creating this song. According to a statement from the two artists, “Dino’s” was inspired by the East Nashville dive bar of the same name, which both of them frequented while touring in support of their latest albums, The Best of Luck Club and Our Two Skins respectively. Once the ongoing coronavirus pandemic brought live shows to an indefinite halt, they were eager to revisit the special mood cultivated at places like Dino’s through song. “We wrote it on a very humid summer’s day in Nashville before ...
Cherry Glazerr Release New Song “Big Bang”: Stream
Cherry Glazerr have returned with a new song called “Big Bang”. For this one, the Los Angeles garage-rock band continue to move in the poppier direction that their last couple singles have hinted at. During Cherry Glazerr’s breakout years in the mid-2010s, the band, led by frontwoman Clementine Creevy, were standouts in the West Coast garage and surf revival. Their 2014 album Haxel Princess helped define that era, but 2017’s Apocalypstick and 2019’s Stuffed & Ready saw the band develop into a bigger, fuller rock sound akin to groups like White Reaper and Bleached. Then, at the end of 2019, the group collaborated with their former tourmates Portugal. The Man on a track called “Call Me” that had a much sleeker sound. After a year of radio silence, they dropped a ...
Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett Are Finally Releasing Their Score to Spike Jonze’s Her
In 2013, Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett wrote the score for Spike Jonze’s Oscar-nominated film Her, which starred Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. For whatever reason, the soundtrack was never properly released either digitally or physically, but next month that’ll finally change. The Canadian-turned-New Orleans indie-rock institution and their frequent collaborator have announced that they’re officially issuing the Her (Original Score) on digital, vinyl, and cassette formats in mid-March. The soundtrack, which was nominated for “Best Original Score” at the 2014 Oscars, will be broken up into 13 songs and come packaged with a unique album cover that’s not a mere crop of the film’s promo poster. Her was a strange sci-fi tale about a man who falls in love with a...
Phoebe Bridgers Talks SNL Guitar Smash and Marilyn Manson on CNN: Watch
Phoebe Bridgers has been the talk of the Internet this week thanks to an iconic Saturday Night Live performance and her “horrible” experience at Marilyn Manson’s house. Now, she has opened up about both of those moments in a new video interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour began the 14-minute-long TV segment by asking Bridgers about her SNL performance, specifically the guitar smash that has drawn both melodramatic criticism and praise. As it turns out, the whole thing was staged, all the way down to wielding a cheap guitar and using a fake monitor intentionally designed to collapse and shoot sparks. “I’ve always wanted to do it and when I mentioned it to the show, they built me this whole monitor that would look like it was exploded even if I wasn’t hitting it that hard,” expl...
In Defense of Phoebe Bridgers Smashing Her Guitar on Saturday Night Live
This past weekend, Phoebe Bridgers made her eagerly anticipated debut as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. During the final moments of her performance of “I Know the End”, a track from her buzzy sophomore album, Punisher, Bridgers went out with a bang — literally — when she repeatedly smashed her guitar into a monitor onstage. Unfortunately, the Internet being what it is, Bridgers’ epic moment of punk euphoria was clouded by curmudgeonly chatter. A simple search of “Phoebe Bridgers guitar” on Twitter brings up a litany of comments wondering why “that woman” had the nerve to “damage expensive property.” Others called the act pointless and even poked fun at Bridgers for apparently not being strong enough to have done more physical damage to the instrument. No matter how much doom scr...
Song of the Week: boygenius Reunite on Julien Baker’s Confessional “Favor”
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. While several stories over the past few weeks have reminded us that the entertainment world can still be very much a boys’ club in the worst ways imaginable, on the artistic side of matters, we’ve seen an undeniable shift in the recognition women are finally beginning to receive within the music industry, especially in the rock genre. Studies have shown that young women are not only picking up guitars at the highest rates ever, but they’re actually learning to play them in larger numbers than their male counterparts. No doubt it’s been partl...
Rostam Shares New Solo Song “These Kids We Knew”: Stream
Last month, Rostam set Amanda Gorman’s now-famous Inauguration poem to music using piano arrangements. The former Vampire Weekend member is back today, this time with a dazzling original song of his own dubbed “These Kids We Knew”. Stream it below. This new offering revolves around a musical pulse meant to reflect the innocence of youth and the impermanence of stability. According to a press release, Rostam wrote “These Kids We Knew” in a “fever-dream state” in March of last year — during which he was recovering from COVID-19 — while reflecting on the push and pull of societal responsibility. “I was thinking of three generations while I was writing this song,” he explained. “There’s a generation of adults who don’t see global warming as their problem because they think they won’t...
SLONK Channels His Inner Blur on New Song “Colin”: Stream
Bristol-based indie rocker Joe Sherrin has been making music under the moniker SLONK for quite some time now, all while playing in other bands like Fenne Lily, Milo’s Planes, and Let’s Kill Janice. Today, he’s sharing a new song called “Colin” and it sees him changing gears from his typical sound to embrace the anthemic side of synth pop. “This song came about a few years ago at a temp job where I didn’t know (and still don’t) what I was actually doing there,” explained Sherrin in a statement. “I knew what type of thing I was supposed to be doing on the computer, but had no idea what it meant or what its purpose was. ‘Colin’ is about the idea staying there forever, told through the eyes of the characters who I worked there with.” As bleak as being trapped in a dead-end job may be, SLONK ma...
Shovels & Rope Enlist Sharon Van Etten to Cover The Beach Boys’ “In My Room”: Stream
Shovels & Rope (photo by Todd Cooper) and Sharon Van Etten (photo by Ryan Pfluger) Shovels & Rope have teamed up with Sharon Van Etten for a cover of The Beach Boys’ “In My Room”. The track is part of an upcoming covers collection called Busted Jukebox Volume 3 that’s loosely inspired by the act of parenting. The first two installments of Shovels & Rope’s collaborative series arrived in 2015 and 2017, respectively, and both of those projects were loaded with guests like Brandi Carlile and Shakey Graves. Volume 3 has the cheeky alternative titled Busted Juicebox because all of the guests musicians are parents themselves, and the songs they chose to cover — from lullabies and American songbook standards, to R.E.M. and Janis Joplin cuts — are emotionally relate...
Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not Takes Us Back to Their Garage Days
Editor’s Notes: Consequence has been around long enough that so many of the new albums that originally turned us on to music are now celebrating their first milestone anniversaries. As we begin to reflect on these records, you can catch our updated assessments here. “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes,” Arctic Monkeys’ vocalist Alex Turner sings on the opening line of Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. It’s a somewhat ironic statement. The Sheffield indie rockers’ most recent album sounds nothing like The Strokes, especially the opening track “Star Treatment”. The 2018 record is infused with a lounge-jazz, yacht-rock persona with songs that follow Odyssean orbits rather than traditional verse-chorus patterns. With the Arctic Monkeys that fans are familiar with now, going back to their 20...
Madeline Kenney Reveals New Summer Quarter EP: Stream
Madeline Kenney has unveiled the Summer Quarter EP via Carpark Records. Stream it below using Apple Music or Spotify. The follow-up to 2020’s Sucker’s Lunch, Summer Quarter was recorded in the isolation of quarantine, at a time when Kenney had hoped to be touring. The indie songwriter used the extra hours to develop new skills — namely behind the boards. While her first three records were produced by Toro y Moi and members of Wye Oak, this time Kenney took on all the producing duties herself. As she explained on Twitter, “i recorded it in my basement and it’s my first release produced solely by me. it’s weird and different but i like it.” Editors’ Picks The four-track effort is headlined by “Wasted Time” which comes with a music video directed by Kenney. With the aid o...
