Indie Rock
The Mountain Goats Reveal New Single “Get Famous”: Stream
Next month, The Mountain Goats will drop their second album of the year, Getting Into Knives. A first preview came via “As Many Candles As Possible”, which featured contributions from Al Green’s own organist Charles Hodges. The indie outfit is now sharing another single in “Get Famous”. While most wish for popularity and success, The Mountain Goats are making us seriously reconsider these lofty dreams. The new song encourages listeners to follow their ambitions, but paints fame as something not at all worth coveting. Or as a press release succinctly puts it, frontman John Darnielle sings the title “as if it were a curse.” “Cold, grey world/ All these obedient sheep/ They act like they know, but they’re all sound asleep/ You arrive on the scene like a message from God/ Listen to the people ...
Phoebe Bridgers Performs Three Punisher Songs on CBS This Morning: Watch
Phoebe Bridgers has kept up her prolific streak into September. After taking part in a Daniel Johnston livestream tribute, playing a Tiny Desk (Home) concert in a miniature Oval Office, and covering Radiohead in a church, Bridgers stopped by CBS This Morning over the weekend for a Saturday Sessions performance. Bridgers delivered a trio of tracks off her latest full-length, Punisher, one of our favorite albums of the year thus far. Dressed in her now familiar skeleton suit, she sang “Garden Song”, “I Know the End”, and one of 2020’s best songs, “Kyoto”. Watch all three performances below. Earlier this summer, Bridgers contributed to a voters’ rights compilation alongside R.E.M., Hayley Williams, Angel Olsen, and others; teamed with Courtney Barnett to cover Gillian Welch’s “Everything...
Angel Olsen Covers George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” from Quarantine: Watch
The pressure to be productive while in quarantine continues to be very real, but Angel Olsen has made it look fairly effortless. In addition to rolling out a stellar new album, Whole New Mess, she’s spent the last few months sharing cover after cover. In March, she took on Roxy Music’s “More Than This”, followed by the Tori Amos original “Winter” in April. For her latest reworking, Olsen has tackled “Beware of Darkness” by George Harrison. Originally appearing on The Beatles guitarist’s All Things Must Pass album, the 1970 track was described by Olsen as “pretty great.” Her rendition, uploaded directly to IGTV late Thursday night, is similarly impressive in its vulnerability and starkness. “I’m just messing around like a tired sad shit,” Olsen wrote of her version, which was filmed in...
Finn Wolfhard’s Band The Aubreys Share New Song “Smoke Bomb”: Stream
Shortly after the breakup of their band Calpurnia late last year, singer-guitarist Finn Wolfhard and drummer Malcolm Craig decided to team back up to form The Aubreys, a new indie rock band that’s more influenced by Jay Reatard than The Strokes. Today, the duo is back with a brand new song under that moniker called “Smoke Bomb”, and it comes with an excellent on-brand music video, too. This is the second track we’ve heard from The Aubreys so far following “Getting Better (otherwise)”, their debut single. It doubled as a contribution to the soundtrack for thriller The Turning, too. Whereas that track was meant to be an angst-filled burst of fuzz, though, “Smoke Bomb” is full guitar-pop bliss, complete with scruffy feedback tones. In the music video for “Smoke Bomb”, Wolfhard and Craig photo...
Django Django Return with New Song “Spirals”: Stream
Although the pandemic continues to keep us apart, and political tactics seek to divide us, we’re all inherently connected as one human race. That’s the message British art-rock outfit Django Django want to remind us of on “Spirals”, their first single in almost two years. The track follows the group’s pair of 2018 releases, Winter’s Beach EP and full-length album Marble Skies, and picks up musically where those projects left off. With frontman Vincent Neff leading the way with a spell-like cadence, “Spirals” chugs along with propulsive energy until its guitars and drums lock into a looping groove. Its accompanying video, directed by Maxim Kelly, continues this spinning theme. Imagining Neff as something of a hybrid human and double helix, the clip “uses the image of DNA to muse on how...
The National’s Matt Berninger Reveals New Solo Song “One More Second”: Stream
We’re less than a month out from hearing Matt Berninger’s debut solo album, Serpentine Prison. In anticipation, The National frontman is giving fans another preview of the record with a new song called “One More Second”. Unlike recent single “Distant Axis”, which featured a momentous swell, today’s offering has more in common with the album’s mellow title track from back in May. “One More Second” is a mostly acoustic cut with the pacing of a country shuffle. Berninger’s fibrous guitar strums are elevated by crisp percussive taps, and eventually the song does take off into a pretty anthemic swing that orbits around a tickling keyboard solo. Lyrically, the tune is an entry in the timeless canon of “give me one more chance” love songs. In fact, according to a statement in the track’s YouTube ...
Sylvan Esso Shares Video for New Single “Frequency”, Directed by Moses Sumney: Watch
On September 25th, electropop duo Sylvan Esso will let loose their third studio album, Free Love. The follow-up to 2017’s What Now is being teased today with a new single dubbed “Frequency”, as well as its video directed by friend and fellow musician Moses Sumney. Here, Amelia Meath’s vocals roll gingerly over the track’s glitchy blips and beeps, rising and falling like a frequency wave. She sings about being irresistibly drawn to someone’s energy field, to the point that she’d like to be a part of it, too. This abstract idea is visualized pretty literally in Sumney’s corresponding clip. In it, a soaked Meath is seen dancing alone outside on a suburban lawn. Slowly but surely, though, more and more people — a delivery person, golfer, neighbor, etc. — are pulled into her orbit and join her ...
Djo (aka Joe Keery) Unveils New Song “Keep Your Head Up”: Stream
Joe Keery introduced us to his Djo musical moniker last year with his debut album, Twenty Twenty. Today, the Stranger Things actor returns with a new single encouraging you to “Keep Your Head Up”. A funky psych-pop tune that nods to George Clinton, the track aligns Djo with fellow experimental contemporaries like Jacob Collier. A heavy beat with a fat synth drone loop under a cacophony of dancing piano notes, swinging horns, and dazzling electronics in an intoxicating if heady mix. “Got to love yourself/ Go ahead touch yourself,” Keery sings on the opening verse. “Take that time alone before your heart belongs to someone else.” Take a listen via the “Keep Your Head Up” visualizer below. Editors’ Picks Keery will join The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne today (Wednesday, September 9...
beabadoobee Stays Present on New Single “Worth It”: Stream
Fake It Flowers is the forthcoming debut album from rising indie rocker beabadoobee, due out next month via Dirty Hit. One of the most anticipated of 2020, it’s been teased thus far with the brooding “Sorry” and Song of the Week “Care”. As a third preview, she’s now sharing a track titled “Worth It”. Additionally, beabadoobee has announced 2021 tour dates in the UK. On this new crunchy, grunge-inspired offering, the Filipino-British artist attempts to shake off the ghosts of a past relationship that have been distracting her from fully living in the present. The single reminds us of both the importance of letting our old traumas heal and the value in the here and now. In a statement, the musician also known as Bea Kristi says the track is “simply about teenage infidelity and the mistakes o...
Anna McClellan Announces New Album I saw first light, Shares Two Singles: Stream
Indie pop songwriter Anna McClellan has announced a new album titled I saw first light, set to arrive November 20th. To accompanying today’s news, the Omaha musician has shared two new singles, “Desperate” and “Pace of the Universe”. The record is McClellan’s third full-length to date and second for Father/Daughter Records following her 2018 album Yes and No. Early on in her career, the Nebraska-born singer-songwriter was cosigned by Frankie Cosmos, which gave her profile a boost and placed her in a league of comparable contemporaries. Like Cosmos and others such as Florist and Dear Nora, McClellan makes soft, relatively lo-fi twee pop with intimate subject matter and clever lyrics. Unlike those other acts, though, McClellan’s songs have a woozy and whimsical swing to them that’s distinctl...
The Cranberries on the 25th Anniversary of No Need to Argue
Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Radio Public | Stitcher This Must Be the Gig is joined by Fergal Lawler and Noel Hogan of The Cranberries. Formed in Limerick, Ireland in 1989, the two were joined by Hogan’s brother Mike on bass and later vocalist Dolores O’Riordan. Over the course of eight albums and 20 years, the group wrote some of the most memorable sing-along anthems of the ’90s, from “Linger” to “Dreams” to “Zombie” to “Salvation”, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Tragically, the group’s most recent record, 2019’s In the End, turned out to be their last as O’Riordan sadly passed away prior to its completion. But now, Fergal and the Hogan brothers are honoring their late friend and continuing the strength of their l...
Phoebe Bridgers Covers Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” in a Church: Watch
In addition to releasing one of the year’s best albums so far, Phoebe Bridgers has spent the summer months covering a number of iconic artists. In June, she shared her official recording of John Prine’s “Summer’s End”, which she then followed up with a rendition of Gillian Welch’s “Everything is Free”, done in collaboration with Courtney Barnett. Now, Bridgers has taken on an alt-rock classic in “Fake Plastic Trees”. The indie folk artist’s Radiohead cover came as part of the BBC Radio 1 program Phil Taggart’s Chillest Show. And chill it certainly was. Bridgers recorded her delicate version of The Bends original inside of a church with help from rising R&B star Arlo Parks, who provided icy piano accompaniment. Bridgers previously covered “Fake Plastic Trees” live in concert in 2017, as...
