Category: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Living Hour Shares Fuzzy and Simmering “Wheel”

Acclaimed Winnipeg-based indie quintet Living Hour — Sam Sarty (vocals, multi-instrumentalist), Gil Carroll (guitar), Adam Soloway (guitar, vocals), Brett Ticzon (bass, keys) and Issac Tate (drums) — will be releasing their Melina Duterte, a.k.a. Jay Som-produced fourth album Internal Drone Infinity through Keeled Scales and Paper Bag Records on October 17, 2025. Initially known for their lush fusion of dream pop and shoegaze, the Canadian quintet have continually evolved throughout their history, gradually merging folk-inflected slowcore, fuzzy indie pop and hazy noise rock into a sound that’s expansive and emotionally piercing.

Internal Drone Infinity was recorded during the stark, isolating cold of a Manitoba/Winnipeg November. Duterte flew in the day after performing on Saturday Night Live with Boygenius, and the energy of that whirlwind transition seeped into record’s intimate yet vast emotional core.

Drawing from Yo La Tengo, Magnolia Electric Co., The Weakerthans, Feeble Little Horse, Yuck and DIIV, Internal Drone Infinity sees Living Hour reportedly crafting a striking sonic atmosphere, full of icy, melodic vocals, grainy textures, twangy warmth, screeching distortion and immersive percussion. Thematically, the album explores the cyclical process of observation, documentation and projection. While being a raw, commanding expansion of their long-held dreamy sound, the album’s material also gives voice to the quiet strength and simmering rage of the overlooked.

Before I forget, drums on two album tracks, “Wheel” and “Texting” were recorded by The Weakerthans’ Jason Tait at his Winnipeg home studio.

The forthcoming album’s first single “Wheel” is angsty and fuzzy, 120 Minutes MTV-era alternative rock-like track, which features arguably some of the biggest and catchiest hooks and choruses they’ve written or recorded paired with the band’s unerring knack for breezy melodies. But just underneath the surface, the song is a tale of simmering and uneasy rage about being taken advantage of — and unnecessarily being put in danger.

“The story of ‘Wheel’ begins with buying a car off Facebook Marketplace in BC,” the band’s Sam Sarty explains. “Turns out the car was junk, but I had no choice but to drive it home to Winnipeg. It took 3 days. I was driving through the mountains, and the headlights were so dim, and for a stretch there was nowhere to turn off. It felt like a weird, horrific video game–navigating the road and dodging danger and trying not to die. I also felt so deeply betrayed by all the men involved in the whole thing.  

“These men feel like a series of characters now. I felt so powerless in this weird system that prioritizes men and their opinions. In this song, I was able to imagine an alternate reality where I’m a vengeful spectator in these men’s lives. What if I had died on the road, and what if I came back and plagued them all with my powerful essence that they so easily dismissed, contorted and took advantage of in order to sell me a fucked up car?”

“I fantasized about how it would feel to ‘fall off the wheel’ and lean into this witchy, monstered realm of existence where men are de-centered. One where I would have no hesitation to put those men in the same danger they put me in.”

Filmed by Leigh Lugosi, the accompanying video for “Wheel” was shot on VHS and features the band performing the song in the studio, doing band hang out/photo shoot kind of stuff, as well as goofing off. And fittingly, it feels like it could have aired on 120 Minutes back in the day.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Silver Relics Share Hook-Driven “Same Old Tune”

Founded by singer/songwriter Alex Sepsis back in 2017, the New York-based indie outfit — Sepassi (vocals, guitar), Garrett De Temple (bass) and Hitomi Nakamura (drums) — quickly established a sound that saw them effortlessl blending classic and modern rock influences that included The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Nirvana on their full-length debut, 2019’s Generic. 

The trio’s latest single “Same Old Tune” was recently released through Brooklyn-based A Diamond Heart Production. The new single sees the band crating a sound that seemingly draws from and blends the Madchester scene, Nirvana and 90s shoegaze while continuing to showcase a band with an unerring knack for incredibly catchy hooks and rousingly anthemic choruses.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: grandson Shares a Politically Charged and Anthemic Ripper

Jordan Benjamin is the Los Angeles-based creative mastermind behind the rising indie rock project grandson. Benjamin’s highly-anticipated sophomore grandson album, the Mike Crossey-produced INERTIA is slated for a September 5, 2025 release through XX Records/Create Music. The album reportedly marks an urgent, unfiltered chapter for Benjamin as an artist and songwriter, who’s operating on his own terms and speaking truth to power.

INERTIA‘s second and latest single “SELF IMMOLATION” is a Rage Against the Machine-meets-Incubus-era nu metal bruiser that sees Benjamin pairing a punchy and impassioned delivery with pummeling boom bap-like percussion, bursts of DJ scratching and a rousingly anthemic and mosh pit friendly, Tom Morello-like crunchy power chord-driven hook and chorus. Thematically, the song sees the rising Los Angeles-based artist unpacking what it means to have a cause to fight for — and to potentially die for.

“’Self Immolation’ was inspired by the Palestinian liberation movement across college campuses, inspired by the late Aaron Bushnell who gave his life in protest of the actions of the very military he served, inspired by the dead students of Kent State 1970, and written about what it means to have a cause to live for, to die for,” Benjamin explains. “I wrote it with my friends, each of us playing an instrument live together, in a stoned, free, creative place in Andrew’s studio one afternoon, and it was a feeling we locked into across the whole album. It was a blast to create, and we all felt a great deal of purpose and meaning in the session that day.” 

The accompanying video for “SELF IMMOLATION” is split between Benjamin and his backing band performing the song as two funereally-dressed women headbang and mosh behind him, edited footage from Kent State, protests, uprisings and fires.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Total Wife Shares Woozy “second spring”

Over the past decade, the experimental Nashville-based duo Total Wife — Luna Kupper and Ash Richter — have firmly cemented as fixtures of both the Nashville and East Coast DIY scenes.

The duo’s fifth album, Come Back Down is slated for a September 25, 2025 release through Julia’s War Recordings. Come Back Down is the follow-up to 2023’s in/out and builds upon their varied and rich catalog, while featuring the previously released 0 EP tracks “naoisa,” and “(dead b).”

The album’s latest single “second spring” is a woozy track that features fuzzy and churning guitars paired with syrupy sweet, ethereal melodies. At its core, the song evokes both the hope of new beginnings and the unease and anxiousness of what those new beginnings will actually mean for you and your life.

“Ash started the lyrics for this song in early spring of 2020, and worked them out over the next few years before Luna wrote this song, which helped her finish them,” the Nashville-based duo explain. “Hard to remember, but flowers will bloom with or without you,” is from the same poem that “Reveal Sky,” was written from (total wife Self-Titled LP, “It’s easy to forget that it’s spring, staring through grey-blue drywall”).“

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sex Week Shares Brooding and Lynchian “Lone Wolf”

Brooklyn-based indie duo Sex Week — collaborative and romantic partners Richard Orofino and Pearl Amanda Dickson — can trace their origins back to 2022: Orofino, a prolific musician and producer since he was in grade school, feel in love with Dickson’s taste through a wildly eclectic playlist she made for his roommate. Orofino excelled at, “honing structural strangeness into something more recognizable,” as he put it. And Dickson’s precocious perspective and natural appetite for the stranger corners of music was an uncannily natural fit.

Their innate creative chemistry led to the whirlwind writing and recording of their self-titled, debut EP, which received praise from Rolling Stone, PAPER Magazine, Nylon Magazine, Paste Magazine, Consequence and a lengthy list of others.

The Brooklyn duo’s recently announced new EP Upper Mezzanine is slated for an August 1, 2025 release through Grand Jury Music. “The approach for Upper Mezzanine felt more inquisitive,” Sex Week’s Pearl Amanda Dickson says. Where the music of their debut felt like momentary glimpses of something scary and exciting, the EP reportedly feels far more visceral, each track a focused punch delivered directly from the gut. “I still want people to be singing along and taking the melodies away with them, but the darkness of the EP is obviously there,” Dickson says. “The world is scary right now. I’m scared in lots of ways, and I think that omnipresent feeling definitely snuck into Upper Mezzanine.” 

The duo’s DIY ethos sees them firmly dedicated to helming multiple aspects of each release, including designing the art and making music videos themselves. But the EP sees Dickson learning to use her novel songwriting approach as a sort of superpower. “It’s not second nature to me yet,” she says. “So I’m always wanting to do more and be more involved than I have the capability to. And somehow at the same time, I still have the gusto to say ‘no that’s not it’ or ‘yes, that’s it.'”

The EP also sees Orofino continuing to harness his ability to make the alien feel somehow universal. “I feel it stretched me out wide creating these songs with peal and it just made me feel excited and hopeful that things can be weird and also totally accessible if you allow yourself to just be open.”

Upper Mezzanine‘s latest single “Lone Wolf,” is a brooding and eerily atmospheric tune that simultaneously channels David Lynch soundtracks and Me Moan and Carnation-era Daughn Gibson with the song featuring swirling, spectral harmonies, reverb-soaked twangy guitar. The duo’s individual verses capture an uneasily tense relationship at the brink.

The duo explain that “‘Lone Wolf’ is about communication and testing the limits of a relationship.” The accompanying self-directed video for the new single is fittingly a Lynchian fever dream.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Berlin’s Nilipek. Shares Expressive and Expansive “Yalan Söyledik”

Turkish-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter Nilipek. has developed a sound and approach that has shaped the landscape of Turkish language alternative music for the past decade. Her critically applauded debut, 2015’s Sabah marked the arrival of a unique voice in the scene.

Since then the Turkish-born, Berlin-based artist has continually evolved, exploring new textures and sonic landscapes. 2017’s Döngü and 2020’s Mektuplar found Nilipek. embracing a decided shift towards a richer, more layered sound that blended introspective lyrics with bold, experimental arrangements.

Her striking reinterpretations of Turkish classics like “Gözleri Aşka Gülen” and “Bir Gün Beni Arzularsan Gel” helped to further cement her reputation for reimagining familiar songs in unexpected ways. Building upon a growing profile, much of her work has appeared in popular TV and streaming series, like 2019’s One Love Two Lives and Halka which have helped introduce her sound to a much wider audience. She has also collaborated on several boundary-pushing efforts like “Castles” with French indie pop artist Oscar Anton and “Vazgeçtim” with Turkish producer Taner Yücel, expanding her creative universe beyond the lines of genre and geography.

Nilipek.’s fourth album, last year’s Uydurduğumuz Oyunlarla (“The Games We Made Up”) was arguably one of the more interactive and emotionally resonant batches of material she’s written and recorded to date that sees her weaving poetic Turkish lyrics with cinematic arrangements and haunting melodies.

Album single “Yalan Söyledik” manages to recall PJ Harvey and Juana Molina with the song being anchored around an expansive arrangement with cinematic flourishes paired with Nilipek.’s sultry delivery. The song evokes a complex and confusing emotional landscape with seemingly lived-in sensibility.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Smut Shares Expansive and Anthemic “Waste Me”

After spending years in the Cincinnati DIY scene, Smut — currently Tay Roebuck (vocals), Andie Min (guitar), John Steiner (bass), Sam Ruschman (guitar) and Aidan O’Connor (drums) — caught the attention of Bayonet Records, who signed the band and released their sophomore album, 2022’s critically applauded How the Light Felt. The album brought the band to Chicago, a city with more room for their growing sound. 

But despite their early successes, they still faced the struggles of the modern working musician: instability, financial precarity, objectification and more. The band channeled a period of touring, personnel changes and personal upheavals into their third album, Tomorrow Comes Crashing. 

Officially dropping today, through Bayonet Records, Tomorrow Comes Crashing marks the band’s first recorded output with O’Connor and Steiner while seeing the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love.

The band specifically focused on capturing the big emotions that come with falling in love with music for the first time. The result is ten of what may arguably be their most intense, bombastic and focused songs to date.

The Chicago-based band recorded the album’s material “as live as they could,” alongside Momma‘s Aron Kobayashi Ritch in a Red Hook, Brooklyn-based studio over the course of a breakneck 10-day session. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married, with the rest of the band by their side. 

“We have so much energy right now,” Smut’s Roebuck says. The recording sessions were a true labor of love — driving from Chicago with all their equipment, returning from 12 hour studio days to sleep on friends’ couches and floors, Roebuck completely blowing her voice by the end. Fittingly, the album is culmination of the band’s long-held DIY spirit — with the band creating a record that encompasses the intensity, moodiness and emotions of their journey so far. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “Syd Sweeney,” a song inspired by and named after the actor that describes the profound strangeness to be a woman, and how easily as a woman it is to be constantly misunderstood and misconstrued.

  • “Touch & Go,” a full-throated, 120 Minutes MTV-era power ballad that showcases the band’s knack for pairing rousingly anthemic hooks with, big riffs and earnest, lived-in lyricism and songwriting.

Tomorrow Comes Crashing‘s latest single “Waste Me” continues a run of hooky and anthemic material that recalls 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock — but under the big power chords and arena rock swagger is a softness that’s feminine but also thoughtful, lived-in and deeply earnest while arguably being the most dynamic, expansive and The Cure-like song they’ve written and recorded to date.

“Waste Me” is inspired by Greek mythology. “I wanted to write about ego, about building people up in our minds to unreachable heights, and pride,” Smut’s Roebuck explains,. “The story of Icarus was really ripe to elaborate on so I just extended the story. What if Icarus lived? What if someone thought he was the answer to their prayers?”

The accompanying video by Michael Fanos features collage-styled animation loosely based on the song’s lyrics.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Brisbane’s The Valery Trails Share an Anthemic Ode to Nostalgia and Aging

Formed back in 2011, Brisbane-based indie rock outfit The Valery Trails — currently, Andrew Bower (vocals, guitar), Sean Bower (bass), Dan McNaulty (drums) and longtime collaborators Screamfeeder‘s Tim Steward (guitar, vocals) and We All Want To‘s Skye Staniford (vocals) — traces their origins back to when the band’s frontman, Andrew Bower, an expatriate Aussie then residing in Houston, enlisted his brother Sean Bower and Dan McNaulty to start the band.

With the assistance of file-sharing through the internet and some occasional intercontinental travel, the trio develop da set of songs started in Andrew Bower’s home studio into the band’s full-length debut, 2012’s Ghosts and Gravity.

2014’s Buffalo Speedway and 2016’s Chameleon Bones further cemented their melodic and atmospheric rock sound while receiving college and speciality airplay in the States and critical applause from media outlets like PopMatters, The Big Takeover and many others across the globe.

Following Andrew Bower’s return to Brisbane in 2020, the band began their transition to writing in a much more conventional manner, gathering to to record 2022’s The Sky Is Blue with long-time collaborators Steward taking a more active role in the band while Staniford continued to provide backing vocals, as she has since the band’s second album. Radio airplay in several Aussie cities and an east coast tour helped to increase the band’s profile at home, while The Sky Is Blue charted on Stateside college and specialty radio.

The band’s extended lineup gathered last year to work on a set of songs, which would become the band’s forthcoming album, Winter Palace. Slated for a September 12, 2025 release, the Aussie indie rock outfit’s fifth album continues the eclectic approach of its immediate predecessor, with the material seeing the band explore synth-pop stylings, horn-driven retro flavors and some straightforward rock and roll sprinkled among the band’s long-held power pop crunch and jangle.

“Everything Is Temporary” Winter Palace‘s breakneck first single continues a remarkable run of hook-driven, crunchy, 120 Minutes-era MTV alt-rock-meets-Husker Dü -like rock. Thematically, the song leans a bit on familiar nostalgia while also viewing with a healthy and wizened suspicion of too much nostalgia. As LCD Soundsystem‘s James Murphy once sang “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five minutes of life” and maybe that’s a healthier way of looking back on things.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Flooding Shares Woozy and Bruising “depictions of the female body”

Fronted by Rose Brown, the Lawrence, KS-based indie trio Flooding formed back in 2021. That same year, the trio released self-titled full-length debut, which featured fan favorites “Insure Me, Procure Me” and “Delayed Gratification” and an attention grabbing sound that ranged from whispers and airy guitar riffs to intense lyricism and distorted blasts of noise.

The Kansas trio’s sophomore album, 2023’s Silhouette Machine received praise from Rolling Stone, Treble Zine, New Noise Magazine and others for a heavy soothing and otherworldly sound that brought in pummeling drums and guitars, just when the listener was getting comfortable.

Flooding kicked off the year, opening for Los Angeles-based outfit Cryogeyser‘s national tour. And building upon that momentum, the trio will be releasing the object 1 EP on July 11, 2025. The EP, which will feature the previously released “your silence is my favorite song” reportedly sees the Lawrence-based trio infusing pop-leaning songwriting into their sound, trading spoken word for melodies and thinking like pop stars when cultivating the energy of their live show.

The EP’s latest single “depictions of the female body”  is a bruising and grungy bit of 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock that delves into the hope and desperation of unreciprocated desire, capturing the woozy and bitter ache of heartsickness in a deeply lived-in fashion.

“Sexual fantasies are a form of hope,” Flooding’s Rose Brown explains. “If you’re ever horribly depressed, you should try having a crush on someone.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Singapore’s Blush Shares Deceptively Upbeat “X My Heart”

Slated for an August 1, 2025 release through Kanine Records, rising Singapore-based indie outfit Blush‘s sophomore album Beauty Fades, Pain Lasts Forever sees the band with a revamped lineup featuring Soffi Peters (vocals), Daniel Pei (bass), Sobs‘ Darrell Laser (guitar) and Forests‘ Jared Lim (guitar, production).

Continuing the “tangled family tree” collaboration of the contemporary Singaporean indie scene, the album features songwriting contributions from Peters, Laser and Lim with the material showcasing subtle influences from the latter two bands. The album reportedly finds the members of Blush attempting to create pristine pop that simultaneously explores life’s bittersweet moments while featuring intricately crafted arrangements that swirl between dreamscapes and noise.

Yesterday, the band announced their signing to Kanine Records while sharing Beauty Fades, Pain Lasts Forever‘s latest single “X My Heart.” “X My Heart” is an undeniably sunny yet ironically deceptive bit of pop that sees the band pairing jangling guitar and a catchy hook and chorus with a deeply melancholy and heartbroken lyrics.

Shot, directed and produced by Goh Koon How, the accompanying video for “X My Heart” is viral visual that sees its protagonist take spiral from wistful lovesickness into murderous and obsessive delusion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Beth Gladden Shares Rousingly Anthemic “Subdued Madness”

Beth Gladen is a Cleveland-born, Miami-based singer/songwriter, musician, producer and audio engineer, who works and records out of her Miami-based studio, Sweet Spot Recording.

Following on the heels of “Re-birth,” Gladen’s latest single “Subdued Madness” is a decided change in sonic direction. “Subdued Madness” is a hard-charging and anthemic, 1990s grunge/120 Minutes MTV-era rocker, featuring fuzzy power chords, woozy and eerie bursts of keys thunderous drumming, a supple bass line and some enormous, arena rock friendly hooks and choruses paired with Gladen’s impassioned shouts and crooning. Play loud, reminisce about the 90s if you were around then and rock out.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bedolina Shares Rousingly Anthemic “We Are the Clock Ourselves Again”

Ken Gould is a Philadelphia-based singer/songwriter, musician, frontman and creative mastermind behind the emerging, experimental rock project Bedolina. The project’s name is derived from the Bedolina Map, a rock in the Italian Alps engraved with a complex topographical map and petroglyphs of people and animals amidst villages and roads, created between 1000 and 200 BC.

The Philadelphia-based band can trace its origins back to just before COVID-19 lockdowns: Gould brought four songs to Miner Street Recording‘s Brian McTear (Kurt Vile, Sharon van Etten) and Matt Poirier. When pandemic lockdowns caused the world to grind to a halt, Gould was allowed the opportunity to create a new, diverse set of introspective songs.

Tour cancellations allowed The War on Drugs‘ Charlie Hall (drums) and Robbie Bennet (drums), along with Dr. Dog‘s Frank McElroy to participate in the recording sessions for the material that would eventually comprise the band’s recently released sophomore album Sun and Flamingoes.

Sun and Flamingoes touches upon themes of surrealism, fascist dystopia and the unsettling nature of the modern world, while socially, the album’s material sees Gould and company establishing a sound that weaves together elements of experimental electronica, indie rock and classic pop among others.

The sophomore EP’s first single “We Are the Clock Ourselves Again” is a woozy rock anthem that showcases Gould’s unerring knack for pairing rousing and remarkably catch hooks and choruses with a relentless, driving rhythm and Dire Straits-like guitars. Featuring The War On Drugs’ Robbie Bennett (keys) and Charlie Hall (drums), “We Are the Clock Ourselves Again” as Gould explains is about “perceiving life through your innate sense of right and wrong.” Highlighting self-reliance, the song encourages those listening to march to the beat of their own “clock.”