Tag: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Josh da Costa Returns with Shimmering “Shireen”

Los Angeles-based artist Josh da Costa was a fixture in the early 2010s Brooklyn scene. Covering music back then, it seemed as though anyone could start a band or a project — and just about everyone did. And they all played at hundreds of now, long-shuttered venues like Cameo Art Gallery, Glasslands, 285 Kent, The Palisades, The Grand Victory, Trash Bar and countless others. da Costa’s first band Regal Degal toured with Real Estate and DIIV and opened for The Pop Group. (Unsurprisingly, I wrote about Regal Degal on this site back in 2013. Yes, this site’s early days y’all.)

When Regal Degal split up, da Costa relocated to Los Angeles. The old Craftsman house he shared with Geneva Jacuzzi, Shags Chamberlain, James Ferraro and Daryl Johns was a paradise for “freaks and friends,” as well as artists and musicians, who constantly wandered in for a jam session or for a hang. At the time, he played drums with Drugdealer and MGMT and he formed CMON, who released an album through Mexican Summer. (I saw CMON open for Jorge Elbrecht back in 2018! So I’m familiar with da Costa and his work.)

The party came to an abrupt end when the Craftsman burned down “in a blaze of glory,” set alight by a serial arsonist and the pandemic forced CMON, much like countless other acts, to cancel a big tour. da Costa’s serious relationship also ended. But for him, it wasn’t all disaster: his friends supported him after the fire, he met someone new and the pandemic meant that he finally had the time to revisit music from his adolescence and “get deep into some of the great I’d had lying around for years but overlooked.”

da Costa’s full-length debut, New Wave Graveyard is slated for a Friday July 24, 2026 release through Stones Throw Records. He imagined the album as a “greatest hits from a parallel universe, classic songs from an alternate reality.” “Instead of trying to hone in on one specific vibe or sound, I went through my own taste and record collection and tried out different approaches — as if I were more than just one artist,” he explains. While drawing from different styles and genres, the album’s material is anchored in how he crystallizes these very different approaches into something singular distinct, crafting a stylish record that defies easy categorization.

If you’ve been lucky to catch da Costa DJ around Los Angeles or have caught his Confusing Mix radio show on NTS, the album’s album overall aesthetic won’t come as a surprise. As a DJ and radio host, he has an uncanny knack for finding curious records from all over the place — music from Brussels-based micro-labels, Flying Nun Records favorites and left field post punk — and blending them in a way that somehow makes perfect sense.

Written over the course of several years, New Wave Graveyard was written during a transition period, a time when da Costa was “getting close to people and getting torn between the types of pleasure and discomfort all of that brings. Breaking people’s hearts, but mostly your own. And remaining excited about not just falling in love, but staying in love.”

Much like countless others, da Costa was drawn to LA’s “movie magic, bizarre music, sleazy sexy glammy druggy outsiders, and this blown-out bad vibe flipside to the California dream” – which interestingly enough, also describers New Wave Graveyard in a nutshell. The titular new wave graveyard is both a literal place (da Costa sometimes drives by his old burned-down house, which is still vacant) and a vibe, an elegy to forgotten fantasies and faded memories.

Nothing lasts forever: Bands start and break up. Friends flame out and lovers leave. Treasured spaces vanish. But the album reportedly bottles the sensation of being there, where the magic and cool shit happened — even if that place is completely imagined. It’s a celebration of strange people met once, but never forgotten, of shows and parties you attended and those you wished you had, of being young and earnest, and a little bit weird.

New Wave Graveyard will include the previously released, shimmering electro pop ballad “96 Year Old Girl” and the album’s last pre-release single, “Shireen.” “Shireen” is a a bit of XTC and Flying Nun Records-like jangle pop, anchored around a shimmering 12 string guitar and da Costa’s unerring knack for crafting a remarkably catchy hook. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Shireen” sounds as though it could have been released in 1983 or so — but with a subtly modern production.

Directed by Ambar Navarro, the accompanying video for “Shireen” features da Costa as a sort of unseen narrator to an 80s teen movie that quickly turns into a campy horror movie featuring a blood-thirsty vampire/werewolf.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOHN DORIAN Shares Shimmering “LOVE I REMEMBER”

New Audio: JOHN DORIAN Shares Shimmering “LOVE I REMEMBER”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Twin Temple Shares Swooning and Lush “Doomed Lovers”

Formed back in 2017, Twin Temple — married couple Alexandra and Zachary James — are an acclaimed Los Angeles-based duo, who specialize in a new sub-genre and style that they’ve dubbed “Satanic Doo Wop,” which blends their practice of Satanism with a sound that’s influenced by The Platters, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and the like.

The Los Angeles-based duo have developed for being one of the contemporary scene’s most talked about crossover acts, earning widespread coverage from media outlets like Rolling Stone, NME, Billboard, American Songwriter, Stereogum, Consequence, Revolver, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Loudwire, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and a long list of others, and for being one of the most provocative acts out there right now. Their uncompromising artistic vision routinely sparks much larger and more serious conversations about artistic freedom, religious freedom, freedom of expression, censorship, the role of controversy in art, and on a broader sense, the wider role art plays within the cultural landscape.

Some of y’all, will know of the duo after Charley Crockett abruptly dropped the band from his shows this past week — specifically for their usage of Satanic imagery. This lead to Jack White publicly inviting the band to open for him in Hollywood in September. Serendipitously, the duo’s third album, Doomed Lovers is coming red hot off the heels of their latest controversy.

Slated for an October 9, 2026 release through their own Pentagrammation Records, the Shooter Jennings-produced Doomed Lovers was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound‘s iconic Studio 3 and marks the acclaimed duo’s boldest chapter to date. The album continues the band’s commitment to analog recording while expanding upon their sound with lush orchestral arrangements performed by a 37-member orchestra. Yes, 37!

Born from one of the darkest periods of their personal lives, Doomed Lovers is reportedly their most intimate and emotionally revealing work to date. Expanding upon the cinematic scope of the sound that has won them acclaim while remaining rooted in the timeless sound and traditions of early rock ‘n’ roll, the album is their most ambitious and fully realized artistic statement so far.

“We poured everything into this new record that we made with Shooter,” says the acclaimed and controversial duo. “We wanted to push ourselves creatively and expand the production further than we have before, drawing inspiration from the lush orchestral productions of Roy Orbison, The Ronettes, and The Shangri-Las, and added in some Countrypolitan flair. We brought in some incredible musicians like Matt Chamberlain and Jay Bellerose, and a 37-piece orchestra. We wanted to make something as beautiful as we possibly could – of course with our dark spin on things.”

The truth is, this album was made during one of the darkest periods of our lives. We had been struggling with grief, health issues, addiction, and depression. But day by day, going into Sunset Sound, making music with incredible people who believed in us, and being surrounded by that creativity slowly brought us back to life. We started smiling and laughing again. I was becoming alive again. It connected us to why we fell in love with music in the first place and became our most personal album yet.”

Doomed Lovers‘ latest single, album title track “Doomed Lovers” features a lush, breathtakingly gorgeous, sculpted wall of sound-like production and arrangement beneath Alexandra James’ remarkably Patsy Cline-like croon singing confessional lyrics desiring an a consuming, all or nothing love along the lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and other Romantic-era literature.

The first time I heard the song, the first three or four thoughts that entered my mind were “holy shit, that’s fucking gorgeous!,” followed by “this sounds like it could have been a B-side to Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” and “Back in Baby’s Arms” or Roy Orbison’s “Only The Lonely” and “Crying,” followed by “I’d pay to hear Alexandra James read entries in the phone book.”

“This is the philosophical centerpiece of the album – a theatrical and confessional take on all or nothing love, the dark side of devotion and centuries old mythic literary Romantic themes,” the acclaimed duo explain. “It longs for a love so enduring and eternal that it ultimately consumes, obliterates, and drives one to madness and death. At its core, it asks the question – ‘What happens when your lover dies?’”

But what makes the song unique is that it rejects the conventional and culturally accepted answer… ‘I know I should tell you to find someone new,’ in favor of raw, unfiltered and selfish desire, things that would be shameful to speak in mundane reality.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Deep Sea Diver Tackles Massive Attack’s “Teardrop”

Seattle-based JOVM mainstays Deep Sea Diver fourth album, last year’s Billboard Heart, which featured “Shovel,” “Let Me Go” feat. Madison Cunningham and “What Do I Know” was released to critical applause internationally. The JOVM mainstays […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Julia Jacklin Teams Up with The Maes on Introspective “I Wish”

Acclaimed Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and musician Julia Jacklin will be releasing her highly-anticipated fourth album, the Robert Muiños and Jacklin co-produced, 10-song album  The Gem through 4AD Records digitally and on CD, cassette and vinyl on September 25, 2026. Exclusive color vinyl editions with retailers will include turquoise, green opal, ruby and rose quartz. Pre-order information can be found here.

When Jacklin first moved to Melbourne from Sydney back in 2017, she discovered a little bar on a back street in Collingwood, a suburb just outside of downtown, where bands pushed dining tables to the side and set up in a corner on the floor. She didn’t know anyone in town, but knew she wanted to make the city home, so she started hanging out there, facing herself out of her comfort zone. That pub was named The Gem. 

Eight years later, Jacklin had released three acclaimed albums, 2016’s Don’t Let The Kids Win, 2019’s Crushing and 2022’s PRE PLEASURE — and was looking to write and record her fourth. Her contract with her previous label had ended. She was searching for a manager. And with time on her hands, she decided that she would make her fourth album in Melbourne, something she’d never done before. 

She called up an old drinking buddy Robert Muiños, owner of Rat Shack Studios, which is just above The Gem and brought in her friends Jacob Diamond (guitar), Mimi Gilbert (bass) and Jess Elwood (drums). Recording happened in close quarter, in converted hotel room accommodation upstairs at the pub. Because The Gem was in a residential neighborhood, they couldn’t record late into the night for fear of bothering neighbors and sound bleed was a glorious constant: foot traffic to the hairdressers and lotto parlor next door and loud music from the bands and the kitchen staff downstairs. But if anyone needed a break during the sessions, they would head downstairs and watch a local band play. Jacklin and her friends even played two unannounced shows there to try out the album’s material before recording them. 

They originally thought they’d be able to finish the album in two weeks, like she’d always done previously, but this time that wasn’t the case. In fact, it took nearly a year of tinkering to arrive at something Jacklin could get behind, “The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was doing it almost in the dark, just trusting I was going to find something,” Jacklin says. While conjuring images of excavation, of reinvention, of trusting your instincts and surrounding yourself with the people and things that make life worthwhile, the album documents the songwriter’s journey back to herself. 

“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free. The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life,” says Jacklin. That theme underpins the album’s material. 

The album will include the previously released “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You)” and the album’s latest single, the album closer “I Wish” feat, Aussie folk sibling duo The Maes. Channeling Crosby, Stills, and Nash, “I Wish” features Jacklin’s gorgeous and expressive vocal and the Elsie and Maggie Rigby’s impeccable harmonies beneath strummed acoustic guitar. The song is an introspective and a bit melancholy note from one’s older, wiser self to their younger self, essentially saying “girl, if you knew then what you know now . . . ” There’s quite a bit of awe, forgiveness and love for the narrator’s younger self, full of the recognition of the things she experienced and survived made her into who she is now.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Nashville’s Hannah Cole Shares Bruising, “120 Minutes”-era MTV-like “MMA”

Covington, LA-born, Nashville-based artist Hannah Cole can trace the origins of her career to her childhood: She began writing songs and singing at six, despite the fact that there wasn’t much of a music scene in her hometown. After relocating to Nashville in 2019 for school, Cole was exposed to new sounds and possibilities — and given the permission to dream big. Much like Bully and Soccer Mommy, Cole found a way to merge a taste for heavier sounds with a studied sense of songwriting craftsmanship, juxtaposing brushing, distorted guitar with a cool, honey sweetened vocals and a punchy, melodic hooks.

Cole has released two EPs, 2023’s Big Bite and 2024’s Glisten. But her highly-anticipated full-length debut, the 10-song Switchbacks is reportedly a marked step in the Covington-born, Nashville-based artist’s development while showcasing her unique blend of style and technique. Slated for a September 4, 2026 release through Tight Knit, the album was recorded by Cole and her longtime collaborator and partner Joseph Kuhn in their home studio between 2024 and 2025, playing nearly every instrument. Aided by mixer Sonny Diperri, Switchbacks features a much wider and dense sonic palette than Cole’s previous releases with the material’s massive, cathartic splashes of sound specifically constructed with the live show in mind. Sonically, the album can be described as a blend of shoegaze and alternative rock with infectious pop melodies and strains of 90s nostalgia.

Thematically, the album’s material is a commentary on the pursuit of success and how to protect the pure joy and love that lives at our core. “Success is a moment that comes and goes,” Cole concludes, “but I think the joy and experience that comes with making music is something I can take with me forever.”

Switchbacks‘ lead single “MMA” features bruising wall of sound riffs and swirling shoegazer textures and thunderous drumming beneath Cole’s honeyed delivery, punchy melodic hooks and enormous choruses. Channeling Whip-Smart-era Liz Phair, L7‘s “Pretend We”re Dead,” and Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins, the song is a razor sharp take on the gamble of success, exploring the ugly side of the music industry through the image of Las Vegas: while being the so-called fight capital of the world, a rich and glamorous city with a seedy underbelly, surrounded by a void of sand.

After reading Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, which Didion explores the scummy underbelly of 1970s Hollywood, Cole began thinking about Nashville, often referred to “Nashveagas,” ”Reflecting on her experience in the industry, Cole says, “I’ve taught myself how to live outside of reality, how to put on a show.”

Fittingly, the video draws from 120 Minutes-era MTV and features edited footage of skateboarders wiping out hard, rodeos, people getting arrested and dreamily shot closeups of Cole among other imagery, It’s a fever dream that captures the strangeness of contemporary America.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Valery Trails Shares Hard-Charging and Introspective “Fragment Hanging 2026”

Last year’s Winter Palace saw the Brisbane-based outfit The Valery Trails — currently Andrew Bower (vocals, guitar, keys), Sean Bower (bass), Dan McNaulty (drums, percussion), Screamfeeder’s Tim Steward (guitar) and Skye Staniford (vocals) — continuing their trademark jangle and crunch while exploring some diverse styles and genres, including synth pop-stylings, horn-driven retro flavors and some straightforward rock.

This year has been busy for the Aussie JOVM mainstays: The Valery Trails side project Soviet Dust released their self-titled debut EP earlier this year. And the band will follow up last year’s Winter Palace with the forthcoming Down on Buffalo Speedway EP. Down on Buffalo Speedway sees the Aussie quintet resisting, re-imagining and recording or remixing a selection of tunes from 2014’s Buffalo Speedway. “Buffalo Speedway was an early high-water mark for the band, with a number of songs becoming setlist staples,” The Valery Trails’ Andrew Bower says, “With the current extended lineup including Tim Steward and Skye Staniford, the songs have evolved over the years, so the idea to re-record some tracks with the current lineup and reflecting the band’s current live sound has been in the back of our minds for a while.”

“The new tracks benefited from having creative input from the current extended lineup of the band, and the freedom to experiment that came from working in my own studio,” Bower adds. “We were able to try things without being ‘on the clock.’ I don’t think the remixes would have happened if we were working in a traditional method of booking time in a studio.”

The EP will feature the previously released “Waiting 2026,” which wasn’t originally a single or a focus track on Buffalo Speedway but has been a fixture in the band’s setlist for some years, and “Fragment Hanging 2026.” The Down on Buffalo Speedway EP rendition of “Fragment Hanging” is a hard-charging mix of jangle pop, alt country and rock that channels Wilco, Flying Nun Records and the like, anchored by earnest, lived-in lyricism and loose, live-on-the-floor performances.

The song’s overarching themes are familiar, if you’ve lived a full, messy life — in particular, the sense of regret and shame over a relationship that failed and your part in it, and the lingering desire to have done more or to have done something different. But you live and learn through both heartbreak and disaster.

“This one is a deep cut from the Buffalo Speedway album, and one we’ve never played live,” Bower shares. “”The first verse is literally one of the most autobiographical things I’ve ever written. I’m not exactly sure how this led to the second verse introspective musings about how I messed up a relationship though… there’s something about the oppressive atmosphere of a Brisbane summer night that can prompt such melancholy trains of thought.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Uh Huh Her Shares Sultry “Shook”

Acclaimed and influential duo Uh Huh Her — Camilla Grey and Leisha Hailey — were once brought together by a sense of divine providence. Now, more than two decades later, the duo that would help define the indie sleaze era and inspire the likes of Metric, Dum Dum Girls and Magic Wands have returned to beckon a brand new generation of folks to the dance floor with the re-release of their beloved 2011 effort, Nocturnes.

The reissue, Nocturnes:Redux is slated for an August 7, 2026 release through Kill Rock Stars across DSPs and as a limited edition goth confetti vinyl. The reissue features never-before-heard original mixes by acclaimed super producer Tchad Blake, along with two previously unreleased songs — a cover of Sonic Youth‘s classic song “Kool Thing” and a new track “Shook.”

Just like how they came together back in the summer of 2006 through common friends and interests, the duo’s reconnection blossomed serendipitously and quickly. “It feels like it did when we first got together,” says Uh Huh Her’s Leisha Haliey, a songwriter, actor and author, who may now be best known for her starting role on Showtime’s The L Word and its follow-up Generation Q and her 2025 New York Times bestselling memoir, So Gay For You: Friendship, Found Family and the Show That Started It All. “We’re just creative again together, and it’s an interesting place to come back to. And it’s almost like no time has passed, and all of the pressure’s off.”

The original release of Nocturnes was the band’s first independent release. “It meant the world that our fans directly supported the mixing of the album through online eBay auctions of memorabilia, vinyl, art, and even a couple private dinners, because that enabled us to enlist the powers of the incredible Tchad Blake,” Uh Huh Her’s Camilla Grey says. As they contemplated rereleasing Nocturnes with Kill Rock Stars, Grey started digging around to find the album’s original mixes. “I chose Tchad’s first and second mix attempts because I wanted to preserve his first instincts before we gave him a million notes,” she says. This is truly how he heard it on one or two tries. The songs are longer, they’re more rocked out, they’re a little more raucous.” The entirety of those original mixes have never seen the light of day until now.

“Shook,” Nocturnes: Redux‘s first single, and the re-issues only new, original single is a sultry tune that feels and sounds effortlessly crafted yet earnest, deeply universal yet intimate and personal with the song subtly capturing the slow-burn dread and unease of our weird moment. Camila Grey explains that the song is “particularly relevant in a time where everything and everyone feels so unstable. We are living through a profound assault on our central nervous systems by the barrage of media we ingest on a daily basis. While ‘Shook’ is more about a personal situation, the title speaks volumes about what we feel as humans on a daily basis.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Abbie Ozard Shares Soaring and Cathartic “Baby I’m Your Star”

Released to critical applause from the likes of The Times, The Independent, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, Clash Magazine, The Fader, Notion, Hunger and more, 2024’s full-length debut, everything still worries me saw British artist Abbie Ozard explode into the national scene.

Ozard built upon a growing profile with a number of headlining UK shows, a European Union tour opening slot for Briston Maroey and a run of the regional festival circuit that included her debut at Glastonbury.

everything still worries me‘s highly-anticipated follow-up, Baby I’m Your Star EP is slated for an August 21. 2026 release. The EP will include the perviously released “Backbone,” which continues a run of material that has received airplay on Jack Saunders‘ and Huw Stephens’ BBC 1 Radio shows, as well as BBC Introducing Track of the Week, and Abbie McCarthy‘s and Chris Hawkins’ BBC Radio 6 shows.

“Baby I’m Your Star,” the EP’s title track and latest single is a rousingly anthemic tune that sees Ozard pairing open-armed, earnest lyricism and her soaring vocal with swirling and chiming guitar textures and her unerring knack for bombastic, festival friendly hooks and choruses. But underneath the rousingly bombastic catharsis is song that touches upon the sensation of faking-it-’til-you-make-it and wanting to be heard and understood. I guarantee most of us have been there at some point or another — including right now.

“‘Baby I’m Your Star’ is about trying to convince yourself you’re as confident as you want everyone else to think you are,” Ozard explains. “On the surface it’s cocky and playful, but underneath it comes from wanting to be heard and believed in. The song plays with the tension between ego and self-doubt, and the idea that sometimes confidence is something you have to perform before you fully believe it. It feels like a defiant moment for me, but there’s still plenty of vulnerability hiding underneath.”

Directed by Jack Hartley, the accompanying, mischievous video for “Baby I’m Your Star” features an aging guy out in the countryside, trying to stargaze — during the day, eventually coming upon Ozard, strolling through the countryside.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Forest Shares Anthemic “Anchor”

Rising Los Angeles-based artist Forest will be releasing her highly-anticipated full-length debut, Swan Dive through AWAL on September 25, 2026. Swan Dive is reportedly the Los Angeles-based artist’s most fully realized work to date, expanding upon the alt-rock foundation of her earliest releases into something much larger sonically and more fluid. The ten-song album features walls of distorted guitars paired with electronic textures, industrial undercurrents and moments of startling pop clarity. The result is an effort that’s intimate yet overwhelming and sees the rising artist showcasing her capability to shift from whispered confession to emotional free-fall — within the turn of a phrase.

The rising artist’s full-length debut will include the previously released “Prosthetic Stars,” “Whore and Savior,” “Lay With Me” and the album’s latest single, “Anchor.” Featuring fuzzy and chugging power chords paired with thunderous drumming and Forest’s emo and pop-influenced vocal within a classic grunge structure, “Anchor” showcases an artist who can pair earnest, lived-in lyricism with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with a seemingly effortless bombast.

“‘Anchor’ delves into the idea of becoming wrapped up in something you can’t get out of,” Forest explains. “It was written in my childhood bedroom on a trip to Chicago, at a time when I had felt the past wrap its arms around me. The thought of being stuck and tied to the past was the driving thought throughout this track.”

Forest has developed a reputation for unforgettable performances, sharing stages with Starcrawler, Chokecherry, Empty Shell Casing and a long list of others. She kicked off the year, playing the sold-out emo revival festival Burndown in Santa Ana, CA. During the spring, she went on an extensive North American tour with Clarion. The rising artist will be embarking on a West Coast tour opening for ivri. Check out the tour dates below.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Halfway Up a Jagged Hill Shares Bruising “Obscure Sorrows”

Brooklyn-based indie duo Halfway Up a Jagged Hill (HUAJH) — longtime friends Devin Gilbert and Jeb Holstein — were walking in the woods one January night, looking for owls, when they can came across what could only have been described as a witch hut. Stacked between bare trees, the pile of sticks framed a void that swallowed any moonlight bouncing off the frozen ground, What mysterious crouched instead? The two friends found no owls that night. But as Halfway Up a Jagged Hill, Gilbert and Holstein continue to look.

Gilbert and Polstein have been writing and performing together for most of their lives, forging a deep and uncanny musical bond that stretches back to middle school jazz band. Since then, the pair have been involved in a number of different projects both together and separately including the post-hardcore band Primate House, the shoegaze-tinged Chris Sunshine, as well as Polstein’s Seattle-based free jazz/math duo Macaw and Gilbert’s experimental pop solo project Kid Dusty. But HUAJH can trace its origins back to 2024 when the two longtime friends found themselves both living gin New York for the first time in years, and hungry to explore the heavier side of their musical backgrounds.

After roughly a year of practicing and writing, the duo approached Vinegar Hill Sound‘s Reed Black to record an album. The longtime friends were very familiar with Black and his work: They worked with Black, recording a song on Fish Hunt’s 2024 effort Self-Taught, and the experience led them to believe that Black would the right person to bring their vision to life. But they didn’t know that halfway through the album’s mixing process that Black would sign them to Vinegar Hill Sound Records, who will be releasing the duo’s full-length debut, HUAJH on September 10, 2026.

HUAJH features a maximalist sound from a minimalist set up: Gilbert’s downtuned guitar carries weight, with distorted chugging leavened by ringing harmonies and melodic lines as Polstein’s drums simultaneously shoulder the guitar lines and dance around them. Gilbert’s vocal alternates between sining and screaming lyrics that take listeners on a journey from hopelessness to regeneration while drawing on natural imagery, daily observations and fantastical themes. The result is an album that bludgeons but also consoles while bringing Pile, Liturgy, The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Hella and Debussy to mind, while weaving them into something distinct.

Gilbert works as a mental health clinician during the day. And naturally themes of pain and recovery punctuate the album’s material. Polstein, on the other hand, is a landscape architect. While being immersed in nature and natural imagery, he thinks of music spatially — and for him, the drums are a way to create landscapes to move through musically.

HUAJH‘s first single “Obscure Sorrows” is a bruising 90s alt rock-inspired tune that brings back nostalgic memories of Dinosaur Jr. and In Utereo-era Nirvana while anchored in a heart-wrenching despair and anguish that feels — well, completely of our time and yet somehow deeply timeless.

“Obscure Sorrows’ is inspired by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, which is a book of made-up words to describe human feelings and experiences that there are no real words for in the English language,” the duo explain. “In the screamed section, the lyrics reference the Nine of Swords, the tarot card that represents fear, pain, and sadness. The song is ultimately about releasing your despair and not being held captive by it. This was the first song we wrote and our first journey into blast beats.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: POND Returns with Bombastic, Anthemic “Skyworks”

Perth-based JOVM mainstays POND — currently, Nicholas Allbrook (lead vocals, guitar, keys, bass, flute, slide guitar and drums); singer/songwriter and producer Jay Watson (vocals, guitar, keys, drums, synths and bass), who’s also the creative mastermind of acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit GUM and a touring member of acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated JOVM mainstays Tame Impala; Joe Ryan (vocals, guitar, bass, 12 string guitar, slide guitar); Jamie Terry (keys, bass, synths, organs, guitar); and Jamie Ireland (drums, keys) — will be releasing their 11th album Terrestrials on Friday through their newly-minted Mangovision/Secretly Distribution. 

The writing and recording process for Terrestrials was subject to a simple set of rules: No fuzz pedal. No ballads. No “Pink Floyd shit.” Conceived from a place of deep reverence for a particular potent era of Oz rock, the JOVM mainstays’ 11th album reportedly mines the sound of open sky melancholia, heat haze sizzling on the plains and jangly pub backrooms that will hit an eternally poignant nerve for those familiar with the sound, time and place. And from there, the album evolved with the idea of “Goths at the pub” becoming the record’s stylistic north star — with 80s Australiana being acid-washed with the post-punk of Sisters Of Mercy, Magazine and the like. Throughout the album’s creative and recording process, they’d ask themselves “Would Goths like it? Could you have a beer to this?” If the answers were yes, it was thrust into the mix. 

Like much of their catalog, Terrestrials is a record of people and place, of exploring the identity of each, as well as where and how they intersect and interact. Thematically, the album touches upon extractive capitalism, power dynamics., inequality, Indigenous incarceration, eccentric outcasts, fire and water, diesel and dust, unity and division, blood and bauxite, unborn tomorrows and dead yesterdays. And as a result, the album’s material twitches with the desperation of people and their planet on the brink, but while betting on the beauty of both to prevail. 

The album will feature the prevoouisly released, album title track “Terrestrials,” the Sisters of Mercy-meets-Diesel and Dust-era Midnight Oil-like “Two Hands,” the achingly yaerning “Through The Heather,” and the album’s latest single, album opener “Skyworks.” “Skyworks” feautres what may argaubly be Terrestrials‘ most rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses within a song that channels a syntheis of Diesel and Dust-era Midnight Oil, pub rock and post punk.

The song explores the complicated and uneasy history of Australia Day and the juxtaposition of public celebrations against the brural and painful history behind the day — and in turn, the country’s — origins. “The skyworks happen every year on the day Australia was invaded and claimed by the crown. They explode over the river in a gaudy display of drunkenness and patriotism, sponsored by the Lotto,” Nick Allbrook explains. “We love a flutter. The river is bejewelled with magical glittering lights, and loud bangs that remind some of canons and muskets. The river is ablaze, magic, filthy, like a Hieronymus Bosch picture, strewn with bottles and shit in the morning. It’s a confusing time for a confused people. Joe Ryan wrote the main chord progression for this one and then it grew in weird ways”

Directed by Stephanie Senior the accompanying video for “Skyworks” is a syltishly shot visual that employs the same colorful silhouettes reminiscent of the early iPod ad campaigns.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Body Type Returns with Vulnerable and Introspective “Sick Bag”

Over the course of their decade long history together, Aussie punk outfit Body Type — Sophie McComish (vocals, guitar), Annabel Blackman (vocals, guitar), Cecil Coleman (drums) and Georgia Wilkinson-Derums (vocals, bass) have received coverage from internationally recognized media outlets like Billboard, Rolling Stone, NME, The FADER, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and more, as well as airplay from Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson and BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, and a list of others. Adding to a growing profile, the Aussie quartet have extensively toured across the globe, sharing stages with Foo Fighters, Sleater-Kinney, Warpaint, Pixies, Fontaines D.C., Big Thief, Cate Le Bon, POND, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Frankie Cosmos, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Wolf Alice, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, DZ Deathrays, and many moire. 

Body Type’s highly-anticipated third album, Tally is slated for a July 24, 2026 release through King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s p(doom) records. Recorded at Los Angeles-based Velveteen Laboratory Studios with producer Stella Mozgawa, Tally reportedly marks a deliberate evolution for the quartet. While 2023’s Expired Candy arrived on a wave of post-pandemic momentum, their third album takes long to breathe — the material’s ambitions are quieter, its craft more considered. ‘

The album cones as the band celebrates their tenth anniversary together. Featuring a blend of big, jagged riffs, moody post-punk and 60s pop, Tally may arguably be their most self-assured and expansive batch of material to date, capturing band maturing and taking stock but while wit and playfulness still are supreme. Thematically, the album chronicles mundanity’s mystical implications, the deformations of romance and love’s confounding elasticity and more. 

The album will include the previously released “Mulberry,“ and the album’s latest single “Sick Bag.” Continuing a run of material that seemingly channels a mix of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey, The Breeders and a bit of Marquee Moon-era Television,”‘Sick Bag” may arguably be the most vulnerable, broken heart worn on sleeve song on the album. Thematically, the song examines the very fine line between generosity and self-erasure.

“Our first ever song to feature a mellotron — a true Stella moment,” the band’s Sophie McComish says, “”This one just poured out of me like ink in a broken biro.” Written during a relationship that felt increasingly one-sided, “Sick Bang” emerged after a conversation McComish had with bandmate Annabel Blackman, who pointed out the unusual patience McComish was showing someone, who just couldn’t meet her halfway.

Directed by Madeline Purdy, the accompanying video for “Sick Bag” is a surreal, fantastical and darkly comedic visual that seems inspired by Igmar Berman while pointing out the mundanity, boredom and exhaustion of being a worker bee.