Tag: lo-fi rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: lazybed Shares Jangling, Hook-Driven “time”

Macau-based Filipino artist Richard Winstanley can trace the origins of his music career back to high school, when he started writing, producing and mixing demos using GarageBand. His first solo project, a fictional band he called The Yankies saw him writing and recording songs in both English and Filipino. Although he never released those early tracks publicly, this early work wound up laying the foundation for his future musical explorations.

Winstanley stepped away from music while attending college. But after graduation, he found his passion for music re-ignited. He publicly emerged with his second solo recording project Cardz, which saw him release 2024’s mini-album Lok Kuan Express through Bandcamp and YouTube. For the most part, music was a beloved hobby that offered him a creative escape from his full-time job.

Earlier this year, the Macau-based artist emerged with his latest solo project lazybed, which derives it name from “lazy afternoons on [sic] my bedroom making music.” lazybed reflects a shift in sonic direction that sees Winstanley embracing guitar-driven indie rock. jangle pop and psych pop. Drawing from Broken Social Scene, MGMT, Blur, Eraserheaads, Mac DeMarco and more, the Macau-based artist creates songs from his bedroom using his MacBook and Logic Pro X.

The Macau-based artist’s latest single “time” is a remarkably catchy, hook-driven song that seemingly channels 00s jangle pop, slacker pop and New Order while thematically focusing on the inevitable passing of time, getting older and feeling like you’ve wasted both time and your life away. The song is rooted in a timeless theme that would be familiar to someone in their 20s or their 40s — but with a slightly different weight.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Emerging Artist TomEE Shares Hook-Driven “’bout Time”

TomEE is a mysterious, emerging artist, who over the course of handful of singles has firmly established a DIY, lo-fi bedroom pop sound and approach. Clocking in at a little under two minutes, his latest single “’bout Time” manages to recall JOVM mainstays MUNYA and Kainalu while showcasing an adept and uncanny knack for crafting an incredibly catchy hook.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: heavy wild Shares TrIppy Visual for Brooding “Wasteland”

Led by Wolfgang Harte, rising London-based lo-fi outfit heavy wild just released their highly-anticipated Paolo Ruiu-produced debut EP Death Dreams. 

Sonically, the EP sees the London-based lo-fi outfit blending elements of alternative rock, post-punk, garage rock, shoegaze, indie rock, lo-fi and grunge — and is a culmination of the project’s output date, as Harte explains: “I think having a running theme through any body of work is always important. I tend to write subconsciously and never really with a specific idea in mind so looking back through all these tracks and identifying what they’re really about has been interesting, discovering the themes that underpin my writing. There’s a couple of well-loved tracks on there but I’m excited for people to hear some new stuff too and see the direction it’s moving in.”

The EP’s first single “Wasteland” is a brooding whirlwind of a tune featuring shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars and distorted synths and driving rhythm section paired with remarkably catchy hooks and choruses and fuzzed out yet plaintive vocals. Sonically recalling a woozy mix of Interpol, Crocodiles, Grave Babies and others, the song explores themes of fractured relationships, arrests and suicide.

“Ultimately, it’s an optimistic track. It’s about going through dark times and finding a way to keep on going,” Harte explains. “I had a bassline [sic] that I was just playing on loop and I started writing, and this montage of stuff that had happened over the years was flooding my mind, and the energy of that bassline [sic] just kept dragging more stuff up. I guess it’s me sort of processing some of those situations and reflecting on it all. It’s about standing in the wreckage of life and saying fuck it… just gotta keep going.”

Harte cites Wavves, Beach Fossils, Small Black, Girls and Crocodiles as a big influence on him — and on the track. “On this track, I think I was really going back to that stuff that I loved as a teenager when I was first making music and trying to capture that frenetic sort of energy. I wanted the song to sound like it could fall apart at any moment,” Harte says.

The accompanying video is a mix of analog tape fuzz, kaleidoscopic filters and footage of the band in studio shot and edited in a way that evokes our uneasy, near apocalyptic moment.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Agora Sci-Fi Shares a “120 Minutes” MTV-Inspired Lament on Capitalism

Nathania Rubin is an Illinois-based singer/songwriter, visual artist and animator, who most recently designed the music video for Advance Base’s “The Tooth Fairy.” Her work has been featured in both museums and film festivals both nationally and internationally, including Seattle International Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Cannes Video Art Festival AVIFF, Boston Underground, Brooklyn Film Festival, Oxford Film Festival, Fest Ança, Animaze, Animafest Zagreb and many others.

Rubin is also the creative mastermind and frontperson behind the lo-fi pop project Agora Sci-Fi. Agora Sci-Fi conceptually is centered around a fictional character, simply named Z.

As the story goes, Z was recently released from prison for unclear crimes against society. Her wealthy family poisons her with memory-obliterating treats that block out crucial events and plot points of her own life and history. For fun, Z swims in the East River at night. (As a native New Yorker, I’d just have to say — “whatever floats your boat, kid.”)

Sonically Agora Sci-Fi draws from lo-fi, indie rock and pop in the vein of Rilo Kiley, Stef Chura and others.

Agora Sci-Fi’s debut EP, Finding It Hard to Explain Something So Obvious is slated for a June 6, 2025 release. The EP’s second single “sloppy” is a 120 Minutes-era MTV bit of indie rock anchored around rousingly anthemic hooks and Rubin’s dreamy delivery. But at its core, are deeply relatable lyrics for all of us, who have to maneuver capitalism, jobs we find unsatisfying, dull, underpaid or just under appreciated. Throughout, the song’s narrator expresses the slow-burn doldrums of working life — and the desire to never have to do that again. We all sell our time for money because — well, everyone wants money.

“Weaving in the fictional narrative in ‘sloppy’ allowed me to really ramp up the stakes of the song,” Rubin explains. “I was picturing a singular sane person, in a world with completely maddening and inhumane mandates. I imagined it as two separate songs in one, two personalities of the same person too, that kind of smash into each other at the end. Like many songs on the EP, it speaks to a desire to escape social confines, and the fracturing of self that happens when playing different roles in various areas of your life. The person who doesn’t conform, gets gaslit from inside and out, and labeled something like sloppy.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: London’s heavy wild Shares Brooding “Wasteland”

Led by Wolfgang Harte, rising London-based lo-fi outfit heavy wild will be releasing their highly-anticipated debut Paolo Ruiu-produced EP, Death Dreams on May 28, 2025. The band has already made a name for themselves making a run of the UK and European Union touring circuit, playing sold-out shows opening for HighSchool, Swim Deep, Dog Race, Humane The Moon and Chicago‘s Blood Club, among a list of others. And over the past month, the London-based band went on their first, six-date, UK headlining tour.

Sonically, the EP sees the London-based lo-fi outfit blending elements of alternative rock, post-punk, garage rock, shoegaze, indie rock, lo-fi and grunge — and is a culmination of the project’s output date, as Harte explains: “I think having a running theme through any body of work is always important. I tend to write subconsciously and never really with a specific idea in mind so looking back through all these tracks and identifying what they’re really about has been interesting, discovering the themes that underpin my writing. There’s a couple of well-loved tracks on there but I’m excited for people to hear some new stuff too and see the direction it’s moving in.”

The EP’s first single “Wasteland” is a brooding whirlwind of a tune featuring shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars and distorted synths and driving rhythm section paired with remarkably catchy hooks and choruses and fuzzed out yet plaintive vocals. Sonically recalling a woozy mix of Interpol, Crocodiles, Grave Babies and others, the song explores themes of fractured relationships, arrests and suicide.

“Ultimately, it’s an optimistic track. It’s about going through dark times and finding a way to keep on going,” Harte explains. “I had a bassline [sic] that I was just playing on loop and I started writing, and this montage of stuff that had happened over the years was flooding my mind, and the energy of that bassline [sic] just kept dragging more stuff up. I guess it’s me sort of processing some of those situations and reflecting on it all. It’s about standing in the wreckage of life and saying fuck it… just gotta keep going.”

Harte cites Wavves, Beach Fossils, Small Black, Girls and Crocodiles as a big influence on him — and on the track. “On this track, I think I was really going back to that stuff that I loved as a teenager when I was first making music and trying to capture that frenetic sort of energy. I wanted the song to sound like it could fall apart at any moment,” Harte says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Colleen Green’s Anthemic “It’s Nice to Be Nice”

Colleen Green is a Dunstable, MA-born, Los Angeles-based lo-fi rock/indie pop singer/songwriter and guitarist. Green’s career started in earnest with her full-length debut, 2011’s Milo Goes to Compton, an effort initially released as a cassette and later on vinyl through Art Fag Recordings.

The Dunstable-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and guitarist’s debut caught the attention of Seattle-based indie label Hardly Art Records, who signed her and released her sophomore album, 2013’s Sock It To Me. Green’s third album, 20115’s I Want to Grow Up was released to critical acclaim with LA Weekly readers voting her that year’s Best Solo Artist. The album was also her most commercially successful album to date, perhaps as a result of album single “Wild One” being featured on the Netflix series Love.

Thematically, I Want To Grow Up found Green at a familiar yet profound existential crisis: Although almost always cool, she didn’t necessarily feel so at that point: Seemingly too young to be free of insecurities, she was old enough to be sick of them running — and ruining — her life.

Green’s forthcoming third album Cool is her first album in six years. Slated for a September 10, 2021 release through Hardly Art, the album’s material reportedly finds her figuring out what it means to be grown up — and realizing that being an adult, who has somehow managed to live and survive through a full and messy life is pretty damn cool. Co-produced by Gordon Raphael and Green and featuring beats by hip-hop producer Aqua and drumming from Brendan Eder, the album was recorded in several different Southern California-based studios including Glendale’s comp-ny, North Hollywood’s Tenement Yard and Los Angeles’ Cosmic Vinyl. Sonically, the album sees Green retaining the lo-fi aesthetic that has won her praise and fans globally while pushing her songs to a higher level: burnt out on bad feelings, Green wanted to have fun with melodies and beats while keeping her lo-fi aesthetic intact.

The album features “I Want to Be a Dog,” a single released to praise from the likes of The New York Times, The Fader, Stereogum, Under the Radar, DIY, BrooklynVegan, Spin, Our Culture, Closed Captioned and others. Cool’s and latest single “It’s Nice to Be Nice” is a breezy bit of power pop centered around chugging power chords, an athemic chorus and razor sharp hooks. But underneath the big choruses and power chords, the song thematically is a reminder — both to the songwriter and the listener — that in life, you often get what you give, so it’s important to be the best person you can be. And in a world that regularly seems on the verge of collapse, the song’s message seems rather pertinent.

y Renee Lusano, the recently released video was shot on a boat, just off the Los Angeles coast. We see Green making herself a simple dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and hanging out on the boat. But we see someone, who has finally gained comfort in her own skin and mind. As Green calls it, “a nice video for a nice song.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mini Malibu is a self-taught, emerging Biarritz, France-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who employs a decidedly DIY ethos to his work: he writes, records, produces and mixes everything himself — and every new project finds the emerging French artist yearning to switch styles and sounds while being centered around his love of bass and guitar.

The emerging French producer’s debut effort ily EP was released a few days ago and the effort’s first single “Surf In Spain” is centered around a sinuous groove, glistening synths, the French artist’s plaintive vocals and a big hook. And while sonically recalling a lo-fi version of Currents-era Tame Impala, thanks to his effortless mixing of psych pop, synth pop, psych pop and funk, the song as the emerging French producer explains “is like a photograph of the end of a 6 year relationship, between funny stories and heavy feelings.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of founding members Michael Goodwin, a member of the OBN IIIs and eeetsFEATS; Chris “Anton” Stevenson, a member of Spray Paint, Dikes of Holland and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth; Marley Jones, a member of the OBN IIIs and Sweet Talk; and Victor Ziolkowski, a member of Skeleton and Nosferatu, the Austin, TX-based punk quartet PLAX can trace its origins to last year, when founding member Goodwin approached his longtime friend Stevenson and current OBN IIIs bandmate Jones about the possibility of forming an outsider punk band that would defy all conventional expectations while being inspired by the likes of Wire and Dawn of Humans. The band’s founding trio quickly went to work writing songs for a demo — they eventually wrote 9 — but they felt were still in need of a vocalist to complete the project. At the time Marley was collaborating with David and Victor Ziolkowksi, the founding members and frontman of Skeleton, a constantly evolving project featuring the Ziolkowski Brothers and a rotating cast of collaborators and friends. And as the story goes, Stevenson and Marley approached Victor Ziolkowski to contribute his vocals, and when he agreed, the project’s lineup was finalized.

By the end of last July, the newly formed quartet had played their first show with New Orleans punk act Patsy and they quickly followed that by playing with a number of national touring Texas-based bands including Crooked Bangs, Institute and Army and others — and building upon the buzz they were receiving, the band went on a January 2017 tour throughout Texas. And although Stevenson has recently relocated to Melbourne, Australia, the band has continued writing and recording; in fact, as you’ll hear on “Boring Story” the first single off the quartet’s forthcoming full-length debut Clean Feeling, the band specializes in the sort of scuzzy, garage punk that would be at home on Goner Records or on Castle Face Records, complete with slashing power chords and punchily delivered vocals. Arguably, “Boring Story” is one of the most mosh pit worthy songs I’ve listened to in several months — and it reminds me of the sort of music I’d hear in countless dive bars and dank DIY spaces.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although very little is currently known about them, the London-based indie rock act Le Clientele, their latest single “Strats and Precisions” as the band describes is a “Dire Straits, Ariel Pink inspired workout” and was recorded in Softhouse Studios using a Studer A827 tape recorder, which helps to give the proceedings a jangling, old-timey feel but with a subtly contemporary take.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Check Out A Digital 45 from Daptone Records’ First Old School/Lo-Fi Rock-Leaning Signing

Comprised of Mike Brandon (guitar and vocals), L.A. Solano (guitar), Alex Q. Amini (bass) and Kevin Harris (organ), New York-based quartet The Mystery Lights specialize in old timey garage rock and psych rock sound that’s […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: High Waisted’s Sexy, Girl-Powered Party Video for “Party In The Back”

Fronted by Jessica Louise Dye, the NYC-based indie rock quartet High Waisted formed in 2014 and have quickly developed a reputation for a sound that possesses elements of old school surf rock,  lo-fi garage rock […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of Brigid Dawson (vocals and tambourine), Petey Damnit (a.k.a. Petey Damnit!) Mike Shoun (drums) and led by the band’s founder member and creative mastermind, John Dwyer (vocals and guitar),  San Francisco-based quarter Thee Oh Sees have developed a reputation both regionally and nationally for being incredibly prolific, as they’ve released over a dozen albums since their official formation back in 2004 — and for being relentlessly experimental, as each album they’ve released has been decidedly different, while remaining true to their garage rock/psych rock origins. And naturally, as result of their prolificacy, their reputation for sweaty, raucous, and punishing live set and their ability to craft mind-melting power chord-based rock, the Bay Area-based outfit has become a JOVM mainstay and blogosphere darlings.

 

2015 has been a big year for Dwyer and associates as they released the critically acclaimed Mutilator Defeated At Last, arguably one of the heaviest and hardest hitting efforts the band has released in recent memory. And they’ll close out the year playing a number of live shows — including a two night benefit concert for L.A. Kitchen, a Los Angeles-based charity, whose mission is to provide healthy meals to the area’s homeless and help unemployed and unskilled men and women for jobs and more. But they also will close out the year with the announcement of the release of the “Fortress”/”Man In A Suitcase” 7 inch, slated for a February 12 release through Dwyer’s renowned Castle Face Records.

The material for the new 7 inch is culled from the Mutilator Defeated sessions and acts as an addendum of sorts to the album, as well as a teaser for a full-length slated for release sometime in 2016. A Side single “Fortress” is probably the most prog rock-leaning song Dwyer and associates have released in some time, as the song consists of propulsive and forceful, motorik-like groove, a throbbing bass line, breakneck, mind-melting guitar chords and falsetto vocals — all of which give the song an anxious, buzzing and nightmarish feel that evokes the sensation of restless tossing and turning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tour Dates 

Wednesday 12/16 Los Angeles, CA (L.A. Kitchen benefit) – Buy Tickets
Thursday 12/17 Los Angeles, CA (L.A. Kitchen benefit) – Buy Tickets
Thursday 12/31 Palm Springs CA, The Commune at Ace Hotel
Friday 1/8 Brisbane, Crow Bar
Saturday 1/9 Gold Coast, Shark Bar
Sunday 1/10 Byron Bay, The Northern
Wednesday 1/13 Newcastle, The Small Ballroom
Friday 1/15 Sydney, Newtown Social Club
Saturday 1/16 Wollongong, Wollongong Uni Bar
Tuesday 1/19 Geelong, Barwon Club
Wednesday 1/20 Melbourne, Howler
Saturday 1/23 Fremantle, Mojo’s Bar
Friday 2/12 Solana Beach, Belly Up Tavern
Wednesday 3/23 – Sunday 3/27 – Boise ID, Treefort Music Festival

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Originating as the solo recording project of David Miller, the Chicago, IL-based lo-fi/punk/psych rock quartet Strange Faces expanded to a quartet when Miller recruited Taylor Walters (guitar), Philip Valdez (bass) and Ben Leach (drums) to flesh out and complete the project’s sound. “Brand New Way,” off the quartet’s soon-to-be released debut effort Stonerism is a swaggering, scuzzy bit of psychedelic  lo-fi reminiscent of Crocodiles and Raccoon Fighter as the album’s first single pairs buzzing guitar chords, a tight and propulsive rhythm section, big hooks and vocals fed through layers of distortion. And despite it’s swaggering nature, at its core is a bruised and aching heart as the song’s narrator talks about moving on from crushing loneliness while capturing the youthful restlessness and rebellion that’s always been the rock ‘n’ roll spirit.