Model Shop – Letters To Melissa As my age increases, my testosterone decreases, and my attitude towards life becomes decidedly more melodic and mellow, it has become freed from any need to be trendy whatsoever. I appear to be becoming increasingly at ease with music that appears to be made for the sake of “soft classic indie beauty.”… The impetus for Model Shop comes from ex-Math and Physics Club alumni Kevin Emerson and Ethan Jones janglepophub

Dot Dash – Forever Far Out their eighth, Madman in the Rain album, knocks on your door like an old friend in town and plonks itself on your sofa for a lovingly crafted catch up over a well-chosen beverage. It’s always gloriously comfortable, in the very best sense of the word, with this trio. 90s/early 2000s comfortability to be exact. janglepophub

Lande Hekt – Backstreet Snow “I’m not someone who works at lightning speed/ I’m not even someone who knows what I need,” she sings in its sweetly lifting chorus. “I knew I was waiting for something, that much is true/ I just didn’t know that something was you.” streregum

Taylor Swift – Snow On The Beach (featr. Lana Del Rey) begins with light Christmas music energy and never really ascends. Del Rey excels at a kind of rumbling, oozy stasis — it’s like the ecstasy of being caught in a spider’s web — but Swift’s vocals are a mite too cheery to achieve the same effect. nytimes

The National – Weird Goodbyes (feat. Bon Iver) singer Matt Berninger said that “Weird Goodbyes” is “about letting go of the past and moving on, then later being overwhelmed by second thoughts.”

Matching Outfits – It Keeps Happening the more I listen to this single, the more I’m just completely enthralled by their sound. There’s just something distinctively magical about singer Linnea’s voice… There’s just so many different ways the vocals are spoken, or sung, or stopped then started. Just listen to the chorus, as the styles seem to all swirl and mix up with one another inside that brief moment. And, just as you’re sucked into the quiet joy of this song, it begins to climb just after the 2 minute mark austintownhall

Roller Derby – Only You Catchy feel good retro (what isn’t these days?) pop music thanks to the vocals and chorus from Hamburg. Oh and those melodies too recordsilike

The Beths – Expert In a Dying Field Close friends and lovers have the privilege of sharing an exclusive language. And while the joy of knowing another so acutely feels unmatched, the risk of loss runs even higher—if the love affair fizzles or the friendship fades, not only is an alliance broken, but also an entire empire shattered with it. But like an anthropologist who specializes in a dead language or a long-extinct civilization, the parties to the ex-relationship are liable to remain fluent in that shared tongue—they just have no one to speak it with. The Beths’ Elizabeth Stokes introduces the perfect metaphor for this tragedy on the first track of the band’s latest LP: “Love is learned over time / ‘til you’re an expert in a dying field.” pastemagazine

Alvvays – Belinda Says a heartbreaking sketch of an unexpected pregnancy that’s also a modern power-pop classic. She only needs one line to render vivid scenes: a warm vodka cooler chugged behind a hockey rink, a tense phone call with a would-be father, a forlorn move to the countryside soundtracked by Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” Like a heroine in one of Munro’s timeless stories, the narrator’s life is altered forever by a single choice of impossible magnitude. pitchfork

Jockstrap – Glasgow The obsessed performing arts student is one of Hollywood’s favorite clichés…. Graduates of London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye have made a career of tearing down the academy walls… With the help of an 18-piece orchestra, Jockstrap stage elaborate, theatrical scenes atop the conservatory rubble… a thumping road ballad driven by acoustic thrums and Ellery’s violin, which arches like a comet. Sweet and rapturous, it is primed for a singalong—the track that could land them a slot at Glastonbury pitchfork

Kindsight – Love You Baby All The Time Nina’s voice has this power to it, which is on full display throughout the song, but the band sets her up to kind of rise like a sort of phoenix; they’ve got these stuttering guitar notes, quieted backing vocals and little nuance that completely fill your musical cup until its overflowing with the emotive vibe of the vocals austintownhall

Alex G – Runner Like all the best tracks by this prolific musician (we’re talking nine near-perfect albums in a little over a decade), it goes from light to dark, loose to tight, smooth to shouty in an instant timeout

Slum Summer – Tenderize The Night energetic and driving, with these riffs ready to rip right through your apartment walls austintownhall

EggS – Old Fashioned Virtue The Parisian septet EggS sidled onto the indie scene in 2018 with their eponymous EP released on Howlin Banana Records, with a minimal fanfare approach that did not even include a social media presence. Perhaps they knew they had something that most bands do not: an old school energy and a neo-C86 sound that would appeal to the frenzied word of mouth “cool crowd.” So it was that critical acclaim followed this EP and subsequent single releases and hoisted them into the loving embrace of the Prefect Records label founded by ex-The Field Mice man, Mark Dobson, who knows a thing about jangy indie-pop. However, perhaps “pop” is too muffled to really explain this A Glitter Year debut album. For in comparison to the EggS of yesteryear, everything has become more massive, expansive, and just downright goriously shambolic. janglepophub

The Vapour Veils – Eleanor The new single from the Stockholm based The Vapour Veils is the third one to be lifted from the forthcoming debut album The Last Hurrah which is set for release at the end of October. And what a vibrant blast of a track it is too… The band obviously want to achieve great things. janglepophub

Alan Braxe/DJ Falcon – Step by Step (feat. Panda Bear) Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon reunited to figure out how their pioneering 90s house might have mellowed into middle age. Step By Step turns down the aggressive filtering of their heyday for wistful soft rock that sails into a hazy horizon with no division between sea and sky. “As I try to find a new way forward / Feels like there’s something in the air,” sings Panda Bear (AKA Noah Lennox), his voice evanescing into their limitless pop future guardian

Arctic Monkeys – Body Paint like a number from some lost Cassavetes musical, a narrative that turns mutual deception in a relationship into a surrealist game of cat and mouse. Alex Turner prowls around his set trying to uncover the truth he already knows, while refusing to show his own hand: “I’m keeping on my costume and calling it a writing tool.” The song’s grand instrumental denouement might be a blowout or it might be sex; either way, it’s spectacular guardian

Chorusgirl – In The Business Of Dreams one that’s got plenty of little sonic twists and turns, so be sure to strap in here. It opens with this drawn out, cavernous sound; you think you’re in for some expansive bit of indie prog, but then the drums begin to bounce. The guitars skitter in, and Silvi’s vocals roll their own bounce right into the frame; this offers a playful contrast with some of the darker ideas of the lyrics, commenting on the willingness of artists to subject themselves to the ringer of the industry despite mental health struggles. Back and forth, the song tugs at you, and at itself, much like one would imagine the artist, struggling between the natural highs of writing a great tune like this one, only to have the industry turn away to the next cool thing. But not me! I’m here for it, and so are you! austintownhall

Field School – I Just Want To Paint You In Pictures the new project of former Math and Physics Club member Charles Bert. But, unlike the pristine pop substance of his friends, Charles brings in the steady ringing guitar work that gets mixed in with those angular jangles. Interestingly, though their various approaches may differ, they both seem to view the world with this spiritual optimism, and maybe that’s just the nature of the joy their song’s create. Still, there’s something about this tune (and the Model Shop track) that just makes you feel like there’s bright moments left to be uncovered in this world austintownhall

Galore – New Living Well, well, well, this EP is precious. And we mean “precious” in the most complimentary way. It is sweet, melodic, hooky jangle pop of the kind that we often spend hours scouring the web to find whenyoumotoraway

Martin Frawley – This Is Gonna Change Your Mind Aussie slacker-pop and chiming jangle. This is the first single from his forthcoming album, out on June 23 2023, and it promises the world. janglepophub

Babaganouj – What Planet Do You Come From the band home to singer-songwriter Hatchie, have shared their first release since 2017… It sees the Brisbane quartet return with a choral chant of the song’s title, before launching into thunderous drum sequences courtesy of bandmate George Browning. For her part, Hatchie provides supporting vocals for Charles Sale, who pleads for clarity from a lover. “Oh darling, take me to your living room,” he sings on the track’s final verse, imploring the song’s subject to “just tell me what you want” nme

Th Da Freak – Come Rescue Me In The Forest It’s all sorts of playful in all the right places. The guitars feel heavy, though in that sort of poppy surf rock fashion; they feel like they’re made for perfect driving soundtracks. You get an added melodic bonus built in from backing vocals to uplift the main vocal austintownhall

Martha – I Didn’t Come Here To Surrender Take careening punk guitars, quick-fire emotive lyricism, open-hearted twee charm, and heaps of pop hooks, and you have the makings of a great Martha record. Yet, for a band that has innovated in increments, their new album, Please Don’t Take Me Back, may be the best distillation of their formula yet….

“I Didn’t Come Here to Surrender” takes a defiant angle toward an uncertain future… Many bands mix the political with the personal, but few bands make both into hopeful collective experiences like Martha does, all while remaining one of the most consistent bands in indie punk undertheradarmag

Holy Now – Places My friend Don, from the I Don’t Hear A Single blog, has a little giggle at my penchant for dream-pop. However, when it is this vibrant, when it is this jangly and when it is this vital, my love for the genre is justified janglepophub

The Sundries – Triumph Herald South East London foursome The Sundries, just have the sound of ‘joy’. Not the unfettered sort that slaps you around the face when your team scores an important goal against the run of play, or when worshipping whatever god you feel atuned to, but that more realistic, casual, simple joy that can be gleaned from life’s everyday experiences. janglepophub

Prim – Porn Magazines stage name of songwriter Irene Pignatti. After her debut “when monday comes”, the young artist decided, for fun and for a bet, to participate in Italy’s X Factor 2022, keeping her personality intact and immediately receiving a standing ovation, up to presenting “Hope There’s Someone” by Antony and the Johnsons at the last Bootcamp indieforbunnies

Weyes Blood – It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody Over a soft bed of piano and percussion, Natalie Mering makes a blunt observation about the human condition. “We’ve all become strangers/Even to ourselves,”… As Mering repeats the title refrain, the song swells with orchestral strings and effervescent harp from Mary Lattimore. Her assertion that she’s not the only one suffering lingers alongside her own reminder that “it’s all a part of the same thing”: Being good to one another won’t fix the world as it is, but it can at least make each day a little more bearable. pitchfork

H Hawkline – Milk For Flowers “Grief is a song that can’t be unheard: from the moment you learn it, you never stop singing,” says Evans of the song. “Its music paints the scenery – pulling the strings of every day. Forgotten corners and untended gardens can become rich with sickly vegetation, ice rinks and playgrounds decaying with every chord.“

The Radio Field – Years Ago  12 string riffs that simply shimmer with sweetness amid a dulcet, subdued beauty janglepophub

The Slow Summits – Time’s On Your Side Friday’s are perfect for Swedish pop songs, in my ears. You’re looking out the window, counting down the seconds towards freedom, but as the Slow Summits detail in their latest single, “time’s on your side,” so be sure to take it all in