My favourite Rolling Stones song is Mother’s Little Helper (which is about, to quote Wikipedia, “the popularity of prescribed tranquilisers like Valium among housewives”) but whenever I listen to it, I can’t help thinking of Cresoxipropanediol En Capsule by the late French actress Ginette Garcin, which I like a lot more. In it Garcin, who died in 2010 aged 82, lists a series of fictional medications with long names that she takes whenever she isn’t feeling well. In a glass of sugar water and, probably, with a strong french r.

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Pa pa pa pa pa pa. If you start a song like that, it can’t really go wrong. The Story Of A Fool (As Told By The Fool Herself) certainly doesn’t go wrong. 91 seconds – I counted – of bouncy happy indie punk pop. Josie is from Copenhagen, Denmark, though with members from all over Europe. They list Shop Assistants and Talulah Gosh as their influences (this song reminds me in particular of the former) and have been a support act for Shonen Knife. I can imagine why Shonen Knife would be a fan. I am a fan.

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It is very much not the end of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere and the way things are going with climate change, summer won’t be gone until November, but I’m really enjoying this Summer’s Gone by Oakland’s Twin Bloom. Jangly-but-melancholic indiepop that borrows heavily from Bay Area music from both the past six and past sixty years. Local label Dandy Boy (a favourite here) also mentions Teenage Fanclub as a reference and that’s not a million miles off either. I hope I get to hear a lot more music by the band. Preferably before the summer is gone.

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Bleka Dödens Minut (a band with members from various other Swedish bands) is named after a 100-year old Swedish poem but, as far as I can tell, the eponymous song doesn’t follow the poem’s lyrics. Nor does the music sound as grim as the name, which apparently translates to Pale Minute of Death, or statements like “Life is pain. Get used to disappointment.“ suggest. Rather, this is in-your-face jangle pop that gives you some extra energy at the end of a long day at work. It does that to me anyway.

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I can’t believe it was seventeen years ago that I flew to Berlin to see the Lucksmiths‘ last ever European gig; they have now been a former band for longer than they ever were a band. Of all the bands I love, the Lucksmiths are somewhere near the very top. There are many songs of theirs that I absolutely adore and in recent years I have grown very fond of this cover of a song by fellow Australians The Sugargliders. The original is pretty great already and, I recently learned, is on YouTube. But this version is hauntingly beautiful.

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Beyond ‘favouriting’ the odd song on a music app, I had not paid proper attention to North London’s The Leaf Library until last week. This despite their ‘electric drone pop’, as they call it themselves, really being my thing. Sure, this kind of music, also known as ‘heirs to Stereolab’, can easily become a bit monotonous and hide in the background, but the Leaf Library sounds fresh and exciting even on their fourth album (After The Rain, Strange Seeds, just released on Fika Recordings), of which this Still & Moving is my favourite song. Totally my thing.

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The Chutes are Kenny and Erika, husband and wife from San Francisco (they’re named after a former amusement park in the city), who are about to release their self-titled 7-track debut album on local Dandy Boy Records. This Scraping the Last Bits of Light has been pre-released as a teaser and it really makes me want to listen to the other six songs: upbeat, confident indiepop with call-and-response vocals that befit a married couple. The duo appears to have a history in the local hardcore scene but, no disrespect to punks, there’s very little anger here and I like that.

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Another reunion: after a 32-year break, Heavens to Betsy is playing live again. Heavens to Betsy was Corin Tucker’s band before she formed the better known Sleater-Kinney. I’ve always had a weak spot for them and in particular the quiet, atypically introspective punk of this White Girl, written decades before George Floyd’s murder made some white people confront their inner racism, at least for a while. I hope they play it during their reunion gigs, but even if they don’t it’s worth listening to several times in a row. Especially today.

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“Liberty Belle is a band named after this great album from The Go-Betweens”, according to Bandcamp. In fact, it is one person, Jean-François Cantot from France, who has been writing songs for the past 35 years and now released eleven of them as the album 11 Songs. I like it, especially opener Time Step, which even more than the other songs reminds me of The Go-Betweens (the band’s later work in particular). I’m not complaining, if anything provides me with an excuse to listen to that band again. But the 95 seconds of this song are also really good.

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Named after Primal Scream’s contribution to the legendary C86 compilation, Velocity Girl was one of America’s earlier indiepop bands. In the early 1990s, the DC area band released three albums and many singles. Their sound was a bit heavier than their British influences – they released albums on Sub Pop – but still really good indiepop. Most indiepop purists would argue that their early stuff was the best and as luck would have it, Slumberland is about to release a compilation with some of their early songs, including this Forgotten Favorite, which the same label released as a single back in 1991. 

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Almost three decades in, Death Cab For Cutie remains one of the best band names out there. Music wise, I find their songs pleasant enough, but I am more into the synth pop of Ben Gibbard’s other band, The Postal Service. That’s probably why this Trap Door is my favourite song of DCFC’s most recent album, I Built You A Tower: it’s the most electronic among the songs: a steady background beat of a song that builds up to a cute keyboard solo. That’s more than pleasant enough, actually. 

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I had forgotten I knew about Vivian Girls until Tidal reminded me. Wild Eyes is from 2008, when I was very busy with life and didn’t pay much attention to new music. I wish I had as this is how I like my indiepop: mixing the best parts of Black Tambourine, Henry’s Dress and — to use a non-American reference — the Tidy-Ups. 2008 is so long ago already, but one of the best parts of the Internet is that I can listen to it on places like Tidal or Bandcamp as if this is fresh. And it does sound fresh.

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Night-blooming Jasmin is one of several alternative names of cestrum nocturnum, a plant in the potato family. It is also, with slightly different spelling and punctuation, the name of a song by UK underground rapper fakemink, that has been stuck in my head for the past few days. It has a lo-fi feel to it and doesn’t feel very in your face, more like mumbling out loud. I am not a huge connaisseur of the genre, but this is how I like my hip hop. “Ayy, night, bloom Jasmine, second name Yasmin / Th-they wanna eat me alive, can’t stop them”.

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I’m following the football World Cup more than I expected. It’s fun, with all the usual caveats. I didn’t see any Scotland game though and I know I won’t see any because the Tartan Army is already out of the tournament. That leaves me with It Only Takes One Lion, the unofficial theme song Belle and Sebastian (introduction not needed) wrote in support of their country’s football team. No, it doesn’t come close to the band’s best work (like most indiepop fans, that’s their 1990s work), but it’s fun, catchy and – very rightly, given history – says “we love Haiti” too.

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More laptop twee! New York state duo ear (stylised in lowercase) is more laptop than twee. Given the choice I side with the latter, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the duo’s music. In particular this Ne Plus Ultra (released as a single, and also available on the band’s recently released second album Rumspringa), that sounds like a quiet, introverted version of the Femcels, with whom it shares its sketchiness. And I happen to love sketchy, introverted pop songs.

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They were certainly not the first all-girl indiepop band, but given their name they are kind of the quintessential one and, actually, one of the best too: All Girl Summer Fun Band. I fondly remember the few shows they played in my native Netherlands back in 2003 and I am happy to hear the band is still playing the occasional gig. Such as this weekend in their native Portland at the awesomely named and themed Menopunkpapalooza festival, in support of the Menopunks documentary. You’re very lucky if you are going. For everyone else, here is the band’s timeless theme song.

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Look, I can wait until mid August when label Slumberland says the upcoming third album by Real Numbers (of Minneapolis, Minnesota) will be released. Or I can just get really excited about Never Never Again, the one song that has been pre-released and that reminds me more than a bit of Razorcuts (mid-1980s English indiepop is a good reference for the band’s previous work too), including lyrics like “What’s to be done about it / No use to dance around it / You know I thought about it all”. So I’ll just do that.

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Megan From Work is looking for a new bass player to join the band. If you’re interested and you’re available to practice Tuesday nights in Manchester, New Hampshire (or Thursdays, if that works better for you) and willing to go on tour with them sometimes, drop them an email. You will then be able to say that one of pop music’s best band names of the moment is a little bit yours too. And you get to play edgy power pop like this The PIMS (from their 2024 debut Girl Suit, recorded a few years before you joined the band).

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Oh hey, this is fun! I had added Season 2 to my playlist because of a recommendation from I don’t remember where. Then when listening I had to double check to confirm this was released in 2026 and not in 1986 and that this band is from Melbourne, Australia and not from Oxford or Glasgow. They just released their debut album Power of Now with eleven jangly, punky indiepop songs in the style of Shop Assistants or Girls at our Best. I love every single song, it’s just that this What For is the opener that blew me away first.

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Shapes Like People is Carl from England and Kat from New Zealand, now living married life and making music in Wiltshire. And for a change I won’t mention that New Zealand pop label. The jangly indiepop songs sound somewhere between the early indiepop from Glasgow 1984 and the sixties pop from San Francisco 1968. I like it, just as much as I like their description of their “utterly quaint British country home topped with traditional thatched roof”. That sounds like the right kind of middle-aged life. “Don’t change the view, grow gracefully older”.

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