“Bard rap”. Thus describes Hen Ogledd singer Dawn Bothwell her approach to making music. It certainly describes this Scales WIll Fall (from their recent DISCOMBOBULATED album): an 8-minute folk song that refers to many protest movements past and present. Towards the end of the song – not even the longest on the album – It’s hard not to end up singing along to the polyphonic chorus. And you’ll probably have joined them on the barricades too.
The inspiration for Neutrals’ Steven Proctor, Bus Conductor is an old newspaper article about a Scottish bus driver who gambled away the day’s collections. The song is quintessential Neutrals: Bay Area postpunk-indiepop that recalls Television Personalities or – if anyone remembers them – Milky Wimpshake, with the vocals very prominent in a storytelling way and the songs’ subjects often Scottish/British (their singer is unmistakably Scottish). It is also a really good song: my favourite from their 2024 album New Town Dreams (released, obviously, on Slumberland), which itself remains one of my favourite albums of the post-Covid era.
I am currently in a part of the world where it is pretty much impossible to buy or even order new music, making me grateful for places like Bandcamp and Tidal. Those weren’t around two decades ago and I remember searching for years for records by Small Factory of whom I knew some songs from mixtapes. When I finally found their records I wasn’t disappointed: all three albums are good and represent early 1990s US indiepop well, with this Friends still my favourite. Not on Bandcamp (yet?) but it is on Tidal and Spotify for us to enjoy.
More than three decades after bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride discovered their own footwear, there is a lot of shoegaze being released. I am not complaining and I am certainly a fan of the dreampop variant that I feel I refer to in every third song I write about. Philadelphia, PA’s Nothing is more noisy than that. On their album they sound at times like Radiohead – that’s nightmare material for me – but this Cannibal World, where the noisy shoegaze is accompanied by a breakbeat rhythm, is welcome to visit me in my dreams.
I’ve been really into Slippers lately, a Los Angeles band around singer-drummer Madeleine BB. That singer-drummer combination isn’t very common: there’s Genesis, of course, and in indiepop the legendary Lucksmiths. Those are not many miles off, musically, from Slippers: catchy and slightly edgy indiepop with a lo-fi feel to it. For its second album, out in June, Slippers has signed with what feels like its natural home, K Records. Until then, here is the addictive Guess I Started a Band, a non-album single that was released a year ago and could easily serve as the band’s theme song.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart recently played in Jakarta, Indonesia and not even for the first time. It makes sense: the country has long had an active indiepop scene. Meraung, from the Jakarta suburb of Bogor, is one band from this scene and their dreampop suggests they have listened to POPBAH more than once. Smile Like The Sun, from the recently released five-song Change EP, is a sweet love song that shows the band sounds as good (and perhaps a bit more confident) as on earlier work, where they sang in Bahasa. “Together, forever, your hand in mine”.
I was young and eager in the mid 1990s and really into indie rock coming out of the US at the time, but the name Korea Girl (San Jose, California; active 1996-1999) didn’t ring a bell. And I probably would never have discovered them if one of their songs, this Reunion, hadn’t become very popular on TikTok, which helped Tidal recommend it to me. I love the TikTok generation (they did the same to Heavenly, for example) and I really love this sad, reflective indie rock song about an upcoming school reunion.
Of the Spanish bands in the very international catalog of Madrid’s Elefant Records, La Casa Azul is probably the most popular. It’s not hard to see why, given their happy disco synthpop (that Wikipedia, rightly I think, compares with Japanese Shibuya-kei) is really catchy and sounds many miles more confident than most other indiepop bands. They also do (or did, when I saw them) exciting live shows. It’s never a punishment to listen to their songs. This one, perhaps thanks to the lyrics “Y entrar pletórica a lo Barry White / Una auténtica superstar”, is my favourite.
I wouldn’t think that “indierock with a country twang” is something that would get me excited but here you go: I absolutely love the 99 seconds of (Crying In The) Sportsbook by Chapel Hill, NC’s Entrez Vous. True, it helps that there is a bit of punk here and even a hint of indiepop, but most of all it is just a very catchy short song. Come in!
I’m really excited about new ‘classic twee’ bands, such as The Cords, forming and old bands in the genre, such as Heavenly, re-forming. But I’m also excited about the ‘laptop twee’ trend of bands that interpret the genre of cute, playful pop songs with a serious undertone in a new, more electronic (and heavily influenced by electroclash) way. With this dreamy electronic Going Home (“I’m gonna walk when I want, gonna walk when I have to”) London duo Bassvictim fits seamlessly into the box I had previously put Worldpeace DMT and The Femcels in. It’s a very precious box.
My favourite US power pop song for this month is Bug, by Philadelphia’s Remember Sports. Power pop not a very innovative genre and it’s not even a genre I find myself listening to a lot, but all the way back to Magnapop’s Merry (a personal all-time favourite), it’s a genre that once every while produces songs where everything falls into the right place. And Bug is one of those songs. “There’s more to life than cleaning up my room” after all.
Portland, Oregon’s The Autocollants are one of so many 1990s indiepop bands who have re-formed to make new music. In this case, an upcoming split 7” with The Cat’s Miaow. That’s also the main musical reference, as both bands make fragile, sweet but sad indiepop songs, with the lo-fi recording making the songs feel very intimate. I’m too impatient to wait for that 7” to be released in May so here’s a three-decades old song (that also recalls Galaxie 500) from an outtakes compilation that I’ve been playing on repeat for weeks. “You are perfect just the way you are”.
Sonic Youth was, more than three decades ago, a brief but important stop in my journey discovering music. I rarely listen to the band these days, but still enjoy some of their early music, which mixes punk, noise and experimentation with a lot of feedback. The musicians from Land Whales are clearly Sonic Youth fans and this short, edgy song wouldn’t stand out on, say, Daydream Nation (I wrote this before discovering they used to be named after a song from that album). Extra cool: they are from Havana, Cuba and released their debut album on Peru’s Buh Records.
Last year, at a music festival in Athens, Greece I saw Tim (ex-Razorcuts) and Vanessa (ex-Melons) play some old and new songs. What I didn’t pick up on – and that’s on me; I chatted with both after the show – is that they actually have a full band, called Silver Biplanes, and that’s where those new songs were from. Having properly discovered them, I really like Silver Biplanes and Coming Up For Air (from a 2025 EP) in particular as it hides a dark theme behind a lovely sweet melody, which of course it shares with so many 1980s indiepop songs.
Ghanaian Ebo Taylor died last month. In his long life (he lived to 90), he played an important role in the development of highlife and afrobeat, two musical genres that are only slowly being discovered outside Africa. Indeed, not until 2010 did Taylor release an album that was distributed internationally. Thankfully, with his death his music hasn’t died and I really enjoyed digging into his music, with this jazzy Atwer Abroba my favourite: despite my impatient brain and the song lasting more than 8 minutes, it never gets even a tiny bit boring.
For years, Melbourne’s The Cat’s Miaow were this band from a distant past (the 1990s) whose songs indiepop fans shared on mixtapes or played on repeat as they went through breakups. But now, the band is playing shows again and releasing new music too. And not only that, the new songs sound very much like the old ones, which are among the finest bedroom indiepop songs that I know. Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely is actually a Hüsker Dü cover and – no disrespect to the Hüskers – even better than the original in a very Cat’s Miaow way.
According to Wikipedia, Hong Kong’s My Little Airport started “writing politically themed songs” in 2009, which is why I guess it is appropriate they mostly sing in Cantonese now. Those songs are really good (I checked), even if I miss all the political references (so it might be a good moment to learn about Hong Kong’s Umbrellla Movement, which My Little Airport is actively involved in). But this cute early sad love song remains my favourite of theirs. By far actually.
“Breakfast in cemetery / Boy tasting wild cherry / Touch girl, apple blossom / Just a boy playing possum”. That, from Beat Happening’s Indian Summer, is where Austin’s Touch Girl Apple Blossom got its name from. The band’s debut album will be released in May on Beat Happening’s own K Records (choose your band names wisely, kids) but I’m inpatient and I really love Sidewalk, from their 2023 debut EP, so that’s what I’m sharing now. Indiepop that would suit an Indian summer well. It somehow reminds me of Canada’s B’ehl, but if you think Beat Happening, you’re not many miles off either.
More than four decades after she and her Dolly Mixture bandmates sang about a popular classmate, Rachel Love still makes music. In Railcard and on also her second solo album, Lyra (from 2024, but re-released next month by Slumberland), where she is accompanied by her sons as they process the passing of Rachel’s husband Steve. That’s a beautiful story. It is also a beautiful album of quiet, reflective indiepop of which I could have picked any song. Opening Without You, given the subject, seems the most appropriate choice.
The Guardian published an article about Tinariwen, a Tuareg collective from the Sahara who are one of the pioneers of desert blues. The article focuses on how the collective is dealing with the (geo)political changes in the region, but it is also a good introduction to desert blues, which I had written about before. Tinariwen are probably better known than Etran de L’Aïr (they won a Grammy in 2011) and sound slightly more melancholic. Sastanàqqàm (“I question you”) is about the lessons learned from living in the desert and is a good introduction to both Tinariwen and the Tuareg.
There’s some kind of About page at the bottom of the first post. There is an Instagram account and also a Bluesky account and a playlist on Tidal. I am Martijn and this is my personal-professional website.