In the late 1990s, I used to correspond with Paul Nini (I helped him put together a compilation of Dutch and Belgian lo-fi music), who a decade before had been the bass player in the Columbus, Ohio band Great Plains. I was thinking back to that as I listened to Great Plains’ reissued 1985 album Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade, perhaps the first time I properly paid attention to the band. College rock, yet with a wide range of influences, from post-punk to jangle pop to, here on Fertile Crescent, folk, creating a pretty unique sound. Great band.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

“A damsel saved is a damsel earned / joining the ranks of the things I’ve learned”. We – and by ‘we’ I really mean ‘I’ – should listen to young people more often. Callum Ruly Branch (Callum Wilsie, from somewhere in the Bay Area) is 19 years of age, according to Bandcamp, and her folky indiepop (or poppy folk, if you like) sounds very fresh, innocent yet confident. This Things I’ve Learned is the title song of what she describes as having poured her “heart and soul of the past two years bared onto an album”. That’s how I like it.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

One reason why I made this a blog about songs is that there are those bands that have one song that I like so much more than the rest of their oeuvre. The Innocence Mission is such a band. Sure, their indie folk is very pleasant to listen to — indie folk usually is — but Lakes of Canada (a song from 1999) is such a beautiful song that the rest of the band’s oeuvre doesn’t seem to matter. And because I recently found the song stuck in my head — you can guess why — I wanted to share it with you all.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

ComCmit 2 Try, a three piece from Montreal, Canada, self-identifies as tweemo, a genre that mixes the whimsicalness of twee with the intensity of emo. I guess it’s like drawing hearts and faces on your duffel bag, except the hearts are black and the faces are sad. On their just released debut EP Famous Stages, I can definitely hear the emo part (the band apparently cites Rainer Maria as an influence). The twee part less so, except in this introverted-intense Always a Surprise. And that’s exactly how I like my emo. 

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

Today, it is exactly twenty years since I moved out of my native country, The Netherlands. It’s not something I’d have recommended a chronically anxious autistic person to do (even less so move countries a few more times) but I did and here I am, still having fun. And writing, today, about The Klittens, five women from that country, making indiepop-but-slightly-edgier that I wish people made back when I lived there. After several singles, the band will release its debut album Have A Heart later this month, but until then, this 2024 song is my favourite of theirs.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

Don’t judge a book by its cover, or a band by its name (Unrest, anyone?), but a band named The Happy Somethings I simply can’t not like. Indeed, the band from the English Midlands makes very pleasant pop music deep rooted in the 1960s (The Beatles aren’t bad as comparisons go). Though on this reflective You’ll Grow Up Quick, my favourite song from their latest album A Healthy Dose of Hope, they sound perhaps more 2000s American indiepop (accents aside of course). Hey, that’s a something that makes me very happy.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

The Spook School is back! The C86-inspired Edinburgh indiepop band will release a new album, Like A Heartbeat, on Slumberland early next year. One song, Falling, has already been released and I suggest you listen to it; it is really good in a Buzzcocks-kinda way. But today I want to write about Speak When You’re Spoken To, a song from their 2015 album Try to be Hopeful (Fortuna Pop!). For as I was listening to The Spook School’s back catalog while having some mentally rough days, it was this song’s energy that helped me pull through. Thank you, Spook School.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

“What tattoo would you choose if you wanted it to represent a band or album you love?” a friend asked me some time ago. I didn’t have to think for a long time: the rocket cat from Beat Happening‘s self-titled debut album. If there is one album that would be a metaphor for my own weird life it would be this: playful but also serious, very intimate, and punk in its own unique way. “I don’t have to smile if I don’t want to / You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to”. Now ink that on my leg.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

I feel like we’ve run out of band names by now, so when I saw new music by a band called ‘Persil’, I didn’t think it was the Dutch electropop duo releasing new music after two decades. But it is them indeed, with four new tracks that sound like it is still 2004, when I saw the band play at least half a dozen times in small, dark Dutch venues, never disappointing. The late John Peel was a fan. I was a fan and I’m happy with the new music. I am a fan again.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

There are many bands called Shampoo. This Shampoo is a trio from New Jersey who, judging from the Five Favorites EP they just released (and the cassette’s cover art!), love West Coast pop, the Beach Boys in particular. There is absolutely no shame in that. Opener Forgotten Lane is my favourite among the five songs, probably because it sounds least polished: as the bands from the Elephant 6 Collective taught us a few decades ago: you don’t always have to wash your hair to make a great 60s pop song.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

Helen (a SEO nightmare) is the other band of Liz Harris, better known for making fairly minimalistic psychedelic pop under the name Grouper. Helen hadn’t released anything in a decade but will release a new full album Linda’s Head later in the year; Dead Shark II is a teaser. And what a teaser it is: I know there are a lot of shoegaze-dreampop bands these days, modern technology making it easy to create the layers of pop song needed for the genre, but this is good. Like approaching Black Tambourine good. In my world that’s really good.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

I discovered The Crabs’ Alien Girl thirty years ago after someone had put it on a mixtape, apparently not long after it had been released on their debut album Jackpot. The 90 seconds of perfect American indiepop (“Take me to your world, show me to your kin / Now I understand, cause I’m the alien”) have never stopped living in my head. Short and simple, very catchy and unmistakably Pacific North West: the duo is from Anacortes, WA and this album was released on K Records.  I’d be happy to keep it in my head for another 30 years.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

‘Laptop twee’, like most genres, is a continuum and on that continuum Cootie Catcher (a four-piece from Toronto, Canada) is close to the twee side. I mean, listen to a song like this Diary, from its 2025 debut album Shy at first (come to think of it, that album title too): a coming of age love song (“I bet you’re up in your room / figuring out what to do”) sung with the playfulness of an Architecture in Helsinki, one of those proto laptop-Twee bands. I love this so much and I am so glad laptop twee is a thing now.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

I mentioned Glo-Worm the other day and hey, here is another band that reminds me of their style of introverted indiepop. The Kitchenettes are an indiepop supergroup from the San Francisco scene that also brought us bands like The Telephone Numbers. They released their first ‘proper’ record earlier this year, a three-song 7” (on – where else? – Slumberland), of which this sounds most like it was sung by Pam Berry herself. If that sounds like a huge compliment, that is because it is. But it is very true.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

Does anyone remember Six Cents and Natalie, the lo-fi side project of Tullycraft’s Sean Tollefson? Listening to Fishboy’s latest album (his eighth, but the first one I pay close attention to), I am reminded of that project, if only because Eric Michener from Denton, TX, who is Fishboy, has a voice that sounds similar to Sean’s, while his songwriting (and lyrics with a lot of inner rhyme) also reminds me of Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum. Those are pretty big references, but I’d say that especially on this song Fishboy lives up to the comparisons.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

A theme of this blog is finding pop music in pretty much every genre. Today’s pop is hidden inside rather blunt garage punk, more particularly a song called Cock It! By Salmon Sisters, a new five-piece from Melbourne, Australia. The song is full of raw energy and the lyrics are, as you can guess from the title, even more raw than that. And that is actually in its own way kind of cute.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

Last year, I saw Jeffrey Lewis (and band) play live in Paris. It was a fun show: Jeffrey, who is part of the same NYC anti-folk scene that also brought us The Moldy Peaches, is an entertainer as much as he is a singer-songwriter (and comic book artist) and he really engaged with the audience. He didn’t play my favourite song, this Roll Bus Roll, which I found myself singing in my head the other day as I booked myself some bus travel. So here it is. “Roll bus roll, take me off / A rolled sweatshirt makes the window soft”.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

‘Twee pop’ is sometimes derogatively described as music for children. That is unfair given the very adult lyrics by a band like Heavenly, but some twee pop is really written for children. Such as Miss Melody Sunshine, a project by Laura Elizabeth Stone who, with collaborators from around the world, just released an album with very happy “sunshine-soaked indie dream pop for little daisy dreamers”. I haven’t been a child for decades, but I am a twee popper at heart and I cannot resist singling along to songs like this incredibly cute Grasshopper Hop. For children of all ages.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

The only way you can get me to write about Coldplay is by some band having a song with that title, which is what alternative hip hop duo Coco & Clair Clair (from Atlanta, Georgia) did. I won’t go into the rest of the lyrics as young kids may be reading this, but the song is extremely catchy and exactly the kind of sketchy hip hop I like a lot. Heck, I throw in the term “laptop twee” too as I feel that genre has the same vibe. If the duo is quite popular, it’s because kids these days are alright.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube

There is a subgenre of indiepop consisting of extremely intimate bedroom pop that almost makes you feel too embarrassed to listen to it and where a lo-fi recording adds to the intimacy. Think The Cat’s Miaow, The Autocollants or, as suggested by another blog, Glo-Worm. It’s in that box that I gladly place Ready Ave, a new band from Baltimore who just put out an album full of intimate indiepop. It’s music so fragile that I worry writing about it might break it. Just listen to it for yourself. Quietly and on your own. It is really, really good.

Bandcamp | Tidal | Spotify | YouTube