There is the psychedelic pop of The Chills and the noisy lo-fi of Tall Dwarfs, but for me Christchurch’s The Bats have always been the band that best epitomizes New Zealand’s alternative pop music: jangly, melodic, punky and a little bit underground — or is that down under? The band has been around for more than four decades (with a hiatus somewhere in the middle) and is about to tour New Zealand once again, but Made up in Blue is one of their earliest songs and still my favourite song of theirs.

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I am really into pop songs, with the emphasis on ‘pop’ as much as on ‘songs’. So I don’t really have much with six minute long instrumental EDM-dub-techno songs. And yet I am really into this song by Binary Algorithms, the alter ego of Colombia’s Andrés Ávila. His music – I am citing Bandcamp – “frames a narrative of decay and despair, where the Latin—American periphery, the hopelessness of unlove, and the tragedy of resistance in the Global South collide”. Now that I can at least relate to. Plus I love Colombia. And this song, it seems.

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The Girls in the Garage compilation series unearthed many long forgotten songs from the 1960s, all sung and performed by girl bands. They showed that a group of women back then could release great pop songs without the involvement of that guy and his wall of sound. One of my favourites from the series is Turn Her Down, a 1962 song by Cupons (think The Crystals going lo-fi punk), who may have released only one other song. I’m not the only one intrigued and someone else found a bit more and also discovered this ‘male version’ of the song.  

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I keep forgetting about Oakland, California’s Ryli and then when I listen to their debut album Come And Get Me (released last June on Dandy Boy Records) again I remember how good the four-piece really is. I Think I Need You Around, which had previously been released as a single in 2024, is my favourite song from the album. The perfect pop reminds a bit of Camera Obscura, as if that band had grown up next to the San Francisco Bay rather than the river Clyde. If they keep putting out songs like this, I do really need Ryli around.

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Look, I like good lyrics as much as the next music fan. But for me the biggest catch of Assistant’s Flowers is the “do do do do do do do do” throughout this song. The three-piece from Brighton, England lists Felt, Stereolab and the Field Mice as its influences but at least on this song (Flowers appears on a split 7” with Manchester’s Goodbye Wudaokou) sounds a lot more laid back: a simple acoustic indiepop song that you can just imagine listening to while walking along Brighton beach at night. While humming “do do do do do do do do”.

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In its overview of the best global albums of 2025, The Guardian calls Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan “a staple of the region’s indie music scene since the 1990s”. I hadn’t heard of her until recently and I am writing this from an Arab country, so double shame on me. Shmaali ( شمالي in Arabic, meaning North) is heavily rooted in Arab music – again, I can’t claim to be a connaisseur – but also with clear influences from dub and electronic music. It is very good and should be a good starting point for a musical journey through the region.

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Happy 2026! This year it has been three decades since I left my small hometown for a much larger university town. Which meant I was finally able to see decent bands play live, the first of which were Dunedin, New Zealand’s The Chills. I knew only one song, Pink Frost, that someone from Canada had put on a mixtape. I don’t remember much of the concert and it took me years to fully appreciate The Chills, but this dreamy psychedelic song with its solid drum rhythm (as the song’s Wikipedia entry rightly calls it) remains my favourite song of theirs.

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From one Finugrian female singer to another. Tiia Jaakola, the woman behind Count Jaakola, is Finnish but lives in London where among other things she is a touring member of Allo Darlin’. That’s great for her and for them, but musically Count Jaakola doesn’t share a lot with Allo Darlin’. It sounds more generic female-fronted indie, with quite a bit of variation between the songs. Boy Bingo (“It doesn’t matter if you’re Tom, Ben, Trevor or whatever”) sounds like of a less dance-y Saint Etienne and is my favourite song from her debut album, Kind Eyes.

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Mariin K is a project from Mariin Kallikorm, who plays guitar in the band of trip hop musician Tricky. But it is also a band who share a drummer with fellow Estonians Pia Fraus, whom I wrote about earlier, and who are a much better musical reference, for they both fish from the same dreampop pond. I’ve been pretty obsessed with Mariin K lately (their debut album Rose Skin was released earlier this year on Seksound, Pia Fraus’s own label) and with Beach in particular, which keeps popping up as a background sound in my head, like a beautiful dream.

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I’m perfectly fine with today’s digital-first music world, if only for the convenience of not having to carry boxes of heavy vinyl in yet another international move. But I do sometimes miss the evenings where I would continuously play 7” singles. Such as this 1994 debut single by California then Oregon’s Rocketship, who later went on to release a really fine full album on Slumberland. It’s less shoegaze-y and more clear pop (Unrest, anyone?) than their later work, but just as good, and I’m glad I can still listen to it on all the online platforms.

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In true 7″ fashion, the Bandcamp link (and embed) includes both songs from the A-side of the single. But that’s okay as Naomi & Me, about Galaxie 500’s Naomi Yang, is also a really good song.

Yeah life got busy, but it’s Christmas and while I’m in a place where they don’t know it’s Christmas time at all, I found the time to write about what has been my favourite Christmas song for about two decades. Eux Autres is a brother-sister duo from California (later the drummer from the Aislers Set became an adopted family member) who sing catchy jangly indiepop, with this sarcastic Christmas-themed song being one of my favourites. Even when listening to it through my AirPods, it’s hard to resist clapping along. “Dad slides a fiver over / Play me Hotel California, little one”

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I only became a fan of Saint Etienne gradually, joining their fan base late, via the side entrance. Over the years though, the London three piece has become one of my favourite bands, putting out many of my all time favourite indie dance songs. And now, after a tour next year, the band is quitting. They end on a high note though, for I really enjoyed their last album, of which The Last Time is a very fitting closing song. “Now I′m really glad we made the trip // Because only three survived”. Thank you for all the awesome music.

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There is a lot of good power pop coming out of the United States these days: Joe Cusumaro, Strange Passage and now Samuel S.C. A five piece from Virginia, just outside the country’s capital. Like so many bands in the genre it’s really about a few songs that really stand out for me. But that wasn’t a problem when I fell in love with Magnapop’s Merry decades ago (this reminds me a lot of that) and isn’t a problem on this very catchy Evergreen (from a split single with Florida’s POHGOH) either.

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The YouTube link is to a live version.

Ever since I mentioned Dead Moon the other day I’ve had Until it Rains in my head. My favourite song of the Portland three-piece and also the only one I actually remember. When I discovered the garage rock band through Dutch radio in the mid 1990s the fun fact about them was that the two singers were grandparents – which was extremely rare in an era when musicians in their 50s were ancient. Three decades on and Dead Moon is two-thirds dead (only Toody Cole is still alive and making music) but lives on in my head through this great song.

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Zea, once a five-piece indie rock band from the Netherlands, buried indie rock years ago and for almost two decades has been the experimental solo project of Arnold de Boer, now also the singer of equally experimental punk band The Ex. On most songs on Zea’s latest album, Arnold is joined by the marching band of his home village, who on this song in particular provide a rhythm-heavy background to Arnold singing some kind of ballad in his native Frisian — a minority language from the north of the country. It works really, really well.

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Twee pop legends Heavenly are playing shows again, and they’ll even release a new album, their first in three decades. But before Heavenly there was Talulah Gosh, with largely the same line-up, who recorded some of the earliest – and best – twee pop songs. Of which I Can’t Get No Satisfaction (Thank God) is one of my favourites. The feminist anthem certainly has the best title. “Some of my best friends are bastards like you / At least they’re not neurotics too”.

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A school friend who knew more about music than I did once taught me that punk was music that sounded like they were tearing things down. Well, about Olivia’s World he was wrong. For this Sydney, Australia band’s music is very much punk yet also sounds a lot of fun: like a party, or, at worst, getting slightly drunk to forget about a recent break-up. And then remind yourself of the good things in the world. Such as this song.

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Indie folk is a genre that, a few songs at a time, doesn’t easily get boring. I’m not exactly a connoisseur, but Oregon’s Haley Henderickx is a big name and here she is joined by Max García Conover, a Woody Guthrie inspired singer-songwriter from Maine (add Vashti Bunyan as a reference for Henderickx). Apparently, they recorded the songs for their collaboration straight to tape in a barn. I was a Mountain Goats fan in the 1990s, so I like the sound of that, and combined with the two vocals, in this Boars makes a pretty great song.

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I mentally file Sharp Pins somewhere between Elephant 6 and Guided By Voices – the voice of the band’s sole member Kai Slater reminds me of that of Robert Pollard. That’s the What does it sound like? question out of the way. I was a bit surprised that K Records released this, as it seems a little too ‘rock’ for the Olympia, WA label. But then, Sharp Pins does make some really fine songs, such as this Queens of Globes and Mirros.

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Soldiers Who Want to Be Heroes by singer-songwriter-poet Rod McKuen is probably the only song I still like that I discovered through my parents; a 7” single of it was among their pretty small (and very odd) collection. I loved this song as a kid, for even as a nine-year-old who could only speak a few words of English, I understood its anti-war message. Almost forty years later and a decade after McKuen’s passing I still like the song – and still think war is a pretty terrible idea.

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