I’m not necessarily proud of it, but these days I find myself regularly singing “Fighting makes you feel strong / Killing really turns you on”. From a song called Death Destruction Mayhem. Huh? My excuse: it is a really catchy song by hardcore punk band Ceremony, from just north of San Francisco. Like, really catchy, showing that hardcore punk is just pop, except sung with a bit more anger. The band has a history on Matador Records, so are no strangers to the indie world, but this song is from an upcoming album on Relapse, which feels a more natural home.

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I am – I may have mentioned this – very song-oriented and with a song comes someone singing. Or rapping, or mumbling even, but still: a human voice. John Girgus (he was in Sarah Records band Aberdeen) has a human voice, I know from some of the other things he released under the name Legendary House Cats. But under that name he also put out three albums with instrumental songs, of which Out Of Reach is my favourite. Field Mice-y synthpop where you expect someone to start singing any moment, except at the end you realise you never missed it.

(After writing this blog post, I discovered there is a non-instrumental version of the song too. Oh well.)

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I have never been to Peru, but I read atlases so I know the country has a huge coastline. I guess people surf. I know for certain there is a band that plays surf garage rock. Manganzoides they are called and they just celebrated their 30-year anniversary with a compilation Dosis completa on local Buh Records (who are worth following if you’re into heavier indie from Latin America). With its catchy reverb going straight back to Dick Dale, this Musaraña, originally from 2001, is my favourite. You might like it too.

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No matter in which order you put the words ‘indie’, ‘pop’, ‘garage’ and ‘punk’, it applies to Heather the Jerk: raw, simple, lo-fi and full of energy. Heather the Jerk is the solo-project of Heather Sawyer from Madison, Wisconsin but because it is 2026 you can sound like a full band on your own, including ooo ooo ooo background vocals. Heather the Jerk released a full-length cassette in February of this year, but those five months since count as fifty punk years, so here is 74 seconds’ worth of new song, just released as a digital single.

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The girl from Broken Social Scene’s 2002 song Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl (“Used to be one of the rotten ones”) will be in her forties now. Time goes fast like that. The song by the Toronto collective (who are still making music, even though it never again got this good) is timeless though. Dreamy, mesmerizing and the right kind of repetitive – the one that makes you play the song again and again. “Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me”. And so on.

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“SEO wet dream”, @ (pronounced: ‘at’) describes itself on its Bandcamp. That is true, but I did end up finding that Bandcamp so we’re all good. We’re also good about the music: a duo making acoustic folk-pop whose influences go all the way back to that folk duo from sixty years ago, but whose more eerie songs could also have been released on K Records. And on this Autosmile, which was just released as a single, they remind me a bit of The Softies. I love this. Don’t @ me. Or maybe do.

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The TSG is a new band fronted by Taylor Stewart, who also plays drums in The Tubs. The latter have gotten reasonably popular recently (reviews on Pitchfork, a Wikipedia page, that kind of stuff), which you’d expect from their fairly polished janglepop. The TSG is not that: raw, simple punk pop that focuses more on making it to the end of the song than on colouring within the lines. And if I’m honest, that’s how I often like my music best. They just released their debut 7” single on London’s Gob Nation of which this Ramones-y Alright is my favourite.

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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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