There is a loud punk band from Cleveland, Ohio called Cruelster. Minus one member you get The Carp. More melodic, but still too loud for my taste. Except for this one song, I Crave The City, which is pure feelgood pop. It is so simple (and also very catchy) that I struggle to write close to 100 words about it. Think of the kind of song a punk band would write for a family gathering. And I crave that kind of music.
Has anyone ever written better breakup songs than Lush with Ciao! and Hypocrite? Maybe not, but the same sarcastic energy I also hear in Amelia & The Housewives’ Shattered: “I took a leap of faith ‘cause you seemed sorted / You sold a myth to me and I just bought it”. Less shoegaze-y than Lush but equally British – the band is from Brighton – and a really good song. “It doesn’t matter / Everything’s been shattered” and that may be true but – and that’s easy to say when it’s not my own relationship – how lucky we all are that it led to this song.
A compilation of songs recorded in Olympia, WA’s Yoyo Studios had a huge influence on me. I lost my physical copy many years ago, but I still get warm fuzzy feelings from reading the tracklist. Pat Maley owned Yoyo Studios and while I believe they have closed, she is still making music in various bands, including the duo Guidon Bear. They have released a few albums and Animal Child is my favourite song: simple pop with an Olympia garage-y feel to it, that to me serves as a great tribute to the many contributions Pat made to alternative pop music.
I don’t think in musical absolutes, but if someone were to tell me that Freezepop’s Duct Tape My Heart is the best electropop song ever recorded, I am not going to argue with them. And yes, it does help that the song was released during my musical formative years more than 20 years ago and not part of the band’s latest record (which isn’t bad at all!), but still. How can I not be in love with “You’re so dreamy, you’re so sweet / swept completely off my feet”? I’m so lucky Freezepop was around when I was forming my taste.
I am a big fan of Slumberland and Skep Wax, the two labels who released Foglights’s debut EP, and of The Cords, half of whom is also half of Foglights. So I had to look up Stone Anthem, the alter ego of Archie Ingram, who is the Foglights’ other half and whom I wasn’t familiar with. He makes psychedelic songs (soundscapes?), which mixed with the pure indiepop of The Cords gives us this very dreamy, introverted pop song. I absolutely love it and I can’t wait to hear the EP’s other songs. On August 21st, I will be able to.
I’m really into Fakemink these days so I had started looking for other artists from the British underground rap scene. This is how I discovered Fimiguerrero, the alter-ego of British-Nigerian Fimihan Uthman Akinola. On his latest mini album he not only collaborates with Fakemink but also included a song recorded with laptop twee heroes Bassvictim. That makes sense. This Loser is a pure rap song, albeit with the sketchiness that I think is typical of UK underground rap, while the techno-y alarm bells that push the song forward also make it very pop. And that’s what I happen to like.
“Let’s try more interesting things / You could be the person that sings”. The Simple Present are Cathrin and Sabine from Stuttgart, Germany. They just released a short album full of calm, unpretentious indiepop borrowing from four decades of the genre’s history. The whole album makes for some really pleasant listening, with this Let’s Write A New Hit my favourite, as it reminds me of The Bartlebees: the simple production and also, let’s be honest, the soft German accents. “If it helps I could get us some drinks / It’s easier than you think”.
The musical influences of Sugar World – Katryn and Ryan from Los Angeles – go back all the way to Black Tambourine, who in the early 1990s hid their plain indiepop behind layers of fuzzy shoegaze. I love Black Tambourine – who doesn’t? – and I’m really in love with Sugar World’s latest single White Noise (a pre-release of their upcoming album Supercassettevision). Compared to Black Tambourine, the song is both more twee and noisier, a combination that works really well in practice. I look forward to that full album that Sunday Records will release later in the year.
The other day, I was talking on Bluesky with Slumberland’s Mike Schulman about the Just A Taste compilation of early singles from Australia’s Summershine label he released back in 1995. All excellent jangly indiepop from down under despite no household name among them, not even for most indiepop fans, though I mentioned The Sugargliders here before. My favourite song on the compilation is 1,000 Years, a beautiful jangly love song by Perth’s The Rainyard. That version isn’t online, this version called 1,000 Days is and I am glad I can share it.
In the early years of this century, I was pursuing a career in mathematics. At one of many seminars I attended, I may have run into Dan Snaith, who was doing the same, in a similar field (unlike me, he did finish his PhD). Now Dan is, according to Wikipedia, a “composer, musician, and recording artist”. He does so under various names, with Caribou probably the best known. I love Cabirou’s indietronica – indie in spirit, techno in body – and this Broke My Heart in particular; it was one of my favourite songs from 2024.
I saw earlier music by The Paranoyds (of Los Angeles) described as “synth punk”. That seems accurate, but on this song (from a just released EP) the synths are less prominent. Punk it still is, but more of the cute indiepop variant (there are ooo ooo backing vocals!), the one that I could imagine being released on K Records. If this kind of music is making a resurgence (this month only, I wrote about Josie, The TSG and Heather the Jerk, all of whom sound vaguely similar), then I’m all for it.
I often forget what an incredibly unique band Young Marble Giants were. Active for just three years, they released only one album (1980’s Colossal Youth). On Bandcamp they self-identify as ‘post-punk’, a label that is fitting (the prominent bass line in particular), except that this is post-punk stripped down to its minimalist core, creating very intimate music. It makes you understand why generations of indiepop bands mention the Welsh band as an influence. Just like minimalist punk may be the best punk (Beat Happening, anyone?) minimalist post-punk is the best post-punk. And YMG were so good.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.