“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
‘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.
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.
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.
I understand that seven albums into their career, Barcelona’s Mujeres are reasonably popular in their native Spain. I don’t know why they aren’t better known outside the country, at least in the international indiepop community. The community that at the beginning of the century embraced Spanish bands like Vacaciones and Juniper Moon and that is what songs like this Alucinante remind me of: uptempo happy indiepop with a bit of punk mixed in that is very hard to sit still to. And, despite me not speaking any Spanish, hard not to sing along to either.
“She’s a ridiculous / pop phenomenon / I don’t know why people / put her records on”. The moment I read Dagger Zine’s throwback to Push Kings’ 1997 debut album, I had Pop Phenomenon stuck in my head. It is still incredibly catchy and I see why back then I put it on many mixtapes: simple perfect pop by four white dudes who on the album cover look perfectly groomed. If that sounds like the Beatles then that is because the music does too. And in this case, I get why people put their records on.
I have written variations of “I had to double check this wasn’t recorded in 1989” several times on this blog, but in the case of The Catburgers the music really was recorded back in 1989, by some Edinburghers who got together after seeing The Television Personalities play. It is thanks to Slumberland (who else?) that a nine-song record of original recordings will soon be released. The band’s music does fit the 1980s Scottish indiepop mold quite well, though this I’ve Got a Friend, pre-released as a teaser, also reminds me of early Lucksmiths and yes, that means I love it.
We’ve been dealing with heatwaves in this part of the world, but in Oakland they’re obsessed with summer’s nearing end. After Twin Bloom’s Summer’s Gone, fellow Oaklanders The Goods are slightly more hesitant by singing that Summer’s Almost Gone, on a new single preceding their second album Goodbye Summertime. Season jokes aside, I really dig the band around Rob Good, who also plays with personal favourites Joel Cusumano and Yea-Ming and the Rumours. Compared to earlier work, this is slightly less 60s pop and more standard American indiepop (Math And Physics Club, anyone?). Which I love in any season.
If there was ever a better song recorded about social awkwardness than The Moldy Peaches’ Nothing Came Out I wouldn’t know. 25 years ago, the awkward and confused person that I was (“without 40 oz. of social skills”) would play their just released self-titled album non-stop because it felt so relatable, this song particularly so. It still does and I’m very happy Kimya and Adam are still playing the occasional gig. They’re hugely influential today and actually got reasonably big because of a soundtrack, but even without all that, the world is a better place thanks to The Moldy Peaches.
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.
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.