I spent many years in the South West of England, one county away from Cornwall, which is where Holiday Ghosts hail from. It is a place often linked with magic (King Arthur and all that) and it seems fitting for the folksy (dare I say gothic-y?) indiepop the band makes. “Yesterday I looked for the darkest patch in the river / It asked me, ‘What would you do for gold?’” That’s from Shoot for Peace, which was one of my favourite songs from 2024, the year it came out on the Coat of Arms album. I still love it in 2026.

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Absolutely Yours is from Minnesota. I never visited the state, but I gathered it has cold winters, which may explain the warm sound the band produces. A sound that otherwise reminds me of Great Britain in the late 1980s: jangly C86 indiepop of the fuller kind. A bit like Lush, I guess, or Shop Assistants if they tried to make shoegaze? I like it a lot, especially this Are You Running From Me? from their latest album Desire Path (the third full one, if I count correctly) on Sunday Records, which feels a natural home for their music.

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Does the language in which a song is sung matter? As someone who tends to focus on the vocals, I am tempted to say ‘yes’ and so most French pop sounds… mostly French to me. The first reference that comes to mind when I listen to Feutre (a three-piece from Bordeaux who just released their second album; there is a Watoo Watoo link for who remembers them) is fellow French band Autour de Lucie: the same kind of dreamy synth-driven (indie)pop with prominent vocals. But does it matter if Feutre just makes really nice music? No, of course not.

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Ever since I read somewhere that Soft Science, a five-piece from Sacramento, California, only releases songs and albums with one-word titles I cannot stop focusing on that. It makes track lists on Bandcamp look beautifully minimal. So there is that. There is also the music that goes back more than 15 years, to an album with multi-word song titles and before that bands such as California Oranges and Holiday Flyer and now reached a new album (Sand on Shelflife) with very grown-up American indiepop, that reminds me most of Velocity Girl. Yay! Fun! Exciting! 

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Often, keeping these posts to 100 words or less is a challenge. Sometimes though it isn’t. Twerp is a four-piece punk band from Athens. That’s Athens, Ohio, not Greece or Georgia. They sound like the Ramones and according to this song that is also their ambition, though with a female singer they also sound a lot like Helen Love. And I love that. It’s as simple as that.

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Language of Flowers is back! I was a big fan of the Belfast band (singer Tara Simpson’s fragile voice remains one of my favourites in indiepop) around the time of their 2004 debut album, when I even interviewed them for my small webzine. I moved on in life and apparently so did the band as they didn’t record anything new. Until now, when a new album has been recorded, with this Shimmer pre-released as a single. The music hasn’t changed much (if anything, they sound even more like Lush) so I am really looking forward to that full album.

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In her various bands, Amelia Fletcher has regularly sung about sexual harassment, often rather subtly. Back in 1995, Helen Love of the eponymous Welsh band was less subtle: “We’re gonna find him soon and beat him up”. Which is only fair given that he “stuck those bruises all over you”. More than three decades on, the song hasn’t become any less relevant and the fact that it is also a great song in the Ramones-y indie punk tradition Helen Love is known for feels almost unimportant to mention.

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Sidesleepers are a duo from Wollongong, Australia who just released a debut album Like an almost scalding cup. It contains nine pleasant, jangly indiepop songs (Up Around the Bend is my favourite, but not by a big margin). Another site mentioned The Pastels as a reference and I agree, though this is a little more polished. I’d describe it as “indiepop for people of my parents’ generation”, except that I am now my parents’ generation and this is my kind of music. I am not complaining.

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Combine 1960s American garage (the Girls in the Garage series, in particular) with early 1980s British post-punk (say, Girls at Our Best) and you’ll end up somewhere in Chicago. That is where Miniskirt is from, a four piece who appear only one quarter female but have this great female (or feminist) punk energy that makes those influences (and also Miniskirt) so good. On a recent EP Dive Bar Darlings, where each song plays tribute to a local venue, this Be Nice (“on the way back home”) may be about an unfortunate side of going clubbing in Chicago. Or anywhere, really.

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There is a Pains of Being Pure At Heart link in Always You through shared band members. There is also a Pet Shop Boys link, as their music, this Against The World in particular, really reminds me of the music of the British synth pop duo. Do I mind? Let me say that The Pet Shop Boys were among the first bands I fell in love with, when ten-year-old me explained to my mum how It’s A Sin gave me a special feeling in my belly. I still like them a lot. And I really like Always You too.

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In a recent interview Velocity Girl said that members of The Linda Lindas came up to them and told them “their father had played Velocity Girl for them when they were little kids”. That alone is a reason to love The Linda Lindas. There is of course their awesome name too. And, not unimportant, the music. Catchy pop punk with a lot of young energy – the band members are between 16 and 21 and they’ve been playing for years – and multilingual lyrics that appears to have given them a lot of praise (including some prominent TV appearances). They deserve it.

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I’ve been in Germany for the past few days and as it happens my favourite new band this week is German too: The Naggs are four women and one man from Düsseldorf who make the most addictive indie garage punk. Think of early 1980s girl-fronted indiepop groups like Girls At Our Best! (the lo-fi production sounds 1980s too) or Avilda to provide a more recent reference. Their whole debut album The Naggs Generation (which includes many covers of classic garage songs) is great, but here on Stuck for Good everything really falls into place. Super, super toll.

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I seriously reduced my record collection in the course of several mostly international moves, but I never got rid of The Arrogants’ Your Simple Beauty. The reason was simple: this one song, Lovesick, which for a time wasn’t available on the streaming platforms (it is now). Less than 100 seconds of perfect indiepop that has a unique but recognisable take on a failed relationship: “I’m not sad and I don’t want you back / I just miss the feeling of being in love”. Or, as they say on Bandcamp about themselves: “It was a great time while it lasted”. It was.

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I had never written about the same band twice on this blog, until now. Because this is The Cat’s Miaow. With a song from their upcoming debut album (on Slumberland and Lost and Lonesome). Debut album, yes, for in 34 years of being a band they only ever released a million singles and as many singles compilations. There are few bands whose music hit me deeper in the feels than the Melbourne band with its quiet so-intimate-it’s-almost-scary indiepop. When You Smiled And Turned Away is among their best songs, though in fairness, many of their songs are among their best.

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Full Sun’s Buggin’ reminded me so much of Shonen Knife (the lyrics seem to contain many long vowels) that I had to check whether the band is Japanese. They are not. Full Sun is a four piece from Bloomington, Indiana who operate on a fairly slow release cycle: three albums in twelve years. Through which they rush quickly, as they make fairly straightforward (and rather enjoyable) punk. Which occasionally, such as on this song, skirts closely to the edges of indiepop. And I happen to like that kind of punk best.

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I was a massive fan of The Thermals around the time of their 2003 debut album, which contains some of the most intense indie punk I know. They never got that good again, but follow-up albums were pretty decent still. And now The Thermals are back! Or is back, maybe, as the new album is recorded by Hutch Harris on his own. It still sounds unmistakably Thermals, whose music has, over the years, grown closer to where The Mountain Goats are now. Just listen to this On A Wind So High which still has some of that early Thermals energy.

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Oh, this is lovely. I wasn’t familiar with The Sprouts, but they are from Melbourne, Australia and are about to release a new album, a joint release between their local Lost and Lonesome (run by Mark from the Lucksmiths) and Spain’s Meritorio. I’m looking forward to that album, as I really love this Hit Me Go Down. A “wistful tribute to growing older and the fragility of memory” (I’m quoting their Bandcamp) and the quiet introverted jangle pop song really fits that melancholic feeling of getting older and memories slowly fading away.

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It’s time for the power pop song of the month. Relive It is the title track of Motorcycle’s debut album which was just released on Dandy Boy records. The song reminded me of label mate Joe Cusumano and while many artists on the label share musicians, I do think that comparison may be coincidental. It’s my favourite song of the album, which says a lot as there are several electro pop songs on it – usually more my jam. But with a second vocalist doing oooh oooh, this is exactly the kind of power pop I blindly fall in love with.

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The first Heavenly song I ever heard was C Is The Heavenly Option, a call-and-response duet Amelia Fletcher sang with Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnston. I always thought Heavenly should have done more duets like these. Well, here is a lovely new song by Swansea Sound, in which Amelia does call-and-response vocals with fellow bandmate Hue Williams, whom indiepop fans may know as the singer of The Pooh Sticks (who actually hailed from Swansea). I love it. The song is a teaser of an upcoming album, Pre-post-truth, which will be out in November, obviously on Skep Wax records.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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‘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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”.

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‘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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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