New Playlist: April 2025

To be perfectly honest with you, readers, right now, this moment, is the busiest that I (the person behind this blog) have been in a very long time (in terms of things outside of the world of Rosy Overdrive, I mean). So far I’ve been able to keep the blog posts coming at a normal pace, but for the first time in quite a while I’ve had to consider the fact that I might not be able to at some point in the near future. Hopefully this doesn’t happen! There’s still a ton of good new music on which I’d like to put a spotlight. The good news is that the April 2025 playlist is here, though, and it features a ton of this aforementioned good, new music. Check it out!

Gum Parker, Bliss?, Craig Finn, and Fluung all have two songs on this playlist.

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing a song), BNDCMPR. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

“Not Breaking Rocks”, Gum Parker
From The Brakes (2025, Repeating Cloud)

If you’re familiar with Galen Richmond’s previous band Lemon Pitch, then that’s roughly what his current one, Gum Parker, sounds like, but if you aren’t then they’re sneakily difficult to define. Their debut album The Brakes is “power pop” without that genre’s defining reverence, “pop punk” without a trace of what that term traditionally evokes, “slacker rock” made by people with the perpetual nervousness. Oh, and Richmond, despite being the primary songwriter, only sings about half the songs–bassist Kate Sullivan-Jones sings lead on a few tracks, including what is probably my favorite song on The Brakes, the catty, eminently quotable guitar pop drama of “Not Breaking Rocks” (sample line: “Valedictorian from a class of one throws devil horns as camera shutters shut”). Read more about The Brakes here.

“Living Well”, Bliss?
From Pass Yr Pain Along (2025, Psychic Spice)

A bunch of punk musicians making power pop? Well, that’s one way to get my attention. Bliss? are a brand new band from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and their debut album Pass Yr Pain Along is indeed a full exploration several strains of guitar pop formative to the band– Elvis Costello, post-Replacements pop rock and roll, and the Gin Blossoms all come to mind here. It’s not a “punk” record per se, but it absolutely benefits from a little roughness. “Living Well” is the “hit”, the classic short, punchy, giant-hook-featuring single in album tracklist slot number two. Read more about Pass Yr Pain Along here.

“Between GA”, Truth or Consequences New Mexico
From This Time of Year (2025)

Following in the long-standing tradition of Chicago groups equally indebted to roots rock and alt-country as they are to indie rock and emo, Truth or Consequences New Mexico sound loud but crystal-clear on This Time of Year. The big, earnest-to-the-point-of-emo opening track “Between GA” is probably a good litmus test as to whether or not Truth or Consequences New Mexico are going to be up your alley. Co-bandleader Jack Parker is on vocals here, and the delivery is the “twangiest” thing on This Time of Year–they’re really straining their voice to live up to the surging country rock instrumental, and I will go ahead and say that they land it. Read more about This Time of Year here.

“Dub Vultures”, The Convenience
From Like Cartoon Vampires (2025, Winspear)

Like Cartoon Vampires, the sophomore album from New Orleans’ The Convenience, is a headfirst dive into the world of “art rock”–snappy rhythms, splattered guitars, and strange psychedelic detours characterize the album. For a post-punk album, Like Cartoon Vampires is bright, shiny, and colorful, perhaps informed by the band’s core duo’s work in 80s-inspired synthpop band Video Age. The clattering, groovy art punk/garage rock of “Dub Vultures” reminds me of another great Southern post-punk band, Balkans–it sounds effortlessly cool, naturally alive, and secretly intricate. Read more about Like Cartoon Vampires here.

“Video Den”, The Blackburns
(2025)

Oh, this is good. Who likes story songs? What about power pop story songs? That prominently incorporate synthesizers? Well, the latest single by the Philadelphia power pop quartet The Blackburns has all that, and more. Lead vocalist Joel Tannenbaum introduces us to a trio of characters connected by the titular video store, bound together by circumstance and boredom. The song takes a page out of those horror movies one might find in the back of a place called the “Video Den”, and abruptly ends on a cliffhanger. “It’s hard to explain how different things were back then / When you were working at the Video Den,” Tannenbaum sings at the end of the song, a platitude that rolls around in one’s head while trying to decipher what The Blackburns mean by all of this.

“Luke & Leanna”, Craig Finn
From Always Been (2025, Tamarac/Thirty Tigers)

The music of Craig Finn (and his band, The Hold Steady) is already fairly…divisive for the fickle bunch known as indie rock fans, and even those who enjoy Finn’s most acclaimed works seem split on Always Been, his latest solo record. I, for one, am really into it–I’ve felt that Finn’s solo career has benefited from his attempts to grow his music palette (we already know he’s a great storyteller–what else you got?), and Always Been–produced by Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs and leaning further into shined-up, 80s synth-rock than ever before–certainly qualifies. “Luke & Leanna” is the kind of Craig Finn song that would work no matter what was going on underneath him, though, I think–the story is a wrecking ball, and no amount of polished production will ever make it “easy listening”. But I still love Finn and Granduciel’s attempts to make it so. 

“Starvin Heart”, Fluung
From Fluung (2025, Den Tapes/Setterwind)

Seattle trio Fluung have been keeping Pacific Northwest indie rock loud, electric, and catchy since the mid-2010s. Fluung is pretty clearly the band’s best work yet–an ambitious rock record that nearly doubles their last one (2022’s The Vine) in length, the third Fluung album has enough time to spit out a handful of blissful, hook-laden lost 90s alt-rock classics and push further into feedback-heavy, exploratory, lumbering fuzz rock terrain, too. Fluung is a record that’s about the journey as much as anything else, and the band make sure to leave us with a memorable and complete one. “Starvin Heart” is certainly one of the peaks of this journey–it’s massive, fuzzed out pop rock in the vein of Dinosaur Jr., and done as well as anyone currently doing it. Read more about Fluung here.

“This Kind of Rain”, Blue Cactus
From Believer (2025, Sleepy Cat)

North Carolina’s Blue Cactus reference classic folk-country singer-songwriters Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris as inspiration for their music, and their latest album Believer does its best to balance the simple intimacy of the former with the polish of the latter. Plenty of experienced Nashville-associated hands touched this record, but Blue Cactus’ writing is sufficiently far removed from the bright lights of the city on Believer, a delicate but confident Americana record. The country rockers on Believer all hit immediately–opening track “This Kind of Rain” is an alt-country classic, laid-back but electric in a way that’s in the same universe as the best of Lilly Hiatt and recent Waxahatchee, among others. Read more about Believer here.

“I Got Your Number”, Why Bother?
From You Are Part of the Experiment (2025, Feel It)

The You Are Part of the Experiment EP is a dark, troubling trip into underground noise rock, art punk, and fuzzed-out rock and roll that seemingly allows Why Bother? to get even weirder and unhinged than the mysterious Iowa band’s “proper” (if anything about them can be called that) records. The catchiest thing on You Are Part of the Experiment is also the record’s biggest outlier, an exuberant and surprisingly faithful cover of Cock Sparrer’s “I Got Your Number” that proves that Why Bother?’s basement scuzz translates very well into power pop and first-wave punk rock hooks. The rest of the EP is a real freak show, though. Read more about You Are Part of the Experiment here.

“Everyone I Love Is Depressed”, Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals feat. Randi Withani
From A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears (2025, Phantom Limb)

Apparently the Baltimore rap duo Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals have gained a reputation for experimental and political rap over their first couple of records, and, while A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears isn’t going to disabuse anybody of these notions, the two of them spend time out of these boxes on every account on this album. For instance, there are several moments that sound genuinely fun and pop-friendly–like “Everyone I Love Is Depressed”, an awesome groove of a funk-hop track about, of course, suicide. It’s dark, yes, but it’s also a party, the duo seemingly doing the best they can to aid their proclamation of “Don’t kill yourself! We love you too much!” in the chorus (and they can’t resist tacking an absurd skit onto the end of this one, too). Read more about A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears here.

“Universe Drawer”, Texas 3000
From Weird Dreams (2025, Skin Slicing Horse)

Who else is bummed by Sam Woodring retiring the Mister Goblin project? I suspect his solo material will be rewarding as well once we hear some more of it, but in the meantime I’d like to introduce you to a band from Nakano City, Japan that hits the same spot for me. Texas 3000 is Jojo from Curling’s other band, and it seems like a more chaotic version of the studio-pop of that band’s most recent album, as well as one that deals in the mix of math rock, emo, post-hardcore, and guitar pop that makes Mister Goblin so great. “Universe Drawer”, my favorite song from their most recent EP, Weird Dreams, has all of that and then some–the subtle opening eventually transforms into a cacophony, but a tuneful one.

“Tender and Laughing”, Miscellaneous Owl
From The Cloud Chamber (2025)

The Cloud Chamber displays a more thoughtful and subdued side to the writing of Huan-Hua Chye (aka Miscellaneous Owl). Last year’s You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow ran out to greet us with early Magnetic Fields-worthy bright synthpop instrumentals, and while The Cloud Chamber has its moments, on the whole it’s more of an album that one is “welcome to join in progress” than one that’s going out of its way to invite us inside. The first track on The Cloud Chamber is one of these friendlier moments–it’s a quiet, beautiful, synth-friendly indie pop song called “Tender and Laughing”, and while it never stops being “tender”, the chorus is a genuinely chaotic sensory overload that’s kind of surprising to hear from Miscellaneous Owl. Read more about The Cloud Chamber here.

“Pyramids in the Sky”, Mike Frazier
From April Days (2025, Geneva/Den Tapes)

There’s a refreshing directness to Mike Frazier’s latest record, April Days–recorded live, it’s a departure from the layered psychedelia of last year’s Secrets of Atlantis and a return to Frazier’s Appalachian folk-country roots even as he sets up shop in the Pacific Northwest as a recent Seattle transplant. April Days is about both Frazier’s new home and his health struggles–last year, he had brain surgery to repair the effects of a long-undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy. My favorite moment on April Days is “Pyramids in the Sky”, though, a raucous country rock tune about–what else?–aliens and their spaceships of choice. I could sit here and draw parallels between the extraterrestrial narrative of “Pyramids in the Sky” and the topographical, neurological, and pacifist themes of April Days all day, but it’s best to just take in the experience on your own. Read more about April Days here.

“No More Tears Pt. 2”, The Pennys
From The Pennys (2025, Mt.St.Mtn.)

Ray Seraphin (R.E. Seraphin) and Michael Ramos (Tony Jay) are The Pennys, and the two Bay Area indie pop singer-songwriters’ distinct styles turn out to be a perfect match on their self-titled debut EP. “No More Tears Pt. 2”, the song that closes The Pennys, sums up everything about the duo both on their own and together–the chorus (“Every time I tell myself ‘no more tears’ / The clouds above begin to unleash all my fears”, accompanied by sparkling guitars) is probably the single most gorgeous moment on the entire EP, its perfect guitar pop containing both shades of Seraphin’s lost-in-time power pop and Ramos’ “prehistorical pop music slowed down and reverb-ed all up”. Read more about The Pennys here.

“Perennial ‘65”, Perennial
From Perennial ‘65 (2025, Ernest Jenning)

Perennial ‘65 comes hot on the trail of last year’s Art History; this stopgap EP gives us one brand-new original Perennial rock and roll song, a cover of The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night”, two remixes from Cody Votolato and Chris Walla, and a track that continues the band’s exploration into experimental noise and electronic terrain. The opening title track is the “hit”–it’s as good as anything else the band have done, the now-classic combination of 60s garage rock/pop and furious post-hardcore dance punk hitting no less strongly than on their proper albums. Read more about Perennial ‘65 here.

“Forever”, The Tisburys
From A Still Life Revisited (2025, Double Helix/SofaBurn)

On A Still Life Revisited, The Tisburys consciously sought to expand their sound beyond the power pop of their last album, name-dropping ambitious indie rock groups like Frightened Rabbit and The Hold Steady as their targets. This is a risky decision, but there was a Springsteenian largesse to 2022’s Exile on Main Street, and A Still Life Revisited subsequently comes off as more of a continuous journey down a familiar road for them. It helps that bandleader Tyler Asay and crew still know their way around a nice, big guitar pop hook too, of course. As scholars of classic rock and pop music, it’s not exactly surprising to me that The Tisburys identified the biggest “hits” to release as the album’s first two singles–the lethal power pop direct strike of “Forever” in particular is A Still Life Revisited’s most single effective pop moment. Read more about A Still Life Revisited here.

“Frozen Hearts”, Jerry David DeCicca
From Cardiac Country (2025, Sophomore Lounge)

Jerry David DeCicca seems like somebody who’ll keep making music until his heart gives out–an outcome that he came frighteningly close to in 2023, when a leaky aortic valve led to the Texas songwriter receiving open heart surgery. Cardiac Country was (mostly) written and recorded before DeCicca’s diagnosis, but DeCicca clearly feels that his burgeoning heart problems influenced his writing, to the point of nodding to them in the album’s title. Cardiac Country is a much more streamlined and even traditional-sounding country record compared to his last solo album, which DeCicca and his collaborators utilize to rewarding ends–my favorite song on the album, the smartly saccharine “Frozen Hearts”, tries to recenter the more productive parts of human nature by brushing up against the organ that casts a shadow over this record. Read more about Cardiac Country here.

“Steamy Nights”, Mantarochen
From Cut My Brainhair (2025, It’s Eleven)

Dark and gothic but minimal and catchy, Mantarcohen’s take on post-punk remains quite compelling throughout Cut My Brainhair. The bass is front-and-center, the guitar lines frantic but satisfying, the synths intermittent but always welcome, and the vocals understated but plenty capable for what the rest of the band are doing here. Mantarochen are skilled at tension and dread–they only rarely release the darkness they bottle up throughout Cut My Brainhair, but it’s fascinating no matter what they’re doing with it. “Steamy Nights” is just a little busier than the songs before it on the record, but it keeps the thickening tension coming nonetheless. Read more about Cut My Brainhair here.

“Bags for Life”, Flower Show
From Painted Nails & Silver Bells (2025)

Painted Nails & Silver Bells is certainly a “British pop album”, although it’s a bit of a different sort than the kind of music I typically write about that fits this description. Craig Sinclair’s deep Bowie/Cocker/Nick Saloman-esque vocals are arguably the most foundational aspect of the album, and musically, Painted Nails & Silver Bells switches from 60s-style power pop and psychedelic, Paisley guitar pop to a murky, moody, post-Britpop haze. “Bags for Life” is probably the best song on Painted Nails & Silver Bells–this was Flower Show’s debut single, and it’s such a power move to start your career off with something this effortlessly catchy, clever in a naturally British way (sample lyric: “I need a place to rest my bones, anywhere will do / I’m a cunt and you’re a cunt and we’ve both had a few”), and sneakily quite dynamic. Read more about Painted Nails & Silver Bells here.

“Set Your Aim”, Miracleworker
From Set Your Aim (2025)

New Jersey’s Miracleworker are always good for brief blasts of catchy basement pop punk/indie rock/power pop/“orgcore”; last year saw two quality three-song EPs in Arrows and Upstate, and in 2025 the trio seem to have resolved to streamline things even further, with their first release of the new year being a two-song single. The A-side to the Set Your Aim single is my favorite of the two (B-side “Eyes” is also worth queuing up if this does it for you, though); heart firmly visible on sleeve and melodies bursting out of the hissing, slightly lo-fi recording, 90s punk rock and indie rock converge in this three-minute, Jawbreaker-reminiscent triumph.

“Carriers”, Ex Pilots
From Carriers / Laundromat (2025)

Damn, I love Ex Pilots. It’s been a great few months for the Pittsburgh noise-pop/GBV-fi band, as they released the excellent Motel Cable LP last August, dropped a version of Guided by Voices’ “Color of My Blade” at the beginning of this year, and celebrated the tenth anniversary of their debut album Findlay by re-recording two songs from it last month. I needed to conserve some space on this playlist so I have gone with the sub-two-minute “Carriers” rather than the five-plus “Laundromat”, but they both rule and are confirmations both of Ex Pilots’ long-term brilliance and their current hot streak. It’s just an absolute joy to listen to, an electric ball of squealing melodies, ace vocals from the incomparable Ethan Oliva, and superhero guitars. 

“Deepend”, Gamma Ray
From Gamma Ray (2025)

A Midwestern garage punk band called Gamma Ray, eh? This’ll probably be good. This self-described “snot rock” group has members based in both Columbus and Chicago, and their self-titled debut album is a twenty-four minute fuzzy and ramshackle indie rock record that pretty much always lands on a winning hook. Opening track “Deepend” is lo-fi fuzz rock party music–somewhere alongside the “power pop/slacker rock” axis, Gamma Ray’s first statement is that of a band who isn’t afraid to pull out all the stops underneath the distorted guitars. Read more about Gamma Ray here.

“Back in the Line”, B. Hamilton
From B. Hamilton (2025)

A strange, meandering forty-eight minute experience, B. Hamilton is sometimes floating, unmoored post-rock, sometimes groovy, swinging classic rock–it’s something in between those two. Departure rock music? That’s perhaps an appropriate term for the latest album from the long-running Bay Area band, as it’s a record that bandleader Ryan Christopher Parks openly states is about grief. B. Hamilton is a “difficult” record–it’s too scattered to really be “stubborn”, but there’s a standoffishness to it. Very little of this is apparent from listening to “Back in the Line”, though–it’s a smooth 70s-style AOR rock and roller that comes completely out of nowhere, a jarring transition that becomes a theme throughout the rest of the record. Read more about B. Hamilton here.

“TV Dinner”, A Place for Owls
From My Friends Were Here (2025, Refresh)

A Place for Owls and Birthday Dad are a pair of emo-y indie rock bands from west of the Mississippi (the former’s from Denver, the latter central California), and they recently released a split single together because that’s just what you do if you’re a small emo-y indie rock band. I’m only passingly familiar with both bands (my favorite thing related to either of them is the collaborative album that A Place for Owls vocalist Ben Sooy made with phoneswithchords in 2023), so while I do think it’s cool that they cover each other’s songs on the second half of this EP, “TV Dinner” would be new to me regardless. A Place for Owls give the Birthday Dad song a fairly unhinged reading–there’s a bit of that bookish Pedro the Lion version of emo-indie I’ve come to associate with them, yes, but they really let loose in an earnest emo-power-pop way across the track, too. Not bad!

“Semantics of Yet”, (T-T)b
From Beautiful Extension Cord (2025, Disposable America)

Boston slacker rockers (T-T)b utilize chiptune and video game soundtrack instrumentation as an accent, the way one might use synths or horns. It seems impossible for this kind of thing to ever be “subtly” incorporated into one’s music, but if it can be, it probably sounds like their latest record, Beautiful Extension Cord–still quite visible, but integrated more seamlessly than ever into the group’s slacker rock, 90s alt-rock, and bedroom indie rock-evoking sound. Between the big old guitars, the chirping 8-bit sounds, and bandleader Nick Dussault’s plain but capable vocals, there’s somehow a cosmic element to (T-T)b’s indie rock, and “Semantics of Yet” is one of the biggest moments of this side of them. It starts very low but steadily rises to a huge alt-rock refrain, Speedy Oritz’s Sadie Dupuis joining Dussault to meditate on the wavering evoked by the adverb in the title. Read more about Beautiful Extension Cord here.

“Two Subarus”, Gum Parker
From The Brakes (2025, Repeating Cloud)

Gum Parker bandleader Galen Richmond is a 90s indie rock devotee with (presumably) plenty of Archers of Loaf, Guided by Voices, and Silkworm albums in his record collection, but he comes off as much more interested in simply making loud pop music than trying to directly emulate his influences on his latest group’s debut LP. A speedy album, The Brakes zips through a few classic pop songs in its first half–the Archers-nodding, Superchunk-evoking opening anthem “Two Subarus” is a perfect first statement, with frantic power pop, punk, and indie rock coursing through its caffeinated veins. Read more about The Brakes here.

“Line of Best Fit”, Marshy
From Light Business (2025, Marsh Slope)

There’s bits of power pop, dreamy/jangly indie pop, shoegaze-adjacent fuzz rock, and maybe just the smallest bit of emo on the debut EP from New York’s Marshy, Light Business–most importantly, though, it’s a collection of songs displaying that this group’s collaborative take on writing and playing just seems to work. “Line of Best Fit” opens the EP and is my favorite on the record by a fair amount–the other songs eventually grew on me enough to write about the whole record, though. Still, “Line of Best Fit” is clearly Light Business’ “hit”–ascending, triumphant power pop chords, sweeping, expertly-wielded distortion, and unbothered vocal melodies will all do that. Read more about Light Business here.

“Everybody’s Talking (Again)”, JPW & Dad Weed
From Amassed Like a Rat King (2025, Fort Lowell)

Amassed Like a Rat King has a pretty metal title, but that couldn’t be further away from the music that Dad Weed (aka Zach Toporek) and JPW (aka Jason P. Woodbury) make together here–recalling power pop, jangle pop, and college rock of the 1960s through the 1980s and lightly baked by the southwestern sun, the Arizona duo’s first album together is a comfortable but undeniably hooky guitar pop LP. The no-bullshit, all-business jangle-power pop of my favorite song on the record, “Everybody’s Talking (Again)”, is a casual victory, crossing the economy of Dazy with the southwestern vibes of Dust Star and the most recent Young Guv album. Read more about Amassed Like a Rat King here.

“Pat’s Uninteresting Tours”, Pat’s Alternative Bus Tour
From World to Rights (2025)

Scottish indie pop musician Andrew Paterson’s second act as Pat’s Alternative Bus Tour continues at a steady clip with World to Rights, his second album in as many years. Befitting the dramatic title, World to Rights sets its aim a bit higher–it’s a more conscious attempt to weave the interpersonal, political, and ecological together with breezy folk rock and C86-inspired pop music. The bright, memorable narratives of last year’s Virtual Virgins are still here, don’t get me wrong: there’s just more clear connecting threads. The titular tour company “operated in Sydney in the mid to late 1980s, offering tourists the chance to explore some of the more mundane attractions of the city”; Paterson only learned about them after naming his own project similarly, but he’s clearly found some kind of kinship with them, as this offbeat, belated tribute shows. Read more about World to Rights here.

“Arrow”, Lily Seabird
From Trash Mountain (2025, Lame-O)

I found myself pretty surprised at where Vermont singer-songwriter Lily Seabird decided to go on her third LP, Trash Mountain. The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of last year’s Alas, are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis. The probing electric alt-country rock of “Arrow” sits precariously right in the middle of the album, louder than most of the record but (like everything else on Trash Mountain) not in a jarring way. Read more about Trash Mountain here.

“Magic Glove”, GBMystical
From Wannabe (2025, Bee Side Cassettes)

GBMystical has primarily been an outlet for Terrin Munawet’s experimental electronic beatmaking, but there have been hints at lo-fi indie folk and guitar pop sides in the past–sides that are fully explored on the latest GBMystical release, Wannabe. Munawet and their collaborators transform the project into a vehicle for folky, psychedelic indie pop/rock across a dozen brief tracks–it all comes in a casual but very well-crafted guitar pop package, delivering its version of psychedelia in brief, self-contained bursts.“Magic Glove” is a gorgeous ninety-second opener, sliding in some horns to introduce us to Wannabe in the form of lo-fi chamber pop and very nearly “jangle pop”. Read more about Wannabe here.

“Sve Yrself”, Impulsive Hearts
From Sorry in the Summer (Remastered) (2025, Cavity Search)

The latest release from Chicago’s Impulsive Hearts is a remastered version of their 2016 debut album, Sorry in the Summer. Sorry in the Summer is certainly compelling enough in 2025–nine years later, it comes off as the missing link between the early 2010s buzzy, fuzzy indie-surf-pop wave and the earnest, “confessional/bedroom pop” era of indie rock that would dominate the latter half of the decade. Even more importantly, though, the songs are there–Impulsive Hearts don’t beat you over the head with them, but this is an excellent pop record upon a closer look. Sorry in the Summer has a sort of “guitar pop via controlled-intensity” attitude that reminds me of the Friko album from last year; “Sve Yrself” might start off with Beach Boys-esque “woo-ooh”ing, but it’s way too desperate to see the pastiche through without going off the deep end. Read more about Sorry in the Summer here.

“People of Substance”, Craig Finn
From Always Been (2025, Tamarac/Thirty Tigers)

“Spent way too much time with people without any substance”–me too, Craig, me too. “People of Substance” is not quite as…musically intense as “Luke & Leanna” (discussed earlier) is, leaning into a nice, uplifting rootsy indie rock instrumental, but, of course, there’s an entire world contained herein. The double entendre of the title is just the tip of the iceberg for this one, a theatrical pop rock song where Craig Finn injects his delivery with enough dynamics to not sound totally out of place with the ringing pianos and the actual, real deal guitar solo found here, too.

“Raft Song”, Bliss?
From Pass Yr Pain Along (2025, Psychic Spice)

Bliss? vocalist Josh Higdon isn’t at all shy about putting the vocals up front on Pass Yr Pain Along, and the band are loose but clear in a way that puts the spotlight on a collection of songs that really could’ve been shipped straight from Homestead Records to your local college radio station circa 1989. Everything is just right in the opening track, “Raft Song”, which captivates us with a tough rock and roll backbone cradling a basket of melodies–Higdon’s vocals are a delicate, earnest counterbalance to the punk-inspired instrumental. Oh, and that bass guitar is doing an insane amount of melodic heavy lifting, too. Really hyped about this album. Read more about Pass Yr Pain Along here.

“Too Vague”, Entrez Vous
From Antenna Legs Hear Everything (2025)

North Carolina’s Entrez Vous debuted with a self-titled album in 2023, and the collaboration between Clark Blomquist and Kelly Reidy has remained fruitful, as they’re back a little under two years later with Antenna Legs Hear Everything. It’s fourteen tracks of garage rock-mussed-up power pop (or, if you prefer, garage rock with power pop hidden in the center) in twenty-seven minutes, putting garage rock, weird psych pop, and power pop in a blender to make something equally confusing and friendly (but always exciting). The kind-of-fuzzy opening track “Too Vague” is just a little psychedelic, just a little Southern, just a little Elephant 6, and much more than just a little compelling–all in under two minutes. Read more about Antenna Legs Hear Everything here.

“I’ve Been Looking Over My Shoulder for Too Long”, Sunny Intervals
From Swept Away (2025)

The first Sunny Intervals record in eight years is friendly and familiar-sounding, a delicately beautiful LP of quiet indie folk, soft rock, chamber pop, and good old-fashioned indie pop. Bandleader Andy Hudson pulls a neat trick on Swept Away–these ten songs sound relaxed, unhurried, and content, but, at almost exactly half an hour in length, there’s not a wasted moment among the tasteful acoustic guitars and minimal but brisk percussion. The gorgeous 60s-style piano pop blossoming of “I’ve Been Looking Over My Shoulder for Too Long”, for instance, is about as forward as this kind of music can be. Read more about Swept Away here.

“The Whistleblower”, Fluung
From Fluung (2025, Den Tapes/Setterwind)

“The Whistleblower” is the six-minute-long centerpiece of Fluung, but it’s also just as catchy as the shorter and punchier songs on the record in its own way. Dreams of dead animals and plane crashes populate the song, the trio reporting on the unreality with a grounded seriousness that rises and falls with the music. It’s a wild but inspired mix of Archers of Loaf-style noise pop, creepy Pacific Northwest psychedelia, and a bit of punk rock–it’s a masterpiece, clearly. Read more about Fluung here.