New Playlist: June 2025

June 2025 playlist! Bunch of great new music, much of which has appeared on this blog before but you’ll see some new faces, too. Hopefully you’ll find something to take with you to your Fourth of July picnic (for the Americans, at least).

Graham Hunt and HLLLYH have three songs on this playlist; Idle Ray, WPTR, Hallelujah the Hills, and Whitney’s Playland have two. Abe Savas has five, sort of.

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (BNDCMPR was bugging out when I tried to use it; check back later). 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.

“Bad July”, Ryli
From Come and Get Me (2025, Dandy Boy)

Ryli are effectively a supergroup when it comes to Bay Area jangle pop–the group’s “co-leaders” are Yea-Ming Chen (of Yea-Ming and the Rumours) on lead vocals and guitar and Rob Good (of The Goods) on lead guitar, and the rhythm section features Luke Robbins of R.E. Seraphin and The Rumours on bass and Ian McBrayer, formerly of Sonny & the Sunsets, on drums. Everybody in Ryli is familiar with what goes into making a solid pop song, and Come and Get Me absolutely reflects this–practically the entire first half of the album is one long parade of brisk tempos, jangly arpeggios, deft lead guitars, and tons of hooks. “Bad July” is based on some chiming guitar riffs and precise percussion–it’s my favorite one on the album, but there’s plenty of competition. Read more about Come and Get Me here.

“Spiritual Problems”, Graham Hunt
From Timeless World Forever (2025, Run for Cover)

It’s like an intricate and smooth version of “slacker pop”, the Graham Hunt sound, indie rock with bits of 90s alt-pop as well as electronic and dance touches delivered in a skewed but ultimately sincere fashion. Timeless World Forever might be the most “Graham Hunt” Graham Hunt album to date, and I think that might make it his best work so far. “Spiritual Problems” is a jaw-dropper; that chorus is sweeping and mountain-summiting, and Hunt just puts so much into the lines that end with “This weight is a gift that you’ve given to me” that it feels like whatever healing he’s talking about here is just within reach. Read more about Timeless World Forever here.

“Yellow Brick Wall”, HLLLYH
From URUBURU (2025, Team Shi)

HLLLYH is effectively a new version of a 2000s art punk group from Los Angeles called The Mae Shi who put out a few albums before dissolving, seemingly for good. Three years ago, a bunch of former Mae Shi members got together to create what they envisioned as the final Mae Shi album, but instead, they decided that it was something new, and URUBURU became the first HLLLYH album instead. URUBURU is drawn from “unearthed half-written Mae Shi songs” as well as freshly-written material–regardless of where and when these songs came from, HLLLYH have done an excellent job of recapturing that supercharged, ornery kaleidoscopic rock and roll energy that The Mae Shi had. “Yellow Brick Wall”, my favorite song on URUBURU, is perfect glitzy power pop in spite of itself, a strange and kinetic journey through giant hooks. Read more about URUBURU here.

“Quiet Cab”, Idle Ray
From Even in the Spring (2025, Life Like Tapes)

When the self-titled first Idle Ray album came out back in 2021, the Michigan “band” was pretty much entirely a Fred Thomas solo project; in the four years since, they’ve become a solid power trio with bassist Devon Clausen and guitarist Frances Ma joining Thomas, and the new members even wrote a few of the songs on Even in the Spring. Ma and Clausen’s contributions fit right in with Thomas’ lo-fi power pop/indie rock style, and the three of them zip through ten songs in a mere twenty-four minutes on this one. “Quiet Cab” is one of the two Ma-helmed songs, and as much as I’ve been on-record as loving Thomas’ songwriting, this might actually be the crown jewel of Even in the Spring between Ma’s capably lounging dream pop vocals and punchy drum machine/tinny-guitar lo-fi pop. 

“In Bruges”, WPTR
From Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site (2025, Lame-O)

WPTR is the new solo project of 2nd Grade frontperson Peter Gill, and his debut album under the name, Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site, stands out from his main band by following a more personal, insular brand of pop music–lo-fi, outsider bedroom pop and jazz/bossa nova-influenced instrumentals replace the full-band power pop rock and roll of 2nd Grade. If WPTR is looking for number one hit singles from a distant galaxy, Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site has ‘em–there’s a song in the middle of the album called “In Bruges” that’s sixty seconds of absolutely perfect lo-fi power pop, like, genuinely up there with the best 2nd Grade songs (I assume it’s named after the 2008 Colin Farrell/Brendan Gleeson movie I saw once and don’t remember very well). Read more about Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site here.

“Hit and Run”, Career Woman
From Lighthouse (2025, Lauren)

Lighthouse, the long-awaited debut album from San Jose’s Career Woman, is world-conquering music. It’s the sound of a young songwriter and band excitedly reaching new heights together. These songs are massive and polished, gigantic indie pop rock anthems that balance the clear might of the Career Woman Band with the just-as-obvious spotlight on bandleader Melody Caudill herself. Listening to Lighthouse is to be taken in by a powerful universality that can only really be achieved by saying “fuck it” and just putting everything “you” that you can fit into your music–exemplified greatly by “Hit and Run”, which is restless to the point of catastrophe (“This morning, we fucked up / And not Walgreens, Target, Best Buy, or Wal-Mart could pick us back up” might be my favorite lyric on this entire album). Read more about Lighthouse here.

“Long Rehearsal”, Whitney’s Playland
From Long Rehearsal (2025, Meritoro/Dandy Boy)

One of my favorite debuts of 2023 was Sunset Sea Breeze by Whitney’s Playland, a San Francisco-based indie pop group co-founded by George Tarlson and Inna Showalter and whose first statement delivered several records’ worth of lo-fi power pop hooks. The second Whitney’s Playland record, an EP called Long Rehearsal, is pretty short–three songs in about ten minutes. Still, this gives the quartet plenty of time to revisit and reaffirm their ability to hit all the high points they did on their last album–jangly, bubblegum-flavored guitar pop, electric and fuzzy power pop, and rainy, dreary, dreamy indie pop all make appearances on Long Rehearsal. Long Rehearsal opens with the title track, which comes in at under two minutes and spends every second of it offering up melodies in its jangly guitars and Inna Showalter’s vocals–it’s a high point for a band that’s already collected several of them. Read more about Long Rehearsal here.

“Freee”, Peaceful Faces
From Without a Single Fight (2025, Glamour Gowns)

The first-ever Peaceful Faces album I heard was 2023’s Sifting Through the Goo, Reaching For the Candlelight, which placed itself firmly on the “soft” side of indie pop music. I was a bit surprised to press play on their follow-up, Without a Single Fight, and immediately be greeted not by delicate, chamber-ish indie pop sound but by the guitar distortion and bounding power pop tempo of opening track “Freee”. Not everything on Without a Single Fight is as much of a departure as this first statement, no, but there’s a concision to Peaceful Faces’ latest record that seems to be bandleader Tree Palmedo’s driving force. Read more about Without a Single Fight here.

“Frog in the Shower”, Graham Hunt
From Timeless World Forever (2025, Run for Cover)

If It wasn’t for “Frog in the Shower”, “Spiritual Problems” would be the clear peak of Timeless World Forever, but as it is, Graham Hunt sticks what’s probably my favorite pop song of the year in his latest album’s second half. It’s just immaculate fuzzy power pop, stitched together with the skill of somebody who’s spent enough time outside the world of straight-ahead guitar pop to find a little extra gas. I think that screaming “Come back in a century and try it again” with a crowd of people at a Graham Hunt show sometime in the next year will fix me. Read more about Timeless World Forever here.

“Secret”, Salem 66
From SALT (2025, Don Giovanni)

Boston’s Salem 66 released all four of their albums on Homestead Records, played shows with Butthole Surfers, Flipper, and Big Black (among others), and were featured on 2020’s Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987 compilation. With company like that, I’d say they’re probably pretty good! Judging by this new career-spanning compilation, SALT, Salem 66 are perhaps most easily defined as “college rock”–hardly “power pop”, “jangly” enough to fit in with Strum & Thrum, early R.E.M., and their ilk, marked by a guitar-led psychedelic sound that, presumably coincidentally, fits alongside the Paisley Underground happening on the other coast of the United States. The selections from their final two albums–like “Secret”, from 1988’s Natural Disasters, Natural Treasures–are my favorites, displaying a band who’d fully synthesized their parts into something confident, smooth, and heavy. Read more about SALT here.

“Burn This Atlas Down (2 of Clubs)”, Hallelujah the Hills featuring Craig Finn
From DECK: CLUBS (2025, Discrete Pageantry/Best Brother)

Hallelujah the Hills have spent the 2020s working on a project called DECK: four albums, fifty-two songs (and two “jokers” as bonus tracks), with every track corresponding to a card in a traditional deck of playing cards (with an actual deck designed by frontperson Ryan H. Walsh available for purchase with the albums). Stephin Merritt must be furious he didn’t come up with this one! Every single song on DECK feels fully developed, the band doing their damndest to avoid anything that could get tagged as filler, and every album of the “deck” has a handful of songs that are among the Hills’ best. Clubs, for instance, has “Burn This Atlas Down”, a surging melancholic-rocker that does its best to live up to the “featuring Craig Finn” tag (it does). Read more about DECK here.

“(He’s Been) Phoning It in Again”, “Rise to the Occasion”, “The Lost Footage of the Magnificent Ambersons”, “Melodyne”, and “Jingle Work”, Abe Savas
From 99 Songs (Plus One) (2025, Badgering the Witness)

The album is called 99 Songs (Plus One), and that’s exactly what it offers us. This ambitious project is the brainchild of a Kalamazoo, Michigan-based musician named Abe Savas. 99 Songs (Plus One) fits its ninety-nine tracks in seventy-eight minutes (enough for one CD)–you can do the math, but this means a lot of these songs are snippets a few seconds long, and even the more fully-developed tracks are almost all under two minutes. The songs range from incredibly goofy to surprisingly poignant, genre-wise hopping from power pop to acoustic folk to more genre side-excursions than I can count. There’s a lot of Elvis Costello in Savas’ pop music instincts, and this chaotic collection will likely also appeal to fans of Tony Molina, They Might Be Giants, and maybe even Fountains of Wayne. What follows are five of my favorite moments on  99 Songs (Plus One) (on streaming services, this selection is different, as Savas has combined a bunch of the songs into single tracks). Read more about 99 Songs (Plus One) here.

“Classy Plastic Lumber”, Modest Mouse
From Sad Sappy Sucker (2001, K/Glacial Pace)

Obviously not a new song, and there’s no anniversary or reissue or anything attached to this. I listened to Modest Mouse’s initially-shelved debut album for the first time ever last month on the recommendation of a friend (I’ve only heard like their three biggest albums in full, I think) and what do you know, it’s very much up my alley. Nearly unrecognizable from the band that would make The Lonesome Crowded West, Sad Sappy Sucker is a no-fi, shit-wave collection of home-recorded experiments and, surprisingly frequently, great fragments of pop music. Early Built to Spill’s an obvious point of comparison, as well as early Guided by Voices, and there’s stuff that just straight-up sounds like Daniel Johnston. “Classy Plastic Lumber” is the best song on Sad Sappy Sucker, a shambolic 90s indie rock anthem that, of course, begins with a thirty-second garbled answering machine message.

“The Lindens, The Lindens, The Lindens!”, Lightheaded
From Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! (2025, Slumberland/Skep Wax)

The latest record from the New Jersey indie pop group Lightheaded features great brand-new guitar pop and provides a great excuse to revisit their earlier material. The vinyl and CD editions of Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! include the entirety of the band’s 2023 debut EP Good Good Great!, marking the first time those songs have been available on either format. Placing their earliest and newest material right beside each other allows us a chance to really witness the progress of the band. The new songs feel like Lightheaded’s most confident, smoothest pop recordings yet to my ears–they’re bright, shiny jangle pop tunes that can’t be obscured by a little bit of echo. “The Lindens, The Lindens, The Lindens!” might be my favorite one, a bright chorus that arrives and leaves in the blink of an eye. Read more about Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! here.

“Sound of the Rain (Alternate Mix)”, Tired of Triangles
From Splendid Hour: Dave J. Andrae and Associates (1997-2023) (2025)

Splendid Hour: Dave J. Andrae and Associates (1997-2023) encompasses more than a quarter-century of various musical endeavors whittled down to twenty-five songs and sixty-six minutes, beginning in the titular singer-songwriter’s hometown of Milwaukee and ending in his current residence of northwest Florida, featuring both long-defunct bands and projects and Andrae’s still-active solo project Tired of Triangles. Splendid Hour is a lot to take in, but to me that’s part of its appeal. Not every song here is a lost underground classic, but there are plenty of moments on here that stand on their own as single triumphs–for example, Tired of Triangles’ unassuming, Yo La Tengo-ified cover of The Dils’ “Sound of the Rain” is a shining example of the blank-canvas brilliance of the indie rock of the 1990s. Read more about Splendid Hour: Dave J. Andrae and Associates (1997-2023) here.

“I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages”, Drunken Prayer
From Thy Burdens (2025, Dial Back Sound)

Drunken Prayer’s Morgan Geer conceived Thy Burdens with Drive-By Truckers bassist Matt Patton, sharing a desire to shine a light on the “core values” of gospel songs: “the incontrovertibly true and inconceivably vast principles of kindness, right and wrong, and social justice”. That’s all noble and good, of course, but Thy Burdens wouldn’t be able to reach across the aisle so effectively if Drunken Prayer’s self-described “snarling country-soul” sound wasn’t so immaculately-executed. “I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages” might be the best of Thy Burdens distilled into four heat-packing minutes–it’s country music, it’s folk music, it’s the blues. It’s the Gospel, delivered by a bunch of southern rock-and-rollers who–despite what they might say–are the exact right people for the message. Read more about Thy Burdens here.

“Recolor”, The Western Expanse
From The Western Expanse (2025, Dimensional Projects)

California indie rock group The Western Expanse was active in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but almost none of their recordings saw an official release during their lifespan–1999’s Hollywood Nights 7” single was the only one. The band’s Jae Rodriguez recently started up a record label called Dimensional Projects for the purpose of finally getting these recordings to see the light of day–an album and an EP from The Western Expanse, plus a compilation from the members’ previous band, Emery. Combining the rock-band precision of Emery with the patient, measured outlook of the EP, The Western Expanse’s LP is the best, fullest collection that the band’s members would make. “Recolor” lands on a sound that doesn’t sound unlike a lot of the “big name” 90s indie rock bands with which you’re likely already familiar, but getting to trace The Western Expanse’s journey to this song is rewarding in its own right. Read more about The Western Expanse here. 

“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”, The Feelies
From Rewind (2025, Bar/None)

Rewind is an archival compilation of cover songs that legendary New Jersey post-punk/proto-indie rock group The Feelies have recorded across their entire career. Rewind may be a hodgepodge (of these nine songs, seven are from the band’s initial run from 1976 to 1992, and two of them from their “reunion” era in the 21st century), but these recordings have a unified feel to them. Veering away from the folky and pastoral side of the band, these nine recordings find The Feelies reveling in their love and understanding of electric, rollicking classic rock that’s just too simple and powerful to ever lose anything to time. Including “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” from their classic debut album Crazy Rhythms feels like cheating, but I can’t argue that it doesn’t fit on here, particularly in the extra-frantic second half of the album. Read more about Rewind here.

“Florencia”, Friends of Cesar Romero
(2025, Doomed Babe/Kit Fox)

It’s time to check in on the great J. Waylon Porcupine and his Friends of Cesar Romero power pop project. If you’re already familiar with the prolific South Dakota-based act, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that they had a busy June–we saw a new EP called All Goodbyes Aren’t Bad Cause This Goodbye Is for Good, the two-song “Can’t Get You” single, and the one-off “Florencia”. There are several winners among this recent crop (check out “Summer Boyfriend” from the EP too) but “Florencia” is my favorite of them by a wide margin. It’s unsubtle, collar-grabbing, punked-up power pop for all of its wrecking-ball two minutes. It’s a feverish paean to the titular character (who “love[s] The Smiths and anarchy”, among other things).

“Evolver”, HLLLYH
From URUBURU (2025, Team Shi)

“Evolver” is one of the instant-classics of URUBURU, a huge-sounding, big-picture indie rock anthem that nonetheless twists and turns and refuses to settle into anything too comfortable. Does it sound like an older version of HLLLYH’s previous incarnation, The Mae Shi? Perhaps, but there’s no depletion of energy in the maximalist, twitching power pop of “Evolver”, an excellent piece of post-Apples in Stereo noisy hook assault. And don’t be worried, there’s plenty of wordless “way-oh, way-oh” vocals here, too. Read more about URUBURU here.

“You Can’t Get It Back”, Jeanines
From How Long Can It Last (2025, Slumberland/Skep Wax)

Massachusetts indie pop trio Jeanines continue to favor a much more clean and direct sound on their latest album–How Long Can It Last is still very much in the world of “jangly indie pop”, but the more streamlined side of classic folk rock is in there too, and vocalist Alicia Jeanine’s distinct vocals are right in the center throughout the album. How Long Can It Last remains wedded to the “Jeanines ethos”–of the record’s thirteen songs, only two are (barely) longer than two minutes, and the entire thing is done in under twenty-two. “You Can’t Get It Back” is one of those fabulous quick-hitters, hurrying along with the perfunctory spookiness of a 1960s folk-pop tune. Read more about How Long Can It Last here.

“Backwards”, Idle Ray
From Even in the Spring (2025, Life Like Tapes)

I highlighted “Quiet Cab” earlier on this playlist, but surely I wasn’t going to let the new Idle Ray album go by without highlighting one of Fred Thomas’ own songs, no? “Backwards” is classic Fred Thomas lo-fi power pop and the perfect choice to open Even in the Spring–after the wildly sprawling 2024 Thomas solo album Window in the Rhythm, it feels so good to hear him knock out two-minute pop songs with just as much zeal as anything on the first Idle Ray album (which is probably the best “pop” Thomas-led album in recent memory).

“Mi Si Ma Io”, Lùlù
From Lùlù (2025, Howlin Banana/Taken by Surprise/Dangerhouse Skylab)

The self-titled Lùlù debut album is power pop in its most freewheeling, energetically fun form. Luc Simone and his collaborators gleefully roll around in the histories of garage rock and punk rock to make ten massively hooky rock and roll knockout punches. Far removed from the refined, cosmopolitan sound that I associated with French indie pop, Lùlù has more in common with Australian garage-power-poppers, American retro-pop groups and, honestly, even a little bit of the brighter side of melodic lifer punk rock (“orgcore”) groups. The cowbell-heavy classic rock throwback “Ma Si Ma Io” might be the most triumphant moment on Lùlù, but there is plenty of competition for that. Read more about Lùlù here.

“Bitter Blue”, Max Look
From Cruise (2025, Kestrel)

Another unknown power pop musician? You bet! We’re highlighting Los Angeles’ Max Look, a “director and editor” who appears to make guitar pop music as a solo artist in his spare time. The latest Max Look release is a four-song cassette EP called Cruise on a San Francisco label I don’t know called Kestrel Records. Closing track “Bitter Blue” is probably the black sheep of Cruise–compared to the more rocking power pop of the three songs preceding it, this one is more of a starry-eyed jangly ballad. Nonetheless, it’s my favorite Max Look song that I’ve heard yet, a bittersweet final statement on a brief EP that hints at future heights for the singer-songwriter to scale.

“I Want to Remember It All”, Laura Stevenson
From Late Great (2025, Really)

I will probably need more time with this Laura Stevenson album. The singer-songwriter’s first record of new material in four years (oddly enough, released by Jeff Rosenstock’s Really Records instead of her longtime home of Don Giovanni) is pretty subtle and unbothered, even for her, but Late Great has all the makings of a “sleeper favorite”. It’s a breakup album of some kind, but if that’s exactly what “I Want to Remember It All” is about, I’m not entirely sure. “…Even the tallest of hurts,” is how Stevenson completes the titular thought, which is a pretty fervent way to describe some conflicting emotions. Late Great probably sounds exactly like it should, with that in mind.

“Sometime”, Options
From Beast Mode (2025)

Chicago recording engineer and musician Seth Engel was incredibly active as Options in the late 2010s and early 2020s, but Beast Mode is his solo project’s first record in three years. Beast Mode is slick, snappy, heavily AutoTuned bedroom pop music (indeed, Engel writes that it was recorded “in my room 2021-2024”) that reminds me of a more fully-developed version of 2021’s On the Draw, one of my favorite Options releases. It hits the same “fucking around and making timeless pop songs” sweet spot that, like, early This Is Lorelei did. The whole thing is full of casually hard-hitting pop songs, but the opening track, “Sometime”, lays down the gauntlet right at the beginning and is a pretty hard one to top.

“Treasures in the Magic Hole”, W. Cullen Hart & Andrew Rieger
From Leap Through Poisoned Air (2025, Cloud Recordings)

Twenty-five years ago, two key figures in the Elephant 6 movement/Athens, Georgia indie rock (The Olivia Tremor Control’s Will Cullen Hart and Elf Power’s Andrew Rieger) were roommates, and they made a bit of music together–short, curious, dark pop pieces largely made up of instrumentals from the former and lyrics and vocal melodies from the latter. These four songs, finally seeing the light of day, come in at under six minutes total in length–nothing here crosses the two-minute mark. The first three songs on Leap Through Poisoned Air all feature strange, minimalist instrumentals from Hart–“Treasures in the Magic Hole” is a collision of Hart’s electronic tinkering and the darker side of 60s pop music, and Rieger is just the right person to helm it. Read more about Leap Through Poisoned Air here.

“Dark Pleasure of Endless Doing”, Little Mazarn
From Mustang Island (2025, Dear Life)

The third Little Mazarn album is the Austin experimental folk group’s first as a trio, with the Chicago-based Carolina Chauffe (of Hemlock) officially joining the band on harmonies on every song. Synths and flutes join the familiar sounds of banjos and singing saw on Mustang Island, but while there are a few busy moments of psychedelic pop music, the trio’s expanded sound still frequently finds its way to the big wide empty. The fluttering, synth-led dream pop of “Dark Pleasure of Endless Doing” is a first-half highlight, coming out of nowhere to completely rearrange the whole Little Mazarn sound in a couple of sweet, bright minutes. Read more about Mustang Island here.

“Queen of the Hill”, Frizbee
From Sour Kisses (2025, Painters Tapes/Noise Merchant)

Frizbee are an Indianapolis quartet who are expert practitioners of fast-paced, furious (almost hardcore) Midwestern garage punk. On Sour Kisses, we get seven brand-new Frizbee tracks as well as fresh-sounding versions of a couple tracks from Splat, their debut split EP with Cleveland’s PAL. I’ve heard plenty of great music along these lines coming out of Detroit and Chicago in recent memory, and it kind of feels like Frizbee synthesizes the infinitely-cool, fuzz-rock-and-roll-reverent vibes of the former with the sarcastic punk-y irreverence of the latter. Look, regardless of where Sour Kisses falls on your imagined egg/chain punk spectrum-graphics, it’s a really cool seventeen-minute rock record from a new band that’s already operating at a high and lethal level. “Queen of the Hill” is a second-half highlight from Sour Kisses, with frontperson Maude Atlas delivering the fuzz-pop excoriation we didn’t know that we all needed. Read more about Sour Kisses here.

“Dirt Nap”, Michael Robert Chadwick
From Illusion of Touch (2025, Anxiety Blanket)

Made “over several years in several different places”, Illusion of Touch is a more polished, teased-out version of what seems to be the “Michael Robert Chadwick sound”–synth-led pop music that recalls a nice bite-sized, portable version of soft rock and sophisti-pop. The icy synths that kick off opening track “Dirt Nap” eventually give way to bass grooves, jazzy saxophones, and smooth indie pop vocals, setting up a lot of the key ingredients that go into Illusion of Touch. Read more about Illusion of Touch here.

“Only Daughter”, Whitney’s Playland
From Long Rehearsal (2025, Meritoro/Dandy Boy)

“Only Daughter” follows Long Rehearsal’s sublime opening title track and holds its own against it–neither it nor the song after it are as concisely, immediately brilliant as “Long Rehearsal”, but they’re not exactly trying to best it at its own game. “Only Daughter”, for one, is the most electric song on the EP, opening with a nice, coiling guitar solo and the guitars continue giving off static (albeit in a more backgrounded form) as the track advances. I do hope that the next Whitney’s Playland release gives us more than three new songs, yes, but Long Rehearsal is a strong collection regardless of size. Read more about Long Rehearsal here.

“Lockjaw”, Idiot Mambo
From Shoot the Star (2025, Strange Mono)

Shoot the Star is Philadelphia duo Idiot Mambo’s most ambitious and best release yet. The band (Benji Davis and Leah G.) sought and received more outside help on this one than ever before, but Idiot Mambo lose none of their vibrancy by adopting a higher level of production, and Shoot the Star only enhances their skewed indie pop music. Indeed, it only helps Davis and Leah G. bring the attitude of They Might Be Giants, Sparks, and the more pop side of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 to the world of modern-day Philadelphia guitar pop. The surreal yet crystal-clear power pop of “Lockjaw” only needs two minutes to firmly lodge its way into one’s head. Read more about Shoot the Star here.

“Help”, The Apartments
From Can’t Stop It! Australian Post-Punk 1978-82 (2001, Chapter Music)

“Post-punk” is at its best when it’s a wide-ranging term for a host of good, boundary-pushing rock music, and Australia must’ve gotten this memo–this compilation of early Aussie post-punk compiled by Chapter Music (newly reissued with six bonus tracks) ranges from sparkling indie pop, bizarre synth experiments, fiery garage-y rock, rhythmic “art punk”, and everything in between (sometimes more than one in a single track!). Classic guitar pop heroes The Apartments contribute “Help” to Can’t Stop It!, making a strong case that the story of the catchier side of early indie rock doesn’t end with Flying Nun Records in nearby New Zealand or C86 in the United Kingdom. Read more about Can’t Stop It! Australian Post-Punk 1978-82 here.

“Possession”, Ty Segall
From Possession (2025, Drag City)

I’ve enjoyed a few Ty Segall-related releases over the past few years, but it seems like I always run out of space for them on these playlists. Well, good news–I was able to fit the title track of Possession, Segall’s most recent solo album, on this one. It’s most similar to the album Segall released earlier this year with Corey Madden as Freckle (especially compared to Segall’s most recent solo album, the percussion-led Love Rudiments)–some quite accessible glammy, poppy garage rock and roll. “Possession” does everything I want a Ty Segall song to do–offer up some cathartic guitar play, roll along in a nice groove, nail some easy, shambling hooks.

“Why Am I Here”, Subsonic Eye
From Singapore Dreaming (2025, Topshelf)

Subsonic Eye’s fifth album, Singapore Dreaming, doesn’t reinvent the Singaporean band’s formula, but, considering how energized and focused they sound on this LP, there’s no need to worry about them running out of steam. As per usual with Subsonic Eye, Singapore Dreaming is a brief, sub-thirty minute listen; the band say it’s inspired by their hometown city-state, and while it might be a little more uptempo, busy, and/or direct than their last album, the threads that went into creating this one aren’t easy to differentiate from their earlier ones on the surface. Early on in the album, Subsonic Eye ask “Why Am I Here” with a song that takes a minute to really get going but which eventually builds into a triumphant, explosive guitar tangle in its final minute or so–for them, it’s quite “jammy”. Read more about Singapore Dreaming here.

“I Just Need Enough”, Graham Hunt
From Timeless World Forever (2025, Run for Cover)

Three Graham Hunt songs on this playlist, huh? I think it’s safe to say that this one’s going to be on rotation for me for a while now and it’s pretty easily the pinnacle of the Wisconsinite’s career thus far. “I Just Need Enough” is Timeless World Forever’s opening track, and it’s a fascinating, intricate first statement. “I Just Need Enough” is so much more than its chorus, and the winding roads it takes to get there are just right, but it’s that huge refrain that’ll stick with me most of all. Read more about Timeless World Forever here.

“I Like to Think”, Void Participant
(2025)

“I Like to Think” is the debut single from Void Participant, but the act already has a couple of connections to bands I’ve previously written about on Rosy Overdrive. It’s the solo project of Maria Muscatello, who was one-half of the San Jose folk-pop duo Comets Near Me (they appear to no longer be active, I think), and “I Like to Think” was produced by awakebutstillinbed guitarist Brendan Gibson. “I Like to Think” is something of a soft launch (is there any other kind for indie folk rock singer-songwriter solo projects?); there’s actually quite a bit of impressive instrumentation and orchestration going on underneath Muscatello’s acoustic surface, but it’s delivered pretty subtly. Seems like a new project to watch.

“Flex It, Tagger”, HLLLYH
From URUBURU (2025, Team Shi)

The third song from URUBURU I’ve chosen for this playlist is the most “rocking” one. The writhing, taunting post-punk-revival scorcher “Flex It, Tagger” is a sneakier, punchier highlight compared to the gigantic, star-shooting anthems surrounding in the first half of the album. It’s no less effective at what it does, of course, with HLLLYH confirming their off-the-rails rock and roll side hasn’t been lost amidst the name change. Read more about URUBURU here.

“Waiting Again”, The Parkways
From Quick Hitters (2025)

I mean, this is just excellent pop rock. I’m not sure if I have a whole bunch to say about The Parkways, a band from South Jersey who describe their live shows as “energetic and frenzied performances of original music alongside classic dive bar staples”. Quick Hitters is their debut EP, and it’s a post-Strokes collection of guitar pop music with shades of garage rock, surf rock, and classic rock. Those surf-y indie rock bands were kind of like the 2010s version of “landfill indie”, no? Well, regardless, “Waiting Again” sounds great in 2025. 

“No Star General”, WPTR
From Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site (2025, Lame-O)

Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site’s closing track, “No Star General”, is up there with the previously-mentioned “In Bruges” in terms of pop brilliance, just less frantic and more “aw, shucks” in terms of power pop archetypes. Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site has its immediate rewards like those two tracks, but it is, of course, also about the journey to get to (and away from) them. Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site has me ready to put my faith in Peter Gill, the No Star General, to helm such missions. Read more about Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site here.

“A Lot of Super Weird Stuff Went Down Right Before I Met You (Jack of Spades)”, Hallelujah the Hills
From DECK: SPADES (2025, Discrete Pageantry/Best Brother)

Spades is kind of the sore thumb of the four-song DECK collection to me; it’s a lot looser and offbeat, allowing some genuine oddities to creep into the until-now fairly buttoned-up project. Even on Spades, though, “A Lot of Super Weird Stuff Went Down Before I Met You” is a titanic song that is one of the best things I’ve ever heard from Hallelujah the Hills yet. It’s a very surreal, viola-marked (thanks David Michael Curry) ballad featuring some evocative but head-scratching lyrics from the great Ryan H. Walsh. The contextless snippets we get of a, yes, “super weird” story could be gimmicky without the skill of Walsh, Curry, and the rest of Hallelujah the Hills here. Read more about DECK here.