Happy Tuesday! Time for the September 2025 Playlist. It’s yet another edition featuring two hours of mostly-new, all-great music. Of course.
Lawn, Miss Bones, and Golden Apples have two songs on this playlist. Silkworm and Liquid Mike have three.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal. 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.
“Youth Unit”, Pea Sea
From A Pyke of Patina Slate (2025, Sea)
I don’t really know anything about whatever “Pea Sea” is, but this song rules. Well, after doing some research, I’ve learned that apparently Chris Rollen has been making music under the name since 1997, and A Pyke of Patina Slate is the third in a “trilogy” of LPs that began in 2013 with The Debatable Land. Rollen has some connections to Peter Brewis of the art-pop group Field Music (Brewis contributes production to this latest LP), and together with Maximo Park drummer Tom English, Pea Sea veer all over the place on A Pyke of Patina Slate. “Youth Unit” is some great polished anthemic power pop with just a bit of a new wave slant to it; whatever it is, Pea Sea have nailed it.
“Davie”, Lawn
From God Made the Highway (2025, Exploding in Sound)
New Orleans’ Lawn remain one of the most interesting bands in indie rock today (it makes sense that they found a home at Exploding in Sound after their previous label, Born Yesterday, folded up). Nobody is as committed to veering between noisy, knucklehead post-punk and angelic jangly guitar pop as Rui DeMagalhaes and Mac Folger–I recommend listening to the entire of God Made the Highway to get the entire “Lawn experience”, but the jangle pop moments are perfect to cut and paste into this playlist (listen to “Davie” and try to tell me any different, I dare you).
“Crop Circles”, Liquid Mike
From Hell Is an Airport (2025)
If a tad less grandiose than last year’s Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, Hell Is an Airport is the smoother and tighter Liquid Mike album: fourteen songs of 90s-fuzz-laden, pop punk-baiting power pop in under thirty minutes. Everything on Hell Is an Airport feels like a hit, and the songs bleed and squeal into each other like the Marquette, Michigan group are running frantically from one idea to the next before the fire burns out. “Crop Circles” initially came out as a standalone single last year, but hearing it in the context of Hell Is an Airport is what sold me on it. Read more about Hell Is an Airport here.
“Double Dutch”, Liquid Mike
From Hell Is an Airport (2025)
I like the transition between “Crop Circles” and “Double Dutch” so much that I decided to preserve it on this playlist. It’s a pretty stupid thing to try to pick favorite hooks on Hell Is an Airport, but bandleader Mike Maple and his associates (synthesizer player/backing vocalist Monica Nelson, drummer Cody Marecek, bassist Zack Alworden, and guitarist Dave Daignault) don’t let up at all throughout the massive “Double Dutch”. Read more about Hell Is an Airport here.
“Happy Halloween”, Dancer
From More or Less (2025, Meritorio)
More or Less is Dancer’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, but despite the lineup change, More or Less has the Glasgow quartet sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures from previous records are still part and parcel of More or Less, yes, but they’ve been more effectively ironed into a wider tapestry of expansive, exploratory art rock and (for Dancer, at least) more laid-back pursuits of pop music. There’s still boundless energy in songs like “Happy Halloween”, but this track’s almost late-period Sonic Youth-esque fuzz rock displays a bit of patience, too. Read more (or less) about More or Less here.
“Everyone Chicago”, BRNDA
From Total Pain (2025, Crafted Sounds)
BRNDA’s Total Pain both re-ups the Baltimore group’s penchant for bizarre, groovy art-dance-punk-whatever stuff and expands their range beyond that. Even the hilarious and absurd “Everyone Chicago”, a post-punk rant-raver that sounds just like a slightly darker cut from 2021’s Do You Like Salt?, distinguishes itself thanks to what I can only call “blistering noise rock flute soloing” (credit Mike Gillispie, who also plays on the album’s “A Little Balloon”). Read more about Total Pain here.
“Fantasia”, Golden Apples
From Shooting Star (2025, Lame-O)
Pieced together in a handful of different locales by bandleader Russell Edling with various contributors, Golden Apples’ Shooting Star pulls off the trick of sounding more like an insular folk-influenced record while at the same time retaining the bright, distorted, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic power pop of 2023’s Bananasugarfire. There are too many great pop moments on Shooting Star to highlight all of them, but if I had to choose just one, the roaring power pop of “Fantasia” would be my selection. Read more about Shooting Star here.
“Bad Feeling”, Absolute Losers
From In the Crowd (2025, We Are Busy Bodies/Having Fun)
Many of us know about Canada’s rich tradition of power pop music, but I can’t think of much of it that came from Prince Edward Island (unless we count Alvvays, I suppose). Don’t tell that to Absolute Losers, though, a trio from Canada’s smallest province who’ve just dropped their sophomore LP, In the Crowd. Much like peers on the mainland Kiwi Jr. and Motorists, Absolute Losers (guitarist Josh Langille, bassist Sam Langille, and drummer Daniel Hartinger) have mixed post-punk into their jangly guitar pop before, but my favorite song on their newest album, “Bad Feeling”, is pure bubblegum. It’s half Spoon-Cola-Strokes-kinda indie garage rock, half chiming melodies–it won’t leave my head!
“Garden City Blues”, Silkworm
From In the West (1994, C/Z/Comedy Minus One)
I saw my favorite band, Silkworm, three times last week. I’ve been unable to stop thinking about Silkworm ever since then, unsurprisingly, so there are a handful of Silkworm songs strewn throughout this playlist. All three songs on this playlist were played during their Chicago shows, and there’s one apiece from the band’s three lead vocalists (I had to have some kind of parameters, lest this just become “Silkworm: the playlist”). “Garden City Blues” was, I believe, the earliest Tim Midyett song to show up during the shows, but his Missoula-inspired opener to In the West is one of his best. Read more about those Silkworm shows here.
“Precious Coffee Moments”, Curling
(2025, Royal Oakie)
It’s been about two years since guitar pop trio Curling’s most recent album, No Guitar (one of my favorites of 2023), but the bi-Pacific-Coastal group (co-founders Bernie Gelman & Joseph Brandel, now featuring drummer Kynwyn Sterling) have stayed active in the interim. Last year they signed to Royal Oakie Records, released a “deluxe version” of No Guitar, and remixed a few cuts from their 2018 album Definitely Band. Looks like we’re getting at least one brand-new Curling song this year, too, with the (thus-far) non-album single “Precious Coffee Moments”. It’s a Curling classic, combining their penchant for labored-over, prog/math-influenced “studio pop” music with an almost breezy jangly power pop attitude.
“I-93”, Miss Bones
From Sap Green (2025)
“Ooh, shoulda taken care of that / Ooh, how’d you let it get so bad?” This is a song about car troubles, kind of. Miss Bones take several shapes throughout their debut LP, but one of the most rewarding moments on Sap Green is when the band (bandleader June Isenhart, Eugene Umlor on synths, Jasper Park on bass, Mat Bloomfield on drums, Melisande Pope on guitar, and Rachel Eber on vocals) go full roots-pop mode on “I-93”. The good news is that this song sounds great and Miss Bones has a bright future ahead of them if they’re already pulling something like this off, but the bad news is that I just remembered I need to get my brake pads replaced. Read more about Sap Green here.
“Townies”, Wednesday
From Bleeds (2025, Dead Oceans)
Rosy Overdrive was an early MJ Lenderman adopter, but I have to confess that I’ve never loved Wednesday as much as the hype suggested I ought to have (a familiar story, yes). I like plenty of moments on Rat Saw God and (especially) Twin Plagues, but Bleeds is pretty easily their best one yet and the first one where I can fully see “it”. The band finally got their promising, inspired mix of Drive-By Truckers southern rock bravado, nu-shoegaze noiseiness, and Appalachian folk rock songwriting to the perfect levels. The proof of concept is called “Townies”, a relatively simple song in which Karly Hartzman sounds completely prepared to pull off her lofty ambitions as a frontperson and the band ready to shape themselves around someone who demands it.
“Why I Bought the House”, Asher White
From 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living (2025, Joyful Noise)
Asher White’s 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living is one of the wildest albums I’ve heard this year. Do I like every second of this album, which is an unholy (actually, no, pretty holy) mixture of experimental electronica, industrial, heaviness, and pop music? Well, no, but quite a bit of it sounds brilliant to my ears, and that includes all of “Why I Bought the House”. White displays an aptitude for Beach Boys-y/Jon Brion-esque studio power pop throughout 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living, but “Why I Bought the House” is the one song where she fully embraces it, 60s pop piano and power pop guitar meanderings doing heavy lifting (alongside her excellent, capable guidance as lead vocalist).
“Pulling Teeth”, Bones Shredder
From Morbid Little Thing (2025, Sunken Teeth)
You’ll hear a bit of that darker Chicago pop punk sound–Smoking Popes and Alkaline Trio, the latter of which Bones Shredder’s Randy Moore has been linked to multiple times in the past–in Morbid Little Thing’s ten songs, but no amount of “dark cabaret” vibes can cover up the other source material: suburban Fountains of Wayne-esque power pop and big old Blue Album power chords. The ascendent power pop of “Pulling Teeth” is probably my favorite song on Morbid Little Thing, but it’s far from the only piece of evidence that Bones Shredder may possibly be the best new power pop band of 2025. Read more about Morbid Little Thing here.
“You-Shaped Forever”, Dan Darrah & The Rain
From There’s a Place (2025, Sunday Drive)
There’s a Place features the same backing cast as the last Dan Darrah record (bassist/producer Scott Downes, guitarist Darian Palumbo, vocalist Danielle Clark, and drummer Jacob Hellas) and, much like 2023’s Rivers Bridges Trains, it’s nothing less than forty-six minutes of sprawling, unhurried, melancholic guitar pop. The record’s entire opening trio is a (relatively speaking) tight parade of pop hits, with first track “You-Shaped Forever” in particular standing out as a masterclass in jangly power pop from the Toronto group. Read more about There’s a Place here.
“October”, The Cords
From The Cords (2025, Slumberland/Skep Wax)
A new indie pop band on Slumberland Records, huh? The Cords’ sound should be a recognizable one for guitar pop fans–it’s an amalgamation of groups like The Vaselines, Heavenly (who’ve signed The Cords to their label Skep Wax in the U.K.), and Tiger Trap. They fit right in with current labelmates like The Umbrellas and Jeanines, and (like these acts) they stick out on a crowded and well-traveled road due to unflagging energy and pretty unimpeachable songwriting. The Cords cram a baker’s dozen indie pop nuggets into their first impression–blink and you’ll miss “October”, a highlight in which The Cords crank up the electricity just a bit to rip through some quick indie-pop-punk. Read more about The Cords here.
“Treat the New Guy Right”, Silkworm
From Lifestyle (2000, Touch & Go)
“Treat the New Guy Right” was probably the first Silkworm song that I heard, and it was definitely the first Silkworm song that I loved. It was a free mp3 on the Touch & Go Records website (as well as “(I Hope U) Don’t Survive” and maybe one other one I can’t remember). I think this is one of the few Silkworm songs that can be enjoyed casually (maybe even more than “Couldn’t You Wait?” or “Nerves”), although in hindsight I don’t know how someone could hear a song about how “Motorhead is coming for you” and not want to figure out exactly what this Andy Cohen guy’s whole deal is. I really loved Tim Midyett’s addition of a different inflection of “Ain’t you ever been alone in your life?” in the chorus when they played it all three nights that I saw them in Chicago. Read more about those Silkworm shows here.
“Angus Valley”, Thomas Dollbaum
From Drive All Night (2025, Dear Life)
I hadn’t really connected with New Orleans singer-songwriter Thomas Dollbaum’s work in the past, but I’m glad I gave Drive All Night a shot–it’s very good! Drive All Night is more stripped-down than Dollbaum’s previous music, and its writing is quite personal, but the hushed folk music of the majority of the EP doesn’t feel any more intimate than the bombast of the album’s one rocker, “Angus Valley”. This impact is something Dollbaum and his collaborators pull off throughout the entirety of Drive All Night. Read more about Drive All Night here.
“Passenger Princess”, Cheerbleederz
From (Prove Me Wrong) (2025, Alcopop!)
Fans of the uniquely British, Martha-ish style of “indie pop punk”/power pop will find Cheerbleederz’s latest EP (Prove Me Wrong) much to their liking, and no previous knowledge of the myriad other London bands in which the members have played is necessary to appreciate this loud, cathartic-sounding pop music. (Prove Me Wrong) skips along across four songs all too briefly but not without leaving a trail of bubblegum-flavored carnage in its wake. “Passenger Princess” might be the best one, a song about learning to drive as an adult that, I suspect, is about a little more than even that insurmountable-feeling topic. Read more about (Prove Me Wrong) here.
“Alta Vista”, Dragnet
From Dragnet Reigns! (2025, Spoilsport/Idiotape)
I’ve enjoyed the stylings of Geelong, Australia garage punks Vintage Crop for a while now, but it’s taken me all too long to get around to checking out lead singer Jack Cherry’s other group, Dragnet. As it turns out, Dragnet sounds a lot like Vintage Crop: Aussie garage rock and thumping post-punk in the instrumentals, Cherry talk-singing like a madman on top of them. Dragnet Reigns! is less than twenty minutes of tension being hastily built up and then torn down ad nauseum–the garage rock joyride “Alta Vista” is just one piece of the chaotic tapestry, but it’s an incredible one. Read more about Dragnet Reigns! here.
“Quiet Storm King”, Fig Dish
From That’s What Love Songs Often Do (1995/2025, Polydor/Forge Again)
Recorded by Lou Giordano and originally released on Polydor, Fig Dish’s 1995 debut album That’s What Love Songs Often Do is a mid-90s “alternative rock gold rush” classic, fifty minutes of “slacker” fuzzed-out power pop now available as a double LP for the first time thirty years later thanks to Forge Again Records. The 90s indie rock underground collides with Midwestern power pop a la Cheap Trick and Material Issue and post-grunge bluntness on That’s What Love Songs Often Do, but the Chicago group still found time for deviations like “Quiet Storm King”, a surprisingly baggage-free piece of garage-pop. Read more about That’s What Love Songs Often Do here.
“What’s the Story, Mother?”, Miss Bones
From Sap Green (2025)
Miss Bones is part of a nice little indie folk/folk rock/pop rock scene in Boston alongside acts like James Ikeda’s longrunning project The Michael Character and Amanda Lozada’s Lonesome Joan. More pop-forward than the latter act, more laid-back than the former one, Miss Bones’ debut album Sap Green is a rock-solid coming-out party from the could’ve-been adult alternative/folk rock hit “What’s the Story, Mother?” (in which frontperson June Isenhart pleads “I’ll split my head wide open just to prove / That you and I share the same skull”) on down. Read more about Sap Green here.
“Force Fed”, Sunnyboyy
From Sunnyboyy (2025, RTF)
Jersey City, New Jersey’s Sunnyboyy are a new practitioner of a genre that’s received plenty of shine on Rosy Overdrive in recent years. On their five song self-titled EP, band founder Patrick DeFrancisci and his crew (guitarist Robert Scheuerman, bassist Pete Wilderotter, and drummer Steve Cerri) adhere to the fuzzed-out, alt-rock inspired side of 90s power pop (names like Sugar, Superdrag, Matthew Sweet, and Weezer from then, acts like Dazy, New You, and Supercrush for now). Not only that, but Sunnyboyy have the “bitter and jaded” aspect of 90s power pop down too, as they sing an ode to being force-fed bullshit and a request to fuck off with incredible polish on “Force Fed”, the EP’s opening track.
“If I Ever Ever Needed You”, Grant Pavol
From Save Some Time (2025, Sonder House)
Save Some Time is the third Grant Pavol EP of 2025, and it’s the hardest of the three to categorize thus far. Pavol names Yo La Tengo, The Velvet Underground and Women as influences for this EP, and that’s a pretty wide range of possible sounds–nonetheless, it’s a pretty accurate list of sources for Save Some Time’s opening track and “hit”, the fuzz-country-tinged pop song “If I Ever Ever Needed You”. Read more about Save Some Time here.
“Taxi2”, Understanding
From The Joy of Living (2025, Cooked Raw)
Understanding may be fresh out of the gate, but the majority of the Toronto band has been featured on this blog as members of Westelaken and Cootie Catcher. The Joy of Living, for the most part, pursues a rambling, keyboard-heavy indie rock sound that streamlines the sprawling folk rock of the former associated band and/or mellows out the chaotic, electronic-tinged twee pop of the latter. Recorded by Squiggly Lines’ Rob McLay, The Joy of Living is six songs of Understanding locking into place and riding a low-key but fervent vibe to a memorable debut. The swiftly humming “Taxi2”, like the rest of the EP, keeps the ivories front and center. Read more about The Joy of Living here.
“Unreal Cities”, OUT
From Billie (2020, Comedy Minus One)
I saw the band OUT from Kalamazoo open up the first night of Silkworm’s three-night stand in Chicago (read more about that here). Though I’d written about OUT-related acts Future Living and Wowza in Kalamazoo, I hadn’t gotten this quartet on the blog before now. I heard several good songs I could’ve put on this playlist on that Tuesday night (“Wound Up”, “Rashomon”), but I’m going with the exasperated garage rock of “Unreal Cities” from their 2020 sophomore album Billie. It seemed like the right performance to reintroduce Silkworm (and Ike Turner’s delivery of “I’m forty-two years old / With forty-one records sold / In the last ten years or so, I am told” is pretty unbeatable).
“Why Won’t You Let Me Keep It”, Léna Bartels
From The Brightest Silver Fish (2025, Glamour Gowns)
I enjoyed Léna Bartels’ intimate bedroom folk-style half of It’s Gonna Be a Wonderful New Year (her split EP with Nico Hedley) earlier this year, but as it turns out, they were hardly sufficient to prepare me for the full range of her sophomore LP, The Brightest Silver Fish. It’s (loosely speaking) a “folk rock” album that explores either end of that spectrum as well as other avenues entirely across its thirty-four minutes. On the rock side we have fuzzed-out, soaring alt-rock stuff like “Why Won’t You Let Me Keep It” that will appeal to fans of Lily Seabird’s Alas, or even Wednesday, but lo-fi bedroom pop, rootsy alt-country, and even synthpop have their moments on The Brightest Silver Fish too. Read more about The Brightest Silver Fish here.
“To Voicemail”, Big Cry Country
From Something Blue (2025)
If you’ve enjoyed what fellow D.C. bands like Pretty Bitter and Flowerbomb have been doing (not to mention the 2010s Midwestern indie rock bands that inspired them like Remember Sports and Ratboys), the sophomore EP from the District’s Big Cry Country will be a satisfying and promising listen. Despite being a relatively barebones group, the pop punk bass and (relatively) subtle keyboard hook of Something Blue’s opening track, “To Voicemail”, feel as grand as the most polished arena “indie” rock could be. Read more about Something Blue here.
“Barroom Wonder”, Lawn
From God Made the Highway (2025, Exploding in Sound)
Yes, a second Lawn song, because “Barroom Wonder” is neck-and-neck with “Davie” for the best Flying Nun-inspired jangle pop tune on God Made the Highway. To be clear, though, “Barroom Wonder” isn’t merely a repeat of the aforementioned other song–it’s a more distinctly American take on guitar pop music, as I can hear everything from Big Star to 80s southern college rock to 2010s “lo-fi”/“bedroom” pop stuff in its genesis. I kind of wish every Lawn song sounded like this, true, although one also must respect their devotion to doing the incredibly specific thing they do without flagging.
“The Days We Had Each Other”, Prathloons
From Breadbox (2025)
Even for a Prathloons album, Breadbox is pretty hushed and low-key–it largely eschews the swooning crescendos in which 2022’s The Kansas Wind occasionally indulged and instead seeks to expand and open up the space around frontperson Colin Dall’s voice even further. The most upbeat song on the album, “The Days We Had Each Other”, is just a little perky in an early Death Cab for Cutie way, but it doesn’t derail Breadbox from pursuing some immaculate slowcore-infused vibes. Read more about Breadbox here.
“All Over Again”, Tanner York
From Welcome to the Shower (2025, Trash Tape)
I’m deep into power pop subgenres you haven’t even dreamt of. “Jangly power pop with high-pitched chipmunk vocals” is a surprisingly prolific one (there’s one practitioner of it in particular who used to appear on this blog a lot)–I’m not sure what the appeal of it is for creators, exactly, but (like most other strange subsets of pop music) it hardly matters when the songs are good enough. Tanner York’s Welcome to the Shower, out via Trash Tape (Rain Recordings, Hill View #73, Tombstone Poetry), is a promising debut of such music, and my favorite song on the album, “All Over Again”, is a beautiful jangly chimer made by somebody who can trace a straight line from Big Star to Teenage Fanclub to Jon Brion to Sharp Pins.
“Grand Am”, Liquid Mike
From Hell Is an Airport (2025)
A third Liquid Mike song, huh. Well, it’s a short one–around ninety seconds–so I think we’ve got room for “Grand Am”. While not a full-on lo-fi detour, “Grand Am” finds Liquid Mike channeling their inner Alien Lanes and seemingly dropping us right in the middle of a pop song from another universe. “Grand Am” is arguably a tease, never fully wringing everything it can out of its main hook and even cutting out mid-guitar-solo (?!), but what’s here is more than enough to make it one of the best tracks on Hell Is an Airport. Read more about Hell Is an Airport here.
“Dream Destroyer”, Sloan
From Based on the Best Seller (2025, Two Minutes for Music/Yep Roc)
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, dream destroyer”. Aside from the obvious, has there been another band that’s been more dangerous with the “yeah, yeah, yeah”s than Sloan? Time will tell how the Nova Scotian power pop legends’ fourteenth album will stack up to the rest of their discography (including 2022’s late-career highlight Steady), but Based on the Best Seller sounds pretty good to me on first blush. “Dream Destroyer” is the early highlight for me, a swinging party penned by Patrick Pentland that struts onto the scene in the LP’s second slot.
“Downhill”, Carson McHone
From Pentimento (2025, Merge)
I first heard of Carson McHone thanks to her work in the Canadian phenomenon Daniel Romano’s Outfit, but the Austin, Texas-originating, Ontario-based singer-songwriter has been making folk-country records under her own name for a decade as well. Carson McHone LP number four, Pentimento, is an album that could look intimidating from a distance (between the rambling, sixteen-track length and the spoken-word interludes which regularly crop up) but is quite friendly at its core. McHone’s music isn’t nearly as boisterous as Romano’s, but it’s “Americana”-tinged folk rock with a pulse and a more-than-passing interest in pop music. The electric jangle of “Downhill” in particular is a first-half winner. Read more about Pentimento here.
“Breeze”, Golden Apples
From Shooting Star (2025, Lame-O)
I mentioned Sparklehorse two times when writing about Golden Apples’ Shooting Star, although no comparison I could make is as clear as the power of listening to “Breeze” with even a passing familiarity with Mark Linkous’ music. The point of comparison isn’t meant to imply that Russell Edling is just a homework-copier, to be clear–Sparklehorse didn’t invent this specific, wide-eyed combination of delicate and noisy, they’re just the most obvious example of it in our corner of the music world, and it’s useful for describing what, exactly, Golden Apples have tapped into throughout Shooting Star. But, I mean, that opening guitar riff is also pure Good Morning Spider, right? Read more about Shooting Star here.
“Yen + Janet Forever”, Silkworm
From Libertine (1994, El Recordo/Comedy Minus One)
I never thought I’d hear “Yen + Janet Forever” live–or any of Joel Phelps’ songs from Libertine, for that matter. As much as I love “Pilot” and “Raised by Tigers” from In the West, Phelps’ greatest moment as a member of Silkworm to me was his three-song-stretch in the middle of Libertine: the six-minute, tortured “Yen + Janet Forever”, the uneasy breeze of “Oh How We Laughed”, the white-hot fury of “The Cigarette Lighters”. Silkworm played “Yen + Janet Forever” twice in Chicago, and each time Phelps’ simple, haunted lyrics in between an instrumental torrent (as well as the climax, of course, perhaps my favorite Joel Phelps moment in the entire Silkworm catalog) hit very hard. Read more about those Silkworm shows here.
“Hard to Love a Man”, Friendship
From I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina (2025, Run for Cover)
Despite arguably shaping the current sound of “indie rock” more than any other indie musician, there’s a surprising lack of curiosity around huge swaths of Jason Molina’s work at this present moment. I Will Swim to You, a new Molina covers compilation from Run for Cover, isn’t equipped to change this, but it understands this, and it’s a good deal of how it stays interesting for its entirety. My favorite band who appears on the compilation, Friendship, are in particular up to the task with their choice of a relatively obscure Molina track: they offer up a hypnotic, dark version of the Magnolia Electric Co. song “Hard to Love a Man” that lands somewhere between the coverer and the covered, somehow. Read more about I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina here.
“Maldição”, Oruã
From Reflectors, Vol. I (2025, Half Shell/Dead Currencies)
Nashville experimental label Dead Currencies have recently announced a split LP series called “Reflectors”, and they’ve kicked off this new project with two titans of modern psychedelic music in Seattle’s Reverse Death and Brazilian Built to Spill associates Oruã. For the latter band, they’ve offered up a handful of demos and outtakes from Oruã’s upcoming K Records debut, Slacker, featuring a more rock-focused psychedelia than their Pacific Northwest counterparts. Even so, the nine-minute electric guitar explosion of “Maldição” sticks out like a sore thumb–it’s worth the price of admission on its own. Read more about Reflectors, Vol. I here.
Rosy Overdrive 