New Playlist: November 2025

It’s time for the November 2025 playlist! A bunch of good songs from the past month and throughout this year features below. We’ll be wrapping up this year on the blog soon enough, but there’s still plenty of new stuff to take a look at yet.

Buddie, The Melancholy Kings, and Mint Mile all have multiple songs on this playlist (two apiece).

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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

“Doda”, Chico States
From I Saw a Galloping Horse Cover No Ground (2025, Anything Bagel)

I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of Portland, Maine alt-country group Chico States before now–for one thing, they’re quite good, and they’re also connected to a bunch of music I like, from local Maine institution Repeating Cloud Records to Fred Thomas’ Life Like Tapes to Montana’s Anything Bagel, the imprint who put out I Saw a Galloping Horse Cover No Ground on cassette. “Doda”, which opens the album, is everything you could hope for in an alt-country song that namechecks Big Star–catchy as hell and appropriately casual and rambling.

“Eternal Fade”, Idle Ray
From Airport (2025, Salinas)

It wasn’t enough for Idle Ray to put out a new album this year (June’s Even in the Spring); the Michigan trio had to get another four-song EP out before 2025 was over, too. Airport features songs recorded for Even in the Spring but were deemed by the band to work better as a small unit; they’re louder and livelier than most of that album, and it’s probably no coincidence that these all feature Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings, Knowso) on drums. From the explosive guitars that introduce “Eternal Fade” onward, Idle Ray ride a pleasing power pop wave (with more than enough hooks to back it up).

“Evergreen”, Samuel S.C.
From Split (2025, New Granada/Waterslide)

A four-song split EP makes plenty of sense for Samuel S.C. and Pohgoh–they’re both bands who made music combining Superchunk-esque indie-punk-rock with emo in the mid-1990s, and they’ve both reunited and released new music over the past decade. Both of them brought very good material to the table for this one, and the Samuel S.C. songs in particular are nothing short of some of their best material yet. “Evergreen”, my favorite song on the split, is tough, fevered, and surging anthem-emo-rock with a scorching refrain. Read more about Split here.

“Fear & Trembling”, Bliss?
From Keep Your Joy to Yourself (2025, Psychic Spice)

As one might guess from the thematically similar title, Keep Your Joy to Yourself’s songs were written at the same time as those on Bliss?’s March debut album, Pass Yr Pain Along, but they “weren’t ready to be recorded” until now. “Fear & Trembling”, the three-song EP’s hit, is as catchy as anything on the New Orleans group’s first LP, an awesome firecracker Lemonheads/Replacements-style power-punk wrecking ball. Read more about Keep Your Joy to Yourself here.

“Yamaha”, Mint Mile
From andwhichstray (2025, Comedy Minus One)

Perhaps my favorite song on the third Mint Mile LP is “Yamaha” (named so for the guitar on which it was written), a song I’d previously heard frontperson Tim Midyett play live solo on an acoustic guitar but appears here as a fuzzed-out, ear-splitting country rocker. It’s a bit of parallel thinking with the likes of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, I dare say. Midyett’s “Don’t wanna live a life about money,” in “Yamaha” cuts to the quick, centering a clear-eyed directness that’s the “thread” on andwhichstray, from Midyett’s words to (of course) engineer Steve Albini’s engineering. Read more about andwhichstray here.

“Pyro”, Tulpa
From Monster of the Week (2025, Skep Wax)

Monster of the Week is undoubtedly “British indie pop” at its finest; Leeds quartet Tulpa love Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth-style noisy guitars, but these bouncy, twee, sugary songs would never be mistaken for either of those bands. There’s a simplicity and breeziness to early hits like “Pyro”, in which Tulpa make it sound much easier than it must be. Read more about Monster of the Week here.

“Confusion”, Blue Zero
From Confusion (2025)

Blue Zero’s self-released cassette EP is a big step forward for the Chris Natividad solo-project-turned-band, with the shoegaze-y fuzz pop of their debut album Colder Shade Blue exploding into an intense, focused, but still quite catchy brand of Sonic Youth-style indie rock. The opening title track is the biggest hit that the Oakland band have put together yet, a wall-of-sound hurricane with Pixies-level pop instincts. Read more about Confusion here.

“Scream”, Lane
(2025, Total War)

Last year’s Receiver introduced Boston trio Lane as polished practitioners of a streamlined, pop-friendly version of math rock (no, really, it’s quite possible to do and they did it). Lane are back a year and a half later with a one-off single called “Scream”, recorded entirely by the duo of bandleader Wes Kaplan and drummer Julian Fader (Remember Sports, Ava Luna, Sweet Dreams Nadine). It starts with a twisted, Brainiac-style guitar riff, but then sails smoothly into a skewed, slightly noisy, but very agreeable pop song.

“Steady As She Goes”, The Melancholy Kings
From Her Favorite Disguise (2025, Magic Door)

The members of New Jersey quartet The Melancholy Kings have histories in Garden State and New York indie rock dating back to the 1980s; Her Favorite Disguise is their second album, following a self-titled one in 2019, and I admit I’m quite impressed with what these veterans have to offer in 2025. It’s one thing to “end up” making power pop after years of working in edgier underground indie rock, but The Melancholy Kings attack these songs like they’re just as cool as the New York post-punk of their youths. “Steady As She Goes”, pulls out all the stops–“whoa oh oh”s, jangly guitar hooks, winking lyrics. Read more about Her Favorite Disguise here.

“Stressed in Paradise”, Buddie
From Glass (2025, Crafted Sounds/Placeholder)

Glass was recorded by Buddie’s new Vancouver-based line-up, but the eight-song, twenty-five minute LP sounds almost exactly like the Philadelphia version of quartet (and that’s a good thing). If there’s a difference, it’s a slightly more “rocking” record, probably due to the consistent lineup (only the four Buddie members, no guest musicians this time around) and the all-too-brief runtime. The first four songs on Glass could be the record’s biggest “Buddie-style anthem”–for this playlist, but I’m going with the breezy reality-check of “Stressed in Paradise”. Read more about Glass here.

“Radiator Baby”, Soup Dreams
From Hellbender (2025, Candlepin/Pleasure Tapes)

Soup Dreams are another kind-of-rootsy indie rock band from Philadelphia, sure, but they’ve always been good for a great tune (see “Highway Song” from last year’s Twigs for Burning), and it sounds like they’re aiming bigger on Hellbender, their latest album. Recorded by Heather Jones of Ther, Hellbender is a winding journey that comes to a head on the slightly-distorted, super-catchy country rocker “Radiator Baby”. Even if it’s something of an outlier on Hellbender, it’s nice to know that Soup Dreams have something like this in them. 

“It Don’t Matter”, Volcano
From Volcano (2004, Skunk/Don Giovanni)

What a song, this. An unlikely supergroup, Volcano was the result of the Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood linking up with none other than two architects of Sublime (Bud Gaugh and Miguel Happoldt), plus bassist Jon Poutney. Their sole album, released in 2004 and reissued this year by Don Giovanni, is a surprisingly strong collection of laid-back Meat Puppets-esque psychedelic alt-rock; the reggae influence is used sparingly, but it’s there enough, especially in “It Don’t Matter”, a stunning syncopated psychedelic pop rock song that really does sound like the synthesis of its creators.

“Date Night in the Hague”, The Brokedowns
From Let’s Tip the Landlord (2025, Red Scare)

The Brokedowns have been at this thing for more than twenty years now, and they have this whole “Chicagoland punk rock thing” down pat, cranking out records on Windy City stalwart Red Scare Industries and, if their latest LP is any indication, specializing in loud, catchy, and unfashionable punk music. On Let’s Tip the Landlord, the band’s tongue-in-cheek tributes to the Qanon moms, passive income leeches, and delusional war criminals among us are catchy and energetic–“Date Night in the Hague”, my favorite song on the LP, has no business being such a pop-punk rug-cutter. Read more about Let’s Tip the Landlord here.

“Chasing the Strings”, Nervous Verbs
From Pony Coughing (2025, Don Giovanni)

Mike Montgomery is a prolific recording engineer, and his most notable role as a musician is probably co-leading Dayton band R. Ring with Kelley Deal of The Breeders. Recently he’s debuted a solo project called Nervous Verbs, in which he embraces a stripped-down indie rock sound. Pony Coughing is a solid album, but “Chasing the Strings” is an instant-classic, a note-perfect “indie rock” pop song where everything from the unassuming vocals to the sneaky Superchunk/Archers of Loaf-style guitar melodies works in lockstep.

“Fall in Love Again”, Sharp Pins
From Balloon Balloon Balloon (2025, K/Perennial)

I’d hesitate to call Balloon Balloon Balloon the best Sharp Pins album yet, but it’s the most impressive one: twenty-one pitch-perfect mod revival tunes from the mind of Kai Slater in under forty-five minutes, one after the other begging the question of “how is this not an unearthed garage-band wonder from sixty years ago?” Balloon Balloon Balloon starts with a real murderer’s row of five relentless pop songs, but the best one on the album, “Fall in Love Again”, is somehow held back until the middle of the LP. Read more about Balloon Balloon Balloon here.

“We Must Be Evil”, Chronophage
From Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship (2025, Post Present Medium)

Austin group Chronophage are undersung pop merchants of the greater garage/punk/whatever underground, and it’s good to see them still going strong despite member Donna Allen’s fairly active solo career. Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship is four songs of slapdash garage-y power pop, over too soon but not too soon for “We Must Be Evil” to sink its teeth in–it’s messy, triumphant pop music over in less than two minutes.

“Love Soda”, The World Famous
(2025, Lauren)

Los Angeles’ The World Famous burst onto the scene in 2023 with Totally Famous, one of the best power pop debut LPs in recent memory (it was good enough to get me to reference Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads, and Fountains of Wayne in the same review!). The first taste of new music from the Will Harris-led group since then is a one-off song called “Love Soda”, and I’m pleased to report that The World Famous have effectively picked up where they left off with this one. Delicate melodies given a slight edge with a 90s alt-rock punch, all delivered with pop-nerd flourishes and contours.

“Gaslamp Lighter”, Lozenge
From EP1 (2025, Candlepin)

After putting out a demo cassette on Pleasure Tapes last year, Los Angeles shoegaze group Lozenge dropped their debut EP on Candlepin back in April. EP1 is five songs of lo-fi melodies and fuzz, an impressively strong bid to enter the pantheon of modern “Guided by Voices-gaze” bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots. My favorite song on the EP is probably the opening track, “Gaslamp Lighter”, which clangs through distorted, tinny guitar leads, shimmery jangles, and walls of amplifiers.

“Revenge”, Sweet Nobody
From Driving Off to Nowhere (2025, Repeating Cloud)

Vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Joy Deyo, drummer Brian Dishon, guitarist Casey Snyder, and bassist Adam Nolan haven’t completely abandoned the straightforward jangly guitar pop of 2021’s We’re Trying Our Best on their third LP, but Driving Off to Nowhere represents something markedly different for Sweet Nobody. There’s a hazy, reverb-touched quality to just about everything on Driving Off to Nowhere, with bits of dream pop, synthpop, and new wave in the mix, but–as album highlight “Revenge” confirms–there’s still plenty of jangle in the Los Angeles band’s sound. Read more about Driving Off to Nowhere here.

“Heat Death”, Pressure Wheel
From Atomic Woe (2025, Alchemy Hours)

The Philadelphia supergroup Pressure Wheel’s debut EP, Atomic Woe, is the result of members of Restorations, Signals Midwest, and Timeshares zeroing in on the catchier sides of punk rock, garage rock, emo-punk, and even post-hardcore. “A little less scalpel, a little more sledgehammer,” claims the band’s bio, and indeed, Atomic Woe eschews the more high-concept aspects of the members’ other bands to land a half-dozen blunt-force rock and roll blows. My favorite track on the record, “Heat Death”, marries the heart-on-sleeve earnestness of all three of the members’ other bands with precision guitar pop. Read more about Atomic Woe here.

“Chances on Love”, The Blackburns
(2025, Third Act Problems)

This is the second song that’s trickled out from Philadelphia group The Blackburns’ upcoming (“early 2026″) sophomore album, following April’s “Video Den”. Like “Video Den”, it’s another power pop earworm, but, compared to the last song’s high-concept ambitions, “Chances on Love” is a lot more streamlined and goes for the jugular pretty much immediately. Nick Palmer is the lead vocalist for this one (bassist Joel Tannenbaum helmed the previous single); you’ll hear “You’re gonna have to take your chances on love” a lot in this song, but I didn’t get tired of it.

“Backlight”, Freezing Cold
From Treasure Pool (2025, Don Giovanni)

Jeff Cunningham, Leanne Butkovic, and Angie Boylan are Freezing Cold, an under-the-radar New York trio featuring members of Aye Nako, Little Lungs, and Slingshot Dakota who’ve put out albums on Salinas and now Don Giovanni. There’s no real “hook” or twist to Treasure Pool, their sophomore album, “merely” a collection of solid, catchy, punk-ish indie rock from folks who’ve been on the vanguard of the movement. “Backlight” is slick, just a little emo-y, and entirely undeniable.

“Lou and Eddie”, Semi Trucks
From Georgia Overdrive (2025, Post Present Medium)

Semi Trucks are new to me, but the Los Angeles quartet’s latest LP is everything good about West Coast rock and roll music. Georgia Overdrive (great album name, by the way) is ten songs of fuzzed-out, psychedelic guitar pop music, bits of dream pop and garage rock and Undergrounds both Paisley and Velvet all in tow. “Lou and Eddie” is my favorite song on the album, and it’s a little more straightforward in its California fuzz-pop ambitions, but it’s a pretty representative sample of what to expect on Georgia Overdrive.

“Nothing Without You”, Morvern Hum
From Hollow (2025, Candlepin)

The Candlepin-released Hollow appears to be the debut EP from Chicago dream pop/shoegaze quintet Morven Hum, and it’s a promising first record. My favorite song on Hollow by a fair margin is “Nothing Without You”, a jovial indie pop song buoyed by a vocal tradeoff between keyboardist Lola Marcantonio and guitarist Ben Abid. 

“Italian Wine”, Swearing at Motorists
From 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues (2025, BB*ISLAND/Bone Voyage)

Self-recorded by the band “in a Bundesliga soccer stadium”, Swearing at Motorists’ 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues is a barebones, blunt-force indie rock “duo” album. It’s neither a “roots rock” or “garage rock” record, but it will appeal to fans of either of those genres; the Dayton-originating, Hamburg-based band leave just enough blank space that you can fill it in with whatever you’d like in your head. “Italian Wine”, my favorite song on 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues, is stark, simple, and eternal-sounding, just like how Swearing at Motorists like it. Read more about 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues here.

“Victoria”, The Melancholy Kings
From Her Favorite Disguise (2025, Magic Door)

Like “Steady As She Goes” earlier in this playlist, “Victoria” is an insanely catchy song from a bunch of power pop lifers. In this song, we get to hear lead vocalist Mike Potenza get away with a refrain built out of “The odds are even that you harbor a demon or two (yeah, yeah) / And if you act real soon, I’ll exorcise them with you,” addressed to the titular figure. With a hook that solid, it’s impressive that they held off for even fifty seconds before launching it. Read more about Her Favorite Disguise here.

“Even the Sun Can Hurt You”, Star Card
From Trash World (2025, Already Dead)

The first Star Card LP and first Full Band Star Card release, Trash World, is a big one–it’s forty-seven minutes of greyscale but animated indie rock and noisy pop music. “Even the Sun Can Hurt You”, in the album’s second slot, seizes the reins from offbeat opening track “Flowers” and puts the Queens band closer to the realms of 90s acts like Superchunk, Versus, and Scrawl. Read more about Trash World here.

“Palace Behind the Shade”, Strange Passage
From A Folded Sky (2025, Meritorio)

Made by a guitar pop band who mentions names like The Church, The Feelies, and Neu! as influences, it’s probably not surprising to learn that Strange Passage’s A Folded Sky is both incredibly catchy and built with a noticeably tough post-punk backbone. The Boston and New York-split quartet tackle “Palace Behind the Shade”, the record’s opening track, with a freewheeling garage punk energy, even if the song itself is a nervy post-punk/college rock chimer. Read more about A Folded Sky here.

“Something Here”, Dogwood Gap
From Probably Not Enough (2025, Revelator)

Dogwood Gap’s debut album, Probably Not Enough, is also their first record as a full band, and it’s a reinvention of the project’s sound, too. Although the Songs: Ohia influence of their debut EP is still there, it’s a lot less alt-country or folk-inspired, with a quiet but electric 90s indie rock sound now presenting as the dominant strain. Dogwood Gap reference bands like Pile and Unwound as touchpoints, and while they’re not a post-hardcore group now, there’s an exploratory aspect to Patrick Murray’s guitar playing that fits well with this kind of electric, slowcore-evoking indie rock. “Something Here”, my favorite song on the album, is delicate yet with a post-punk edge at moments, too. Read more about Probably Not Enough here.

“Bride of Frankenstein”, Night Court
From Nervous Birds (2025, Snappy Little Numbers/Debt Offensive/Drunk Dial/Shield)

The Vancouver trio Night Court have made a name for themselves in recent years via albums stuffed to the gills with brief, energetic bursts of punk-pop, and the archival Nervous Birds compilation (2021’s Nervous Birds! One and 2022’s Nervous Birds Too, the band’s first two EPs, crammed onto one LP) suggests that Night Court arrived more or less fully-formed. The horror-themed power-pop-punk of “Bride of Frankenstein” inexplicably opens the compilation with a song from the 2023 Frater Set (the only song on the LP not from one of the Nervous Birds records), but it’s so good that I can’t complain about the choice. Read more about Nervous Birds here.

“Livin’ Wrong”, Tony Molina
From On This Day (2025, Slumberland/Speakeasy Studios SF/Olde Fade)

If you know anything about Tony Molina’s music, it’s probably that strong guitar pop music is his specialty, typically delivered in sub-ninety-second nuggets–and that’s precisely what we get when we join the San Francisco singer-songwriter on On This Day, Molina’s first solo album in three years. On This Day, twenty-one songs in twenty-three minutes, was recorded by Molina and collaborators at home in an “unhurried” manner, and is subsequently on the “acoustic” and “laid-back” ends of the Tony Molina spectrum. Highlights like the blissful jangle pop creation “Livin Wrong” lean into Molina’s 60s folk-pop influences, which is never a bad place for a Molina song to end up. Read more about On This Day here.

“Golden”, Buddie
From Glass (2025, Crafted Sounds/Placeholder)

Yeah, another Buddie song. There are too many good ones on Glass, a problem this album shares with 2023’s Agitator. The writing on “Golden” is interesting; between the title and the diversion into Los Angeles trivia in the lyrics, it seems like the Vancouver-based band are looking a little further south down the West Coast, but the determined feeling is vintage Buddie nonetheless. It’s, of course, quite catchy too, with choppy power chords anchoring the album highlight. Read more about Glass here.

“No Need to Know”, Mint Mile
From andwhichstray (2025, Comedy Minus One)

Mint Mile recorded andwhichstray a couple of months after last year’s Roughrider came out in France with longtime friend of the band Steve Albini–less than a week before the legendary engineer’s sudden passing. andwhichstray is, thankfully, an album made to carry the heavy circumstances. For one, this is the best that Mint Mile have ever sounded–the Crazy Horse solidification of Roughrider is sharpened further here, the band even more roaring. “No Need to Know” opens andwhichstray with an automatic version of Mint Mile, gorgeous guitars chiming while Tim Midyett rejects uncertainty and embraces the tactile in his writing. Read more about andwhichstray here.

“I’m a Fan”, Pohgoh
From Split (2025, New Granada/Waterslide)

I was unfamiliar with Tampa emo-punk-pop group Pohgoh before they shared a four-song split EP with blog favorites Samuel S.C., but the pairing is a good fit, and the fellow recently-revived 90s indie rock band acquits themselves nicely on their two tracks. Opening track “I’m a Fan” especially is a lovely punk-pop song that should win anyone unfamiliar with Pohgoh over–it certainly worked on me. Read more about Split here.

“If the Song Is Momcore”, Abe Savas & the New Standards of Beauty
From Have a Good Life (2025, Badgering the Witless)

Kalamazoo artist Abe Savas released an album called 99 Songs (Plus One) back in June–compared to the ambition of that project, a four-song EP seems so…ordinary? Comprised of previously-unfinished outtakes from Savas’ 2023 album Love Cabal, the Have a Good Life EP deserves to be judged on its own merits nonetheless, and opening track “If the Song Is Momcore” is a pretty stellar guitar pop song. Stacked alongside strange references to Starfleet, Vito Corleone, and the titular microgenre, there’s an impressive mid-tempo post-Evan Dando power pop core here that works very well.  

“Willow”, The Maple State
From Don’t Take Forever (2025)

Manchester’s The Maple State came up in the early 2000s’ “emo-punk” scene, but their newest album Don’t Take Forever thankfully doesn’t sound like a band trying to recreate 2005. I certainly believe that American emo was an influence on this band, although these are big, catchy, and (yes) emotional pop songs of the sort that British bands from Frightened Rabbit to ME REX have made in The Maple State’s absence. Surprisingly enough, though, one of the best songs on the album comes when The Maple State bust out the dreaded acoustic guitar in “Willow”. Read more about Don’t Take Forever here. 

“Rodeo”, Host Family
From Extended Play (2025, Candlepin)

The debut EP from Los Angeles’ Host Family is another piece of evidence that southern California seems to be the place to be for modern shoegaze-influenced bands; its six pop songs (four singles from last year and two new ones) aren’t nearly as abrasive as, say, Lozenge (another L.A. Candlepin group who appear earlier on this playlist) but still feature a healthy amount of noisy rave-ups in the polish, too. “Rodeo” is a controlled fuzzy shoegaze-pop success, leaning not insignificantly on a “strong, for shoegaze” central lead vocal performance.

“Dry TV”, The Cindys
From The Cindys (2025, Ruination/Breakfast)

The Cindys are a band from Bristol, England founded by Jack Ogborne, an art rocker who wanted a project for making music inspired by 80s guitar pop (touchstones like C86 and Flying Nun have been thrown around). The Cindys is a pretty unimpeachable debut, a twenty-one-minute, seven-song “mini-LP” that’s nonetheless stocked with fully-fleshed-out ideas and confident pop performances. The majority of the album may have been recorded on 8-track cassette in a basement, but it’s on the more polished, stately side of the “indie pop spectrum”. Catchy and deliberate, the melodies practically fall out of highlights like “Dry TV” (whose lyrics contain the phrase “full-contact smoker’s lounge”, which is a great Robert Pollard-ism). Read more about The Cindys here.

“My My”, Orillia
From Fire-Weed (2025, Far West)

Orillia’s self-titled debut album was a fairly stripped-down sampler of Andrew Marczak the songwriter and performer; Fire-Weed, coming less than a year later, feels like a more clear attempt by the Chicago artist at creating a coherent “album” this time around. The full-band songs feature a more stable line-up, but some of the best tracks on the album are still lo-fi, mostly Marczak recordings–like “My My”, which he hides towards the end of the record’s second side. Read more about Fire-Weed here.

“Circles”, Spectres of Desire
From Incursions (2025)

A synthpop/darkwave project from a punk musician? Cool! Jonny C. Tamayo plays in Minnesota punk supergroup The Slow Death, but he’s recently launched a solo project called Spectres of Desire, and the six-song Incursions EP is its first release. “Circles” starts with a ringing guitar before a wobbling synth also enters the fray; what follows is a lively take on synth-y post-punk/new wave revivalism, led by a charismatic frontperson.

“A Check List, a Dream”, Young Constable
From On a Wave That Will Eventually Come to Shore (2025)

Melbourne-based musician Mark Vale is a long-time lo-fi/four-track home-recorder who recently returned from a long musical hiatus with a new project called Young Constable. Referencing acts like Superchunk and Mclusky as influences, the project’s On a Wave That Will Eventually Come to Shore is a more insular solo affair that nonetheless has a bit of the edge implied by the lo-fi, punky indie rock that’s influenced Vale in the past. “A Check List, a Dream” is my favorite song on the album, and it’s a half-ballad, half-anthem piece of slightly emo, British-tinged pop rock.

“American Prayer”, Tiny Vipers
From Tormentor (2025)

A brand new Tiny Vipers album seems like it should be bigger news than it apparently is. This blog isn’t exactly a hub of “stark, crushing, nearly-ambient folk music”, but I’m more than happy to talk about Tormentor, an album that’s great if you’re into that kind of thing. The best song on the album, “American Prayer”, did previously appear on a 2022 EP, but it’s no less jaw-dropping here–Jesy Fortino delicately ushering the song’s hushed, acoustic foundation along for five transfixing minutes.