New Playlist: March 2026

Hey there! This is the March 2026 playlist, featuring a bunch of great music I’ve been enjoying recently (mostly from the last month or so).

Miserable chillers, Sluice, Timeout Room, and It’s All You, Cowboy have two songs apiece on this playlist. True Green has four.

We’ll be back on Thursday!

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify (missing three songs), Tidal (missing two). 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.

“Hey Dude”, HEDGE
From Freeze Frame High Five (2026, Best Brother)

HEDGE are a pop punk trio from Worcester, Massachusetts who caught my attention with their 2024 debut album, Better Days. On the group’s brand new EP Freeze Frame High Five, the band take us on a foot-on-gas journey through post-Jawbreaker 90s “indie punk” energy and intensity with a power pop sensibility, sprinting through a half-dozen songs in under ten minutes. Opening track “Hey Dude” is just a monster truck of a pop song, and lead singer Christopher’s deep, almost conversational voice and vocal melodies make him feel like a pop punk version of The Bevis Frond’s Nick Salomon. Read more about Freeze Frame High Five here.

“It Really Never Did”, Helicopter Leaves
From Sabrina Nickels (2026, Noyes)

Chicago musician Anthony Vaccaro has been widely heard this decade as part of the wildly popular Beach Bunny; Vaccaro first stepped out on his own in 2023 with Get Stuck In, the home-recorded debut album from his power pop solo project Helicopter Leaves, but it’s the second LP under the name that has fully realized the guitar pop potential that Vaccaro clearly possesses. Vaccaro’s relatively delicate vocals keep Sabrina Nickels with one foot in the worlds of twee and indie pop, but the big guitars and even bigger refrains are hardly bashful. Sabrina Nickels is a whirlwind; this feeling is greatly enhanced by “It Really Never Did”, a starry-eyed power pop opening track that’s as good as any guitar pop I’ve heard this year. Read more about Sabrina Nickels here.

“Sunny Boy”, Dialup Ghost
From Donkey Howdy (2026)

The goofy title of Dialup Ghost’s Donkey Howdy is “an attempt to free the band from over-seriousness and over-thinking” per the band, and these eleven songs also represent an attempt by the Nashville group to incorporate musical ideas beyond their alt-country roots (synthesizer and trumpet feature prominently in a few songs, for instance). Both vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Russ Finn’s writing and his Nashville drawl help Dialup Ghost stay squarely in the big-tent version of “alt-country”, but Donkey Howdy is a subsequently adventurous and weird album reflecting a band still restless after several records together. I’d direct any skeptics to the power pop/alt-country synthesis of “Sunny Boy”; if that hits, then maybe you’re ready for the weirder moments. Read more about Donkey Howdy here.

“Vegas”, Sluice
From Companion (2026, Mtn Laurel Recording Co.)

With “Vegas”, Sluice pull the trick of saving the catchiest song on Companion for last. It’s an exhilarating, whirlwind country-rock flashback to bandleader Justin Morris’ time touring with Angel Olsen as her merch guy in the 2010s, an up-close experience with “indie stardom” that nearly made him quit music and that really wouldn’t have worked anywhere else in the album’s sequencing. After an album of thoughtful, fully-alive country-rock, “Vegas” is one final curveball suggesting that Morris and Sluice had to burn a bunch of things down to get where they got to on Companion. Read more about Companion here.

“Italian Lightning”, True Green
From Hail Disaster (2026, Spacecase)

“You quit the family business, and hopped on a plane / To root through Roman trash and study ancient slang”–so begins my favorite album of 2026 so far, to the tune of lilting, lackadaisical guitar pop. True Green’s Dan Hornsby continues to be one of the best storytellers in “indie rock” music on his project’s second album, Hail Disaster–there’s a reason I put four songs from it on this playlist. Well, several reasons, actually. “Italian Lightning” is about as catchy as Hail Disaster gets, its cheerful R.E.M.-ish folk rock obscuring some pretty dark undercurrents. “You beat me to the punch, and then you punched me to the beat,” indeed. Read more about Hail Disaster here.

“How to Draw Hands”, True Green
From Hail Disaster (2026, Spacecase)

One of my favorite songs on Hail Disaster is about how to draw hands. It’s called “How to Draw Hands”. In “How to Draw Hands”, Hornsby sings “Go slow, it’s no race,” from the perspective of his mother giving him artistic advice on the subject. The more time I spend with Hail Disaster, the more I’m drawn in by its overwhelming calmness, a rejection of calamity drawn from what I must assume is Hornsby taking that aforementioned advice. The final verse is the perfect cherry on top, drawing us closer without overdoing it; it’s a masterclass, in drawing hands and writing songs, too. Read more about Hail Disaster here.

“Long Way”, Filth Is Eternal
From Impossible World (2026, MNRK Heavy)

Filth Is Eternal’s fourth album, Impossible World, throws itself headfirst into the realm of meaty, muscular, punk-heavy alt-rock. It hits like a tractor-trailer: a dozen short, serious, grey, loud bursts of heavy metal/hardcore-tinged grunge-pop songs in just under a half-hour. Lead vocalist Lis DiAngelo is clear and unwavering over top of guitars set to “rumbling down the highway” and rhythms doing their requisite pounding. It’s hard to pick highlights because Impossible World is an incredibly even listening experience–you can’t go wrong with any of the first four songs, including the one I chose for this playlist, “Long Way”. Read more about Impossible World here.

“Sea Life Sandwich Boy”, Horsegirl
From Red Xerox (2026, Desert Island/New Now)

Chicago indie rockers Horsegirl have turned buzz into a Matador record deal and Pitchfork hype, but they’ve always been adamant that they’re part of a larger scene–a bunch of teenagers in the Windy City making underground indie rock music inspired by varying combinations of early Guided by Voices, Flying Nun, Elephant 6, 1960s psychedelic pop, shoegaze, and their home city’s noise rock. Red Xerox, assembled by local chronicler and TV Buddha drummer Eli Schmitt, is a well-earned and useful five-year marker for this scene, and Horsegirl are represented on the compilation via one of their their earliest songs, “Sea Life Sandwich Boy”. Chamber pop and Yo La Tengo-ish noisy hooks collide in a song that’s a very good choice to sum up everything on Red Xerox. Read more about Red Xerox here.

“Night Eye”, Timeout Room
From Celebration Station (2026, Tough Gum)

Timeout Room crash-landed into view back in 2023 with an album called Tight-Ass Goku Pictures, a brilliant, skewed, and bizarre collection of guitar pop that was like The Cleaners from Venus as interpreted by a lo-fi punk from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. LP2, Celebration Station, is a fantastically frayed collection of jangle pop, power pop, and garage punk that meets that high bar; some of the more overtly silly aspects of Tight-Ass Goku Pictures are absent, leading to a tighter, more rocking collection of tracks that is nonetheless still very fun. Early highlight “Night Eye” continues bandleader S.T. McCrary’s mission to shove pop punk-level hooks and attitude into lo-fi guitar pop. Read more about Celebration Station here.

“The Big Guitar”, Miserable chillers
From Innocent Victims (2026, Baby Blue)

Two years after the eclectic art pop “mixtape” Great American Turn Off, Miguel Gallego is back with the first proper song-based Miserable chillers album since 2020, Innocent Victims, which offers a very different listening experience than his previous release. Gallego continues to mine soft rock, art pop, and 60s/70s studio-auteur-type music for inspiration, but it’s a more muted, pensive version of it than on Great American Turn Off, evidently due to the personal tragedy behind this record’s creation. The titular Thin Lizzy worship of “The Big Guitar” is one of the most electric and immediately catchy moments on Innocent Victims; dropping in the guitars is an odd choice, but there’s no arguing with the result. Read more about Innocent Victims here.

“Please Stop Moving to Philadelphia”, Fake Canadian
From Fellow Traveler (2026, Daylight Headlight Section)

The second Fake Canadian album and first as a full-on band is called Fellow Traveler, recorded by Cameron Karren at Sacramento’s renowned Pus Cavern studio, and it’s large enough to contain several more hits from the self-described “angular power pop” band as well as push some of their (already fairly loose) boundaries. Whip-smart, wordy (read: “nerdy”), punched-up by the rhythm section, and quite catchy, the hits of Fellow Traveler reap the rewards of Christopher Casuga’s decision to bring bassist Howard Ingerman and drummer Jordan Solomon into the fold. The surging power pop of “Please Stop Moving to Philadelphia” sports Silkworm’s Lifestyle-esque guitar-lead spatter, a surefire way to get me to enjoy a song. Read more about Fellow Traveler here.

“Comedy Gold”, Stimmerman
From Challenging Music for Difficult People (2026)

Interesting stuff here from Stimmerman, aka Brooklyn guitarist Eva Lawitts (who’s played with Oceanator, Allegra Krieger, and Vagabon, among others). After a solid album in 2023 called Undertaking, Stimmerman returned this year with Challenging Music for Difficult People, which is probably the best album title of the year. I’ll just go ahead and say that while it doesn’t entirely live up to the impossible expectations I’d have for an album called that, it’s an admirable attempt in which Lawitts collides emo-y indie rock with bizarre prog- and math rock excess and ambition. “Comedy Gold” is probably the closest thing to a “hit” on this album; “Am I a clown or am I man?” asks Lawitts over a tuneful cacophony. 

“Where Did All the Fruit Go?”, The Foot & Leg Clinic
From Sit Down for Rock and Roll (2026, Bingo)

For their debut album, the Glasgow band formerly known as “The Wife Guys of Reddit” have rechristened themselves The Foot & Leg Clinic (a marginally better name, I suppose) and asked us to Sit Down for Rock and Roll with an offbeat, catchy, and surprising collection of British indie-art-rock (“wonk rock”, they call it). The catchy, pop-forward garage rock of “Where Did All the Fruit Go?” imagines a more polite version of their Bingo Records labelmates in The Bug Club; elsewhere on Sit Down for Rock and Roll The Foot & Leg Clinic get much odder, but this is the “hit”. Read more about Sit Down for Rock and Roll here.

“Crack Skinny”, It’s All You, Cowboy
From I Can’t Eat (2026, Crutch of Memory)

This It’s All You, Cowboy record might be the greatest album of all time. Probably not, but it might be. I Can’t Eat has an absurd but deadpan vibe to it that could only possibly come from a Midwestern “experimental grindcore” musician’s minimalist 80s art pop side project. That’s Frankie Furillo, a guy from Stoughton, Wisconsin who also plays in The Central and who’s just put out a second album on Crutch of Memory (Dusk, Julia Blair, Amos Pitsch). “Crack Skinny” is a wildly catchy indie pop song about–well, I’ll just let Furillo explain it, as he’s quite direct about it. 

“Bodysurfing”, True Green
From Hail Disaster (2026, Spacecase)

“Bodysurfing” is probably the most beautiful song on Hail Disaster (and there’s a lot of competition for that title), Dan Hornsby and Tailer Ransom giving the sparkling, polished, dreamy guitar pop treatment to the former’s tale of a family’s home getting robbed while they’re having “the time of [their] lives” at the beach. “The first half of your life is Tetris / And the second half is Jenga,” Hornsby sings, towards the end of “Bodysurfing”, suggesting a loss of innocence, but he just as immediately shrugs the conclusion off: “But maybe it’s all just / Bodysurfing”. Read more about Hail Disaster here.

“Missed Dunks at Summer League”, Missed Dunks at Summer League
From Fared Well (2026, Machine Duplication)

Jordan Petersen-Kamp began Missed Dunks at Summer League not long after landing in Memphis from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and his debut album under the name, Fared Well, is largely a solo effort. Compared to the bands around them in their adopted hometown, Missed Dunks at Summer League’s influences are a bit more…esoteric? The dominant sound of Fared Well is greyscale, chilly, introverted 90s indie rock–their label, Machine Duplication, mentions Built to Spill and the Mountain Goats as ingredients, though they don’t particularly sound like either one of those acts. Fared Well does rock in its own way, though–the opening title track features a nice bass groove and a hypnotic guitar riff, for instance. Read more about Fared Well here.

“Came Back Kicking”, The Pretty Flowers
From Never Felt Bitter (2026, Forge Again)

Never Felt Bitter, The Pretty Flowers’ third full-length and first for Forge Again Records, finds the southern California power pop group back in their Paul Westerberg- and Lemonheads-influenced element. Bandleader Noah Green writes that he was inspired by moving out of Los Angeles to the more spacious and quiet town of Sierra Madre, but Never Felt Bitter doesn’t abandon what The Pretty Flowers started in the city–it’s just more. The rockers really do feel like they are able to take up space and stretch out more than the band had done so previously; I count several could’ve-been-hits on Never Felt Bitter, not the least of which is the triumphant “Came Back Kicking”. Read more about Never Felt Bitter here.

“Bi-Weekly Lady”, Otoliths
From Lithos (2026)

The Chicago-originating, Oakland-based musician Tom Smith has been in a bunch of different bands; his latest project, Otoliths, debuted in 2024 with a song on a compilation, and their next release is a full-fledged debut album called Lithos. It fits right in with the jangly indie pop/college rock revival happening across the San Francisco Bay Area, which they’ve acknowledged in a somewhat roundabout way by calling themselves a “post-punk band” influenced by Emmett Kelly and Martin Newell. Lithos comes out swinging early with hits like the massive fuzz-pop hooks of “Bi-Weekly Lady”. Read more about Lithos here.

“Born in ‘62”, Railcard
From Railcard (2026, Skep Wax/Slumberland)

Railcard is a new indie pop supergroup featuring members of Heavenly, Dolly Mixture, and Would-Be-Goods, and their self-titled debut record is very much in line with those groups’ pursuit of timeless-sounding pop music. Loosely speaking, Railcard have two different modes: a triumphant, confident, often horn-aided 60s-style pop rock side, and a softer, more pensive take on indie-soft-folk-rock-pop; “Born in ‘62” (named after the year in which three of the band’s four members were indeed born) is a shining example of their direct side. Read more about Railcard here.

“Bongos”, Micah Schnabel & Vanessa Jean Speckman
From The Great Degradation (2026)

Two Cow Garage co-leader and central Ohio cowpunk poet laureate Micah Schnabel is about two years removed from The Clown Watches the Clock, a smart, catchy, and funny opus of Midwestern desperation, poverty, and general ambience that stands as one of the long-running musician’s best works. The cult alt-country lifer is back with a record called The Great Degradation, made with his partner, poet and musician Vanessa Jean Speckman, and partially spurred on by the two of them getting priced out of their Columbus apartment. Like most Schnabel-helmed records, The Great Degradation is a rollercoaster, and we’re rewarded with moments of country rock catharsis like the transcendent hackeysack/drum circle anthem “Bongos”. Read more about The Great Degradation here.

“Like a Rembrandt”, Julianna Riolino
From Echo in the Dust (2025, MoonWhistle)

A desire to more fully focus on her solo career led to Julianna Riolino leaving Daniel Romano’s Outfit shortly after Too Hot to Sleep, and she self-released a sophomore album called Echo in the Dust late last year. Though I missed Echo in the Dust on the first go-around, a “deluxe” re-release of it (featuring three additional songs) caught my ear, and I can say now that the Canadian musician has successfully carved out her own style honed from classic 60s folk rock, bits of 70s and even 80s singer-songwriter touches, and snatches of Romano-esque energetic power pop. Opening track “Like a Rembrandt” in particular is the kind of polished, exuberant, poppy country rock I’d expect from a “Daniel Romano-associate solo album”. Read more about Echo in the Dust here.

“Good Enough”, Status / Non Status feat. Julie Doiron
From Big Changes (2026, You’ve Changed)

Anishinaabe indie rocker Adam Sturgeon has been busy with his two bands Status / Non Status and OMBIIGIZI in recent years, but Big Changes, an overwhelming, emotional Canadian rock album, already stands out in his discography. Sturgeon has the gift of pulling together blunt alt-rock with the mistiness of dream pop, and Big Changes has moments of confrontation and beauty. “Good Enough”, a six-minute Canadian rock hymn featuring Julie Doiron, is a stark example of the latter–and it’s worth noting that anyone who’s heard Sturgeon’s music knows how much of an influence Doiron’s old band Eric’s Trip has been on it. Read more about Big Changes here.

“Keep It Heavy”, Dust Star
From Big Smash (2026, Hilltown/Storm Chasters LTD)

Has it really been nearly four years since Open Up That Heart, the Lame-O Records-issued debut album from California power pop duo Dust Star? Apparently so, but Dust Star LP2 is here now with Big Smash, and Cameron Wisch and Justin Jurgens still have plenty of garage-y, desert-sunburned power pop hooks between them on this one. Storm Chasers LTD, who are putting this one out on vinyl, reference names like Sheer Mag, Tenement, and Radioactivity for what to expect on Big Smash, and opening track “Keep It Heavy” marries classic power pop triumph with garage rock energy. 

“Push Me Down”, Gladie
From No Need to Be Lonely (2026, Get Better)

Augusta Koch, the former frontperson of the now-defunct 2010s indie punk band Cayetana, has kept the slightly-emo, slightly pop-punk flame alive with Gladie for three albums now. The Jeff Rosenstock-produced No Need to Be Lonely is immediate, hard-hitting, and raw because that’s what it should be–that’s how Koch writes, plays, and sings. The revved-up, huge guitars make themselves known before anything else on the album, but Koch’s frayed, cracking voice isn’t far behind–both feature heavily on “Push Me Down”, a wrecking ball of an opening track. Read more about No Need to Be Lonely here.

“Beadie”, Sluice
From Companion (2026, Mtn Laurel Recording Co.)

Listening to Companion by Sluice, I couldn’t help but thinking about the North Carolina group’s sister act, Fust, and how their 2025 album, Big Ugly, seized the little “moment” that their scene is having by polishing their music into vibrant, immediately-grabbing country rock. Companion is a different beast: it’s a more challenging, wide-ranging “folk rock” album, with plenty of accessible moments and just as many I would hardly describe as such. The wobbly, steady country rock of opening track “Beadie” is, nonetheless, a strong example of the former; it’s as warm an opening to Companion as one could hope for. Read more about Companion here.

“X-Ray”, The Notwist
From News from Planet Zombie (2026, Morr Music)

News from Planet Zombie, The Notwist’s tenth album and first in five years, was recorded by the septet in their “home base” of Munich; the resulting album subsequently has a strong foundation in solid indie rock music, even if I’d characterize it as largely “unclassifiable” beyond that. Sometimes quick and straightforward, sometimes symphonic and patient, News from Planet Zombie sounds like a veteran band confidently going wherever their ideas happen to take them. Single “X-Ray” grabs us early on with garage rock structure, post-punk rhythms, and a melancholic vocal melody from Markus Acher. Read more about News from Planet Zombie here.

“Halo”, Star Moles
From Highway to Hell (2026, Historic New Jersey)

Star Moles is Emily Moales, a prolific Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter who’s been putting out music under the name since 2017 and as of late has been averaging at least one record per year. Moales has described Star Moles’ music as “medieval-via-1960s folk-troubadour” before, and that’s not far off from the offbeat, transcendent, marching-to-the-beat-of-her-own-drum singer-songwriter I hear on Highway to Hell. It’s a well-executed and disciplined album, but the vision that Moales and producer Kevin Basko have in mind with these songs is something beautiful in a more challenging way than most “indie folk”. The ever-so-slightly “Philly alt-country”-curious closing track “Halo” is just one of the moments on Highway to Hell that’ll stick with me. Read more about Highway to Hell here.

“Little Glow”, Land Whales
From How to Make a Breakfast (2026, Buh)

Martín Schellekens recently relocated from Cuba to The Netherlands, but not before recording How to Make a Breakfast, the second Land Whales album, with regular collaborator Martín Espinosa in Havana. How to Make a Breakfast is an abrasive, maxed-out noise rock record; more accessible influences like Sonic Youth and shoegaze are present, but Schellekens and Espinosa are truly committed to making challenging pillars of noise music as well. After starting their LP with droning feedback and sludgy noise punk, “Little Glow” is a relatively reprieve via distorted but more or less straightforward indie rock in a Sonic Youth vein. Read more about How to Make a Breakfast here.

“Still Do Drugs”, Fort Not
From You on Repeat (2026, Meritorio)

Meritorio Records certainly releases a lot of good jangly indie pop music; it’s entirely possible that you might’ve missed Kungälv, Sweden project Fort Not’s 2023 sophomore album, Depressed for Success. The quintet (songwriters Robert Carlsson and Fredrik Söderström, plus Philip Gates, David Hansson, and Joakim Björnberg) shoot for a mix of classic guitar pop and 90s lo-fi indie on their third LP, You on Repeat, most impressively exemplified by the low-key but masterful highlight “Still Do Drugs”. It’s the midpoint between Sebadoh and Teenage Fanclub, polished but earnest in its titular question (as in, “Do you?”).

“Walling Up the Train”, Miscellaneous Owl
From The Wanting Chemical (2026)

This is the third year in a row that I’ve found myself writing about an album from Miscellaneous Owl (aka Madison, Wisconsin indie pop musician Huan-Hua Chye) that came out in March. This newest one, The Wanting Chemical, isn’t quite full-band power pop, but perhaps the return of Chye’s band Gentle Brontosaurus has trickled into Miscellaneous Owl’s latest album–there’s a bit more electric guitar, some of which I’d even describe as “chugging”. “Walling Up the Train” is one of these pop-rockers; in this one, you may catch a few literary references (or, as I assume is the case with the title, a reference to a literary reference). Read more about The Wanting Chemical here.

“Thirty Years”, Sixtieth Parallel
From Sixtieth Parallel (2025)

The Long Beach, California post-punk trio Sixtieth Parallel formed forty years ago; they released an EP called Into Bliss in 1988 and, for a long time, that was that. Nonetheless, two of the members (guitarist/vocalist Kevin Bartley and drummer Damien Murray) and longtime friend and occasional collaborator Wes Jackert (bass) found themselves playing in a cover band together in the late 2010s, which eventually led to a brand-new self-titled Sixtieth Parallel EP (of original material, no less). Sixtieth Parallel does sound like the work of musicians who came together via a love of acts like Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Sound, and The Psychedelic Furs, although the pensive, languid collection of songs isn’t overly concerned with trying to perfectly recreate the past. “Thirty Years” is great post-punk music–it would be in 1986, and it is in 2026.

“Domino”, Timeout Room
From Celebration Station (2026, Tough Gum)

A second Timeout Room song! What can I say, S.T. McCrary has a finger on the pulse of excellent lo-fi guitar pop. Celebration Station is as good as it is in large part due to a strong second half, featuring hits like “I Hope It Didn’t Take Long”, “All Away”, and this one, the breezy indie pop of “Domino”. The juxtaposition of McCrary’s weary, punk-influenced vocals with one of the more polished instrumentalist Timeout Room has put together yet (that’s also all McCrary, even though he does get instrumental help elsewhere on the album) is enough to make “Domino” arguably Celebration Station’s greatest success. Read more about Celebration Station here.

“Parachute”, Powerwasher
From Pressure (2026, Strange View)

Almost exactly two years after Everyone Laughs, Baltimore post-punk group Powerwasher are back with Pressure, an EP that condenses their whole deal into five songs and fifteen minutes. The band are still very much the explosive, fun, hardcore-ish punk rock group of their past work (you’ll hear bits of classic SST Records, Nomeansno, and, of course, Dischord here), but Powerwasher have taken this between-album release to get a little weird, too. “Parachute” is a hard-charging, electric punk opener, but the no wave-y horns and strange whirring sounds hint at some of Pressure’s odder undercurrents. Read more about Pressure here.

“If I Was Your Dad”, It’s All You, Cowboy
From I Can’t Eat (2026, Crutch of Memory)

A second It’s All You, Cowboy song that’s also brilliant in a headscratching way. Crutch of Memory calls I Can’t Eat “23 infectious yacht/boogie influenced pop tracks”, and Frankie Furillo himself cites Michael McDonald as an influence. Just the kind of thing I’d expect a grindcore musician to release on a Midwestern alt-country label, of course. Okay, I’ll stop harping on this point and highlight “If I Was Your Dad”, another awesome key/synth indie pop song about what it would be like if Furillo was your dad. (“You could stay up as late as you want to / Just make sure to get some rest” … “If all you want to eat is pizza / I’ll be sure to cook that”).

“Terry’s Parrot”, True Green
From Hail Disaster (2026, Spacecase)

True Green’s Hail Disaster was preceded a year ago by a two-song single; both “Consider the Priesthood” and “Falconry” ended up making the album, and the quieter, more pensive side of True Green displayed on those songs was, as it turns out, an apt preview of the band’s second album. Not everything on Hail Disaster is such a clear turn into sparse, spacey folk-rock, but there’s a subdued, adrift nature throughout the entire album spurred by both bandleader Dan Hornsby’s delivery and True Green’s musical choices. “Terry’s Parrot” is, I think, the emotional core of Hail Disaster; the story isn’t entirely complete without extra context (according to Hornsby, it’s about his uncle who died of AIDS), but we just need to understand the idea of heavy loss to feel the full impact of that song’s final verse. Read more about Hail Disaster here.

“En Utero”, Dwaal Troupe
Red Xerox (2026, Desert Island/New Now)

Before Kai Slater became a power pop critic’s darling with his excellent Sharp Pins project and even before the Chicago musician turned some heads in the noise rock trio Lifeguard, he was in a band called Dwaal Troupe. Effectively a looser, more New Zealand-influenced version of the guitar pop he’d later tidy and polish up with Sharp Pins, the Dwaal Troupe records still stand up with Slater’s later, more well-known work; “En Utero” is originally from 2020’s To Swallow a Sea, and its six-minute underwater Guided by Voices vibes are an inspired choice to represent the project on the scene-snapshot Red Xerox compilation. Read more about Red Xerox here.

“Hoping for Snow”, Miserable chillers
From Innocent Victims (2026, Baby Blue)

“I was hoping for the snow / So I wouldn’t have to go / To the hospital where your / Hands were swollen and cold,” sings Miserable chillers’ Miguel Gallego in the opening verse of Innocent Victims, the song tasked with closing a beautiful and emotional thirteen-track journey. Like the rest of the album, the musical choices of “Hoping for Snow” are sublime; the jaunty bass guitar and cool keyboards that greet Gallego’s voice in the beginning are perfect, and there’s a really nice guitar solo that’s short and sweet. “But the weather doesn’t see me at all / Doesn’t miss the weight of whatever falls,” Gallego sings in response to his initial hope. Read more about Innocent Victims here.