Welcome to the June 2026 playlist! We’ve got a bunch of songs on here that I enjoyed last month, and I think you’ll enjoy them too. Check them out below!
Emperor X and Vesuvian have three songs on this playlist. Spacemoth and Bellows have two.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify (missing two songs), Tidal (missing one). 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.
“Cassandra (The Ox Is on My Tongue)”, Vesuvian
From Vesuvian (2026, Worry Bead)
I first heard the Philadelphia group Vesuvian thanks to a song on a Gaza benefit compilation, which led me to their 2023 debut album, More Treble. At the time, they were more or less a Joey DeGrado solo project, and the name of their game was fuzzy, lo-fi alt-country. Now a solid quartet, Vesuvian appear to have completely reinvented themselves on their self-titled sophomore album: there’s still a slight twang, but Vesuvian is a mesmerizing mixture of riff-forward classic rock as filtered through abrasive underground indie/noise rock and lyrics preoccupied with mythology, history, and other esoteric subjects that sound particularly gripping coming from DeGrado’s deadpan, almost Albini-esque mouth. “Cassandra (The Ox Is on My Tongue)” is the kind of seething, puzzling, and catchy rock song of which we could always use more.
“Delta9 Self Immolation”, Bellows
From “Que Bello!” (2026, Bloody Knuckles)
Even in Rosy Overdrive’s most long-winded era I probably would’ve struggled to do justice to something like the hour-long double LP “Que Bello!”; it’s an album that has so much to it that I’m still finding new and interesting angles every time I put it on. Bellows draw us in perfectly with two of the record’s best songs right up front: “Delta9 Self Immolation”, in slot number two, is the punchy, sub-two-minute hook-infested robot-pop song that follows a more expansive opening track. Read more about “Que Bello!” here.
“Haunted Limbs”, Parts & Labor
From Set of All Sets (2026, Ernest Jenning)
Parts & Labor were a card-carrying member of the technicolor 2000s underground noise rock movement, associating with the likes of Deerhoof, Melt-Banana, Oneida, and Lightning Bolt as they made their own aggressive, squealing version of pop music (gigantic choruses and loud, distorted instrumentals). Set of All Sets, the first new Parts & Labor album in eleven years, is a seventy-nine-minute double LP that’s like nothing else they’ve ever done. Set of All Sets is more than a pop album, but when it’s particularly interesting in being one–like in highlight “Haunted Limbs”, one of the most Dan Friel songs to ever Dan Friel–it’s unmatched. I’ll have more to say about Set of All Sets soon.
“Do We Exist?”, Spacemoth
From Inward Eye (2026, Greenway)
2022’s No Past No Future was an excellent-sounding debut album, a charming and exciting mixture of Stereolab-worshipping analog synths, hard-hitting percussion, and pop music of the “space”-y variety. Still very much a pop album, Inward Eye feels like an accentuation of the layered and psychedelic sides of Spacemoth’s debut; it’s an album that feels very “tinkered with”, an area in which Spacemoth clearly thrive. Opening track “Do We Exist?” is an actually pretty streamlined take on Stereolab and krautrock via up-front pop music, with Spacemoth’s trademark rubbery hooks front and center. Read more about Inward Eye here.
“Feeling Nothing”, Emperor X
From Unified Field (2026, Bar None)
Deeply-felt personal (real or fictional) narratives have always been the glue holding Emperor X’s Chad Matheny’s writing together, and Unified Field offers up beautiful examples of the form, like probably my favorite song on the album, “Feeling Nothing”. Songs like this bolster the granular details throughout Unified Field but they also live and breathe on their own. With Unified Field literally on the front lines (it was largely recorded in Ukraine, a subject touched on more explicitly elsewhere on the album) and subsequently sounding more urgent than ever in parts, it’s absolutely needed. Read more about Unified Field here.
“Of Some Use”, Sun Kin
From Bobby’s Voice (2026)
Bobby’s Voice is a “cross-generational collaboration” between Kabir Kumar (aka Sun Kin) and Rajesh Prakash (“RP”) Kumar, Kabir’s father: the elder is the lyricist and the younger Kumar wrote the music and performs vocals. Kiran “Bobby” Kumar was RP’s brother and Kabir’s uncle, who passed away in the Kumars’ native Delhi in 2018; Bobby’s Voice is RP’s attempt to tell his brother’s story from the deceased Kumar’s perspective. The material with which Kabir has been given to work is undeniably difficult, in multiple ways, but, all things considered, the Kumars pull this off admirably; at the very least, “Of Some Use” (which soundtracks something of a rebirth) is one of Sun Kin’s best pop songs in its own right. Read more about Bobby’s Voice here.
“Falling Star”, Dark Surfers
From Falling Star (2026)
Dark Surfers’ first new music since their 2024 EP Songs from a Wednesday Night is here in the form of a two-song single called Falling Star. The A-side of this single is maybe my favorite song that I’ve heard from the Trenton, New Jersey quartet yet, finding the band (vocalist/guitarist Christopher Yaple, guitarist Ian Everett, bassist Kelli Kalikas, and drummer George Miller) taking a detour from the softer indie pop of their last record to a more college rock and power pop-indebted sound. It’s still excellently “laid-back”, don’t get me wrong, but the handclap-bait beat and the slowed-down rock and roll riff are nice touches.
“Firecracker (4th of July)”, Jr. Juggernaut
(2026, Nickel Eye)
Dave Alvin by way of X. Elliott Smith. Cymbals Eat Guitars. Jr. Juggernaut? Yes, I’m ready to induct the newest single from the Los Angeles power pop/punk power trio into the “indie/alt songs about the 4th of July” Hall of Fame already. Vocalist/guitarist Mike Williamson, drummer Wal Rashidi, and bassist Noah Green (also of The Pretty Flowers) won me over with 2024’s Another Big Explosion, a huge, loud album of Bob Mould/Sugar worship with the hooks and desperation to back it up; “Firecracker (4th of July)” would’ve been one of the best songs on that album, and it shines on its own here this holiday weekend just like a….uh…something that’s bright?
“Before the Feeling’s Gone”, National Photo Committee
From Red Hot Photo Committee (2026, Ever/Never)
The debut album from Chicago alt-country group National Photo Committee, Red Hot Photo Committee, has been a while in the making (you can hear some of these songs in their initial forms in the 2023 live tape Live Nude Photo Committee) but I’m happy to report that the first proper album from the group was worth the gestation time. Bandleader Maxwell Bottner is compelling and clever, of course, but the reason I enjoyed this album at first is because so much of it–particularly highlight “Before the Feeling’s Gone”–genuinely country-rocks. Read more about Red Hot Photo Committee here.
“Your Name”, Chorus Truly
From Is As Real As You Are (2026, Gentle Reminder/Home Late)
On Chorus Truly’s first proper EP, Is As Real As You Are, bandleader Zo Talkin and their collaborators make snappy, polished guitar pop with bits of college rock, jangle pop, and power pop in the mixture. Talkin’s confident, centered vocals separate Chorus Truly from a lot of modern college rock-influenced bands; there’s more than a bit of the classic Pretenders sound in these six songs. Everything on Is As Real As You Are is decidedly pop music, but the smooth-sailing jangly indie pop of opening track “Your Name” is the “hit” if I’ve ever heard one. Read more about Is As Real As You Are here.
“Blind Horse”, NAYAN
From In the Dirt (2026, Red Stapler)
Two years after their debut album, Rock N Roll Ruined My Life, Washington, D.C.’s NAYAN have pared down to a quartet and have returned with a six-song EP called In the Dirt, recorded by J. Robbins at his Magpie Cage Recording Studio. In the Dirt is nothing less than an extremely vigorous, open-hearted rock and roll record bearing the mark of longtime musicians doing it purely for the love of the genre. Opening track “Blind Horse” is a brilliant, surging anthem, a foot-on-gas beginning to an impressively varied, compact package. Read more about In the Dirt here.
“Hecate in the Highlands”, Vesuvian
From Vesuvian (2026, Worry Bead)
Our second Vesuvian song on this playlist (out of three) finds our Philadelphia punk rock heroes developing and nailing a bunch of touchpoints to their sound: a big old Thin Lizzy guitar riff, Greek mythology deployment front and center, grousing talk-singing (or muttering) verses, and a singalong chorus. It could be from a musical that absolutely tanks but gets a cult following in the years afterwards. I just don’t know what to tell you if you don’t like this one.
“Bridget Because”, Hypnolovewheel
From Parallel Universe (2026, Octopeace)
Hypnolovewheel were one of the great lost college rock bands of the late 1980s and early 90s; they formed in New York in 1986 and released five LPs before dissolving in 1993. Their music was pop with a healthy amount of distortion, psychedelia, and post-punk attitude–it would’ve fit in well with what was going on in New Zealand at the time, and it did fit in well with their sonic and geographical neighbors in Yo La Tengo. The first fifteen songs on the retrospective compilation Parallel Universe are from the band’s five studio albums, presented in no particular order–well, no particular chronological order, I mean, as the front end of Parallel Universe is stacked with could’ve-been-hits like “Bridget Because”. Read more about Parallel Universe here.
“Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds”, the Mountain Goats
From Days (2026, Cadmean Dawn)
“Dead Moons”, Wade Easy
From Sea of Night (2026)
Everything on the eleven-song, thirty-eight minute Sea of Night was recorded by Wade Easy himself, and the entirety of the album is devoted to building a singular, striking ambience. Easy’s signature sound is a hushed, molasses-slow, Appalachian-shaded, “atmospheric” and “gothic” one. It’s electric, but I don’t know if I’d call it “rock” music. If early Songs: Ohia is “folk music” than I suppose that Sea of Night is too, but there’s a hazy, psychedelic side to Wade Easy that was never really the style of Jason Molina. It’s hard to call out specific songs from Sea of Night, but “Dead Moons” captures the entire thing as well as anything else on it. Read more about Sea of Night here.
“Make Me Whole”, Lovewell
From Everything You Ever Wanted (2026, Another Year/Financial)
Everything You Wanted finds Lovewell’s founding duo of Mark Palladino and Joe Bradshaw welcoming new members Bobby Pettigrew and Jake Watkins into the band. Rather than shaking up their sound, these new recruits seem to have fallen right into lockstep with the sublime, hook-driven emo-dream-gaze sound that Palladino and Bradshaw did so well on 2022’s Around the Flowers. Few bands are doing the “delicate, crystal-clear vocal melodies mixed with fuzzed-out, gas-pedal-driven punk/alt-rock instrumentals” thing better than Lovewell right now; guitar pop anthems like “Make Me Whole” feel second-nature for them. Read more about Everything You Ever Wanted here.
“Pharmacies”, The Laughing Chimes
From Behind Your Blue Fields (2026, Slumberland)
Early last year, Athens, Ohio jangle pop group The Laughing Chimes debuted a darker, more post-punk/goth-indebted sound with Whispers in the Speech Machine. The journey from 2022’s Zoo Avenue EP to that endpoint was captured in an album’s worth of outtakes and scrapped sessions, which the band decided to release this year as Behind Your Blue Fields. As someone who first got into the Chimes as a Guided by Voices-inspired lo-fi guitar pop group, Behind Your Blue Fields is full of gems, nuggets, and whatnot; the seventy-second jangle-snippet “Pharmacies” just might be the best of them all (plus, The Laughing Chimes say their band name in the lyrics, so that’s cool).
“Coin”, Comfy
From Steel Chimp (2026)
Always nice to hear new music from Rochester, New York power pop/pop punk quartet Comfy (who share members with another good and likeminded group in Big Nobody). The four-song Steel Chimp EP is the group’s first new music since late 2024’s Goated & Foreboded LP, and it’s a sharp ten-minute collection of power pop, alt-rock, pop punk, and post-grunge hooks. My favorite track on Steel Chimp is “Coin”, which opens with wobbly, uncertain power chords and wobbly, uncertain vocals and ends on a fire-and-brimstone, Raytheon-and-Lockheed-namechecking note.
“Cold”, Yea-Ming and the Rumours
From Residue (2026, Dandy Boy)
I’ve good news: the 60s pop, folk rock, and gentle-side-of Yo La Tengo conjured up by I Can’t Have It All once again factor heavily into Residue, Yea-Ming and the Rumours’ fourth album. The Rumours are heavily linked to the San Francisco Bay Area’s indie pop scene (their label, Dandy Boy, is at the center of it, and most of their members are pulling double duty, at least), but their take on the genre has always been a different, “proto-” version compared to that of their janglier/twee-er peers. There’s a freedom to this that The Rumours embrace in Residue; the stop-and-go power pop of “Cold” is one of my favorites, but it’s just one facet of what they do here. Read more about Residue here.
“Somebody Wants to Send You a Message”, Styrofoam Winos
From Any River (2026, Dear Life)
The exploits of the Nashville-based supergroup Styrofoam Winos and its members are numerous, spilling over into neighboring scenes in Louisville and Asheville and sharing members with both Ryan Davis and MJ Lenderman’s bands. Still, there’s something special about when Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel get together, swapping instruments, lead vocals, and song ideas to the tune of breezy but adventurous folk rock. Aside from a truly incredible bass clarinet solo from Equipment Pointed Ankh’s Jim Marlowe on “Somebody Wants to Send You a Message”, Any River is entirely the work of the three of them, and it sounds like a band still very in-tune with one another. Read more about Any River here.
“Ostrich Toss”, Emperor X
From Unified Field (2026, Bar None)
“Ostrich Toss” might be the most interesting thing on Unified Field. It’s a bouncy one, a Looney Tunes-esque see-saw between the narrator and their foil before the titular flightless bird delivers a speech condemning, I guess, all of humanity, at the end of the song. Perhaps the characters in the song have State-level analogues, or perhaps the ultimate driver of “Ostrich Toss” is a different kind of subjugation or industrial violence. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking about it and turning it over in my head–Unified Field, as with the rest of Emperor X’s best work, is expertly designed to provoke in such a way. Read more about Unified Field here.
“Only a Matter of Time”, Eliksa
From From Falmer Court (2026, Crafting Room)
Eliksa’s debut EP, From Falmer Court, was recorded live at something called The Great Thatch Barn in the record’s titular city over an “intensive five-hour window” and initially released earlier this year as a video before the audio was put out by Crafting Room. Crafting Room calls Eliksa a “slacker-folk” act, but I’m not sure many slackers make high-concept, well-produced concert film debut releases in historic British barns. There’s a compelling contradiction between the polish of the video and the music, which is ultimately pretty simple and stripped down folk-pop. In terms of immediately-hitting guitar pop, “Only a Matter of Time” is the biggest success, but not the only one. Read more about From Falmer Court here.
“Here We Go Again”, Shrubs
From Rising (2026, FABCOM)
From 1994 to 2018, Shrubs were a New Jersey rock trio making what we’d sometimes call “college rock”, a mixture of power pop, garage rock, psychedelia, folk rock, and roots rock that recalls bands like Refrigerator, several Flying Nun Records acts, and frequent associate The Feelies. Rising is a posthumous Shrubs CD collection featuring the two songs that Shrubs had written for their next album before guitarist/vocalist Jay LoRubbio’s death and augmented by two WFMU radio sessions the band recorded in 2008 and 2011. My selection is from the WFMU sessions, as there’s something very compelling about hearing a band rocking stripped-down versions of their own original pop songs like “Here We Go Again”. Read more about Rising here.
“First Greens”, Sea Moss
From Big Tube Scene (2026, Zum Audio)
Sea Moss and Miscomings are two noise punk bands from the Pacific Northwest; after the two bands shared a bill in Portland, they hit it off and the split album Big Tube Scene took form. Each band gets a side on this split album, and each half ends with a collaborative track featuring all six musicians playing together. The A-Side is Sea Moss doing what Sea Moss does best, absolutely pummeling us with electronic-driven noise punk for five torrential tracks; opening track “First Greens” tells you more or less everything you need to know. Read more about Big Tube Scene here.
“Cruisin’”, Big Nothing
From Big Nothing (2026, Dead Broke)
Philadelphia’s Big Nothing were sneakily one of the better guitar pop bands of the turn-of-the-last-decade, mining later-Replacements, The Lemonheads, and Buffalo Tom styles for diamond-in-the-rough pop songs on strong albums like 2022’s Dog Hours. They’ve jumped from Lame-O to Dead Broke Rekerds for their latest album and first in four years, a self-titled one that ends up being a low-key collection of mid-tempo guitar pop I’ll likely appreciate more as time passes. “Cruisin” is definitely the hit to my ears, a mid-tempo, slightly jangly alt-rock-radio could’ve-been-hit that hits all the right marks.
“Who’s Gonna Love You Now?”, The Tubs
From Hard Life (2026, Merge)
Everyone loves The Tubs, the most visible band to emerge from the scrum of post-Joanna Gruesome projects from some combination of Owen Willams, Lan McArdle, Max Warren, George Nicholls, and Matthew Green. The Williams-led Tubs put out excellent albums of Welsh jangle pop on Trouble in Mind in 2023 and 2025, and with that label’s unfortunate shuttering, they’ve leapt to Merge for this year’s upcoming Hard Life. The first taste of Tubs LP3 is a breezy one in “Who’s Gonna Love You Now?”, a typically-desperate-sounding power pop jangler that feels shorter than its three-minute runtime.
“Meetcha at Minnies (The Captain’s Song)”, Onesie
From Way Thousand Bump to the Sky (2026, Sell the Heart)
I first heard Brooklyn quartet Onesie back in 2023, when the excellent Liminal Hiss–an electric mixture of power pop, jangle pop, psychedelia, and prog-pop–became one of my favorite albums of that year. On their most recent album, Way Thousand Bump to the Sky, Onesie have “stripped down” to the trio of bandleader/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Ben Haberland, guitarist Rob Lanterman, and drummer Jason Bauers, but this album (recorded by Guided by Voices producer Travis Harrison) doesn’t abandon the ambition and maximalist pop rock of their last LP. The choppy beginning of “Meetcha at Minnies (The Captain’s Song)” doesn’t prepare us for everywhere this song ends up going, for instance.
“Paper Cup”, Spacemoth
From Inward Eye (2026, Greenway)
Maryam Qudus spent several years working as a producer and engineer at Oakland’s Tiny Telephone Recording, producing records from Forest Bees and Sour Widows, among others. When it came time for her own project Spacemoth to debut, Qudus was more than ready. Qudus has spent a lot of time since her 2022 debut No Past No Future on tour–both with Spacemoth and as the keyboardist for garage-pop act La Luz–and it was on the road that the second Spacemoth album, Inward Eye, started to take shape. While Spacemoth’s studio-experimentation frequently yields vibrant, kaleidoscopic pop music, Qudus is just at home in the grainy, distorted sheen that covers up the just-as-strong pop song “Paper Cup”. Read more about Inward Eye here.
“Elixir”, Supermilk
From Grief Hospital (2026, Specialist Subject)
Always nice to have more new music from Supermilk, one of the bright lights in London’s indie pop/rock underground. The four-song Grief Hospital EP follows the 2024 album High Precision Ghosts and last year’s live collection Lazy Teenage Boasts, and if you liked either of those then I have some good news for you about what you’ll hear on this one. Supermilk’s unique sound remains intact on Grief Hospital, one part Superchunk/Bob Mould revival like their peers in Good Grief but with a more British indie pop and even a bit of XTC/post-punk undercurrent to highlights like “Elixir”.
“Are You Looking for Something?”, The Hobknobs
From Helmets Off (2026, 12XU/Cargo)
The Hobknobs are the new duo made up of a couple of Dutch indie veterans in Lewsberg vocalist/guitarist/violinist Arie van Vliet and The Klittens’ Yaël Dekker. Even compared to the relatively stripped-down indie rock of Lewsberg and the streamlined post-punk/indie pop of The Klittens, Helmets Off is a quiet affair. Those who appreciate “minimalism” in indie pop will find a lot to love in Helmets Off, in which van Vliet and Dekker sing together twee-ly over guitars, percussion, and keys all used sparingly. On “Are You Looking for Something?”, my favorite song on Helmets Off, The Hobknobs sound like a C86 band confidently making their way through a Peel Session. Read more about Helmets Off here.
“Diana’s Jacket (As Told by Danny DaChamp)”, Fishboy
From Bravest Neighbor (2026, XLFNT)
I’ve been (ahem) waiting for a new Fishboy album ever since the high-concept twee-power-pop rock-opera Waitsgiving became one of my favorite albums of 2021. The recently-announced Bravest Neighbor finds the Denton, Texas singer-songwriter Eric Michener and his project prepping a suite of songs just as ambitious as Waitsgiving was, if not more so (I hope to get into it more as the album gets closer). For now, we’re left to turn over “Diana’s Jacket (As Told by Danny DaChamp)”, a hard-charging (for Fishboy, at least) twee-power-pop song that does indeed revolve around the titular jacket (it’s somewhere between The Weakerthans and The Apples in Stereo, I think).
“Chrysanthemum Flowers”, Bellows
From “Que Bello!” (2026, Bloody Knuckles)
Arriving four years after Next of Kin, Bellows’ newest record once again lands on the maximalist side of indie pop, but the hour-long double LP “Que Bello!” puts the project’s intricacies on an even larger canvas. The core of Bellows (Oliver Kalb, Jack Greenleaf, Ian Cory and Frank Meadows) recorded the bulk of “Que Bello!” in 2023 and 2024, with Kalb, Greenleaf, and vocalist Emily Reo putting the finishing touches on it last year; the band has released the eighteen-song album in five “chunks” over the past two months, perhaps an acknowledgement that it is indeed a lot to take in. “Chrysanthemum Flowers” is the jaw-dropping, kaleidoscopic “tapestry” piece as the opener, the first indication that “a lot” doesn’t have to be “difficult”. Read more about “Que Bello!” here.
“Do You Feel It Too?”, …or Does It Explode?
From Realities Disguised as Symbols (2026, Middle-Man)
Last year’s Tales to Needed Outcomes found Madison’s …or Does It Explode? exploring post-rock, slowcore, and even orchestral music, which, as it turns out, was something of an outlier for the quintet. Their “normal” sound is much more indebted to the post-hardcore side of 1990s emo, and it’s to this genre they return on their fourth album, the Electrical Audio-recorded Realities Disguised as Symbols. The endlessly floating ambience of the last LP has been replaced by something noisier and grittier, and fans of vintage Touch & Go noisy post-rock will enjoy the one-two opening punch of “Instincts” and “Do You Feel It Too?”. Read more about Realities Disguised as Symbols here.
“Fortunate Death”, Vesuvian
From Vesuvian (2026, Worry Bead)
I absolutely love that Vesuvian swiped the Third Eye Blind “Never Let You Go” riff for this song. And why not? It’s not like they were doing anything good with it. “Fortunate Death” is subsequently a little less explosive than the other two Vesuvian songs on this playlist, but it does alright for itself. At the very least, it’s nice to imagine an alternate universe where I get to hear lyrics like “Cold stone beneath my back / Your knife held up aloft / Let my blood spill / To seed the summer crops” on the Modern Rock radio.
“Line Go Up Line Go Down”, Emperor X
From Unified Field (2026, Bar None)
“Line Go Up Line Go Down” is the shining example of big-picture, global Emperor X on Unified Field. Everything is perfect on that one, an extremely fervent rejection of the invisible hand with a complex but understandable call to action. When I talk about the “uniqueness” of Emperor X, I’m absolutely thinking of the bridge to “Line Go Up Line Go Down”, the clearest journey into Chad Matheny’s personal politics on the record. No matter where one falls on the political spectrum, one could certainly find something objectionable in Matheny’s linking together of the Soviet Union, United Nations, and European Union as he weighs the failures and ideals of all three–the brilliance and righteousness of “Line Go Up Line Go Down” is such that any quibbles with framing I might have start to look like the luxurious window-dressing they ultimately are. Read more about Unified Field here.
“Sugar in the Shoe”, The Cowboys
From Captain Easy’s Downfall (2026, Feel It)
The Bloomington, Indiana-originating band The Cowboys may be spread out between Indiana, Ohio, and Mexico City these days, but that didn’t stop the Feel It Records flagship garage rock/power pop legends from assembling the rollicking nineteen-song Captain Easy’s Downfall. Rock ‘n’ roll/power pop missiles like “Sugar in the Shoe” are Stiff Records throwbacks that The Cowboys could probably bash out in their sleep, but the time and distance haven’t dampened the energy they inject into them. Read more about Captain Easy’s Downfall here.
“Velvet Rabbit Portal”, Some Velvet Sidewalk
From Critters Encore (2026, K/Perennial)
Initially active from 1987 to 1997, Eugene, Oregon’s Some Velvet Sidewalk were a K Records band who seemed to hew towards the noisier/punk-er side of that label. Their first album in over twenty-five years, Critters Encore, is right out of their original era in the best way: it sounds like 1980s underground punk and post-punk filtered through a heavy lo-fi Pacific Northwestern lens. It’s the same pressure cooker that made “grunge”, though Critters Encore is a specific kind of Cascadian noise rock that feels like a later part of a caveman evolution drawing also featuring the Wipers, Dead Moon, Mudhoney, and the U-Men. The world needs weird rock and roll records that kind of don’t make sense, and Some Velvet Sidewalk have, after all these years, risen to the occasion. Read more about Critters Encore here.
Rosy Overdrive 