Pressing Concerns: Wishy, The Cadets, TV Buddha, Greg Freeman

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This Thursday Pressing Concerns covers new albums from Wishy, TV Buddha, and Greg Freeman, plus a retrospective compilation from The Cadets (all of them are out tomorrow, October 2nd). Read ’em below, and if you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Name Names, Buttchug 69, Poem Rocket, and Flower Show), check that out too.

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

Wishy – Nature’s Pill

Release date: October 2nd
Record label: Winspear
Genre: Fuzz pop, dream pop, Madchester, psychedelia, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: All the Rage

The Indianapolis group Wishy exploded onto the scene in 2024, when the intriguing indie pop of the previous year’s Paradise EP metastasized into the impressively confident fuzzed-out power pop/shoegaze quintet on their debut LP Triple Seven. Band co-leader Kevin Krauter is an Indiana indie music veteran at this point, so the ascension of Wishy didn’t come out of nowhere, but the addition of co-lead-singer/songwriter Nina Pitchkites and the backing of guitarist Dimitri Morris, bassist Mitch Collins, and drummer Conner Host resulted in a fascinating dance between Smashing Pumpkins-inspired 90s alt-rock, ethereal dream pop, and just a bit of Madchester psychedelia. Wishy hasn’t slowed down since, releasing the more subdued Planet Popstar EP in 2025 and regrouping for LP2, Nature’s Pill, this year. After seemingly getting a more laid-back detour out of their system last year, Nature’s Pill is every bit the gigantic-sounding pop album that Triple Seven was, cementing Wishy’s status as one of the best at making this currently-quite-popular kind of music.

“All the Rage” opens with Nature’s Pill with nothing less than a lost, timeless indie pop classic–this breezy, jangly fuzz-pop banger is perhaps not the most entirely representative “Wishy song” on the album, but it’s hard not to open your record with something like this if you have the option to do so. The alt-dance and psychedelic sides of Wishy are more apparent in the next few songs on the record, but that doesn’t mean the heavy dreamgaze of “Covergirl” and the spring-in-their-step alt-pop-rock of “Shift” aren’t top-tier pop songs, too (not to mention the sharp-edged groove of “Sensational”, which is just as key a part of Wishy’s sound). “Mona Lisa” and “Lovesick” are a couple more classic Wishy-style guitar pop songs, both steeped in indie rock and pop knowledge but hardly contained within any bygone era, and the quiet-loud closing ballad “Party World” is one last embrace of pop-stratosphere ambition from the Indianapolis artists. Whether or not Nature’s Pill lives up to or even outclasses Triple Seven is to be determined in my book, but the magic is still very much present in this one. (Bandcamp link)

The Cadets – Exile in Marginalia Vol 4

Release date: October 2nd
Record label: Bar/None
Genre: 90s indie rock, garage rock, post-surf rock, experimental rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Threat of Winds

The Cadets emerged out of Jacksonville, Florida in 1995, debuting and then honing a sound that combined surf rock and garage rock with the underground indie rock of the time (apparently Man or Astroman? played a role in the band’s initial formation, which makes sense). Their first album, 1999’s The Cadets, was recorded with the lineup of guitarist Chuck Smyth, bassist Pete Cochrane, and drummer Cash Carter; from 2001 to 2006, two more LPs and an EP followed in which Cochrane was replaced by Chad Matheny (aka Emperor X) on bass and Isaac Bear joined in on guitar and keyboard. Twenty years after their last album, The Cadets have reunited (with Donny Dusinberre replacing Matheny, who lives in Berlin now) and signed to Bar/None Records; their first release for their new home is a retrospective compilation featuring songs from all four of their records as well as a couple of previously-unreleased tracks.

Exile in Marginalia Vol 4 isn’t in chronological order, but it tells the story of The Cadets’ first decade and change of existence upon a closer look. The one song from their first album, “S.O.S. from Darien Coy”, is a solid surf-punk Man or Astroman? tribute, but The Cadets evolve very quickly into the surf/garage/noisy indie rock band displayed on the cuts from 2001’s Conditions on Alpha Atoll (four songs are chosen from this album, the most of any one release) and 2002’s Finding the Straight and Level. “Threat of Winds”, which marries a near-Polvo-level noise squall with a shout-along chorus, and the skittering math rock of “Atuometropolis” demonstrate the range of The Cadets at their most prolific period, and the three songs from 2006’s On the death of science as science as a major world religion also show a multifaceted group (compare the spaghetti Western vibes of “South of the Border at 8:13 a.m.” to the post-rock soundscape of “On the Symmetry of Baobab Trees”). Throw in a couple of extras (including a fuzzed-out cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “The Saddest Story Ever Told”), and you’ve got a superb crash course in a piece of Florida indie rock history. (Bandcamp link)

TV Buddha – Hallelujah Anyway

Release date: October 2nd
Record label: Ever/Never/Hallogallo
Genre: Lo-fi pop, psychedelic pop, fuzz pop, garage rock, 90s indie rock, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: You’ve Been Changed

TV Buddha are Johnson Rockstar and Eli Schmitt, a Chicago-based fuzz pop duo who started putting out music in 2023, first on Sharp Pins’ Kai Slater’s Hallogallo label, then on Georgia’s Chunklet Industries (The Olivia Tremor Control, The Apples in Stereo, Tar), and now finally what appears to be their vinyl LP debut, Hallelujah Anyway, for Ever/Never (Bullseye, National Photo Committee, Patois Counselors). TV Buddha are very much enmeshed in the Windy City’s lo-fi pop underground; Schmitt helped assemble the scene’s Red Xerox compilation earlier this year, and Hallelujah Anyway features contributions from Slater, Joe Glass, Good Flying Birds’ Kellen Baker, and Lifeguard’s Asher Case, among others. This sprawling fifteen-track, forty-six-minute LP indeed fits in with their local movement, embracing distorted, lo-fi, psychedelic guitar pop music and all that entails.

Hallelujah Anyway feels very Elephant 6–especially early Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo–in its combination of hooky 60s-influenced pop, hissing “slacker” 90s indie rock, and psychedelic, noisy experimentation. TV Buddha slam through the hits “Land of the Lord”, “You’ve Been Changed”, and “Too Much to Live” at the onset of Hallelujah Anyway, and later pop gems like “Hey Ella” and “Tears in My Eyes” sit alongside acoustic psych-folk journeys like “Alfred, Don’t Be Dull” and the bonkers seven-minute Velvets-style rave-up “More Than Yesterday, Less Than Tomorrow”. TV Buddha has been hovering around the edges of the modern guitar pop movement for a minute now, but Hallelujah Anyway announces that it’s time to pay full attention to them. (Bandcamp link)

Greg Freeman – All Set the Bone

Release date: October 2nd 
Record label: Transgressive
Genre: Country rock, alt-country, garage rock, Americana
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Cahokia

In an indie rock landscape dominated by Magnolia Electric Co.-influenced “alt-country” acts, Greg Freeman separates himself by singing like Jason Molina sang on his most beloved records. Freeman’s lightning-strike tenor voice is what stood out to me first on All Set the Bone, the Vermont singer-songwriter’s third album and best one yet. After 2025’s Burnover crashed Rosy Overdrive’s Readers Poll last year, I figured I better see what the deal with this guy was, and I enjoyed that one and 2022’s I Looked Out–but All Set the Bone is the record Freeman achieving the peak of his powers. The magic of this sixty-six-minute double LP is that it merges Freeman’s windswept Molina-style vocals with tight pop songcraft, another thing often missing from this current wave of alt-country-influenced indie rock bands (he’s the Old 97s to MJ Lenderman’s Drive-By Truckers, if you will). Laid out like that, the recent success Freeman has been experiencing is the least surprising thing in the world, but it’s still pretty impressive to come shooting out of a burgeoning scene like a bottle rocket (Burlington, Vermont, from which Lily Seabird, Dari Bay, and Robber Robber have recently emerged) and make an album that’s able to sound electric and possessed for over an hour. (Bandcamp link)

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