It’s been a surprisingly busy week in mid-to-late December here on Rosy Overdrive, and we’re capping it off with a new Pressing Concerns featuring a compilation from Wishes on a Plane, a new album from Endless Mike and the Beagle Club, and new EPs from Tongue Scraper and Rocket Bureau. Rosy Overdrive’s Top 25 EPs of 2025 went up earlier this week, and we also had a Monday Pressing Concerns (featuring The Kyle Sowashes, Daddy Fell Through, Tercel, and Silk Daisys), so check those 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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!
Wishes on a Plane – Lost Songs
Release date: November 7th Record label: Time As a Color Genre: Emo, 90s indie rock, acoustic Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: What’s Left of What Is…
Daniel Becker is a musician from Munich, Germany, and he currently makes music under the name Amid the Old Wounds (recently seen releasing a split record with Michigan emo act Mt. Oriander last year). Before that, however, Becker led a band called Wishes on a Plane from 2002 to 2009; it’s been quite a while since Wishes on a Plane have been an active band, but Becker has kept the spotlight on them thanks to a few posthumous releases on his own label, Time As a Color. Lost Songs follows a 2021 LP called Unreleased; while the earlier archival Wishes on a Plane release was centered around recordings made by the band’s initial (pre-2006) lineup, Lost Songs seems to be more of a grab bag. The seven tracks are made up of three songs that initially appeared on “local compilations that are mostly unknown”, an alternate recording of a song from their self-titled EP, and three acoustic demos.
The context doesn’t mean all that much to me, because Lost Songs is the first Wishes on a Plane record I’ve ever heard, but it’s a very good, chilly emo album in its own right. All three of the compilation songs deserved rescuing from obscurity–the soaring “Untitled” and the punchy, punk-influenced “Tide” show two intriguing sides to Wishes on a Plane, and “What’s Left of What Is…” tries its hardest to fuse the two. The torch-bearing mid-tempo emo power ballad of “Anywhere (Goldfish Version)” closes out the electric part of Lost Songs with one last bang, and we’re left to sit with the three acoustic emo-folk songs that close the LP out. These recordings weren’t made with the thought they’d be on an album together, and it’s kind of an odd experience, but my taste in “emo music” is fairly odd anyway, so I don’t think it’s all that strange I enjoy Lost Songs as much as I do. (Bandcamp link)
Endless Mike and the Beagle Club – The Forest Is the Trees
Release date: October 17th Record label: Sidewalk Chalk Genre: Alt-country, country punk, country rock, Americana, roots rock, folk rock, you get the point Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Days of the Atom Bomb
Endless Mike and the Beagle Club are new to me, but I feel like I immediately understood the Johnstown, Pennsylvania act’s whole deal after just one listen to their latest album, The Forest Is the Trees. A Rust Belt troubadour (Endless Mike, aka Mike Miller) making alt-country, cowpunk, folk rock, “Americana”, “heartland rock” (whatever you want to call it), touring the underground circuit for two decades, shaken but ultimately undeterred by their homeland’s rightward political lurch–Two Cow Garage and Micah Schnabel come to mind, as well as everyone from Mike Adams at His Honest Weight (a couple of states over) to Fishboy (down in Texas). The Forest Is the Trees boldly starts with its best song, a bottle rocket cowpunk/country punk rocker called “Days of the Atomic Bomb” that burns brighter than anything on the LP (with the possible exception of the fiddle-aided maximalist mid-record highlight “Flight Behavior”). It’d be easy enough to stop there, but then you’d miss Endless Mike and the Beagle Club’s continued attempts to leave it all out there time and time again. “The Pearly Gates of Grandview Cemetery”, “Flight Behavior”, and “Mr. Miller’s Dream” are all centerpiece-worthy in their own ways; every one of these eleven tracks swings for the fences, and if there are a couple of lines here and there that don’t land quite as strongly, it’s easy to forgive when The Forest Is the Trees does so much right. (Bandcamp link)
Tongue Scraper – Tongue Scraper
Release date: December 5th Record label: Self-released Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, noise punk, metal Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Burning Up
What’s that? A new noise rock-infused punk band from the DMV? And they recorded their debut EP at J. Robbins’ recording studio? Alright, let’s hear this Tongue Scraper. This five-song EP was indeed produced by Matt Redenbo (Two Inch Astronaut, War on Women, Jawbox) at Magpie Cage, and we’re introduced to this Baltimore quartet with a collection of heavy, seething post-hardcore riffs and fury. Vocalist Zo Ubaldo brings to the table a time-honored tradition of lyrics about “the alienation of hating a job”, and the rest of Tongue Scraper–guitarist Graham Twibell, bassist Jarrod Brennet (also of Big Cry Country), and drummer Andrew Barnes–back them up with music that really does sound like Sisyphus rolling a big old bowling ball-shaped skull up a hill (shout-out to Glenn Kelly for that very evocative cover art). In both the disgust of “One or None” and the resignation of “Scam Humanity”, Tongue Scraper confront head-on the fact that everything is kind of, like, bullshit, you know? Of course, a band like this is going to be good for an old-fashioned hardcore punk callout song, and that’s what we get with “Virtue Signals”, but this is also a band that can pull off real-deal heaviness–see “Burning Up”. In that one, Ubaldo proclaims “Individualism is actually Hell, and we’re burning up”; they’ve done a very good diagnostic job, but that’s small comfort when it’s just you and the boulder. (Bandcamp link)
Rocket Bureau – Party Armz
Release date: October 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Take It to the Night
Rocket Bureau is a band from Madison, Wisconsin, although the recorded version of Rocket Bureau is the one-man project of one Kyle Urban. The latest Rocket Bureau record is a five-song EP recorded entirely on an “analog tape machine from the early 1970s” called Party Armz. Urban has been at this with Rocket Bureau for over a decade now, and Party Armz is a seasoned, expertly-wielded collection of classic power pop touched with bits of early punk rock, garage rock, and straight-up rock and roll. I know for a fact that it’s pretty dreary in Wisconsin at the time I’m writing this, but Party Armz is a portal straight to the heat of summer; EP bookends “Hotlips” and “Take It to the Night” are surging, windows-down retro power pop that hits the same highs of bands like Romero and Sheer Mag (quite impressive for a solo project!). The middle of Party Armz has plenty to recommend as well, as there’s no filler between the Tony Molina-esque wall-of-guitars/classic pop melding of the title track, the breezy “Louise”, and the two-minute jolt of “I Don’t Wanna Go Back Home”. Some of the best power pop has come out of basements deep in the American Midwest, and it’s heartening to hear the lineage continue like this. (Bandcamp link)
EPs! My 25 favorites from this year, to be precise! A week after Rosy Overdrive wrapped its Top 100 Albums of 2025, the blog is sharing this smaller, (on average) more obscure, and all-around fun list. There’s a bunch of records in here that deserved way more attention this year than they ended up getting, and now’s the perfect time to start fixing that.
Here are links to the EPs on this list that are on streaming services: Spotify, Tidal. Look for a Best Compilations/Reissues of 2025 list and a couple more Pressing Concerns before the year’s out. To read about much more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. Thank you for reading, and, last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!
25. The Cindys – The Cindys
Release date: November 7th Record label: Ruination/Breakfast Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital
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 record that’s nonetheless stocked with fully-fleshed-out ideas and confident pop performances. The majority of The Cindys 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”. (Read more)
24. Marni – fml era
Release date: October 10th Record label: Self-released Genre: Fuzz rock, shoegaze, alt-rock, slowcore, 90s indie rock Formats: Digital
When I wrote about the band Marni briefly in 2023, they were the solo project of Palm Springs vocalist/guitarist Nicolas Lara, but they’re now a full Los Angeles-based band, settling in nicely with West Coast groups playing some mixture of slowcore, shoegaze, and fuzz-punk (they opened for Idaho last year, if that helps). Marni’s latest EP, fml era, is the best that they’ve sounded yet, even if (perhaps because) they’re still kind of hard to get a handle on: expect heavy alt-rock rippers and slowcore/alt-country meanderers both in these five songs. (Read more)
23. Left Tracks – LT2
Release date: September 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Art pop, indie pop, psychedelic pop, synthpop Formats: Digital
Kabir Kumar (Sun Kin) and Phil Di Leo (DI LEO, Seemway) co-founded Left Tracks as a way to stay musically connected after the latter’s departure to SoCal from Oakland; the project’s second release, the appropriately-titled LT2, contains plenty of the vibrant, colorful indie pop that I’ve enjoyed via Sun Kin. LT2 is both more streamlined and weirder than Kumar’s solo project, somehow–I’m not sure how else to describe a record that quickly darts between minimal spoken word experimentation, bright, sunny pop-rock, and deconstructed dream folk (among other diversions). (Read more)
22. Lozenge – EP1
Release date: April 25th Record label: Candlepin Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, shoegaze, fuzz pop Formats: Cassette, digital
After putting out a demo cassette on Pleasure Tapes last year, Los Angeles shoegaze group Lozenge linked up with blog favorite Candlepin Records to release their debut EP. 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. Walls of amplifiers and distorted, tinny guitars course through EP1’s veins, but it’s not too hard to make out shimmery, jangly guitar pop music shining amidst the noise.
21. Cast of Thousands – Useful People
Release date: January 9th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, garage rock, college rock Formats: Cassette, digital
Hot on the heels of their 2024 debut album, Third House, Austin power pop insurgents Cast of Thousands kicked off 2025 with a rock-solid four-song EP called Useful People back in January. The chugging alt-rock/power pop/“heartland” rock anthem “Heads or Tails” (featuring, in a surprising twist, heavy AutoTune on bandleader Max Vandever’s vocals) is Cast of Thousands’ best song yet, but Useful People makes it onto this list thanks to a solid supporting cast too, from the breezy jangly college rock of the title track to the mid-tempo, measured “Serpo”.
20. Patches – A Three Legged Chair
Release date: February 3rd Record label: Self-released Genre: Dream pop, post-punk, jangle pop, college rock Formats: Digital
The bad news is that the remote-collaborating college rock/post-punk/jangle pop trio Patches broke up this year, but the good news is that Evan Seurkamp, Aaron Griffin, and Robin KC left us with one final release, a five-song EP of material that was “scrapped, passed over, or shared elsewhere”. There’s a Guided by Voices cover from a compilation I wrote about in 2023, an alternate version of a track from their 2022 debut album Tales We Heard from the Fields, and three previously-unheard tracks, two of which feature Robin’s sister (credited as “KRMT”) on lead vocals. It wasn’t really meant to, but A Three Legged Chair does hold its own against a couple of underrated but brilliant albums. (Read more)
19. Midwestern Medicine – Ripped Headline
Release date: February 21st Record label: Website Genre: Garage rock, garage punk, 90s indie rock, post-punk Formats: Digital
New England indie rock fixture Brock Ginther has honed a distinct style over the years (in his current band Midwestern Medicine as well as older bands like Lemon Pitch and King Pedestrian), marked by an ability to veer between polished, humble-sounding poppy 90s indie rock evoking Jason Lytle, Mark Linkous, and Stephen Malkmus to off-the-wall careening rockabilly rave-ups at the drop of a pin. The five-song Ripped Headlines EP finds Ginther and the rest of Midwestern Medicine hewing toward the more slapdash side of the spectrum–it’s a noisy, garage-y indie rock EP, but one that unmistakably bears the mark of its frontperson. (Read more)
18. Disaster Kid – Rare Bird
Release date: March 21st Record label: Semicircle Genre: Alt-country, power pop, folk rock Formats: Digital
Let it not be said that Seamus Kreitzer doesn’t put himself out there as a writer. Rare Bird is clearly a record in which its frontperson put a lot of thought into the lyrics and isn’t afraid to show it–any EP prominently featuring the line “Don’t apologize so much for nurturing an unknown beauty,” has to fall into this category to some degree. On the whole, Disaster Kid fits in well with Chicago’s modern folk rock/alt-country scene, but there’s a delicate side to Kreitzer’s writing that gives the EP a unique spin (and, on the flipside, Rare Bird as a whole is as good as it is because of the strong reading the rest of the band give to Kreitzer’s words and melodies). (Read more)
17. Sting Pain Index – The Revolution Somewhere Else
Release date: September 29th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, post-hardcore, garage punk, new wave, art rock Formats: Digital
Sting Pain Index are a self-proclaimed “punk rock supergroup” with connections to Texas, Tennessee, and Maryland, and I suppose that their newest EP, The Revolution Somewhere Else, is punk rock–sometimes of a noisy, abrasive, and “post-” variety, and sometimes not like that at all. The first half of The Revolution Somewhere Else gives us garage-y noise punk and prowling post-punk, but things get pretty weird on Side B with a seven-minute 80s-style power ballad called “I Could Have Been Queen” and a shockingly faithful cover of Tears for Fears’ “Break It Down Again”. It all makes sense if you try to see it from Sting Pain Index’s perspective. (Read more)
16. Blue Zero – Confusion
Release date: October 29th Record label: Self-released Genre: Fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, shoegaze, noise pop, post-punk Formats: Cassette, digital
If there’s one thing about Oakland musician Chris Natividad I know, it’s that he loves playing in bands (see Marbled Eye, Public Interest, Aluminum, and Tanukichan)–so it’s not so surprising that his onetime solo project Blue Zero are a solid quartet on their newest record, Confusion. Blue Zero’s self-released cassette EP is a big step forward for the group, 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. It’s a welcome check-in from a band on an upward trajectory. (Read more)
15. The Pennys – The Pennys
Release date: May 1st Record label: Mt.St.Mtn. Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
The Bay Area indie pop team-up that we didn’t know we needed, The Pennys are co-led by Michael Ramos (who makes slow-moving, unmoored, dreamy indie pop as Tony Jay) and Ray Seraphin (who embraces fuller and more grounded power pop/college rock as R.E. Seraphin). Busier than Tony Jay but more subdued than R.E. Seraphin, The Pennys hit the jangle pop sweet spot for six songs and sixteen minutes on their self-titled debut. Seraphin and Ramos roam in tandem from electric power pop to Velvets-y dream pop across The Pennys, spotlighting both the former’s lost-in-time power pop and the latter’s “prehistorical pop music slowed down and reverb-ed all up”. (Read more)
14. Time Thief – Time Thief
Release date: September 12th Record label: Musical Fanzine/Lost Sound Tapes Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, indie pop, 90s indie rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Time Thief are a new band from Providence, Rhode Island made up of two familiar faces in Zoë Wyner (Halfsour, Zowy) and James Walsh (Dump Him, Musical Fanzine Records). The first Time Thief release is a self-titled 10” record and cassette tape that introduces an even-keeled duo with a clear, wide-ranging love of lo-fi indie rock and pop music. Time Thief has a nice, full-band sound, but the instrumentals are hardly overly polished or showy. Over the course of fourteen minutes, Time Thief masters melancholic Pacific Northwestern indie rock, jangly indie pop, 60s-ish folk-rock, and choppy, bass-led, post-punk-influenced material. (Read more)
13. Bliss? – Keep Your Joy to Yourself
Release date: November 21st Record label: Psychic Spice Genre: Garage rock, power pop, college rock, punk rock Formats: Cassette, digital
Bliss?’s Pass Yr Pain Along was one of my favorite albums of this year: a punk band making a record of Elvis Costello-inspired college rock, power pop, and rough-around-the-edges mod-revival. 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 debut album, but they “weren’t ready to be recorded” until now. Bliss? dropped down from trio to duo in between the two records, but Keep Your Joy to Yourself isn’t any kind of major departure from what they’ve done so well so far –it certainly does sound like three songs that could’ve been on Pass Yr Pain Along. (Read more)
12. Perennial – Perennial ‘65
Release date: April 4th Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore, experimental Formats: Digital
Perennial ‘65 (named as a nod to the mid-career Beatles ‘65 compilation) gives the New England “modernist punk” trio a chance to try some things that they perhaps didn’t have time for in last year’s tight, twenty-one minute Art Historywhile still sounding very much like the Perennial we’ve all come to know and love. We get one brand-new original Perennial rock and roll song (the title track), a ferocious garage rock cover of The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night”, two remixes from Cody Votolato and Chris Walla, and a track that continues the band’s exploration into experimental noise and electronic terrain (“C is for Cubism”). (Read more)
11. The Croaks – Menagerie
Release date: July 11th Record label: Cretin Genre: Folk rock, prog-folk, traditional folk Formats: CD, digital
The Croaks are a prog-folk “wench rock” band from Boston who got on my radar with 2023’s Croakus Pocus; their follow-up release, Menagerie, is a bit shorter, but there’s still plenty of that increasingly-recognizable “Croaks sound” in these four songs and twelve minutes. Now a solid quartet, Anna Reidister, Haley Wood, Alli Fuchs, and Denver Nuckolls come armed with mandolins and violins through a brief whirlwind of frequently darkly humorous folk rock. All of Menagrie is informed by traditional folk music, but between the electric moments on “The Ballad of Tenderblood” and “Poppy” and an overall streamlined sound, The Croaks remain far removed from being “reenactors”.
10. Living Dream – Absolute Devotion
Release date: April 18th Record label: Inscrutable Genre: Psychedelic pop, jangle pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
Living Dream are keeping the dream of hazy, dreamy guitar pop alive in none other than Indianapolis, Indiana. While their peers in Good Flying Birds got a bit of attention this year, Living Dream seems determined to continue to fly under the radar with their psychedelic, murky take on jangle pop, as heard on the very good Absolute Devotion EP. It’s perhaps a little more accessible than their 2023 self-titled debut album–regardless, no amount of fog and disorientation can stop “Mist (Surrounds Me)” and “Lift a Feather” from being excellent jangle pop tunes.
9. Whitney’s Playland – Long Rehearsal
Release date: June 20th Record label: Meritorio/Dandy Boy Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psych pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
One of my favorite debuts of 2023 was Sunset Sea Breezeby Whitney’s Playland, which delivered several records’ worth of lo-fi power pop hooks. Their first new music since then, Long Rehearsal, is only three songs in about ten minutes, but this still gives the San Francisco quartet plenty of time to revisit and reaffirm their ability to hit all the high points they did on their last album: jangly, bubblegum-flavored guitar pop, electric and fuzzy power pop, and rainy, dreary, dreamy indie pop. A “brief hiatus” and the doubling of their membership from the founding duo haven’t caused Whitney’s Playland to deviate from their established talents for even a moment. (Read more)
8. Dazy – Bad Penny
Release date: October 21st Record label: Lame-O Genre: Power pop, Madchester, alt-dance, fuzz pop, pop punk Formats: Digital
Dazy’s James Goodson releases music on his own timeline, largely in the realms of surprise-releases, EPs, and outtake collections, so I don’t take for granted Bad Penny, a seven-song, twenty-two minute EP that’s the fuzz pop act’s most substantial release in over two years. Every time Dazy puts out something that sounds like Dazy, I’m once again forced to marvel at how obvious Goodson makes mixing power pop, pop punk, Madchester/alt-dance, Britpop, and fuzzed-out garage rock together seem. Who knew there was a huge vacancy right at the midpoint of Green Day and Primal Scream? (Read more)
7. Sam Woodring – Mechanical Bull
Release date: October 17th Record label: Pretzle Genre: Singer-songwriter, folk Formats: CD, digital
From 2018 to 2024, the artist formerly known as Sam Goblin made a unique mixture of post-hardcore, folk rock, and guitar pop under the “Mister Goblin” moniker, including two ofmy favorite albums of this decade so far. Mechanical Bull is the first record Sam Woodring has ever put out under his own name (well, first and middle name, apparently), and it’s certainly the furthest he’s wandered yet from his punk/math rock/Exploding in Sound-core roots. It’s five stark songs featuring nothing but Woodring’s voice and acoustic guitar, but gentle folk playing aside, Woodring is still the same remarkable songwriter in his “solo troubadour” era. (Read more)
6. Idle Ray – Airport
Release date: November 7th Record label: Salinas Genre: Lo-fi pop, power pop, indie pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
It wasn’t enough for Idle Ray to put out a new album this year (June’s Even in the Spring, which appeared on Rosy Overdrive’s Top Albums of 2025); the Michigan trio had to get another four-song EP out before 2025 was over, too. The four songs on Airport were 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” to the brisk tempos of “Allison, Walking Away Yet Again” and the title track, Idle Ray are riding a strong power pop wave on Airport.
5. Retirement Party – Nothing to Hear Without a Sound
Release date: August 28th Record label: Rat Poison Genre: Power pop, pop punk Formats: Digital
The “original lineup” of Chicago pop punk/power pop band Retirement Party may have broken up in 2022, but bandleader Avery Springer has kept the project alive with a four-song EP called Nothing to Hear Without a Sound. Springer plays everything other than drums on these songs, but that doesn’t stop Nothing to Hear Without a Sound from pursuing and acquiring a muscular, full band-evoking power pop sound. The combination of big melodic guitar lines and Springer’s earnest Midwestern vocals both help keep this iteration of Retirement Party among the best of punk/indie rock underground “guitar pop”. (Read more)
4. Outro – Broken Promise
Release date: February 14th Record label: Repeating Cloud Genre: Art rock, post-punk, garage rock, psychedelic rock, Paisley Underground, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl (“Villages” and “New Home” only), digital
Northampton, Massachusetts quartet Outro put out an album of Paisley Underground-reminiscent indie rock in 2023 called The Current, and the band don’t stray too far from that sound on their latest record and first for Repeating Cloud. In addition to classic college rock, the band mentions Steve Albini as a recording influence for Broken Promise, and while the five-songEP isn’t precisely a “noise rock” record, it does capture the same energy of Electrical Audio-associated bands who make or made unflappable, unbothered indie rock (with shimmering, swirling guitarplay, careening post-punk tempos, and a peaceful electricity). (Read more)
3. Pohgoh / Samuel S.C. – Split
Release date: October 8th Record label: New Granada/Waterslide Genre: Emo, punk rock, pop punk, 90s indie rock, twee-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
State College, Pennsylvania-originating emo band Samuel S.C. released three EPs and singles in the mid-90s, reunited in 2021, and put out an LP featuring new and “reimagined” old material in 2023. Tampa, Florida’s Pohgoh also made music combining Superchunk-esque indie-punk-rock with emo in the mid-1990s, and they also reunited over the past decade, putting out new albums in 2018 and 2022. A four-song split EP makes plenty of sense for the two bands, and both of them brought very good material (some of their best yet!) to the table for this one. Bands hiding their best songs on stopgap between-album split singles? It feels like the mid-90s all over again. (Read more)
2. Chronophage – Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship
Release date: July 11th Record label: Post Present Medium Genre: Power pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Austin group Chronophage are undersung pop merchants of the greater garage/punk/whatever underground, and it’s good to see them still going strong after their underrated 2022 self-titled album. 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” and “Anti-Miracle” (and the other two tracks, let’s be real) to sink their teeth in. Chronophage don’t have anything to prove to me in terms of guitar pop skill, but, nonetheless, I remain impressed that they’ve made their best work when backed into a corner (and by “corner”, I mean “the 7” format”).
1. Pacing – Songs
Release date: January 7th Record label: Asian Man Genre: Anti-folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter, indie folk, twee Formats: CD, digital
San Jose anti-folk/bedroom pop act Pacing put out a big, exciting sophomore album called PL*NET F*TNESS this year, but that’s not what their first new music on their new label of Asian Man Records ended up being. That “new music” was Songs. Songs is twelve minutes long. It’s a “mini-album” if it has to be called anything, or maybe it’s just “songs” (for the purposes of this list, it’s now an EP). Most of these are written and played by entirely bandleader Katie McTigue herself. Only one of these songs is more than two minutes long. The naming conventions are aggressively low-key and casual. Maybe Songs was a hot dog-esque byproduct of the sessions for Pacing LP2, an album that did indeed live up to the high bar set here. It’s a throwaway release that’s too good to be a throwaway release, and instead just ends up being another reminder that McTigue is still one of the sharpest and most unique songwriters operating in the present. (Read more)
Welcome to a mid-December Monday Pressing Concerns! We’ve got new albums from The Kyle Sowashes and Silk Daisys, plus new EPs from Daddy Fell Through and Tercel. Stay tuned for some more year-end lists from the blog, but, for now, check out these great records that may have slipped by you.
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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!
The Kyle Sowashes – Start Making Sense
Release date: October 3rd Record label: Anyway Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, 90s indie rock, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Start Making Sense
Kyle Sowash is a Columbus, Ohio indie rock institution in the vein of lifers like Micah Schnabel of Two Cow Garage and Lizard McGee of Earwig–he’s been stubbornly leading his eponymous band in gruff, punk-adjacent underground rock music for coming up on twenty years now. For around a decade, Sowash (who also plays in Smug Brothers) has been steadily backed by Dan Bandman (drums), Justin Hemminger (guitar/keys), and Nick La Russo (bass)–alongside horns provided by Carolyn Dever and Lonn Schubert (trumpet and trombone, respectively), these are the players you’ll hear on Start Making Sense, the Kyle Sowashes’ first LP in six years. It’s thirteen songs of The Kyle Sowashes experience, which can be described in loose genre-based terms (pop punk, “orgcore”, 90s-style indie garage rock) or more basic, kind-of-backhanded-sounding descriptors (“no-frills”, “workmanlike”, “everyman”, “barebones”).
Imagine a guy from the Midwest who writes songs with titles like “I’m Sorry, But We’ve Done Everything We Can Do at This Point”, “It Doesn’t Really Matter What You Think”, and “The Least That You Can Do” (the latter of which’s title line is preceded by “You can’t even do…”). There’s an unflagging, uncomfortably-up-close feature to Sowash’s writing that reminds me more than anything else of the late Karl Hendricks. There’s classic rock in there, too, of course, and “classic indie rock” like blog-favorites Silkworm (for one, the vocal melody of “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore” bears enough of a resemblance to “Wild in My Day” to trigger something in me). These kinds of records make their marks in the margins, and Start Making Sense is plenty marginal–that frantic guitar riff that kicks off “The Least That You Can Do”, or a couple good one-liners in the sauntering anti-cop shrug of “Napoleon Complex”, or the beleaguered chorus to the title track, the big cathartic moment towards which it feels like the entire record was building up. The Kyle Sowashes know how to make a rock-solid, approachable, and (yes) sensible album–who’d have thought? (Bandcamp link)
Daddy Fell Through – Daddy Fell Through
Release date: November 14th Record label: Olly Olly Genre: Acoustic rock, lo-fi pop, folk rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Digital Pull Track: Forget the Tradeoffs
A couple of months ago I wrote about Higher Selves Playdate, a Virginia-based duo who’d just put out their debut album, The New Apocalyptic. I called it a “colorful and glitzy pop album”, grasping for ways to convey how Jessica Kallista and Steve Fitzpatrick enthusiastically melted an “Athens, Georgia sound”, new wave, psychedelia, and synthpop together on those songs. Fitzpatrick now has a new project called Daddy Fell Through, and it’s just about as far away from Higher Selves Playdate as he could get, stylistically at least. The self-titled Daddy Fell Through EP is five songs and eight minutes of Fitzpatrick strumming pop songs alone on an acoustic guitar; the title of the project is a nod to Fitzpatrick’s children, who apparently prefer hearing the campfire guitar chords over the “50 track songs” of Higher Selves Playdate. It’s acoustic, yes, but it’s not really “folk”–I can hear Fitzpatrick writing pop music for Higher Selves Playdate here, reaching for ideas that he and Kallista can tinker around with eventually (he even calls the EP a bunch of “half-completed songs”). At the same time, though, I like the simplicity of Daddy Fell Through. It reminds me of early Mountain Goats, Fitzpatrick giving so much to these basic performances that it seems like the three-chord arrangements are all they could possibly need. Maybe these songs will appear on a future Higher Selves Playdate record with forty-something instruments layered over top of them, and I’ll be interested in hearing those, too. But it’ll also be okay if this is it for them. (Bandcamp link)
Tercel – Tercel
Release date: December 5th Record label: Fort Lowell Genre: 2000s indie rock, alt-country, indie pop Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Decoder Ring
The self-titled EP from Tercel is the Wilmington, North Carolina band’s first record in which they don’t have to share the main billing (they took the unusual step of releasing a split EP with hip hop duo Fuzz Jaxx & CoolOutSessions last year despite only having a couple of one off-singles to their name at that point). They’re a quartet co-led by Savannah Wood and Robin Wood and rounded out by Chris Vinopal (pedal steel, guitar) and Taylor Salvetti (drums); on our clearest glimpse of Tercel yet, we start to be able to see them as big-picture, earnest, pop-forward indie rockers. The exuberant, in-focus guitar work reflects a band who’ve taken cues from their home state’s indie rock history (maybe more Superchunk than Archers of Loaf, but probably both), but all five songs on Tercel shoot for giant, polished choruses (call them heartland rock, Americana, power pop…) that skip right past the 1990s into the following decade. The more electric songs on Tercel (like “Stuck and “Strange Energy”) work because the band are just scuzzy enough to give the tracks the sharper edges they need, although my favorite song on the EP, “Decoder Ring”, cuts the fuzz and chases after an overwhelming, immaculately-building post-alt-country indie rock ball of emotion and melody. And if you’re looking to understand Tercel, that’s probably it. (Bandcamp link)
Silk Daisys – Silk Daisys
Release date: December 5th Record label: Self-released Genre: Dream pop, shoegaze, jangle pop, fuzz pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: That Was Yesterday
2025 is almost over, but there’s still time to hear some jangly, shoegaze-y dream pop from Atlanta, Georgia. This take on it comes to us via Silk Daisys, the duo of Karla Jean Davis and James Abercrombie, who’ve made the jump from “occasional Soundcloud project” to “full-fledged rock band” with their self-titled debut album. Pick your favorite dream pop/shoegaze-straddling band to compare them to–Silk Daisys is a nice, even-keeled survey of a wide array of fuzzed-out, poppy indie rock. Opening track “It’s a Laugh” kicks off Silk Daisys with straight-up jangle/power pop, but, before you worry, the duo’s shoegaze bona fides come into focus very quickly between the 80s coldwave-touched “Kiss Me Like You Mean It” and “Honeymilk”, which is full-on reverb-drenched pop music. Silk Daisys have a Cocteau Twins streak in them, and nowhere is this more apparent than “Little Galaxy”, which pares down their sound to a mist of echoing guitars, prominent basslines, and Davis’ voice. We get a few more wall-of-sound shoegaze/fuzz rock (“Haunted House”, “Everybody Wants to Be My Baby”) and jangle pop (“That Was Yesterday”, “Let Me Be Your House”) moments before Silky Daisys is all said and done, which certainly helps this album feel like a generous and passionate tour through its creators’ favored genres. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to a normal old Thursday Pressing Concerns. This is probably the last “upcoming records” one of the year, but there’ll be a few miscellaneous ones before we wrap 2025 up. Speaking of wrapping 2025 up, Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025 went up earlier this week! If you missed it somehow, you’ll want to queue that up. Anyway, let’s look at new EPs from Vulture Feather and Dorothy, and new LPs from Billy Joel Jr. and Shande (שאַנדע). They’re all either out today or tomorrow (December 12th).
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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!
Vulture Feather – Craving and Aversion
Release date: December 12th Record label: Felte Genre: Post-punk, art rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Pleasant Obstacle
The vocals don’t kick in on Vulture Feather’s latest EP, Craving and Aversion, until nearly three minutes into the first track. Colin McCann, Brian Gossman, and Eric Fiscus take their time in setting up “Pleasant Obstacle”, giving the opening instrumental a lackadaisical undercurrent that nonetheless oddly retains a bit of the power trio’s trademark quiet intensity. At around the two-minute-thirty mark, though, Vulture Feather get serious, lock into a groove, and McCann’s intonation begins not long afterwards. They can’t keep getting away with it, right? Except they have, and the Hayfork, California-based group (made up of a couple of former members of 2000s buzzy Baltimore indie rock band Wilderness) have now released four records of this stuff since June 2023.
Once again recorded by Tim Green (Nation of Ulysses), Craving and Aversion continues Vulture Feather’s strange, hypnotic remote northern California Dischord Records splinter group bid, pursuing slow, intense, Lungfish-esque post-hardcore music just as fervently as before. The EP was recorded “in the wake of” February’s It Will Be Like Now (timeline-wise, I think this would be somewhere in between the LP’s recording and release), and it’s a little smokier and jagged than that album. Everything on this EP is its own little world, from the aforementioned extended runway of “Pleasant Obstacle” to the five-minute post-punk monument “Coronation Veil” to the two-minute sweep of “The Secret” (I guess this is the “hit”) to the instrumental closing title track. “Craving and Aversion” fades into focus, and McCann’s snaking, coiling guitar is doing noticeably more work than it would be were he singing, too. If you’ve been paying close attention to Vulture Feather (which I recommend you do), it’s a palpable shift. (Bandcamp link)
Billy Joel Jr. – Ur a Star
Release date: December 11th Record label: 11 AM Genre: Garage rock, fuzz rock,indie pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Bad Heart
The stunningly-named Billy Joel Jr. are actually a quartet from Chicago led by a singer-songwriter named Ari Levin. The band put out an EP last year called Rubberhouse, and now Levin, joined by drummer Karl El Sokhn, lead guitarist Nate Dorian, and Charlie Dykstal, has produced an entire Billy Joel Jr. LP called Ur a Star. The album was recorded by Blake Sokoloff at Abbey Cat Recordings, and it’s an exciting and promising Windy City indie rock debut. Moments on Ur a Star display at least a passing familiarity with Chicago punk and garage rock, but this is a decidedly inadequate umbrella for a band with just-as-sizeable penchants for earnest guitar pop and candle-waving balladry. “Girlfriend Twin Bed” is a genuinely amusing piss-take of garage rock and roll (if The Orwells aren’t dead yet, this will hopefully kill them), and “Bad Heart” shows that Billy Joel Jr. can make solid fuzz-rock music without the humor as a crutch. However, it’s songs like the alt-rock power ballad “She’s Always on My Mind”, the light-on-its-feet “About Me”, and the slow-burn “About Dying (Hannah)” that showcase a wider (and probably more accurate) picture of the band (I should say that, while some of the rock is indeed “soft”, and pianos do feature on the album, little if any of Ur a Star reminds me of Billy Joel the Senior). I have no idea how far Billy Joel Jr. can go (seriously, with a name like that…), but Ur a Star is a fine way to introduce one’s self. (Bandcamp link)
Shande (שאַנדע) – Hereness (דאָיִקייט)
Release date: December 12th Record label: Peace Isn’t Luck/Como Tapes Genre: Folk rock, lo-fi indie rock, slowcore, orchestral rock, jazz-folk Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Trust Yourself
It’s mid-December, but there’s still time in 2025 for a fifty-four minute debut album from a radical Jewish experimental folk rock twelve-piece band from Philadelphia. I am talking about Shande (שאַנדע), the project of a clarinetist and songwriter named Jack Braunstein, which began in 2018 in Vermont and has grown to include contributions from names like bassist And Keller (Snow Caps), drummer Dan Lynch (Loamer), and composer Melinda Rice. Hereness (דאָיִקייט) was recorded by Heather Jones (Ther) in Philly’s Beaumont Warehouse, and it’s an overwhelming listen to be sure. The tracks are folk songs at their core, guided by Braunstein’s measured, steady, almost slowcore style–but bits of woodwinds and brass, jazz, and “experimental” music take their turns chipping away at the foundation. The relatively tranquil foundation of Hereness (דאָיִקייט) (seriously, just listen to that tasteful jazz-pop instrumental in “Trust Yourself”!) might seem like an odd fit for a band that unambiguously stands for what it believes in–anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, veganism, anti-police…ism–both in and outside of its music, but Shande (שאַנדע) make no apologies for challenging or pleading in “The News” (a series of pointed vignettes), “Every Land (Is the Holy Land)” (which is based on a Ursula K. Le Guin poem), and “The Adversary” (a nine-minute journey to pure darkness). Hereness (דאָיִקייט) is a classic “a lot to chew on” kind of album, and I mean that in a good way–how empty do you have to be to mean that as a criticism, anyway? (Bandcamp link)
Dorothy – Sea Songs
Release date: December 12th Record label: Angel Tapes/Fire Talk Genre: Dream pop, psychedelic pop, post-rock, chamber pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: 50s Song
Dorothy are a new trio from London whose members are all pretty accomplished artists on their own–Jude Woodhead makes music under the name Saint Jude, Marco Pini’s credits include Sorry, GG Skips, and RIP Magic, and Francesca Brierley has a project called Heka and also contributed to the most recent Naima Bock album. I’m not familiar with every one of those acts, but I believe they run the gamut from folk to ambient to slowcore to electronic music, and Dorothy does their best to make a coherent five-song pop EP out of that spectrum. I suppose you could loosely call Sea Songs “dream pop”, although it’s on the more scattershot side of Dreamland, if that. It reminds me a bit of sprawling, hypnotic British indie acts like Flotation Toy Warning, or whatever that mid-2000s movement people called “folktronica” was. Sea Songs contains “I Want to Be Out on the Sea”, which is content to be a lightly-floating, barely-there pop song for the majority of its runtime, as well as the glitzy, (relatively) maximalist retro-pop of “50s Song”, and British folk rock gets some time in the spotlight with “High Tide”. Sea Songs is large-feeling and wide-ranging for a five-track debut EP–the songs drift in and out of pop music structure, idling in strange waters before returning to shore. There’s nothing excessive about Sea Songs, though; Dorothy are right where they’re supposed to be here. (Bandcamp link)
Here we are! Rosy Overdrive’s 25 favorite albums of 2025, revealed today along with albums 50 through 26, and coming a day after albums 51 through 100. By my count, I wrote about 343 albums on the blog this year (not counting a few posts that have yet to be published), so these are really the best of the best! Once again, thank you for reading, vote in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll, and stay tuned for upcoming EP and compilation lists as well as a few more Pressing Concerns.
Release date: May 16th Record label: Bud Tapes Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock Formats: Cassette, digital
Tim Howe (Vista House) and Nathan Tucker (Cool Original) are accomplished artists in their own rights, but the 2022 album they made together as First Rodeo is some of the finest work by either of them, so I was pleased to hear about Rode Hard and Put Away Wet, the duo’s second album together. Their new label Bud Tapes boasts that First Rodeo have “moved beyond genre constraints to explore collaborative songwriting and arranging”, and there are certainly moments (like “Nothing”) that back this up, but Rode Hard and Put Away Wet isn’t a huge departure–it’s still grounded in the roots, country, and folk rock on which First Rodeo built their initial foundation. (Read more)
24. Sharp Pins – Balloon Balloon Balloon
Release date: November 21st Record label: K/Perennial Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Whatever drives Sharp Pins’ Kai Slater to continually dig in the mines of Byrds worship and 60s jangly guitar pop, it’s a strong motivator, as we’ve now gotten a superb LP from the project three years in a row. 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 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?” (or, at least, “an unearthed early Guided by Voices recording from forty years ago?”). It’s actually quite hard to make great music while remaining this devoted to time-machine-level construction, but here’s Balloon Balloon Balloon coming through with a real murderer’s row of excellent jangle pop material. (Read more)
23. Fluung – Fluung
Release date: April 7th Record label: Setterwind/Den Tapes Genre: 90s indie rock, punk rock, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Seattle trio Fluung have been keeping Pacific Northwest indie rock loud, electric, and catchy since the mid-2010s, but Fluung is pretty clearly the band’s best work yet. An ambitious rock record that nearly doubles their last one in length, the third Fluung album has enough time to spit out a handful of blissful, hook-laden lost 90s alt-rock classics and push further into feedback-heavy, exploratory, lumbering fuzz rock terrain, too. Like the region’s best rock bands, Fluung is a record that’s about the journey as much as anything else, and the band make sure to leave us with a memorable and complete one. Fluung aren’t the first group to stumble onto something as fulfilling as this album, but it never gets old hearing a band figure it out like this. (Read more)
22. HLLLYH – URUBURU
Release date: June 27th Record label: Team Shi Genre: Art rock, noise pop, power pop, 2000s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
HLLLYH is effectively a new version of a 2000s art punk group from Los Angeles called The Mae Shi, a “blog rock” band in the realms of technicolor, noisy 2000s indie rock/pop music with all sorts of bizarre stuff thrown into the mix. Three years ago, a bunch of former Mae Shi members got together to create what they envisioned as the final Mae Shi album, but instead decided that it was something new. This something, the album URUBURU by the band HLLLYH, is drawn from “unearthed half-written Mae Shi songs” as well as freshly-written material–regardless of where and when these songs came from, HLLLYH have done an excellent job of recapturing that supercharged, ornery kaleidoscopic rock and roll energy that their previous band had. (Read more)
21. Ganser – Animal Hospital
Release date: August 29th Record label: Felte Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
We’ve been waiting for Animal Hospital for a half-decade, and Ganser have finally returned with an album worthy of an even larger spotlight than the one they’ve steadily amassed between 2020’s Just Look at the Sky and now. The Chicago post-punks are down to a trio for the first time ever, but nonetheless, Animal Hospital sounds like the Ganser we’ve continued to get glimpses of over the past few years: sometimes nervous, sometimes angry, always dark and loud. Ganser are a boring band–I mean, in the sense that their music drills and bores intensely and incessantly into anything and anyone that happens to be nearby. The rhythm section is pounding, of course, the guitars are an assault, and the synths whir and seethe at the base of it all. (Read more)
20. Vulture Feather – It Will Be Like Now
Release date: February 14th Record label: Felte Genre: Post-punk, art rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
Vulture Feather have such a distinct sound–Colin McCann’s otherworldly yowling vocals and chiming guitar, the steady, glacial movement, a rapturous devotion to minimalism and repetition–that they really only sound like themselves at this point. Like last year’s Merge Now in Friendship and 2023’s Liminal Fields, It Will Be Like Now is a powerful-sounding record, but I didn’t come away from it thinking “Vulture Feather just made the same album again”. The fact that they recorded the album after a bunch of touring might explain the subtle difference I hear–“looser” isn’t exactly the right descriptor…maybe “more alive”? Liminal Fields sounded like it just came into being one day, but I can actually imagine Vulture Feather playing the songs of It Will Be Like Now live, in person, in-studio. This is their punk album, maybe. (Read more)
19. Gum Parker – The Brakes
Release date: April 11th Record label: Repeating Cloud Genre: 90s indie rock, power pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
If you’re familiar with Galen Richmond’s previous band Lemon Pitch, then that’s roughly what his current one, Gum Parker, sounds like, but if you aren’t then they’re sneakily difficult to define. Richmond’s a 90s indie rock devote, but with Gum Parker he comes off as much more interested in simply making loud pop music than trying to directly emulate his influences. The Portland, Maine group’s debut album The Brakes is “power pop” without that genre’s defining reverence, “pop punk” without a trace of what that term traditionally evokes, “slacker rock” made by people with the perpetual nervousness. Oh, and Richmond, despite being the primary songwriter, only sings about half the songs–bassist Kate Sullivan-Jones sings lead on the rest of ’em. (Read more)
18. Guitar – We’re Headed to the Lake
Release date: October 10th Record label: Julia’s War Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop, fuzz pop, garage rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Three Guitar records, three reinventions. And We’re Headed to the Lake, the best one yet, ought to get Portland musician Saia Kuli the notoriety he’s been due for a hot minute. The sophomore Guitar LP ditches the lo-fi post-punk and the shoegaze-infused noise-fuzz assault of previous releases and embraces clarity and pop songwriting like never before. All of a sudden, Kuli and some familiar collaborators are making exquisite 90s-influenced indie rock that reminds me quite a bit of Guided by Voices, Pavement, and Silkworm. These elements were there in Guitar’s earlier, more chaotic material, but the clear and consistent embrace of dreamy jangle-rock and Robert Pollard-level guitar pop is still a shock to the system. (Read more)
17. Cheekface – Middle Spoon
Release date: February 25th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, indie pop, post-punk, Cheekface Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
For the better part of a decade now, Los Angeles trio Cheekface have been making an incredibly specific type of music, a proprietary blend of power pop, dance-punk, and Television combined with Greg Katz’s everyman talk-singing vocals mixed up in a way scientifically guaranteed to garner Cake comparisons. The orations of Katz, a state-of-the-union collection of one-liners and fake-outs from somebody who has incomplete knowledge of every subject, have always been the immediate draw, but the band behind him and their mastery of “groove” have been an increasingly potent weapon. This growth is present on the fifth Cheekface LP, Middle Spoon, featuring more big-chorus power pop slingers than ever before. You can still dance to it, of course, but somehow it’s a more cathartic hip-swaying. (Read more)
16. Bliss? – Pass Yr Pain Along
Release date: March 21st Record label: Psychic Spice Genre: Lo-fi power pop, garage rock, jangle punk, mod revival Formats: Cassette, digital
The debut from a new power trio straight out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bliss?’s Pass Yr Pain Along is a full exploration of the strains of guitar pop (“REM, power pop, and all varieties of jangly 80s college rock”) formative to the band–Josh Higdon’s vocals are incredibly Elvis Costello-reminiscent, while the band’s somewhat jangly post-Replacements pop rock and roll sounds like the Gin Blossoms as interpreted by basement punk musicians. It’s not a “punk” record per se, but it absolutely benefits from a little roughness–Higdon isn’t at all shy about putting the vocals up front, and the band are loose but clear in a way that puts the spotlight on a collection of songs that really could’ve been shipped straight from Homestead Records to your local college radio station circa 1989. (Read more)
15. Pile – Sunshine and Balance Beams
Release date: August 15th Record label: Sooper Genre: Noise rock, art rock, post-hardcore, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
It’s really nice to have Pile back and rocking again. Rick Maguire and company never lost me during their most experimental years, but it feels like they had to wander the wilderness a bit to get back to what they do best on Sunshine and Balance Beams. The eighth Pile LP (give or take) hits in a way that the Boston-originating noise rockers haven’t quite hit since Green and Gray, even if you can hear the spacier moments of their recent material all over the album too. Pile are up to a lot of their usual tricks throughout the album: building up, drawing back, surging forward, exploding into fiery post-hardcore finales. They sound a little more “seasoned” here, but Sunshine and Balance Beams is as fresh as can be regardless.
14. Telethon – Suburban Electric
Release date: March 6th Record label: Halloween Genre: Power pop, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Suburban Electric certainly sounds like a Telethon album, but it also sounds like a conscious attempt not to repeat their previous LP, the sprawling, overstuffed, guest musician-heavy Swim Out Past the Breakers. If it’s possible for Telethon’s blend of maximalist power pop, Midwestern workhorse pop punk, and dashes of ska and emo to ever be “streamlined”, Suburban Electric is it. Suburban Electric is still a rich and stuffed-to-the-gills record in its own way, though–every song on this album is a wild self-contained narrative (the lyrics are presented as paragraphs on the album’s Bandcamp page, which seems right to me), and Telethon set their punk rock theater energy towards building lengthy, almost prog-pop Jenga towers. (Read more)
13. Alex Orange Drink – Future 86
Release date: October 3rd Record label: Million Stars Genre: Power pop, punk rock, garage rock Formats: CD, digital
In September, Alex Orange Drink (aka Alex Zarou Levine of The So So Glos) revealed plans to release five albums based on the five stages of grief (written and recorded parallel to Levine’s battle against cancer) by the end of 2025. May’s Victory Lap (#23) was tagged “denial”, and the second one, Future 86, was deemed by Levine to be a “power pop album about the bargaining stage”. Levine does a great Elvis Costello-Kinks-Clash-Ramones synthesis on this entire album, and while there’s certainly death hovering around Future 86 (in one of the best moments on the album, Levine triumphantly touts his lead in being “first one to oblivion”), the punchy power pop hooks and winking lyrics resist any sort of pigeonholing as a “cancer album”.
12. Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up
Release date: May 16th Record label: Merge Genre: Alt-country, ambient country Formats: LP, CD, digital
The more anthemic, immediately-gripping songs of Friendship’s 2022 triumph Love the Stranger are gone on Caveman Wakes Up, and the Philadelphia alt-country group have replaced them with more ambient, vibes-based music. I compared Love the Stranger to Lambchop, without properly appreciating the kind of range that “Lambchop-esque” would end up giving them. Perhaps the die was cast for how this album would be perceived when they released a song called “Free Association” as the lead single. Frontperson Dan Wriggins, who recently released his first book of poetry, does seem more “poetic” on Caveman Wakes Up than he’s been in the past, but he’s also quite direct in his own way. I didn’t need the press pack to infer that a breakup was involved in the composition of these songs, for instance. (Read more)
11. Liquid Mike – Hell Is an Airport
Release date: September 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, pop punk, alternative rock, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Hell Is an Airport, the third Liquid Mike album in as many years, strikes while the iron is hot: bandleader Mike Maple apparently quit his job at the USPS to focus on the Marquette, Michigan group full-time, and they’re now a well-oiled five-piece alternative rock and roll band. If a tad less grandiose than last year’s Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, Hell Is an Airport is the smoother and tighter 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 Liquid Mike are running frantically from one idea to the next before the fire burns out. The urgency makes for exhilarating listening, but I don’t think there’s any act currently going that needs to worry less about their flame being extinguished than Liquid Mike. (Read more)
10. Gosh Diggity – Good Luck! Have Fun!
Release date: July 3rd Record label: Worry Genre: Chiptune-punk, pop punk, power pop, emo Formats: Cassette, digital
Well, it seems like emo-chiptune-pop-punk-rock music is in good hands in 2025. Specifically, I mean music that combines big power pop hooks, rock band instrumentation, and video game-inspired synth bleating; if that sounds alright by you, it’s time to meet a trio from Chicago called Gosh Diggity, co-founded in 2018 by vocalist/guitarist/synth programmer Joe Marshall and vocalist/bassist CJ Hoglind and eventually joined by drummer Kelson Zbichorski. As one should be able to surmise for the album’s cartoon cover art, Good Luck! Have Fun! is absolutely loaded with bright colors, quick energy, and 8-bit/chiptune hooks strewn all over the place. Hoglind and Marshall are an excellent tag-team, both displaying the ability to emote like proper emo/pop-punk frontpeople and not sound absurd with the technicolor, digital symphony going on around them. (Read more)
9. Mint Mile – andwhichstray
Release date: November 28th Record label: Comedy Minus One Genre: Alt-country-folk-rock, 90s indie rock, Crazy Horse Formats: Vinyl, digital
Mint Mile recorded andwhichstray a couple of months after last year’s Roughrider came out with longtime friend of the band Steve Albini, less than a week before the legendary engineer’s sudden passing. A year and a half and a lifetime later, we have andwhichstray–an album, thankfully, made to stand tall in 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. A clear-eyed directness is the central “thread” on andwhichstray, a feature found in everything from bandleader Tim Midyett’s lyrics to (of course) Albini’s engineering. (Read more)
8. Graham Hunt – Timeless World Forever
Release date: June 13th Record label: Run for Cover Genre: Indie pop, psychedelic pop, power pop, Madchester, post-punk, trip hop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
It’s like an intricate and smooth version of “slacker pop”, the Graham Hunt sound, indie rock with bits of 90s alt-pop as well as electronic and dance touches delivered in a skewed but ultimately sincere fashion. Timeless World Forever might be the most “Graham Hunt” Graham Hunt album to date, and I think that might make it the Madison musician’s best work so far. The instrumentals are bright, precise, and adventurous, Hunt’s vocals are all over the place from “burnout” to “soaring emo guy” to basically rap-singing; Hunt approached the album like a “modern pop record”, and there’s plenty of the hazy psychedelia and hip hop structure I’d associate with that kind of world here. Timeless World Forever is a lot, but (to paraphrase Hunt himself in “Spiritual Problems”) the weight of it is a gift. (Read more)
7. Ex-Vöid – In Love Again
Release date: January 17th Record label: Tapete Genre: Power pop, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
As Welsh indie rock band The Tubs gained a decent amount of notoriety over the past few years, their sibling band Ex-Vöid quietly made just-as-great records. Lan McArdle and Owen Williams (who first debuted as members of Joanna Gruesome in the 2010s) singing together is one of the greatest sounds one can hear in all of indie pop/power pop/jangle pop/et cetera, and Ex-Vöid’s sophomore album In Love Again certainly delivers on that front. Perhaps a little less punchy and more refined than 2022’s Bigger Than Before, In Love Again is as natural-feeling a guitar pop album as any of those to which its members have lent their talents. Unfortunately (but not entirely surprisingly), Ex-Vöid broke up in October, making In Love Again a strong final statement.
6. Wavers – Look What I Found
Release date: August 29th Record label: Salinas/Musical Fanzine/Reach Around Genre: 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie rock, indie pop, twee, fuzz pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
My favorite EP of 2024 was an under-the-radar self-titled debut from an Olympia, Washington quartet called Wavers, an impressive release that threw together emo, 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie pop, and punk in under ten minutes. The band’s Salinas-released debut album, Look What I Found, retains the sound that made Wavers sound so great, giving everyone who missed that EP the perfect second opportunity to jump on board. Wavers may not have a rabid cult following yet, but they’re already starting to look like a band that could sustain one, between the thematic call-backs and connections, large hooks, and the independent yet communal vibe that permeates everything about them. (Read more)
5. Silo’s Choice – Liberals
Release date: March 7th Record label: Obscure Pharaoh Genre: Indie pop, sophisti-pop, jazz pop, soft rock Formats: Digital
Liberals is a pretty clear departure from the meandering, John Fahey-influenced acoustic guitars and upright bass explorations of 2024’s Languid Swords–Silo’s Choice mastermind Jon Massey mentions The Left Banke, early Destroyer, and Belle & Sebastian as touchpoints for this one, and he’s kind of right. At its most animated, Liberals has the same kind of jazzy, whip-smart pop rock that Massey had previously explored in the band Coventry, and even the slower numbers on this album display a renewal of vows with concise pop music. Liberals’ default mode of polished piano-led pop doesn’t come even close to getting stale, and there are plenty of deviations from it, dropping a bit into everything from folk music to disco. (Read more)
4. Mal Blum – The Villain
Release date: July 11th Record label: Get Better Genre: Alt-rock, fuzz rock, pop punk, slacker rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After coming up in the late 2000s in the world of early Mountain Goats-inspired folk punk-adjacent music, Mal Blum eventually graduated to more electric indie rock with bits of pop punk and grunge-pop. They’ve always displayed flashes of brilliance, but The Villain is, for me, where they’ve finally “put it all together” and made a cohesive, potent, front-to-back classic album. It’s Blum’s first album made entirely with their “lower register after several years on testosterone”, and they’ve embraced their new voice’s ability to sell a specific kind of low-key, muttering darkness. The press release implies that The Villain isn’t entirely a break-up album, but there’s a lot of relationship ugliness in here, and the character that Blum adopts throughout the album–passively, sardonically observing one royal mess after another as if they aren’t even there at all–ends up being a very fascinating byproduct of a major personal transition. (Read more)
3. The Tubs – Cotton Crown
Release date: March 7th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
You probably don’t need me to tell you that Cotton Crown is good if you’re tapped into the worlds of jangle pop and power pop that are this blog’s bread and butter–The Tubs have been one of the few such bands that regularly get lauded outside of our bubble, and I can’t even be hipstery about the praise that’s been bestowed upon them because this new album is the (already quite good) band’s best work yet. If you’re interested in learning about the personal nature of frontperson Owen Williams’ writing on this album, there are interviews (not to mention Williams’ own Substack) about it, but suffice it to say that the group’s sparkling, bright guitar pop collides with some tough, complex kinds of grief throughout Cotton Crown.
2. Pacing – PL*NET F*TNESS
Release date: July 25th Record label: Asian Man Genre: Indie pop, twee, folk-pop, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pacing’s 2023 debut album Real Poetry…was a kitchen-sink indie pop/twee/“anti-folk” DIY affair with visible seams, and the studio-recorded PL*NET F*TNESS represents a bold step forward for the San Jose group. Pacing’s evolution on PL*NET F*TNESS goes beyond the instrumental bells and whistles–it’s just as thematically ambitious as Real Poetry…’s dissection of reality and art was, but Katie McTigue seems more comfortable drawing from personal experiences to construct these giant overarching structures this time. For all of its might and bluster, PL*NET F*TNESS features some of McTigue’s most confused and awkward writing yet. There are no answers on PL*NET F*TNESS, only Things–charismatic professional chess players, bastardized Mr. Rogers quotes, reality television, true love, half-remembered advice from the dead, tickets for events you forgot to go to. And some pretty nice guitar tones, too. (Read more)
1. Fust – Big Ugly
Release date: March 7th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Alt-country Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
At this point, I’m ready to declare Aaron Dowdy’s Fust the best band making country-influenced indie rock in North Carolina (and yes, I’m aware of what kind of competition that description pits them against). I’ve loved everything that this band has done thus far, but it didn’t take long before it became clear to me that Big Ugly is the band’s masterpiece. In what I can only assume is directly pandering to the author of this blog, Big Ugly is an album-length journey to Dowdy’s roots in southern West Virginia, drawing its name and much of its imagery from the shadow of the Guyandotte River in Lincoln County. The record’s scenes of corner stores and cinderblock-propped-up cars are much more than cheap signifiers, and I don’t really have the space and time here to get into everything going on in it, but that just leaves more for you to discover.
Hello! Welcome back (or just welcome) to Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025! Today reveals the top 50 albums on the list. Yesterday unveiled numbers 100 through 51, so be sure to check those out as well if you haven’t yet.
Release date: March 14th Record label: Cooked Raw Genre: Indie pop, twee, electronica, bedroom pop, experimental pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
As one might expect from a band with a “DJ scratcher” enlisted, Toronto’s Cootie Catcher have a foot in the world of electronic music (largely due to the wobbly, wavering synths that Sophia Chavez injects over top of more typical indie pop instrumentals). The group strike a balance between tweeish guitar pop and the aforementioned synth touches on their sophomore album, Shy at First–sometimes Cootie Catcher lean more into guitar pop, sometimes into the stranger electronic impulses, and sometimes both flare up notably in the same song. Shy at First has a ton of obvious “hits”, but even the more curious moments on the album are still “pop songs”, just presented in a somewhat hazier fashion. (Read more)
49. Joel Cusumano – Waxworld
Release date: October 24th Record label: Dandy Boy Genre: Jangle pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
Power pop fans who read this blog may have heard Oakland musician Joel Cusumano via his work as the guitarist in R.E. Seraphin, or maybe they’re familiar with him as the frontperson of Sob Stories, but it’s his first-ever solo album, Waxworld, that cements him as a key figure in the Bay Area indie pop scene. Cusumano can write jangle pop as well as his associates, but he’s a distinct bandleader who favors sprinkling mythology, art history, and religion throughout his writing. I see why Cusumano tapped the titular uncanny lifelike art form to represent Waxworld–it’s a good metaphor, but it’s also an entire medium beyond that, befitting of somebody alight with non-musical influences as well as the typical “college rock”. (Read more)
48. Good Flying Birds – Talulah’s Tape
Release date: January 2nd Record label: Rotten Apple/Carpark/Smoking Room Genre: Lo-fi pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Loosely speaking, Indianapolis’ Good Flying Birds fit into a new jangle pop movement somewhere alongside acts like the psychedelic freakbeat of The Smashing Times, the lo-fi mod revival of Sharp Pins, and their dreamy, hazier labelmates Living Dream. However, their debut release Talulah’s Tape is more…frantic than any of those bands. Perhaps appropriately for an act named after a Guided by Voices song, there’s a slapdash basement feel to these tracks: the most obvious pop hits on the record sound like the band recorded them as quickly as possible before the jangly inspiration faded, while the more full-on rockers demonstrate their ability to step on the gas pedal when they want to. (Read more)
47. Miscellaneous Owl – The Cloud Chamber
Release date: March 7th Record label: Self-released Genre: Bedroom pop, synthpop, indie folk, lo-fi pop Formats: Digital
This year’s Miscellaneous Owlbum is called The Cloud Chamber, and Madison, Wisconsin singer-songwriter Huan-Hua Chye promises something “folkier, quieter, and dreamier” this time around, as well as “1000% more theremin” than on her last record (You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, one of my favorites of 2024). While the exact specifics of this description (other than the theremin part) are up for debate, I do agree that The Cloud Chamber displays a more thoughtful and subdued side to Chye’s writing. You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow ran out to greet us with early Magnetic Fields-worthy bright synthpop instrumentals, and while this new one has some such moments, on the whole it’s more of an album that one is “welcome to join in progress” than one that’s going out of its way to invite us inside. (Read more)
46. Pigeon Pit – Crazy Arms
Release date: January 17th Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Folk punk, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
In the three years since their breakout album, 2022’s Feather River Canyon Blues, Olympia folk punk rockers Pigeon Pit have solidified into a six-piece “country/punk maximalist” group led by former sole member Lomes Oleander and featuring a bunch of Olympia-area ringers. Crazy Arms is both a culmination of “Pigeon Pit the Band” and a statement of their current power; Oleander is still a “folk punk” frontperson, yes, but her vocals and writing have evolved to also encapsulate the kind of world-reverent folk-y indie rock practiced by heroes like the Mountain Goats, The Weakerthans, and certain eras of Against Me!–and, of course, the band is key in helping her realize a more expansive sound for these songs, too. Pigeon Pit is always giving about 120 percent on Crazy Arms, even (perhaps especially) when Oleander is singing about being run-through and tired. (Read more)
45. Hallelujah the Hills – DECK
Release date: June 13th Record label: Best Brother/Discrete Pageantry Genre: 2000s indie rock, folk rock, heartland rock Formats: Vinyl (Diamonds only), playing cards, digital
Boston’s Hallelujah the Hills burst onto the scene in the 2000s with a 90s-style lo-fi, quick-hook attitude combined with a largess and sincerity from a different world entirely, and their career has been marked by a focused consistency ever since. The Ryan H. Walsh-led band has spent the 2020s working on a project called DECK: four albums, fifty-two songs, with every track corresponding to a card in a traditional deck of playing cards. DECK is a pure reflection of what I interpret as the Hallelujah the Hills ethos–it’s highly collaborative, it’s incredibly earnest and adventurous in both its writing and arrangement, and it’s dream-like despite a very grounded execution from the players. (Read more)
44. Star 99 – Gaman
Release date: March 7th Record label: Lauren Genre: Power pop, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
A year and a half after Bitch Unlimited (my second favorite album of 2023), San Jose power pop group Star 99 returned in 2025 with a fifth bandmember, a more wide-ranging sound, and a sophomore album called Gaman. I’d be despondent if Star 99 completely abandoned the sugary power-pop-punk that they’d mastered on their last album, and thankfully Gaman is not a reinvention so much as an expansion. Star 99 have once again put together a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (twenty-five minutes, actually shorter this time around) collection of tour-de-force songs with plenty of knockout punches; they’ve merely diversified the way that they go about landing these blows, is all. (Read more)
43. Kinski – Stumbledown Terrace
Release date: March 7th Record label: Comedy Minus One Genre: Post-rock, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Kinski are an experimental post-rock band from Seattle, forming at the tail end of the 1990s and spending this century steadily releasing albums on storied indie rock labels like Sub Pop and Kill Rock Stars. Stumbledown Terrace is the group’s tenth album, their first in nearly seven years, their first for Comedy Minus One, and their first as a power trio in over twenty-five years. Clearly this paring down hasn’t slowed Kinski, though–their latest LP is a nice, electric jolt of a reminder of how cool guitar music is. On Stumbledown Terrace, Kinski walk the tightrope between instrumental, sprawling post-rock and punchy rock and roll like the best of their influences and peers like Sonic Youth, Trans Am, and Oneida. It has a live feel to it, certainly–and this applies to the moments in between the most kinetic ones, too. (Read more)
42. Dick Texas – All That Fall
Release date: March 7th Record label: Life Like/Tortilla Flat Genre: Alt-country, country rock, post-rock, slowcore, art rock, folk rock, psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, digital
All That Fall, the first Dick Texas LP, has been over a half-decade in the making, but it’s pretty believable that letting this music marinate for as long as it did helped make the album as special as it turned out to be. Loosely speaking, All That Fall is a country rock record–and “loose” is the right word to use here, as Dick Texas’ lost, woozy, incredibly slow playing style really does sound on the verge of falling apart more often than not. The songs–all seven of ‘em, that’s all we need–sprawl out in their self-contained desert worlds, and Valerie Salerno is the steady center with vocals that murmur along with the music’s psychedelic haze, declining to hog the spotlight but still leaving a distinct mark on Dick Texas’ landscapes. (Read more)
41. Rip Van Winkle – Blasphemy
Release date: July 11th Record label: Splendid Research Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, post-punk, art rock, Guided by Voices Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Rip Van Winkle, made up of Robert Pollard and members of the band Joseph Airport, are the latest “weird” Guided by Voices offshoot. The lo-fi, clanging experimental EP The Grand Rapids introduced us to Rip Van Winkle last year with a brief but tantalizing offbeat teaser, and the project’s first album, Blasphemy, delivers on that promise. On the surface, Blasphemy has the same sloppy, surprising qualities of Pollard’s albums where he himself plays (nearly) everything–Vampire on Titus, Please Be Honest, his Teenage Guitar project–but despite this, there’s a secret polish to the playing of the rest of Rip Van Winkle that provides a link to Pollard’s more obviously pop-forward material. (Read more)
40. Saoirse Dream – Saoirse Dream
Release date: February 28th Record label: Lauren Genre: Hyperpop, synthpop, indie pop, bedroom pop, noise pop, chiptune, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Since the beginning of this decade, Catherine Egbert has been connected to “hyperpop” as a movement, both through her work as Saoirse Dream and as part of collectives like webcage and User-177606669. Her debut album for Lauren Records is indeed a charged mix of chiptune pop blasts, pop punk guitars, emo angst, and lo-fi bedroom pop intimacy. Saoirse Dream isn’t as sonically chaotic as a lot of hyperpop I’m familiar with–I could imagine more typical pop punk/indie pop versions of most of these songs (in fact, they might already be in there somewhere), but Egbert has such a handle on these extra touches and tools that they pretty much always feel like they add to the music. Saoirse Dream has a ton of ideas in any case, and most of these are executed in the context of sweeping pop music. (Read more)
39. Idle Ray – Even in the Spring
Release date: June 6th Record label: Life Like Genre: Lo-fi pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
When the self-titled first Idle Ray album came out back in 2021, the Michigan “band” was pretty much entirely a Fred Thomas solo project; in the four years since, they’ve become a solid power trio with bassist Devon Clausen and guitarist Frances Ma joining Thomas, and the new members even wrote a few of the songs on Even in the Spring. Ma and Clausen’s contributions fit right in with Thomas’ lo-fi power pop/indie rock style, and the three of them zip through ten songs in a mere twenty-four minutes on this one. It’s a noisy but efficient and laser-focused pop record that suggests Thomas, as strong of a songwriter as he is, was right to open Idle Ray up for more collaboration.
38. Tullycraft – Shoot the Point
Release date: August 22nd Record label: HHBTM Genre: Twee, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
I’m not sure I would’ve pegged Tullycraft as the 90s indie pop band to still be going strong in the year 2025, but here we are with Shoot the Point, a very solid collection of pop music that might be “mature” in some ways but that doesn’t involve “slowing down” in any. Bouncing power pop hooks, tambourine-shaking barebones 60s throwbacks, two wisened but still animated personalities at the reins–it’s hard to find any fault with where Tullycraft are at these days. There are just way too many big pop home-runs on Shoot the Point–lesser bands have built entire albums around mid-record stocking-stuffers like “Rhinestone Tease” and “Tarrytown”. So here’s to Tullycraft, a band thankfully eager to prove that they are, right now, at the top of their complicated game. (Read more)
37. Lùlù – Lùlù
Release date: June 6th Record label: Howlin Banana/Taken by Surprise/Dangerhouse Skylab Genre: Power pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
The self-titled debut album from Lyon/Marseille-based Lùlù is power pop in its most freewheeling, energetically fun form. Bandleader Luc Simone and his collaborators gleefully roll around in the histories of garage rock and punk rock to make ten massively hooky rock and roll knockout punches. Far removed from the refined, cosmopolitan sound that I associated with French indie pop, Lùlù has more in common with Australian garage-power-poppers like The Unknowns and Romero, American retro-pop groups like Sheer Mag and Free Energy, and, honestly, even a little bit of melodic lifer “orgcore” punk rock groups. (Read more)
36. Higher Selves Playdate – The New Apocalyptic
Release date: July 30th Record label: Olly Olly Genre: Psychedelic pop, indie pop, synthpop, power pop, new wave Formats: Digital
Fairfax, Virginia’s Higher Selves Playdate have been around and steadily releasing singles since 2020, but, as far as I can tell, The New Apocalyptic is the duo’s first full-length album. The New Apocalyptic is a colorful and glitzy pop album, a glorious mess of glitter, danceable beats, and great pop smarts equally anchored by sparkling synthesizers, taut and rhythmic basslines, and delirious sugar-high tempos. The duo name Devo, Grace Jones, and the B-52s as some of their favorite acts, and while The New Apocalyptic doesn’t precisely sound like any of those artists, it’s an album made by people with a deep understanding of the freakier sides of dance music, the transformative power of new wave, and the rich inner mythologies suggested by those names. (Read more)
35. Abe Savas – 99 Songs (Plus One)
Release date: June 20th Record label: Badgering the Witless Genre: Power pop, bedroom pop, folk-pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
The album is called 99 Songs (Plus One), and that’s exactly what it offers us. 99 Songs (Plus One) fits its one-hundred tracks in seventy-eight minutes (enough for one CD)–you can do the math, but this means a lot of these songs are snippets a few seconds long, and even the more fully-developed tracks are almost all under two minutes in length. The songs range from incredibly goofy to surprisingly poignant, genre-wise hopping from power pop to acoustic folk to more side-excursions than I can count. There’s a lot of Elvis Costello in Abe Savas’ pop music instincts, and this chaotic collection will likely also appeal to fans of Tony Molina, They Might Be Giants, and maybe even Fountains of Wayne. There’s a ton of brilliant moments on 99 Songs (Plus One), and one may only need to wait a couple of seconds after one ends for another to begin. (Read more)
34. Robbie Fulks – Now Then
Release date: September 5th Record label: Compass Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, singer-songwriter, bluegrass, country-folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Oh, man. It’s so nice to have a new classic grab-bag Robbie Fulks album. Not that I disliked the forays into more traditional bluegrass and his collaborative record with Linda Gail Lewis, but the alt-country firebrand has long had an incredibly wide range of strengths, and Now Then puts a bunch of them on full display. Between the sprawling, gorgeous folk rock storytelling of songs like “That Was Juarez, This Is Alpine” and “There’s a Man”, the exhilarating country rocker “Now Now Now Now Now”, and the typically clever traditionalism of “Poor and Sharp-Witted”, it really does feel like the album the Let’s Kill Saturday Night guy would make a quarter-century later.
33. Alex Orange Drink – Victory Lap (#23)
Release date: May 9th Record label: Million Stars Genre: Garage punk, power pop, folk punk, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital
Alex Zarou Levine didn’t choose to pigeonhole himself as the punk rock musician who writes about his experiences living with and battling various medical ailments; he’s just attempting to live his life, I think. 2021’s Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. is about Levine’s long-term metabolic genetic disorder homocystinuria, and this year’s Victory Lap (#23) came about after the So So Glos frontperson was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma and subsequently went through intense chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Victory Lap (#23) is as defiant and fiery as one would hope from its title, an excellent collection of Levine’s signature New York City power pop rock, slapdash, garage-y punk, and folk punk-adjacent singalongs.
32. Stay Inside – Lunger
Release date: October 3rd Record label: Tiny Engines Genre: Emo, art rock, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Stay Inside became one of the best emo bands currently active so naturally and quietly that I didn’t even notice until now. I enjoyed last year’s Ferried Away, but it now feels like it was a warm-up for Lunger, Stay Inside’s third and best LP. Lunger is fourteen songs of the New York quartet delivering blows informed by heavy-gravity groups like mewithouYou and The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, only chiseled down to punchy, poppy emo-rock songs. Stay Inside do their best to outrun a sense of decay through a smattering of sweeping rockers–really, just about every song on Lunger feels like it’s in motion in some form. Stay Inside’s progress had largely flown under the radar until now, but we all ought to be listening after Lunger. (Read more)
31. The Telephone Numbers – Scarecrow II
Release date: October 10th Record label: Slumberland Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein is remarkable in how he manages to carve out his own signature style while giving so much of himself over to the towering jangle pop, college rock, and power pop that’s shaped the entire scene around him. The one-off singles and compilation appearances in the intervening four years only increased my anticipation for Scarecrow II, the second Telephone Numbers LP and the first one for Slumberland Records. Scarecrow II also happens to be the band’s first as a solid quartet, and it sounds like Rubenstein and his collaborators have long been ready to turn their intermittent brilliance into something larger-scale. (Read more)
30. Possible Humans – Standing Around Alive
Release date: October 9th Record label: Hobbies Galore Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
Possible Humans’ 2019 album Everybody Split (released in the United States by the recently-defunct and already-sorely-missed Trouble in Mind) was one of my favorite albums of that year, establishing the Melbourne-based group as one of the best garage-tinged jangle pop groups currently active. It took a half-dozen years to get another Possible Humans album, but Standing Around Alive sounds just like that band that grabbed me at the end of last decade. The second Possible Humans album marries that gloomy and motorik sides of post-punk with bittersweet, Kiwi-influenced jangly guitar pop in a sturdy way that only sounds better the more I listen to it.
29. Buddie – Glass
Release date: November 7th Record label: Crafted Sounds/Placeholder Genre: Power pop, fuzz pop, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Glass is the third Buddie album and the first recorded with the 90s indie rock/fuzz pop/power pop revival band’s new Vancouver-based lineup (lead guitarist Patrick Farrugia, drummer Natalie Glubb, and bassist Lindsay Partin). The eight-song, twenty-five minute LP sounds almost exactly like the previous, Philadelphia-stationed version of Buddie (and that’s a good thing); if there’s a difference between this one and their last LP, 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. Despite the similarities, Glass feels like a distinct version of this band and, I suspect, will continue to assert itself in Buddie’s discography regardless of what the group do next. (Read more)
28. Dancer – More or Less
Release date: September 12th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, art rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
I’ve been clear enough on this blog that Glasgow’s Dancer is a special group, and they’ve continued their winning streak into 2025, as their sophomore album, More or Less, is their most substantial release yet at a dozen tracks and nearly forty minutes. It’s the band’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, but despite the lineup change, More or Less has Dancer sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures 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. Dancer may be taking their time a little more here, but they aren’t slowing down. (Read more)
27. Mekons – Horror
Release date: April 4th Record label: Fire Genre: Post-punk, art punk, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The Mekons are forty-nine years old this year. I’m not even going to try to figure out what number LP they’re on at this point. And yet here is Horror, an album that purports to “[look] at history and the legacies of British imperialism with mashed up lyrics” and that sounds a hell of a lot like the great Mekons records littered throughout history before it. Post-punk artsiness, alt-country rock-and-rolling, traditionalist folk instrumentation, reggae rhythms, and a good old communal feeling all permeate Horror, an album that keeps one foot in the past only to mainline all the power and humanity and bullshit that’s still ever-so-relevant today, always forging some kind of connection or another.
26. Califone – The Villager’s Companion
Release date: February 21st Record label: Jealous Butcher Genre: Folk rock, post-rock, art rock, blues rock, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
As the name implies, The Villager’s Companion is linked to the Califone record before it, 2023’s The Villagers: it was recorded around the same time and is augmented by a couple of covers that have been previously released over the past few years. Califone bandleader Tim Rutili referred to these songs as “misfit toys” when the album was announced, but The Villager’s Companion is just further confirmation that Califone thrives in a less formal environment. It gives Rutili and company a chance to both spin some simple blues-folk numbers and to journey beyond them right next to each other, to interpret other people’s songs and incorporate them into the Califone songbook like they’ve always belonged there. (Read more)
Welcome to part two (of four) of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025! This post covers albums 75 through 51. For any and all background info, see part one.
Release date: October 17th Record label: Flying Nun Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, Dunedin sound, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
I don’t know if there’s much to say beyond that I’m grateful The Bats are still around and making new music. Corner Coming Up is the legendary New Zealand group’s first new album in five years, and it certainly sounds like a band who’ve been blissfully pursuing indie pop for over four decades. The Bats are now long-removed from making instant-gratification, quick-hit jangle pop singles, although that’s still part of Corner Coming Up’s DNA; it’s just now rolled into an all-encompassing, sprawling folk-rock land survey of an album that requires patience and time to really start to reveal itself.
74. Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow
Release date: March 7th Record label: Southeastern Genre: Folk, country, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Foxes in the Snow is a tough one, the “divorce album” that Jason Isbell recorded entirely on his own with just his acoustic guitar partly so he could just get the songs out and not have to dwell on them. 2023’s Weathervanes was my favorite Isbell album in quite some time, and while Foxes in the Snow isn’t an LP to “throw on” frequently like that one is, I do get the sense that it’s built to stand beyond the circumstances of its creation. Isbell’s separation from his wife and former bandmate Amanda Shires colors these songs, certainly, although one would have to have one’s head in the clouds not to recognize Foxes in the Snow’s ability to glance beyond that just frequently enough.
73. Golden Apples – Shooting Star
Release date: September 19th Record label: Lame-O Genre: Fuzz pop, noise pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
2023’s Bananasugarfire was a big milestone for Philadelphia artist Russell Edling and his Golden Apples project, incorporating shoegaze and psychedelia into the group’s loud and fuzzy sound. Pieced together in a handful of different locales by Edling with various contributors, Shooting Star pulls off the trick of sounding more like an insular folk-influenced record while at the same time retaining Bananasugarfire’s bright, distorted, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic power pop. Between these last two LPs, there’s now a distinct “Golden Apples sound”–I think I like this new take on it the best so far. (Read more)
72. My Wife’s an Angel – Yeah, I Bet
Release date: April 18th Record label: Knife Hits/GRIMGRIMGRIM/Broken Cycle Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
My Wife’s an Angel are a chaotic, piss-taking noise rock band from Philadelphia, although my intelligence suggests that they may have roots in the expansive wasteland known as “the rest of Pennsylvania”. The quartet’s second album, Yeah, I Bet, is positively a mess–it’s ugly, heavy noise-punk that sometimes doesn’t sound like any of those descriptors at all. The closest thing I can think to compare My Wife’s an Angel to is, like, a more millennial and Appalachian version of Killdozer (if you understand what I mean by this, you’re probably going to hell, by the way)–the Midwestern classic rock devil worship subbed out for a big, wide, empty hollering against rock music simply played wrong. (Read more)
71. The Tisburys – A Still Life Revisited
Release date: April 25th Record label: Double Helix/SofaBurn Genre: Power pop, Americana, heartland rock, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
On A Still Life Revisited, Philadelphia heartland rock group The Tisburys consciously sought to expand their sound beyond the power pop of their last album (2022’s Exile on Main Street), name-dropping ambitious indie rock groups like Frightened Rabbit and The Hold Steady as their targets. This is a bold (and, for most bands in the same boat, would be an ill-advised) decision, but there was a Springsteenian largesse to Exile on Main Street, and A Still Life Revisited subsequently comes off as more of a continuous journey down a familiar road for them. It helps that bandleader Tyler Asay and crew still know their way around a nice, big guitar pop hook too, of course. (Read more)
70. Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears
Release date: April 4th Record label: Phantom Limb Genre: Experimental rap, noise rap, folk, art rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals are a pair of Baltimore rappers who’ve gained a reputation for experimental and political rap over their first couple of records, and A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears isn’t going to disabuse anybody of these notions. On every account, though, the duo spend time out of these boxes–not everything reads as explicitly political, for one, and there are also moments that sound genuinely fun and pop-friendly (and even “rap” is too small of a box to constrain the duo on this record, as there are two straight-up folk songs on A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, among other excursions). (Read more)
69. Lily Seabird – Trash Mountain
Release date: April 4th Record label: Lame-O Genre: Folk rock, alt-country Formats: Vinyl, digital
Trash Mountain was written and recorded much more quickly than Lily Seabird’s previous two albums, and I found myself pretty surprised at where the Vermont singer-songwriter decided to go on her third LP. The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of last year’s Alas, are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain (named after an artist-filled house on a “decommissioned landfill site” where Seabird lived while writing the album) is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis. (Read more)
68. Lake Ruth – Hawking Radiation
Release date: June 6th Record label: Feral Child/Dell’Orso Genre: Psychedelic pop, jazz-pop, space pop, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After releasing two albums in the late 2010s, Lake Ruth had been pretty quiet this decade, but Hawking Radiation is a great reintroduction to a high-quality indie rock band. Recorded by the band themselves with help from SAVAK’s Sohrab Habibion & Michael Jaworski, among others, Hawking Radiation is adventurous, psychedelic, synth-led “space pop”. Lake Ruth differentiate themselves from their like-minded peers via a palpably-embraced jazz side. Plenty of bands like this dabble in “jazz-pop”, yes, but rarely is it so thoroughly a part of a record’s makeup as it is on Hawking Radiation–everything from Matt Schulz’s tireless drumming to Allison Brice’s striking vocals to, well, everything that multi-instrumentalist Hewson Chen is doing is completely in tune with it. (Read more)
67. Craig Finn – Always Been
Release date: April 4th Record label: Tamarac/Thirty Tigers Genre: Singer-songwriter, heartland rock, synthrock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The music of Craig Finn (and his band, The Hold Steady) is already fairly…divisive for the fickle bunch known as indie rock fans, and even those who enjoy Finn’s most acclaimed works seem split on Always Been, his latest solo record. I, for one, am really into it–I’ve felt that Finn’s solo career has benefited from his attempts to grow his music palette (we already know he’s a great storyteller–what else you got?), and Always Been–produced by Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs and leaning further into shined-up, 80s synth-rock than ever before–certainly qualifies. As always, the narratives are dense and no amount of polished production will ever make it “easy listening”. But I still love Finn and Granduciel’s attempts to make it so.
66. Jeff Tobias – One Hundredfold Now in This Age
Release date: October 17th Record label: Repeating Cloud Genre: Art rock, orchestral pop, experimental pop, jazz-pop, synthpop Formats: Vinyl, digital
Musically speaking, One Hundredfold Now in This Age is more orchestral and jazz-indebted that 2022’s Recurring Dream was, but if you enjoyed that album’s smooth yet dense take on pop music, Brooklyn multi-talented artist Jeff Tobias does it again here, more or less. Tobias, (who also plays in art rock group Modern Nature and noise-jazz ensemble Sunwatchers), with an impressive list of guest musicians in tow, turns this collection of strange songs into a single chaotic, vibrant, and seething beast, a sharp, crystal-clear political collection that meets the moment in the most difficult and correct way. (Read more)
65. Charm School – Debt Forever
Release date: January 24th Record label: Surprise Mind Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, garage punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
The 2023 Finite Jest EP introduced Louisville’s Charm School as devotees of Touch & Go Records-influenced post-punk, garage rock, and post-rock. On their first LP, Debt Forever, Charm School haven’t completely shaken up their sound, but they’re doing something a little different here. It’s somehow both looser and angrier; there’s still plenty of that modern Fall-influenced post-punk sound here, but there’s also some San Diego-style post-hardcore/garage rock and turn-of-the-century Washington, D.C. art punk in the mix, too. As the title hints at, Debt Forever spends a good deal of time focusing on financial anxiety and insecurity–whether the alternatively brooding and seething music drew this all-American fear out of frontperson Andrew Sellers or whether his preoccupations with such matters informed the music, there’s no denying the synergy here. (Read more)
64. Teenage Tom Petties – Rally the Tropes
Release date: October 24th Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home Genre: Fuzz pop, power pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
It may seem like there’s a steady stream of new power pop music from Teenage Tom Petties mastermind Tom Brown that he just can’t turn off, but he specifically wrote the songs of Rally the Tropes with a full-band recording session in mind–after releasing a pair of self-recorded albums in the past year and a half, Brown is ready to once again put his songs in his friends’ hands to elevate them. Even more so than the garage-y, punk-y, jangly power pop sound of Rally the Tropes, the band’s presence is felt via Brown’s writing; it’s communal in a winking (read: British) way. Though it may be Brown’s pen to paper, it’s the rest of his band giving him the freedom to fly on Rally the Tropes. (Read more)
63. Maneka – bathes and listens
Release date: October 29th Record label: Topshelf Genre: Art rock, slowcore, experimental rock, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, math rock, Maneka Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
The Washington, D.C.-originating, Philadelphia-based musician Devin McKnight has been making music as Maneka since the mid-2010s; much of the project lands in the realms of slowcore-ish, greyscale indie rock, but Maneka has always been a bit more than that. McKnight’s newest Maneka album, bathes and listens, was recorded with modern slowcore and/or shoegaze go-to producer Alex Farrar, and it subsequently finds the unclassifiable musician making a renewal of vows with distorted, 90s-influenced indie rock. It’s not a full retreat from McKnight’s stranger impulses, but when bathes and listens is supposed to rock, it rocks. (Read more)
62. K9 – Thrills
Release date: July 21st (Digital)/October 3rd (Vinyl) Record label: Who Ya Know Genre: Garage rock, power pop, punk rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette (partial), digital
Thrills is K9’s first full-length album, and the twenty-minute collection delivers on the potential that the Richmond group had previously flashed in smaller doses. They aren’t shy at all about their love of classic college rock and jangle pop, but they carry themselves like a bunch of garage rockers (or even, at time, punks)–the final product is somewhere around the midpoint between Lame-O and Feel It Records. On one end of the spectrum, the vocal interplay between the two lead vocalists and the zippy guitar melodies help K9 pull off “indie pop” or perhaps even twee pop, and on the other side of things, the six-strings lob punk slingshots and the ferocious drumming approaches hardcore tempos. (Read more)
61. Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra – Yikes Almighty
Release date: July 18th Record label: Lauren/Making New Enemies Genre: Folk pop, singer-songwriter, indie pop, twee, slacker pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Dubbed “a calming existential crisis set to children’s toy instruments”, Yikes Almighty is low-key folk-pop music that’s about as “relaxed” and “chill” as its creator could reasonably allow it to be. Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra (aka Walter Etc., aka Dustin Hayes and whoever’s playing with him) get referred to as a “folk punk” act, and I can hear how they might’ve initially been one, but Yikes Almighty is in the realm of underground iconoclasts who fall somewhere between “lo-fi pop” and anti-folk/folk punk. Like a lot of “cult”-ish-type bands, it’s hard to say what, exactly, Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra is, which helps Yikes Almighty sound like a one-of-a-kind album in 2025. (Read more)
60. Strange Magic – Effervescent
Release date: October 3rd Record label: Mama Mañana Genre: Psychedelic pop, indie pop, power pop, dream pop, soft rock Formats: Cassette, digital
New Mexico musician Javier Romero has been toiling away making homespun power pop as Strange Magic since at least the early 2010s, but the prolific artist’s latest record is something of a departure for him. Romero declares Effervescent to be inspired by “New Jack Swing, the golden age of hip-hop, and early, true alternative stylings”–I wouldn’t say that Strange Magic is now closer to those aforementioned genres than, say, the Elvis Costello-ish power pop of Romero’s past records, but there’s definitely some fun and unusual things going on in these songs. Effervescent is equal parts “dreamy, unmoored vibe-pursuing” and “grounded guitar pop”.
59. Miss Bones – Sap Green
Release date: September 13th Record label: Self-released Genre: Indie folk, folk rock, folk-pop, pop rock Formats: Digital
There’s a nice little indie folk/folk rock/pop rock scene happening up in Boston, and Miss Bones’ June Isenhart is right in the middle of it. Sap Green, the debut Miss Bones album, follows a 2023 EP called Grey Lady and features Isenhart backed by members of Lonesome Joan and The Michael Character. Miss Bones’ first album is a rock-solid coming-out party from the could’ve-been adult alternative/folk rock hit “What’s the Story, Mother?” on down: the roots-pop anthem “I-93”, the multi-layered folk-pop closing ballad “Moving Song”, the soaring heartland rock “Sign-Off”–any of these could be the center of Sap Green. We get it all on Sap Green, though, and a handful of more patience-requiring moments, too. (Read more)
58. Spring Onion – Seated Figure
Release date: March 14th Record label: Anything Bagel Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
I’ve listened to the music of Catherine Dwyer extensively thanks to her work as the bassist of Remember Sports, but this year I learned that she’s more than capable of making a great lo-fi/bedroom pop record on her own (well, with the assistance of many great Philadelphia DIY musicians and her Remember Sports bandmates, yes, but Spring Onion is “her” project). Seated Figure, the sophomore Spring Onion album and the first since 2018, is about the death of Dwyer’s father, and her vibrant, meditative version of sunny guitar pop is a surreal but deeply-felt tribute and crystallization of a foggy, difficult-to-describe experience.
57. The Bird Calls – Melody Trail
Release date: February 7th Record label: Ruination Genre: Folk rock, soft rock, singer-songwriter, synthpop, sophisti-pop Formats: CD, digital
2025’s album from Sam Sodomsky and his prolific project The Bird Calls finds the New York singer-songwriter (and music writer) putting together something a bit different, comparatively speaking. Melody Trail was assembled entirely by Sodomsky and producer Ryan Weiner, and while these songs certainly sound like they were written and sung by the same artist who made last year’s casual country-folk Old Faithful, the duo give Melody Trail a more polished pop reading. It’s a path down which many of Sodomsky’s influences–Dan Bejar, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen–have wandered to rewarding ends, but Melody Trail retains the greatest strength of Sodomsky’s previous work: namely, that he’s able to evoke the art of such idiosyncratic, larger-than-life figures while coming off more or less as a regular guy. (Read more)
56. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band – New Threats from the Soul
Release date: July 25th Record label: Sophomore Lounge/Tough Love Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, country rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
I don’t need to sing the praises of Ryan Davis as fervently these days, because the rest of the “music writing world” has finally caught up to his brilliance. If you liked the expansive alt-country sagas of Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band’s 2023 breakout album Dancing on the Edge, I’ve got good news with regards to what you’ll hear on New Threats from the Soul. As always, the incomparable Davis rolls deceptively simple country rock along with his rambling observations and lets us sort the resultant rich texts out. The confusion by some at Davis’ whole deal upon his ascent has been amusing, but not as amusing as listening to New Threats from the Soul.
55. Peter Peter Hughes – Half-Staff Blues
Release date: September 5th Record label: Tired Media Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, garage pop, singer-songwriter Formats: Digital
After stepping down from his position as the longtime (we’re talking since the 1990s, more or less) bassist for the Mountain Goats last year, Peter Hughes was finally faced with the time to make his first solo album in a decade and a half. The former Shrimper Records stalwart, to my delight, decided to go to Australia and make one of them Aussie indie pop/post-punk kinda albums; recorded with members of The Ocean Party, Pop Filter, and Partner Look, Half-Staff Blues translates Hughes’ propensity for unflinching left-wing commentary and melancholic meandering into the realms of snappy rhythms and bright and garish pop get-ups.
54. SAVAK – SQUAWK!
Release date: May 30th Record label: Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning Genre: Garage rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
I’m pleased to report that Brooklyn’s finest prolific veteran-studded indie rock group SAVAK still sound exactly like themselves on their seventh album, SQUAWK!. A tight ten songs and thirty-five minutes, the album finds Sohrab Habibion, Michael Jaworski, and Matt Schulz continuing to hammer out their by-now quite recognizable style of college rock, post-punk, and garage rock–tough but polished, familiar but surprising, catchy as ever. Detours into New York electric noise rock collages, more overt Lou Reed worship, and atmospheric pieces are infrequent but always done well. If you’re already part of the SAVAK society, I doubt you’ll need more convincing that they’ve done it yet again–but there’s always room for more. (Read more)
53. Club Night – Joy Coming Down
Release date: May 2nd Record label: Tiny Engines Genre: Art rock, math rock, emo Formats: Vinyl, digital
There were plenty of groups in the late 2010s making music that could be described as some combination of “math rock”, “indie rock”, and “emo”, but the way that Club Night do it–an overall hugeness, jittery art-punk instrumentation, strange but welcome synth-centric additions–just works better than the others. It was enough to keep the band regularly on my mind in the six-year gap between their first album, What Life, and Joy Coming Down, which picks up right where Club Night left off–not that a band like this can ever really be predictable, but their second album packs as much of what makes this group special as it can in its forty-two minutes. Club Night alternate between sounding like a real, rumbling live rock band and a bunch of artists frantically sculpting something in a gigantic studio throughout the album. Like a good math rock record, a lot of these change-ups in Joy Coming Down happen within the same song. (Read more)
52. FACS – Wish Defense
Release date: February 7th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Wish Defense was the final album recorded by Steve Albini before his sudden passing last year, but its tragic circumstances do not obscure the fact that this LP is actually a rebirth and revitalization of FACS. The Chicago art rock trio welcome back original guitarist Jonathan Van Herik for the first time since their 2018 debut Negative Houses, now playing bass after founding bassist Brian Case moved over to guitar to replace him. 2023’s Still Life in Decay found FACS pushing and probing their sound to the outer margins of “rock music”, a direction seemingly necessary for the band to continue to sound inspired and forward-glancing. The reintroduction of Van Herik seems to have changed this calculus, allowing FACS to find heretofore undiscovered life in the realms of (relatively) brief bursts of power trio post-punk and noise rock. (Read more)
51. Julian Cubillos – Julian Cubillos
Release date: July 25th Record label: Ruination Genre: Folk-pop, psychedelic pop, indie pop, soft rock, synthpop Formats: Cassette, digital
Julian Cubillos has contributed to records by everyone from Okkervil River and Joe Henry to Field Guides and Scree in recent years, but Julian Cubillos is the Queens musician’s first solo album in seven years. Julian Cubillos is just an absolute blast of pop music–it’s short and pretty straightforward in its instrumental choices, but Cubillos has jammed so much stuff into it nonetheless. It’s a tight collection, wrapping its ten songs up in under thirty minutes with hardly a wasted moment. Cubillos has the touch of a studio rat and auteur (Wilson, Rundgren, Prince, et cetera), and though he’s an understated frontperson, he has the material and attitude to justify a mini-whirlwind through funk, folk, psychedelia, and R&B (among other stops). (Read more)
It looks like we’ve found ourselves in December, which means that I find myself putting the finishing touches on Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of the Year. Today, albums 51 through 100 are being posted, and tomorrow (Tuesday, December 9th), the top 50 will be revealed.
As always, thank you to anyone who reads this blog, anyone who’s shared Rosy Overdrive with others, and anyone who’s made it part of their lives or uses it in any way. I’m grateful I can share the music I’ve liked with other people and I don’t take it for granted that a small but real amount of people care about that.
Here is a playlist featuring all of the records from this list that are available on streaming services: on Spotify, on Tidal. Separate lists for EPs and compilations/reissues will go up over the next couple of weeks, along with a few more Pressing Concerns. To read about more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And you can also be part of the blog’s year-end rundown by voting in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll! Anyway, without further ado, let’s get to the list.
Release date: August 29th Record label: Bella Union Genre: Chamber pop, folk rock, post-rock, sophisti-pop, psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After getting more abstract and post-rock/chamber music-influenced over the course of four records, British art rock group Modern Nature decided it was time to start from scratch with The Heat Warps. The vast blank space of previous Modern Nature LPs hasn’t completely dissipated, but the quartet have allowed more of it than ever to fill with Jeff Tobias and Jim Wallis’ steady rhythms and Tara Cunningham and Jack Cooper’s snaking guitars. Even the album’s cover art–a warm yellow, depicting the four players–indicates a change to something more approachable and evenly-split. (Read more)
99. Lone Striker – Lone Striker
Release date: March 14th Record label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud/Hidden Bay Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop, power pop, folk pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
As the bandleader of Teenage Tom Petties, Tom Brown worships at the altars of lo-fi power pop, college rock, and jangly indie pop. Lone Striker is an attempt by the Bath, England musician to do something markedly different: the project’s self-titled debut album was recorded almost entirely by Brown at home utilizing “wobbly doo-wop samples, off-kilter soul drum loops and found sounds” as well as his typical indie rock instrumentation. Drawing from psychedelic and atmospheric-pop 90s indie groups like Sparklehorse and Mercury Rev, Lone Striker works because Brown is able to speak the same fuzzy, half-remembered, mid-century Americana language that those bands also spoke (somehow, despite being British). (Read more)
98. Jordan Krimston – Count It All Joy
Release date: January 31st Record label: DHCR Genre: Emo-pop, pop punk, indie pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
San Diego musician Jordan Krimston has popped up here and there on material from Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon and Oso Oso (for whom he’s currently the touring drummer), among others. The prolific musician has kept up a steady solo career in addition to instrumental and recording work, and his most recent album, Count It All Joy, is a blast. As one might expect from an Oso Osociate, it’s roughly in the realm of “emo/pop punk/power pop”, although that doesn’t quite capture the adventurous, ambitious pop music contained herein. Chirping synths, math rock-y drums, bright emo-pop, electronic undercurrents–Count It All Joy is an inspired combination.
97. Jobber – Jobber to the Stars
Release date: August 22nd Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Fuzz rock, alternative rock, grunge-pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
Brooklyn’s Jobber burst onto the scene in 2022 with an exciting and inspired combination of 90s alt-rock fuzz, huge pop hooks, and professional wrestling-themed writing in their debut EP, all of which continue to be found on the band’s first album, Jobber to the Stars. After three years, the band’s first record as a full quartet pulls off the challenge of expanding their sound admirably. They put their bigger stage to use throughout Jobber to the Stars, keeping the smart hooks intact but adding heavy lumbering alternative rock moments and zippy, jagged Exploding in Sound-style underground rock into their sound. (Read more)
96. Open Head – What Is Success
Release date: January 24th Record label: Wharf Cat Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, art punk, no wave Formats: Vinyl, digital
Kingston art punk group Open Head had grand ambitions for their second LP, naming hip hop and electronic music as equally influential on it as punk and art rock. Of course, any adventurous and forward-thinking band ought to be looking outside their own genre for ideas, and just because the resultant What Is Success is “merely” a rock album doesn’t mean that Open Head weren’t successful in making something that genuinely feels informed by things other than “merely” post-punk and noise rock. Although, to be clear, I do hear a lot of good noise rock and post-punk bands in What Is Success’ sound, too–New York no wave, Exploding in Sound-associated post-hardcore, and Rust Belt noise rock all likely had a hand in where Open Head end up here. (Read more)
95. Allo Darlin’ – Bright Nights
Release date: July 11th Record label: Slumberland/Fika Recordings Genre: Folk-pop, indie pop, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After releasing three records that received just about as much attention and adoration that vintage-style indie pop music was capable of receiving in the early 2010s, London quartet Allo Darlin’ decided to hang it up, a decision that thankfully only lasted a few years. On their first album in more than a decade, Allo Darlin’ do indeed sound like an indie pop band who’ve allowed themselves to age–somewhere between the stalwart folk rock of The Innocence Mission and the elder-statespeople twee pop of The Catenary Wires, Bright Nights is the record that the four of them needed to take some time off to make. (Read more)
94. Kilynn Lunsford – Promiscuous Genes
Release date: May 16th Record label: Feel It Genre: Art punk, post-punk, no wave Formats: Vinyl, digital
New Jersey’s Kilynn Lunsford has been playing in bands in and around Philadelphia for two decades now, most notably the wild art punk group Taiwan Housing Project. Lunsford’s latest solo album, Promiscuous Genes, is on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. It’s hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. (Read more)
93. Exploding Flowers – Watermelon/Peacock
Release date: March 21st Record label: Meritorio/Leather Jacket Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psychedelic pop, Paisley Underground Formats: Vinyl, digital
Hailing from ground zero of the 1980s “Paisley Underground” movement, Los Angeles’ Exploding Flowers do indeed evoke the loose, psychedelic side of this strain of American jangly college rock. Watermelon/Peacock offers up everything from hook-fest power pop to pure psychedelia to throwback San Francisco garage rock to 60s-style keys and organs throughout its fourteen tracks and forty-odd minutes. Sometimes hazy, sometimes bright and vibrant, Watermelon/Peacock is a compelling and generous Americana record arising from one of the country’s largest population centers. (Read more)
92. Bones Shredder – Morbid Little Thing
Release date: September 19th Record label: Sunken Teeth Genre: Pop punk, power pop Formats: Digital
Randy Moore is Mr. Bones Shredder: a pop punk artist with a dark cabaret aesthetic, a horror-themed musical vampire-mad-scientist whose Frankenstein’s monster is a Morrissey that only knows how to write Ramones/Misfits songs, an Alkaline Trio associate, and more. The San Jose musician’s new album, Morbid Little Thing, takes these ingredients and makes one of the best power pop albums of the year with them. You’ll hear a bit of that darker Chicago pop punk sound–Smoking Popes and, yes, Alkaline Trio–in Morbid Little Thing’s ten songs, but it’s equally suburban Fountains of Wayne-esque power pop and big old Blue Album power chords. (Read more)
91. The Laughing Chimes – Whispers in the Speech Machine
Release date: January 31st Record label: Slumberland Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, college rock, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Athens, Ohio-based jangle pop group The Laughing Chimes have doubled in size since their 2022 Zoo Avenue EP, and their sophomore album Whispers in the Speech Machine reflects a more expansive sound. Whispers in the Speech Machine adds moodier, more post-punk and even goth-pop-indebted elements to The Laughing Chimes–new member Ella Franks’ synth contributions are given a prominent place on these eight songs, and they’re key to elevating the quartet to this next chapter. Even though Whispers in the Speech Machine is a short album (under thirty minutes), it radiates ideas and layers as many of them on top of each other as it can. (Read more)
90. Good Luck – Big Dreams, Mister
Release date: October 17th Record label: Lauren/Specialist Subject Genre: Indie pop, pop punk, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
The Bloomington, Indiana trio Good Luck released two albums before breaking up in 2012, quietly bowing out of the indie rock/punk underground right before the “scene” began to be dotted with bands making some similar combination of earnest Midwestern indie rock, pop punk, and power pop. Good Luck has only grown in stature in their absence, but their first album in fourteen years doesn’t really feel burdened with any weight: the communal flair, nonstop pop hooks, and sneakily impressive guitars from Big Dreams, Mister‘s opening track “Into the Void” on down lets it feel like no time at all has passed. (Read more)
89. Shaki Tavi – Minor Slip
Release date: August 15th Record label: Felte Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, digital
Shaki Tavi bandleader Leon Mosburg describes dealing with “burnout and disillusionment” in the three-year gap between his group’s self-titled debut album and Minor Slip, and a desire to do something “fun” with his music brought him back from the brink. Minor Slip doesn’t abandon the hard-hitting wall-of-sound shoegaze of Shaki Tavi, but the melodic and pop undercurrents of that first LP are closer than ever to the surface now. With dream pop, psychedelia, and electronica all sitting next to the blasts of guitars, Mosburg and company are now ready to explore an exciting style of “pop music”. (Read more)
88. The High Water Marks – Consult the Oracle
Release date: May 16th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Fuzz pop, power pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
The High Water Marks began in the mid-2000s as a trans-Atlantic partnership between founding Elephant 6 member and longtime Apples in Stereo drummer Hilarie Sidney in Kentucky and Per Ole Bratset in Oslo–and some twenty years later, the psychedelic power pop band is as active as it’s ever been. Consult the Oracle is The High Water Marks’ fourth album since 2020; perhaps it’s a tinge more laid-back than 2023’s Your Next Wolf was, a chance for The High Water Marks to let their slightly jangly, slightly psychedelic pop music marinate a little more than usual. It’s a subtle distinction, though: The High Water Marks aren’t a chamber pop group all of a sudden, and their 60s garage rock influences are still felt throughout Consult the Oracle. (Read more)
87. Dropkick – Primary Colours
Release date: February 7th Record label: Bobo Integral/Sound Asleep Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Whether it’s with The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, his Andrew Taylor & The Harmonizers project, or his oldest band, Dropkick, nobody does jangly, Teenage Fanclub-evoking wistful guitar pop like Scotland’s Andrew Taylor does. If you liked his previous records in this vein (2021’s twin LPs Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers and TBWTPN’s Songs from Another Life are highlights for those unfamiliar), you’re going to enjoy Dropkick’s latest album, Primary Colours, too. And if you’re new to Taylor, Primary Colours is a great place to start–there’s just a little bit of ragged power pop shot through this otherwise incredibly-refined jangle pop album.
86. Dave Scanlon – Greenland Shark
Release date: February 25th Record label: Self-released Genre: Experimental folk, post-rock, ambient Formats: Digital (streaming)
Indie folk artist Dave Scanlon’s latest album is intriguing both in its subject matter and its release format–for the former, Greenland Shark is about the titular North Atlantic/Arctic animal “and [his] obsession with it”, and for the latter, the album was, for much of this year, only available to listen to via greenlandshark.tv, a website designed specifically for it. Greenland Shark is perhaps a bit more “experimental” than Scanlon’s previous solo albums, but the hallmarks of the singer-songwriter–pensive, Phil Elverum-esque talk-singing over subtle but often unpredictable music–remain intact in this journey to a thousand meters below the Arctic surface. (Read more)
85. Tony Molina – On This Day
Release date: November 14th Record label: Slumberland/Speakeasy Studios SF/Olde Fade Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
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. On This Day leans into Molina’s 60s folk-pop influences, and ends up in the realm of the more languid side of Elephant 6, too. (Read more)
84. The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie
Release date: August 29th Record label: Anti- Genre: Power pop, indie pop, The Beths Formats: Vinyl, digital
Everybody loves The Beths, the scrappy yet polished indie pop quartet from Auckland, New Zealand led by Elizabeth Stokes. Health-based writer’s block suffered by Stokes since 2022’s Expert in a Dying Field makes it sound like Straight Line Was a Lie was their most difficult record to make, and I can believe it based on how it sounds. The melancholy that’s always been at the periphery of their sound is explored more thoroughly here than ever before, and it’s easy to imagine a band as tight and well-sculpted as The Beths struggling to let some of these songs sit as unadorned as they ended up sounding on-record. The Beths have always been a band that seems to take seriously the placement and inclusion of every track on their records, and Straight Line Was a Lie is (in what’s becoming a more and more understandable compliment) a Beths album through and through. (Read more)
83. (T-T)b – Beautiful Extension Cord
Release date: April 4th Record label: Disposable America Genre: Fuzz rock, synthpop, power pop, chiptune, slacker rock, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Boston’s (T-T)b incorporate chiptune and video game soundtrack instrumentation into their music as an accent, the way one might use synths or horns. Beautiful Extension Cord is the band’s second album and first new music of any kind in four years, and (T-T)b have evolved in the meantime, I’d say. It seems impossible for chiptune to ever be “subtly” baked into one’s music, but if it is, it probably sounds like this album–still quite visible, but integrated more seamlessly than ever into the group’s slacker rock, 90s alt-rock, and bedroom indie rock-evoking sound. Between the big old guitars, the chirping 8-bit sounds, and JM Dussault’s plain but capable vocals, there’s somehow a cosmic element to (T-T)b’s indie rock. (Read more)
82. Alan Sparhawk & Trampled by Turtles – Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles
Release date: May 30th Record label: Sub Pop Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles is as tough of a listen as anyone familiar with the tragedy experienced by the former of the two artists would expect, although it’s “tough” in an entirely different way than last year’s confrontational electronic Sparhawk solo album White Roses, My God. An unlikely but ultimately very fitting team-up between two of Duluth, Minnesota’s most prominent acts, this album ends up synthesizing the glacial-paced, beautiful slowcore of the early work of Sparhawk’s Low and the more traditional folk music of Trampled by Turtles. The latter band’s bluegrass-trained sound is well-equipped to take these songs to the brink of the abyss, but Sparhawk steadies the ship with (one imagines) everything he’s got in him.
81. Gaytheist – The Mustache Stays
Release date: February 21st Record label: Hex Genre: Noise rock, noise punk, hardcore punk, metallic hardcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
A band squarely in the middle of the “noise rock” landscape with punk energy, metal chops, and a sense of humor, Portland, Oregon trio Gaytheist brought with them a breath of fresh air in 2020 with How Long Have I Been on Fire?, and they’ve been sorely missed in the five years since. The wait is over, however, as Gaytheist returned this year with The Mustache Stays, an album that reenters the fray with a pure cannonball-like energy. Gaytheist sequence the album in the most dangerous way possible, throwing a bunch of brief, explosive noise-punk blasts at us in a row before sneaking in a few surprises (like, for example, a surprisingly faithful eight-minute cover of The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Silverfuck”) in the back half of the LP. (Read more)
80. Now – Now Does the Trick
Release date: May 16th Record label: K/Perennial Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
The second album from the difficultly-named Bay Area trio Now (and their first for their new labels, K and Perennial) is called Now Does the Trick, and it’s a different beast than their debut (but no less strong of an LP). The psychedelic, kraut-y mud of 2023’s And Blue Space Is Burning Noon is turned down and the jangle pop guitars and hooks are turned up–Now sound like they’re aiming for the little big-time here. Now are still a bunch of weirdos, though–lo-fi, sparkling jangle can’t paper over all of that. Even though the dozen songs of Now Does the Trick total just a bit over a half-hour, it feels like they encompass so much more than that; Now eat their craft-sharpening cake and get to keep some skeletons in their collective closet, too. (Read more)
79. Beauty – I’d Do Almost Anything for You
Release date: August 1st Record label: Strange View Genre: Power pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Red Bank, New Jersey quartet Beauty have been making music together since 2018, but I’d Do Almost Anything for You is only their first full-length album. Beauty’s debut LP is nothing less than some of the finest 90s power pop revivalism I’ve heard in recent memory, harkening back to a time where acts like Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, and Fountains of Wayne were able to smuggle Cheap Trick/Beatles-level hooks and huge guitars onto the periphery of the mainstream of so-called “alternative rock”. Beauty don’t overthink it, but they don’t miss anything either: where there should be harmonies, there are harmonies, and where there ought to be a nice big guitar riff, a sharp solo, or some well-placed handclaps, they’re all right on time. (Read more)
78. Supreme Joy – 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps
Release date: July 11th Record label: VOD Genre: Garage rock, noise rock, experimental rock, post-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Denver musician Ryan Wong made a lo-fi/basement record called Joy under the name Supreme Joy in 2021, but now Supreme Joy is a four-piece band, and they’ve taken the opportunity of a bigger and louder sophomore album (the incredibly-titled 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps) to become a straight-up wild, noisy, and experimental rock group. Somehow 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps is only twenty-six minutes long, but it feels like a lengthy, arduous, and exhilarating journey nonetheless. There’s plenty of Sonic Youth in Supreme Joy’s DNA, filtering New York art rock moves through the lens of Wong’s background in West Coast garage punk. (Read more)
77. Knowso – Hypnotic Smack
Release date: August 1st Record label: Sorry State Genre: Garage punk, post-punk, egg punk, noise rock, no wave Formats: Vinyl, digital
In 2024, I called the Cleveland punk band Knowso’s third album, Pulsating Gore, “serious-feeling, blunt garage-post-punk”, and I did indeed get around to using the terms “egg punk” and “Devo-core” to describe the group. Much of this applies once again to the fourth Knowso album, Hypnotic Smack; they’re apparently down to a duo for this one, with longtime drummer Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings) being Nathan Ward’s only sidekick now. Maybe Knowso’s violent, dead-eyed version of egg punk is a little more stripped-down on Hypnotic Smack, but it’s not overly noticeable–Ward and Gerycz are, apparently, more than capable of whipping up something strikingly chaotic on their own. (Read more)
76. The Chop – It’s the Chop
Release date: August 1st Record label: Wrong Speed Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art pop, no wave Formats: Cassette, digital
Gemma Fleet and Andrew Doig (aka Robert Sotelo) are most well-known these days for making up one-half of the scrappy Scottish indie pop/post-punk quartet Dancer, which have been going strong ever since their early 2023 debut EP. Perhaps their new project, The Chop, is intended to be a more “low-stakes” output source; even compared to the more streamlined side of Dancer’s art pop, It’s the Chop is a minimal affair, with simple drum machines, bass riffs, and synth interjections all used fairly sparingly. Fleet’s vocals are much less inclined to go “off the rails”; she’s still doing that conversational thing she does in Dancer very well, but it’s less “mile a minute” and more “pensive”, befitting of this odd little album. (Read more)
This Thursday, we’re taking a look at four records out tomorrow, December 5th: new albums from Laika Songs and Evening Glass, a new EP from Soft on Crime, and an archival collection from Mercyland. If you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s Pressing Concerns covered Earwig, Sting Pain Index, Dietz, and Addicus, and the November 2025 playlist went up on Tuesday), check those 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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!
Mercyland – Mercyland
Release date: December 5th Record label: Propeller Sound Recordings Genre: Punk rock, garage punk, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Radio Thieves
Georgia musician David Barbe is probably most famous for his role as the bassist in Bob Mould’s (recently reunited) early-1990s power trio Sugar, and his work has been widely heard thanks to a prolific career as a producer (making records with everyone from the Drive-By Truckers to Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires to Bambara). Before any of that, though, Barbe was immersed in the thriving 1980s Athens, Georgia music scene, forming a band called Mercyland in 1985. They only released one album while they were active, 1989’s No Feet on the Cowling, but another album’s worth of songs they recorded shortly before breaking up in 1991 was finally released in 2022 by Propeller Sound Recordings as We Never Lost a Single Game.
Once again, Mercyland and Propeller Sound have teamed up for an archival release, but this time it’s a collection focusing on the early years of the band. Originally recorded between 1985 and 1987, the eleven songs that make up Mercyland represent the earliest version of the group that’s been officially released yet. Subsequently, it’s a raw and particularly punk-y look at the band, before they’d go and (relatively) clean up their sound on later recordings. Mercyland reflects a band right in tune with the 1980s underground indie rock catalogued in Our Band Could Be Your Life–Hüsker Dü, with its mix of noise, punk energy, and skewed pop songwriting, is the closest analogue (and I’m not just saying that because of the Mould connection), but Dinosaur Jr., The Replacements, and their home city’s college rock/power pop sound are all applicable at different points, too. Not everything on Mercyland is as hard-charging as the high-octane punk opening track “Amerigod”, but garage-y pop songs like “Black on Black on Black”, “Radio Thieves”, and “Vomit Clown” are charming in their own way (they’d fit nicely on a block together with later Paul Westerberg, The Lemonheads, and earlier Buffalo Tom). Maybe Mercyland were being pulled in a couple of different directions in these early recordings, but that’s the same push and pull that makes, say, Hüsker Dü such an interesting band all these years later. (Bandcamp link)
Laika Songs – I Can Feel an Ending
Release date: December 5th Record label: Two Worlds/Galaxy Train Genre: Folk rock, dream pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Press Coverage
Brooklyn musician Evan Brock (previously of the quartet Neil Jung) debuted his solo project Laika Songs last year with an LP called Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light; inspired by Trace Mountains and Mount Eerie, he traded his last band’s fuzzy guitar pop for wide-eyed indie-Americana. A second Laika Songs album began taking shape very quickly, and here we are with I Can Feel an Ending, for which Brock assembled an impressive group of backing musicians including Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Kris Hayes (Labrador, Neil Jung) on guitars, Dominic Angelella on bass, and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty) on drums. The resultant album is an incredibly comfortable one: it’s just as large as Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light is and has at least as many great pop moments, but it’s even less concerned with presenting them punctually or linearly.
The first half of I Can Feel an Ending is the more “difficult” one, and a good deal of that feeling likely has to do with Brock’s decision to open the album not with any of the half-dozen or so undeniable guitar pop anthems here but rather “Visitor”, a hushed five-minute slow-builder. “Shaking” (which marries a wobbly Neil Young/Jason Molina-esque skeleton with lush indie folk rock) and “Arpeggiator” (which is aptly titled) are the “hits” of the A-side, but so many of the most immediate tracks on of I Can Feel an Ending come in its second half: the gentle power pop charms of “Optimism Shame”, the shimmering guitar leads of “The Plan”, the short, to-the-point, imminently repeatable “Press Coverage”. It makes sense that I Can Feel an Ending finishes with a song called “I Get Lost”, a synth-shaded moody rocker that doesn’t really sound like the rest of the album but fits in well enough. It’s an odd note on which to end, but Laika Songs feel their way there just as they do through the rest of the album. (Bandcamp link)
Soft on Crime – Noz Mat
Release date: December 5th Record label: Eats It Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, garage rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Whistle and I’ll Come to You
Dublin trio Soft on Crime have been one of the most reliable purveyors of power, jangle, and psychedelic pop ever since their debut album, 2023’s New Suite (one of my favorites of that year). Dylan Philips, Padraig O’Reilly, and Lee Casey have since offered up a “rarities” compilation and a proper sophomore album, and they don’t let 2025 pass them by without new music either thanks to the five-song Noz Mat cassette EP. It’s slighter than the last couple of Soft on Crime records, sure, but that doesn’t lessen the thrill of hearing a handful more bursts of guitar pop straight from the garage: early on we get “Relativity USA”, a sloppy garage rocker that takes a second to get to the Beach Boys-inspired payoff hinted by its title (but it sure does get there), and Noz Mat actually seems to get stronger and more solid as it goes on between the mid-tempo jangle-rock clinics of “London Billy”, “Anthologist”, and “Whistle and I’ll Come to You”. The bounciness of the former of those three is slightly tempered by the more restrained moments found in the EP’s final two songs, although only “Whistle and I’ll Come to You” could even be partially described as a “ballad”. It’s “pastoral’’, but only because that’s what makes sense for that hook. Soft on Crime are experts at putting in the little bit of extra effort required to make the sell by this point. (Bandcamp link)
Evening Glass – Postcards
Release date: December 5th Record label: Crazy Ha! Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, folk rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Wait Until 3
Sonoma, California quartet Evening Glass released their debut EP, Steady Motion, in late 2022; the record’s half-dozen songs established the group (vocalist/guitarist Zachary Carroll, bassist Thomas, guitarist Chris Miller, and drummer PJ Hakimi) as impressive practitioners of the quieter, gentler side of jangle pop. A couple of towns over from San Francisco and Oakland, Evening Glass feels slightly removed from those cities’ indie pop scene but still close enough to be enjoyed by fans of it. Evening Glass’ first full-length album, Postcards, is full of the laid-back melodies and lackadaisical Flying Nun tempos we heard on Steady Motion, confirming that the band haven’t lost their charm in the intervening three years. Steady Motion lull us with four sleepy but quite tangible pop songs (I like “Wait Until 3” or “Natural Light” the best, but they’re all solid) before the crashing fuzzed-out guitars of the appropriately-titled “Stumblin’ Stoned” gives us the album’s first curveball (it’s also pretty New Zealand of them, honestly). “Small Crooked Smile” is also just a little more feedback-drenched than one would expect from Evening Glass, and “Stabilize Yr Brainwaves” ends Steady Motion by adding just a hint of garage-y muscle to the fuzz-pop. There are enough glimpses beneath the surface of Evening Glass to add a bit of mystique, but not so much that it detracts from the glistening cool water above. (Bandcamp link)
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 Receiverintroduced 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 Beston 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.
Rosy Overdrive 