This is the Thursday Pressing Concerns! It’s got new albums from Hour, Song People, and Classic Traffic, plus a reissue of an album from The Smashing Times. Earlier this week, the September 2026 playlist went up, so check that out too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Hour – Ghost Bridge
Release date: October 9th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Post-rock, contemporary classical, orchestral, chamber music Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: So Long Without a Word
We checked up on the chamber music/contemporary classical ensemble Hour in 2024 when they put out their fourth studio album, Ease the Work, and then again in February of last year when they put out the live album Subminiature. While releasing folk-leaning music under his own name, drumming in the alt-country group Friendship, and co-running Dear Life Records, the Philadelphia-based Michael Cormier-O’Leary has nonetheless found time to lead Hour in a brand-new collection of music in the form of their fifth LP, Ghost Bridge. While Ease the Work was made in Maine, Cormier-O’Leary built the latest Hour album close to home, calling on a familiar group of collaborators to realize these compositions: Peter Gill (2nd Grade, Friendship) on electric bass, Frank Meadows (Fust, Dear Life Records) and Pat Keen (Flora Hibberd) on upright bass, Abi Reimold on electric guitar, Em Downing (Buttchug 69) on violin, Peter McLaughlin (Jordan Holtz, Dead Gowns) on drums, and Lucas Knapp (2nd Grade, Nina Ryser, Joey Nebulous) on synth and pump organ, to name about half of them.
Hour has always felt somewhat related to 1990s Chicago post-rock, and Tortoise and Jim O’Rouke are indeed cited as influences on Ghost Bridge. The record’s title apparently comes from an “an unrealized movie concept” of Cormier-O’Leary’s, and Ghost Bridge is subsequently more inspired by soundtrack work–in his essay about the album, Office Culture’s Winston Cook Wilson also references ECM Records and Van Dyke Parks. Longer compositions like “So Long Without a Word” and the title track are slow and expressive, languid with well-timed moments of dissonance (a key aspect of Ghost Bridge more outwardly apparent in the relatively shorter “Centralia” and the ever-so-slightly rousing “Pearls”). Heeyoon Won (who’s also contributed to Gill and Cormier-O’Leary’s solo projects) is brought forward to sing vocals on “Sky Is Blue”, a lovely orchestral/chamber pop song that rises from and recedes back into the larger Hour soundscape with smoothness. Ghost Bridge is another strong entry into the Hour discography, moving forward from the Ease the Work/Subminiature era subtly but deliberately. (Bandcamp link)
The Smashing Times – Come Along with Me
Release date: October 9th Record label: K/Perennial Genre: Jangle pop, lo-fi pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Shade, The Changing Man
From 2021 to 2024, Baltimore group The Smashing Times put out four superb albums of vintage jangle pop and folk rock, evolving into a five-piece band led by Thee Jasmine Monk on guitar and vocals. Before that hot streak, though, came Come Along with Me–The Smashing Times’ debut album, initially released only on cassette in 2019 and featuring an earlier lineup of Monk, Alex (AKA Zelda-Anais), and former member Ole Johnson. The Smashing Times’ labels of K and Perennial (who’ve put out their two most recent LPs) have given Come Along with Me a reissue and first-ever vinyl and CD pressings, augmenting the original seven-song cassette with four previously-unreleased tracks from between the time of this album and 2021’s Summer Inside.
Come Along with Me is a peek into The Smashing Times still in the process of developing their signature sound. That striking mixture of hazy, murky psychedelia, pastoral British ambience, and undeniable guitar pop expertise isn’t apparent yet, but Come Along with Me does prove that Thee Jasmine Monk could already write excellent jangle pop songs at this point. Compared to, say, Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys, Come Along with Me is a much more streamlined and straightforward listen, although they’re still a bit more fractured than your more typical jangle pop revivalists. Any band who starts their first record with a handful of timeless-sounding guitar pop songs in “Shade, The Changing Man”, “Romani Coats”, and “The Lemon King” is most certainly going somewhere, and one that’s also willing and able to stretch their 60s pop rock out in “Edward Gorey Stories” and “Noburu’s Eyes” is probably going to blaze a trail or two. This expanded version of Come Along with Me is a worthy part of The Smashing Times’ story, one that fulfilled much of this promise in the first half of this decade and one that hopefully opens a new chapter sooner than later. (Bandcamp link)
Song People – Tho I Seem Tame
Release date: October 9th Record label: Strange Mono Genre: Post-punk, jangle pop, college rock, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Silver Flag
Song People is vocalist Shaina Kapeluck, guitarist Darian Scatton, and bassist Benjamin Schurr, a trio of Philadelphia indie music veterans who’ve played in each other’s bands (like Ruah, Hallowed Bells, and Br’er) and contributed to other Philly acts (like Luna Honey and Nyxy Nyx) over the past decade or so. The trio’s debut album, Like Somebody Calling Your Name, came out on Don Giovanni in 2024, and their sophomore LP Tho I Seem Tame has followed a little under two years later. Very few new bands sound like how Song People sound on Tho I Seem Tame, even though I write about a lot of bands who play “jangle pop”, “folk rock”, and even “college rock”.
Tho I Seem Tame reminds me a lot of 10,000 Maniacs, who perhaps similarly built beautiful pop rock (with bits of dream, jangle, and post-punk) via a few talented musical ringers and a striking lead singer (in this case, Kapeluck, who “began her music life as a ballad singer, drawing from traditions of the British Isles, the US and Maritime Canada”). The more “ethereal” and polished sides of Siouxsie and the Banshees are also present, as well as Sinead O’Connor and many of the influences listed for Like Somebody Calling Your Name (Fairport Convention, R.E.M., Talk Talk). Schurr’s post-punk bass work and Scatton’s jangly guitar playing contribute to the gentle “push and pull” feeling we get in songs like “Unwritten Rules” and “Silver Flag”, and Kapeluck’s background very clearly informs her writing in “Mead Hall” (which begins with “I keep coming back to the mead hall, knowing I might be slain”) and “Intervene on My Behalf” (“…for I am weary”, pleads the narrator). Song People virtually have this lane to themselves right now, and Tho I Seem Tame sounds like they’re thriving in it. (Bandcamp link)
Classic Traffic – Real Music
Release date: October 9th Record label: Same View Genre: Power pop, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Wanna Wish
Classic Traffic are a power pop trio from New Jersey; they formed in 2022, the same year they released their self-titled debut album, and two more LPs followed in 2023 and 2024. Real Music is the fourth full-length from the trio (guitarist/vocalist Andy Altadonna, drummer/lyricist Dante Fotino, and bassist Michael “Dogmeat” Svehla) and their first for Baltimore label Same View Records (formerly known as Strange View Records), who’ve notably put out records from Powerwasher, Beauty, and Robber Robber lately. Beauty’s 2024 album I’d Do Almost Anything for You is especially worth a mention, as Classic Traffic share plenty of similarities with that act: they’re both trios, both from Jersey, and they both share an obvious reverence for 1990s power pop. I referenced Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, and Matthew Sweet when I wrote about I’d Do Almost Anything for You, all of whom very much apply to Real Music, too. If there’s a difference, I think the fuzz rock/pop punk/hard rock edge is more pronounced in Classic Traffic’s music–it sort of sounds like if Thin Lizzy loomed just as large over the Blue Album as the Beach Boys do. Fans of the aforementioned Sloan will love the electric crunchy power pop of “There With You” and “Wanna Wish”, and the relatively quieter songs on the album like “Ghost’s Host” and “It Leaves Your Mind” are nonetheless marked by exciting guitar work. Real Music is quite short, but like the best new power pop bands of this decade, Classic Traffic jam a bunch of great pop music in this short package. (Bandcamp link)
Hey there, everyone! Check out the September playlist below. We’ve got two hours’ worth of mostly new music for you to enjoy.
Artists with multiple songs on this playlist: Scarves (3), Perennial (2), My Pet Fossil (2), Name Names (2), The Tubs (2), Asher White (2), Deady (2).
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify (missing three songs), Tidal (missing two). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Still in Error”, The Human Hearts From Faith & Credit (2026, Dromedary)
It’s been a fourteen-year wait for the third album from The Human Hearts, the current band of 90s indie rock/pop lifer Franklin Bruno (Nothing Painted Blue, The Extra Glenns). Sure, the singles/EP compilation Viable bridged the gap in 2023, but it’s still very exciting to hear the brisk rhythm section and jangly guitars that kick off “Still in Error”, the opening track and lead single for Faith & Credit. Bruno picks up right where he left off, just like riding a bicycle–an activity that he only just recently learned how to do, as amusingly chronicled in the song’s music video.
“The Eagle Is No Omen”, Asher White From Love Aggregates (2026, Joyful Noise)
On Love Aggregates, Asher White is still the same weirdo musician who made 2025’s wild 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living, but her eccentricities are focused relatively cleanly on making 70s-inspired baroque/chamber pop this time around. One fun wrinkle to Love Aggregates is that many of its “wildest” moments are also its catchiest ones, like the synthetic, bass-led minimal banger “The Eagle Is No Omen”, which might be my favorite song on the LP. Read more about Love Aggregates here.
“Stoop to Me”, The Tubs From Hard Life (2026, Merge)
Oh, Jesus Christ. About a year and a half after their last album, the superb Cotton Crown, British jangle pop institution The Tubs have already returned with their third album and Merge Records debut Hard Life. It contains “Stoop to Me”, which is possibly the best song ever (every Tubs album–scratch that, every album from an Owen Williams band–has at least one song that makes me feel like this). So many of the Tubs’ hallmarks–the folk-influenced Big Music opening, the jangly guitars, the Husker Du edge to the instrumental breaks–are present in “Stoop to Me”, and that’s not even going into how weird and funny it is to hear Williams contort his voice in an almost mocking tone to try to wrap himself around this too-good pop chorus he’s had the misfortune of writing. Because baby, you know, he’s a patient guy.
“New Year’s Eve”, Hey I’m Outside From Loud Ass Barking Dogs (2026, Archival Workshop)
Hey, Hey I’m Outside are back with a new album. Despite being from Massachusetts, the Medford duo (now trio)’s 2024 self-titled album proved them to be one of the best new alt-country bands capable of incorporating actual twang into their music. Their winning streak has extended into Loud Ass Barking Dogs, surprise-released last month. So far, my favorite song on Loud Ass Barking Dogs is the first one–on “New Year’s Eve”, guitarist/vocalist Patrick McPherson, drummer Noah Wisch, and bassist Hannah Fletcher waste no time jumping right back into their rootsy No Depression-style folk/country rock sweet spot.
“A Million Bugs”, Name Names From Waste in My Enrichment Area (2026)
One of the great indie pop bands of the 2010s was Bent Shapes, a Boston-originating “jangle punk” group led by the inimitable Ben Moy until they broke up in 2017. Moy’s new band, Name Names, doesn’t exactly sound like Bent Shapes, but they can get pretty damn close. The five-song, eight-minute Waste in My Enrichment Area is way too short, but it packs a punch for every second. Opener “A Million Bugs” is seventy-two seconds of fizzy power-garage-pop-punk (“You make me feel like a million bugs! / Crawling all over me, I can’t get enough!” bellows Moy at the onset) featuring great intertwined sibling vocals (shout out to Moy’s sister, Kate Virginia). Read more about Waste in My Enrichment Area here.
“All the Rage”, Wishy From Nature’s Pill (2026, Winspear)
After seemingly getting a more laid-back detour out of their system last year with the Planet Popstar EP, Nature’s Pill is every bit the gigantic-sounding pop album that 2024’s Triple Seven was, cementing Wishy’s status as one of the best at making this kind of 90s alternative-influenced guitar pop. “All the Rage” opens with the Indianapolis group’s second album with nothing less than a lost, timeless indie pop classic–this breezy, jangly fuzz-pop banger is perhaps not the most entirely representative “Wishy song” on the LP, but it’s hard not to open your record with something like this if you have the option to do so. Read more about Nature’s Pill here.
“Anew”, Off Contact From Can You? (2026)
Hailing from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Off Contact are an art-punk quartet who marry jagged post-punk foundations with psychedelia, off-beat guitar pop, and shoegaze distortion. Unsurprisingly, their latest album Can You? is thus kind of unclassifiable, other than being “very good”. Largely due to Qarl Koyzer’s somewhat petulant yelp of a led vocal, I can’t help but being reminded of Game Theory listening to this album, even as the differences between the two acts are nonetheless myriad. Opening track “Anew” is seething, streamlined, and incredibly catchy. Read more about Can You? here.
“Sneezed”, King’s Evil From King’s Evil (2026, Worry Bead)
King’s Evil are a duo co-founded in 2020 by two very good Boston indie musicians in their own right: Sami Martasian of the bedroom pop act Puppy Problems and JM Dussault of chiptune-slacker-rockers (T-T)b. Their self-titled debut EP’s one entry into the modern alt-country sweepstakes, “Sneezed”, is a perfect toe-dipping; the “Range Life” guitar riff and the Silver Jews reference situate it right at the center of a hyper-specific movement, but one doesn’t need to have an opinion on Berman versus Malkmus to appreciate what’s ultimately a flawless pop song. Read more about King’s Evil here.
“We Should Get a Dog”, Scarves From Strays Forever (2026, Tender Loving Empire)
I wrote about the Seattle group Scarves back in 2022, when the Niko Stathakopoulos-led act put out their fourth album, Delicate Creatures. That aptly-titled record won me over with its mixture of tender, almost-twee indie pop with 90s-style meandering and occasionally distorted indie rock, all led by a frontperson whose earnest and, yes, gentle vocals and lyrics take cues from John K. Samson of The Weakerthans and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. Their fifth LP, Strays Forever, was produced by Chris Walla, a natural choice to record a Scarves album. A second-half highlight, “We Should Get a Dog” is a swirling, anthemic kicking against ennui that all leads up to the title line. Read more about Strays Forever here.
“Down on Love”, Sam and Louise Sullivan From Love & Devotion (2026, Historic New Jersey)
Sam and Louise Sullivan are a sibling duo inspired by 60s and 70s folk and pop rock who’ve put out three albums since 2023. Unlike a lot of modern bands who try to recreate this kind of laid-back, “studio-based” 1970s music, Sam and Louise Sullivan keep the recordings on Love & Devotion crisp and clear, the arrangements simple, and the pop hooks front and center. There’s nothing “psychedelic” whatsoever about the fist-pumping retro-pop success of opening track “Down on Love”. Read more about Love & Devotion here.
“The Weight”, Deady From Hunka Junk (2026, Romanus)
Hunka Junk is the long-awaited debut album from Kentucky post-hardcore/noise rock group Deady. Over twenty-seven minutes and thirteen tracks, the quintet offer up plenty of the self-aggrandizing, absurdist fury of their first EP and fully veer away from their signature sound on multiple occasions, too. A late-record highlight, the relatively mid-tempo “The Weight” demonstrates that Deady can evolve their sound a bit while still remaining pretty heavy (in multiple senses). Read more about Hunka Junk here.
“Means More Now”, The Bird Calls From Take Leave (2026, Ruination)
This year’s Bird Calls album, Take Leave, continues Sam Sodomsky’s collaboration with producer Ryan Weiner that began with last year’s Melody Trail, but the two take a step back from some of that album’s more synthetic touches on this LP. That doesn’t mean, however, that Take Leave is a complete return to the straight-up one-man acoustic band sound of early Bird Calls; effectively, Sodomsky and Weiner embrace a warm, simple but robust folk rock sound throughout the album. Take Leave’s second song, “Means More Now”, is on the animated, electric, and (relatively) fist-pumping side of The Bird Calls’ sound. Read more about Take Leave here.
“Modernism”, Perennial From Modernism (2026, Ernest Jenning/Safe Suburban Home)
On their fourth album, Modernism, New England art-punk trio Perennial are extremely “Perennial”–like I said when I wrote about 2024’s Art History, they’ve a near-AC/DC level of knowing exactly what they’re about and performing it perfectly. It’s easy to take this for granted after four LPs’ worth of it, but whenever the faucet stops and the group decide to hang it up–that’s it. This is the Perennial Sound, and they’re the only band that does it. Modernism gives us the hits yet again, rolling through blaring, deafening songs that are equally indebted to 60s garage rock and turn-of-the-century noise rock–and the opening title track sets the bar high. Read more about Modernism here.
“Life of Accidents”, Joan Kelsey From A Dog Called Memory (2026, Dear Life)
Joan Kelsey’s 2022 album Standing Out on the Grass is a sleeper contender for one of my favorite “folk” LPs I’ve written about on this blog; the Dear Life Records mainstay penned some of the most rewarding music in that vein for that record. A Dog Called Memory is Kelsey’s first new record in nearly four years, and comes after the singer-songwriter relocated to New York City from Seattle. “Life of Accidents” is the standout of this five-song EP and already one of my favorite Kelsey songs; it’s a little more ragged than most of Standing Out on the Grass, but there’s still a refined, string-aided side to it.
“Pretend”, Total Downer From Presented for to You by (2026, Just Because)
Cleveland pop punk/power pop group Total Downer followed up their very good 2023 album Caretaker last month with a surprise-release LP called Presented for to You by (got it?). Caretaker was a “big feelings” album, tackling heavy subject matter head-on via frontperson Andy Schumann’s performance. If you enjoyed that, you’ll love “Pretend”, the immediate standout on their latest LP. Even if Schumann didn’t leave us with a messy oversharing tangle of sexual and gender identity to sift through, the triumphant refrain would be enough to get me to come back to “Pretend” (“In the dark, you can be anything”).
“Dedicated Turning Lane”, My Pet Fossil From Live My Valley Life (2026, Cherub Dream)
Live My Valley Life is effectively a concept album about the “American West” as an ideal–sometimes it’s a violent exorcism of its demonic influence, other times it’s a more curious exploration, but the subject is certainly dark enough to give My Pet Fossil enough fuel for a thirty-minute record. “Dedicated Turning Lane” is an exciting, skeevy rock song that imagines a world where Wipers and Thin White Rope crossed paths at the peak of their powers. Read more about Live My Valley Life here.
“Malt Shop Gizmo”, Soda Gumball From Super Honey Teaspoon! (2026, Den Tapes)
Soda Gumball is the project of Benjamin Rea, a Seattle music instructor who has been making chaotic freak-punk on his own as Jealous Yellow since the pandemic and who also plays in the post-hardcore group Laminate. Soda Gumball in particular stems from Rea’s time as an instructor, and some of these comparatively simple pop songs even originated from collaborations with the musician’s students. Super Honey Teaspoon!, the first Soda Gumball album, displays a laid-back comfort with K Records-style indie pop; Rea’s low-key vocals, while more outwardly sorted for the kind of greyscale, noisy post-punk of his other projects, lend a slacker, almost Elephant 6 psychedelic vibe to these compositions. The chirping synth-twee-pop of “Malt Shop Gizmo” is about as animated as Soda Gumball gets. Read more about Super Honey Teaspoon! here.
“Fade”, Soft Science From Sand (2026, Shelflife/Spinout Nuggets)
On 2023’s Lines, Sacramento’s Soft Science established themselves as a heavier, distorted indie pop group with a sound containing bits of dream pop, synthpop, jangle pop, and shoegaze. The quintet’s fifth LP, Sand, is even larger-feeling than their previous LP; it’s a full-on “dream-rock” album, with vocalist Katie Haley’s vocals gliding over full-bodied, shoegaze-influenced, fuzzed-out pop music. Sand is very nearly a tour through several types of “big music”, such as in the starry-eyed highlight “Fade”, which shoots for power pop and new wave. Read more about Sand here.
“I’ve Got a Friend”, The Catburgers From Galashiels (2026, Slumberland)
The Catburgers formed in 1985 in Edinburgh, Scotland, right in time to be part of a golden age of indie pop, post-punk, and combinations thereof in the United Kingdom. They broke up in 1990 without ever formally releasing anything, including nine songs that they recorded in 1989 which then sat on a shelf for thirty years before seeing the light of day this year via Slumberland Records. Listening to Galashiels is to suddenly be swept back to the key time and place from which The Catburgers emerged–an exciting era where bands made records with bubbly, jangly indie pop songs like “I’ve Got a Friend” right next to moodier post-punk. Read more about Galashiels here.
“Living Is Easy”, Psychic Flowers From Columbarium Niches (2026, Living Lost)
Not only have David Settle’s blown-out, fuzzed-out garage-pop group Psychic Flowers returned, but their first album since 2021’s For the Undertow is an oversized, twenty-song, forty-plus-minute CD and cassette. Settle wrote a dozen new songs for Columbarium Niches, but then decided to augment the record with a handful of outtakes from previous Psychic Flowers albums and a few alternate versions of previously-released tracks. The overstuffed record tosses off highlights like the sparkly, Guided by Voices-esque guitar pop song “Living Is Easy” with ease. Read more about Columbarium Niches here.
“Chainsaw”, Scarves From Strays Forever (2026, Tender Loving Empire)
Scarves frontperson Niko Stathakopoulos is most impactful when he seems to fully give in to his deeply-felt, eccentric writing, and the triumph of “Chainsaw” in the second half of Strays Forever reflect this. The dreamy track is a love song apparently inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and features Stathakopoulos proclaiming “I love you like a cat loves cardboard / I want to tear you to shreds / Out of pure joy” in the refrain. Read more about Strays Forever here.
“Split Lip”, Jawdropped From Secret to Spare (2026, Transgressive)
The Los Angeles group Jawdropped has been getting a fair amount of buzz since they put out their debut EP, Just Fantasy, on Fire Talk last year. Signing to Transgressive Records (Greg Freeman, Alvvays, Black Country, New Road), playing shows with This Is Lorelei and Graham Hunt, and having Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Colin Miller) mix their debut album, Secret to Spare, all certainly helps with that. Regardless, I was fairly impressed with Secret to Spare, a strong guitar pop album with an appropriate amount of Teenage Fanclub and Lemonheads influence. You can hear it especially in highlight “Split Lip”.
“Cahokia”, Greg Freeman From All Set the Bone (2026, Transgressive)
In an indie rock landscape dominated by Magnolia Electric Co.-influenced “alt-country” acts, Greg Freeman separates himself by singing like Jason Molina sang on his most beloved records. Freeman’s lightning-strike tenor voice is what stood out to me first on All Set the Bone, the Vermont singer-songwriter’s third album and best one yet. The magic of this sixty-six-minute double LP is that it merges Freeman’s windswept Molina-style vocals with tight pop songcraft. Read more about All Set the Bone here.
“Easier to Trust”, Dagwood From So What (2026)
So What is Dagwood’s fourth full-length album and first in four years. The twelve-song proper LP also comes with six bonus tracks, christened the So What Else EP by the Connecticut group, making the entire package a behemoth eighteen-song collection of 90s-style fuzzed-out power pop, alt-rock, and garage rock revival that stands as Dagwood’s most impressive statement yet–in terms of sheer magnitude, if nothing else. The steadily-building opening track “Easier to Trust” is a more restrained version of Dagwood, but it’s one of the best pop songs on the album regardless. Read more about So What here.
“Prophets of Doom”, The Drin From I Lost My Way for Centuries (2026, Feel It)
I Lost My Way for Centuries feels like a “double album” in a classic rock sense. The Drin take the meditative aspects of 2024’s Elude the Torch and allow them to stretch and sprawl to previously-unthinkable proportions. This album’s twenty-three songs give the Cincinnati group the chance to fully embrace the music that’s led them to this point: you’ll hear clear bits of progressive rock, psychedelia, folk, dub, and krautrock throughout I Lost My Way for Centuries. The thundering blues-rock of “Prophets of Doom” evokes Led Zeppelin through the Midwestern post-punk underground haze in which The Drin operate. Read more about I Lost My Way for Centuries here.
“Now and Then”, The Tubs From Hard Life (2026, Merge)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Owen Williams and Lan McArdle singing together is one of the best sounds in “indie rock”. The band they co-led, Ex-Vöid, sadly but unsurprisingly disbanded last year, but it doesn’t seem like these two will ever stop showing up on each others’ records, and the chorus of “Now and Then” certainly benefits from McArdle dropping in to check up on Williams’ group The Tubs. I like plenty of the stuff Williams has led The Tubs into on his own, but he could do whatever he wanted and still get me to listen as long as he turns in refrains like this every now and then.
“Way Too Well”, Antietam From The Counting Game (2026, Dromedary)
It’s been nearly a decade since the most recent original Antietam album, but bassist Tim Harris, guitarist/vocalist Tara Key, and drummer Joshua Madell still sound like themselves four decades into their career. The Counting Game is classic Antietam–it’ll appeal to real-deep-in-it “indie rock/alternative rock” fans in its evocation of the likes of the Paisley Underground, Crazy Horse, alt-country, and psychedelic pop rock. See the album’s Dream Syndicate-like opening track “Way Too Well” for a sterling example of multiple of these influences. Read more about The Counting Game here.
“Gender Dysphoria”, CalicoLoco From I Love Myself (2024, Ur Mom)
CalicoLoco are a new-to-me band, but they’ve been putting out singles since 2020 and their first album, I Love Myself, came out back in 2024. They’re a Chicago-based emo-punk-pop-power et cetera group who were a duo (Dani Robles & Zeke Ramsey) when they recorded I Love Myself but who seem to have since expanded to a five-piece. The first track on I Love Myself is called “Gender Dysphoria”, and it’s a gigantic emo-punk pop song large enough to tackle the subject acknowledged in its title. It can (and should) be enjoyed by fans of Jeff Rosenstock and that one We Are the Union album–let’s say that it’s “not ska-punk, but fits nicely alongside ska-punk”.
“Over the Moon”, Blimps From Over the Moon (2026, Terminal Releases)
Blimps is Rocky Mercer and Colin Musolf, a lo-fi power pop duo from Charleston, South Carolina who put out their debut record, a seven-song cassette called Over the Moon, back in May. As a prolific group of underground pop musicians from a C-class American city whose band is named after a Guided by Voices song, Blimps certainly have a Robert Pollard-esque side, but that doesn’t necessarily define all of Over the Moon. The crunchy opening title track, for one, is more indebted to Weezer and 90s fuzzed-out power pop (it’s very nearly a Rozwell Kid song). Read more about Over the Moon here.
“Is It Real?”, Mr. Husband From Song for the Old World (2026, Good Soil)
As Mr. Husband, the Maryland panhandle’s Kenny Tompkins has straddled the line between Appalachian-inspired folky Americana and jangly indie pop (with plenty of excursions away from both as well), and Song for the Old World (dubbed the ninth Mr. Husband album by Tompkins, though I think it depends on how one counts) plays to the troubadour’s strengths. Tompkins and the same lineup from 2024’s Wildflower (drummer Chris Morris, lap steel guitarist Adam Laye, and bassist Curt Tompkins) thoughtfully move through timeless-sounding pop music with bits of folk and rock music history contained therein, rousing a bit more than normal to suit the rollicking folk-rocking “Is It Real”. Read more about Song for the Old World here.
“The Time Changes”, Lande Hekt From Threadbare (2026, Tapete)
Back in January, Bristol musician Lande Hekt put out Lucky Now, her fourth album and first in four years–I called it “an earnest, emotional take on British guitar pop, C86 and jangle pop” at the time and compared it to Hekt’s labelmates Ex-Vöid. We didn’t have to wait nearly as long for new music from Hekt this time, though, as the four-song Threadbare EP showed up in September with some more excellent indie pop songwriting–especially on my favorite song on the EP, “The Time Changes”.
“My Day at the Casino”, Asher White From Love Aggregates (2026, Joyful Noise)
Just about everything on Love Aggregates is ornate pop music–just listen to how Asher White turns the minimalist, R&B-influenced “My Day at the Casino” into a clever, single-worthy orchestral pop piece if you’re still a White skeptic. Read more about Love Aggregates here.
“Baby, Are You Abstract?”, Perennial From Modernism (2026, Ernest Jenning/Safe Suburban Home)
Well, are you? Like many a track on Perennial’s latest LP, Modernism, “Baby, Are You Abstract?” has everything one could want in a Perennial song–Chelsey Hahn’s sharp electric organ stabs, Chad Jewett bellowing lyrics (and Hahn giving them right back), plenty of “yeah yeahs”, and a weirdly (ahem) abstract instrumental break as the song draws to a close. It’s over in two and a half minutes, too, so if you have somewhere to be after our date with abstraction, that’s nice. Read more about Modernism here.
“(No Subject) Empty Body”, Name Names From Waste in My Enrichment Area (2026)
Name Names is a new quartet featuring former Bent Shapes leader Ben Moy on vocals, guitar, and keys, alongside Moy’s sister (and occasional Bent Shapes member) Kate Virginia on vocals and guitar and a rhythm section (drummer Ethan Cannon and bassist Dan Paul Mary) who used to play together in the band Courters. The polish of the final Bent Shapes album is entirely dispensed with on their debut EP, Waste in My Enrichment Area, and Name Names instead bash out five relatively snotty and gritty garage punk tracks recorded in a basement. Nonetheless, everything that made Bent Shapes great–the indie pop melodies, Moy’s lyrics, the overall shout-along-vibe–is still there upon a closer listen, especially in the clinking, biting garage rocker “(No Subject) Empty Body”. Read more about Waste in My Enrichment Area here.
“Eject”, Poem Rocket From Felix Culpa (1995/2026, PCP/Silver Girl)
Originally released in 1995, Felix Culpa wasn’t a proper “album” from turn-of-the-century New York City noise rock group Poem Rocket but rather a CD compilation of the band’s earliest EP and singles. Now reissued on double vinyl to coincide with its 30th anniversary, Felix Culpa is a time capsule straight from the 1990s New York art rock scene. The screeching feedback, post-punk rhythms, and noise rock abrasion of Felix Culpa make names like Sonic Youth and Blonde Redhead obvious points of comparison for Poem Rocket, though the “art” side of their music doesn’t prevent Poem Rocket from pulling off straightforward noise rock rippers like “Eject”. Read more about Felix Culpa here.
“Berlin”, Scarves From Strays Forever (2026, Tender Loving Empire)
The third Scarves song on this playlist, “Berlin” may not have the offbeat thematic hooks that “We Should Get a Dog” and “Chainsaw” do, but it’s still an exploration of everything Scarves do best on Strays Forever: an ambitious, busy, Chris Walla-guided instrumental, strong hooks, and maximum earnestness from frontperson Niko Stathakopoulos. Read more about Strays Forever here.
“My Heart Won’t Wait”, My Pet Fossil From Live My Valley Life (2026, Cherub Dream)
The heart-on-sleeve jangly indie rock of “My Heart Won’t Wait” is a likely candidate for “song on a Rosy Overdrive playlist”, but it comes from an unlikely place: the B-side of an SST/Touch & Go Records-inspired noise rock band from central California. Nonetheless, Sacramento’s My Pet Fossil pull this off very well, and it helps cement Live My Valley Life as one of the sneakily more interesting rock records I’ve heard this year. Read more about Live My Valley Life here.
“Louisville”, Deady From Hunka Junk (2026, Romanus)
The first curveball on the Kentucky noise-punk group Deady’s debut album is track number five, “Louisville”, nestled right in between the metallic “Spinning Rooms” and the furious rocker single “Bad As It Sounds”. It’s a straight-up acoustic folk song, believe it or not. The gorgeous guitar line has the work of Deady guitarist Sam Woodring (FKA Mister Goblin) written all over it with its hushed, resigned, but somewhat wonky beauty; lead vocalist Mandy Keathley adds a twang to it that I never knew I needed in a Sam Woodring ballad. Read more about Hunka Junk here.
“Pass Life”, Jon Mckiel From Gold Horatio (2026, You’ve Changed)
New Brunswick-based singer-songwriter Jon Mckiel has subtly been one of the most consistent voices in psychedelic Canadian indie folk this decade (though I’m not sure if one can be a non-subtle Canadian psychedelic indie folk musician). Picking up where strong releases like 2020’s Bobby Joe Hope and 2024’s Hex left off, this year’s Gold Horatio is a nicely frayed and warbly collection of warped pop music. The simple groove and golden melodies of “Pass Life” make this song one of Mckiel’s most straightforwardly enjoyable moments yet, but it’s hardly the only one on Gold Horatio.
This Thursday Pressing Concerns covers new albums from Wishy, TV Buddha, and Greg Freeman, plus a retrospective compilation from The Cadets (all of them are out tomorrow, October 2nd). Read ’em below, and if you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Name Names, Buttchug 69, Poem Rocket, and Flower Show), check that out too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Wishy – Nature’s Pill
Release date: October 2nd Record label: Winspear Genre: Fuzz pop, dream pop, Madchester, psychedelia, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: All the Rage
The Indianapolis group Wishy exploded onto the scene in 2024, when the intriguing indie pop of the previous year’s Paradise EP metastasized into the impressively confident fuzzed-out power pop/shoegaze quintet on their debut LP Triple Seven. Band co-leader Kevin Krauter is an Indiana indie music veteran at this point, so the ascension of Wishy didn’t come out of nowhere, but the addition of co-lead-singer/songwriter Nina Pitchkites and the backing of guitarist Dimitri Morris, bassist Mitch Collins, and drummer Conner Host resulted in a fascinating dance between Smashing Pumpkins-inspired 90s alt-rock, ethereal dream pop, and just a bit of Madchester psychedelia. Wishy hasn’t slowed down since, releasing the more subdued Planet Popstar EP in 2025 and regrouping for LP2, Nature’s Pill, this year. After seemingly getting a more laid-back detour out of their system last year, Nature’s Pill is every bit the gigantic-sounding pop album that Triple Seven was, cementing Wishy’s status as one of the best at making this currently-quite-popular kind of music.
“All the Rage” opens with Nature’s Pill with nothing less than a lost, timeless indie pop classic–this breezy, jangly fuzz-pop banger is perhaps not the most entirely representative “Wishy song” on the album, but it’s hard not to open your record with something like this if you have the option to do so. The alt-dance and psychedelic sides of Wishy are more apparent in the next few songs on the record, but that doesn’t mean the heavy dreamgaze of “Covergirl” and the spring-in-their-step alt-pop-rock of “Shift” aren’t top-tier pop songs, too (not to mention the sharp-edged groove of “Sensational”, which is just as key a part of Wishy’s sound). “Mona Lisa” and “Lovesick” are a couple more classic Wishy-style guitar pop songs, both steeped in indie rock and pop knowledge but hardly contained within any bygone era, and the quiet-loud closing ballad “Party World” is one last embrace of pop-stratosphere ambition from the Indianapolis artists. Whether or not Nature’s Pill lives up to or even outclasses Triple Seven is to be determined in my book, but the magic is still very much present in this one. (Bandcamp link)
The Cadets – Exile in Marginalia Vol 4
Release date: October 2nd Record label: Bar/None Genre: 90s indie rock, garage rock, post-surf rock, experimental rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Threat of Winds
The Cadets emerged out of Jacksonville, Florida in 1995, debuting and then honing a sound that combined surf rock and garage rock with the underground indie rock of the time (apparently Man or Astroman? played a role in the band’s initial formation, which makes sense). Their first album, 1999’s The Cadets, was recorded with the lineup of guitarist Chuck Smyth, bassist Pete Cochrane, and drummer Cash Carter; from 2001 to 2006, two more LPs and an EP followed in which Cochrane was replaced by Chad Matheny (aka Emperor X) on bass and Isaac Bear joined in on guitar and keyboard. Twenty years after their last album, The Cadets have reunited (with Donny Dusinberre replacing Matheny, who lives in Berlin now) and signed to Bar/None Records; their first release for their new home is a retrospective compilation featuring songs from all four of their records as well as a couple of previously-unreleased tracks.
Exile in Marginalia Vol 4 isn’t in chronological order, but it tells the story of The Cadets’ first decade and change of existence upon a closer look. The one song from their first album, “S.O.S. from Darien Coy”, is a solid surf-punk Man or Astroman? tribute, but The Cadets evolve very quickly into the surf/garage/noisy indie rock band displayed on the cuts from 2001’s Conditions on Alpha Atoll (four songs are chosen from this album, the most of any one release) and 2002’s Finding the Straight and Level. “Threat of Winds”, which marries a near-Polvo-level noise squall with a shout-along chorus, and the skittering math rock of “Atuometropolis” demonstrate the range of The Cadets at their most prolific period, and the three songs from 2006’s On the death of science as science as a major world religion also show a multifaceted group (compare the spaghetti Western vibes of “South of the Border at 8:13 a.m.” to the post-rock soundscape of “On the Symmetry of Baobab Trees”). Throw in a couple of extras (including a fuzzed-out cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “The Saddest Story Ever Told”), and you’ve got a superb crash course in a piece of Florida indie rock history. (Bandcamp link)
TV Buddha – Hallelujah Anyway
Release date: October 2nd Record label: Ever/Never/Hallogallo Genre: Lo-fi pop, psychedelic pop, fuzz pop, garage rock, 90s indie rock, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: You’ve Been Changed
TV Buddha are Johnson Rockstar and Eli Schmitt, a Chicago-based fuzz pop duo who started putting out music in 2023, first on Sharp Pins’ Kai Slater’s Hallogallo label, then on Georgia’s Chunklet Industries (The Olivia Tremor Control, The Apples in Stereo, Tar), and now finally what appears to be their vinyl LP debut, Hallelujah Anyway, for Ever/Never (Bullseye, National Photo Committee, Patois Counselors). TV Buddha are very much enmeshed in the Windy City’s lo-fi pop underground; Schmitt helped assemble the scene’s Red Xerox compilation earlier this year, and Hallelujah Anyway features contributions from Slater, Joe Glass, Good Flying Birds’ Kellen Baker, and Lifeguard’s Asher Case, among others. This sprawling fifteen-track, forty-six-minute LP indeed fits in with their local movement, embracing distorted, lo-fi, psychedelic guitar pop music and all that entails.
Hallelujah Anyway feels very Elephant 6–especially early Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo–in its combination of hooky 60s-influenced pop, hissing “slacker” 90s indie rock, and psychedelic, noisy experimentation. TV Buddha slam through the hits “Land of the Lord”, “You’ve Been Changed”, and “Too Much to Live” at the onset of Hallelujah Anyway, and later pop gems like “Hey Ella” and “Tears in My Eyes” sit alongside acoustic psych-folk journeys like “Alfred, Don’t Be Dull” and the bonkers seven-minute Velvets-style rave-up “More Than Yesterday, Less Than Tomorrow”. TV Buddha has been hovering around the edges of the modern guitar pop movement for a minute now, but Hallelujah Anyway announces that it’s time to pay full attention to them. (Bandcamp link)
Greg Freeman – All Set the Bone
Release date: October 2nd Record label: Transgressive Genre: Country rock, alt-country, garage rock, Americana Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Cahokia
In an indie rock landscape dominated by Magnolia Electric Co.-influenced “alt-country” acts, Greg Freeman separates himself by singing like Jason Molina sang on his most beloved records. Freeman’s lightning-strike tenor voice is what stood out to me first on All Set the Bone, the Vermont singer-songwriter’s third album and best one yet. After 2025’s Burnover crashed Rosy Overdrive’s Readers Poll last year, I figured I better see what the deal with this guy was, and I enjoyed that one and 2022’s I Looked Out–but All Set the Bone is the record Freeman achieving the peak of his powers. The magic of this sixty-six-minute double LP is that it merges Freeman’s windswept Molina-style vocals with tight pop songcraft, another thing often missing from this current wave of alt-country-influenced indie rock bands (he’s the Old 97s to MJ Lenderman’s Drive-By Truckers, if you will). Laid out like that, the recent success Freeman has been experiencing is the least surprising thing in the world, but it’s still pretty impressive to come shooting out of a burgeoning scene like a bottle rocket (Burlington, Vermont, from which Lily Seabird, Dari Bay, and Robber Robber have recently emerged) and make an album that’s able to sound electric and possessed for over an hour. (Bandcamp link)
This Monday Pressing Concerns features new albums from Buttchug 69 and Flower Show, a new EP from Name Names, and a reissued compilation from Poem Rocket. Check ’em out!
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.
Name Names – Waste in My Enrichment Area
Release date: September 18th Record label: Self-released Genre: Garage rock, fuzz pop, garage punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: A Million Bugs
One of the great indie pop bands of the 2010s was Bent Shapes, a Boston-originating “jangle punk” group led by the inimitable Ben Potrykus until they broke up in 2017. They put out two distinct-from-one-another records of sugar-rush tempos, over-the-top cleverness, and massive hooks; both Feels Weird and Wolves of Want get regular play from me in 2026. On multiple occasions over the past few years, I’d throw on “Behead Yrself, Pt. 2” on my car speakers to give me a jolt of energy and keep me awake driving home from attending a show in the city and idly wonder if I’d ever hear new music from Potrykus again. There was a relocation to Rhode Island and a pandemic-era project called Fruiting Body that released one tantalizing song in 2020, but nothing further ever materialized from them, and another half-decade passed in radio silence from the New England college rock poet laureate. Then, without warning, we got Waste in My Enrichment Area, the debut EP from a brand-new Potrykus band called Name Names. Name Names is a quartet featuring the former Bent Shapes leader (billed as Ben Moy) on vocals, guitar, and keys, alongside Moy’s sister (and occasional Bent Shapes member) Kate Virginia on vocals and guitar and a rhythm section (drummer Ethan Cannon and bassist Dan Paul Mary) who used to play together in the band Courters.
It’s been a decade since Wolves of Want, and the lineup is completely different other than Moy, so it’s no big surprise that Name Names doesn’t exactly sound like Bent Shapes. But it gets pretty damn close. The five-song, eight-minute Waste in My Enrichment Area is way too short, but it packs a punch for every second. The polish of the final Bent Shapes album is entirely dispensed with here, and Name Names instead bash out five relatively snotty and gritting garage punk tracks recorded in a basement. Nonetheless, everything that made Bent Shapes great–the indie pop melodies, Moy’s lyrics, the overall shout-along-vibe–is still there upon a closer listen. “A Million Bugs” is seventy-two seconds of fizzy power-garage-pop-punk (“You make me feel like a million bugs! / Crawling all over me, I can’t get enough!” bellows Moy at the onset) featuring great intertwined sibling vocals starting the EP perfectly. There’s something about the runaway-train guitar chord and metallic-smack drumbeat that kicks off “Translucent Report” that feels spiritually Bent Shapes, even as it’s one of the least-Bent Shapes songs overall on the EP (Kate’s verses are chain; the chorus is egg punk). The crunchy white-hot pop-punk of “Bleeding Out”, the clinking, biting garage rocker “(No Subject) Empty Body”, the “bit of this, bit of that” closing track “Spread Ego”–it’s all essential. It’s a triumphant return for Ben Moy and hopefully the start of something new and exciting for Name Names. (Bandcamp link)
Buttchug 69 – Keep on Rocking for Free in the World
Release date: August 9th Record label: Self-released Genre: Garage rock, twee, indie pop, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: For Free
The memorably-titled Buttchug 69 are a trio that came out of Columbia, Missouri in the “mid-2010s”, playing shows but never releasing anything before the three members all moved to different cities (Chicago, New York, and Denver). That’s a familiar story for many bands who formed and disbanded in Midwestern college towns (and all over the world, sure), but vocalist/guitarist Jonas Weir, bassist/vocalist Em Downing (who has also played in Hour), and drummer/vocalist Loretta Kyle reunited in 2023 to play some more shows and eventually get around to recording their debut album. All these years later, Keep on Rocking for Free in the World (which is hands-down the album title of the year) is here; the full album is only available on vinyl and digitally on the co-op streaming platform subvert.fm, so it may involve more mouse clicks than normal for you, the listener, to hear–but it’s worth that Herculean effort, especially if you like the kind of music that Rosy Overdrive typically covers.
The most obvious point of comparison for Buttchug 69 is Beat Happening due to the droll monotone vocals of (I assume) Weir, although the frequently interjections from Kyle and Downing and the simple, straightforward musical choices also help with the similarities. Nonetheless, there’s a Midwestern rootsiness to the irreverence of Keep on Rocking for Free in the World; the trio chug along cheerfully to blustery electric cowboy chords and rudimentary rhythms much like the Canadian musician who inspired the album’s title and his most famous backing band. It’s sort of like surf rock if it was slower, landlocked, and more like alt-country. It’s a dozen fun pop songs by a band fluent in underground indie rock. “For Free” and “Ghost Party” are a couple of immediate standouts, but Keep on Rocking for Free in the World is a really consistent listen from the soft-launching opening of “Intergalactic” to the meandering finale of “Water & Water”. (Bandcamp link)
Poem Rocket – Felix Culpa (30th Anniversary Edition)
Release date: June 4th Record label: Silver Girl Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, post-hardcore, art punk, 90s indie rock, post-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Eject
It’s been a good few years for fans of the turn-of-the-century New York City noise rock group Poem Rocket. Not only have the band started playing shows again, but guitarist Mike Knowlton has been prolific recently as Unlettered and the band finally released their 1999-recorded “lost EP” Lend-Lease in 2024. Apparently the resuscitation of Lend-Lease was the prelude for a discography-wide reissue campaign for all of Poem Rocket’s releases, starting with Felix Culpa. Originally released in 1995, Felix Culpa wasn’t a proper “album” but rather a CD compilation of the band’s earliest EP and singles; these songs predate Knowlton’s involvement in the band, as they were recorded in 1994 and 1995 with the original lineup of vocalist/guitarist Michael Peters, vocalist/bassist Sandra Gardner, drummer Andrew Nelson, and guitarist/keyboardist Dennis Bass.
Now reissued on double vinyl to coincide with its 30th anniversary, Felix Culpa is a time capsule straight from the 1990s New York art rock scene. Largely recorded by William Gilmore Weber and Jerry Teel of The Chrome Cranks, the screeching feedback, post-punk rhythms, and noise rock abrasion of Felix Culpa make names like Sonic Youth and Blonde Redhead obvious points of comparison for Poem Rocket. Although it’s a very “New York” sound, the punk heaviness of Felix Culpa’s “rockers” feels less like coastal no wave and a little more…inland (primary songwriter Peters has roots in Ohio, which may explain it). Of course, with Felix Culpa spanning nearly an hour in length, Poem Rocket have plenty of time to nail both relatively straightforward noise rock rippers like “Eject” and “Small White Animal” as well as quieter things like “Milky White Entropy” and “Pretty Baby” and wild experimentation like “The Furry Evil Bird”. It all ends with the massive ten-minute “Blue Chevy Impala”, a destructive march that ensures Felix Culpa is a gripping listen all the way through. (Bandcamp link)
Flower Show – A Cake in a Daydream
Release date: September 4th Record label: Self-released Genre: Baroque pop, indie pop, folk-pop, Britpop Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Planets in My Eyes
Last May, I wrote about the debut album from Liverpool’s Flower Show, a self-described “charity shop pop” sextet whose first LP displayed a very British grasp of guitar pop music (I mentioned David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, and The Bevis Frond as names who come to mind at various points on Painted Nails & Silver Bells). The second album from the band (vocalist/guitarist/synth player Craig Sinclair, guitarists Dave Miller and Simon Gabriel, bassist Dominic Price, synth player Lloyd Gabriel, and drummer Terry Green) has arrived a year and a couple of months after Painted Nails & Silver Bells, and while A Cake in a Daydream is similarly a lot to take in at once, it also sounds like the work of a group of musicians who’ve taken a large leap forward together as a band and have thus made something remarkably coherent.
A Cake in a Daydream opens with a string of hits: if the mid-tempo, in media res opening track “The Morning Horn” isn’t exciting enough for you, the quick jangle pop of “Planets in My Eyes” and the bouncy post-punk hooks of “Three Day Week” should do it. The minimal ballad “The Only Way Is Down” (which opens side two) is the first moment on A Cake in a Daydream where Flower Show “slows down”, but “Size Queen”, “Lorraine”, and “Noises Off” all ensure that the LP is vibrant as it draws to a close. Flower Show are well on their way to developing a distinct footprint two albums and two years into their run, and A Cake in a Daydream has all the development one would want to hear in a sophomore album, too. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to the Thursday Pressing Concerns! We have new albums from Psychic Flowers and Homework that come out tomorrow (September 25th), as well as an archival release from The Catburgers that also comes out tomorrow and a brand-new LP from Deady that came out earlier this week. Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Shotmaker, The Van Pelt, My Pet Fossil, and Carry Ripple), check that out too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Psychic Flowers – Columbarium Niches
Release date: September 25th Record label: Living Lost Genre: Lo-fi power pop, lo-fi indie rock, garage rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Living Is Easy
After a five-year hiatus from releasing his own music, prolific Philadelphia musician (and 2nd Grade bassist) David Settle brought back one of his three projects at the beginning of this year with The Fragiles’ Sing the Heat of the Sun. The Fragiles is Settle’s outlet for relatively dreamy, psychedelic jangle pop, while Psychic Flowers, which Settle has also revived this year, hews towards blown-out, fuzzed-out garage-pop (the third Settle band, the post-punk/noise rock group Big Heet, hasn’t resurfaced yet–but, fingers crossed). Not only have the Psychic Flowers returned, but their first album since 2021’s For the Undertow is an oversized, twenty-song, forty-plus-minute CD and cassette. Settle wrote a dozen new songs for Columbarium Niches, but then decided to augment the record with a handful of outtakes from previous Psychic Flowers albums and a few alternate versions of previously-released tracks (inspired by compilations like Superchunk’s Cup of Sand, per Settle).
There’s no clear “band” on Columbarium Niches, but the majority of these songs have outside help on drums (between Nathan Walters, Ronnie Francisco, and Leo Suarez) and Zak Krone provides bass on a few of them. Unsurprisingly, Columbarium Niches is full-steam-ahead from the get-go between snotty garage-punk opening track “Diamonds in the Sky” and the speedy punk-pop of single “Go Man Go”. The relatively pastoral jangle pop of “Follow You Down” and the acoustic folk-pop “Summer Rose” are surprising turns, setting up an album that doesn’t always go the direction I’ve been expecting Psychic Flowers to go. The pin-drop quiet “Dust Cloud Descends” and the mini-epic “Atlas Wager” stand out in the first half, but this is still a record from a band that can toss off garage rockers (“Last Drive-In”) and sparkly, Guided by Voices-core guitar pop songs (“Living Is Easy”) with ease. One of the quieter moments on Columbarium Niches is actually an acoustic version of “For the Record” from For the Undertow, a nice call-back before the thirty-second Alien Lanes-style snippet “Astral Projector” and the ripping “Crushing the Microscope” lurch Psychic Flowers back into gear. Much like Sing the Heat of the Sun was in January, Columbarium Niches is a welcome return from a talented songwriter. (Bandcamp link)
Deady – Hunka Junk
Release date: September 21st Record label: Romanus Genre: Punk rock, noise punk, hardcore punk, noise rock, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: The Weight
Louisville quintet Deady came out of the gate swinging back in 2023 with their self-titled EP, six tracks of exciting, wild punk rock with bits of Brainiac and Midwestern egg punk in the mix. It’s the kind of debut EP that, as fun as it is, makes one wonder how they’re going to pull off a full-length album’s worth of this kind of thing. Three years later, we have our answer with Hunka Junk, the Kentucky post-hardcore/noise rock group’s first-ever LP. Over twenty-seven minutes and thirteen tracks, the group (vocalist Mandy Keathley, guitarists Sam Woodring FKA Mister Goblin and Chyppe Crosby, bassist Clayton Ray, and drummer KJ Bechtloff) offer up plenty of the self-aggrandizing, absurdist fury of their first EP and fully veer away from their signature sound on multiple occasions, too.
When Hunka Junk rocks, it’s an unstoppable force–the goal of any punk band in 2026 should be blowing the door off its hinges as well as Deady do with “Systematic Slaughter”, “Outlaw Pornography”, and “Hot Damn” before we’ve got a chance to catch our breath. The first curveball is track number five, “Louisville”, nestled right in between the metallic “Spinning Rooms” and the noise punk single “Bad As It Sounds”; it’s a straight-up acoustic folk song, believe it or not. The gorgeous guitar line has Woodring’s solo work written all over it with its hushed, resigned, but somewhat wonky beauty; Keathley adds a twang to it that I never knew I needed in a Sam Woodring ballad. It’s a different side of Keathley from the one who’s shouting “suck my dick in hell!” in the more-or-less nu metal “Hunka” (when Deady get like this, they remind me of Jobber if they were inspired by barfights instead of professional wrestling). The acoustic moments return in “Goodnight Bitch” and “Lie to the Police”, and the relatively mid-tempo “The Weight” demonstrates that Deady can evolve their sound a bit while still remaining pretty heavy (in multiple senses). Hunka Junk is a predictably unpredictable wild ride worth taking. (Bandcamp link)
The Catburgers – Galashiels
Release date: September 25th Record label: Slumberland Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, C86, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: I’ve Got a Friend
The Catburgers formed in 1985 in Edinburgh, Scotland, right in time to be part of a golden age of indie pop, post-punk, and combinations thereof in the United Kingdom. Guitarist/vocalist Robert Jones, bassist Stuart Macgregor, drummer Jeff Duffy, and guitarist Keith Burns played shows and recorded demos over their five-year run, even rubbing elbows with Dan Treacy of their biggest musical influence, the Television Personalities; however, they broke up in 1990 without ever formally releasing anything. Nine songs that The Catburgers recorded in 1989 sat unreleased and mixed for more than thirty years, but after a few earlier Catburgers recordings saw release through FELT Records in 2022, it was time for their shelved album to see the light of day. Unsurprisingly, major indie pop player Slumberland Records is at the scene of the crime, as they’ve put out these songs–mixed by Archie Moore and christened Galashiels–on vinyl and CD.
Listening to Galashiels is to suddenly be swept back to the key time and place from which The Catburgers emerged–an exciting time where bands made records with bubbly, jangly indie pop songs like “I’ve Got a Friend” and “Children’s TV” right next to moodier, post-punk-ish tracks like “Holiday House” and “Nothing to Live For”. “Holiday House”, featuring melodica from Jowe Head of Television Personalities and Swell Maps, is a neat early curveball, one that doesn’t derail the nearly pop-punk giddiness of “The First Day of Spring” or the low-end-heavy proto-gaze of “Summer of Love”. The dreaminess of “I’m Leaving on the 7:52” leads us into a more subdued closing stretch marked by the dread-filled quiet of “Darkness Before Dawn” and the rumbling post-punk of finale “Nothing to Live For”. Even here, though, The Catburgers sneak in one last jangle pop song in penultimate track “The Frightened Girl”, and one of Galashiels’ strongest qualities as a whole is an LP-long ability to live in the darkness and the light. (Bandcamp link)
Homework – Bang Here If Stuck
Release date: September 25th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, 90s indie rock, slacker rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Heroes Welcome
Homework are a new-ish band out of Glasgow who make a warmly familiar kind of pop music–it’s either classic 1980s British indie pop filtered through 1990s American indie rock, or vice versa. After a couple of three-song EPs in 2023 and 2024, Bang Here If Stuck is Homework’s first LP, and it finds the quartet (Michael Newton, Santiago Taberna, Lizzie Quirke, and Andrew Gordon) putting together a set of sharply-written tunes that justifies their label Meritorio Records’ invocation of Pavement, Teenage Fanclub, and Urusei Yatsura (it also reminds me a lot of modern power pop/90s revivalists Kiwi Jr.). The album’s dozen songs take us on a catchy, somewhat warped odyssey; we get gold-soundz guitar pop like “Made” right next to sloppy rockers like “Hedge Your Bets” (finally, somebody rips of that side of Pavement) and stuff like “Trivial” that embraces Homework’s absurd and pop sides. Homework keep their eyes on the indie pop prize and don’t let any of their excursions go too far off the beaten path; by the time they’re closing out Bang Here If Stuck with the appropriately-titled “Ending Song”, it feels like their first LP has been wrapped up as neatly as possible. If actual homework was this fun and rewarding, I probably would’ve ended up a physicist instead of a music blogger. (Bandcamp link)
This is the Monday Pressing Concerns! It features a reissue from Shotmaker and new albums from The Van Pelt, My Pet Fossil, and Carry Ripple. Check ’em out below.
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.
Release date: September 18th Record label: Solid Brass Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock, post-punk, emo Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Sky
It’s time to revisit another plucked-from-obscurity noise rock band from the 1990s–are you ready? Specifically, we’re talking about Shotmaker, a trio who formed in 1993 in between Toronto and Ottawa (specifically, they arose from the towns of Belleville and Tweed), relocated to the latter city the following year, and put out two albums plus the requisite smattering of compilation appearances and EPs/singles before disbanding in 1999. The band (drummer Matt Deline, guitarist Tim McKeough, and bassist Nick Pye) partnered with reissue-focused label Solid Brass in 2023 for a career-spanning box set, and the success of that endeavor inspired the trio and the label to reissue their final album, Mouse Ear [Forget-Me-Not], as a standalone release for its thirtieth anniversary. Originally released in 1996 on Troubleman Unlimited (Lync, Dahlia Seed, Ex Models), Mouse Ear [Forget-Me-Not] is as a kinetic and uncompromising record of 90s-style emo-tinged post-hardcore as I’ve heard in recent memory.
Solid Brass’ bio for Shotmaker makes sure to list the impressive number of notable bands with which the trio rubbed elbows as a frequently-touring act in the 1990s: Modest Mouse! Unwound! Fugazi! Cap’n Jazz! Mouse Ear [Forget-Me-Not] does indeed appeal to devotees of multiple heavy indie rock scenes: early 90s emo, Dischord Records when they affixed “post-” to hardcore, and yes, the greyer, insular side of what was happening in the Pacific Northwest. Unwound is definitely the closest analogue among those big names, and I would also shout out a lesser-known Dischord band Shotmaker also played with in Hoover. In between the circular, depressive riffs and the shouted vocals drowned out by the music, though, there’s a more propulsive, “rock and roll” side to Mouse Ear [Forget-Me-Not] to which Unwound’s records didn’t really aspire even at their most “punk”. They’re not in any way really “accessible”, but you can hear the hard rock DNA in stuff like “Uninhibited” and “Bailer”. All these bands active concurrently had their own little variations on the sound of the day, and a more complete picture of it is certainly welcome. (Bandcamp link)
The Van Pelt – Remain Obscure
Release date: September 18st Record label: Ernest Jenning/La Tempesta Dischi/Wrong Speed Genre: 90s indie rock, post-rock, art rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Arid as the Aral
Reviving a band after more than two decades of inactivity has been a tricky maze that many of our great 1990s indie rock groups have navigated in recent years to varying degrees of success, but New York-originating quartet The Van Pelt has a sound that naturally seems to lend itself to “elder statesmen” status. They were originally active from 1993 to 1997, and by the time of their second LP, 1997’s Sultans of Sentiment, founding members Chris Leo (vocals/guitar) and Neil O’Brien (drums) had been joined by guitarist Brian Maryansky and bassist Sean Greene. Leo (brother of Ted of The Pharmacists fame) sketched gripping sung-spoken images over music that pulled from 90s emo, post-hardcore, and post-rock, and when this lineup reunited for 2023’s Artisans & Merchants, the punk edges were stretched into a vast atmospheric sound, but otherwise The Van Pelt transitioned into the 2020s quite smoothly.
Remain Obscure, the fourth Van Pelt LP (fifth if you count the archival release Imaginary Third), picks up the quartet’s wandering thread, having explored the reaches of their whole deal to the point where they’re making largely unclassifiable post-indie rock “art” music. On the one hand, the music of The Van Pelt is sculpted to be the backdrop for what’s effectively “aging New York artist poetry” from Leo, but that minimizes the effect that these musical choices have on the final LP. It reminds me of the sprawling Fred Thomas solo LP from a few years ago, a collection of alternatively fuzzy and stark remembrances given an appropriate reading from adept veterans of “indie music”. Remain Obscure is a knowing title, although it would have been so no matter what kind of album The Van Pelt would’ve made in 2026. With that in mind, The Van Pelt took advantage of being themselves for thirty years and made something only they could’ve made. (Bandcamp link)
My Pet Fossil – Live My Valley Life
Release date: August 21st Record label: Cherub Dream Genre: Punk rock, noise rock, garage punk Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Dedicated Turning Lane
Who doesn’t like noise rock? People whose only interactions with that genre have been Jesus Lizard and Swans clones might not jump to call My Pet Fossil “noise rock”, but this Sacramento quartet display a deeper and more understanding knowledge of 1980s SST and Touch & Go Records’ discographies than most modern acts. The second album from the band (guitarist/vocalist Julian Hall, guitarist Alejandro Magallan, bassist Claire Tauber, and drummer Eric Frankenstein), Live My Valley Life, is a punk record that is sometimes heavy, sometimes downtuned, and frequently ugly, but most importantly, it’s an LP that understands that this kind of underground U.S. indie (as in “independent”) rock music is at its best when it’s holding up a mirror to the seedy underbelly of Americana. You can do this in any part of the country if you’re good enough, but Sacramento, California has got to be one of the most fertile breeding grounds for this kind of thing.
Live My Valley Life is effectively a concept album about the “American West” as an ideal–sometimes it’s a violent exorcism of its demonic influence, other times it’s a more curious exploration, but the subject is certainly dark enough to give My Pet Fossil enough fuel for a thirty-minute record. “Michael P. Fossil” and “Dedicated Turning Lane” are exciting, skeevy rock songs that imagine a world where Wipers and Thin White Rope crossed paths at the peak of their powers, and My Pet Fossil throw some real curveballs into the record’s second half between the (ironically) somewhat psychedelic ballad “Not So Psychedelic”, the heart-on-sleeve jangly indie rock of “My Heart Won’t Wait”, and the stuck-between-stations finale of “For Morro Rock”. It’s a cloudy and beautiful dispatch from the frontier that’s going to stick with me for a while. (Bandcamp link)
Carry Ripple – Carry Ripple 2
Release date: September 4th Record label: Machine Duplication Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, lo-fi folk, electronic Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Mathematics of the Infinite
Carry Ripple is the project of Carter Earheart-Brown, a Memphis-based musician whose 2024 debut album was pegged as part of the American South’s “current wave of weirdo lo-fi indie rock” by me. Carry Ripple’s synthesis of MJ Lenderman, Feeble Little Horse, and Spirit of the Beehive into experimental shoegaze-alt-country-90s-slacker-indie-rock made it one of the more intriguing debut LPs of that year, and I’m pleased to hear that Earheart-Brown decided to get even weirder with Carry Ripple 2. Although the album features performances from names like Colin Miller, Darryl Johns, and Heaven Schmitt, Carry Ripple 2 is ultimately a trip deeper and deeper into the mind of Earheart-Brown. That’s an arena large enough to contain the molasses-slow “Whisper”, the beautiful folk-country-tinged numbers “Birdbath” and “Mathematics of the Infinite”, the experimental ecological folk-tronica of “Ailanthus Altissima”, and soundscapes like “Trepanning” (which is quite beautiful) and “Goofy” (which indeed is). Despite the wide-ranging nature of Carry Ripple 2, Earheart-Brown takes us on this trip slowly and deliberately in a way that helps it feel like Carry Ripple’s most coherent work yet. (Bandcamp link)
It’s the Thursday Pressing Concerns! We’ve got new albums from Perennial, The Drin, Scarves, and Mr. Husband down below. Check them out, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Dagwood, Soda Gumball, Blimps, and Plum), check that out too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Perennial – Modernism
Release date: September 18th Record label: Ernest Jenning/Safe Suburban Home Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Modernism
When this whole “Perennial” thing winds down, we’re sure gonna miss these guys. That’s a thought I had while listening to the fourth album from the New England-based “modernist punk” trio, Modernism, specifically when listening to “Me and the Magpie”, one of the most “Perennial” songs that Perennial have ever made. Chelsey Hahn stabs at her electric organ, Ceej Wolf pounds out a drum beat, and Hahn and vocalist/guitarist Chad Jewett trade lines with bits of Perennial’s favorite imagery in them (“Me and the magpie in our haunted house” / Me and the magpie going underground” / “Me and the magpie in the dead of night” / “Me and the magpie on the harpsichord”, etc., all punctuated by “Yeah, yeah, yeah”s and “Alright”s, of course). And then, of course, the guitars kick in right on time for a furious garage punk/post-hardcore rave-up of a refrain. It is, like I said, extremely “Perennial”–like I said when I wrote about 2024’s Art History, it’s a near-AC/DC level of knowing exactly what they’re about and performing it perfectly. It’s easy to take this for granted after four LPs’ worth of it, but when the faucet stops–that’s it. This is the Perennial Sound, and they’re the only band that does it.
So, Modernism gives us the hits yet again, rolling through blaring, deafening songs that are equally indebted to 60s garage rock and turn-of-the-century noise rock (the title track, “Perennial ‘65”, “Emma Peel”, “Me and the Magpie”), as well as marginally more fractured rock and rollers like “Baby, Are You Abstract?”, “What’s New on the Beat Scene”, and “Cloak & Dagger”. As opposed to Art History, which let its edges get frayed and scorched with some genuine ambient and electronic moments, the twenty-one minute Modernism is an assault for all but the two-minute “Granny Smith Apple”. You can tell that “Granny Smith Apple” wants to explode, but it doesn’t, instead living its entire brief life as a warm, mid-tempo, organ-led indie pop song–it’s Perennial by way of Sparklehorse or Flotation Toy Warning (or maybe the gentler moments of one of Perennial’s biggest influences to my ears, Lunchbox). It doesn’t sound like any other song on Modernism, although, like I said, you can hear the Perennial Sound beating on the walls of “Granny Smith Apple” trying to get out. Which it does one song later, of course, with “The Shadow”, and it doesn’t stop from there. Thankfully, it’s still going right now. (Bandcamp link)
The Drin – I Lost My Way for Centuries
Release date: September 18th Record label: Feel It Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic rock, folk rock, art rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Prophets of Doom
2025 was the first year in quite some time that we didn’t get a new album from Cincinnati underground group The Drin (even though bandleader Dylan McCartney did put out a solo EP called For Those Not Here). In hindsight, I should’ve recognized this meant that The Drin were cooking up something big, and indeed they’ve returned this year with the massive double album I Lost My Way for Centuries (seventy-four minutes long on CD and digital, a bit shorter on vinyl). The Drin have picked a good time in their career to shoot for the moon like this–2024’s Elude the Torch was a high-water mark and a reinvention for the group, embracing the full-band sextet lineup (McCartney, Eric Dietrich, Ryan Sennett, Luke Cornett, Cole Gilfilen, and Dakota Carlyle) to make “dark, rhythmic rock music that finds power in steadiness”, as I said at the time.
I Lost My Way for Centuries feels like a “double album” in a classic rock sense. The Drin take the meditative aspects of their last album and allow them to stretch and sprawl to previously-unthinkable proportions. This album’s twenty-three songs give The Drin the chance to fully embrace the music that’s led them to this point: you’ll hear clear bits of progressive rock, psychedelia, folk, dub, and krautrock throughout I Lost My Way for Centuries. “Moths to the Light” is Neil Young circa Harvest with a warped saxophone in play, while the thundering blues-rock of “Prophets of Doom” is closer to Led Zeppelin. I Lost My Way for Centuries has this “intensity at a distance” quality to it that The Drin are really good at evoking, and it helps this double LP trip feel like an unearthed, dust-covered album from some forgotten band from the 1970s. I’ve been told music in this vein has been having something of a moment recently, which does make me wonder what would happen if I Lost My Way for Centuries came from a somewhat-mysterious art-pop auteur from a cultural capital and not a somewhat-mysterious garage rock band from Ohio on a garage rock label from Ohio. As far as Rosy Overdrive is concerned, though, I Lost My Way for Centuries came from exactly where it should’ve come from. (Bandcamp link)
Scarves – Strays Forever
Release date: September 18th Record label: Tender Loving Empire Genre: Indie folk, 90s indie rock, indie pop, twee, synthpop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: We Should Get a Dog
I wrote about the Seattle group Scarves back in 2022, when the Niko Stathakopoulos-led act put out their fourth album, Delicate Creatures. That aptly-titled record won me over with its mixture of tender, almost-twee indie pop with 90s-style meandering and occasionally distorted indie rock, all led by a frontperson whose earnest and, yes, gentle vocals and lyrics take cues from John K. Samson of The Weakerthans and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. On their fifth LP, Strays Forever, Scarves are a quintet–guitarist/vocalist Nessa Grasing and multi-instrumentalist Elijah Sokolow return from Delicate Creatures, and bassist Jesse Cohen and drummer Jacob Whinihan join the trio alongside producer Chris Walla, a natural choice to record a Scarves album.
The affable pop rock of “Self Soothing” introduces Strays Forever in the most welcoming fashion, before “Marionettes” and “Hey!” inject a bit more of a rainy Pacific Northwest indie rock fog to Scarves’ sound and the title track distinguishes itself as “the one with the synths and electronics” (just a touch of them, to be clear). Stathakopoulos is most impactful when he seems to fully give in to his deeply-felt, eccentric writing, and the back-to-back triumphs of “Chainsaw” and “We Should Get a Dog” in the second half of Strays Forever reflect this. The dreamy former track is a love song apparently inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and features Stathakopoulos proclaiming “I love you like a cat loves cardboard / I want to tear you to shreds / Out of pure joy” in the refrain, while the latter is a swirling, anthemic kicking against ennui that all leads up to the title line. Closing track “Skeletons and Swords” is just as memorable, but here Scarves allow Stathakopoulos to dissolve in a sea of strings and haziness. That’s undoubtedly Walla’s touch, but Strays Forever is unmistakably a “Scarves album” first and foremost. (Bandcamp link)
Mr. Husband – Song for the Old World
Release date: September 18th Record label: Good Soil Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Is It Real
From his outpost in the Maryland panhandle, the West Virginia-originating Kenny Tompkins has been a stalwart advancer of American indie pop, from involvement in record labels Yellow K and Good Soil (Japanese Breakfast, Gabby’s World, Human People) to his power pop group The Trend to, more than anything else, his long-running Mr. Husband solo project. As Mr. Husband, Tompkins has straddled the line between Appalachian-inspired folky Americana and jangly indie pop (with plenty of excursions as well), and Song for the Old World (dubbed the ninth Mr. Husband album by Tompkins, though I think it depends on how one counts) plays to the troubadour’s strengths.
The eight-track, thirty-minute LP begins and ends with the title track, an instrumental piece Tompkins claims to have tinkered with for twenty years before finally “let[ting] go of it” here. It’s a delicate and careful framing for the rest of Song for the Old World, which finds Tompkins and the same lineup from 2024’s Wildflower (drummer Chris Morris, lap steel guitarist Adam Laye, and bassist Curt Tompkins) thoughtfully moving through timeless-sounding pop music with bits of folk and rock music history contained therein. The country-folk belter “White Hot Embers”, the rollicking folk-rocking “Is It Real”, the sparse acoustic “So Goodbye”, and the heart-on-sleeve penultimate bow-out of “Haunted Head” all feel like they ought to be Song for the Old World’s centerpiece; the neat trick of this album is they’re all presented that way thanks to how Tompkins constructed this strong little collection. Mr. Husband remains one of the best at what they do here, simple as that. (Bandcamp link)
This Monday Pressing Concerns features new albums from Dagwood, Soda Gumball, and Plum, and a new EP/cassette from Blimps. Check ’em below.
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.
Dagwood – So What / So What Else
Release date: September 8th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, pop punk, alt-rock, fuzz rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Change Your Mind
The New Haven, Connecticut power-pop-punk group Dagwood have been around since the beginning of the 2010s, but the quartet (guitarist/vocalist Grady Hearn, guitarist Mike Nagy, bassist Tim Casey, and drummer Kilian Appleby) really hit their stride earlier this decade with a pair of strong EPs: 2023’s Everything Turned Out Alright and 2024’s Pollyanna Visions. The latter of those EPs was recorded by the acclaimed Western Massachusetts producer Justin Pizzoferrato, and that’s who Dagwood turned to to help make So What, the band’s fourth full-length album and first in four years. The twelve-song proper LP also comes with six bonus tracks, christened the So What Else EP by Dagwood, making the entire package a behemoth eighteen-song collection of 90s-style fuzzed-out power pop, alt-rock, and garage rock revival that stands as Dagwood’s most impressive statement yet–in terms of sheer magnitude, if nothing else.
Dagwood’s influences are a transatlantic game of telephone: both 90s power pop bands with a bit of British invasion influence like Weezer and Superdrag collide with British pop bands with a bit of American indie rock and pop in their DNA like Ride and late-90s Blur. Garage rock hits like “Nowhere New”, “Group Dynamic”, and “Talk You Do” are Dagwood at their most effortless, and they sit alongside more restrained pop numbers like the steadily-building opening track “Easier to Trust”, the dreamy “Walls of My Bedroom”, the power ballad “Change Your Mind”, and the acoustic “I Forget”. The So What Else EP doesn’t feature any drop in quality–the first half in particular (the heavy, dread-tinged “Paranoid”, the turn-of-the-century pop rock “Reason to Believe”, and the breezy garage-pop of “Right Outside”) is one of the strongest stretches in this entire bundle. At the very least, So What and So What Else are proof that Dagwood are still on a hot streak, and sustaining that fire for forty-five minutes over two records is a new milestone for them. (Bandcamp link)
Soda Gumball – Super Honey Teaspoon!
Release date: July 24th Record label: Den Tapes Genre: Indie pop, 90s indie rock, twee Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Malt Shop Gizmo
Another new indie pop band from the Pacific Northwest is an intriguing proposition, and that’s before I even realized the Rosy Overdrive-related background of Seattle’s Soda Gumball. See, Soda Gumball is the project of one Benjamin Rea, a music instructor who has been making chaotic freak-punk on his own as Jealous Yellow since the pandemic and who also plays in the post-hardcore group Laminate. Soda Gumball in particular stems from Rea’s time as an instructor, and some of these comparatively simple pop songs even originated from collaborations with the musician’s students. Super Honey Teaspoon!, the first Soda Gumball album, displays a laid-back comfort with K Records-style indie pop; Rea’s low-key vocals, while more outwardly sorted for the kind of greyscale, noisy post-punk of his other projects, lend a slacker, almost Elephant 6 psychedelic vibe to these compositions. At fifteen songs and forty-five minutes, we get a full dose of Rea’s vision of pop music, which gets as animated as the chirping synth-twee-pop of “Malt Shop Gizmo”, the horn-laden pop rock “Mango Hiccup”, and the fuzzy “Twirly Whirl”. The whole thing ends with a faithful and reverent cover of Beat Happening’s “Cast a Shadow”, and the ease with which Soda Gumball add it to their repertoire is just proof of Super Honey Teaspoon!’s charming success. (Bandcamp link)
Blimps – Over the Moon
Release date: May 8th Record label: Terminal Releases Genre: Power pop, alt-rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Over the Moon
Blimps is Rocky Mercer and Colin Musolf, a lo-fi power pop duo from Charleston, South Carolina who put out their debut record, a seven-song cassette called Over the Moon, back in May. Over the Moon was released by Terminal Releases, a label run by the members of Blimps that has also, in the months since the tape came out, put out a slow of records by various projects appearing to feature different combinations of Blimps members and other local musicians (band names include Miltons, Silky Demands, and ESP Disco). As a prolific group of underground pop musicians from a C-class American city whose band is named after a Guided by Voices song, it seems like Blimps have their heads screwed on right, and Over the Moon is as strong as one would hope it to be. While songs like “Pitfall Traps” and closer “Landed” are certainly Robert Pollard-esque, that doesn’t necessarily define all of Over the Moon–stuff like crunchy opening track “Over the Moon” is more indebted to Weezer and 90s fuzzed-out power pop (it’s very nearly a Rozwell Kid song), and distorted pop rock journeys like “Kung-Fu” sit nicely next to the clean jangle of “Goodbye, Goodbye”. Some promising things are going on down in South Carolina. (Bandcamp link)
Plum – Bodies in Motion
Release date: August 21st Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, dance-punk, egg punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Can Jam
It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks for Chicago post-punk, particularly of the “dance-punk” variety. The beloved Feel It group Spread Joy returned at the beginning of September with their third LP, noise-punks Model Living just put out their debut full-length last week, and Windy City trio Plum just dropped their second album late last month, too. On Bodies in Motion, Plum (guitarist/vocalist Jeff Kelley, bassist Heather Perry, and drummer Eric Ridder) continue to carry the flame of Midwestern “egg punk”, channeling Devo and The B-52’s into a rubbery, rhythm-section-forward collection of vibrant rock music. Like any good Devo-core group, there’s plenty of nervousness inBodies in Motion, but Plum also understand that “fun” post-punk has always borrowed liberally from other locations, and the funk and grooves found in “Born Anew”, “Too Much Sunlight”, and (especially) “Can Jam” showcase a band with real skill when it comes to realizing the music they love effectively. Elsewhere on the album, songs like “Not Out of Mind” and “Club Scum” display a more spaghetti-western approach to post-punk, splattering guitar lines over top of the sleek rhythm section. The common thread in this eleven track, thirty-one-minute album is a very animated and colorful approach to rock music, an absolutely necessary attitude to have when making a record like Bodies in Motion. (Bandcamp link)
In this Thursday Pressing Concerns, we’ve got two albums coming out tomorrow, September 11th (new LPs from Model Living and Twilark), an EP that came out earlier this week (from King’s Evil), and an album that’s out today (Halfway Up a Jagged Hill). Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring The Bird Calls, Asher White, Sam and Louise Sullivan, and Off Contact), check that 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.
King’s Evil – King’s Evil
Release date: September 8th Record label: Worry Bead Genre: Lo-fi indie pop, slacker pop, bedroom pop, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Sneezed
King’s Evil are a duo co-founded in 2020 by two very good Boston indie musicians in their own right: Sami Martasian of the bedroom pop act Puppy Problems and JM Dussault of chiptune-slacker-rockers (T-T)b. If those two aren’t enough of a Rosy Overdrive cosign for you, their self-titled debut EP also features Alex Judd (Salty Greyhound) on synths, percussion, and production and Nick Dussault ((T-T)b, Really Great) on drums. It’s no surprise to me that King’s Evil is a good record, but it’s nonetheless striking how the duo’s first release is already one of the best things either one of them have made yet. The EP really is the best of both worlds: Martasian and Dussault trade off lead vocals over catchy indie pop like a vintage K Records release, marrying the breezy bedroom pop of the former’s project with the more tinkered-with indie rock of the latter’s.
The goofy synth hook of “Villain Story” is the most obvious “(T-T)b moment” on King’s Evil, but the sneaky heaviness of the title track and (especially) “Jerry” feel like more holistic incorporations of that band’s sound into King’s Evil. The EP’s one entry into the modern alt-country sweepstakes, “Sneezed”, is a perfect toe-dipping; the “Range Life” guitar riff and the Silver Jews reference situate it right at the center of a hyper-specific movement, but one doesn’t need to have an opinion on Berman versus Malkmus to appreciate what’s ultimately a flawless pop song. The good times come to a careening halt with “Tsavt Tanem”, a sparse all-acoustic closing track in which Martasian sings about a society constantly witnessing death and pleads for a way out of it all. It’s a beautiful song, and coming at the end of King’s Evil cements it as one of the best debut EPs I’ve heard in a minute. (Bandcamp link)
Model Living – The Wall
Release date: September 11th Record label: Earth Worms Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, no wave, noise rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Head of Talent
Chicago post-punk quartet Model Living began their career with a pair of EPs in 2023 and 2024, and this September 11th brings us the band’s first-ever full-length album. Vocalist Geoff Daniels, bassist Matt Ciani, drummer Nico Ciani, and guitarist Jay Martinez have put together an assault of a debut LP called The Wall; rather than the “wall of sound”-style assault one might envision based upon the title, The Wall is instead a barrage of words, images, ideas, of a society’s worth of detritus in a blender. Model Living’s version of post-punk is a very American one; they belong to a lineage populated by Protomartyr, Lifter Puller, Bambara, Pardoner, and their neighbors in Stuck.
The Wall is Daniels’ deadpan, droll, grey vocals (and lyrics that are anything but), the Cianis’ blunt, unending rhythm section recalling the Windy City’s noise rock history, and occasional bursts of noise like Sarah Clausen’s saxophone in “Tire Pile” and squealing violin from Audrey Alger (of Upstairs and Prathloons) on “Backwards Racer”. Of the approximately five thousand things Daniels references throughout The Wall, I particularly enjoy the Nimrod Workman cameo in “World of Minds” and a particularly surreal shout-out to Hydroplane’s Selected Songs 1997-2003 in “Head of Talent”. Model Living’s Chicago is tired and dripping with contempt; it’s not particularly fun or easy to listen to, nor should it be. For those who are drawn to the photo-negative, quote-unquote rewarding sides of rock and post-punk music, The Wall has bravely put itself out there for us. (Bandcamp link)
Halfway Up a Jagged Hill – HUAJH
Release date: September 10th Record label: Vinegar Hill Sound Genre: Post-hardcore, post-rock, 90s indie rock, noise rock, slowcore Formats: Digital Pull Track: Silver Sword
Halfway Up a Jagged Hill are a new post-hardcore duo out of Brooklyn featuring Devin Gilbert on guitar, bass, and vocals and Jeb Polstein on the drums. Their first release is a self-titled-ish album called HUAJH, made with the help of collaborators Reed Black of Vinegar Hill Sound (who engineered it and is releasing it on his record label) and Lucy Mondello of Fish Hunt (who provides backing vocals on half of these songs), not to mention having Nick Corbo of Spirit Was make the album’s artwork. Halfway Up a Jagged Hill’s influences range from the post-rock/emo of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die to the explosive noise rock of Pile to black metal group Liturgy, and I can believe they’re drawing from all of them listening to HUAJH. At its loudest, Halfway Up a Jagged Hill’s music is heavy, downtuned, metallic post-hardcore/emo scorching, and these crashing waves eventually recede to reveal tidal pools of exhausted-but-tense slowcore sections. It actually does remind me a lot of Spirit Was–it’s an album that’s really able to evoke heavier genres of music while still bearing the mark of the underground indie rock from which it was born. And, like the best of their predecessors, HUAJH takes on the tightrope between beauty and ugliness with purpose. (Bandcamp link)
Twilark – Never Learned the Tide
Release date: September 11th Record label: Self-released Genre: Indie folk, chamber folk, alt-country Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Tired to Sleep
Twilark is Canon Pence, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter who released his debut album, The Taming Ties Create, almost exactly a year ago. The Taming Ties Create was co-recorded in Nashville at the Bomb Shelter by Dominic Billett and features pedal steel from Spencer Cullum; this must’ve been a particularly fruitful assemblage, as Twilark is back twelve months later with another Bomb Shelter-and-Billett-recorded album featuring Cullum’s contributions called Never Learned the Tide. The folk music and Americana that Pence makes as Twilark has an earnest little personality to it–there’s traditionalism in here drawing both from Nashville and from Pence’s western North Carolina origins, but it’s also an “indie folk” record displaying bygone decades of pop rock in Pence’s clear, melodious voice and in the songs’ construction and execution. The sleepy folk-country shuffle of opening track “Tired to Sleep” is nonetheless a full-band recording that takes advantage of everyone’s contributions, and the charm of the campfire folk rock of “Oranore” is only enhanced by its swooning mixture of pedal steel, strings, and accordion. Never Learned the Tide is an album out of time and place; it could’ve come out during the height of 2000s indie folk, but it’s not tethered to that era. It sounds just right in 2026, too. (Bandcamp link)
In this brand new Monday Pressing Concerns, we’ve got new albums from The Bird Calls, Asher White, Sam and Louise Sullivan, and Off Contact; check them out below!
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.
The Bird Calls – Take Leave
Release date: August 28th Record label: Ruination Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Means More Now
New music from Sam Sodomsky and his project The Bird Calls is always welcome, and thankfully the New York-based folk rock singer-songwriter and music critic seems regularly happy to oblige. New Bird Calls records have been (at least) yearly occurrences all decade, and last year’s entry into the oeuvre, the more polished, 80s-influenced Melody Trail, was a high point in his discography (and we also got a collaborative EP with Izzy Oram Brown as a nice bonus). This year’s Bird Calls album, Take Leave, continues Sodomsky’s collaboration with producer Ryan Weiner that began with Melody Trail, but the two take a step back from some of that album’s more synthetic touches on this LP. That doesn’t mean, however, that Take Leave is a complete return to the straight-up one-man acoustic band sound of early Bird Calls, though; effectively, Sodomsky and Weiner embrace a warm, simple but robust folk rock sound throughout the album (Sodomsky writes that they were shooting for “more of a live sound” on Take Leave; I assume the duo didn’t magically play several instruments at once, so they’ve done an admirable reconstruction in that case).
Most of Take Leave isn’t quite as hushed as the leisurely, pensive folk-country opening track “Some Bands”, nor is it quite as animated, electric, and (relatively) fist-pumping as the second song, “Means More Now”. Take Leave finds a middle lane and stays in it, more or less, though the lane is wide enough to encompass the subtly expansive heartland rock sound of “Clockwork”, perky folk rock like “Acid Mermaid”, and beautiful quieter ballads like “Shadow Song” (not a Mountain Goats cover, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an intentional nod) and “Learning to Sing” (which is one of those conversational, instantly-charming songs-about-songs that form the core of The Bird Calls’ appeal to me). Same time next year, hopefully. (Bandcamp link)
Asher White – Love Aggregates
Release date: August 28th Record label: Joyful Noise Genre: Art pop, indie pop, experimental pop, chamber pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: The Eagle Is No Omen
I first heard Asher White’s music last year thanks to 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living, the latest in a long string of releases from the Providence, Rhode Island-based artist and her debut for Joyful Noise Recordings. At the time, I called it “one of the wildest albums I’ve heard this year” and admitted that while I didn’t like everything White tried, I really enjoyed some moments of it. Twelve months (and one remake of Jessica Pratt’s self-titled album) later, White has returned with Love Aggregates, a gorgeous pop album that zeroes in on the aspects I loved most from 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living. Don’t get me wrong, Asher White is still a weirdo musician, but her eccentricities are focused relatively cleanly on making 70s-inspired baroque/chamber pop this time around. Just about everything on Love Aggregates is ornate pop music–in the first half, we get delicate opening track “Reverie for Work”, the R&B-influenced “My Day at the Casino”, the electronic touches of “Memory Patient (Motor Cycle Angel)”, and the folky “White Castle Sad”. Another remarkable wrinkle to Love Aggregates is that many of its “wildest” moments are also its catchiest ones, like in the somewhat messy, electric power pop of “Stage Diva” or the synthetic, bass-led minimal banger “The Eagle Is No Omen”, which might be my favorite song on the LP. It takes a very good musician to make the kind of music Asher White has made, and an even better one to rein it in and focus it like she does on Love Aggregates. (Bandcamp link)
Sam and Louise Sullivan – Love & Devotion
Release date: July 24th Record label: Historic New Jersey Genre: Pop rock, folk rock, soft rock, R&B Formats: Digital Pull Track: Down on Love
The Philadelphia-based sibling pop rock duo Sam and Louise Sullivan debuted in 2021 with a self-titled EP, and full-length albums quickly followed in 2023 and 2025. Both of those albums came out via Historic New Jersey Recordings, the label and studio that also recorded and released Love & Devotion, the third Sam and Louise Sullivan album. Historic New Jersey is run by Kevin Basko of Rubber Band Gun, and they’ve helped make albums from The Lemon Twigs, Star Moles, Lightheaded, and Thank You Thank You, among others–it seems like they’ve fostered a community of indie musicians making music inspired by 60s and 70s folk and pop rock, and Sam and Louise Sullivan fit right in with this movement. Unlike a lot of modern bands who try to recreate this kind of laid-back, “studio-based” 1970s music, Sam and Louise Sullivan keep the recordings crisp and clear, the arrangements simple, and the pop hooks front and center. There’s nothing “psychedelic” whatsoever about the fist-pumping retro-pop success of opening track “Down on Love”, and what follows this impressive start is nine more songs of infectious pop rock with bits of soul, folk rock, and soft rock in their DNA. It’s an incredibly fresh listen, and one that bodes well for Sam and Louise Sullivan and the kind of pop music Historic New Jersey has facilitated. (Bandcamp link)
Off Contact – Can You?
Release date: July 31th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, art punk, psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Anew
Hailing from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Off Contact are an art-punk quartet who marry jagged post-punk foundations with psychedelia, off-beat guitar pop, and shoegaze distortion. Unsurprisingly, their latest album Can You? is thus kind of unclassifiable, other than being “very good”. The band (drummer Brogan Costa, bassist Pat Nelson, vocalist/keyboardist Qarl Koyzer, and guitarist/saxophonist Simon Keller) make indie rock music that is vibrant, serious, and multi-faceted; combined with Koyzer’s somewhat petulant yelp of a led vocal, I can’t help but being reminded of Game Theory listening to this album, even as the differences between the two acts are nonetheless myriad. Opening track “Anew” is seething, streamlined, and incredibly catchy; less straightforward moments like the saxophone odyssey “Haven” and the fuzz-rock thunderclap “Heart and Mind” still contain very obvious “pop” traces. Off Contact barrel into Can You?’s second half with the five-minute post-punk fever dream “Side”, the fiery rock and roll of “Stakes are High”, and a krautrock-evoking psych-rock closing track called “This Is a Stick Up”. Off Contact are good at what they do, and they do quite a lot on Can You?. (Bandcamp link)
