Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025 (50-26)

Hello! Welcome back (or just welcome) to Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025! Today reveals the top 50 albums on the list. Yesterday unveiled numbers 100 through 51, so be sure to check those out as well if you haven’t yet.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)

50. Cootie Catcher – Shy at First

Release date: March 14th
Record label: Cooked Raw
Genre: Indie pop, twee, electronica, bedroom pop, experimental pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

As one might expect from a band with a “DJ scratcher” enlisted, Toronto’s Cootie Catcher have a foot in the world of electronic music (largely due to the wobbly, wavering synths that Sophia Chavez injects over top of more typical indie pop instrumentals). The group strike a balance between tweeish guitar pop and the aforementioned synth touches on their sophomore album, Shy at First–sometimes Cootie Catcher lean more into guitar pop, sometimes into the stranger electronic impulses, and sometimes both flare up notably in the same song. Shy at First has a ton of obvious “hits”, but even the more curious moments on the album are still “pop songs”, just presented in a somewhat hazier fashion. (Read more)

49. Joel Cusumano – Waxworld

Release date: October 24th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Power pop fans who read this blog may have heard Oakland musician Joel Cusumano via his work as the guitarist in R.E. Seraphin, or maybe they’re familiar with him as the frontperson of Sob Stories, but it’s his first-ever solo album, Waxworld, that cements him as a key figure in the Bay Area indie pop scene. Cusumano can write jangle pop as well as his associates, but he’s a distinct bandleader who favors sprinkling mythology, art history, and religion throughout his writing. I see why Cusumano tapped the titular uncanny lifelike art form to represent Waxworld–it’s a good metaphor, but it’s also an entire medium beyond that, befitting of somebody alight with non-musical influences as well as the typical “college rock”. (Read more)

48. Good Flying Birds – Talulah’s Tape

Release date: January 2nd
Record label: Rotten Apple/Carpark/Smoking Room
Genre: Lo-fi pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Loosely speaking, Indianapolis’ Good Flying Birds fit into a new jangle pop movement somewhere alongside acts like the psychedelic freakbeat of The Smashing Times, the lo-fi mod revival of Sharp Pins, and their dreamy, hazier labelmates Living Dream. However, their debut release Talulah’s Tape is more…frantic than any of those bands. Perhaps appropriately for an act named after a Guided by Voices song, there’s a slapdash basement feel to these tracks: the most obvious pop hits on the record sound like the band recorded them as quickly as possible before the jangly inspiration faded, while the more full-on rockers demonstrate their ability to step on the gas pedal when they want to. (Read more)

47. Miscellaneous Owl – The Cloud Chamber

Release date: March 7th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Bedroom pop, synthpop, indie folk, lo-fi pop
Formats: Digital

This year’s Miscellaneous Owlbum is called The Cloud Chamber, and Madison, Wisconsin singer-songwriter Huan-Hua Chye promises something “folkier, quieter, and dreamier” this time around, as well as “1000% more theremin” than on her last record (You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, one of my favorites of 2024). While the exact specifics of this description (other than the theremin part) are up for debate, I do agree that The Cloud Chamber displays a more thoughtful and subdued side to Chye’s writing. You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow ran out to greet us with early Magnetic Fields-worthy bright synthpop instrumentals, and while this new one has some such moments, on the whole it’s more of an album that one is “welcome to join in progress” than one that’s going out of its way to invite us inside. (Read more)

46. Pigeon Pit – Crazy Arms

Release date: January 17th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Folk punk, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

In the three years since their breakout album, 2022’s Feather River Canyon Blues, Olympia folk punk rockers Pigeon Pit have solidified into a six-piece “country/punk maximalist” group led by former sole member Lomes Oleander and featuring a bunch of Olympia-area ringers. Crazy Arms is both a culmination of “Pigeon Pit the Band” and a statement of their current power; Oleander is still a “folk punk” frontperson, yes, but her vocals and writing have evolved to also encapsulate the kind of world-reverent folk-y indie rock practiced by heroes like the Mountain Goats, The Weakerthans, and certain eras of Against Me!–and, of course, the band is key in helping her realize a more expansive sound for these songs, too. Pigeon Pit is always giving about 120 percent on Crazy Arms, even (perhaps especially) when Oleander is singing about being run-through and tired. (Read more)

45. Hallelujah the Hills – DECK

Release date: June 13th
Record label: Best Brother/Discrete Pageantry
Genre: 2000s indie rock, folk rock, heartland rock
Formats: Vinyl (Diamonds only), playing cards, digital

Boston’s Hallelujah the Hills burst onto the scene in the 2000s with a 90s-style lo-fi, quick-hook attitude combined with a largess and sincerity from a different world entirely, and their career has been marked by a focused consistency ever since. The Ryan H. Walsh-led band has spent the 2020s working on a project called DECK: four albums, fifty-two songs, with every track corresponding to a card in a traditional deck of playing cards. DECK is a pure reflection of what I interpret as the Hallelujah the Hills ethos–it’s highly collaborative, it’s incredibly earnest and adventurous in both its writing and arrangement, and it’s dream-like despite a very grounded execution from the players. (Read more)

44. Star 99 – Gaman

Release date: March 7th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

A year and a half after Bitch Unlimited (my second favorite album of 2023), San Jose power pop group Star 99 returned in 2025 with a fifth bandmember, a more wide-ranging sound, and a sophomore album called Gaman. I’d be despondent if Star 99 completely abandoned the sugary power-pop-punk that they’d mastered on their last album, and thankfully Gaman is not a reinvention so much as an expansion. Star 99 have once again put together a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (twenty-five minutes, actually shorter this time around) collection of tour-de-force songs with plenty of knockout punches; they’ve merely diversified the way that they go about landing these blows, is all. (Read more)

43. Kinski – Stumbledown Terrace

Release date: March 7th
Record label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Post-rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Kinski are an experimental post-rock band from Seattle, forming at the tail end of the 1990s and spending this century steadily releasing albums on storied indie rock labels like Sub Pop and Kill Rock Stars. Stumbledown Terrace is the group’s tenth album, their first in nearly seven years, their first for Comedy Minus One, and their first as a power trio in over twenty-five years. Clearly this paring down hasn’t slowed Kinski, though–their latest LP is a nice, electric jolt of a reminder of how cool guitar music is. On Stumbledown Terrace, Kinski walk the tightrope between instrumental, sprawling post-rock and punchy rock and roll like the best of their influences and peers like Sonic Youth, Trans Am, and Oneida. It has a live feel to it, certainly–and this applies to the moments in between the most kinetic ones, too. (Read more)

42. Dick Texas – All That Fall

Release date: March 7th
Record label: Life Like/Tortilla Flat
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, post-rock, slowcore, art rock, folk rock, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital

All That Fall, the first Dick Texas LP, has been over a half-decade in the making, but it’s pretty believable that letting this music marinate for as long as it did helped make the album as special as it turned out to be. Loosely speaking, All That Fall is a country rock record–and “loose” is the right word to use here, as Dick Texas’ lost, woozy, incredibly slow playing style really does sound on the verge of falling apart more often than not. The songs–all seven of ‘em, that’s all we need–sprawl out in their self-contained desert worlds, and Valerie Salerno is the steady center with vocals that murmur along with the music’s psychedelic haze, declining to hog the spotlight but still leaving a distinct mark on Dick Texas’ landscapes. (Read more)

41. Rip Van Winkle – Blasphemy

Release date: July 11th
Record label: Splendid Research
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, post-punk, art rock, Guided by Voices
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Rip Van Winkle, made up of Robert Pollard and members of the band Joseph Airport, are the latest “weird” Guided by Voices offshoot. The lo-fi, clanging experimental EP The Grand Rapids introduced us to Rip Van Winkle last year with a brief but tantalizing offbeat teaser, and the project’s first album, Blasphemy, delivers on that promise. On the surface, Blasphemy has the same sloppy, surprising qualities of Pollard’s albums where he himself plays (nearly) everything–Vampire on Titus, Please Be Honest, his Teenage Guitar project–but despite this, there’s a secret polish to the playing of the rest of Rip Van Winkle that provides a link to Pollard’s more obviously pop-forward material. (Read more)

40. Saoirse Dream – Saoirse Dream

Release date: February 28th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Hyperpop, synthpop, indie pop, bedroom pop, noise pop, chiptune, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Since the beginning of this decade, Catherine Egbert has been connected to “hyperpop” as a movement, both through her work as Saoirse Dream and as part of collectives like webcage and User-177606669. Her debut album for Lauren Records is indeed a charged mix of chiptune pop blasts, pop punk guitars, emo angst, and lo-fi bedroom pop intimacy. Saoirse Dream isn’t as sonically chaotic as a lot of hyperpop I’m familiar with–I could imagine more typical pop punk/indie pop versions of most of these songs (in fact, they might already be in there somewhere), but Egbert has such a handle on these extra touches and tools that they pretty much always feel like they add to the music. Saoirse Dream has a ton of ideas in any case, and most of these are executed in the context of sweeping pop music. (Read more)

39. Idle Ray – Even in the Spring

Release date: June 6th
Record label: Life Like
Genre: Lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

When the self-titled first Idle Ray album came out back in 2021, the Michigan “band” was pretty much entirely a Fred Thomas solo project; in the four years since, they’ve become a solid power trio with bassist Devon Clausen and guitarist Frances Ma joining Thomas, and the new members even wrote a few of the songs on Even in the Spring. Ma and Clausen’s contributions fit right in with Thomas’ lo-fi power pop/indie rock style, and the three of them zip through ten songs in a mere twenty-four minutes on this one. It’s a noisy but efficient and laser-focused pop record that suggests Thomas, as strong of a songwriter as he is, was right to open Idle Ray up for more collaboration.

38. Tullycraft – Shoot the Point

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: HHBTM
Genre: Twee, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I’m not sure I would’ve pegged Tullycraft as the 90s indie pop band to still be going strong in the year 2025, but here we are with Shoot the Point, a very solid collection of pop music that might be “mature” in some ways but that doesn’t involve “slowing down” in any. Bouncing power pop hooks, tambourine-shaking barebones 60s throwbacks, two wisened but still animated personalities at the reins–it’s hard to find any fault with where Tullycraft are at these days. There are just way too many big pop home-runs on Shoot the Point–lesser bands have built entire albums around mid-record stocking-stuffers like “Rhinestone Tease” and “Tarrytown”. So here’s to Tullycraft, a band thankfully eager to prove that they are, right now, at the top of their complicated game. (Read more)

37. Lùlù – Lùlù

Release date: June 6th
Record label: Howlin Banana/Taken by Surprise/Dangerhouse Skylab
Genre: Power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The self-titled debut album from Lyon/Marseille-based Lùlù is power pop in its most freewheeling, energetically fun form. Bandleader Luc Simone and his collaborators gleefully roll around in the histories of garage rock and punk rock to make ten massively hooky rock and roll knockout punches. Far removed from the refined, cosmopolitan sound that I associated with French indie pop, Lùlù has more in common with Australian garage-power-poppers like The Unknowns and Romero, American retro-pop groups like Sheer Mag and Free Energy, and, honestly, even a little bit of melodic lifer “orgcore” punk rock groups. (Read more)

36. Higher Selves Playdate – The New Apocalyptic

Release date: July 30th
Record label: Olly Olly
Genre: Psychedelic pop, indie pop, synthpop, power pop, new wave
Formats: Digital

Fairfax, Virginia’s Higher Selves Playdate have been around and steadily releasing singles since 2020, but, as far as I can tell, The New Apocalyptic is the duo’s first full-length album. The New Apocalyptic is a colorful and glitzy pop album, a glorious mess of glitter, danceable beats, and great pop smarts equally anchored by sparkling synthesizers, taut and rhythmic basslines, and delirious sugar-high tempos. The duo name Devo, Grace Jones, and the B-52s as some of their favorite acts, and while The New Apocalyptic doesn’t precisely sound like any of those artists, it’s an album made by people with a deep understanding of the freakier sides of dance music, the transformative power of new wave, and the rich inner mythologies suggested by those names. (Read more)

35. Abe Savas – 99 Songs (Plus One)

Release date: June 20th
Record label: Badgering the Witless
Genre: Power pop, bedroom pop, folk-pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

The album is called 99 Songs (Plus One), and that’s exactly what it offers us. 99 Songs (Plus One) fits its one-hundred tracks in seventy-eight minutes (enough for one CD)–you can do the math, but this means a lot of these songs are snippets a few seconds long, and even the more fully-developed tracks are almost all under two minutes in length. The songs range from incredibly goofy to surprisingly poignant, genre-wise hopping from power pop to acoustic folk to more side-excursions than I can count. There’s a lot of Elvis Costello in Abe Savas’ pop music instincts, and this chaotic collection will likely also appeal to fans of Tony Molina, They Might Be Giants, and maybe even Fountains of Wayne. There’s a ton of brilliant moments on 99 Songs (Plus One), and one may only need to wait a couple of seconds after one ends for another to begin. (Read more)

34. Robbie Fulks – Now Then

Release date: September 5th
Record label: Compass
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, singer-songwriter, bluegrass, country-folk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Oh, man. It’s so nice to have a new classic grab-bag Robbie Fulks album. Not that I disliked the forays into more traditional bluegrass and his collaborative record with Linda Gail Lewis, but the alt-country firebrand has long had an incredibly wide range of strengths, and Now Then puts a bunch of them on full display. Between the sprawling, gorgeous folk rock storytelling of songs like “That Was Juarez, This Is Alpine” and “There’s a Man”, the exhilarating country rocker “Now Now Now Now Now”, and the typically clever traditionalism of “Poor and Sharp-Witted”, it really does feel like the album the Let’s Kill Saturday Night guy would make a quarter-century later.

33. Alex Orange Drink – Victory Lap (#23)

Release date: May 9th
Record label: Million Stars
Genre: Garage punk, power pop, folk punk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Alex Zarou Levine didn’t choose to pigeonhole himself as the punk rock musician who writes about his experiences living with and battling various medical ailments; he’s just attempting to live his life, I think. 2021’s Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. is about Levine’s long-term metabolic genetic disorder homocystinuria, and this year’s Victory Lap (#23) came about after the So So Glos frontperson was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma and subsequently went through intense chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Victory Lap (#23) is as defiant and fiery as one would hope from its title, an excellent collection of Levine’s signature New York City power pop rock, slapdash, garage-y punk, and folk punk-adjacent singalongs.

32. Stay Inside – Lunger

Release date: October 3rd
Record label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Emo, art rock, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Stay Inside became one of the best emo bands currently active so naturally and quietly that I didn’t even notice until now. I enjoyed last year’s Ferried Away, but it now feels like it was a warm-up for Lunger, Stay Inside’s third and best LP. Lunger is fourteen songs of the New York quartet delivering blows informed by heavy-gravity groups like mewithouYou and The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, only chiseled down to punchy, poppy emo-rock songs. Stay Inside do their best to outrun a sense of decay through a smattering of sweeping rockers–really, just about every song on Lunger feels like it’s in motion in some form. Stay Inside’s progress had largely flown under the radar until now, but we all ought to be listening after Lunger. (Read more)

31. The Telephone Numbers – Scarecrow II

Release date: October 10th
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein is remarkable in how he manages to carve out his own signature style while giving so much of himself over to the towering jangle pop, college rock, and power pop that’s shaped the entire scene around him. The one-off singles and compilation appearances in the intervening four years only increased my anticipation for Scarecrow II, the second Telephone Numbers LP and the first one for Slumberland Records. Scarecrow II also happens to be the band’s first as a solid quartet, and it sounds like Rubenstein and his collaborators have long been ready to turn their intermittent brilliance into something larger-scale. (Read more)

30. Possible Humans – Standing Around Alive

Release date: October 9th
Record label: Hobbies Galore
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Possible Humans’ 2019 album Everybody Split (released in the United States by the recently-defunct and already-sorely-missed Trouble in Mind) was one of my favorite albums of that year, establishing the Melbourne-based group as one of the best garage-tinged jangle pop groups currently active. It took a half-dozen years to get another Possible Humans album, but Standing Around Alive sounds just like that band that grabbed me at the end of last decade. The second Possible Humans album marries that gloomy and motorik sides of post-punk with bittersweet, Kiwi-influenced jangly guitar pop in a sturdy way that only sounds better the more I listen to it.

29. Buddie – Glass

Release date: November 7th
Record label: Crafted Sounds/Placeholder
Genre: Power pop, fuzz pop, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Glass is the third Buddie album and the first recorded with the 90s indie rock/fuzz pop/power pop revival band’s new Vancouver-based lineup (lead guitarist Patrick Farrugia, drummer Natalie Glubb, and bassist Lindsay Partin). The eight-song, twenty-five minute LP sounds almost exactly like the previous, Philadelphia-stationed version of Buddie (and that’s a good thing); if there’s a difference between this one and their last LP, it’s a slightly more “rocking” record, probably due to the consistent lineup (only the four Buddie members, no guest musicians this time around) and the all-too-brief runtime. Despite the similarities, Glass feels like a distinct version of this band and, I suspect, will continue to assert itself in Buddie’s discography regardless of what the group do next. (Read more)

28. Dancer – More or Less

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

I’ve been clear enough on this blog that Glasgow’s Dancer is a special group, and they’ve continued their winning streak into 2025, as their sophomore album, More or Less, is their most substantial release yet at a dozen tracks and nearly forty minutes. It’s the band’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, but despite the lineup change, More or Less has Dancer sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures are still part and parcel of More or Less, yes, but they’ve been more effectively ironed into a wider tapestry of expansive, exploratory art rock and (for Dancer, at least) more laid-back pursuits of pop music. Dancer may be taking their time a little more here, but they aren’t slowing down. (Read more)

27. Mekons – Horror

Release date: April 4th
Record label: Fire
Genre: Post-punk, art punk, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The Mekons are forty-nine years old this year. I’m not even going to try to figure out what number LP they’re on at this point. And yet here is Horror, an album that purports to “[look] at history and the legacies of British imperialism with mashed up lyrics” and that sounds a hell of a lot like the great Mekons records littered throughout history before it. Post-punk artsiness, alt-country rock-and-rolling, traditionalist folk instrumentation, reggae rhythms, and a good old communal feeling all permeate Horror, an album that keeps one foot in the past only to mainline all the power and humanity and bullshit that’s still ever-so-relevant today, always forging some kind of connection or another.

26. Califone – The Villager’s Companion

Release date: February 21st
Record label: Jealous Butcher
Genre: Folk rock, post-rock, art rock, blues rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

As the name implies, The Villager’s Companion is linked to the Califone record before it, 2023’s The Villagers: it was recorded around the same time and is augmented by a couple of covers that have been previously released over the past few years. Califone bandleader Tim Rutili referred to these songs as “misfit toys” when the album was announced, but The Villager’s Companion is just further confirmation that Califone thrives in a less formal environment. It gives Rutili and company a chance to both spin some simple blues-folk numbers and to journey beyond them right next to each other, to interpret other people’s songs and incorporate them into the Califone songbook like they’ve always belonged there. (Read more)

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025 (75-51)

Welcome to part two (of four) of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025! This post covers albums 75 through 51. For any and all background info, see part one.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

75. The Bats – Corner Coming Up

Release date: October 17th
Record label: Flying Nun
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, Dunedin sound, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I don’t know if there’s much to say beyond that I’m grateful The Bats are still around and making new music. Corner Coming Up is the legendary New Zealand group’s first new album in five years, and it certainly sounds like a band who’ve been blissfully pursuing indie pop for over four decades. The Bats are now long-removed from making instant-gratification, quick-hit jangle pop singles, although that’s still part of Corner Coming Up’s DNA; it’s just now rolled into an all-encompassing, sprawling folk-rock land survey of an album that requires patience and time to really start to reveal itself.

74. Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow

Release date: March 7th
Record label: Southeastern
Genre: Folk, country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Foxes in the Snow is a tough one, the “divorce album” that Jason Isbell recorded entirely on his own with just his acoustic guitar partly so he could just get the songs out and not have to dwell on them. 2023’s Weathervanes was my favorite Isbell album in quite some time, and while Foxes in the Snow isn’t an LP to “throw on” frequently like that one is, I do get the sense that it’s built to stand beyond the circumstances of its creation. Isbell’s separation from his wife and former bandmate Amanda Shires colors these songs, certainly, although one would have to have one’s head in the clouds not to recognize Foxes in the Snow’s ability to glance beyond that just frequently enough.

73. Golden Apples – Shooting Star

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Fuzz pop, noise pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

2023’s Bananasugarfire was a big milestone for Philadelphia artist Russell Edling and his Golden Apples project, incorporating shoegaze and psychedelia into the group’s loud and fuzzy sound. Pieced together in a handful of different locales by Edling with various contributors, Shooting Star pulls off the trick of sounding more like an insular folk-influenced record while at the same time retaining Bananasugarfire’s bright, distorted, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic power pop. Between these last two LPs, there’s now a distinct “Golden Apples sound”–I think I like this new take on it the best so far. (Read more)

72. My Wife’s an Angel – Yeah, I Bet

Release date: April 18th
Record label: Knife Hits/GRIMGRIMGRIM/Broken Cycle
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

My Wife’s an Angel are a chaotic, piss-taking noise rock band from Philadelphia, although my intelligence suggests that they may have roots in the expansive wasteland known as “the rest of Pennsylvania”. The quartet’s second album, Yeah, I Bet, is positively a mess–it’s ugly, heavy noise-punk that sometimes doesn’t sound like any of those descriptors at all. The closest thing I can think to compare My Wife’s an Angel to is, like, a more millennial and Appalachian version of Killdozer (if you understand what I mean by this, you’re probably going to hell, by the way)–the Midwestern classic rock devil worship subbed out for a big, wide, empty hollering against rock music simply played wrong. (Read more)

71. The Tisburys – A Still Life Revisited

Release date: April 25th
Record label: Double Helix/SofaBurn
Genre: Power pop, Americana, heartland rock, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

On A Still Life Revisited, Philadelphia heartland rock group The Tisburys consciously sought to expand their sound beyond the power pop of their last album (2022’s Exile on Main Street), name-dropping ambitious indie rock groups like Frightened Rabbit and The Hold Steady as their targets. This is a bold (and, for most bands in the same boat, would be an ill-advised) decision, but there was a Springsteenian largesse to Exile on Main Street, and A Still Life Revisited subsequently comes off as more of a continuous journey down a familiar road for them. It helps that bandleader Tyler Asay and crew still know their way around a nice, big guitar pop hook too, of course. (Read more)

70. Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears

Release date: April 4th
Record label: Phantom Limb
Genre: Experimental rap, noise rap, folk, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals are a pair of Baltimore rappers who’ve gained a reputation for experimental and political rap over their first couple of records, and A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears isn’t going to disabuse anybody of these notions. On every account, though, the duo spend time out of these boxes–not everything reads as explicitly political, for one, and there are also moments that sound genuinely fun and pop-friendly (and even “rap” is too small of a box to constrain the duo on this record, as there are two straight-up folk songs on A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, among other excursions). (Read more)

69. Lily Seabird – Trash Mountain

Release date: April 4th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Trash Mountain was written and recorded much more quickly than Lily Seabird’s previous two albums, and I found myself pretty surprised at where the Vermont singer-songwriter decided to go on her third LP. The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of last year’s Alas, are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain (named after an artist-filled house on a “decommissioned landfill site” where Seabird lived while writing the album) is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis. (Read more)

68. Lake Ruth – Hawking Radiation

Release date: June 6th
Record label: Feral Child/Dell’Orso
Genre: Psychedelic pop, jazz-pop, space pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

After releasing two albums in the late 2010s, Lake Ruth had been pretty quiet this decade, but Hawking Radiation is a great reintroduction to a high-quality indie rock band. Recorded by the band themselves with help from SAVAK’s Sohrab Habibion & Michael Jaworski, among others, Hawking Radiation is adventurous, psychedelic, synth-led “space pop”. Lake Ruth differentiate themselves from their like-minded peers via a palpably-embraced jazz side. Plenty of bands like this dabble in “jazz-pop”, yes, but rarely is it so thoroughly a part of a record’s makeup as it is on Hawking Radiation–everything from Matt Schulz’s tireless drumming to Allison Brice’s striking vocals to, well, everything that multi-instrumentalist Hewson Chen is doing is completely in tune with it. (Read more)

67. Craig Finn – Always Been

Release date: April 4th
Record label: Tamarac/Thirty Tigers
Genre: Singer-songwriter, heartland rock, synthrock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The music of Craig Finn (and his band, The Hold Steady) is already fairly…divisive for the fickle bunch known as indie rock fans, and even those who enjoy Finn’s most acclaimed works seem split on Always Been, his latest solo record. I, for one, am really into it–I’ve felt that Finn’s solo career has benefited from his attempts to grow his music palette (we already know he’s a great storyteller–what else you got?), and Always Been–produced by Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs and leaning further into shined-up, 80s synth-rock than ever before–certainly qualifies. As always, the narratives are dense and no amount of polished production will ever make it “easy listening”. But I still love Finn and Granduciel’s attempts to make it so. 

66. Jeff Tobias – One Hundredfold Now in This Age

Release date: October 17th
Record label: Repeating Cloud
Genre: Art rock, orchestral pop, experimental pop, jazz-pop, synthpop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Musically speaking, One Hundredfold Now in This Age is more orchestral and jazz-indebted that 2022’s Recurring Dream was, but if you enjoyed that album’s smooth yet dense take on pop music, Brooklyn multi-talented artist Jeff Tobias does it again here, more or less. Tobias, (who also plays in art rock group Modern Nature and noise-jazz ensemble Sunwatchers), with an impressive list of guest musicians in tow, turns this collection of strange songs into a single chaotic, vibrant, and seething beast, a sharp, crystal-clear political collection that meets the moment in the most difficult and correct way. (Read more)

65. Charm School – Debt Forever

Release date: January 24th
Record label: Surprise Mind
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The 2023 Finite Jest EP introduced Louisville’s Charm School as devotees of Touch & Go Records-influenced post-punk, garage rock, and post-rock. On their first LP, Debt Forever, Charm School haven’t completely shaken up their sound, but they’re doing something a little different here. It’s somehow both looser and angrier; there’s still plenty of that modern Fall-influenced post-punk sound here, but there’s also some San Diego-style post-hardcore/garage rock and turn-of-the-century Washington, D.C. art punk in the mix, too. As the title hints at, Debt Forever spends a good deal of time focusing on financial anxiety and insecurity–whether the alternatively brooding and seething music drew this all-American fear out of frontperson Andrew Sellers or whether his preoccupations with such matters informed the music, there’s no denying the synergy here. (Read more)

64. Teenage Tom Petties – Rally the Tropes

Release date: October 24th
Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home
Genre: Fuzz pop, power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

It may seem like there’s a steady stream of new power pop music from Teenage Tom Petties mastermind Tom Brown that he just can’t turn off, but he specifically wrote the songs of Rally the Tropes with a full-band recording session in mind–after releasing a pair of self-recorded albums in the past year and a half, Brown is ready to once again put his songs in his friends’ hands to elevate them. Even more so than the garage-y, punk-y, jangly power pop sound of Rally the Tropes, the band’s presence is felt via Brown’s writing; it’s communal in a winking (read: British) way. Though it may be Brown’s pen to paper, it’s the rest of his band giving him the freedom to fly on Rally the Tropes. (Read more)

63. Maneka – bathes and listens

Release date: October 29th
Record label: Topshelf
Genre: Art rock, slowcore, experimental rock, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, math rock, Maneka
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

The Washington, D.C.-originating, Philadelphia-based musician Devin McKnight has been making music as Maneka since the mid-2010s; much of the project lands in the realms of slowcore-ish, greyscale indie rock, but Maneka has always been a bit more than that. McKnight’s newest Maneka album, bathes and listens, was recorded with modern slowcore and/or shoegaze go-to producer Alex Farrar, and it subsequently finds the unclassifiable musician making a renewal of vows with distorted, 90s-influenced indie rock. It’s not a full retreat from McKnight’s stranger impulses, but when bathes and listens is supposed to rock, it rocks. (Read more)

62. K9 – Thrills

Release date: July 21st  (Digital)/October 3rd  (Vinyl)
Record label: Who Ya Know
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette (partial), digital

Thrills is K9’s first full-length album, and the twenty-minute collection delivers on the potential that the Richmond group had previously flashed in smaller doses. They aren’t shy at all about their love of classic college rock and jangle pop, but they carry themselves like a bunch of garage rockers (or even, at time, punks)–the final product is somewhere around the midpoint between Lame-O and Feel It Records. On one end of the spectrum, the vocal interplay between the two lead vocalists and the zippy guitar melodies help K9 pull off “indie pop” or perhaps even twee pop, and on the other side of things, the six-strings lob punk slingshots and the ferocious drumming approaches hardcore tempos. (Read more)

61. Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra – Yikes Almighty

Release date: July 18th
Record label: Lauren/Making New Enemies
Genre: Folk pop, singer-songwriter, indie pop, twee, slacker pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Dubbed “a calming existential crisis set to children’s toy instruments”, Yikes Almighty is low-key folk-pop music that’s about as “relaxed” and “chill” as its creator could reasonably allow it to be. Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra (aka Walter Etc., aka Dustin Hayes and whoever’s playing with him) get referred to as a “folk punk” act, and I can hear how they might’ve initially been one, but Yikes Almighty is in the realm of underground iconoclasts who fall somewhere between “lo-fi pop” and anti-folk/folk punk. Like a lot of “cult”-ish-type bands, it’s hard to say what, exactly, Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra is, which helps Yikes Almighty sound like a one-of-a-kind album in 2025. (Read more)

60. Strange Magic – Effervescent

Release date: October 3rd
Record label: Mama Mañana
Genre: Psychedelic pop, indie pop, power pop, dream pop, soft rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

New Mexico musician Javier Romero has been toiling away making homespun power pop as Strange Magic since at least the early 2010s, but the prolific artist’s latest record is something of a departure for him. Romero declares Effervescent to be inspired by “New Jack Swing, the golden age of hip-hop, and early, true alternative stylings”–I wouldn’t say that Strange Magic is now closer to those aforementioned genres than, say, the Elvis Costello-ish power pop of Romero’s past records, but there’s definitely some fun and unusual things going on in these songs. Effervescent is equal parts “dreamy, unmoored vibe-pursuing” and “grounded guitar pop”.

59. Miss Bones – Sap Green

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, folk rock, folk-pop, pop rock
Formats: Digital

There’s a nice little indie folk/folk rock/pop rock scene happening up in Boston, and Miss Bones’ June Isenhart is right in the middle of it. Sap Green, the debut Miss Bones album, follows a 2023 EP called Grey Lady and features Isenhart backed by members of Lonesome Joan and The Michael Character. Miss Bones’ first album is a rock-solid coming-out party from the could’ve-been adult alternative/folk rock hit “What’s the Story, Mother?” on down: the roots-pop anthem “I-93”, the multi-layered folk-pop closing ballad “Moving Song”, the soaring heartland rock “Sign-Off”–any of these could be the center of Sap Green. We get it all on Sap Green, though, and a handful of more patience-requiring moments, too. (Read more)

58. Spring Onion – Seated Figure

Release date: March 14th
Record label: Anything Bagel
Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

I’ve listened to the music of Catherine Dwyer extensively thanks to her work as the bassist of Remember Sports, but this year I learned that she’s more than capable of making a great lo-fi/bedroom pop record on her own (well, with the assistance of many great Philadelphia DIY musicians and her Remember Sports bandmates, yes, but Spring Onion is “her” project). Seated Figure, the sophomore Spring Onion album and the first since 2018, is about the death of Dwyer’s father, and her vibrant, meditative version of sunny guitar pop is a surreal but deeply-felt tribute and crystallization of a foggy, difficult-to-describe experience.

57. The Bird Calls – Melody Trail

Release date: February 7th
Record label: Ruination
Genre: Folk rock, soft rock, singer-songwriter, synthpop, sophisti-pop
Formats: CD, digital

2025’s album from Sam Sodomsky and his prolific project The Bird Calls finds the New York singer-songwriter (and music writer) putting together something a bit different, comparatively speaking. Melody Trail was assembled entirely by Sodomsky and producer Ryan Weiner, and while these songs certainly sound like they were written and sung by the same artist who made last year’s casual country-folk Old Faithful, the duo give Melody Trail a more polished pop reading. It’s a path down which many of Sodomsky’s influences–Dan Bejar, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen–have wandered to rewarding ends, but Melody Trail retains the greatest strength of Sodomsky’s previous work: namely, that he’s able to evoke the art of such idiosyncratic, larger-than-life figures while coming off more or less as a regular guy. (Read more)

56. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band – New Threats from the Soul

Release date: July 25th
Record label: Sophomore Lounge/Tough Love
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, country rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I don’t need to sing the praises of Ryan Davis as fervently these days, because the rest of the “music writing world” has finally caught up to his brilliance. If you liked the expansive alt-country sagas of Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band’s 2023 breakout album Dancing on the Edge, I’ve got good news with regards to what you’ll hear on New Threats from the Soul. As always, the incomparable Davis rolls deceptively simple country rock along with his rambling observations and lets us sort the resultant rich texts out. The confusion by some at Davis’ whole deal upon his ascent has been amusing, but not as amusing as listening to New Threats from the Soul.

55. Peter Peter Hughes – Half-Staff Blues

Release date: September 5th
Record label: Tired Media
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, garage pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

After stepping down from his position as the longtime (we’re talking since the 1990s, more or less) bassist for the Mountain Goats last year, Peter Hughes was finally faced with the time to make his first solo album in a decade and a half. The former Shrimper Records stalwart, to my delight, decided to go to Australia and make one of them Aussie indie pop/post-punk kinda albums; recorded with members of The Ocean Party, Pop Filter, and Partner Look, Half-Staff Blues translates Hughes’ propensity for unflinching left-wing commentary and melancholic meandering into the realms of snappy rhythms and bright and garish pop get-ups.

54. SAVAK – SQUAWK!

Release date: May 30th
Record label: Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

I’m pleased to report that Brooklyn’s finest prolific veteran-studded indie rock group SAVAK still sound exactly like themselves on their seventh album, SQUAWK!. A tight ten songs and thirty-five minutes, the album finds Sohrab Habibion, Michael Jaworski, and Matt Schulz continuing to hammer out their by-now quite recognizable style of college rock, post-punk, and garage rock–tough but polished, familiar but surprising, catchy as ever. Detours into New York electric noise rock collages, more overt Lou Reed worship, and atmospheric pieces are infrequent but always done well. If you’re already part of the SAVAK society, I doubt you’ll need more convincing that they’ve done it yet again–but there’s always room for more. (Read more)

53. Club Night – Joy Coming Down

Release date: May 2nd
Record label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Art rock, math rock, emo
Formats: Vinyl, digital

There were plenty of groups in the late 2010s making music that could be described as some combination of “math rock”, “indie rock”, and “emo”, but the way that Club Night do it–an overall hugeness, jittery art-punk instrumentation, strange but welcome synth-centric additions–just works better than the others. It was enough to keep the band regularly on my mind in the six-year gap between their first album, What Life, and Joy Coming Down, which picks up right where Club Night left off–not that a band like this can ever really be predictable, but their second album packs as much of what makes this group special as it can in its forty-two minutes. Club Night alternate between sounding like a real, rumbling live rock band and a bunch of artists frantically sculpting something in a gigantic studio throughout the album. Like a good math rock record, a lot of these change-ups in Joy Coming Down happen within the same song. (Read more)

52. FACS – Wish Defense

Release date: February 7th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Wish Defense was the final album recorded by Steve Albini before his sudden passing last year, but its tragic circumstances do not obscure the fact that this LP is actually a rebirth and revitalization of FACS. The Chicago art rock trio welcome back original guitarist Jonathan Van Herik for the first time since their 2018 debut Negative Houses, now playing bass after founding bassist Brian Case moved over to guitar to replace him. 2023’s Still Life in Decay found FACS pushing and probing their sound to the outer margins of “rock music”, a direction seemingly necessary for the band to continue to sound inspired and forward-glancing. The reintroduction of Van Herik seems to have changed this calculus, allowing FACS to find heretofore undiscovered life in the realms of (relatively) brief bursts of power trio post-punk and noise rock. (Read more)

51. Julian Cubillos – Julian Cubillos

Release date: July 25th
Record label: Ruination
Genre: Folk-pop, psychedelic pop, indie pop, soft rock, synthpop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Julian Cubillos has contributed to records by everyone from Okkervil River and Joe Henry to Field Guides and Scree in recent years, but Julian Cubillos is the Queens musician’s first solo album in seven years. Julian Cubillos is just an absolute blast of pop music–it’s short and pretty straightforward in its instrumental choices, but Cubillos has jammed so much stuff into it nonetheless. It’s a tight collection, wrapping its ten songs up in under thirty minutes with hardly a wasted moment. Cubillos has the touch of a studio rat and auteur (Wilson, Rundgren, Prince, et cetera), and though he’s an understated frontperson, he has the material and attitude to justify a mini-whirlwind through funk, folk, psychedelia, and R&B (among other stops). (Read more)

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025 (100-76)

It looks like we’ve found ourselves in December, which means that I find myself putting the finishing touches on Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of the Year. Today, albums 51 through 100 are being posted, and tomorrow (Tuesday, December 9th), the top 50 will be revealed.

As always, thank you to anyone who reads this blog, anyone who’s shared Rosy Overdrive with others, and anyone who’s made it part of their lives or uses it in any way. I’m grateful I can share the music I’ve liked with other people and I don’t take it for granted that a small but real amount of people care about that.

Here is a playlist featuring all of the records from this list that are available on streaming services: on Spotify, on Tidal. Separate lists for EPs and compilations/reissues will go up over the next couple of weeks, along with a few more Pressing Concerns. To read about more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And you can also be part of the blog’s year-end rundown by voting in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll! Anyway, without further ado, let’s get to the list.

See also:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

100. Modern Nature – The Heat Warps

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Bella Union
Genre: Chamber pop, folk rock, post-rock, sophisti-pop, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

After getting more abstract and post-rock/chamber music-influenced over the course of four records, British art rock group Modern Nature decided it was time to start from scratch with The Heat Warps. The vast blank space of previous Modern Nature LPs hasn’t completely dissipated, but the quartet have allowed more of it than ever to fill with Jeff Tobias and Jim Wallis’ steady rhythms and Tara Cunningham and Jack Cooper’s snaking guitars. Even the album’s cover art–a warm yellow, depicting the four players–indicates a change to something more approachable and evenly-split. (Read more)

99. Lone Striker – Lone Striker

Release date: March 14th
Record label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud/Hidden Bay
Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop, power pop, folk pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

As the bandleader of Teenage Tom Petties, Tom Brown worships at the altars of lo-fi power pop, college rock, and jangly indie pop. Lone Striker is an attempt by the Bath, England musician to do something markedly different: the project’s self-titled debut album was recorded almost entirely by Brown at home utilizing “wobbly doo-wop samples, off-kilter soul drum loops and found sounds” as well as his typical indie rock instrumentation. Drawing from psychedelic and atmospheric-pop 90s indie groups like Sparklehorse and Mercury Rev, Lone Striker works because Brown is able to speak the same fuzzy, half-remembered, mid-century Americana language that those bands also spoke (somehow, despite being British). (Read more)

98. Jordan Krimston – Count It All Joy

Release date: January 31st
Record label: DHCR
Genre: Emo-pop, pop punk, indie pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

San Diego musician Jordan Krimston has popped up here and there on material from Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon and Oso Oso (for whom he’s currently the touring drummer), among others. The prolific musician has kept up a steady solo career in addition to instrumental and recording work, and his most recent album, Count It All Joy, is a blast. As one might expect from an Oso Osociate, it’s roughly in the realm of “emo/pop punk/power pop”, although that doesn’t quite capture the adventurous, ambitious pop music contained herein. Chirping synths, math rock-y drums, bright emo-pop, electronic undercurrents–Count It All Joy is an inspired combination.

97. Jobber – Jobber to the Stars

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: Fuzz rock, alternative rock, grunge-pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Brooklyn’s Jobber burst onto the scene in 2022 with an exciting and inspired combination of 90s alt-rock fuzz, huge pop hooks, and professional wrestling-themed writing in their debut EP, all of which continue to be found on the band’s first album, Jobber to the Stars. After three years, the band’s first record as a full quartet pulls off the challenge of expanding their sound admirably. They put their bigger stage to use throughout Jobber to the Stars, keeping the smart hooks intact but adding heavy lumbering alternative rock moments and zippy, jagged Exploding in Sound-style underground rock into their sound. (Read more)

96. Open Head – What Is Success

Release date: January 24th
Record label: Wharf Cat
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, art punk, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Kingston art punk group Open Head had grand ambitions for their second LP, naming hip hop and electronic music as equally influential on it as punk and art rock. Of course, any adventurous and forward-thinking band ought to be looking outside their own genre for ideas, and just because the resultant What Is Success is “merely” a rock album doesn’t mean that Open Head weren’t successful in making something that genuinely feels informed by things other than “merely” post-punk and noise rock. Although, to be clear, I do hear a lot of good noise rock and post-punk bands in What Is Success’ sound, too–New York no wave, Exploding in Sound-associated post-hardcore, and Rust Belt noise rock all likely had a hand in where Open Head end up here. (Read more)

95. Allo Darlin’ – Bright Nights

Release date: July 11th
Record label: Slumberland/Fika Recordings
Genre: Folk-pop, indie pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

After releasing three records that received just about as much attention and adoration that vintage-style indie pop music was capable of receiving in the early 2010s, London quartet Allo Darlin’ decided to hang it up, a decision that thankfully only lasted a few years. On their first album in more than a decade, Allo Darlin’ do indeed sound like an indie pop band who’ve allowed themselves to age–somewhere between the stalwart folk rock of The Innocence Mission and the elder-statespeople twee pop of The Catenary Wires, Bright Nights is the record that the four of them needed to take some time off to make. (Read more)

94. Kilynn Lunsford – Promiscuous Genes

Release date: May 16th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital

New Jersey’s Kilynn Lunsford has been playing in bands in and around Philadelphia for two decades now, most notably the wild art punk group Taiwan Housing Project. Lunsford’s latest solo album, Promiscuous Genes, is on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. It’s hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. (Read more)

93. Exploding Flowers – Watermelon/Peacock

Release date: March 21st
Record label: Meritorio/Leather Jacket
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psychedelic pop, Paisley Underground
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Hailing from ground zero of the 1980s “Paisley Underground” movement, Los Angeles’ Exploding Flowers do indeed evoke the loose, psychedelic side of this strain of American jangly college rock. Watermelon/Peacock offers up everything from hook-fest power pop to pure psychedelia to throwback San Francisco garage rock to 60s-style keys and organs throughout its fourteen tracks and forty-odd minutes. Sometimes hazy, sometimes bright and vibrant, Watermelon/Peacock is a compelling and generous Americana record arising from one of the country’s largest population centers. (Read more)

92. Bones Shredder – Morbid Little Thing

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Sunken Teeth
Genre: Pop punk, power pop
Formats: Digital

Randy Moore is Mr. Bones Shredder: a pop punk artist with a dark cabaret aesthetic, a horror-themed musical vampire-mad-scientist whose Frankenstein’s monster is a Morrissey that only knows how to write Ramones/Misfits songs, an Alkaline Trio associate, and more. The San Jose musician’s new album, Morbid Little Thing, takes these ingredients and makes one of the best power pop albums of the year with them. You’ll hear a bit of that darker Chicago pop punk sound–Smoking Popes and, yes, Alkaline Trio–in Morbid Little Thing’s ten songs, but it’s equally suburban Fountains of Wayne-esque power pop and big old Blue Album power chords. (Read more)

91. The Laughing Chimes – Whispers in the Speech Machine

Release date: January 31st
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, college rock, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Athens, Ohio-based jangle pop group The Laughing Chimes have doubled in size since their 2022 Zoo Avenue EP, and their sophomore album Whispers in the Speech Machine reflects a more expansive sound. Whispers in the Speech Machine adds moodier, more post-punk and even goth-pop-indebted elements to The Laughing Chimes–new member Ella Franks’ synth contributions are given a prominent place on these eight songs, and they’re key to elevating the quartet to this next chapter. Even though Whispers in the Speech Machine is a short album (under thirty minutes), it radiates ideas and layers as many of them on top of each other as it can. (Read more)

90. Good Luck – Big Dreams, Mister

Release date: October 17th
Record label: Lauren/Specialist Subject
Genre: Indie pop, pop punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The Bloomington, Indiana trio Good Luck released two albums before breaking up in 2012, quietly bowing out of the indie rock/punk underground right before the “scene” began to be dotted with bands making some similar combination of earnest Midwestern indie rock, pop punk, and power pop. Good Luck has only grown in stature in their absence, but their first album in fourteen years doesn’t really feel burdened with any weight: the communal flair, nonstop pop hooks, and sneakily impressive guitars from Big Dreams, Mister‘s opening track “Into the Void” on down lets it feel like no time at all has passed. (Read more)

89. Shaki Tavi – Minor Slip

Release date: August 15th
Record label: Felte
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Shaki Tavi bandleader Leon Mosburg describes dealing with “burnout and disillusionment” in the three-year gap between his group’s self-titled debut album and Minor Slip, and a desire to do something “fun” with his music brought him back from the brink. Minor Slip doesn’t abandon the hard-hitting wall-of-sound shoegaze of Shaki Tavi, but the melodic and pop undercurrents of that first LP are closer than ever to the surface now. With dream pop, psychedelia, and electronica all sitting next to the blasts of guitars, Mosburg and company are now ready to explore an exciting style of “pop music”. (Read more)

88. The High Water Marks – Consult the Oracle

Release date: May 16th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Fuzz pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The High Water Marks began in the mid-2000s as a trans-Atlantic partnership between founding Elephant 6 member and longtime Apples in Stereo drummer Hilarie Sidney in Kentucky and Per Ole Bratset in Oslo–and some twenty years later, the psychedelic power pop band is as active as it’s ever been. Consult the Oracle is The High Water Marks’ fourth album since 2020; perhaps it’s a tinge more laid-back than 2023’s Your Next Wolf was, a chance for The High Water Marks to let their slightly jangly, slightly psychedelic pop music marinate a little more than usual. It’s a subtle distinction, though: The High Water Marks aren’t a chamber pop group all of a sudden, and their 60s garage rock influences are still felt throughout Consult the Oracle. (Read more)

87. Dropkick – Primary Colours

Release date: February 7th
Record label: Bobo Integral/Sound Asleep
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Whether it’s with The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, his Andrew Taylor & The Harmonizers project, or his oldest band, Dropkick, nobody does jangly, Teenage Fanclub-evoking wistful guitar pop like Scotland’s Andrew Taylor does. If you liked his previous records in this vein (2021’s twin LPs Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers and TBWTPN’s Songs from Another Life are highlights for those unfamiliar), you’re going to enjoy Dropkick’s latest album, Primary Colours, too. And if you’re new to Taylor, Primary Colours is a great place to start–there’s just a little bit of ragged power pop shot through this otherwise incredibly-refined jangle pop album. 

86. Dave Scanlon – Greenland Shark

Release date: February 25th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Experimental folk, post-rock, ambient
Formats: Digital (streaming)

Indie folk artist Dave Scanlon’s latest album is intriguing both in its subject matter and its release format–for the former, Greenland Shark is about the titular North Atlantic/Arctic animal “and [his] obsession with it”, and for the latter, the album was, for much of this year, only available to listen to via greenlandshark.tv, a website designed specifically for it. Greenland Shark is perhaps a bit more “experimental” than Scanlon’s previous solo albums, but the hallmarks of the singer-songwriter–pensive, Phil Elverum-esque talk-singing over subtle but often unpredictable music–remain intact in this journey to a thousand meters below the Arctic surface. (Read more)

85. Tony Molina – On This Day

Release date: November 14th
Record label: Slumberland/Speakeasy Studios SF/Olde Fade
Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

If you know anything about Tony Molina’s music, it’s probably that strong guitar pop music is his specialty, typically delivered in sub-ninety-second nuggets–and that’s precisely what we get when we join the San Francisco singer-songwriter on On This Day, Molina’s first solo album in three years. On This Day, twenty-one songs in twenty-three minutes, was recorded by Molina and collaborators at home in an “unhurried” manner, and is subsequently on the “acoustic” and “laid-back” ends of the Tony Molina spectrum. On This Day leans into Molina’s 60s folk-pop influences, and ends up in the realm of the more languid side of Elephant 6, too. (Read more)

84. The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Anti-
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, The Beths
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Everybody loves The Beths, the scrappy yet polished indie pop quartet from Auckland, New Zealand led by Elizabeth Stokes. Health-based writer’s block suffered by Stokes since 2022’s Expert in a Dying Field makes it sound like Straight Line Was a Lie was their most difficult record to make, and I can believe it based on how it sounds. The melancholy that’s always been at the periphery of their sound is explored more thoroughly here than ever before, and it’s easy to imagine a band as tight and well-sculpted as The Beths struggling to let some of these songs sit as unadorned as they ended up sounding on-record. The Beths have always been a band that seems to take seriously the placement and inclusion of every track on their records, and Straight Line Was a Lie is (in what’s becoming a more and more understandable compliment) a Beths album through and through. (Read more)

83. (T-T)b – Beautiful Extension Cord

Release date: April 4th
Record label: Disposable America
Genre: Fuzz rock, synthpop, power pop, chiptune, slacker rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Boston’s (T-T)b incorporate chiptune and video game soundtrack instrumentation into their music as an accent, the way one might use synths or horns. Beautiful Extension Cord is the band’s second album and first new music of any kind in four years, and (T-T)b have evolved in the meantime, I’d say. It seems impossible for chiptune to ever be “subtly” baked into one’s music, but if it is, it probably sounds like this album–still quite visible, but integrated more seamlessly than ever into the group’s slacker rock, 90s alt-rock, and bedroom indie rock-evoking sound. Between the big old guitars, the chirping 8-bit sounds, and JM Dussault’s plain but capable vocals, there’s somehow a cosmic element to (T-T)b’s indie rock. (Read more)

82. Alan Sparhawk & Trampled by Turtles – Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles 

Release date: May 30th
Record label: Sub Pop
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, slowcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles is as tough of a listen as anyone familiar with the tragedy experienced by the former of the two artists would expect, although it’s “tough” in an entirely different way than last year’s confrontational electronic Sparhawk solo album White Roses, My God. An unlikely but ultimately very fitting team-up between two of Duluth, Minnesota’s most prominent acts, this album ends up synthesizing the glacial-paced, beautiful slowcore of the early work of Sparhawk’s Low and the more traditional folk music of Trampled by Turtles. The latter band’s bluegrass-trained sound is well-equipped to take these songs to the brink of the abyss, but Sparhawk steadies the ship with (one imagines) everything he’s got in him.

81. Gaytheist – The Mustache Stays

Release date: February 21st
Record label: Hex
Genre: Noise rock, noise punk, hardcore punk, metallic hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

A band squarely in the middle of the “noise rock” landscape with punk energy, metal chops, and a sense of humor, Portland, Oregon trio Gaytheist brought with them a breath of fresh air in 2020 with How Long Have I Been on Fire?, and they’ve been sorely missed in the five years since. The wait is over, however, as Gaytheist returned this year with The Mustache Stays, an album that reenters the fray with a pure cannonball-like energy. Gaytheist sequence the album in the most dangerous way possible, throwing a bunch of brief, explosive noise-punk blasts at us in a row before sneaking in a few surprises (like, for example, a surprisingly faithful eight-minute cover of The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Silverfuck”) in the back half of the LP. (Read more)

80. Now – Now Does the Trick

Release date: May 16th
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The second album from the difficultly-named Bay Area trio Now (and their first for their new labels, K and Perennial) is called Now Does the Trick, and it’s a different beast than their debut (but no less strong of an LP). The psychedelic, kraut-y mud of 2023’s And Blue Space Is Burning Noon is turned down and the jangle pop guitars and hooks are turned up–Now sound like they’re aiming for the little big-time here. Now are still a bunch of weirdos, though–lo-fi, sparkling jangle can’t paper over all of that. Even though the dozen songs of Now Does the Trick total just a bit over a half-hour, it feels like they encompass so much more than that; Now eat their craft-sharpening cake and get to keep some skeletons in their collective closet, too. (Read more)

79. Beauty – I’d Do Almost Anything for You

Release date: August 1st
Record label: Strange View
Genre: Power pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Red Bank, New Jersey quartet Beauty have been making music together since 2018, but I’d Do Almost Anything for You is only their first full-length album. Beauty’s debut LP is nothing less than some of the finest 90s power pop revivalism I’ve heard in recent memory, harkening back to a time where acts like Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, and Fountains of Wayne were able to smuggle Cheap Trick/Beatles-level hooks and huge guitars onto the periphery of the mainstream of so-called “alternative rock”. Beauty don’t overthink it, but they don’t miss anything either: where there should be harmonies, there are harmonies, and where there ought to be a nice big guitar riff, a sharp solo, or some well-placed handclaps, they’re all right on time. (Read more)

78. Supreme Joy – 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps

Release date: July 11th
Record label: VOD
Genre: Garage rock, noise rock, experimental rock, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital 

Denver musician Ryan Wong made a lo-fi/basement record called Joy under the name Supreme Joy in 2021, but now Supreme Joy is a four-piece band, and they’ve taken the opportunity of a bigger and louder sophomore album (the incredibly-titled 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps) to become a straight-up wild, noisy, and experimental rock group. Somehow 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps is only twenty-six minutes long, but it feels like a lengthy, arduous, and exhilarating journey nonetheless. There’s plenty of Sonic Youth in Supreme Joy’s DNA, filtering New York art rock moves through the lens of Wong’s background in West Coast garage punk. (Read more)

77. Knowso – Hypnotic Smack

Release date: August 1st
Record label: Sorry State
Genre: Garage punk, post-punk, egg punk, noise rock, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital

In 2024, I called the Cleveland punk band Knowso’s third album, Pulsating Gore, “serious-feeling, blunt garage-post-punk”, and I did indeed get around to using the terms “egg punk” and “Devo-core” to describe the group. Much of this applies once again to the fourth Knowso album, Hypnotic Smack; they’re apparently down to a duo for this one, with longtime drummer Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings) being Nathan Ward’s only sidekick now. Maybe Knowso’s violent, dead-eyed version of egg punk is a little more stripped-down on Hypnotic Smack, but it’s not overly noticeable–Ward and Gerycz are, apparently, more than capable of whipping up something strikingly chaotic on their own. (Read more)

76. The Chop – It’s the Chop

Release date: August 1st
Record label: Wrong Speed
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art pop, no wave
Formats: Cassette, digital

Gemma Fleet and Andrew Doig (aka Robert Sotelo) are most well-known these days for making up one-half of the scrappy Scottish indie pop/post-punk quartet Dancer, which have been going strong ever since their early 2023 debut EP. Perhaps their new project, The Chop, is intended to be a more “low-stakes” output source; even compared to the more streamlined side of Dancer’s art pop, It’s the Chop is a minimal affair, with simple drum machines, bass riffs, and synth interjections all used fairly sparingly. Fleet’s vocals are much less inclined to go “off the rails”; she’s still doing that conversational thing she does in Dancer very well, but it’s less “mile a minute” and more “pensive”, befitting of this odd little album. (Read more)

Click here for:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)

Pressing Concerns: Mercyland, Laika Songs, Soft on Crime, Evening Glass

This Thursday, we’re taking a look at four records out tomorrow, December 5th: new albums from Laika Songs and Evening Glass, a new EP from Soft on Crime, and an archival collection from Mercyland. If you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s Pressing Concerns covered Earwig, Sting Pain Index, Dietz, and Addicus, and the November 2025 playlist went up on Tuesday), check those out too.

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

Mercyland – Mercyland

Release date: December 5th
Record label: Propeller Sound Recordings
Genre: Punk rock, garage punk, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Radio Thieves

Georgia musician David Barbe is probably most famous for his role as the bassist in Bob Mould’s (recently reunited) early-1990s power trio Sugar, and his work has been widely heard thanks to a prolific career as a producer (making records with everyone from the Drive-By Truckers to Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires to Bambara). Before any of that, though, Barbe was immersed in the thriving 1980s Athens, Georgia music scene, forming a band called Mercyland in 1985. They only released one album while they were active, 1989’s No Feet on the Cowling, but another album’s worth of songs they recorded shortly before breaking up in 1991 was finally released in 2022 by Propeller Sound Recordings as We Never Lost a Single Game.

Once again, Mercyland and Propeller Sound have teamed up for an archival release, but this time it’s a collection focusing on the early years of the band. Originally recorded between 1985 and 1987, the eleven songs that make up Mercyland represent the earliest version of the group that’s been officially released yet. Subsequently, it’s a raw and particularly punk-y look at the band, before they’d go and (relatively) clean up their sound on later recordings. Mercyland reflects a band right in tune with the 1980s underground indie rock catalogued in Our Band Could Be Your Life–Hüsker Dü, with its mix of noise, punk energy, and skewed pop songwriting, is the closest analogue (and I’m not just saying that because of the Mould connection), but Dinosaur Jr., The Replacements, and their home city’s college rock/power pop sound are all applicable at different points, too. Not everything on Mercyland is as hard-charging as the high-octane punk opening track “Amerigod”, but garage-y pop songs like “Black on Black on Black”, “Radio Thieves”, and “Vomit Clown” are charming in their own way (they’d fit nicely on a block together with later Paul Westerberg, The Lemonheads, and earlier Buffalo Tom). Maybe Mercyland were being pulled in a couple of different directions in these early recordings, but that’s the same push and pull that makes, say, Hüsker Dü such an interesting band all these years later. (Bandcamp link)

Laika Songs – I Can Feel an Ending

Release date: December 5th
Record label: Two Worlds/Galaxy Train
Genre: Folk rock, dream pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Press Coverage 

Brooklyn musician Evan Brock (previously of the quartet Neil Jung) debuted his solo project Laika Songs last year with an LP called Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light; inspired by Trace Mountains and Mount Eerie, he traded his last band’s fuzzy guitar pop for wide-eyed indie-Americana. A second Laika Songs album began taking shape very quickly, and here we are with I Can Feel an Ending, for which Brock assembled an impressive group of backing musicians including Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Kris Hayes (Labrador, Neil Jung) on guitars, Dominic Angelella on bass, and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty) on drums. The resultant album is an incredibly comfortable one: it’s just as large as Slowly Spiraling Towards the Light is and has at least as many great pop moments, but it’s even less concerned with presenting them punctually or linearly.

The first half of I Can Feel an Ending is the more “difficult” one, and a good deal of that feeling likely has to do with Brock’s decision to open the album not with any of the half-dozen or so undeniable guitar pop anthems here but rather “Visitor”, a hushed five-minute slow-builder. “Shaking” (which marries a wobbly Neil Young/Jason Molina-esque skeleton with lush indie folk rock) and “Arpeggiator” (which is aptly titled) are the “hits” of the A-side, but so many of the most immediate tracks on I Can Feel an Ending come in its second half: the gentle power pop charms of “Optimism Shame”, the shimmering guitar leads of “The Plan”, the short, to-the-point, imminently repeatable “Press Coverage”. It makes sense that I Can Feel an Ending finishes with a song called “I Get Lost”, a synth-shaded moody rocker that doesn’t really sound like the rest of the album but fits in well enough. It’s an odd note on which to end, but Laika Songs feel their way there just as they do through the rest of the album. (Bandcamp link)

Soft on Crime – Noz Mat

Release date: December 5th
Record label: Eats It
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, garage rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Whistle and I’ll Come to You

Dublin trio Soft on Crime have been one of the most reliable purveyors of power, jangle, and psychedelic pop ever since their debut album, 2023’s New Suite (one of my favorites of that year). Dylan Philips, Padraig O’Reilly, and Lee Casey have since offered up a “rarities” compilation and a proper sophomore album, and they don’t let 2025 pass them by without new music either thanks to the five-song Noz Mat cassette EP. It’s slighter than the last couple of Soft on Crime records, sure, but that doesn’t lessen the thrill of hearing a handful more bursts of guitar pop straight from the garage: early on we get “Relativity USA”, a sloppy garage rocker that takes a second to get to the Beach Boys-inspired payoff hinted by its title (but it sure does get there), and Noz Mat actually seems to get stronger and more solid as it goes on between the mid-tempo jangle-rock clinics of “London Billy”, “Anthologist”, and “Whistle and I’ll Come to You”.  The bounciness of the former of those three is slightly tempered by the more restrained moments found in the EP’s final two songs, although only “Whistle and I’ll Come to You” could even be partially described as a “ballad”. It’s “pastoral’’, but only because that’s what makes sense for that hook. Soft on Crime are experts at putting in the little bit of extra effort required to make the sell by this point. (Bandcamp link)

Evening Glass – Postcards

Release date: December 5th
Record label: Crazy Ha!
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, folk rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Wait Until 3

Sonoma, California quartet Evening Glass released their debut EP, Steady Motion, in late 2022; the record’s half-dozen songs established the group (vocalist/guitarist Zachary Carroll, bassist Thomas, guitarist Chris Miller, and drummer PJ Hakimi) as impressive practitioners of the quieter, gentler side of jangle pop. A couple of towns over from San Francisco and Oakland, Evening Glass feels slightly removed from those cities’ indie pop scene but still close enough to be enjoyed by fans of it. Evening Glass’ first full-length album, Postcards, is full of the laid-back melodies and lackadaisical Flying Nun tempos we heard on Steady Motion, confirming that the band haven’t lost their charm in the intervening three years. Steady Motion lull us with four sleepy but quite tangible pop songs (I like “Wait Until 3” or “Natural Light” the best, but they’re all solid) before the crashing fuzzed-out guitars of the appropriately-titled “Stumblin’ Stoned” gives us the album’s first curveball (it’s also pretty New Zealand of them, honestly). “Small Crooked Smile” is also just a little more feedback-drenched than one would expect from Evening Glass, and “Stabilize Yr Brainwaves” ends Steady Motion by adding just a hint of garage-y muscle to the fuzz-pop. There are enough glimpses beneath the surface of Evening Glass to add a bit of mystique, but not so much that it detracts from the glistening cool water above. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

New Playlist: November 2025

It’s time for the November 2025 playlist! A bunch of good songs from the past month and throughout this year features below. We’ll be wrapping up this year on the blog soon enough, but there’s still plenty of new stuff to take a look at yet.

Buddie, The Melancholy Kings, and Mint Mile all have multiple songs on this playlist (two apiece).

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

“Doda”, Chico States
From I Saw a Galloping Horse Cover No Ground (2025, Anything Bagel)

I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of Portland, Maine alt-country group Chico States before now–for one thing, they’re quite good, and they’re also connected to a bunch of music I like, from local Maine institution Repeating Cloud Records to Fred Thomas’ Life Like Tapes to Montana’s Anything Bagel, the imprint who put out I Saw a Galloping Horse Cover No Ground on cassette. “Doda”, which opens the album, is everything you could hope for in an alt-country song that namechecks Big Star–catchy as hell and appropriately casual and rambling.

“Eternal Fade”, Idle Ray
From Airport (2025, Salinas)

It wasn’t enough for Idle Ray to put out a new album this year (June’s Even in the Spring); the Michigan trio had to get another four-song EP out before 2025 was over, too. Airport features songs recorded for Even in the Spring but were deemed by the band to work better as a small unit; they’re louder and livelier than most of that album, and it’s probably no coincidence that these all feature Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings, Knowso) on drums. From the explosive guitars that introduce “Eternal Fade” onward, Idle Ray ride a pleasing power pop wave (with more than enough hooks to back it up).

“Evergreen”, Samuel S.C.
From Split (2025, New Granada/Waterslide)

A four-song split EP makes plenty of sense for Samuel S.C. and Pohgoh–they’re both bands who made music combining Superchunk-esque indie-punk-rock with emo in the mid-1990s, and they’ve both reunited and released new music over the past decade. Both of them brought very good material to the table for this one, and the Samuel S.C. songs in particular are nothing short of some of their best material yet. “Evergreen”, my favorite song on the split, is tough, fevered, and surging anthem-emo-rock with a scorching refrain. Read more about Split here.

“Fear & Trembling”, Bliss?
From Keep Your Joy to Yourself (2025, Psychic Spice)

As one might guess from the thematically similar title, Keep Your Joy to Yourself’s songs were written at the same time as those on Bliss?’s March debut album, Pass Yr Pain Along, but they “weren’t ready to be recorded” until now. “Fear & Trembling”, the three-song EP’s hit, is as catchy as anything on the New Orleans group’s first LP, an awesome firecracker Lemonheads/Replacements-style power-punk wrecking ball. Read more about Keep Your Joy to Yourself here.

“Yamaha”, Mint Mile
From andwhichstray (2025, Comedy Minus One)

Perhaps my favorite song on the third Mint Mile LP is “Yamaha” (named so for the guitar on which it was written), a song I’d previously heard frontperson Tim Midyett play live solo on an acoustic guitar but appears here as a fuzzed-out, ear-splitting country rocker. It’s a bit of parallel thinking with the likes of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, I dare say. Midyett’s “Don’t wanna live a life about money,” in “Yamaha” cuts to the quick, centering a clear-eyed directness that’s the “thread” on andwhichstray, from Midyett’s words to (of course) engineer Steve Albini’s engineering. Read more about andwhichstray here.

“Pyro”, Tulpa
From Monster of the Week (2025, Skep Wax)

Monster of the Week is undoubtedly “British indie pop” at its finest; Leeds quartet Tulpa love Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth-style noisy guitars, but these bouncy, twee, sugary songs would never be mistaken for either of those bands. There’s a simplicity and breeziness to early hits like “Pyro”, in which Tulpa make it sound much easier than it must be. Read more about Monster of the Week here.

“Confusion”, Blue Zero
From Confusion (2025)

Blue Zero’s self-released cassette EP is a big step forward for the Chris Natividad solo-project-turned-band, with the shoegaze-y fuzz pop of their debut album Colder Shade Blue exploding into an intense, focused, but still quite catchy brand of Sonic Youth-style indie rock. The opening title track is the biggest hit that the Oakland band have put together yet, a wall-of-sound hurricane with Pixies-level pop instincts. Read more about Confusion here.

“Scream”, Lane
(2025, Total War)

Last year’s Receiver introduced Boston trio Lane as polished practitioners of a streamlined, pop-friendly version of math rock (no, really, it’s quite possible to do and they did it). Lane are back a year and a half later with a one-off single called “Scream”, recorded entirely by the duo of bandleader Wes Kaplan and drummer Julian Fader (Remember Sports, Ava Luna, Sweet Dreams Nadine). It starts with a twisted, Brainiac-style guitar riff, but then sails smoothly into a skewed, slightly noisy, but very agreeable pop song.

“Steady As She Goes”, The Melancholy Kings
From Her Favorite Disguise (2025, Magic Door)

The members of New Jersey quartet The Melancholy Kings have histories in Garden State and New York indie rock dating back to the 1980s; Her Favorite Disguise is their second album, following a self-titled one in 2019, and I admit I’m quite impressed with what these veterans have to offer in 2025. It’s one thing to “end up” making power pop after years of working in edgier underground indie rock, but The Melancholy Kings attack these songs like they’re just as cool as the New York post-punk of their youths. “Steady As She Goes”, pulls out all the stops–“whoa oh oh”s, jangly guitar hooks, winking lyrics. Read more about Her Favorite Disguise here.

“Stressed in Paradise”, Buddie
From Glass (2025, Crafted Sounds/Placeholder)

Glass was recorded by Buddie’s new Vancouver-based line-up, but the eight-song, twenty-five minute LP sounds almost exactly like the Philadelphia version of quartet (and that’s a good thing). If there’s a difference, it’s a slightly more “rocking” record, probably due to the consistent lineup (only the four Buddie members, no guest musicians this time around) and the all-too-brief runtime. The first four songs on Glass could be the record’s biggest “Buddie-style anthem”–for this playlist, but I’m going with the breezy reality-check of “Stressed in Paradise”. Read more about Glass here.

“Radiator Baby”, Soup Dreams
From Hellbender (2025, Candlepin/Pleasure Tapes)

Soup Dreams are another kind-of-rootsy indie rock band from Philadelphia, sure, but they’ve always been good for a great tune (see “Highway Song” from last year’s Twigs for Burning), and it sounds like they’re aiming bigger on Hellbender, their latest album. Recorded by Heather Jones of Ther, Hellbender is a winding journey that comes to a head on the slightly-distorted, super-catchy country rocker “Radiator Baby”. Even if it’s something of an outlier on Hellbender, it’s nice to know that Soup Dreams have something like this in them. 

“It Don’t Matter”, Volcano
From Volcano (2004, Skunk/Don Giovanni)

What a song, this. An unlikely supergroup, Volcano was the result of the Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood linking up with none other than two architects of Sublime (Bud Gaugh and Miguel Happoldt), plus bassist Jon Poutney. Their sole album, released in 2004 and reissued this year by Don Giovanni, is a surprisingly strong collection of laid-back Meat Puppets-esque psychedelic alt-rock; the reggae influence is used sparingly, but it’s there enough, especially in “It Don’t Matter”, a stunning syncopated psychedelic pop rock song that really does sound like the synthesis of its creators.

“Date Night in the Hague”, The Brokedowns
From Let’s Tip the Landlord (2025, Red Scare)

The Brokedowns have been at this thing for more than twenty years now, and they have this whole “Chicagoland punk rock thing” down pat, cranking out records on Windy City stalwart Red Scare Industries and, if their latest LP is any indication, specializing in loud, catchy, and unfashionable punk music. On Let’s Tip the Landlord, the band’s tongue-in-cheek tributes to the Qanon moms, passive income leeches, and delusional war criminals among us are catchy and energetic–“Date Night in the Hague”, my favorite song on the LP, has no business being such a pop-punk rug-cutter. Read more about Let’s Tip the Landlord here.

“Chasing the Strings”, Nervous Verbs
From Pony Coughing (2025, Don Giovanni)

Mike Montgomery is a prolific recording engineer, and his most notable role as a musician is probably co-leading Dayton band R. Ring with Kelley Deal of The Breeders. Recently he’s debuted a solo project called Nervous Verbs, in which he embraces a stripped-down indie rock sound. Pony Coughing is a solid album, but “Chasing the Strings” is an instant-classic, a note-perfect “indie rock” pop song where everything from the unassuming vocals to the sneaky Superchunk/Archers of Loaf-style guitar melodies works in lockstep.

“Fall in Love Again”, Sharp Pins
From Balloon Balloon Balloon (2025, K/Perennial)

I’d hesitate to call Balloon Balloon Balloon the best Sharp Pins album yet, but it’s the most impressive one: twenty-one pitch-perfect mod revival tunes from the mind of Kai Slater in under forty-five minutes, one after the other begging the question of “how is this not an unearthed garage-band wonder from sixty years ago?” Balloon Balloon Balloon starts with a real murderer’s row of five relentless pop songs, but the best one on the album, “Fall in Love Again”, is somehow held back until the middle of the LP. Read more about Balloon Balloon Balloon here.

“We Must Be Evil”, Chronophage
From Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship (2025, Post Present Medium)

Austin group Chronophage are undersung pop merchants of the greater garage/punk/whatever underground, and it’s good to see them still going strong despite member Donna Allen’s fairly active solo career. Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship is four songs of slapdash garage-y power pop, over too soon but not too soon for “We Must Be Evil” to sink its teeth in–it’s messy, triumphant pop music over in less than two minutes.

“Love Soda”, The World Famous
(2025, Lauren)

Los Angeles’ The World Famous burst onto the scene in 2023 with Totally Famous, one of the best power pop debut LPs in recent memory (it was good enough to get me to reference Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads, and Fountains of Wayne in the same review!). The first taste of new music from the Will Harris-led group since then is a one-off song called “Love Soda”, and I’m pleased to report that The World Famous have effectively picked up where they left off with this one. Delicate melodies given a slight edge with a 90s alt-rock punch, all delivered with pop-nerd flourishes and contours.

“Gaslamp Lighter”, Lozenge
From EP1 (2025, Candlepin)

After putting out a demo cassette on Pleasure Tapes last year, Los Angeles shoegaze group Lozenge dropped their debut EP on Candlepin back in April. EP1 is five songs of lo-fi melodies and fuzz, an impressively strong bid to enter the pantheon of modern “Guided by Voices-gaze” bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots. My favorite song on the EP is probably the opening track, “Gaslamp Lighter”, which clangs through distorted, tinny guitar leads, shimmery jangles, and walls of amplifiers.

“Revenge”, Sweet Nobody
From Driving Off to Nowhere (2025, Repeating Cloud)

Vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Joy Deyo, drummer Brian Dishon, guitarist Casey Snyder, and bassist Adam Nolan haven’t completely abandoned the straightforward jangly guitar pop of 2021’s We’re Trying Our Best on their third LP, but Driving Off to Nowhere represents something markedly different for Sweet Nobody. There’s a hazy, reverb-touched quality to just about everything on Driving Off to Nowhere, with bits of dream pop, synthpop, and new wave in the mix, but–as album highlight “Revenge” confirms–there’s still plenty of jangle in the Los Angeles band’s sound. Read more about Driving Off to Nowhere here.

“Heat Death”, Pressure Wheel
From Atomic Woe (2025, Alchemy Hours)

The Philadelphia supergroup Pressure Wheel’s debut EP, Atomic Woe, is the result of members of Restorations, Signals Midwest, and Timeshares zeroing in on the catchier sides of punk rock, garage rock, emo-punk, and even post-hardcore. “A little less scalpel, a little more sledgehammer,” claims the band’s bio, and indeed, Atomic Woe eschews the more high-concept aspects of the members’ other bands to land a half-dozen blunt-force rock and roll blows. My favorite track on the record, “Heat Death”, marries the heart-on-sleeve earnestness of all three of the members’ other bands with precision guitar pop. Read more about Atomic Woe here.

“Chances on Love”, The Blackburns
(2025, Third Act Problems)

This is the second song that’s trickled out from Philadelphia group The Blackburns’ upcoming (“early 2026″) sophomore album, following April’s “Video Den”. Like “Video Den”, it’s another power pop earworm, but, compared to the last song’s high-concept ambitions, “Chances on Love” is a lot more streamlined and goes for the jugular pretty much immediately. Nick Palmer is the lead vocalist for this one (bassist Joel Tannenbaum helmed the previous single); you’ll hear “You’re gonna have to take your chances on love” a lot in this song, but I didn’t get tired of it.

“Backlight”, Freezing Cold
From Treasure Pool (2025, Don Giovanni)

Jeff Cunningham, Leanne Butkovic, and Angie Boylan are Freezing Cold, an under-the-radar New York trio featuring members of Aye Nako, Little Lungs, and Slingshot Dakota who’ve put out albums on Salinas and now Don Giovanni. There’s no real “hook” or twist to Treasure Pool, their sophomore album, “merely” a collection of solid, catchy, punk-ish indie rock from folks who’ve been on the vanguard of the movement. “Backlight” is slick, just a little emo-y, and entirely undeniable.

“Lou and Eddie”, Semi Trucks
From Georgia Overdrive (2025, Post Present Medium)

Semi Trucks are new to me, but the Los Angeles quartet’s latest LP is everything good about West Coast rock and roll music. Georgia Overdrive (great album name, by the way) is ten songs of fuzzed-out, psychedelic guitar pop music, bits of dream pop and garage rock and Undergrounds both Paisley and Velvet all in tow. “Lou and Eddie” is my favorite song on the album, and it’s a little more straightforward in its California fuzz-pop ambitions, but it’s a pretty representative sample of what to expect on Georgia Overdrive.

“Nothing Without You”, Morvern Hum
From Hollow (2025, Candlepin)

The Candlepin-released Hollow appears to be the debut EP from Chicago dream pop/shoegaze quintet Morven Hum, and it’s a promising first record. My favorite song on Hollow by a fair margin is “Nothing Without You”, a jovial indie pop song buoyed by a vocal tradeoff between keyboardist Lola Marcantonio and guitarist Ben Abid. 

“Italian Wine”, Swearing at Motorists
From 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues (2025, BB*ISLAND/Bone Voyage)

Self-recorded by the band “in a Bundesliga soccer stadium”, Swearing at Motorists’ 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues is a barebones, blunt-force indie rock “duo” album. It’s neither a “roots rock” or “garage rock” record, but it will appeal to fans of either of those genres; the Dayton-originating, Hamburg-based band leave just enough blank space that you can fill it in with whatever you’d like in your head. “Italian Wine”, my favorite song on 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues, is stark, simple, and eternal-sounding, just like how Swearing at Motorists like it. Read more about 31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues here.

“Victoria”, The Melancholy Kings
From Her Favorite Disguise (2025, Magic Door)

Like “Steady As She Goes” earlier in this playlist, “Victoria” is an insanely catchy song from a bunch of power pop lifers. In this song, we get to hear lead vocalist Mike Potenza get away with a refrain built out of “The odds are even that you harbor a demon or two (yeah, yeah) / And if you act real soon, I’ll exorcise them with you,” addressed to the titular figure. With a hook that solid, it’s impressive that they held off for even fifty seconds before launching it. Read more about Her Favorite Disguise here.

“Even the Sun Can Hurt You”, Star Card
From Trash World (2025, Already Dead)

The first Star Card LP and first Full Band Star Card release, Trash World, is a big one–it’s forty-seven minutes of greyscale but animated indie rock and noisy pop music. “Even the Sun Can Hurt You”, in the album’s second slot, seizes the reins from offbeat opening track “Flowers” and puts the Queens band closer to the realms of 90s acts like Superchunk, Versus, and Scrawl. Read more about Trash World here.

“Palace Behind the Shade”, Strange Passage
From A Folded Sky (2025, Meritorio)

Made by a guitar pop band who mentions names like The Church, The Feelies, and Neu! as influences, it’s probably not surprising to learn that Strange Passage’s A Folded Sky is both incredibly catchy and built with a noticeably tough post-punk backbone. The Boston and New York-split quartet tackle “Palace Behind the Shade”, the record’s opening track, with a freewheeling garage punk energy, even if the song itself is a nervy post-punk/college rock chimer. Read more about A Folded Sky here.

“Something Here”, Dogwood Gap
From Probably Not Enough (2025, Revelator)

Dogwood Gap’s debut album, Probably Not Enough, is also their first record as a full band, and it’s a reinvention of the project’s sound, too. Although the Songs: Ohia influence of their debut EP is still there, it’s a lot less alt-country or folk-inspired, with a quiet but electric 90s indie rock sound now presenting as the dominant strain. Dogwood Gap reference bands like Pile and Unwound as touchpoints, and while they’re not a post-hardcore group now, there’s an exploratory aspect to Patrick Murray’s guitar playing that fits well with this kind of electric, slowcore-evoking indie rock. “Something Here”, my favorite song on the album, is delicate yet with a post-punk edge at moments, too. Read more about Probably Not Enough here.

“Bride of Frankenstein”, Night Court
From Nervous Birds (2025, Snappy Little Numbers/Debt Offensive/Drunk Dial/Shield)

The Vancouver trio Night Court have made a name for themselves in recent years via albums stuffed to the gills with brief, energetic bursts of punk-pop, and the archival Nervous Birds compilation (2021’s Nervous Birds! One and 2022’s Nervous Birds Too, the band’s first two EPs, crammed onto one LP) suggests that Night Court arrived more or less fully-formed. The horror-themed power-pop-punk of “Bride of Frankenstein” inexplicably opens the compilation with a song from the 2023 Frater Set (the only song on the LP not from one of the Nervous Birds records), but it’s so good that I can’t complain about the choice. Read more about Nervous Birds here.

“Livin’ Wrong”, Tony Molina
From On This Day (2025, Slumberland/Speakeasy Studios SF/Olde Fade)

If you know anything about Tony Molina’s music, it’s probably that strong guitar pop music is his specialty, typically delivered in sub-ninety-second nuggets–and that’s precisely what we get when we join the San Francisco singer-songwriter on On This Day, Molina’s first solo album in three years. On This Day, twenty-one songs in twenty-three minutes, was recorded by Molina and collaborators at home in an “unhurried” manner, and is subsequently on the “acoustic” and “laid-back” ends of the Tony Molina spectrum. Highlights like the blissful jangle pop creation “Livin Wrong” lean into Molina’s 60s folk-pop influences, which is never a bad place for a Molina song to end up. Read more about On This Day here.

“Golden”, Buddie
From Glass (2025, Crafted Sounds/Placeholder)

Yeah, another Buddie song. There are too many good ones on Glass, a problem this album shares with 2023’s Agitator. The writing on “Golden” is interesting; between the title and the diversion into Los Angeles trivia in the lyrics, it seems like the Vancouver-based band are looking a little further south down the West Coast, but the determined feeling is vintage Buddie nonetheless. It’s, of course, quite catchy too, with choppy power chords anchoring the album highlight. Read more about Glass here.

“No Need to Know”, Mint Mile
From andwhichstray (2025, Comedy Minus One)

Mint Mile recorded andwhichstray a couple of months after last year’s Roughrider came out in France with longtime friend of the band Steve Albini–less than a week before the legendary engineer’s sudden passing. andwhichstray is, thankfully, an album made to carry the heavy circumstances. For one, this is the best that Mint Mile have ever sounded–the Crazy Horse solidification of Roughrider is sharpened further here, the band even more roaring. “No Need to Know” opens andwhichstray with an automatic version of Mint Mile, gorgeous guitars chiming while Tim Midyett rejects uncertainty and embraces the tactile in his writing. Read more about andwhichstray here.

“I’m a Fan”, Pohgoh
From Split (2025, New Granada/Waterslide)

I was unfamiliar with Tampa emo-punk-pop group Pohgoh before they shared a four-song split EP with blog favorites Samuel S.C., but the pairing is a good fit, and the fellow recently-revived 90s indie rock band acquits themselves nicely on their two tracks. Opening track “I’m a Fan” especially is a lovely punk-pop song that should win anyone unfamiliar with Pohgoh over–it certainly worked on me. Read more about Split here.

“If the Song Is Momcore”, Abe Savas & the New Standards of Beauty
From Have a Good Life (2025, Badgering the Witless)

Kalamazoo artist Abe Savas released an album called 99 Songs (Plus One) back in June–compared to the ambition of that project, a four-song EP seems so…ordinary? Comprised of previously-unfinished outtakes from Savas’ 2023 album Love Cabal, the Have a Good Life EP deserves to be judged on its own merits nonetheless, and opening track “If the Song Is Momcore” is a pretty stellar guitar pop song. Stacked alongside strange references to Starfleet, Vito Corleone, and the titular microgenre, there’s an impressive mid-tempo post-Evan Dando power pop core here that works very well.  

“Willow”, The Maple State
From Don’t Take Forever (2025)

Manchester’s The Maple State came up in the early 2000s’ “emo-punk” scene, but their newest album Don’t Take Forever thankfully doesn’t sound like a band trying to recreate 2005. I certainly believe that American emo was an influence on this band, although these are big, catchy, and (yes) emotional pop songs of the sort that British bands from Frightened Rabbit to ME REX have made in The Maple State’s absence. Surprisingly enough, though, one of the best songs on the album comes when The Maple State bust out the dreaded acoustic guitar in “Willow”. Read more about Don’t Take Forever here. 

“Rodeo”, Host Family
From Extended Play (2025, Candlepin)

The debut EP from Los Angeles’ Host Family is another piece of evidence that southern California seems to be the place to be for modern shoegaze-influenced bands; its six pop songs (four singles from last year and two new ones) aren’t nearly as abrasive as, say, Lozenge (another L.A. Candlepin group who appear earlier on this playlist) but still feature a healthy amount of noisy rave-ups in the polish, too. “Rodeo” is a controlled fuzzy shoegaze-pop success, leaning not insignificantly on a “strong, for shoegaze” central lead vocal performance.

“Dry TV”, The Cindys
From The Cindys (2025, Ruination/Breakfast)

The Cindys are a band from Bristol, England founded by Jack Ogborne, an art rocker who wanted a project for making music inspired by 80s guitar pop (touchstones like C86 and Flying Nun have been thrown around). The Cindys is a pretty unimpeachable debut, a twenty-one-minute, seven-song “mini-LP” that’s nonetheless stocked with fully-fleshed-out ideas and confident pop performances. The majority of the album may have been recorded on 8-track cassette in a basement, but it’s on the more polished, stately side of the “indie pop spectrum”. Catchy and deliberate, the melodies practically fall out of highlights like “Dry TV” (whose lyrics contain the phrase “full-contact smoker’s lounge”, which is a great Robert Pollard-ism). Read more about The Cindys here.

“My My”, Orillia
From Fire-Weed (2025, Far West)

Orillia’s self-titled debut album was a fairly stripped-down sampler of Andrew Marczak the songwriter and performer; Fire-Weed, coming less than a year later, feels like a more clear attempt by the Chicago artist at creating a coherent “album” this time around. The full-band songs feature a more stable line-up, but some of the best tracks on the album are still lo-fi, mostly Marczak recordings–like “My My”, which he hides towards the end of the record’s second side. Read more about Fire-Weed here.

“Circles”, Spectres of Desire
From Incursions (2025)

A synthpop/darkwave project from a punk musician? Cool! Jonny C. Tamayo plays in Minnesota punk supergroup The Slow Death, but he’s recently launched a solo project called Spectres of Desire, and the six-song Incursions EP is its first release. “Circles” starts with a ringing guitar before a wobbling synth also enters the fray; what follows is a lively take on synth-y post-punk/new wave revivalism, led by a charismatic frontperson.

“A Check List, a Dream”, Young Constable
From On a Wave That Will Eventually Come to Shore (2025)

Melbourne-based musician Mark Vale is a long-time lo-fi/four-track home-recorder who recently returned from a long musical hiatus with a new project called Young Constable. Referencing acts like Superchunk and Mclusky as influences, the project’s On a Wave That Will Eventually Come to Shore is a more insular solo affair that nonetheless has a bit of the edge implied by the lo-fi, punky indie rock that’s influenced Vale in the past. “A Check List, a Dream” is my favorite song on the album, and it’s a half-ballad, half-anthem piece of slightly emo, British-tinged pop rock.

“American Prayer”, Tiny Vipers
From Tormentor (2025)

A brand new Tiny Vipers album seems like it should be bigger news than it apparently is. This blog isn’t exactly a hub of “stark, crushing, nearly-ambient folk music”, but I’m more than happy to talk about Tormentor, an album that’s great if you’re into that kind of thing. The best song on the album, “American Prayer”, did previously appear on a 2022 EP, but it’s no less jaw-dropping here–Jesy Fortino delicately ushering the song’s hushed, acoustic foundation along for five transfixing minutes.

Pressing Concerns: Earwig, Sting Pain Index, Dietz, Addicus

December or not, there’s still plenty of new music to cover in Pressing Concerns. Today, we’ve got new albums from Dietz and Addicus, as well as new EPs from Earwig and Sting Pain Index. Check them out below! We did have a Pressing Concerns go up on Thanksgiving (featuring Mint Mile, Tulpa, The Melancholy Kings, and Split Apex); if you were busy with family matters or other holiday business and missed it, check it out here.

Also: The Rosy Overdrive 2025 Reader’s Poll is now open for voting! Head over here to learn more about it and submit a ballot by December 26th.

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.

Earwig – Secret Studio Sessions

Release date: October 19th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, heartland rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Late September Song

The Columbus, Ohio quartet Earwig has been around since the early 1990s, and the only consistent member throughout has been guitarist and vocalist Lizard McGee (who himself is something of a Columbus indie rock institution). It’s been almost a decade since the last Earwig album (2016’s Pause For The Jets), but the group are still active: the current lineup is McGee, Costa Hondroulis on bass, Jeremy Skeen on drums, and McGee’s daughter, James McGee-Moore, on lead vocals. The four of them are working on a new album called Rattle OK, and in the meantime they’ve released Secret Studio Sessions, featuring live-in-studio versions of four songs slated to be on their new LP. I didn’t know it was a “live” EP when I first listened to it; it just sounds like four good indie rock songs done power trio (plus power trio’s guitarist’s daughter) style.

I would dare call the “Late September Song”, the opening track, “anthemic”; this doesn’t sound like a band still stuck in the 90s underground, but one that’s let itself grow into something different with time. “Late September Song” is the “hit”, but that doesn’t mean the rest of Secret Studio Sessions is a letdown–the slightly jangly power pop bounce of “Coyote Cry” and the mid-tempo power ballad “Fucked Up & Perfect” are a fine middle section, and “The World Is Coming 2 an End” (featuring vocal trade-offs between McGee and McGee-Moore) is nearly the mirror image of the EP’s opening. Looking forward to hearing that Rattle OK album now, certainly. (Bandcamp link)

Sting Pain Index – The Revolution Somewhere Else

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, post-hardcore, garage punk, new wave, art rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: John Brown’s Knife

I don’t know much about Sting Pain Index. They call themselves a “punk rock supergroup”. They put out an album in 2022 called Songs About Fracking. They are likely spread out across the United States, and appear to have connections to Texas, Tennessee, and Maryland; their first album was recorded by Ross Ingram (EEP) in El Paso, and their new EP The Revolution Somewhere Else was recorded in Knoxville and co-produced by Ingram and Scotty Loewen (THEMM!). So what does this four-song EP sound like? Well, like punk rock, I suppose, albeit of a noisy, abrasive, and “post-” variety. The first half of The Revolution Somewhere Else is the more aggressive one, with the furious shouting at the beginning of opening track “Flight Risk” kicking off a garage-y noise punk introduction and the prowling post-punk “John Brown’s Knife” living up to the high expectations set by the title.

Things get a bit…stranger on the digital B-side, as we then take a trip to a seven-minute 80s-style power ballad called “I Could Have Been Queen”. And then, of course, The Revolution Somewhere Else ends with a shockingly faithful cover of Tears for Fears’ “Break It Down Again” (if the title of the EP sounded familiar but unplaceable to you–it’s a paraphrased lyric from this one). Sting Pain Index clearly saw something in this also-ran pop song that speaks to their agitated underground Americana, and The Revolution Somewhere Else is, ironically, successful at building this connection up. (Bandcamp link)

Dietz – Watch Your Step Slick

Release date: October 24th
Record label: One Frog
Genre: Folk rock, slowcore, lo-fi indie rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Grass

John Dietz hails from Richmond, Virginia, and they’ve been making music under their last name since at least the late 2010s. The “Dietz” project, while always led by its namesake, typically includes other contributors, and the latest Dietz record, Watch Your Step Slick, features Soph Asenso and Nick Gada on drums and Abby Mendez and Logan Wolf on additional vocals. Dietz listed a bizarre set of influences when they sent me this album: R.E.M., John Darnielle, George Clanton, and Greg Freeman. I’m not sure what an even split of those acts would even sound like, but Watch Your Step Slick succeeds in being an unhurried, wandering, “southern gothic”-style folk rock record. Dietz calls the album “psychedelic”, and while I don’t know if I would’ve called it that on my own, I don’t disagree with that–there’s a disorienting aspect to both slow-burners like “Genesee” and rockers like “Grass”. Some stuff like “Dog & Kit” feels genuinely folk-adjacent, but a lot of these songs (like, say, “Tennis”) are just really odd singer-songwriter material that happens to be acoustic. By the time we get to the nine-minute penultimate track, “Tropical Storm Ophelia We Will Rebuild”, we’ve been fully baptized in the intense, offbeat way of Dietz. (Bandcamp link)

Addicus – A Story About…

Release date: September 24th
Record label: Acid Punk
Genre: Pop punk, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Mario Party Crashout!

The Marquette, Michigan power pop band Addicus first came to my attention last summer, when they released their self-titled debut album. Over ten scrappy indie-pop-punk songs, vocalist/guitarist Alexis Armstrong, drummer/guitarist/synth player Joshua Copeman, and bassist Eric Gladwell made their case as a notable name in the Upper Peninsula music scene (which is surprisingly strong thanks to Liquid Mike, Deep-Fried Butterfly, and Kitschy Spirit Records). The trio didn’t wait long to return, as we’ve been given a sophomore Addicus album, A Story About…, a year and change later. It’s a shorter record than Addicus, but it’s their strongest one yet; they come out the gate swinging with a couple of Remember Sports/Chumped-esque punk-pop classics in “Self Satisfaction” and “Stupid Luck”, and the momentum carries through for a clean twenty-one minutes. The synthetic touches on “Call Me (When It’s Over)” are a new and interesting development for Addicus, but their bread and butter is still three-to-four-chord wreckers of pop songs (see “Mario Party Crashout!”, a shining example of the form). I already thought Addicus were a good band, but it’s even more promising to hear A Story About… make it clear that they’re on the upswing. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

VOTE! In the Rosy Overdrive 2025 Reader’s Poll

It’s the third annual Rosy Overdrive readership poll! The results have been truly great two years in a row now: no pressure, but I’m especially excited to see what your favorite music of 2025 is.

The first question on the poll is simply: What are your ten favorite albums from 2025? This is the only question that you’re required to answer in order to submit (please, choose at least five), but I do highly encourage you to list your favorite song(s), EP(s), and record label of 2025 in the rest of the poll, too.

If you need help remembering what came out in 2025, here’s a list of everything that Rosy Overdrive wrote about in Pressing Concerns this year. Obviously, it’s a not comprehensive list of the year’s best (and you’re more than welcome and even encouraged to vote for albums I haven’t covered), but it’s a starting point!

The deadline to submit your choices will be at midnight (EST) on December 26th, and the results will be revealed the following week.

Click here to participate in the reader’s poll!

Pressing Concerns: Mint Mile, Tulpa, The Melancholy Kings, Split Apex

Happy Thanksgiving! We have a Thursday Pressing Concerns today, featuring new albums from Mint Mile, Tulpa, The Melancholy Kings, and Split Apex. If you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday was a Pressing Concerns featuring Bliss?, Ali Murray, Rose of the World, and Second Story Man), and Tuesday was the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Label Watch), check those out too.

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

Mint Mile – andwhichstray

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Alt-country-folk-rock, 90s indie rock, Crazy Horse
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Yamaha

Mint Mile recorded their third album, andwhichstray, a couple of months after last year’s Roughrider came out. It was a chance kind of thing–Steve Albini, longtime friend and engineer of Mint Mile bandleader Tim Midyett, was participating in a recording seminar at France’s Studios de la Fabrique, and the band he had initially intended to record had to drop. Mint Mile, with an album’s worth of songs ready to go, went over to Europe, recorded them with Albini from April 28 to May 1, and headed home. A lot has happened over the past year and a half–the sudden death of Albini less than a week later, which led to Midyett’s old band (and my favorite band) Silkworm to reconvene for his memorial and eventually playing an entire reunion tour (which I did get to see). I would say that the circumstances surrounding andwhichstray threaten to overshadow the album, except that it’s an album made for said circumstances.

andwhichstray is the best that Mint Mile have ever sounded. The Crazy Horse solidification of Roughrider is sharpened further here, the band even more roaring. There’s a rocker called “Little Chicken” that gets an insane amount of mileage out of basically one chord, and there’s a moody, percussion-heavy piece called “Black Road” that doesn’t sound like anything this band has ever done before. There’s “Yamaha”, a song I’d previously heard Midyett play solo on an acoustic guitar but appears here as a fuzzed-out, ear-splitting country rocker (it’s a bit of parallel thinking with the likes of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, I dare say). Midyett’s “Don’t wanna live a life about money,” in “Yamaha” and “I’m your friend, it just feels right,” in single “This ‘n’ That” cut to the quick, centering a clear-eyed directness that’s the “thread” on andwhichstray, from Midyett’s words to (of course) Albini’s engineering.

Then there is “Can’t Be the First One”. It was written by Jason Molina “for the surviving members of Silkworm, the day after [their drummer] Michael Dahlquist was killed in 2005”. As far as I know, this song has never been released or heard by the public before now, but here is Tim Midyett singing it twenty years later, and damned if it doesn’t sound like Tim from Silkworm singing a Jason Molina song (Mint Mile drummer Jeff Panall’s previous life as Molina’s drummer surely helped). The immediacy with which Molina originally wrote “Can’t Be the First One”, preserved admirably here by Mint Mile, is what allows it to make sense on andwhichstray. andwhichstray is “about” the death of Albini in the way that “Can’t Be the First One” is “about” Molina, who also died much too young. It makes strange sense to me, a bunch of departed musicians somehow paying tribute to each other in a non-linear fashion, arranged by Mint Mile over the course of decades and in a few short days in France. On andwhichstray’s final song, “Summer’s Mostly Wasted”, original Silkworm member Joel R.L. Phelps plays alto saxophone alongside Midyett’s voice. Thankfully the both of them are still around to do the channeling. (Bandcamp link)

Tulpa – Monster of the Week

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Skep Wax
Genre: Indie pop, krautpop, post-punk, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Pyro

Josie Kirk (vocals, bass), Daniel Hyndman (guitar), Myles Kirk (guitar), and Mike Ainsley (drums) are Tulpa, an new indie pop band from Leeds who’ve recently partnered with the British indie pop label, Skep Wax, for their debut album. I first heard of this band last year thanks to a very good EP called Dismantler, which, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to be available online anywhere now–they’ve had some lineup changes, and perhaps they’ve decided it doesn’t fit where they’ve ended up, but I still hope it resurfaces again someday. Regardless, their first full-length album, Monster of the Week, is every bit as strong a debut LP as I would’ve hoped from Tulpa, and it has a smoothness and confidence particularly impressive from a new band.

This is undoubtedly “British indie pop” at its finest; Tulpa love Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth-style noisy guitars, but these bouncy, twee, sugary songs would never be mistaken for either of those bands. There’s a simplicity and breeziness to early hits “Transfixed Gaze”, “Psyops”, and “Pyro”, in which Tulpa make it sound much easier than it must be. The quasi-theme song “Let’s Make a Tulpa!” is another dizzying high, as is the similarly quick power pop “You’re Living in a Reverie” in Monster of the Week’s second half. You want curveballs? Well, Tulpa switch lead vocalists in the title track, they lumber through a five-minute fuzz-rumbler in “Stick Figure Boy”, and then there’s a couple black sheep towards the end of the album in the subdued, moody “Amateur Hour” and the choppy post-punk of “Raw Nerve”. That’s the sound of us getting one more great pop album in before 2025 is up. (Bandcamp link)

The Melancholy Kings – Her Favorite Disguise

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Magic Door
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Steady As She Goes

The members of New Jersey quartet The Melancholy Kings have histories in Garden State and New York indie rock dating back to the 1980s: vocalist/guitarist Mike Potenza, bassist Scott Selig, guitarist/vocalist Peter Horvath, and drummer Paul Andrew have played in The Anderson Council, The Make Three, Phantom Tollbooth, Fluffer, The Deni Bonet Band, and more between them. Her Favorite Disguise is the second Melancholy Kings album, following a self-titled one in 2019, and I admit I’m quite impressed with what these veterans have to offer in 2025. It’s one thing to “end up” making power pop after years of working in edgier underground indie rock, but The Melancholy Kings attack these songs like they’re just as cool as the New York post-punk of their youths.

The two biggest hits on Her Favorite Disguise, “Victoria” and “Steady As She Goes”, pull out all the stops–“whoa oh oh”s, “radio”/“stereo”, jangly guitar hooks, winking lyrics. Rolling mid-tempo Lemonheads-y pop rock like “Astor Place” and “Bitcoin Elegy” gives a little more space for narratives without dropping the catchiness, and there’s also opening track “Six Feet Down”, perhaps the best The Who pastiche I’ve heard this decade. Speaking of Who pastiche, The Melancholy Kings make the inspired decision to cover a late period Guided by Voices song– “Alex Bell” from 2022’s Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, which any hardcore Robert Pollard fan knows contains some of the best melodies you’ll hear in this current run of GBV albums. It’s arguably a better recording than the original–The Melancholy Kings keep the helicopter arena-rock guitars in the front, and Horvath (who sings lead vocals on this cover, the only non-Potenza-led one) injects a gigantic desperation into the song’s massive first half. Her Favorite Disguise takes this kind of music very seriously, but it’s not self-serious–mainly, though, it rocks. (Bandcamp link)

Split Apex – Thoughts in 3D

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Ever/Never
Genre: Post-rock, experimental, sound collage, industrial, spoken word
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Peninsula

Peter Blundell is a longtime experimental musician, known for his work in acts like Mosquitoes, Komare, and Temperatures. Finnish-originating artist Jussi Palmusaari has previously played in Preesens, a progressive rock group from his home country. Together, they are Split Apex, a London-based duo who formed in late 2024 and released a self-titled cassette EP not long afterwards. They’ve linked up with Ever/Never Records for their first full-length album, a strange and eerie five-song collection called Thoughts in 3D. The only actual musical reference that WFMU’s Erick Bradshaw makes in the bio for this record is to cult British experimental act The Shadow Ring, but it’s the non-musical ones–to the “oceanic abyss” and “unchartered waters”–that explain what it’s like to listen to Thoughts in 3D. Palmusaari handles “guitar, electronics, percussion”, and Blundell (on voice and bass) interjects with occasional spoken-word snippets. On “Peninsula”, the propulsive opening track, Split Apex are able to turn all of this into a facsimile of industrial post-punk, but the rest of Thoughts in 3D declines even this meager relief. “Crux Machine” and the title track are vast, desolate wastelands, occasional stabs of guitars or bass walking appearing and disappearing like specters. It’s all unsettlingly quiet and simple, making the remote vistas conjured up by Split Apex here all the more impressive. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Rosy Overdrive Label Watch 2025

Welcome to the fourth annual Rosy Overdrive Label Watch! It’s time to check in on what a dozen (give or take) of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite modern labels have been up to for the past few months, and pull a couple of highlights from each one. For the second straight year, I’m doing this during (American) Thanksgiving week, because the blog is, indeed, thankful for the work these labels do year after year.

As I always reiterate, this is not a “best record labels of 2025” list (although there would, of course, be some overlap). These are the labels that I’ve grown to love over the past decade or so, some of which were quite active this year, while others were less so. Still, everyone on this list put out enough music for me to choose both a favorite record and a worthy “honorable mention” (which can be either my second favorite, something I thought didn’t get as much attention as it should’ve, or something I didn’t have time to review in Pressing Concerns but still merits a closer look).

There are a bunch of great record labels doing great work that I don’t have time to highlight here, but you can always check the blog’s “browse by label” section which lists every record label whose releases I’ve covered at least three times in Pressing Concerns.

This year we must, unfortunately, say goodbye to Trouble in Mind Records, who announced that they were folding up shop in September. Thankfully, they did release two albums this year before shutting, so we do get to include them in the Label Watch one last time. On a positive note, I’ve added Repeating Cloud Records to the list this year!

Dear Life

RO Pick: Fust, Big Ugly

Aaron Dowdy’s Fust continue their strong case for “the best band making country-influenced indie rock in North Carolina” on Big Ugly, the group’s best album yet. Big Ugly is an album-length journey to Dowdy’s roots in southern West Virginia, drawing its name and much of its imagery from the shadow of the Guyandotte River; I’ve loved everything they’ve done, but Fust found another gear in Lincoln County.

Honorable Mention: Weirs, Diamond Grove

A bunch of regulars in the Dear Life Records/greater North Carolina music scene came together as “an experimental/traditional music collective” to make Weirs’ sophomore album, Diamond Grove, expanding on the sound that Oliver Child-Lanning and Justin Morris pursued as a duo on their 2020 debut. Traditional English folk ballads and hymns are stretched and tweaked into long, droning, ambient-filled passages, and the spaces in between give us all the time in the world to reflect on the centuries and lifetimes from then to now.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Joseph Decosimo, Fiery Gizzard / Thomas Dollbaum, Drive All Night / Florry, Sounds Like… / Hour, Subminiature / Little Mazarn, Mustang Island)

Meritorio

RO Pick: Dancer, More or Less

More or Less is Dancer’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, but despite the lineup change, their sophomore LP has the Glasgow quartet sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures are still part and parcel of More or Less, yes, but they’ve been more effectively ironed into a wider tapestry of expansive, exploratory art rock and (for Dancer, at least) more laid-back pursuits of pop music. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Exploding Flowers, Watermelon/Peacock

Hailing from ground zero of the 1980s “Paisley Underground” movement, Los Angeles’ Exploding Flowers do evoke the loose, psychedelic side of this strain of American jangly college rock. Sometimes hazy, sometimes bright and vibrant, Watermelon/Peacock is a compelling and generous Americana record arising from one of the country’s largest population centers. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Creative Writing, Baby Did This / The High Water Marks, Consult the Oracle / Monnone Alone, Here Comes the Afternoon / Prism Shores, Out from Underneath / Strange Passage, A Folded Sky / Whitney’s Playland, Long Rehearsal)

Comedy Minus One

RO Pick: Silkworm, Developer

Every Silkworm album is a “cult favorite”, but the background on their 1997 album Developer makes it perhaps the über “cult” Silkworm album–it was their second and final album for Matador Records, the band’s final chance to parlay critical/indie rock underground buzz into larger platforms and sizeable followings. They made the insular and cold Developer instead. Now a two-LP set with a handful of bonus tracks thanks to Comedy Minus One twenty-five years later, Developer is still right there for you to figure out if you haven’t yet. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Mint Mile, andwhichstray

I wanted to avoid doing an all-Silkworm/Silkworm-related edition for Comedy Minus One this year, but Tim Midyett is still at it and the upcoming third Mint Mile album is too damn good to pass up again. I’ll have more to say about it soon.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Kinski, Stumbledown Terrace)

Slumberland

RO Pick: The Telephone Numbers, Scarecrow II

The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein is remarkable in how he manages to carve out his own signature style while giving so much of himself over to the towering jangle pop, college rock, and power pop that’s shaped the entire scene around him. Scarecrow II is The Telephone Numbers’ coming-out party (their first as a solid quartet and first for Slumberland), and Rubenstein and company sound more than ready for their moment. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Lunchbox, Evolver

This is the second straight year that Lunchbox has appeared in the “honorable mention” section, and this will continue until everyone bestows the proper respect on the long-running Oakland group. It’s a reissue this time: 2002’s Evolver was something of Lunchbox’s swan song, a difficult-to-replicate statement of 60s pop music and uninhibited experimental electronic music that stood as the band’s final one until they were ready to re-emerge years later. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Allo Darlin’, Bright Nights / Autocamper, What Do You Do All Day? / The Cords, The Cords / Jeanines, How Long Can It Last / The Laughing Chimes, Whispers in the Speech Machine / Lightheaded, Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! / Tony Molina, On This Day / The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008-2010)

Trouble in Mind

RO Pick: The Tubs, Cotton Crown

London’s The Tubs have become one of the few jangly power pop bands that regularly get lauded outside of the genres’ bubbles, and it’s consistently deserved, too: Cotton Crown is the (already quite good) band’s best work yet. The personal nature of frontperson Owen Williams’ writing (about his late mother) results in the group’s sparkling, bright guitar pop collides with some tough, complex kinds of grief throughout Cotton Crown.

Honorable Mention: FACS, Wish Defense

Wish Defense was the last-ever album recorded by Steve Albini before his sudden passing last year, but its tragic circumstances do not obscure the fact that this LP is actually a rebirth and revitalization of FACS. The reintroduction of guitarist Jonathan Van Herik (who left the band in 2018) seems to have allowed the experimental rockers to find heretofore undiscovered life in the realms of (relatively) brief bursts of power trio post-punk and noise rock. (Read more)

Mt.St.Mtn.

RO Pick: Massage, Coaster

Massage fit right into the current West Coast jangle pop revival, but the Los Angeles quintet have gotten there by doing their own thing, one that pulls together pastoral folk rock, New Order-influenced melodicism, and plenty of “college rock”. Coaster is their third LP, and while it’s their first in four years, they’ve hardly missed a beat with this collection of impeccable guitar pop. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: The Pennys, The Pennys

The Bay Area indie pop team-up that we didn’t know we needed, The Pennys is co-led by Michael Ramos (who makes slow-moving, unmoored, dreamy indie pop as Tony Jay) and Ray Seraphin (who embraces more full and grounded power pop/college rock as R.E. Seraphin). Busier than Tony Jay but more subdued than R.E. Seraphin, The Pennys hit the jangle pop sweet spot for six songs and sixteen minutes on their self-titled debut. (Read more)

Don Giovanni

RO Pick: Salem 66, SALT

Don Giovanni made 1980s/early 90s Boston group Salem 66’s entire discography available digitally earlier this year, as well as putting together a career-spanning compilation called SALT as an accessible entry point. Salem 66 are perhaps most easily defined as “college rock”–hardly “power pop”, “jangly” enough to fit in with early R.E.M., and their ilk, marked by a guitar-led psychedelic sound, fluent in the heavier strains of indie rock but, more than anything else, “doing their own thing”. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Volcano, Volcano

An unlikely supergroup, Volcano was the result of the Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood linking up with none other than two architects of Sublime (Bud Gaugh and Miguel Happoldt), plus bassist Jon Poutney. Their sole album, released in 2004 and reissued this year by Don Giovanni, is a surprisingly strong collection of laid-back Meat Puppets-esque psychedelic alt-rock; the reggae influence is used sparingly, but it’s there enough.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Mourning [A] BLKstar, Flowers for the Living / Rodeo Boys, Junior)

Lame-O

RO Pick: Lily Seabird, Trash Mountain

The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of last year’s Alas, are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Lily Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Golden Apples, Shooting Star

Pieced together in a handful of different locales by bandleader Russell Edling with various contributors, Golden Apples’ Shooting Star pulls off the trick of sounding more like an insular folk-influenced record while at the same time retaining the bright, distorted, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic power pop of 2023’s Bananasugarfire. Between these last two LPs, there’s now a distinct “Golden Apples sound”–I think I like this new take on it the best so far. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Dazy, Bad Penny / WPTR, Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site)

Sophomore Lounge

RO Pick: Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, New Threats from the Soul

If you liked the expansive alt-country sagas of Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band’s 2023 breakout album Dancing on the Edge, I’ve got good news with regards to what you’ll hear on New Threats from the Soul. As always, the incomparable Davis rolls deceptively simple country rock along with his rambling observations and lets us sort the resultant rich texts out. The confusion by some at Davis’ whole deal upon his ascent has been amusing, but not as amusing as listening to New Threats from the Soul.

Honorable Mention: Grace Rogers, Mad Dogs

We can count on Sophomore Lounge for two things every year: reissuing bizarre underground rock records from around the globe and shining a light on unknown Louisville musicians. Grace Rogers’ Mad Dogs is decidedly in the latter camp; apparently this is the traditionalist folkie’s first “electric” record, gathering up a handful of ringers for a laid-back collection of songs reminiscing on family and immersing themselves in the Kentucky of it all.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Jerry David DeCicca, Cardiac Country)

Post Present Medium

RO Pick: Semi Trucks, Georgia Overdrive

Semi Trucks are new to me (apparently they put out an album on Meritorio in 2021), but the Los Angeles quartet’s latest LP is everything good about West Coast rock and roll music. Georgia Overdrive is ten songs of fuzzed-out, psychedelic guitar pop music, bits of dream pop and garage rock and Undergrounds both Paisley and Velvet all in tow. Multiple lead vocalists, stoned-out-of-your gourd atmospheres one moment, hard-charging fuzz-rock the next. All good.

Honorable Mention: Chronophage, Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship

Austin group Chronophage are undersung pop merchants of the greater garage/punk/whatever underground, and it’s good to see them still going strong despite member Donna Allen’s fairly active solo career. Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship is four songs of slapdash garage-y power pop, over too soon but not too soon for “We Must Be Evil” and “Anti-Miracle” (and the other two tracks, let’s be real) to sink their teeth in.

Candlepin

RO Pick: Lozenge, EP 1

Putting this together, I learned that there are apparently two different shoegaze bands named Lozenge who have put music out on Pleasure Tapes. Very confusing! This is about the Los Angeles-based one, who, after putting out a demo cassette on Pleasure Tapes last year, dropped their debut EP on Candlepin. EP1 is five songs of lo-fi melodies and fuzz, an impressively strong bid to enter the pantheon of modern “Guided by Voices-gaze” bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots.

Honorable Mention: Host Family, Extended Play

Another new Los Angeles shoegaze-pop band on Candlepin! The debut EP from Host Family is another piece of evidence that southern California seems to be the place to be for modern shoegaze-influenced bands; it’s six pop songs (collecting four singles from last year and two new ones) that aren’t nearly as abrasive as Lozenge’s take on the genre but still feature a healthy amount of noisy rave-ups in the polish, too.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Abel, How to Get Away with Nothing / Smalltalk, As If)

Exploding in Sound

RO Pick: Jobber, Jobber to the Stars

Brooklyn’s Jobber burst onto the scene in 2022 with an exciting and inspired combination of 90s alt-rock fuzz, huge pop hooks, and professional wrestling-themed writing, all of which continue to be found on the band’s first album, Jobber to the Stars. They put their bigger stage to use on the LP, keeping the smart hooks intact but adding heavy lumbering alternative rock moments and zippy, jagged Exploding in Sound-style underground rock into their sound. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Magic Fig, Valerian Tea

To be perfectly honest I’ve only listened to this one a little bit so far (it just came out last Friday), but my first impression is that the San Francisco psychedelic rock supergroup have put together a worthy follow-up to their 2024 self-titled debut. Featuring members of Whitney’s Playland, The Umbrellas, and Almond Joy (among others), Magic Fig’s second album continues to walk the line between high-concept psychedelia and the indie pop for which the Bay Area is currently more well-known.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Cusp, What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back / Prewn, System)

12XU

RO Pick: Ed Kuepper & Jim White, After the Flood

After the Flood is an album of new recordings that pulls material from all across Australian punk/indie rock giant Ed Kuepper’s career–there’s one from his time with The Saints, three from his next band, The Laughing Clowns, and four are from his solo LPs. If I had to describe this album, I’d refer to it as “long, winding, electric desert folk rock”–Kuepper wanders both in his guitar playing and his vocals, letting the songs build and sprawl with Dirty Three’s Jim White on the drums as a grounding force. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: The Gotobeds, Masterclass

The Gotobeds have been garage rocking, noise rocking, and post-punking for over a decade now. Their first album in six years, Masterclass, is just that: the Pittsburgh quartet have retaken the reins for ten songs in a little over a half-hour, clanging noisy underground rock that’s like Sonic Youth with a newfound laser focus or a more furious version of their peers in Savak. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Chris Brokaw, Ghost Ship)

Feel It

RO Pick: Kilynn Lunsford, Promiscuous Genes

Kilynn Lunsford’s Promiscuous Genes is on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. It’s hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Why Bother?, You Are Part of the Experiment

Mason City, Iowa’s premiere basement-garage-horror-punk-rockers have been on a hot streak lately, and their first record of 2025 (out of two) in particular is a high note. The five-song You Are Part of the Experiment EP is a dark, troubling trip into underground noise rock, art punk, and fuzzed-out rock and roll that seemingly allows Why Bother? to get even weirder and more unhinged than they do on their “proper” records. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Artificial Go, Musical Chairs / Citric Dummies, Split With Turnstile / Gentle Leader XIV, Joke in the Shadow / Lung, The Swankeeper / MARAUDEUR, Flaschenträger / Motorbike, Kick It Over / Private Lives, Salt of the Earth / Why Bother?, Case Studies)

Repeating Cloud

RO Pick: Jeff Tobias, One Hundredfold Now in This Age

Musically speaking, One Hundredfold Now in This Age is more orchestral and jazz-indebted that 2022’s Recurring Dream was, but if you enjoyed that album’s smooth yet dense take on pop music, Brooklyn multi-talented artist Jeff Tobias does it again here, more or less. Tobias and a bunch of guest musicians turn this collection of strange songs into a single chaotic, vibrant, and seething beast, a sharp political collection that meets the moment in the most difficult and correct way. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Gum Parker, The Brakes

Portland, Maine’s Gum Parker are 90s indie rock devotees, but they come off as much more interested in simply making loud pop music than trying to directly emulate their influences on their debut album. The Brakes is “power pop” without that genre’s defining reverence, “pop punk” without a trace of what that term traditionally evokes, and “slacker rock” made by people with the perpetual nervousness. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Festiva, Everything in Moderation / Little Oso, How Lucky to Be Somebody / Lone Striker, Lone Striker / LP Gavin, Trials, Tribulations, Deliberations, Pratfalls, Repreievers, Etc. / Monnone Alone, Here Comes the Afternoon / Mythical Motors, Travelogues and Movie Stills / Outro, Broken Promise / Sweet Nobody, Driving Off to Nowhere / Teenage Tom Petties, Rally the Tropes)

Pressing Concerns: Bliss?, Ali Murray, Rose of the World, Second Story Man

It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns! It features a new EP from Bliss?, and new albums from Ali Murray, Rose of the World, and Second Story Man! Read on!

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.

Bliss? – Keep Your Joy to Yourself

Release date: November 21st
Record label: Psychic Spice
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, college rock, punk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Fear & Trembling

I’ve only just started putting Rosy Overdrive’s year-end lists together, so I’m not entirely sure if this is 100% accurate, but my gut tells me that Bliss?’s Pass Yr Pain Along is the best debut album of 2025 (and if it’s not, it’s very close). Three Baton Rouge punk musicians (guitarist/vocalist Josh Higdon, bassist Hunter Kiser, and drummer Robert DeMouy) converged to make a record of Elvis Costello-inspired college rock, power pop, and rough-around-the-edges mod-revival. Not long after Pass Yr Pain Along’s release, Hunter Kiser moved to Houston and subsequently left the band, but Higdon and DeMouy have forged ahead as a duo, splitting bass duties on the three-song Keep Your Joy to Yourself EP. As one might guess from the thematically similar title, Keep Your Joy to Yourself’s songs were written as the same time as Pass Yr Pain Along’s, but they “weren’t ready to be recorded” until now.

DeMouy, upon sending this EP to me, wrote that Bliss? had to “take a new approach to recording” due to their new configuration and notes that the duo spent more time on overdubs than they had as a power trio. Keep Your Joy to Yourself isn’t any kind of major departure in its final form, though–it certainly does sound like three songs that could’ve been on Pass Yr Pain Along. “Fear & Trembling”, the EP’s hit, is as catchy as anything on that debut album, an awesome firecracker Lemonheads/Replacements-style power-punk wrecking ball. Sandwiching “Fear & Trembling” are two weirder pop songs–the opening track, “Antpile”, is a wobbly, dubby post-punk pastiche (full-time bassist or not, Bliss? haven’t forgotten the importance of the low-end in this kind of stuff), and “Clemency Program” marries the Costello new waviness of the EP’s first song with a bit more garage/alt-rock heft. The circular ending to “Clemency Program” may be where those “overdubs” start to become most obvious, but it’s a steady slide into just a tiny bit of maximalism. I fully trust the pilots of Bliss? to navigate this terrain at this point. (Bandcamp link)

Ali Murray – Spiritual Drift

Release date: November 19th
Record label: Dead Forest
Genre: Folk, slowcore, dream pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Where Is Time Going?

Isle of Lewis, Scotland singer-songwriter Ali Murray has released a lot of music, much of it in the realms of dreamy, slowcore- and dream pop-indebted folk. Many of these records have shown up in Pressing Concerns before, but (if the musician himself is to be believed), Spiritual Drift will be the last Ali Murray album to appear on this blog. Murray isn’t retiring from music, apparently, just from putting it out under his own name (likely to be followed by albums released via “some other moniker/guise at some future point”), but Spiritual Drift is clearly the end of something. It’s a subdued finale, to be sure–the electric, distorted moments of past Murray records here are largely absent, and he instead zeroes in on a mostly acoustic sound that veers towards folk music, quiet dream pop, and even ambient at points. The mid-tempo electric folk rock of “Where Is Time Going?” is a rousing song in the record’s first half, but look towards tracks like the hushed opening “Blue Tree” and the straight-up acoustic ballad “Abuser” to get a better sense of what to expect on Spiritual Drift as a whole. The instrumental “The Natural World” separates the first side of the record from an even quieter second one, a collection of acoustic picking and ambient folk only sort of broken up by the light electronic touches (and guest vocals from Lyndsie Alguire) on the title track. The windswept “I Held You at the End of Time” is as good of an ending as Ali Murray could’ve conjured up–it’s dramatic and dynamic, but quite subtly so. (Bandcamp link)

Rose of the World – Heaven Is a Broken Heart

Release date: November 12th
Record label: Sad Cactus
Genre: Post-hardcore, emo, art-rock, post-punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Vitamin

The members of Brooklyn quartet Rose of the World aren’t household names, exactly, but they’ve spent over a decade doing time in underground indie rock bands in New York and Boston–between the four of them, they’ve played with Quarrels, S.C.A.B., Superteen, Twen, Off Drugs, and Aural Burrows, among others. Many of those acts have put out music on Poughkeepsie, New York label Sad Cactus Records, and that’s who’s releasing Heaven Is a Broken Heart, Rose of the World’s debut LP (following a self-released EP in 2020). The band (vocalist/guitarist Cory Best, drummer Jeff Crenshaw, guitarist Jackson Martel, and bassist Drew Hardgrove) aren’t so easy to categorize on Heaven Is a Broken Heart, which makes sense for a bunch of veterans of different strains of indie rock–part of it is indebted to that New England/Northeastern Exploding in Sound-like post-hardcore/art rock sound, but it’s also more directly emo-influenced than a lot of that music, and there’s a subtle, subdued, almost “atmospheric” quality to this album, too. Heaven Is a Broken Heart is explosive basement rock (“Sucker”), catchy post-punk (“Vitamin”), and driving noisy garage punk (“SYS”) whenever Rose of the World deem these diversions to be the most interesting direction to take these songs–between the restlessness of the band and a passionate but not overly showy frontperson performance from Best, Heaven Is a Broken Heart has all the makings of a “grower” debut album. (Bandcamp link)

Second Story Man – Calico

Release date: October 24th
Record label: Noise Pollution
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzzy indie rock stuff
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Let It Out

Louisville, Kentucky has always punched above its weight a bit when it’s come to solid indie rock, and that goes beyond names like Slint, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Eleventh Dream Day that are famous (or at least recognizable) in certain corners of the indie music world. Noise Pollution Records has been cataloging Louisville acts since 1997, and their latest release is a new record from a similarly long-running band in Second Story Man. Second Story Man also emerged out of Louisville in the late 90s, and Calico is the fifth album by the quartet (guitarist/vocalists Evan Bailey and Carrie Neumayer, bassist Jeremy Irvin, and drummer Drew Osborn) and first since 2017. Calico is an enjoyably unclassifiable indie rock album–their bio mentions that Second Story Man has played shows with Versus, Sebadoh, and Rainer Maria, and that trio is a good start for what to expect. I’d also add Tsunami, Samuel S.C., and the aforementioned Eleventh Dream Day–parts of Calico are noisy, but it’s not “noise rock”, and parts of it are very poppy but it’s not really “indie pop”, either. This is a band that can crank out amplifier-drenched basement rock (the title track, “Let It Out”), retro pop-rock (“It’s in the Air”, “Big Seltzer”), and even a bit of emo (“Side of the Road”). It’s probably a “mature” record, but it’s a lively version of it. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable: