May Highlights: recent indie music discoveries

It’s the end of another month, time to look back on the great new music discoveries of the past weeks. Indie rock, indie punk and a smattering of pop and other genres. Give the playlist a listen and find a new favourite band or sound.

Playlist highlights

This month’s playlist is book-ended by new singles from Say Sue Me, and Church Girls, two bands that have had growing followings over the last couple of years and have become mainstays on my personal playlists. In addition to those more recognized names, here’s a few less well-known (in these parts anyway) highlights from this month’s list.

Mega X – Find Your Toy: Hailing from Tokyo, Mega X released their first album New Mythtakes this month. The track opens with some pleasingly Superchunk-y guitars, and blends what their Spotify bio labels as “strong yet sweet and sour harmonies between a female and two male vocalists”. You’re definitely gonna wanna add this one to your summer roadtrip playlist.

BERRIES – We Are Machines: I feel like every day I discover some great new band from the UK and grungy rock trio Berries is yet another. This track is in advance of the Album How We Function due for release this July.

Ditches – Lost in Time: Swedish band Ditches was one of my favourite discoveries through last year’s 2021-a-Day playlist, and I’m excited to hear them back with a new two song single. Titled Drunk Dial #9 it was apparently written and recorded on a two day bender last spring.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t include a shout out for my own band Shoulder Season upon the release of our first ever EP Not the Time. By turns catchy, crunchy, gritty and bittersweet, the tracks reflect our band motto: Not too hard, not too soft; not too young, not too old; not too hot, not too cold … We’re Shoulder Season!

Favourite discoveries from April 2022

I’m very late with my latest monthly post, but still wanted to share these tracks discovered in April 2022 (but not necessarily released then).

One of my goals with this blog has always been to share music from different parts of the world – to share in one space artists from local music scenes that might not otherwise come together. Here’s 7 highlights from the April playlist from 7 different countries.

A world of indie music highlights from April’s playlist

Body Type — Buoyancy: advance single from Sydney, Australian scuzz // rock band. Their full length Everything Is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising was released on May 20th.

Tape Toy – Phone Call: grunge pop from Amsterdam, from an album released in January.

Marian — Don’t Wanna Be Down: this one’s from my neck of the woods, classic rock sounds with a pleasant twang, out of Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Happypills — Monsoon: Japanese dream pop from a February released cassette.

Liiek — Paranoia: Some day I will get to visit Berlin, and when I do I want to check out local punk bands like Liiek

Snarls — Fixed Gear: self-described glitter emo alt rock from Columbus, Ohio

French Alps Tiger — Lost Boys: surf-y, indie punk from Swansea, UK

March 2022: New and Newly Discovered Music

March is poor for many things but it turned out to be a great month for music discovery. I’ve been hanging out, waiting for Spring to arrive on something other than just the calendar. We’re almost to mid-April now, but it still seems worth sharing some music discovered in March. Add these to your Spring playlist for walking in the sunshine or sitting inside waiting for the showers to cease.

Highlighted Indie Releases

The playlist features 41 great tracks of mostly indie rock, punk and post-punk. It’s hard to pick highlights, but here’s a taste. Follow the links to their bandcamp pages to support them directly.

Onsloow – Nothing But a Memory: Combining elements of my fave all time band Superchunk and my obsession du jour The Beths, Onsloow deserves to be as well known as both of those two indie rock darlings. From Trondheim, Norway, this is “rousing and dreamy powerpop [with an] undercurrent of pop punk flair, with gritty edge on the guitars that hides behind fun and pop friendly choruses.” (bandcamp)

Weird Nightmare – Searching For You: Weird Nightmare is METZ’s Alex Edkins. This is the first song released in advance of a full length in May on SubPop, who describe it as “contain[ing] all of his main band’s bite with an unexpected, yet totally satisfying, sweetness.” It forms a good pair with the Onsloow track above, and showing similar influences, Weird Nightmare will be opening for Superchunk when they hit Toronto this June.

Horsegirl – Anti-Glory: Experimental, shoe-gazey rockers Horsegirl were featured previously on the 2021-a-Day blog about this time last year. The band has been buzzy on the indie music scene and are gearing up to release a full length called Versions of Modern Performance this June. This track is a sneak peek.

Yawners – Rivers Cuomo: Pop/rock from Madrid, Spain. From the forthcoming May Release Duplo, “Big riffs, big feelings, big tunes. Yawners high energy indie rock feels like a crush.” (Bandcamp)

Ex-Void – Churchyard: From the March released Bigger Than Before. “Ex-Vöid, formed by Joanna Gruesome singers Lan McArdle and Owen Williams, draw on guitar pop through the ages – The Byrds, Big Star, Teenage Fanclub – and attack it with the ferocity and economy of a hardcore punk band.” (bandcamp)

Loose Fit – Social Graces: My infatuation with Australian indie music continues. Post-punk/no-wave sounds, this is the title track from an album to be released later in April.

February 2022

Playing catch-up on my 2022 Indie music playlists, while I think about new names for this blog site. As I mentioned in my last post, 2021-a-Day has wrapped but I’m using this space to continue to share new music through monthly playlists. I missed the first two months of the year, and before March rolls around and I get even more behind, here are some things I discovered and enjoyed in February.

Playlist Highlights

• Am I Okay? from Pinch Points: 2021 was all about me discovering Australian indie, so no surprise that early into 2022, I’m already excited about a new-to-me Melbourne band. This single dropped in February but a full album came out this month. “Nothing is normal — but PINCH POINTS are here.”
• A Real Thing by The Beths: The Beths!! Back in August or September, I bought a ticket to see the Beths in Montreal in January (or maybe it was supposed to have been February). Then Omicron hit Canada and things got shut down and this show got cancelled. This track was a wonderful consolation prize that I’ve been listening to on repeat (and so should you).
• Restless by Artsick: How did I not know about Artsick until now!?! Fuzzy, DIY punk, this California trio reminds me of one of my 2021-a-Day bands Ribbon Stage. This single and the album it came from dropped in January, but it’s still a great time to discover it!

There’s so much goodness on this list and too little time to mention all the awesome bands here. Check out the full list on Spotify and then do a search on Bandcamp for your faves and support great indie bands!

2021-a-Day in 2022

The thing with starting a blog that’s linked to a year, is what do you do when that year is over? Well, the first thing you do is take a bit of a break. With that break behind me, I’ve been thinking of ways that I can continue this site to some degree, without the daily obligation to post that clearly got away from me last year.

I still enjoy sharing new and new-to-me music and talking about indie bands that you may have missed. On my own time, I keep playlists of the new things I’m discovering and so my goal for the next little while is to share those here. To get started, I’ll do a couple of catch-up posts for the lists that I created already for 2022, with the aim to be on track by the end of March.

These are Spotify lists, which frankly are great for discovery but if you want to support the artists, check them out on Bandcamp or via their own websites.

January 2022 Playlist

Highlights from January’s list include:

• Heartbreaker from Helsinki pop-punker’s Teini-Pää off of their new album Maailma kyllä odottaa (The World is Waiting… or so Google Translate tells me). Teini-Pää were featured in the original 2021-a-Day playlist and here on the blog back in February 2021.
• TOO-ZOOMA from New Zealand’s Asta Rangu another 2021-a-Day fave
• The French Tips, a self-described Boise based dance punk trio