A study in Mellow: 3 Indie Tracks for Your Weekend

After another long week, I’m ready to sit back and try to recharge with some cool indie tunes. Here’s hoping you find yourself with some down time this weekend and if you do, here are three tracks to listen to all added to the 2021-a-Day Spotify playlist today.

Quiet Noise-Rock from Chicago’s Horsegirl

This trio of high school pals has been gaining steady attention in the indie media in the last 6 months or so. Formed in 2019, Horsegirl have a few tracks available through streaming and have apparently just signed to Matador Records. A post on this track Ballroom Dance Scene in Pitchfork this past January means maybe you’ve already added it to your personal playlists, but it’s been a real ear worm of late for me, so I’m adding to the 2021-a-Day playlist this week.

Toronto NoWave With Luge

Luge is a band from Toronto. That’s what their bandcamp bio says. And now you know about as much about this band as I do. There are releases on their bandcamp page going back to 2015 and the self-titled album that this track up & up (& up) comes from was released in April 2020. Classified as No Wave, Art Punk or experimental rock, there are lots of exciting sounds throughout this record – no track is totally representative, so after checking out this one on the 2021-a-Day Playlist pop over to their bandcamp page and give a listen to the range of cool tracks they’ve come up with.

Mysterious indie from Colouring Outside

And while Luge is a bit mysterious to me, Halifax/Montreal’s Colouring Outside seems to want to be a little mysterious to all of us. Their bio says:

Little is known about this Miquelon power-pop band. They played a handful of shows at the all-ages venue the Moon Snail (?) to moderate acclaim and released the cassette ep “the lines” on their own coquille label in 1984. A dispute between recordist Johnni “JJ” DesRogiers and bassist Mikie led to the destruction of the adat masters. A rough cassette dub from the abortive lp sessions survives.

Bandcamp

but a quick perusal of their bandcamp bio tells you they have a few more familiar names than the mystery suggests.

Introduction | Rollercoaster

Australian indie dream pop mixed with an art punk aesthetic.

Adelaide, South Australia trio Introduction released their debut self-titled cassette last June:

Deploying a minimalist post-punk approach to echo drenched pop and resonating solidarity with the other girl-gangs, who with soft precision kick a hole in your chest.

Bandcamp bio

A wandering keyboard over straight ahead punk-rock drums and bass, yet layered over with lush vocals, Introduction create a unique dream-pop/indie-punk mix. Beat Happening meets Stereolab? You’ll want to be introduced to Introduction. If you liked previous 2021-a-Day tracks from Ribbon Stage and Genn and wonder what it might sound like if you threw them together in a blender with a Korg, satisfy your curiosity and check out Introduction.

Diode | Tomothy

Mysterious post-punk from (probably) California.

Diode’s self-titled release on ReFry Records dropped February 7th. (Edit: actually it looks like it was released last September but only added to Spotify in February).The four-piece gives little information on themselves on the Bandcamp or Spotify pages except to note that the group features “members of Freakees, Shark Toys, Rearranged Face, Wild Wing, Vaguess, Fernando and the Teenage Narcs, etc.”

Gritty, post-punk: killer drummer. This is rad. Check it out on the 2021-a-day playlist or via the bandcamp link above.