What a one-two punch this last week has been… not just because BrooklynVegan and AltPress have been dismantled, but also because Veeps — the livestreaming platform owned by Good Charlotte (yikes) and backed by Live Nation (double yikes) — were wielding the crowbar.

It’s a massive bummer. A blow to both music journalism and to the music industry – nay, the arts! – writ large.

A massive bummer but not a surprise. The bullshit has been snowballing for years. BrooklynVegan isn’t the first to succumb to the dual pressures of our short attention spans and corporate greed.

When journalism is reduced to “content,” it becomes easier to see it as a commodity and devalue it, something to be optimized and scaled. -

We have to let go of the idea that the old guard of music journalism can somehow be restored. It’s going to be tough, but there’s every reason to remain optimistic.

You’re just going to have to keep the magazine concept alive your own damn self.

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Our Interests Can’t Be Monopolized

I’ve been noticing a weird contradiction in the supply vs. demand of music writing. Namely, that individual tastes keep fragmenting while the industry at large keeps consolidating.

This most recent round of layoffs is just one piece of a consolidation story you’ve heard unfold in many different ways on many different days.

Pitchfork was absorbed by Condé Nast. Ticketmaster sells the bulk of concert tickets in most markets. iHeartRadio owns something like 900 radio stations. Three major record labels account for 70% of all recorded music revenue. Like… ever. And that includes a bunch of “independent” labels that sit under their umbrella. Ticketmaster and Live Nation were just found guilty of running a monopoly. I was going to reveal that Warner owns SongKick, but in fact-checking myself, I found out that they recently sold it to Suno (yeah, the AI music generator).

It goes on and on. A powerful few hold all the cards, just like in every other aspect of our lives. Apart from the exorbitant prices, one of the ways we as mere consumers feel this influence is that the “indie mainstream” has been regressing to the mean. The same records end up on almost every end-of-year list.1 The most aggressive PR campaigns backed by the biggest dollars always seem to win out. There’s more great music being made than ever before, but the average person would never know — they’d probably claim the exact opposite, in fact.

Meanwhile, our actual tastes are becoming more and more diffuse. We sit in our perfectly curated, hyper-niche, algorithmically generated bubbles. We listen to esoteric subgenres and wear clothing micro-trends. There’s no expectation anymore that everyone will gather around the TV at the same time to watch the MTV Music Awards or even the Grammys.2 Maybe the entire nation glued to the cathode ray tube watching The Beatles make their Ed Sullivan debut is a ridiculously outdated example, but the fact remains that we used to be united around specific cultural moments that now feel fewer and further between.

Such is the so-called “death of monoculture” that so many lament. And while it’s sad that we no longer have a universal experience to plug into, it also means that we’ve become largely immune to the sense that we MUST get on board with the next hot thing. There’s a sort of sleeper anti-gatekeeping side effect there that I can get behind.

Perhaps that’s part of why the old authoritative model of journalism has less pull than it once did. We no longer need professionals to tell us what to listen to, read, or watch in order to be relevant. And far more simply, instant access to all recorded music upon the day of its release means we can judge it for ourselves without reading any criticism about it in advance. All we need to know is that it exists in the first place!

Instead, we want “authenticity.” I’m scare-quoting it because the term has become a corporate buzzword, but there’s no denying how hungry we are for real people to give us their unfiltered, unpolished opinions and recommendations. Just look at the rise of music curators and fan TikTok accounts as a source of music discovery — there’s so much more of a personalized feel to this style. It’s also doing a lot of filtering work that we need now.

We never used to be so overwhelmed by choice. Journalists used to help us decide what records to buy. Now almost every single album is scored a 7 out of 10, and we’re supposed to derive meaning from that.

When you have these two forces at odds – the corporate monolith on the one end screaming for consolidation, the persnickety listener on the other screaming for personalization, where could that possibly leave the traditional music publication?

The Death of the One-Stop Shop

Music magazines were once essential. If you loved music, if you wanted to know what was new or interesting or worthwhile, you needed a subscription to the Blenders and AltPresses and Qs of the world. You could augment with college radio or MTV2 (if you were lucky) or especially helpful record store clerks, but magazines were the lifeblood of new music discovery.

No matter how excellent BrooklynVegan was, it’s tough to claim that it was a necessity any longer. Not in the age of near infinite music supply. No matter how much these big boys consolidate and try to shove the same handful of records in our faces every press cycle, they’re still competing with so many more sources than before. Every streaming platform, every social media outlet, thousands of blogs and newsletters, all dividing and overwhelming our attention.

We’ve never had more music available to us, or more people trying to tell us what to listen to. What we’re losing when we lose publications like BrooklynVegan isn’t the existence of music journalism. Or good writing. Or music discovery.

We’re losing efficiency. We’re losing a one-stop shop.

It’s depressing that all of these talented writers have been laid off, but you’ll still be able to read many of them. It was only last December when Uproxx canceled Indiecast, and has since become the third best selling music writer on Substack, with thousands of paid subscribers (meaning he is making a solid living just from this work). It’s been less than a week since BrooklynVegan editor started his newsletter, and he’s already a bestseller – #1 rising on the Substack music charts.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t feel empathy for laid-off music journalists – we should! It’s clearly a bad thing that our beloved music outlets are shuttering! Nobody should have to hang up their own shingle. But I’m not worried that they won’t land on their feet. I’m not worried that the quality of writing will decline. And I’m worrying less and less that we, the music fans, will not support them.

But for those of us lamenting the loss of the traditional music magazine, our work is just beginning.

I gave you just two examples of displaced writers who created their own newsletters. Eventually, more magazines will close their doors.

There will come a day when the only music magazine left standing will be one massive Pitchfork/Live Nation superbeast that features approximately 100 words of advertorial writing per new album release. Enshittification at its absolute peak, right?

Instead, you’ll be inundated by choice. It will feel like there are just as many critics, journalists, playlisters, TikTokers, vloggers, and bloggers as there are musicians. Figuring out who they are and which ones to read will be exhausting. What am I saying – it already feels exhausting. And that’s before we even get to the more obvious question of what music to listen to.

It also feels awfully familiar. Isn’t this exact sort of thing happening with all the video streaming services? Hulu, Netflix, HBO, Disney, all fracturing and asking for so much of your money that it makes you yearn for the relative simplicity of cable? You might feel ready to surrender to those conglomerates right about now. Maybe if you stick with Pitchfork and your Spotify algorithm, you can cover all your new music bases without putting in any extra effort.

I beg you to resist that urge. I beg you to put in that effort.3

Your New Favorite Music Magazine: Some Assembly Required

Cultivate your own personal music outlet. Build a feed of your favorite displaced journalists, amateur critics, curators, friends, whomever. The death of traditional media is your opportunity to lean into the personalization that you crave, and simultaneously build a community that’s been missing from both the traditional mags and from your algorithms.

Isn’t it better to find a handful of individual writers who align best with your tastes, and whose writing styles appeal to you most? No house style. No selling out to pressure. No compromising on scores to an editorial team.

The one-stop shop is fracturing4, but the need for knowledgeable people to help us filter through the onslaught of new music isn’t. Stop accepting scraps in the name of efficiency. And definitely don’t let your tastes get consolidated like the magazines are.

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• Best July Albums

• Reader Favorites

• Playlist

Well, we’ve blown right past July, and I think we’re at risk of completing yet another year without having a Certified Summer Banger.

Am I just missing it? Has the committee already voted and I slept through the deliberations? Unclear, but I really think we’ve been running on empty since brat summer.*

Alarming, really, because Charli XCX just dropped a new record. Not that she’s required to carry the summer banger torch year after year, but we may have come to expect it. I won’t add to that already oversaturated discussion, for what it’s worth — even if it were my favorite July album, you still wouldn’t see it on the list below. You don't need me to put you on it.

Other July albums that could have been contenders: new ones from legends like Madonna and The Strokes, a buzzy debut from Swapmeet1, and strong follow-ons from Lucia & The Best Boys, Baby Rose and Suki Waterhouse.

You won’t see any of them in the list below, for that reason, or just because they didn't fully do it for me (needless to say, five release days in one month is excessive!). And none of them produced a universally beloved warm weather anthem, anyway, as far as I can tell.

I very much want to stand corrected, by the way, so please present any and all counter-evidence.

Prove me wrong — what’s the 2026 Song of the Summer?

(*Update - It's Olivia Rodrigo, isn't it?)

Leave a comment

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The Best Albums of July 2026

9 albums. 1 Playlist. No rankings.

Legend:

🎯 → if you only have time for one…
📼 → most nostalgic/accessible
🧩 → most challenging

Keep scrolling for the July playlist.

Twisted Teens - Florida Water Blues

I’ve been watching this band skyrocket to indie superstardom over the last few months with a quickness I haven’t experienced for ages. They already had an album release earlier this year you might have missed, but I’ll forgive you if you skip it (it’s worthwhile, but this one is stronger). Unlike other post-country/swamp rock bands we’ve been loving in recent years (Wednesday or Ratboys, par exemple), these guys are rougher, grittier, swampier — think Creedence Clearwater Revival with a touch of The Black Keys.

• Start with: “Florida Water Blues”

Still to come — we’re heading to Brazil, Cuba, and back in time to the ‘80s and ‘90s… from synthpop to backpack hip-hop to college rock and more.

• Need more personalized recs? I have an app for that.

• Paid subscribers also get access to the full band directory, exclusive playlists, vinyl and ticket giveaways, and the lively Discord community. Join us!

Certified cutie patootie makes the NBfOH crop tee look so stylin’. Get yr merch here :)

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Back when I started New Bands for Old Heads, I made a music discovery guide for the chronically disengaged. One of my best tips was one I often used myself: pummel your streaming algorithm of choice into submission until it spits out exactly the kind of (new) music you want to hear.

I’m elated to report that I haven’t discovered music via any kind of algorithm for at least a year now. That’s entirely thanks to you guys. You’re my biggest feeder for music discovery now.

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Not to brag, but my readers have the best taste. My own taste has grown exponentially in every direction thanks to everyone who has gathered here. I consider myself very fortunate.

I want to do a better job of putting your listening front and center, because it’s genuinely changing my life1. We talk about community so much on “Musicstack” — how getting back into music can be as easy as finding other people to talk to about it, how musicians need to develop community instead of fans — but here we are, actually actively nurturing one. Well done, you.

Today’s recommendations are recent NBfOH community favorites, as collected through listening stats on our Discord server. I asked a few of our regulars to tell you what makes these records so special, so you’re getting the fan perspective today, but rest assured I would never include something in this newsletter that I don’t personally recommend.

If you want to influence these choices in the future (or write about your own favorites), you know what to do.

JOIN US JOIN US

A few small notes about what you WON’T find here:

• July albums (that’s for next week!)

• Albums I’ve already recommended (you’re getting all new stuff today!)

That’s it!

Ratboys - Singin’ to an Empty Chair

New West Records, Feb 6th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Indie Rock/Alt-Country
RIYL: Wilco, Jenny Lewis, The Cardigans

It took me a while to warm up to this release over my beloved The Window from 2023, but peer pressure (and a live show) has gotten the better of me. It says a lot that of all their recent new music listening, the only pre-May release that the Discord crew is still spinning regularly is this one right here.

: "Confessional, thoughtful, and also fun, this album has everything from Ringo references, songs about loyal dogs, campfire sing-alongs and guitar-shredding desires to burn it all down and start over.”

: “The first four tracks are god-tier indie-rock songs, especially the ginormous guitar freakout with the appropriately tossed-off, say-it-in-one-breath title “Light Night Mountains All That.” I mean, the lyrics about family trauma are great too, but it’s really the fiery riot and stomping country edge to this indie rock album that sells me. It’s just a force of nature.”

Start with: “Penny in the Lake”

Slippers - Slippers 08

Perennial/K Records, June 5th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Twee/Power Pop
RIYL: The Beach Boys, Apples in Stereo, The Beatles

I’ve started and stopped writing about Slippers at least three times now (I really did Madeline Babuka Black dirty not including her on the twee post a little while back) but this album truly deserves more than just a passing mention on a genre playlist.

: “Wholly unique and perfectly crafted songs that will rattle around your skull for days. I dare you to listen to Slippers 08 in full and not get at least a couple stuck up there.”

Start with: “Wants for Everyone”

Soft Palms - In Echo

Everloving Records, June 19th 🇺🇸

GENRE: New Wave
RIYL: The Yardbirds, Bauhaus, The Shadows

Years ago I went gaga over a dark, vintage, surf-rock band called Death Valley Girls. This is more of that fuzzy haunted sock-hop sound.

@meandtimory... plus for everyone paying attention to the Cramps again now, this is clearly heavily influenced by them & other 70s era psych/punk (The Stooges) but with a unique spin that I'm really digging.@deathvalleygirls #newbandsforoldheads #musicrecommendations #psychrock #genxtiktokers #genxcrew #xennialsoftiktok #eldermillenialcheck #deathvalleygirls #siouxsieandthebanshees #thecramps

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: “A little bit punk, a lot bit soft goth with all the haze of a late night drive down the California coast. This album just feels good. Hard-driving, reverb-y, surf-adjacent rock that might be trying to cast a spell or might be starting an uprising. Either way, I’m in.”

Start with: “Radio”

Liz Lawrence - Vespers

Chrysalis Records, June 5th 🇬🇧

GENRE: Art Pop
RIYL: Aimee Mann

If you remember watching P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, especially in theaters, and you had a lot of emotions seeing the cast pass around “Wise Up” from their respective lonely corners, then I can almost guarantee that Liz Lawrence’s new album will resonate.

: “Liz’s voice is pure and resonant. This album is deeply personal and I think that shines through. She wrote it after the death of her sister and, while that sounds like it could be depressing, it’s an incredible meditation on grief and loss and leaves me marveling at its beauty.”

Start with: “Black Ulysses”

Wiki - Ancient History

Wikset Enterprise, June 12th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Hip-Hop
RIYL: The Alchemist, Earl Sweatshirt, Mobb Deep

One of the most charming aspects of building a community of music nerds is when all of our highly specific specialties and archetypes start emerging. Nate () has become our go-to hip hop head. I treasure his input when the rest of us are getting a little predictable.

: “After a series of collaborative projects starting back in 2019, Wiki is finally back with a solo record! Expect mellow, abstract, East Coast beats with introspective bars, rapping about his experiences living in New York. This album makes me want to put headphones on and just walk without a real destination. I can put it on to drown out the stress of everything around me, or decompress at the end of the day.”

Start with: “Right Away”

feeble little horse - bitknot

Saddle Creek, May 26th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Noise Pop/Shoegaze
RIYL: My Bloody Valentine, Helium, Swirlies

I’ve been avoiding direct recommendations of feeble little horse since their debut despite my intense love of their music for the simple reason that I can’t for the life of me think of who they remind me of. I mean, yes, My Bloody Valentine. Slowdive. Blah blah blah. But there’s something else on the tip of my tongue and it is KILLING ME.

: “This thing is loud and sticky like throwing bubblegum at a loudspeaker at 120mph… and also that bubblegum is a paring knife. It’s like if hyperpop was rock, and it’s so extreme it’s kinda hilarious. The songs that lean more dream pop than noise pop are gorgeous and equally sticky. An all-around treat.”

: “I don’t know what’s in the water in Pittsburgh, but I want some. Like fellow ‘Burghers (can I say Yinzers if I’m not from there?2) Ex-Pilots, the band squishes chaotic distortion, soothing melodies, and Lydia Slocum’s vocals into a package that somehow makes it all work. Crafting an ornate sound while sounding lo-fi is no easy feat. On bitknot, the band makes it look light work.”

Start with: “Doorway”

Paycheque - S/T

Mansions and Millions, June 12th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Synthpop
RIYL: italo disco, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure

This record is a blinking neon sign. Or a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, perhaps.

: “It’s like this: you’ve been sucked into a time vortex and transported to an ‘80s vision of the future. You stumble out of the back door of a club and start walking down a damp, August city street. Suddenly, you find yourself stuck in a trance staring through a bodega window at a stack of flickering TV sets that light up your silhouette. This is the album that’s been playing on your Walkman the entire time. It’s delightful, vampiric 80s dance club music with killer bass lines. I absolutely love it.”

Start with: “Temporary Love”

Olivia Rodrigo - yOu SeEm PrEtTy SaD fOr A gIrL sO iN lOvE

Geffen Records, June 12th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Pop/Rock
RIYL: The Cure, No Doubt, Lorde

I try not to highlight massive mainstream records here, but good music is good music, and today is all about what you are actually listening to. I resisted this album for about a week before succumbing to every inch of its well-deserved hype. She really makes being a generational talent seem oh so easy, doesn’t she?

: “Thesis: Rodrigo is the Beatles of this era. Evidence: extremely well written pop songs about love and heartbreak, a multi-generational fanbase, and a producer-collaborator who encourages her growth as a songwriter and musician (Dan Nigro is Olivia’s second Beatle). She’s leagues above the rest because she’s the best. Her most ambitious and confident album yet, with flawless sequencing and a sound equal parts idol worship and idiosyncratic.”

: “Olivia Rodrigo is the most distinct songwriter in the mainstream, and she’s a master at following an anticipation-building verse with a payoff-as-fuck chorus, plus she has actual bridges! And they work. The home stretch of “maggots for brains” that becomes mostly vocals is pure euphoria. Good-ass lyrics too for subject matter as well-trodden as breakups.”

Start with: “my way”

Sick merch, man.

Send me photos of yourself in your New Bands for Old Heads merch, get 3 months of paid access for cheap as free.

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Both of my drinking companions are musicians and had already spent the previous twenty minutes talking about theory while I contributed exactly nothing to the conversation. The place was trendy and their music selection had been solid until then, so it was only a matter of time before they would start playing Angine de Poitrine. That would be my moment to shine.

My cousin’s ears perked up. “What is this? It’s polyrhythmic.”

“Oh, that’s Angine de Poitrine.” So smug. See, I know things. “They’re blowing up right now.”

He wondered out loud how many musicians it would take to produce the sounds we were listening to. I was happy to unveil my second fact of the day. “It’s just two guys!” I started loading the KEXP video while he argued with me.

The second he saw the costumes and the view counts, his face fell. “Okay, I get it. It’s a gimmick.” I knew he’d never listen to them again.

Hate Meditations

When the wrong thing gets popular

Never try to go viral. There’s a unique embarrassment that comes with trying to go virality. The kind reserved for TV ads that appropriate internet meme culture. An abyssal exercise in the pathetic stemming from the fact that virality, by its very nature, is a freak of circumstance, grabbing our attention with unfiltered abandon. An accidental one liner…

Read more

3 months ago · 169 likes · 50 comments · Shelley

Meanwhile, my friend1 had been politely nodding along. He wasn’t quite as unplugged as my cousin — a classically trained bassist who’s chronically suspicious of popular music — but just because he’d heard of the band didn’t mean he was interested.

“It’s just prog rock, isn’t it?” He was visibly annoyed. “We’ve heard it all before.” The recent commotion about their ingenuity left him cold. The complexity that intrigued my cousin was old hat for him.

So, Angine de Poitrine didn’t land for either of them. It didn’t fit into their music discovery “comfort zone,” if you will. My cousin needed fewer theatrics. My friend needed more originality. I found myself wondering how they would react if that KEXP video had never gone viral.

We Listen and We Judge

We like to think that as long as the music is good, it can survive any context. But there’s no escaping context. There’s no such thing as a pristine music lab where we can test our taste in a complete vacuum. Context is ever-present and it informs our taste.

How we arrive at new music - how it’s packaged and presented to us when we first hear it – matters almost as much as the music itself. In other words, every new recommendation is filtered through both your taste and your receptivity.

It’s why all of those people wondering whether they can trust their own taste after learning about the whole “Geese is a psyop” nonsense discourse are asking themselves the wrong question, because the marketing got them to listen in the first place.

As somebody who provides context for music for a semi-living, I’ve been thinking for a long while about what makes us most and least receptive to new music. A trusted source is probably priority number one. After that, I kept coming back to two completely unquantifiable variables: hype and accessibility. The two things that my Bologna bar mates had unwittingly identified as obstacles.

Oh, how I wanted to plot bands on this graph! I tried. It was a disaster. I thought I could put Angine de Poitrine (the only band I’ve heard of) in the High Hype/Low Accessibility quadrant. Easy. But I literally just told you how accessible they were to my friend. It turns out that your own experience colors your perception. Crazy.

I’m incredibly stubborn, so I’m going to keep the chart. I’m even going to make you do some homework, because you should map bands you like and dislike on the chart for yourself. Getting rid of context isn’t the point. Maybe we can call it decluttering context instead.

Let’s start with a bit of clarification before we jump into activities:

What do I mean by “accessibility”?

Generally we call music accessible when it has conventional structure (predictable time signatures, easy-to-play chords, verse-chorus-verse construction, catchy hooks, etc.) or is otherwise “unchallenging.” But it can be accessible to you personally because it is familiar to you, because it reminds you of something else that you love (complex or not!), or scratches a particular itch in your brain.

What do I mean by “hype”?

It’s easy to treat hype and popularity as synonyms, but it ain’t necessarily so. From my perspective, popularity is far more broad (think Taylor Swift), whereas hype stays in particular circles (Geese post-Getting Killed for the music nerd set, but not for gen pop SNL viewers). Whatever is generating buzz in your bubble has hype.

(Note: Neither of these terms has any kind of moral weight. They can be positive or negative. You might seek these out or you might avoid them.)

What’s your music discovery sweet spot?

We’ll start with the easier question: what conditions make you most receptive to new music discovery? What context makes the experience better for you?

Think of a handful of new bands or artists you recently learned about and really enjoyed. How would they fit on your personal hype vs. accessibility map?

I can’t plot them for you2, but I can give you some hints.

It may help to see likely discovery methods mapped on the chart, too. If you can think about how you learned about the new artist you recently enjoyed, or how you prefer to learn about new music generally, that can also be your guide.

I suspect most of this newsletter’s readers3 are primed to discover music that is lower on the hype scale and higher on the accessibility scale — music that sounds familiar from bands that are totally new to you.

You know yourself better than I do, though.

Are you most receptive when music arrives untainted by mass hysteria? Are you more likely to enjoy something when you know thousands of others already do? Or is being the only one “in the know” the most exciting part of hearing a new band?4

What’s your music discovery no-go zone?

This might be a harder question to answer, at least publicly, but It’s also the more important one — I’d start with this one if you’re too lazy to run through the full chart mapping exercise:

What conditions make you least receptive to new music discovery? What context makes the experience worse for you?

We all want to think of ourselves as incredibly open-minded. If you didn’t like something, it’s because you weren’t in the mood, or because it’s straight up bad, right?

But even if nothing shuts you down entirely, there are still situations that make you less receptive to hearing, listening to, or enjoying new music, no matter what it sounds like.

Look at the chart again and think about a new band that didn’t land with you recently. Especially one where you can’t quite pinpoint what it is you dislike. What were the circumstances surrounding your first encounter with them?

I’ll go back and answer for my cousin and my friend. At least for Angine de Poitrine (the only band to exist), my cousin was bristling against high hype/low accessibility. The “weirdness” might have been okay if it were simply part of the musical experience, but extending it to the band’s whole raison d’être was a bridge too far. For my friend, it was both high hype and high accessibility that pushed him away.

As for you — what stands in the way of taking a new band on board?

Leave a comment

Know Thyself

What are you supposed to do once you have a better idea of your turn-ons and turn-offs?

What you’ve learned about yourself can help you become more open-minded and open-eared. This is why I said that the second chart — the one about what prevents you from receiving new music well — is the more important one.

A few examples:

• If hype or discourse overwhelm you, “mute” it. You can’t help how you learned about a band in many cases, but you can control how much you dig into them. I, for one, treat music reviews like spoilers.

• Before writing it off, name what’s in the way. It’s like naming your feelings in therapy!

• Revisit first impressions after a break. I don’t trust first impressions, anyway.

• Seek out what’s outside of your comfort zone. When I was a kid, I hated olives but thought no self-respecting adult could possibly hate olives. So I made myself eat them, trying them in new ways and with different foods. Now I love them. Maybe you can do that with pop music?

You’re allowed to just not like stuff, too. But if you’re trying to build up your taste or want to understand what the fuss is, it’s worth a shot.

Context, Context, Context

The purpose of this exercise isn’t to box you in to one quadrant. You may feel totally agnostic about accessibility, but hype sours you. You may prefer music that sounds familiar to you, and be fully ignorant of hype. Every square might apply to you at some point or another.

What’s more, you (or the music you listen to, or the way you prefer to discover music) may simply not “fit” into the chart at all. Hype and accessibility are just two of countless factors that influence your receptivity. They may not even be the ones that matter most to you; perhaps a single trusted curator’s recommendation could override every other obstacle you have. There’s a reason I felt like throwing the chart into the trash after staring at it for so long.

I still stubbornly insist that it’s helpful to think about.

Stepping back to analyze your taste more holistically, regardless of which factors you use to make the assessment, can help you nail down preferences beyond genre, especially if you’re trying to identify why something didn’t land. Like it or not, outside influences will always shape your willingness to listen, and your willingness to listen (your receptivity!) factors into your taste.

And isn’t that kind of self-reflection the entire purpose of deliberate listening?

MAXIMUM EXPOSURE INC.

YOU DON'T ACTUALLY LIKE THE BAND "GEESE™"

“ADS ARE NOT MEANT FOR CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTION. THEY ARE INTENDED AS SUBLIMINAL PILLS FOR THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN ORDER TO EXERCISE A HYPNOTIC SPELL…

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4 months ago · 863 likes · 297 comments · TONY PRICE

For what it’s worth, I did try my hand at plotting recent New Bands for Old Heads recommendations (and I’ll share it with you if you’re curious). It was a silly idea, in part, because I only recommend what I already love. But it did reveal something about my preferences:

I’m far less excited to listen to new music on the higher hype scale, even if I eventually end up loving it. Call it a hazard of being unyieldingly plugged in, but I find myself craving more unusual sounds from lesser known artists. I put off listening to higher hype releases, sometimes indefinitely. It usually takes multiple personal recommendations for me to take the plunge. For all of my poptimist leanings, I have to concede that emerging artists will get my attention far more quickly. Because I know that I’m equally likely to love those hugely hyped records as the unknown ones, I’ve eliminated some pressure to hold off on them.

As for my cousin and my friend?

I can’t rerun that perfect experiment that sent me spiraling down this staircase. They can’t hear Angine de Poitrine (the only people who have ever made music) for the first time again. That bar in Bologna was probably the closest I’d come to a pristine listening lab… before I ruined it with all that pesky context, anyway.

I do wonder whether they’d be more willing to give it a second or third listen if they knew a bit more about what makes them tick.

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Dearest old heads,

My essay this week needs more time to cook. Pardon the delay.

In the meantime, not wanting to leave you empty-eared, I offer a small palate cleanser.

June Mini-Roundup

As you know, my Midyear Best Of usually lets me get away with avoiding a June roundup entirely. I shall hide behind it no longer!

➡️ All of the other month-by-month best of lists are here.
➡️ Best tracks of ALL of 2026 (so far) can be found here.

6 albums. 1 Playlist. No rankings.

Legend:

🎯 = if you only have time for one…
📼 = most nostalgic/accessible
🧩 = most challenging

Keep scrolling for the playlist.

Slippers - Slippers 08

Perennial/K Records, June 5th
FFO: Apples in Stereo, Vaselines, twee

Playlists

I lied, there’s more than one this month. We’ve actually ramped up to include weekly playlists, if you can imagine such a thing.

One thing I don’t say enough is just how amazing this community is. Generally, because you’re all very cool people, but also specifically, because you’ve become my favorite way to discover new music.

If you haven’t already joined us in the Discord server, do. We play Music League, have an extremely laid back book club, and (as likes to say) act like hungry birds pointing out juicy new music worms to each other. About once a month I host a listening party, no cameras required.

Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week.

If I did my job right, then for the first time ever, the comment section should be open to all subscribers. So please tell me what your favorite albums were last month, or what you’re enjoying so far in July.

Leave a comment

See you (with more substance) next week!

xo

Gabbie

What else?

• I made a music recommendation app.

• If you can’t find a playlist, try this guide.

• Want me to make you a personal playlist instead? I can do that.

• How many guesses will it take you to figure out today’s Magic Number?

The first way I tried to solve this problem was by making a directory to make it easier for me you to find my recommendations in one place. But that’s just one big spreadsheet, and the problem with spreadsheets is that they’re, uh, kinda boring.2

So for a few months now, I’ve been working on how to make my recommendation archive more accessible, enjoyable, and nice to look at.

Here’s what I came up with.

Let’s walk through it together with a theoretical FAQ, in which I’ve anticipated a few of your potential queries and/or concerns.3

What is this thing?

This is an interactive tool that lets you look up all of my recommendations based on the “If You Like [X], Then You’ll Like [Y]” formula that I usually use in my posts.

I’m obviously not one for clever names. Call it whatever you like - the “If You Like X” Engine, the RIYL Machine, the Recommendation Maker, the NBfOH App. I do not care.

Why would I use it?

On the one hand, I think we’ve all pretty much had our fill of getting music recommendations from machines.

On the other hand, we have short attention spans and love instant gratification.

Reading the newsletter is great, but it’s a slog to trawl the archives, and sometimes you need to find something quick to listen to. Maybe you forgot to write down a new band rec I mentioned. Maybe you just want all comparisons in one place instead of across a dozen posts (that’s something the directory could never do, either!). Maybe you’re trying to impress a date and you only have a few minutes before they come back from the bathroom. Who knows!

How do I use it?

Easy peasy. Just start typing in a band name, and it will auto-populate options that are available in the database. Select from the dropdown and hit “go,” and you’ll see the new band recommendations straight from the archive.

You’ll also be able to see other bands I’ve compared the new band to (if applicable), and read the newsletter post where I mentioned them so you can learn more in context. Click the “listen” button to try them out for yourself.

When you’re done, copy all of the recommendations into your notes app or a text message to a friend who detests new music to show them just how wrong they are about everything.

Why isn’t the old band I like in there?

Bad news — most bands aren’t in there!

This app is not, and can never be, comprehensive. It is not a general interest music database. It is not an encyclopedia. It isn’t objective, fairly weighted, or algorithmic in any way.

It is a view into my brain. And you get to stomp around inside. Weird!

Why do some bands have so many recs and others so few?

Because I am human and imperfect.

Building this tool has been a really interesting exercise in figuring out my own musical preferences, biases, and mental shortcuts. For instance, I seem to use Gang of Four as a catch-all for most new post-punk, Pavement as a stand-in for most new slacker rock, and My Bloody Valentine for most new shoegaze.

In future updates, I will try to add genre tags and link similar bands together so you can get more use out of it. In the meantime, if a band you like has very few new music recs attached to it, I suggest looking up a similar band to see if you get more hits.

Why are you embedding Spotify and not Bandcamp?

Because I’m a soulless monster who hates paying musicians.

Or because Spotify is the only platform where I could reliably embed the listening widget without manually entering each artist’s page. For future versions, I hope to use Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or YouTube. For now, the choice was Spotify or nothing, so I decided to risk it and use Spotify so you could preview the music.

How do I make suggestions?

If you scroll down, you’ll see a button where you can suggest an old band that you want me to find new bands for. You’ll also see that teeny tiny link in the corner to report a bug.

The directory is there in case you miss being able to look bands up by new artist instead of old.

How often will you update and how?

I intend to update this database quarterly with more bands, old and new.

Separately, on a mysterious and unknown schedule yet to be determined, I hope to:

• Improve existing RIYLs so more bands are cross-referenced

• Add more features, like genres and playlists

• Review your other suggested improvements

Okay, I’m ready — where do I find it?

You can find the app right here. It works on both desktop and mobile.

This app/tool/toy/whatever is a thank you present to annual paid subscribers.

If you’re ready to give it a try, I’m offering a temporary discount on annual subscriptions (down to $4/mo). Press the pink button below before Wednesday July 15th to get it.

Get 25% off for 1 year

Being a paid subscriber is pretty cool for other reasons — you also get access to the Discord server (with monthly listening parties, a book club, and a bunch of nerds constantly recommending new music to each other), monthly Best Of posts, a ton of playlists, record giveaways, and extra articles. I take care of you, bb.

I have other questions!

Okay! Leave a comment! I’d love to know what you think.

Leave a comment

go play with the app

Don’t forget…

There’s some good news and there’s some bad news.

I’ll start with the bad news, because I don’t like to dwell. I mean, I do dwell — I constantly dwell, I’m so good at dwelling. But I don’t like to do it. And today is actually a happy occasion.

What do you think is the most casual, low-key, unobtrusively charming way of saying “my mom was just diagnosed with Alzheimer's so the rest of my life feels really unimportant in comparison and that's why my newsletter is so late”? Any ideas? I don’t know, either. It’s my latest life plot twist, and scheduling might be a little erratic while I figure things out.

We’ll move on to the good news. Today1 marks two years since I launched New Bands for Old Heads in written form. I feel simultaneously proud and undeserving. There are almost 20,000 of you here — I want to give each of you a kiss on the forehead. Thank you, for real.

Next week, I plan on sharing something kind of neat I’ve been working on the last few months to keep this mixed emotions party going. If I did my job right, it will make it a lot easier to navigate my recommendations now that I’ve accumulated two full years of them.

But for today, my longtime friends and writing companions and Juan Rodriguez2 are joining me to share the albums we’ve been listening to the most in 2026 so far.

Subscribe now

SKIP AROUND?

• Win some records

• Find out what other old heads are listening to

• Listen to some playlists

The 20 Best Albums of 2026 So Far

Hot take, but I think even 20 albums are too many. If you’ve been here since the start of the year, you know I’ve really been trying to hone my “deliberate listening” craft - which means curating my own curation. I’m sick of massive lists. They do nothing for overwhelm.

So as per usual, the title is misleading. I prefer to save the “objective” best (whatever that may mean) for the end of the year. In the summer, we talk about the albums we’ve listened to the most. The ones we keep coming back to even though new music Fridays are eternal and relentless. Maybe you’ll find something to obsess over, too.

I NEVER RANK. ALBUMS ARE LISTED ALPHABETICALLY BY ARTIST’S FIRST NAME. NUMBERING IS ENTIRELY FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE.

1. Cindy - Another Country

Tough Love, May 18th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Slowcore/Indie Pop
RIYL: Duster, Galaxie 500, The Velvet Underground

There is a charming paradox at the heart of Cindy’s music, elevating them above many indie pop peers. While their music is soft, it never feels weak, and while it is slow, it never feels boring. The faint echo of Americana and the barely-there melodies — like an old AM radio station whose frequency is frustratingly out of reach — make Another Country a captivating listen and a triumphant embodiment of the idea that less is so often more. (David Coleman)

Start with: “Procession”

2. deary - Birding

Bella Union, April 3rd 🇬🇧

GENRE: Dream Pop/Shoegaze
RIYL: The Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, Lush

Birding follows the Cocteau Twins template to a tee, seemingly daring listeners and critics alike to find a better descriptor than the all-too-obvious “ethereal.” But deary are smart enough to inject some variety, which they achieve by incorporating heavier, almost explosive passages. When they dip their feet into the murkier waters of shoegaze, the results evoke vaunted genre heavyweights, such as Slowdive and Lush. (David Coleman)

Start with: “Alma”

3. Eaves Wilder - Little Miss Sunshine

Secretly Canadian, April 17th 🇬🇧

GENRE: Indie Rock/Dream Pop
RIYL: Mazzy Star, Kula Shaker, The Beatles

I’m so glad that I didn’t realize until I was already months-deep into my obsession with this album that Eaves Wilder is the daughter of Caitlin Moran and Pete Paphides. I’m not immune to names tarnished by the industry plant/nepo-baby stain, either, but you should ignore it entirely for the sake of this mesmerizing, psychedelia-tinged debut. The singer takes a lot of inspiration from Wolf Alice and other sweeping, space-filling grungy art pop. You can hear the ‘60s and ‘90s battling it out for top billing — a little like Kula Shaker with Mazzy Starr’s voice.

Start with: “Daisy Chain Reaction”

4. Francis of Delirium - Run, Run Pure Beauty

Dalliance Recordings, May 28th 🇱🇺

GENRE: Chamber Pop/Grunge
RIYL: Natalie Merchant, The Cranberries

You’ll hate me for this, but my inability to get on board with Phoebe Bridgers and her entire Saddest Factory crew and various friends, compatriots, and soundalikes has pretty much culminated right here. I don’t know what to tell you except that if you love Phoebe, Mitski, Julien, et al, you’ll love Francis of Delirium (and yes, it’s weird that I do, too). It’s true, she does sound like a pastiche of ‘90s college radio just like they say, but it’s also an unfair comparison. The emotional swells will punch you in the gut. I loved her 2024 debut – this is one better. Lucy Dacus better watch her back.

Start with: “Damned”

5. The Itch - It’s The Hope That Kills You

Fiction Records, April 10th 🇬🇧

GENRE: Indie Sleaze/Dance-Punk
RIYL: Talking Heads, Daft Punk, The Rapture

I had this album playing practically on a loop when it first came out, but I might need a neutral party to tell me if it’s actually any good. The fact is that if you were going to parody almost every single one of my musical tastes in one band, you’d probably end up with The Itch. Their debut has everything: early 2000s sleaze, anxious Talking Heads rhythms, sardonic lyrics with a British accent, the danceability of Daft Punk and The Rapture but with Bloc Party’s gloom. It’s tailor made for 20-something me; let me know if it hits the spot for you, too.

Start with: “Can’t Afford This”

6. Frankie Archer - The Dance of Death

So Young Records, June 5th 🇬🇧

GENRE: Folk, Electro-Trad
RIYL: Franz Schubert, English traditional folk, St. Vincent

If you think that what’s been missing from modern music is baleful yet upsettingly catchy verse about ritualistic murder, then you’re in luck. The Dance of Death begins with the familiar crash of Death and the Maiden opening D minor chord. After that, the stage is set — you know exactly how the story will go. Frankie Archer’s songs are completely untethered, both emotionally and temporally. At times, a kind of hypnotic portal to Northumbria in the middle ages. At others, rooted to our present moment with ungrounded electricity.

Start with: “Death and the Maiden”

7. Lime Garden - Maybe Not Tonight

So Young Records, April 10th 🇬🇧

GENRE: Indie Pop/Dance-Punk
RIYL: Arctic Monkeys, LCD Soundsystem, Lily Allen

Told through a night out, the Brighton-based four-piece embrace their individuality and leave no apologies over a zippy 30 minutes that leave you wanting more. Rarely does the album let up, melding Arctic Monkeys-like swagger (“Downtown Lover”), dance-punk (“Body”), and wiry, bass-driven post-punk (“Lifestyle”). Lime Garden isn’t shy about their influences, sure, but what many of those artists lacked at the time, soaring choruses that linger for days, they deliver in spades. (Juan Rodriguez)

Start with: “Lifestyle”

8. Makthaverskan - Glass and Bones

Welfare Sounds & Records, April 3rd 🇸🇪

GENRE: Post-Punk
RIYL: Love Is All, The Smiths, Alvvays

Autocorrect-defying Gothenburg band Makthaverskan (rough translation: women holding power) are commonly described as a punk or post-punk outfit, but their sound is much harder to pin down, featuring elements of jangle, power pop, goth rock, C86, shoegaze, and dream pop. Glass and Bones’ effervescent standout “Pity Party” compresses the lot into three and a half minutes of transcendent bliss. (David Coleman)

Start with: “Pity Party”

9. Marisa Anderson - The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music

Thrill Jockey, May 22nd 🇺🇸

GENRE: Folk
RIYL: William Tyler, acoustic wizardry, global folk music

Having seized an opportunity to explore Harry Smith’s archives of ethnographic folk recordings, Portland-based guitarist Marisa Anderson set to work on The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music. The globe-trotting collection features nine interpretations of pieces from Smith’s collection, with a conscious focus on works from countries that the USA has been in conflict with since 1970. Highlights include the sprawling “Quodlibet,” based on Bābā Qerān’s dambura music, which has its roots in Afghan and Uzbek teahouses, and the ghostly drone of “Pair of Duduk,” which Anderson adapted from a 1960 recording from Turkmenistan. If you find yourself craving something a little different, this comes highly recommended. (David Coleman)

Start with: “Quodlibet”

10. media puzzle - New Racehorse

Impressed Recordings, April 17th 🇦🇺

GENRE: Egg Punk
RIYL: Devo, Beck, actual literal horses

I’m pleased to add yet another notch to my super massive, super secret playlist of Australian musicians. I can describe this record as egg punk — that frenetic brand of punk rock that sounds like Devo on adderall — and call it a day. But compared to, say, Snõõper or Prison Affair or Gee Tee, media puzzle are oddly not particularly keyed up. They also take more risks, interspersing curious samples throughout and playing with timing and song structure. Conceptually, if not sonically, it’s a bit reminiscent of Beck’s Mellow Gold.

Start with: “Knowledge”

Giveaway Intermission!

Normally, giveaways are only for paid subscribers. Today we’re celebrating, so everyone is welcome.

First up, Domino is giving away a vinyl + sticker + charm prize pack for the upcoming Panda Bear & Sonic Boom release. This album won't be available on streaming.

Next, our friends at Cherry Red Records are giving away four Dinosaur Jr. re-issues: Where You Been, Green Mind, Hand It Over, and Without A Sound. Four winners can each choose a record (Deluxe CD or color vinyl variant).

enter here

Winners announced July 10th.
Paid subscribers entries count twice!

11. MIDDLEMAN - Following the Ghost

Evil Speaker Records, February 13th 🇬🇧

GENRE: Indie Rock
RIYL: The Replacements, Dinosaur Jr.

London’s MIDDLEMAN play a brand of alternative punk better associated with ’80s US underground rock bands on their debut LP. With its tight but loose mix, Following the Ghost — led by vocalist Noah Alves’ Paul Westerberg-like snarl — balances muscular, fuzz-laden rockers (“Distractions”) and open-hearted rippers (“All But the Flame”) into a brash yet controlled sound. (Juan Rodriguez)

Start with: “All But the Flame”

12. Ora Cogan - Hard Hearted Woman

Sacred Bones, March 13th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Neo-psych/Dark Americana
RIYL: Karen Dalton, Fleetwood Mac

Blurring the lines between folk, psychedelia, and cosmic country, Hard Hearted Woman offers a powerful entry point into Cogan’s quietly bewitching world. Wrapped in her soft, wistful vocals, songs like “Limits” and “Outgrowing” have a jazzy swing to them, swaying as delicately as a passing breeze. Whereas on the strings-laced “Honey,” one of the more timely statements here, Cogan resists anti-trans legislation without resorting to preachy platitudes. (Juan Rodriguez)

Start with: “The Smoke”

13. Pigeon - OUTTANATIONAL

Copyright Control, May 1st 🇬🇧

GENRE: Afrobeat/Funk-Punk/Krautrock
RIYL: William Onyeabor, Grace Jones, Can

Led by charismatic, West African frontperson Falle Nioke, the Margate, UK band effortlessly expands their sound and vision on their genre-bending debut album. The five-piece — featuring members of SAULT and Michael Kiwanuka — rides with feel rather than thought, but that descriptor might even do a disservice to a thoughtful body of work that serves as a spiritual meditation on heritage and continuity. (Juan Rodriguez)

Start with: “Black James Dean”

14. RJD2 & Supastition - According To...

RJ’s Electrical Connections, February 27th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Hip Hop
RIYL: DJ Shadow, MF DOOM

According To… slipped under most people’s radar, but this underrated collaboration between veteran producer RJD2 and lyrical maestro Supastition is one of the strongest Hip Hop records of the year. RJD2’s production integrates classic boom bap with deft scratching and energetic breakbeats, while Supa works his magic across a series of grown-up themes that will appeal to people who remember the best days of ’90s Hip Hop with great fondness. (David Coleman)

Start with: “Carte Blanche”

15. Robber Robber - Two Wheels Move the Soul

Fire Talk, April 3rd 🇺🇸

GENRE: Post-Punk/Shoegaze
RIYL: The Prodigy, Elastica

Robber Robber has been on my personal “bands to watch” list since I snubbed them for my 2024 EOY list, so I’m thrilled to have a chance to course correct. A record like this one reveals itself more with each listen. The first time through, I could only think of contemporaries like YHWH Nailgun and Water From Your Eyes to compare them to. But from the grit and the noise emerge distinct echoes of more familiar sounds, like The Prodigy and Elastica. “New Year’s Eve,” which is currently vying for my favorite track of 2026, sounds like “Connection” having an existential crisis.

Start with: “New Year’s Eve”

16. Star Moles - Highway to Hell

Historic New Jersey, February 26th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Indie Folk/Bedroom Pop
RIYL: Sandy Denny, Weyes Blood, Arthur Russell

Highway to Hell, the third LP Philadelphia’s Emily Moales, is the bedroom project I always dreamed of. Rooted in piano-led minimalism, Moales taps into a subconscious exploration of the everyday with her dream-like storytelling. Maybe it’s her quiet melancholia that draws me so naturally to her work, though there’s a playful whimsy here as well. (Juan Rodriguez)

Start with: “Time”

17. Suitor - Saw You Out with the Weeds

Feel It Records, March 20th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Post-Punk
RIYL: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sonic Youth

Wait, did you say you’ve had enough post punk? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over that muddy bass tone. Also, riddle me this: when new bands start sounding more like each other than their older influences, does that mean the sound has gotten watered down, or does it mean a dawn of a new era? Because yeah, Suitor harken back to Siouxsie and Kim Gordon, but they also spread outward to Dry Cleaning and Sweeping Promises. Discuss. Decide. I’ll be here rocking out.

Start with: “Still Life”

18. THUMPER - Sleeping With the Light On

Self-released, February 20th 🇮🇪

GENRE: Indie Rock
RIYL: The Strokes, The Stereophonics, The Dandy Warhols

THUMPER’s latest is this year’s Velveteers, at least when it comes to my own obsessive listening habits. This 50+ minute album breezes by, banger after banger, propulsive with energy as it is. Though I’ll admit my initial reaction was, “so, this is just The Strokes?”, the joke really is on me after the record easily became my most listened album of 2026 thus far. Maybe if The Stooges had been an early 2000s Britpop band, we’d have something like THUMPER — more riotous than the Dandy Warhols or Stereophonics, more punk rock than Weezer.

Start with: “Bad Mood”

19. TV Star - Music For Heads

Father/Daughter Records, April 24th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Neo-Psych/Alt Rock
RIYL: Blind Melon, The Cranberries, The Stone Roses

I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but I’m pretty sure TV Star simply traveled here from 1993. Remember the most optimistic and movie-trailer friendly of The Cranberries’ songs? Remember Blind Melon’s bee girl? Music For Heads was recorded in that same era. I can’t prove it. We don’t have the technology. But I know it to be true. (Thanks to the last week’s listening party audience for absolutely nailing the RIYL for this band!)

Start with: “Out of My Bag”

20. Vince Staples - Cry Baby

Loma Vista, June 5th 🇺🇸

GENRE: Hip Hop, Rap-Rock
RIYL: Gorillaz, N.E.R.D.

Is this a safe space to admit my age-inappropriate crush on Vince Staples? I don’t care, really. I’ve been a fan since Summer ‘06 (the album, not the year), but now he’s blending genres like an absolute pro – rock, funk, post-punk? Oh, be still my heart. I was hooked from the opening track, reminiscent as it is of the Black Eyed Peas, with its repeated pleas of “promise me you won’t gun me down” bookended with invocations to Kanye West, Dirty Diana, Prada, Gucci. On what might very well be the song of the summer, you’ll feel guilty for dancing: “Record spinning, turn up the volume/Music make you feel just like cotton…” Fucking hell. The revolution will be televised, and Vince Staples will be both VJ and MC.

Start with: “Cotton”

Not enough?!

Fine, dammit.

What old heads are listening to this week:

Not to brag, but New Bands for Old Heads readers have pretty great music taste. And the ones who are obsessed with music enough to join the Discord server have especially amazing music taste. I joke that I made a music newsletter just to keep up with new music, but it’s about 80% true at this point.

I’d like to make this a regular feature, actually. I’m extremely nosy.

Your favorite songs of 2026:

I asked paid subscribers to share their favorite songs of the year so far… but no more than three apiece! This is the result. I made some great new discoveries here. I just sneaked my own top three in when you weren’t looking, too.

The best tracks of 2026:

I made sure to include tracks from each album in this post in my ongoing Best of 2026 playlist. Check here to get it on every platform (and to find all of my playlists, of course).

Share

Wake up, babe, we’re glamorizing hipsters again.

Vice has released its definitive guide to the “Hipster Music Era.” Twitter is litigating the legitimacy of “stomp clap” and its dubious standing in the “real” hipster’s iTunes library. People are still losing their shit about how an amorphous, nameless music era was re-dubbed “indie sleaze.”

“Five years into the ‘sleaze’ revival, the movement that shaped the 2000s is also coming to define the 2020s.” -

You couldn’t escape even if you wanted to.

Me, I’m perfectly satisfied to see the trend cycle come back around… as long as the requisite 20 years have passed. And guess what? Girl Talk’s Night Ripper just turned 20. We’ve officially crossed the Rubicon.

I came of age during this era. I recognized myself in Vice’s timeline. I was listening to almost all of that music, in roughly those years. But that doesn’t mean they were writing about me.

People like me, we weren’t the coastal cool kids. We were not tastemakers. The Cobrasnake wasn’t taking photos of us. We were not stylish like Alexa Chung or the Olsen twins.1

If anyone called us hipsters, we bristled at it.2 You could decide if you were punk, goth, or emo, but other people made you a hipster. Frankly, we barely understood the word, but we knew for sure it wasn’t a compliment.

Still, the “hipster music era” is the one that shaped us. And seeing it canonized and handed back to us all glossy and neat is super fucking weird.

So let me tell you what it was like to be an unnamed extra during that time — what it was like to fall in love with music in the early 2000s.

Subscribe now

September 2002:
I’m hanging out in my friend’s dorm room. Somebody down the hall just got a hold of a new EP by a band none of us has ever heard of. They sound unreal. How can one guitar and one drum set sound so massive? I get chills. I play “Mystery Girl” obsessively for a year. When I finally get to see The Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2003, I don’t realize until the song ends that I’ve been holding hands with a stranger the whole time.

Fall 2003:
Peaches is insane live. It’s wild that she’s playing at our tiny school. One minute she’s popping blood capsules that run down her chin. The next minute somebody’s running up on stage to feed her Fritos. This is better than getting spit on by Karen O.

May 2004:
I drive back to my hometown just to see Metric open for The Stills.3 Emily Haines pulls me up on stage to dance with her for “Dead Disco.” I’m twice her size; it kind of ruins my stupid Courtney Cox moment. She’s drunk. I don’t stick around for The Stills. Next time I see her, Metric is headlining. A group of us share a cigarette with her outside after the show. She compliments my friend’s shirt, but I think she’s talking to me (I’d stenciled the cover of Old World Underground onto my t-shirt myself) so I say “thank you!” at the same time that he does. I feel like an idiot.

Summer 2004:
I’m in the passenger seat of my friend’s busted-up Toyota. We’re parked behind a seedy dive that serves cocktails in dixie cups. He says he’s got something new he wants me to hear. I barely make it halfway through Jay-Z absolutely massacring one of John Lennon’s prettiest songs before I tell him to shut it off. What the hell is this shit? Six months later, I will write up a glowing review of The Grey Album as part of my application for an online music magazine.

November 3rd, 2004:4
Yesterday, I waited 5 hours in line to vote. Tonight, we’re letting out our collective vitriol at a Le Tigre/Gossip double billed show. Kathleen Hanna is a balm. I write about it in my LiveJournal later: “It did help me feel better, even if we’re royally fucked.”

April 2005:5
I don’t know if anything will replace my love of Strong Bad emails (my Chucks still have Trogdor sharpied all over the white rubber), but I’ll give YouTube this much – it has actual music videos. I’ve been watching M.I.A.’s “Galang” again and again. She’s dressed like the discount Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and a dozen copies of her are dancing in front of neon spray-painted backgrounds. My review of Arular is actually getting published.6

May 2005:7
Daft Punk was playing at my house until I started losing my edge. At an off-campus cookout, somebody is spinning The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette” and it’s the sexiest, the funniest, the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. My third eye opens. All art punk suddenly makes sense. I have ascended to another plane. Now I DEFINITELY get it when James Murphy says “I hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.” I WAS THERE.

October 2005:8
Cat Power comes to play at the student union. She’s a mess, but we’re with her. We’re entranced. Shaking at the piano, she stops mid-song and bids us sit on the floor. We do – it’s sticky. I feel a little bit sorry for her. I barely know the boy next to me, but we lean on each other for support; structural, but maybe also emotional. The show ends late and another friend tells me “this is typical Chan Marshall.” I’m seething with jealousy. He met her backstage then and she uttered just three words to him: “Lou Reed, man. Lou Reed.”

Fall 2006:
I tell that I’ve been wanting to write an essay about how the mashup has replaced the cover song in the cultural zeitgeist. I never do it.9

August 2007:10
I’m heading to the Pitchfork Music Festival on a press pass. I know, right? This is the wrong time in history to be a 23-year-old girl with zero journalistic experience (and zero backbone) attempting to rub elbows with Pitchfork’s editor. I never muster the courage to introduce myself. I also get my ass handed to me both by journalists and the fans hugging the barrier for “being in the press pen with a point-and-shoot.” I tell them to fuck off but I want to cry. I make awkward small talk with Gregg Gillis. I point at his hat and tell him we’re from the same hometown. I’m never showing my face in public again. In a month, I will start law school.

Summer 2008:
International Law is just an excuse to have a summer abroad and go deeper into debt. On the bus from Luxembourg to Brussels, one of my classmates figures out a way to listen to the radio on her MP3 player. It feels like we’ve been disconnected from music for ages. This song is SO catchy but we miss the name of the band. We sing the song to each other for days so we can look it up the next time we find an internet café. “They call me hell/They call me Stacy/They call me Her/They call me Jane/That’s not my name/That’s not my name…”

Fall 2008:
I’m trying to boot and rally at my own damn party. My playlist is perfect; I can still hear it going in the living room. A disembodied voice: “I think this is Le Tigre?” I yell back from the bathroom floor: “IT’S BIKINI KILL!”

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 at 22:51:

Law school was a cultural dead zone for me.11 I fell off the musical map for years, and emerged only tentatively after I passed the bar.

Vice says that 2009 was “definitely, inarguably, when the hipster era peaked.” That’s certainly convenient for my temporary tap-out, isn’t it?

Whatever you want to call this time period — whatever you think of its music, its fashion, its parties, its grime, its ironic affectation — it’s what built my taste. It’s how I started to understand connections between new music and old.

Hearing LCD Soundsystem back to back with The Normal is what eventually sent me down my very first post-punk rabbit hole. When Ted Leo stitched “Maps” together with “Since U Been Gone,” it didn’t just help me hear how similar the songs were, it also began cracking my “too good for pop music” shell.

And yes, Girl Talk12 burst open a world of sampling and old school hip-hop beyond my limited MTV memories. The “hipster era” taught me to listen to music as much as it kept me up partying.

I spared you from a million other discovery vignettes. Of dancing to The Knife’s “Heartbeats” and crying to José González’ cover. Of cleaning kitchens to the Ratatat remixes. Of listening to Lady Sovereign, somebody’s latest find from studying abroad in London, on the floor of a dingy apartment above the five and dime.

Now I want to hear about yours, from whatever era raised you.

Leave a comment

P.S. My end-of-year lists picked back up again in 2013 and haven’t stopped since. If you want to judge more of my pre-NBfOH taste, or maybe fill in some of your own recent music gaps, I could be persuaded.

You may also like:

This essay is one of my favorites from the archive, and I’m dusting it off not just because most of you missed it, but because whether you like it or not, (anti)poptimism refuses to die.

Rock revival is back in the cultural ether. After a few heady summers back in the club, mainstream appetites are hungry for rock again. Even pop princess Charli XCX is literally making Rock Music now. It’s a perpetual cycle, and we’re seeing the pendulum swinging back already from when this essay was originally published.

So yes, we’re technically talking about pop music, but this discussion applies to almost anything that might set off your internal “absolutely not” alarm. Be it taste, exhaustion, or hype aversion, there are reasons why we all might turn up our noses at music before giving it a real chance. Here, Rita (aka , musician and author of Fear of Music) shows us a useful little crowbar for prying open a song you thought had nothing for you, especially if you thought it was too facile or otherwise “beneath” you.

Keep your ears open, kids.

xo

Gabbie

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What is poptimism?

(And maybe… what is pop?)

A-ah, pop music! Don’t we all have an opinion on it? It’s great, it’s primitive, I’ll sell my kidney to buy a show ticket that costs $1,000, you’re crazy, this is the best poetry since Shakespeare, what a shallow piece of garbage!

You get the point.

I gotta say, I’d never heard the term “poptimism” until Gabbie brought it up in the comment section of my post about The Bee Gees. It was only later that I found out people use “poptimism” in direct opposition to so-called “rockism” — think of it like choosing to shake it off instead of living on a prayer.

Now, is poptimism good or bad? Kind of both - or rather, it depends on whose head you’re in.

Does pop music matter? Yes.

Is pop music the only kind of music that matters? Hell no.

Loving any kind of music is great, but the cultural implications about said music always change dynamically. A couple of years ago, I read ’s “Music: A Subversive History,” in which he promotes an idea of an institutionalization cycle that music experiences – an idea that has stuck with me ever since.

Essentially, it implies that all highbrow music at some point was underground, ostracized, frowned upon by the ruling class, treated as a disruptive element to society. After a new, rebellious type of music inevitably becomes popular (despite all the effort to shut it down), the elite have nothing left to do other than jump on the bandwagon and pretend they’ve approved of it all along.

This is exactly the moment when the music that was once a symbol of rebellion becomes part of the establishment. It is now omnipresent, prescriptivist, rigid and stale.

A new rebellion is brewing somewhere in the gutters. This cycle seems awfully reminiscent of this whole dynamic of rockism and poptimism. Rock is dead, long live pop.1

But is the death of pop actually close? To be quite honest, I don’t think so.

The thing is, pop as such is an insanely broad genre. Taylor Swift is pop. ABBA is pop. Sabrina Carpenter is pop. Fleetwood Mac, for all intents and purposes, is pop. The Bee Gees are pop. A lot of the Beatles’ material, if you ask me, could be classified as pop.2

This, in turn, reminds me of the scene at the end of the “Get Back” documentary where John, Paul, George and Ringo are playing their rooftop show in the center of London.

There’s a split-screen showing the band’s crew as they interview bystanders, and they’re asking questions like: “Do you like what you’re hearing?” “Can you guess who’s playing?” “What do you think of The Beatles?” “What do you think of their new material?”

People mostly speak of the band with great affection. But then there’s one young guy, dressed in office attire, hair combed neatly to the back, drenched in hair gel. He takes a lot of pleasure in telling the interviewer how much the Beatles suck and how he’s so special for seeing right through them. Their music is just beneath him.

As time has shown, this guy is in the minority. Ultimately, his “expert” opinion doesn’t matter.

Yet on a certain level we might be able to understand him. And modern day antipoptimists aren’t so different from him.

What about fandom?

Back in the day, hordes of young girls were so excited to see The Beatles live that they would leave the seats of the venue drenched in piss after the shows. They would scream so loudly that neither the audience nor the band themselves could hear the actual music, which is ultimately why the Beatles stopped performing live.

At this point, are the fans actually in love with the music, or with the idea of their idols?3

Radical fandom hasn’t disappeared. Today, it’s taken on some new forms — potentially concerning parasocial relationships, perhaps.

For the antipoptimists in the room, ask yourself this:

Do you hate the music that much, or do you actually just hate the fans?

Is it possible that you want to extra-hate the music in order to distance yourself from the kind of fan behavior that doesn’t sit right with you?

I am not much of a modern pop-music fan myself. While there are definitely some gems in the mainstream music landscape that I find awesome, I mostly look at the products of pop-industry dispassionately, with more of an analytical interest. I have never intentionally listened to a Taylor Swift song, or a Sabrina Carpenter song, or a Chappell Roan song.

But when I hear one, I understand - from a pure songwriting perspective - why people would like them so much. I invite you to try the same.

Let’s look at it based on two examples that Gabbie gave me for analysis…

Deconstructing Pop Songs

SONG NO. 1. “SHAKE IT OFF” by Taylor Swift4

I once did a decomposition of this song for a Substack livestream on hyper-popular songs. While I personally don’t connect with it on an emotional level, I think it’s a textbook example of a masterfully written pop song.

I invite you to give it an “academic listen” and pay close attention to how it develops.

The song starts with a groovy beat, then adds minimal ostinato instrumentation complemented by instantly high-energy vocals. The verse vocal figure repeats a few times, and before you can get bored of it, the song goes into the bridge and then the chorus.

Now, the chorus melody is nothing if not infectious. Once you’ve heard it, you’re never gonna forget it. It can be argued whether this is great or horrible but for the purpose of my analysis this is just an empirical fact. I say: “Haters gonna…”, - and your brain goes: “…hate, hate, hate, hate, hate”.

While we’re at it, notice how more instruments are added in the chorus and how once we go into verse two, just for a couple of lines, everything but the brass ostinato cuts out. Dynamics, yay! Now that the beat comes back seconds later, our brains are gonna feel happy.

As we move deeper into the second verse, Taylor adds a counter melody repeating the verse lyrics - more new details, and at the same time more of the familiar stuff - an ingenious move for a pop song to stimulate our brains’ love for both repetition and subversion of expectations (read more on it in Dan Levitin’s “This Is Your Brain on Music”). Then, before you know it, her vocals are harmonized - again, melodies that we’ve already heard but with a new twist.

And then we get to chorus number two - and this time the instrumental is fuller than in the previous one. We have a whole brass section added to the mix. And right after, we’re given this entirely new post-chorus section hammering the “shake it off” of it all into our minds.

Moving on - another new section with a spoken-word delivery. It’s distorted, it’s sassy, it’s groovy - and it’s all unknown. It tickles our brains and it makes us long for the resolution to something we already know - the chorus. And boy does it resolve into that chorus! It does so with a big “Yeeeeaaaaahhooooohhh!” and this last chorus is full of supporting harmonies, countermelodies - every “side-story” the song has been teasing is happening at once. It’s a full explosion of joie de vivre, right there.

And mind you: I don’t like this song. However, it is likeable. In fact, if the research laid out in “This Is Your Brain on Music” is right, our brains are basically wired to like it, the way that it’s built.

SONG NO. 2. “VON DUTCH” by Charli XCX

Alright, this song I find genuinely fantastic - it’s probably my love for Magdalena Bay and experimental pop speaking. While I had inadvertently stumbled upon “Shake It Off” before, I’d never heard “Von Dutch” until Gabbie showed it to me. As I was listening to it for the very first time, I found it hard to believe that this song comes from the most hyped album of 2024. Screw it, I was sincerely overjoyed that songs with such an unhinged devil-may-care production make it into the mainstream.

Curiously, I think the two songs I’m analyzing today are sort of the antipodes of each other. “Shake It Off” is a shiny, perfect, ideally formulaic pop-song with a shiny, perfect, ideally formulaic production. “Von Dutch” is like a deformed alien smuggled straight out of Area 51.

I was sincerely overjoyed that songs with such an unhinged devil-may-care production make it into the mainstream.

Here, we’re also dealing with great songwriting. “Von Dutch” is very easy to sing along to. Its main melody is very repetitive, hitting the same note on every syllable, right until the end of each line where it drops by a tone. This monotony makes it all the more satisfying every time we stumble upon a line where instead of going down, Charli goes up a fifth - a huge leap compared to how the rest of the vocal melody is built.

That being said, it’s really the production that sets this song apart and gives it such a high relisten value. Just like in “Shake It Off”, “Von Dutch” plays with intensity, dynamics and instrument combinations.

In the intro we only hear the drum-machine beat, the string synth and the monotonous vocal melody. The song slowly starts to build up with the repetition of “I’m your number one” (ha, repetition!) and then, suddenly, the beat drops and that’s the moment when IT ALL HAPPENS.5

Why suddenly? Because the way it happens is so trippy it subverts every expectation you might have had. Technically the vocals treat the first beat of the measure as the downbeat, but it seems like the drums and the bass REALLY drop only on the second beat. This creates a weird, jagged feeling; a deformed alien you can’t stop looking at.

Pretty soon another sound comes into the mix - one that should be extremely unpleasant taken out of context - a weird screeching sample that reminds me of a massive train doing an emergency braking maneuver. Here it creates this amazing push and pull sensation, while the beat and especially the bass give the song a crazy groove - akin to a kamikaze motorbike ride - the screeching braking sample acts as sort of a resistor.

Later in the song, the groove drops out for what seems to be a bridge section only to explode again and stay for the rest of the track until it finally dissipates in a high-pass filter.

“Wow” is all I can say here.

“If you have shame, you’re lame.”

What’s the moral of this story? Listen to whatever music you want - there is no shame in liking something or disliking something. Adore Taylor Swift or don’t, lose your shit (piss?) about The Beatles or don’t. It’s all there for you - you only have to press play.

For discussion…

• Are we, in fact, seeing the death (or slowing, at least) of pop and an upswing of rock?

• What songs did you find a new appreciation for after examining them more carefully?

• Is there an artist or genre you’ve written off because of the fans rather than the music itself?

• Give an example of “the exciting part” of a particular song that gives you chills - the part WHERE IT ALL HAPPENS, as Rita says.

Leave a comment

Last week’s roundup featured cute little index cards to help you understand more easily which new releases you’ll enjoy. I made four more of them, because May was stacked.

Below, enjoy some indie pop, African-infused krautrock, grungy shoegaze, and soulful electronica. Do it now, because Friday was the single beefiest release day in 2026, and you’ll want to make room to digest it (and all the midyear lists that are already hitting your inboxes) ASAP.

Or don’t, because music should be enjoyed at whatever pace feels good.

Later skaters.

xo,

Gabbie

P.S.

• The Best of May playlist is here.

• All the other Best Of roundups are here.

• All the NBfOH playlists are here.

• The directory of all the bands I’ve recommended (ever!) is here.

Upupayāma - Honesty Flowers

• Start with: “Mystic Chords of Memory”

POM - Enlightened, baby

• Start with: “LOVERS”

Mad Honey - Bridge Over Cumberland

• Start with: “Somehow”

Elder Island - Hello Baby Okay

• Start with: “Bang”

What’s that is wearing? Bet you wish you could have a sweet lid like he does. Well GUESS WHAT SUCKER, NOW YOU CAN!

Send me photos of yourself wearing NBfOH merch for 3 free months of paid access + a chance to win a digital album of one of my Best Of the Month picks!

Ready for something different?

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Remember when I complained about how little context release calendars have? And then I made an adorable imaginary info card that I would use in my fantasy new album tracker?

Sorry, I’m not announcing a new website or anything like that — I’m only slightly delusional! But I am going to do a related experiment in this album roundup.

If you like the new format, maybe I’ll keep it up. If you don’t, don’t tell me about it — I accept only compliments, not criticism 🥰.

For newbies, a quick reminder that I tend to ignore most major releases in the so-called “indie mainstream,” (or indeed the actual mainstream) even if I happened to love them. My goal isn’t to put you on the most esoteric music by any means necessary. But you don’t need me to tell you about the new Paul McCartney, Violet Grohl, or Boards of Canada, either.

What were your favorite records from May? Share with the class!

Leave a comment

The Best Albums of May 2026

9 albums. 1 Playlist. No rankings.

Legend:

🎯 → if you only have time for one…
📼 → most nostalgic/accessible
🧩 → most challenging

Keep scrolling for the May playlist.

Modern Woman - Johnny’s Dreamworld

• Start with: “Offerings”

Cocanha - Flame Folclòre

• Start with: “Clam”

7 albums to go!

Still to come — IDM revival, teenage punks, Swedes on the dance floor, Indonesian soul, and more melodramatic grunge.

Paid subscribers also get access to the full band directory, exclusive playlists, vinyl and ticket giveaways, and a Discord server for tons of community recs and listening parties.

Don’t forget join us at 5pm Eastern on Sunday June 21st for our next radio hour!

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We’re just coming off a three day weekend in the U.S., one that’s supposed to kinda sorta kick us off into an unofficial start of summer. Here in Philadelphia, though, it’s been cold and rainy and miserable.

I can’t will joy and sunshine into being.1 But I can make it sound like summer by conjuring up seven nostalgic scenes. Maybe you’ll remember them. Maybe you won’t. But each one is accompanied by new music that will help set the mood either way.

Keep scrolling for a playlist of all your summer songs.

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ONE.

The sound of a block party on a 90 degree, 90% humidity day. Three of your neighbors are cooking out on the sidewalk, probably raising the temperature at least three degrees in your immediate vicinity. You wipe BBQ sauce off your chin with the back of your hand, sticky with lemonade.

• Jill Scott - Be Great
  RIYL: Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle

• Qveen Herby - MY SZN
  RIYL: TLC, Lauryn Hill

TWO.

The sound of a beach vacation, of stumbling across the hot sand after baking in the sun so long that sweat and sunscreen congealed into little pools under the backs of your knees on your plastic chair. You would have gotten up sooner, but you had to find out how your book ended. Now you’re sun drunk and psyching yourself up to dunk your head under the frigid ocean water.

• Lala Lala - Does This Go Faster?
  RIYL: Björk, Portishead — trip hop gone pop.

• Σtella - Adagio
  RIYL: Greek folk music, Fleetwood Mac, Sade, The Ronettes

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THREE.

The sound of staring wistfully out the window on a sunny Thursday afternoon before a long weekend, then suddenly learning your last meeting was canceled. Cross reference to: the sound of the last day of school before summer vacation.

• Home Star - Weekends
  RIYL: Weezer, Fountains of Wayne

• Tucana - Sun’s Coming Up
  RIYL: Jawbreaker, The Get Up Kids

FOUR.

The sound of a backyard wedding circa 2011. Each picnic table is decorated with fairy lights and mason jars wrapped in paper bags. Every woman in attendance is wearing rose gold jewelry. Every man, a waxed mustache.

• Junior Varsity - Cross the Street
  RIYL: The Go! Team, The Ting Tings

FIVE.

The sound of having your girlfriends over for a pregame before it gets cool enough to abandon the A/C and venture outside for the actual party. You share cheap vodka and Four Lokos and crowd around the mirror to do your makeup that will sweat off on the dance floor in a few hours anyway.

• Surfbort - Hot Dog
  RIYL: Viagra Boys, Le Tigre, X-Ray Spex

• Orla Gartland - Late to the Party
  RIYL: Fiona Apple, Imogen Heap, St. Vincent

• Haute and Freddy - Shy Girl
  RIYL: David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, Kate Bush

SIX.

The sound of enjoying a drink on the stoop after the first summer thunderstorm has passed, the air heavy with petrichor. You swat at mosquitos and daydream about having exactly half a cigarette, wondering whether to send that “WYD?” text to a recent bad decision.

• Smerz - Feisty
  RIYL: The Blow, The Knife, recession-era indie sleaze

• TV Girl - Summer 2000 Baby
  RIYL: The Avalanches, St. Etienne

SEVEN.

The sound of the first overstuffed tote bag of summer fruits from the farmer’s market toppling over onto the kitchen counter because of your impatience. You gobble a peach up over the sink like a messy little piglet playing in its trough. This is the greed they spoke of in the bible.

• Palehound - My Evil
  RIYL: The Breeders, Bob Dylan, Elliott Smith

• She’s In Parties - Summer Haze
  RIYL: Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, williams

There’s 90 minutes of this in a playlist. Songs for dancing to, sweating to, and spacing out to.

The songs are new, but I hope they sound oddly familiar.

Playlist!

Head to the Directory to find the playlist on other platforms.

Coming up…

Discord members had a preview of this playlist yesterday at our monthly listening party. If you don’t want to miss the next one, mark your calendar for June 21st.

We also have a monthly book club! June’s pick is Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto. You have plenty of time to grab the book at the library and join us for a chilled out discussion throughout the month at your leisure.

The link to the Discord server is here (for paid subscribers only).

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We know it’s something we used to have a lot more of, back before the 24 hour news cycle and phone addiction and music streaming took over. We know we used to have richer social lives that naturally revolved around music. We know that the big bad Music Industry has changed a lot in recent years, and how we approach music — how we approach most things, to be fair — is a lot more solitary now.

We know that “community” is a good thing in theory. More human connection, less money in corporate pockets. But we’ve also gotten awfully used to convenience.

If music needs community, what are we actually willing to do for it?

and I started talking about that this week. I’ll be honest, though — we didn’t get as far as we hoped. It’s a really meaty subject and we’ve got a lot to say.

But we did begin to touch on a lot of topics/questions I know you’ll also have opinions about:

• How do we stratify music listeners: passive, active, fans, stans, collectors, etc.?

  • What does each group of listener realistically have the capacity or willingness to give: attention, money, advocacy, time, labor, taste-making, emotional investment?

• How do we stratify musicians: emerging artists, working musicians, established artists, famous artists?

  • What does each group of musician realistically have the capacity or willingness to give: access, collaboration, mentorship, visibility, social capital, labor?

• What does the disappearance of a real “middle class” of musicians mean for artists, fans, touring, releasing records, and long-term sustainability?

• What will be the fate of new community-based “fixes” for this problem?

  • Subvert.fm promises to be a co-op music platform. Can it actually succeed?

  • Does the average person care enough about fair pay for musicians to switch from streaming? Is it enough if only Bandcamp users do?

• What would a healthier music ecosystem look like if fans, musicians, curators, writers, labels, and venues all understood what they can realistically offer each other?

Speaking of…

Carré has started a new collective-based record label: SICK.

The premise is simple. Established artists collaborate with emerging artists on original singles. Emerging artists get mentorship and exposure, everyone builds more connections and flexes their creative muscles, and the end result is incredible new music. Sick.

The problems are predictable. I’ll stop giving everything away because I want you to give you some reason to watch, but I’ll leave you with this —

Who do we have more faith in when it comes to building a music community: musicians or fans?

Carré has a clear answer in mind. I’m undecided. We’re both cynical, but trying to stay hopeful. And we’d love to know what you think.

Catch up on all of our thoughts in the replay above and tell us which thread you want us to unravel next.

Leave a comment

xo

Gabbie

P.S. I didn’t give much of a heads up for this livestream, so the replay is free for everyone. In the future, I’ll keep a video archive for paid subscribers (and give you a healthy heads up about when to catch lives so you don’t miss them!).

There’s a reason I ask you guys in chat or Discord most Fridays what new music releases you’re most excited about, and it’s not (just) because I’m trying to make conversation. Usually I’m using you to find out what actually came out that week and what’s worth the bother.

Did I start a newsletter and build a 19,000 person reader base just to help myself keep up with new music? Possibly. It’s working, isn’t it?

You know what doesn’t work, though? Release calendars. Not unless your preferred method of music discovery is throwing a dart at a wall.1

I am so wholly out of touch with how sane people keep up with new music that I have no earthly idea what role release calendars play, if they enter the equation at all.

What I do know is that as somebody who has to pay attention to new releases every Friday (semi-)professionally, I find them almost entirely useless. And if I were a casual listener — a civilian, if you will — I would be really fucking annoyed.

My Kingdom for a Genre Tag!

Raise your hand if you’ve actually discovered a new band thanks to a release calendar.2

Release calendars could easily double as new artist discovery tools, but they give us nothing.

Realistically, you’re only scanning them for recognizable names, and you’re only recognizing most of the names if you’re already “in the biz” or otherwise hyper locked in to new music. If only industry insiders recognize most of those names, then what are those calendars but smug gatekeepers? They’re serving half of their potential purpose.

I’ll grudgingly forgive the lack of standardization or completeness — it’s not like there’s a single source that announces to media outlets on January 1st when all of the year’s records will be released. And even if they did, every magazine has a different niche and different audience to cater to.

What I can’t forgive is the almost complete lack of context.

Part of the release calendar’s inherent smugness is the assumption that everyone knows the artists on the list. Not just that, but because there’s rarely a priority signal of any kind, there’s also an assumption that everyone knows which albums are most highly anticipated and why.

I reject that notion outright. My brand of anti-gatekeeping accepts that some people have, in fact, been living under rocks (and like it that way).

“Tracking new release calendars can be a slog and is useful only up to a point. Sure, it’s nice to know what’s coming out soon, but if your biggest issue is that you haven’t heard of most of these artists in the first place, it might be better to wait on the other end of this particular production line, where everything has already been sorted, digested, processed, and tabulated by the Pitchforks and Stereogums of the world to let you know what’s what.” -New Music Discovery 101

Invariably, the music topping all my lists at the end of the year comes from bands that I knew absolutely fuck all about at the beginning of the year. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty plugged in and I’ve likely heard of more obscure, pre-debut, up and coming artists than the average person. A sizable percentage of you are probably reading this newsletter precisely because you rely on me to tell you about those kinds of artists. And I’m still hearing crickets when I read these new release announcements.

Who, then, is the release calendar for? At least as a prognostic tool?

People who don’t actually need to discover any music, that’s who.

The lack of context extends beyond the missing genre labels. It’s helpful to see the occasional notation that an release is actually an EP, and there are a few outlets who will notate live albums and reissues, too. But that’s as far as it goes. How nice would it be to have debuts highlighted? Or a quick “for fans of”?

No Ripcord’s release schedule is the best I’ve encountered, and I’m only partially saying that because I had input into its design. If you read New Bands for Old Heads via e-mail, you’ve already seen it (and potentially use it?) for yourselves. It comes closest to the idealized calendar in my imagination — I may not agree with all of the genre labels, but at least it has them! The flag stickers are also a cute touch, even though they’re mostly just reminding us how anglocentric the average curatorial focus continues to be.

Still, it’s not enough.3

Maybe I’m inventing problems where there aren’t any. Maybe this is a complete non-issue for you. So what if release calendars are inscrutable? That’s what music critics are here for. That’s what curators are here for. That’s what I’m here for! Maybe the whole point of release calendars is to scan for the artists you already know about and move on.

But damn, what a wasted opportunity. There’s a staggering amount of new music being released every day, and I could use all the help I can get filtering the signal from the noise.

Let me show you what I came up with.

The Release Calendar of My Dreams

As long as I’m wishing for a metaphorical pony here, I might as well give you everything I desperately want in one place when I’m scanning for new music every week. This is truly the context motherlode.

My mockup ended up looking like a very Glossier-coded little app. I have no idea what to call it.

Imagine a site filled with cards like this one. Somewhere behind the scenes, you can filter and sort by release date, genre, etc.

The cards are split into two parts. The top has the key album info, while the bottom has extras and clickable links.

Here’s what I envision it will include, roughly in order from most to least likely to appear on current release calendars and/or aggregators:

• Artist name

• Album name

• Release date

• Label

• Release Type

  • LP, EP, live album, reissue, single, debut, reunion

• Genre

• Album art

• Country

• Links

  • to Bandcamp, to official sites

• App integration

  • Not just for streaming services, but also for things like email notifications or RSS or Last.fm or whatever else people want to use

• Popularity

• RIYL Comparisons

  • “recommended if you like” or “for fans of” is a context goldmine

• Sorting/filtering

  • Not in my little mockup, but presumably somewhere on the full imaginary website, as already mentioned

• Connections

  • e.g. is it a solo project?

Is creating something like this realistic? I guess not, or it would already exist.4 But if I were doing this music thing full time, you’d better believe I’d be giving you at least half of it.5

What To Use Instead

Honestly, I’ve practically stopped looking at any calendars in advance. I wait until the day before a release day6 and frantically scan all of these websites. I quiz you guys to see what you’re excited about. I ask the Discord. A few days later, I use my weekly go-to outlets to find out what’s already come out. Preparing proactively hasn’t worked out well historically, especially when you factor in surprise drops.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with using release calendars as a catch-up and retroactive discovery tool, but they’re not ideally suited for that purpose, either. While we wait for somebody to capitalize on my rantings, here are a few alternatives I personally use.

MOPS

built one of my favorite and most visually appealing/intuitive new release trackers. It focuses primarily on indie, alternative, and Brazilian music.

Every Monday, she publishes a collection of last Friday’s releases, featuring:

• Album art

• Genre descriptors

• Streaming links for instant listening

• Bandcamp, Wiki, and official website links

• Country of origin flags

• Save-for-later buttons

You can also find her here on Substack.

mops newsletter

Your weekly guide to new music https://www.mopsnews.me/

By Mariana Neri

NEW MUSIC TRACKER

’s sparsely-named tracking tool does exactly what it says on the tin.

The site is still under development and will have more features and integrations in the future, but for now, the sorting and filtering features are what make it stand out for me.

Current functionality/features include:

• Album art

• Popularity ratings

• Genre tags

• Streaming links for instant listening

• Full artist discography

More?

There’s no end to the music catch-up and discovery tools out there. There are almost as many ways to discover new music as there is new music itself.

Obvious picks include AllMusic, Bandcamp, and Rate Your Music.7

There are also the critic aggregators, like Metacritic and AOTY, which I used to use religiously and have now completely given up. If you just want to know which albums the critics are yapping about the most, these are still your best bets.

offline crush

Cool Sites for Real Music Discovery

From vinyl to streaming to whatever TikTok is doing to our brains, every shift in technology has reshaped how we find and experience music. The tools evolve constantly, and so do the ways we stumble across new songs…

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a year ago · 22808 likes · 339 comments · ✧ brooklyn 𓆏

I trust you’ll also fill me in on your favorites.

Every month, I round up nine of my favorite releases to make it easier for you to catch up on what you might have missed.

I knew going in that April wasn’t going to go to plan. I spent half of the month traveling, and no matter how much I tell myself that I can totally, definitely keep my usual routine while I’m several time zones away, the fact is that I don’t even have a usual routine at home.

I did briefly consider cramming everything in at the last minute, but then I remembered ’s sage words:

…doubly so if I ask for it directly, I hope.

So, I’m doing something slightly different this month.

Instead of a clean, tidy, alphabetized “best of,” I’m essentially giving you a peek at the mess inside my brain before I’m ready to curate. Since I haven’t listened to as much as I normally would have, I’m still sorting through it all: what’s getting the most hype, what I was most excited for, what I keep coming back to, what seems to be flying under the radar, what I haven’t had enough time with yet, etc. You get it.

I’m also going to need your help to fill in some gaps, so I’m leaving the last section for you to write in the comments.

Click around as you please!

• Most Hyped

• Most Anticipated

• Most Underrated

• Most Listened

• Most Potential

• Community Favorites

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Psst — you can find all previous Best Ofs here.

Most Hyped:

Angine de Poitrine - Vol.II

I knew that this mysterious, masked Quebecois two piece had really made it when my boyfriend — the same guy who told me it was a silly idea to start this newsletter because nobody would ever read it — sent me their KEXP performance and told me to “check out this band.” I really had to restrain myself that day.

They even briefly impressed my cousin when we met up in Bologna last week. He has a degree in bass performance and we have exactly zero overlap in our musical tastes. When we (inevitably) heard the album start playing at a bar, it piqued his curiosity. “This is polyrhythmic. Interesting.” I told him it was just two guys and showed him a video of their polka-dotted costumes and multi-necked guitars. He lost interest after that, but I’m certain that this record will top just about every indie publication’s end of year list.

Most Anticipated:

Friko - Something Worth Waiting For

Longtime readers might remember that Friko’s debut, Where we’ve been, Where we go from here was one of my absolute favorite records of 2024. I’m always a little nervous about sophomore releases from promising new bands, but this is a truly astonishing album. Everything I loved about the first — the raw emotion, the continuation of the early 2000s orchestral indie rock sound, especially Arcade Fire — is back, sharper and more dramatic than before. Placeholder album name aside, this is another AOTY contender.

Doesn’t look awesome in her New Bands for Old Heads tee? Don’t you wish you could be as cool and amazing as she is? Well GUESS WHAT SUCKER, YOU CAN!

Most Underrated:

Melanie Baker - Somebody Help Me, I’m Being Spontaneous!

I have no recollection now of how I came across this debut, but I’m determined to get her brand of polished slacker rock in front of more ears. Her music is a sugar rush, a Saturday morning cartoon. I find myself craving it even though it might not be entirely good for me. Is it right for grunge music to be produced in such a crystalline way? Arguably not at all. But the album’s conceit seems to be a caricature of ‘90s nostalgia (did you catch the Truman Show reference in the album title?), and it works. The style seems to pull more from other artists inspired by ‘90s alt than by ‘90s alt itself (Wet Leg, Courtney Barnett), and somehow I’m still overjoyed to be listening. Just try it.

Most Listened:

These are the four albums I obsessed over and listened to the most last month, regardless of “objective” quality.

Read more

Ciao, ragazzi! This week and the next, I’m in Bologna taking Italian lessons for no particular reason except that life is short. While I’m away, I’m trying to slow everything down. No set plans outside of class. No eating on the run. No compulsive new album listening. I even thought briefly about not publishing. Instead, I asked one of my favorite music writers, , to tap in while I’m tapped out. It just so happens that she wrote about exactly the kind of unhurried enjoyment I want to channel. Kismet, perhaps? But also an extension of the homework assignment I set for all of us back in January.

Enjoy. A presto.

-Gabbie

P.S. All footnotes are mine ;)

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When I was young, in middle school and high school, my friends and I made a lot of mix CDs for each other. Receiving a mix felt like receiving love, for blank CDs were finite resources that could only be replenished with trips to a Wal-Mart in the next town over, and money was something we rarely had.

This was also one of the few ways to discover new music. A friend or older sibling might’ve gotten new CDs you hadn’t listened to yet, or they discovered a song on someone else’s mix, or they had good internet access and could download albums or rogue playlists from Limewire or Napster. No one bought music from iTunes unless it was around Christmas when gift cards turned up in stockings.

Everything was either the real deal — a physical CD — or completely illegal, which meant that there were stakes in what we listened to. One did not imbibe music glibly. Listening to a soon-to-be favorite song on a mix CD for the first time transcended earthliness and lifted you into an other-worldly euphoria; a high I chase to this day.

Listening to a song that hits you is like locating the center of the self in a way that words can’t adequately describe. Writers like to say that writing is about trying (and often failing) to evoke the deep feelings of life. But music can succeed where words must necessarily fail. Music takes those feelings and lifts them into a new plane. I’ve already used the word transcendental, but that’s the best one the English language has to describe what good music can do.

There’s a reason church begins and ends with music. Karl Ove Knausgaard, in a press release for a Lord Huron album, wrote that

“music [once] belonged to everyone and no one. It was collective. That seems an alien thought now, when all music created is tied to the person making or performing it, but also a compelling one, because it says something about the nature of music, what music is: it is everyone’s and no one’s. It flows between us, and it anchors us to the moment, because it is always heard here and now.”

I listen to this song at least once a day. Usually when I listen to it, I’ll start it over again. I’ve also been learning the dance in the music video.

Discovering new music used to happen as life happened. I would buy a CD when I had money and went to the store. A friend would give me a mix CD at school. Now, a person can discover new music at any moment of any day, and there are no limits to the amount of music they can discover. It’s endless. Sometimes, it feels like I’ve forgotten how to do anything else other than discover, so that I don’t actually hear anything that I’m listening to, but I’m already thinking of what I’ll hear next.

I form fanatical attachments to particular albums or songs every few weeks, which naturally taps the breaks on obsessive discovery. Last year, I went through a phase of listening to Jess Williamson’s Time Ain’t Accidental over and over and over again. The album wasn’t new to me, but I was going through a period of feeling painfully romantic about Austin and my younger days in the city, getting my heart broken and prancing around in a bikini all the time. Emotionally, I didn’t have space for anything else but that album. I needed the feeling of it like I needed air or water.

When I exhausted the indulgence of my feelings, weeks had passed. I didn’t have the will or the time to go back to everything I’d missed, and I didn’t feel particularly compelled to. I have a day job (writer at a tech company), a night job (DJing as ½ of Horse Opera), and am writing a novel or picking up freelance work in between. So, I’ve developed this belief that the music I need to hear is going to find its way to me. That feeling releases the pressure to listen to everything.

Maybe I’m getting woo-woo as I get older, too, which is true of everyone I know. Or maybe I’m just a little bit lazy and I’m justifying it by spiritualizing my shortcomings. Probably the truth lies somewhere in between.

I have a burgeoning theory that the compulsion to listen to everything (and to have an opinion about everything) new could be connected to our hyper-individualized society. Do we not trust that someone else could direct us to something we’ve missed? Do we have to do it ourselves? What do we gain by knowing all we can know?

Byung Chul-Han, a Korean-German philosopher, talks about how we’re living in an era of hyper-achievement and are obsessed with “doing it all.” By trying to do it all, we’re giving up the freedom to shape our own lives — our taste, our capacity, our time. An essential part of shaping something is cutting or editing or chiseling. It seems like no one, including myself, is really willing to do that, at least when it comes to consuming. Maybe we’re trying to square objective thinking into the round hole that is art. And there are gradations of objectivity. Some things are just bad or good — I really do believe that. But once we get into the good, objectivity breaks down.

I absolutely did not vibe with the Geese album last year. Does that mean that there is something fundamentally flawed in my own taste? I don’t think so. But I am interested in how it ended up at the top of so many other people’s lists.1 I have a hard time believing our disparate tastes could converge so cleanly, but who knows, maybe I’m wrong. There’s this thing called “psychological reactance,” which is “a defensive response that occurs when someone thinks their freedom of choice is being constrained,” which Anna Holmes expounds upon in a great piece in the Atlantic on the writer’s aversion to popular culture. It’s possible that I also couldn’t listen to or appreciate Geese and because I just so desperately didn’t want to engage in the conversation around them.

“Perhaps shrugging off culture is a form of self-preservation to those of us who are easily overwhelmed by the way social media algorithms accelerate consumption, and push individuals to engage in public conversation.” -Anna Holmes

I don’t want to be ruled by anything. I don’t want to be ruled by new releases. I don’t want to be ruled by schedules. I don’t want to be ruled by the pressures of other people’s tastes. My taste is mine, cultivated over a lifetime. Some people’s are similar and some aren’t. It’s important to me to honor the heritage of my own taste, which is not sophisticated in any way. I grew up on pop, classic rock, country, emo, and Methodist hymns. For years when I was young, I claimed my favorite album was Straylight Run’s self-titled album. For years. I think that lasted until college.

Maybe what it comes down to is not giving a fuck about what the internet thinks, which I’ve been trying to impress upon myself as much as possible. The internet is a very stupid place full of very fun and wonderful things. But all of my formative experiences have happened in the real world. The best listens of albums I’ve ever had have been on airplanes, trains, cars, on walks, laying on the couch without a screen reaching for my attention.2

The other day, a friend texted me and said, “you’re a snob (complimentary).” Maybe the best way to slow down is to be snobbish, not only about what you’re listening to or consuming, but with how you spend your time. We should luxuriate more, convalesce more. I’m working hard not to worry about what I might’ve missed and to instead enjoy with intensity the things that I’ve found.

I have a few methods for slowing down. Or for being a snob (complimentary).

Here they are.

1. Get off the internet.3

2. Ignore the internet.

3. Release the need to form An Opinion.

4. Let yourself use an imperfect system.

5. Listen to and find music in the real world.

6. Get off the internet.4

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1. Get off the internet

Go to a record store and listen to records you’ve never heard of before. Take a bunch of pictures of them and listen to them later. Ask the record shop employees what they like. Ask what records they’ve put on in the shop over the last day or week.

Read a book. Read a bunch of books. Write down what you think or what you’re feeling in a notebook. Go for a walk without your phone. Go out for the evening without your phone. Throw your phone into the sea.

The internet will tell you that you need a plan, a process, a system, a curriculum, to learn what you like and to understand what you like. You don’t. Plans, processes, systems, curricula are what arise when a person is avoiding what they actually want to do. It’s easy to make a plan. Much harder to write a book, essay, review. Much harder to sit down in a studio and make the song. Much harder to sit on your couch and listen to an album without checking your phone. Much harder to be bad at something you want to be good at.

The best way to slow down, to think about what you like, is to get off the internet and let your thoughts roam free. Eventually, opinions — or, more importantly, curiosities — will arise. Go toward them with all your might!

Recent things that have come up for me include: the color blue, the concept of divas, Zamrock, music that plays on a plane during boarding, Jeff Buckley, albums made exclusively of cover songs, road trips, when to choose silence over music.

2. Ignore the internet

I’m going to quote something I’ve already said: “the internet is a very stupid place.” There are lots of wonderful things on it and many people with many things to say. But you don’t need to know what those chumps on the internet are saying (including me, you don’t need to know what I have to say). What is useful is to know what you really think when your thoughts aren’t mediated through the discourse of small corners of the internet, a place where you feel shame that you thought a very popular album was capital-B Boring. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read the internet. Read it! Then ignore everything people say afterwards.

3. Release the need to form An Opinion

Sometimes, oftentimes, it’s not necessary to have an opinion about an album. You can just like it or dislike it and leave it at that. The more you abstract your way away from the music via words, the further the music will travel from you. I think this is true of most art. What you gain in understanding, you might lose in feral feeling.

4. Let yourself use an imperfect system

I’m saying this more for myself than anyone. The way I discover music, and subsequently categorize it, is messy. I have three or four playlists with loose themes that are definable only to me in a vague way. I don’t put those playlists on for listening. They are folders only. They are used when I am making other playlists for listening. I have so many archive playlists from the newsletter, but the titles aren’t very descriptive because they aren’t meant to be discovered via the streaming service, but via Substack where they live alongside a description. All of this is to say that I’m drowning in playlists and I’m drowning in album saves. But that’s okay. I’ve given up on trying to organize my life and instead I’m trying to live it.5

5. Listen to and find music in the real world

See some of the activities listed in “get off the internet.” But also Shazam shamelessly. Shazam in the vintage store bathroom at the DJ set, at the wine bar (especially at the wine bar), at the Zara, in the hotel lobby, in your friend-of-a-friend’s car. Shazam songs you already know and forgot the name of. I have Shazam’d some truly embarrassing stuff (a recent one was “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC). Your Shazam playlist will also tell you the date when you’ve Shazam’d a song, which is sort-of like keeping an audio diary.

Last summer, I Shazam’d “On The Beach” by Chris Rea somewhere in London:

Then I Shazam’d this song somewhere in Italy:

Then in September, I Shazam’d this one at a friends wedding:

Then I Shazam’d Celine Dion via a transistor radio in the bathroom of the wine bar Liar, Liar in Brooklyn:

And, look, there’s something even better you could do than Shazam shamelessly. You could ask a person what song is playing and see what they say.

6. Get off the internet

For real. Detach yourself from the expectations the internet may place on you and be free. Cultivate wild and weird taste that has nothing to do with the internet and tend to it with vigor.

Your turn.

1. What’s the best song you found in the real world?

2. Any unexpectedly excellent record store finds that you had no idea about beforehand?

3. What are other ways to discover new music outside of the internet?

Leave a comment

P.S. Here are the songs I found IRL that I have on repeat:

Remarkably, yes. Even after force-feeding you a 10,000 word, 20 year old article (that I didn’t write!), then picking up where that article left off and walking you through about a dozen albums that span all 40+ years of twee’s history, I still have more to say. Sheesh!

This week will be easier though, don’t worry. Yes, there will be more to read if you’re up for it, but mostly you just have to sit back and listen. Let the jangly, chime-y guitars wash over you.

Here’s what I’ve cooked up. Click to skip around. Relax. Enjoy.

Every Song from “Twee as Fuck”

• The original “Twee As Fuck” Pitchfork essay I kept foisting on you name drops A FUCKING TON of music, but expects you to go searching for it yourself. As far as I know, nobody else has compiled all of it before. Until now! You’re welcome.

NME's C-86 Cassette Compilation

• I mentioned “NME’s infamous C-86 cassette comp that brought jangle pop into British indie consciousness” in 1986 — now you can listen to it yourself.

NBfOH’s Twee For All Times Playlist

• My own mix of five decades of twee. Try to figure out what’s old and what’s new!

10 More Records for Twee Converts

• It’s very rare that my friends and fellow No Ripcord writers , Rivers, and Juan Rodriguez are able to agree on a music genre. Somehow, twee/jangle/indie pop unites us. I asked them around to help me share ten more of our favorite albums — from 1981 to 2026.

Psssst — don’t forget you can show off your NBfOH merch to win paid access and free music.

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If this newsletter ever turned you on to a band you wouldn’t have found otherwise, please consider a paid subscription. Support your friendly local (human!) music curator, and help keep the playlists bountiful across all platforms. You can even subscribe without supporting Substack directly (it’s $5 cheaper!)🖤

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At the tail end of 2005 (practically the dark ages1) I came across a shiny new essay on Pitchfork called Twee as Fuck: The Story of Indie Pop. I hadn’t yet become disillusioned with the now controversial publication. It was holy, and I was rapt.

I also had no idea what twee was. 10,000 words later, I became a woman obsessed.

YouTube was brand new in 2005, but streaming wasn’t really a thing yet. I was luckier than most: I had access to my college intranet, and thus a direct line to almost every other student’s iTunes library. That’s how I managed to cobble together most of Nitsuh Abebe’s recommendations, all with questionable metadata and erratic volume levels.2

I took these songs with me everywhere. I listened to them at night when I was trying to fall asleep. I have vivid memories of lying in my hostel bunk in Prague one frigid January3 trying to drown out a very loud snorer sleeping above me with the gentle chimes of Talulah Gosh. Winters were as long in my college town in northeast Ohio as they were in northwest Czechia, and so I came to associate the sound of twee — the jangly guitars, the saccharine vocals — with a sort of pristine, chilly melancholia.

This music opened up a new world for me. I already knew about The Magnetic Fields, but the grandeur of 69 Love Songs now expanded back into the shimmering mist of The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees. Suddenly, magically, I also became aware of The 6ths (another of ’s projects) and I lost myself into what seemed like days, weeks, years of cheerful anti-love songs.4

Now I want to open that world up for you.

“Twee as Fuck” Revisited (and Updated)

I’ve been handwringing for weeks about how best to (re)introduce you to twee.

I suppose if I want to be glib, I could do it in a few sentences:

Twee is what happened when punk rock kids traded their leather and denim jackets for cardigans and turned their rage into wistful sighing. They had just as much love for DIY, and no more talent for music. But they rejected aggressive egos and (male) posturing in favor of the cute, the charming, and the naive. They loved pop’s catchiness, but not the gloss. They loved punk’s simplicity, but not the anger. Twee became its own adorable beast.

But you need more.

The perfect guide to twee already exists. 21 years later, it’s still on the internet in all its long form glory. Yes, I could give you the crib notes. I could walk you through its origins: how it branched off from punk rock; NME’s infamous C-86 cassette comp that brought jangle pop into British indie consciousness; the parallel evolution of Sarah Records in the UK and K Records in the Pacific Northwest… there’s a lot to uncover.

How sad would it be for all of us if I had to summarize an essay, though? Surely we’re all better than that. Instead, make yourself a cup of coffee, find a free hour, and settle in to read it. All of it. Read it with the same sense of enthusiasm, awe, and delight that I did at 21 years old. In fact, I advise resuscitating your old iPod and downloading each recommended track one by one as you go.5

TWEE AS FUCK

Once you’ve thoroughly immersed yourself — or even if you’ve decided to skip it entirely — you can meet me back here for a slightly different sort of genre guide:

Part 1 - The Twee As Fuck Top Four

• Curating Pitchfork’s curation down to bare bones basics

Part 2 - Tweevolution [2000s & 2010s]

• What’s been going on since 2000ish?

Part 3 - New Bands for Twee Heads [2020s]

• New bands carrying the torch of old twee

What better way to get an appreciation for a genre than to listen your way through it?

All records are listed chronologically.

Part 1: The Twee As Fuck Top Four

Choosing only four records to represent a decade of twee masterpieces was an agonizing exercise. I ended up picking the records that I felt best represented the two most iconic twee record labels of the time (K and Sarah), one record to represent the Scottish contingent, and a slightly more household name that’s still putting out records today.

Beat Happening - Jamboree [1988]

Inside twee are two wolves - one light, represented by Sarah Records, and one dark, represented by K Records, the brainchild of Beat Happening’s frontman Calvin Johnson. Beat Happening is the mascot of the punk-leaning, almost comically under-produced, sardonic, off-kilter, and often off-key path. The xeroxed zine come to life. The stylistic choice was quite intentional (Mark Lanegan co-produced this particular record, in fact). You’ll hear whispers of other eventually influential PNW genres starting to form: riot grrrl and grunge, most notably. For an infinitely rewarding rabbit hole, I highly suggest following all of Calvin Johnson’s threads — off to bands like Tiger Trap his short lived proto-riot grrrl label mates/signees (who would later spin off into The Softies, among others), then Bratmobile, their collaborators who debuted at Johnson’s International Pop Underground Convention in 19916, and off to Bikini Kill who shared the same stage… and on and on. I think you can write the rest.

• Start with: “Indian Summer,” “Bewitched”

• Also try: “Our Secret”

The Field Mice - Snowball [1989]

On the other side of the Atlantic, Sarah Records was releasing a lighter side of twee. Snowball is one of their more important records. If you expected more of the adorable, bedroom sound, here’s where you’ll find it. With their jangly guitars and indelible bass lines, The Field Mice are like a far sweeter version of The Smiths. The low production, DIY aesthetic is still very much present, but here there be sugar and spice and everything nice (in place of Beat Happening’s slime and snails and puppy dog’s tails). Much more palatable and pretty, certainly. They were arguably the progenitors of the (eventually) overused trope of the awkward, bookish boy who pines for the manic pixie dream girl. You may recognize the very first track as St. Etienne’s “Kiss and Make Up”; but theirs is the original, and only one year earlier!7

• Start with: “Couldn’t Feel Safer,” “Let’s Kiss And Make Up”

• Also try: “Emma’s House”

Heavenly - Le Jardin De Heavenly [1992]

If there were ever any “stars” of twee, then perhaps they would be Heavenly. Another of Sarah’s finest, they’ve been around in one form or another for at least 40 years (admittedly with a 30 year gap; they just released a new album barely a month ago), first as the equally infectious Talulah Gosh. Far more chipper and pop-centric than moodier Beat Happening and wistful Field Mice, Heavenly channels ‘60s music more directly: surf rock guitars, yé-yé girls and girl groups, twist and shout. Calvin Johnson released Heavenly’s records on his own label, which brought them modest acclaim beyond their own shores. It’s tough to call any band of the original twee class “big,” but their influence is undeniable: you’ll hear their legacy in Cub, The Cardigans, and Los Campesinos!, to name just a few. A standout of this album is also an example of how it bridged the oceanic twee divide: the K/Sarah crossover episode that is “C Is The Heavenly Option”8, in which Calvin Johnson joins Amelia Fletcher to sing a teen magazine quiz.

• Start with: “C Is The Heavenly Option”, “Our Love Is Heavenly”

• Also try: “P.U.N.K. Girl”

The Pastels - Mobile Safari [1995]

If the Scottish twee scene had a family tree, The Pastels would be at the root. Stephen Pastel’s 53rd & 3rd label hosted the likes of Talulah Gosh, The Shop Assistants, and Kurt Cobain’s favorite: The Vaselines. It’s tempting to describe their “shambling” style as a midpoint between the K/Sarah dark/light divide (and remember, I pulled that distinction out of my ass; I don’t know who else would subscribe to it!). But it’s not so far off from the truth. They have a charming messiness about them, a disconnect between their percussion and vocals that aligns well with the Calvin Johnson spirit. But the upbeat tempo and chiming, catchy melodies are more in tune with the “pristine pop” of Sarah. No need to compare, though. This was the way of the Scottish scene.

• Start with: “Yoga”, “Strategic Gear”

• Also try: “Nothing to Be Done”

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Part 2: Tweevolution

What twee and twee-inspired albums came out after the records lionized by Pitchfork’s primer? Many didn't even hear about Twee until this later era, but there was a lot more going on even at this supposed height than you may have realized.

The Moldy Peaches - S/T [2001]

What would an anti-folk album be doing on a twee retrospective? Well, honestly, how did anti-folk come to be associated with the NYC sleaze of the early 2000s, anyway? (That’s a rhetorical question. We know how.) To the extent that twee was about sparseness, DIY, cutie patooties, crushes, and hand drawn photocopied album covers, Kimya Dawson and Adam Green were keeping it alive. I also maintain that they’re one of the main reasons it eventually developed into its later quirky, “adorkable” ModCloth-clad incarnation. After all, Juno walked so (500) Days of Summer could run.9

• Start with: “Lucky Number Nine,” “Downloading Porn With Davo”

• Also try: The Juno soundtrack, I guess, or Kimya Dawson’s solo work. This was The Moldy Peaches’ only album

Saturday Looks Good To Me - All Your Summer Songs [2003]

I threw this album on again for the first time in over two decades just for the sake of this article, and memories of how I described them to a friend at the time came rushing back to me: they sound like a sock hop played underwater. How could I possibly beat that? In seriousness though, frontman Fred Thomas was a fixture of the Michigan DIY scene, and it makes sense that there’d be a stronger, more audible connection to the Detroit soul music of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Think of this as twee through a more Motown, Phil Spector lens.

• Start with: “Alcohol,” “Ambulance”

• Also try: “The Girl’s Distracted”

The Blow - Poor Aim: Love Songs [2004]

On the one hand, it’s slightly disingenuous to call Khaela Maricich’s minimalist electropop twee. On the other hand, when I was hemming and hawing about whether to keep this album in the mix, I remembered that it was released on — you guessed it! — K Records. In fact, she was embedded in Calvin Johnson’s Olympia world, and even toured with him on Phil Elverum’s (Mt. Eerie/The Microphones) Paper Opera tour in 2001. So. Res ipsa loquitur. Plus, the absolute grip that this album had over me in my early 20s cannot be overstated. In many ways, these songs are even more precious and spare than most twee — just one girl, her synth, her drum machine, and her limerence to keep her company (“Hey boy - why you didn’t call me?/I waited for days, I can’t believe you didn’t call”). It almost feels like an exposed, tongue-out-of-cheek response to 69 Love Songs.

• Start with: “Hey Boy,” “Come On Petunia”

• Also try: “What Tom Said About Girls,” “Parentheses”

Strawberry Whiplash - Hits In The Car [2012]

This Glaswegian duo took their name from Strawberry Switchblade and Meat Whiplash, and their direct musical cues from the rest of C-86 and their descendants. This record stands out from its genre mates for its fuzziness. At times it almost veers into My Bloody Valentine territory (check out “Sleepy Head”), though it might not be approaching the full wall of sound. Dabbling in shoegaze is an interesting take on twee, one that they’ve extended onto last year’s People Like Us.

• Start with: “Picture Perfect”

• Also try: “Who’s In Your Dreams?”

Alvvays - S/T [2014]

After a bit of genre bending, we’re back in some seriously familiar Sarah Records territory with this delightful debut. This is more pristinely polished indie pop than it is twee, per se, which makes sense given their influences (The Smiths, Belle & Sebastian, The Magnetic Fields, and Celtic folk music besides). You’ll no doubt remember the heartrending “Archie, Marry Me” with all its lush reverb. After this retro record10, the band kept increasing the production value in future releases, culminating in 2022’s exceptional Blue Rev; perhaps the best album of the 2020s so far.

• Start with: “Archie, Marry Me”

• Also try: “Belinda Says”

  

Part 3: New Bands for Twee Heads

Another critical record label for indie pop through the decades (that still happens to actually exist!) is Slumberland. Their roster has featured Velocity Girl, Black Tambourine, Stereolab, Boyracer, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and an endless parade of other indie pop darlings. These days, if you want to find your favorite new twee band, you can throw a dart at their lineup and find one. It’s enough to make me feel like some of my selections are a bit of a gimme.

The Umbrellas - Fairweather Friend [2024]

This is the record that sent me plunging head first back into twee after so much time away. As soon as I heard Matt Ferrera’s voice on the opening of “Three Cheers,” I thought, “this sounds like Beat Happening’s been tuned up.” I can only imagine how appealing that will be to the vast majority of you who can’t understand for a moment why anyone would listen to tuneless vocals. In any event, this is a tight and polished indie pop record that channels the shambling, unpolished twee of its predecessors. Far more like The Magnetic Fields than The Vaselines.

• Start with: “Three Cheers!”, “Games”

• Also try: “Near You”
  

Neutrals - New Town Dream [2024]

Neutrals may be based in the Bay Area, but their lead singer/guitarist’s Glaswegian background is impossible to hide. Both his accent and the particular shambly/jangly style are front and center. There are echoes of Television Personalities, but the cranked up bass and slight disaffection in the vocals belie a strong post-punk influence as well. Not that strange, perhaps, given twee and post-punk’s shared punk roots.

• Start with: “Wish You Were Here”, “That’s Him On The Daft Stuff Again”

• Also try: “Half Shut Knife”
  

Jeanines - How Long Can It Last [2025]

I like my indie pop with a little bit of grit, which Jeanines delivers without damaging any of their sweetness. The more I listen to this duo, the more they remind me of early Belle & Sebastian tracks. I find that much like The Umbrellas, they have the uncanny ability to write songs that feel entirely out of time. If you told me that this album had been recorded in 1966 or 1989, I would have believed you.

• Start with: “Coaxed A Storm”, “Satisfied”

• Also try: “Winter in the Dark”
  

Sharp Pins - Radio DDR [2025]

Outside of the phenomenal Slumberland roster, we have Kai Slater, the phenom/wunderkind behind not one but two of last year’s stellar breakout indie acts: Lifeguard and Sharp Pins. This is the first of two 2025 Sharp Pins releases, and a testament to Slater’s dedication to the spirit behind twee, if not the literal sound. I’ve previously described his records as reminiscent of Guided by Voices covering the Beatles - lo-fi, yes, but perhaps better described as the slacker rock version of twee than the sugary DIY pop of the first wave.

• Start with: “Circle All The Dots”, “When You Know”

• Also try: “Popafangout”

cootie catcher - Something We All Got [2026]

For another departure from the Slumberland roster and a bit more of an experimental option, Cootie Catcher offers up a blend of glitch-pop and indie pop. As and I explained a few weeks ago, they “take that distinctive twee, DIY sound of K Records in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and make it their own. Their eclectic mix of jangly guitars and twitchy/glitchy ‘twee-tronica’ makes for a very satisfying unpredictability.”

• Start with: “No biggie”, “Puzzle pop"

• Also try: “Friend of a friend”

What did I miss?

Trick question. I missed so, so much. That’s why you’ll have to come back next week. But still, I want to know: what are your favorite twee bands and records?

Leave a comment

More???

Yes. So much more. Playlists and poking deeper into the nooks and crannies of twee. Next week, I said! Next week!

But! Since next week’s post is going to be for paid subscribers, how about a chance to win a few free months of paid access (and some free music)?

Send me a photo of yourself showing off your NBfOH merch; win fabulous prizes.

Until next time.

xo

Gabbie

If you’re new here, you’re joining 19,000+ other people who are getting excited about new music again. Start here if you need to get oriented. You can also check out the playlist guide or the directory for way more.

🌟WHAT’S AHEAD🌟

-Best Albums of March 2026
-Monthly Playlist

Hopefully you didn’t notice, but I took a short break from posting last week. I needed a tiny breather.

While I was out, I finally relented and spent some time plugging the newsletter on (gulp) Facebook, the last remaining viable social medium I hadn’t already tapped, and also the least palatable.

Starting from scratch anywhere is humbling, but I had completely forgotten the kind of commentary that used to plague my videos when I first started New Bands for Old Heads on TikTok four years ago. Facebook reminded me. (And this time, people were using their real names to do it! Smart!1)

“This isn’t music, it’s noise.”

“Why would I listen to a band that sounds like another band? You’re literally saying they’re derivative.”

“How dare you compare this shit to [old untouchable rock band].”

Hot take, but people like this aren’t music lovers.

Tastes vary; you’re not required to like everything (or most things) that you hear. But loving music inherently requires an open mind. It presupposes an understanding that inspiration is intrinsic to the process of creation. It allows room for both imitation and experimentation. It is able to appreciate even when it can’t understand.

Music lovers are able to say “this isn’t for me, but that doesn’t make it fundamentally bad.”

Tell me what being a music lover means to you.

Leave a comment

Now that I’m off my soapbox, let’s cool down with the best of last month.

As usual, I’d like to mention that while March was packed with huge releases, you won’t see them here, no matter how much I may have loved them.

Looking for Courtney Barnett, The New Pornographers, Kim Gordon, Haute & Freddy, The Twilight Sad, Snail Mail, Robyn, or other mega-hyped indie rock and pop that came out in March? That’s lucky for you, because you can read about them pretty much anywhere else. I don’t need to tell you about them, no matter what I thought of them.2

Since we’re so inundated with incredible new albums, I (usually) try to focus on the ones I loved that are a bit less frequently discussed.

• All of the other month-by-month best of lists are here.

• ➡️ Best tracks of ALL of 2026 (so far) can be found here.
  

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The Best Albums of March 2026

9 albums. 1 Playlist. No rankings.

Legend:

🎯 = if you only have time for one…
📼 = most nostalgic/accessible
🧩 = most challenging

Keep scrolling for the March playlist, which features a standout track from 44 albums (eep!). Something for everyone.

Cat Clyde - Mud Blood Bone

This is a different sort of roots rock record, where Clyde explores her Métis (that is, mixed indigenous Canadian and European) heritage. The album’s pacing and stylistic ebbs and flows — from heavier blues to gentler folk rock and even garage rock — reflect the very literal, physical journey she was on while she wrote it. Somewhere between Robert Johnson and Big Thief, you’ll find her.

• Start with: “Man’s World”

Still to come — new adventures in post punk, a strange spin on slacker rock, jazz-forward hip hop, and three very different ways to get your groove on.

Paid subscribers also get access to the full band directory, exclusive playlists, vinyl and ticket giveaways, and the lively Discord community. Join in.

Subscribe now

Read more

This year’s New Colossus festival is all wrapped up, but the music discovery is only just beginning. Good news for anyone feeling some FOMO after Tuesday’s post.

It’s only slightly less overwhelming to flip through a 200-band rolodex now that you’re not working on a deadline. Luckily for you, , and I are back with a quick weekend bonus post and a curated selection of some of our favorites from the 2026 New Colossus Lineup to take all the stress off.

A Curated New Colossus: 2026 Edition

Next year, maybe we’ll do this in advance?? A novel concept!

Gabbie’s Picks:

Lip Filler

The latter end of Britpop is an obvious influence for these UK indie rockers. What’s surprising is how much they are (probably unintentionally) taking from Our Lady Peace’s high-angst playbook. Maybe Silverchair, too. Three EPs into their career, and “Tricky” absolutely locked them in as a band to watch.

Shunk

This Montreal art-pop band brings their jazz and classical training to their distinctly chaotic sound. Like an unhinged Cocteau Twins, a cabaret Blondie, or dark B-52s… you’ll feel like you’re in a dingy Berlin or Paris nightclub.

Bonus:

• Midnight Rodeo (California’s paisley underground takes a detour through Nottingham)

• Alien Chicks (experimental/surrealist post-punk, with sax!)

Previously recommended:

• SHAGGO (Brooklyn-based; riot-grrrl inspired)

• TVOD (Post-punk/new-wave hybrid)

• BRNDA (Arty college rock)

• Talon (Queer, catchy ‘90s-inspired alt-rock)

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’s Picks:

cootie catcher

cootie catcher takes that distinctive twee, DIY sound of K Records in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and makes it their own. Their eclectic mix of jangly guitars and twitchy/glitchy "twee-tronica” makes for a very satisfying unpredictability.

Adult Leisure

This Bristol band delivers Tears for Fears’ synths and Peter Gabriel’s vocals. ‘80s tinged melancholia and emotionally-charged lyrics with just enough energy for the dance floor.

Bonus:

• Wolfschmidt (Swedish “nu-gaze”)

• Honey I’m Home (Dutch 5-piece playing ‘90s alt)

’s Picks:

Sex Mask

Sometimes these Australian post-punks channel Gang of Four with their angularity and stream-of-consciousness, beat-poet lyrics. At other times they scratch an Interpol itch. At all times, they have something invitingly abrasive about them.

Ultra Lights

You’ve always wondered what would happen if Stephen Malkmus had been raised in Atlanta and used more CCR hooks. Wonder no more with these Southern college rockers.

Bonus:

• Midscale (Parisian shoegaze)

• Deady (high energy female-fronted punk)

We have so much more, so we made you a playlist.

Paid subscribers have access to the playlist on Apple, SoundCloud, Tidal, Qobuz, and YouTube. Just head to the Directory.

Need EVEN more?

• offered up his own selections from this year’s festival before it happened. I’ll try to be more timely next year!

The Joyful Noise

The Undercard: New Colossus Festival 2026

In this feature, we’ll look at music festival lineups and highlight the lesser known, up-and-coming artists worth checking out…

Read more

6 months ago · 5 likes · Joe Marvilli

• There’s also an official playlist featuring every band on the roster — be warned, it’s almost 11 hours long!

Next week — another non-definitive genre primer, but nothing like post-punk! Any guesses?

xo

Gabbie