Fuzzy Guitar Power Pop & Indie Rock

From rock to punk to pop, this playlist features the best in indie music today. Check out artists you already love and discover future obsessions. (Cover: St. Vincent / Photo: Virgin, press)

Indie Circus: Best New Indie

some favorites

synth typ

Dark woom

To Be Reviewed

Off The Dollyrots fan-funded 4th album. Released in 2012 on Arrested Youth Records.

Hyperactive

Off our debut album, released in 2004 through Panic Button/Lookout! Records

Jackie Chan

Future Me Hates Me

"Tess is a true believer in the church of rock’n’roll. She has great taste and is really sharp!” - Alan McGee

Tess Parks was born and raised in Toronto but moved to London at seventeen to pursue music and to study photography. She has played solo for the past four years.

Having moved back to Toronto in 2012, she put together her amazing psychedelic backing band of "sexy and talented musicians”, The Good People.
Early in 2013, she self-released a very popular EP ‘Work All Day/Up All Night’
Tess describes her songs as "lo-fi alternative drones with a hypnotic vibe”. Influences include Elliott Smith, friends the Dandy Warhols and all the classics: "I was brought up on Bob Dylan, Nirvana, The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Zeppelin.”

She met Alan McGee in London. "We stayed in touch, that was it really. I just got so lucky. I love Oasis, Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine… He’s affiliated with all of my favourite musicians.”

Tess recorded her album of scuzzy, downbeat psychedelia (think Mazzy Star crossed with The Brian Jonestown Massacre) across the summer. It’s been pre-empted by the release of her debut single proper ‘Somedays’.


Tess Parks - Gates Of Broadway

Turn It On!

Go Sailor were a great, short-lived band from the mid-90s who represent a key link in the US indie music chain. Featuring Rose Melberg (Tiger Trap, The Softies, Gaze, Brave Irene, Knife Pleats), Linton (Henry's Dress, The Aislers Set) and Paul Curran (Take A Day fanzine, Crimpshrine), they released three great singles and a few compilation tracks, and then went their separate ways. But what records they are! Basic and lovely in their song-writing, they're perfect snapshots of where indie-pop was during that last burst of pre-internet indie activity. Touching on time-honored themes of friendship and love (lost and found), they resonate with honesty and purity of intention.

While the themes might sound, dare we say, twee, the music is anything but. Rose's scrappy guitar was backed by Linton and Paul's sparkplug rhythm section, each song vibrating with enthusiasm and punk rock energy. Tunes like "I'm Still Crying," "Windy" and their ace cover of Nar's "Blue Sky" are as rambunctious and infectious as pop comes, showing the band's deep roots in the Bay Area punk scene. And the hits just keep on coming: "Ray of Sunshine" and "Long Distance" are total classics, while "Bigger Than The Ocean" slows the pace down for a couple's dance. Paul takes the lead on "The Boy Who Sailed Around The World," wrapping up this flawless record with one of the band's live favorites.

Go Sailor reunited in the early 2010s to play to enraptured crowds at the NYC and Athens Popfests, and their appearance at the Slumberland 20th Anniversary show was the stuff of legend. This album compiles all three of their singles plus compilation tracks and was first released on vinyl in 2011. Due to pressing plant issues it quickly went out of print and that's just not right, so we are very happy to bring you this 11th anniversary edition, back on vinyl where it belongs.

Go Sailor

Go Sailor - Long Distance

S’old

Wand - Take Me Back To The Void

Jex Thoth - Separated at Birth

Letters

Hovvdy

Bad News

Mandy's "Lawn Girl" is due out April 26th via Exploding In Sound Records.

ORDER: https://mwinters.bandcamp.com/album/lawn-girl-2

Mandy is:
Miranda Winters - guitar and vocals
Linda Sherman - guitar
Lizz Smith - bass
Wendy Zeldin - drums

Mandy - Forsythia

GOLDY

Goldy

Strawberry Moon

S’old (Acoustic)

Big Time Nothing

Girlfriend Is Better

'My Method Actor', out now on Ninja Tune: https://niluferyanya.lnk.to/my-method-actorSo

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Like I Say (I runaway)

Home

Home (Single Version)

Wrapped In Sunshine

Holding Out for a Hero

Gringo and Faux Discx are set to release an expanded version of HOOKWORMS debut EP on CD and digitally on March 4th 2016

Pre-order: http://gringorecords.limitedrun.com/products/566096-hookworms-hookworms-ep-bonus-tracks-cd

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A reissue of a 7 track expanded version of Hookworms 2011 self-titled debut EP off the back of two critically acclaimed albums - 2013's Pearl Mystic on Gringo and 2014's The Hum released worldwide on Domino arm Weird World – is both a marker from where Leeds five-piece have subsequently hurtled forwards from, but also a document and proof of the undeniable character that they've never allowed to waver even as all around them has changed.

The EP contains the first tracks the group ever recorded in vocalist and producer MJ's original Suburban Home Studio, with the group just a handful of local shows into their existence – one such show, supporting Sun Araw lead to its original release.  "It was a very exciting time for us," bassist MB recalls. "MJ having his first studio meant we'd gone from practicing in a tiny basement and receiving noise complaints to having a place where we could do what we wanted. We played with Sun Araw just as we were finishing the EP and Cameron Stallones enjoyed our set and asked to hear any recordings - then subsequently released it on cassette."

Hookworms have long since evolved into a mighty beast, live able to fill cavernous warehouses with a vitriolic form of kosmiche, as when headlining Liverpool Psych Fest, or when supporting fuzzy legends Slowdive during their 2014 comeback. Hookworms as a listen though already has in place several of the traits that have helped elevate them – the strutting bass and four note repetition of Teen Dreams is pure Modern Lovers, mining the group's 60's garage and proto-punk influences and mixing them with a caustic modernity. It's the only track that still makes an occasional appearance live; another highlight is the rolling bass thunder of I Have Some Business Out West crackles with the energy of an approaching storm: "Our gear wasn't as good back then so we did quite a bit of re-amping and post-production," MB comments. "The EP was basically a playground for experimentation with a bunch of new guitar pedals we'd recently acquired."

In addition, the reissue comes with additional early and rare recordings - the drone heavy initial version of Form and Function, which would appear on a split 7" alongside Nottingham-based peers Kogumaza, plus the swaggering rumbles of The Correspondent – which appeared on 2012 Sonic Cathedral compilation Psych For Sore Eyes. The former is a premonition of phase two of the band, foreshadowing the heavier, dense sound around Pearl Mystic; the latter still sounds like a wonderful outlier – which says something for a band whose boundaries have forever stretched towards the horizon.

MJ would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for all the support, help and donations he has received after his studio in Leeds was flooded over Christmas. The band had been working on new material at Suburban Home Studios prior to the flood. 

Tracklisting:

Medicine Cabinet
Teen Dreams
I Have Some Business Out West
Resolution
Form and Function (originally released on a split 7" with Kogumaza on Gringo)
Deu (originally released on cassette Spur: Volume One compilation, Magnetic Tapes)
The Correspondent (originally released on Psych For Sore Eyes 7")

Mandy - Forsythia

explodinginsoundrecords