Your Perfect Real Life is a sprawling, motorized, and largely intentional controlled demolition of many of Improvement Movement’s signature forms.

The songs in Silver Plastic Forks are full of gripping moments, from the muffled screams of “Nu Metal Friends” to the Truth Club-esque syncopation of the title line in “7 Year Itch” to the near-ominousness of the breakdowns in “CRV.” Major manages tension and texture extremely well, slicing seconds of calm with steamrolling guitars and letting vocals linger in the background to brighten and soften as needed.

Swapmeet’s Debut Album Mount Zero Impeccably Toes the Line Between Soft and Punchy Indie Rock

Aldous Harding’s music has never been crystal clear. She’s known to weave songs full of strange images and nonsensical lyrics, pulling you in and out of different realities and characters using her distinctive armory of voices. But something about her newest record, Train on the Island, feels like she’s letting the listener in a little closer than usual.

On bitknot, feeble little horse converts what’s been, historically, a kind of hardened laptop twee into something new, confident, and legitimately different. This album sees them shape torqued walls of emotion and sound into a driving, dynamic kind of self-presence operating in a field of illusions.

Ensconced and sculpted by their standard downtempo beats and murky synths, the narrative core of this sprawling project is fairly straightforwardly a meditation on the strangeness of religion, but also, in particular the strangeness of the mismatch between our technical abilities as a species and our capacity to think through their implications.

The slices of life crafted by musician and visual artist John Andrews and his bandmates, collectively known as The Yawns, always have a coziness to them. Though the subjects of his newest record, STREETSWEETER, are quaint characters and experiences from his Brooklyn neighborhood–snowy sidewalks, the first couple times meeting a new friend–the world they exist in feels tangible, capturing a tenderness not often portrayed as the city’s main facade.

Friko’s sophomore album, Something Worth Waiting For, sees the newly expanded quartet fill into bigger, older, and wiser shoes. It is a passionate collection of tracks steeped in restless optimism and a lucidity to the sadness of life, coupled with sweeping arrangements and their signature expressive vocals.

On Something We All Got, cootie catcher channel a primitive and direct (and weirdly wholesome) in between plundered textures and pitch-twisted, weaving melodies.

The sensorial world here is disorienting, spiraling, cyclical. Drums clash in time with a riffing guitar, striking like the second hand of a clock. It breaks down and rebuilds itself repeatedly, balancing chaos and calm on a knife’s edge.

It’s a Fcukers summer: The dance duo draw inspiration from Atlanta’s sound and meld EDM styles to create a novel, invigorating dancefloor of their own on debut record Ö

There have been few times in my life where the opening to an album is so transformative to my understanding of what a genre is as a whole. The most recent song of memory was IDLES’ “Colossus”, opening up Joy as an Act of Resistance . I waited for almost 5 years for something to grip me so quickly. Enter The Scratch, a Dublin, Ireland-based 5-piece band that blends traditional Irish melodies with a tenacious metal and punk approach. The Scratch’s third studio LP, Pull Like a

The 4-piece from Atlanta have made a significant name for themselves on an international scale over the years. Rooted in glam rock and goth tones, Starbenders have cumulatively forged their sound into an epic of pop rock. The Beast Goes On does not look back when walking away from explosions. This new album has Starbenders showcasing their most raw sound yet paired with their cool over-the-top performances. Kimi Shelter in Atlanta (Photo: Sam Kapoor) Kimi said what? The LP be

Nothing’s About to Happen to Me , the 8th full length studio album from art rock icon Mitski, sees her retaining her characteristic maximalist Spaghetti Western color palette but mapping it to more insular, sundown sojourns in lieu of theater kid party anthems. The result is something that feels like it reflects both perennial anxieties and perennial truths. It seems intuitive that a significant amount of a person’s internal disposition becomes visible through their reaction

On one holy day in September 1995, the biggest names in British music, and the young indie, underground scene, gathered together in a studio. Less than a week later, HELP was released to the world by War Child Records. The record was created in response to the turmoil that was unfolding in Bosnia and Herzegovina then, and the proceeds were used to quickly aid children affected by the conflict. Not only was the cause great and just, the album gave us a beautiful, melancholy

Swedish band Girl Scout first turned heads with their debut 2023 EP, the soft indie-popish Real Life Human Garbage , following it up just a few months later with Granny Music . In that short time, you could already hear them beginning to dip their toes into heavier sounds. Their newly released debut record, Brink , lets itself wander further into the murk, though the band retains a distinct ability to explore its human sensitivities, even when it’s happening underneath a no

The Refrigerator sees Ohio rockers Remember Sports trade in some of their 2010’s liveliness for sober clarity over some crisp (albeit mostly familiar) melodies. In contrast with earlier projects such as Sunchokes or Slow Buzz , which carved out a prominent niche for the band in the broader 2010’s indie milieu by stitching together bright-eyed earnestness and frenetic emotion in equal measure, their latest album pulls back the throttle a little, giving us a chance to see som

The California pop punk powerhouse Joyce Manor didn’t leave much to desire after so many iconic records. 40 oz. to Fresno was a cool experiment into plugging tried and true recording methods with a modern kick. However, the new digs are really something to behold. Instead of pushing for a plug-in primed and polished piece, Joyce Manor pays tribute to each wave of emo music in a rustic, dusted off form. Everything is perfectly meshed into a ball of future nostalgia. Don’t bel

If you were around before South London band Dry Cleaning’s current album cycle, you may remember the cryptic nature of their social media presence, plastered mostly with simple line drawings on plain white backgrounds (drawings at times absent and un-accounted for, leaving only white screen) paired with playfully cloying captions. They’ve swapped these now for the all-too-necessary promotional materials, but the spirit remains, preserved by the occasional reappearance of a de

It’s a fun process to guess and try to geolocate bands based on what they sound like. Don’t attempt this with Recess Party. This Must Be will have you dead wrong about where and what this band comes from in the best way. Fortunately, the UGA alumni (Go Dawgs) and Atlanta band are closer than you think. That’s right. You don't have to drive to Ohio or Indiana to witness the best parts of that sound with an undeniable southern intensity. Recess Party (Photo: Rayna Sklar) This