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Shoegaze

Concealer Dragged Angular Guitars and Stone Roses Swagger into Shoegaze’s Next Burst Through the Alt-Indie Zeitgeist with their Debut, ‘Someone’

Posted on 30 May 2026

Alt-90s ear candy is sweeter than ever now that Concealer have entered the alt-indie circuit with their debut single, Someone. After hooking shoegaze fans hook, reel, and sinker with iconic Slowdive-esque angular guitar notes drifting into a kaleidoscope of choral saturation, the band pivots into vocal swagger possessed by Stone Roses and Fontaines D.C., with cadencing so hypnotic and kinetic it acts as a percussive instrument as much as a conduit for bittersweet longing.

Someone feels built from the residue of smoke-machined venues, scuffed pedals, overdriven youth, and the weary romance of guitars sounding half-awake and fully haunted. The production keeps its shoegaze haze lucid enough for the hooks to cut through, while the vocal line prowls across the track with the clipped bite of post-punk and the loose-limbed cool of 90s indie rock.

With just enough psychedelia to twist the atmosphere in a way we’re sure Bez would get high on, Concealer pushed indie shoegaze beyond its usual revivalist limits and landed on something far more affecting than genre nostalgia. Their debut carries the confidence of a band already aware of the room they can command and the cultural pressure they can apply. Someone is a masterstroke of a first strike, armed with exactly what is needed to keep the cultural zeitgeist in a chokehold until their next release.

Someone is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

 Review by Amelia Vandergast

Tokyo’s RAINBOW BELTZ built a monolithic monument of ethereal visceralism in their shoegaze single, 246

Posted on 11 March 2026

‘Sonorous’ hardly scratches the surface of the full-frontal production in 246, the latest single from the Tokyo-based powerhouse RAINBOW BELTZ. The track arrives as a colossal surge of sound, pushing its momentum forward with a pulsating, oscillating energy that feels almost physical in its impact. The production asserts itself with monolithic force, creating an atmosphere that floods the senses while still allowing the song’s melodic core to shine through the haze.

Even the most impermeable walls of sound raised by shoegaze pioneers would struggle to match the intensity of 246. The release thrums with kaleidoscopically hazed momentum, allowing indie dream-pop harmonies to ascend above the intrinsically melodic tumult. Those harmonies glide across the arrangement with diaphonous elegance, hovering above the surging instrumentation while the rhythm section drives the track forward with relentless propulsion.

The way the sound resounds, the way the release becomes greater than the sum of its parts, and the way RAINBOW BELTZ establish their own viscerally ethereal sonic signature all contribute to a listening experience that exhibits a band with a cultivated approach to scale and texture. Their ability to turn dense arrangements into something almost surreally luminous is something not easily forgotten.

246 is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

LIBRE – All Combined: Post-Punk Shoegaze with a Lush Surge of Platonic Romanticism

Posted on 17 January 2026
LIBRE

The debut single, LIBRE, All Combined, writhes with platonic romanticism and floods the bones with the kind of emotion Bowie channelled in ‘Heroes’, caught in a swirl of post-punk melancholy and shoegaze gauziness. With angular guitar licks slicing through the haze and a bassline that clings like memory, there’s an archive of aching devotion in every note that affirms your soul instead of trying to break your heart.

Instead of hiding behind a typical wall of fuzzed-out noise, All Combined lets the textures speak, lets the vocals bleed with a paradox of deadpan soul, and lets the shimmer sit close enough to reach without ever giving in to gloss. The mood simmers in dreamily sludged aesthetics, but LIBRE don’t let it drift too far from a tether of emotional clarity. The track hypnotically curls itself around you, echoing the kind of late-night thoughts that know exactly which memories have shaped you — and which ones still hurt to hold.

Copenhagen’s LIBRE have shown their hand early: this is a band intent on tugging souls in from the void with noisy delicacy. All Combined, mixed by Brian Batz, is for the melancholics who grew up backing The Chameleons over Joy Division, and for those who still want their post-punk adjacent releases served with a warm swell of affection rather than monochrome despair. With this debut, you can let go of apathy and hold on to something far more worthwhile.

All Combined is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen here.
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Review by Amelia Vandergast

Ascension let Smoke Screens drift through shoegazey post-punk poetry

Posted on 20 November 2025

London-based duo Ascension cracked open their EP with Smoke Screens, a title track that glows like a warning flare over a postmodern cityscape. Ascension earned their moniker in the EP as the opening single moves like a semi-lucid synthesis of shoegaze, ambient downtempo post-punk, art rock and poetry, coalescing into a cocktail of resolving resonance.

For those who feel adrift in their own minds, the single matches the timbre of disillusioned dissonance through reverb-soaked instrumentals drifting through corridors of the production, as the syncopation illustrates the loss of grip from an even keel. If you could imagine David Lynch lending his eye for unsettling beauty to Thom Yorke as he plays havoc with rhythmic patterns in a soundscape that nods to Portishead and carries the luxe, swooning croons of The Walkmen, you get close to what the London-based outfit pulled from the ether with Smoke Screens.

Outside the studio, the duo cut their teeth on stage with live drummer Oli Banyard, letting the songs mutate in improvised London sets before recording them. The EP sketches out a descent into a dystopian skyline while keeping a hold on melody and emotional clarity, hinting this is only the opening chapter for a project wired to push alt music into stranger, even more affecting territory.

Smoke Screens is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Georgia Mintz scuzzed up shoegaze sorrow in the sludgy alt rock confessional, ‘Come Back’

Posted on 19 November 2025

Georgia Mintz does not waste time with pleasantries in Come Back. If an artist opens a track on the lyric, “I’m having sex with strangers, I’m lying to my mom”, you know you’re in for a barrage of bruises, and Georgia comes down heavy in their sophomore single, which digs into the kind of grief that leaves teeth marks. A Boston-based alternative rocker with a soft spot for folk confessionals, Mintz uses the track to pick at the scab of absence until it sings, and the effect is as intoxicating as it is uncomfortable.

Come Back starts off in the nostalgic annals of shoegaze before scuzzing up the distortion with swathes of fuzzy rancour to absolve the pain of the previous confessions. It’s messy, it’s chaotic, but Georgia Mintz knows exactly where to push their sound to deliver visceralism and where to scale back to build tension. Each swell in the sludgy alt-rock arrangement adds more intensity to the wounding cry into the void that an absence created. The abrupt, mid-lyrical refrain ending leaves you hanging in the best and worst possible way, stuck between craving resolve and knowing there may never be any for this particular grief-stricken vignette.

As a rising Boston-based artist, Mintz has already started to carve out a space with intimate and edgy alt-rock songs that lean into vulnerability as much as volume. Come Back, released as their second single in November, traces the emotional fallout of someone leaving without sanitising the wreckage. It leaves behind the ghost of expectation, promising more resonant sonic friction from an artist championing sludgy alt-rock innovation and unflinching emotional candour.

Come Back is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

– Review by Amelia Vandergast

The breakthrough augmentors of Shoegaze summoned sonic sanctuary in ‘Paper’

Posted on 29 October 2025

Planer dared to start with ‘End’ on their debut 3-track release. The standout single, Paper, is sonic sanctuary for anyone who was soaking up puddles in their baggy jeans before it was cool. The augmentors of Shoegaze built the track with a hypnotic juxtaposition between the lush languidity of distortion-heavy production and visceral instrumental momentum. It’s pure poetry. The ennui of outlier desolation oscillates through the release before Grandaddy-esque polyphonic synths deliver a sugar fix into the sludgy melancholy that will feel like home for any alt 90s kid, or anyone romanticising the era they wish they existed within, instead of the more maleficent malaise of modernity.

The diaphanous humility in the vocals draws you in, while the relentless kinetic current ensures you stay submerged and sonically sedated by the sense-wrestling progressions. It’s a stunning way to signal that Planer’s future releases will only dive deeper into that emotionally expansive density.

Formed of J. Mooradian, Z. Moncrieff, Matt “Bucket” Day, and Ricky Frame, Planer exists somewhere between ethereal beauty and crushing sonic weight. They’ve already sharpened a sound that weaves post-rock dynamics into heavy shoegaze foundations, with dual vocal and guitar work that never chases crescendo for the sake of it. Their aim is atmosphere and texture, and Paper proves they’ve mastered the push and pull between introspection and catharsis.

Paper is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

BABY B spilt spirals of distortion and dream pop etherealism in her seminal single, Because

Posted on 30 September 2025
BABY

BABY B will turn rhythmic pulses inside out with her seminal single, Because. The way the shoegazey oscillations in the intro spiral into alt-indie distortion before moody synths and glassy 80s-esque harmonies cut through locks you into the vignette of a mind unspooling. Before a single lyric is relayed, the atmosphere has already atomised the senses. When the words arrive, they blur confession with disorientation, weighing the fine line between affection and affliction until it becomes impossible to separate the two.

The crossover magnetism is undeniable. The former dance-pop artist has thrown herself into one of the most essential alt-indie releases of the year, one that could be devoured by mainstream pop listeners while still holding enough etherealism to draw in dream pop devotees. It’s a rare synthesis, proof that the alt and pop worlds need not run in parallel when one artist can hold them both in the palm of her hand.

Behind BABY is Manchester-born songwriter Sarah Blanchard, who has spent over a decade writing hits for other artists, her pen fuelling tracks that have collectively amassed over a billion streams. With long-term collaborator Richard Boardman, formerly of Delphic, she has built a cinematic yet intimate sonic world that feels like a long-overdue arrival of her own alchemy. Released through AWAL, Because is only the beginning; the industry would be skewed beyond reason if 2025 didn’t see BABY ascend to the recognition she so clearly deserves.

Because is now available on all major streaming platforms.

Follow BABY B on TikTok and Instagram to stay up to date with all her latest releases.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

With glimmer, MICAH soundtracked the slow spin of longing with shoegazey melancholy

Posted on 26 September 2025

MICAH reached the epitome of indie dream pop melancholy with her sophomore single, glimmer, which fuses shoegaze-y reverb with a voice with enough soul to shake even the most stoic heartstrings. glimmer is a song of deep longing, with guitars that yearn as much as the lyrics as they pirouette their way through the moody synths and over the beat that allows the single to amass visceral momentum following the quiescently forlorn prelude.

After introducing herself with her 2024 debut single Mirror, MICAH, the London-based singer-songwriter, has continued redefining her place in the alternative pop and soft rock landscape. Drawing inspiration from artists like Willow Smith, Fousheé, and Billie Eilish, her signature weaves live rock and acoustic elements into a spectral sound that refuses to stay in one lane.

As one of the most essential up-and-coming voices in indie dream pop, it should be criminal to ignore MICAH and how she’s used the depths of her soul to revolutionise the genre with an aching authenticity that won’t fail to leave an imprint on you.

With BBC’s Boarders already catching wind of her talent, alongside airplay on Amazing Radio and Smoke Radio, and a Top 10 placement in the 2025 Song Academy Songwriting Competition for glimmer, she’s not only putting her sound on the map, she’s drawing one of her own. Her recent performances at The Finsbury and The Bush Theatre prove that this momentum is more than a flicker.

glimmer is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Wastrels Summoned Shoegazing Post-Rock Spirits in ‘Devil Built a Home Where You Once Prayed’

Posted on 21 September 2025

Through deliciously dark oscillations of distortion and cinematically psychedelic conjurings of harbingering post-rock, Wastrels held the ultimate sonic séance with Devil Built a Home Where You Once Prayed. With a tonal palette capable of striking deep into the serrated souls of fans of the Horrors and Echo and the Bunnymen, this release proves that Wastrels know exactly how to use texture to pull listeners into their world. What they conjure here is a pit of melancholic reckoning, built from shoegaze-soaked walls of noise and basslines that lurch like spectres. Even the title feels like a warning etched into stone, and the soundscape signs and seals their metaphysical vision into your psyche in a way that will haunt you long after the last note collapses into static.

After six years away from the studio, the Minneapolis shoegaze and dreampop outfit has returned sharper than ever, following up their 2019 debut LP Dangerous Summer with the double A-side single Bell Jar / Devil Built a Home Where You Once Prayed, ahead of their forthcoming full-length album due this autumn.

With Dan Schulte-Sasse’s phantasmal vocal presence riding over Rich Norris’ keys and guitars, anchored by Sahil Merchant’s bass and Ben Mulhern’s percussion, Wastrels have created their most unflinching work to date.

Devil Built a Home Where You Once Prayed is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Søftbleach Staked Their Claim on the Indie Dream Pop Zeitgeist with Fortress

Posted on 10 September 2025

With a sound so ethereal it slipped straight into the new wave indie dream pop zeitgeist, the debut single Fortress from Søftbleach marked yet another trajectory of ascent from the diaphanous London-based powerhouse. They’re already shaping up to be an artist that seeks out your senses rather than waits to be sought.

It’s the most plausible outcome that they’ll be on all the hit radio stations, TV shows, and appear on the most prestigious stages based on the ephemeral weight of their talent, which is enough to bridge the gap between fans of Sabrina Carpenter and Beach House. With a CV that already stretches from Abbey Road to Love Island sync placements, they’ve made short work of leaving their sonic fingerprints all over the industry before their first EP has even landed

Their debut is a sublime sonic sojourn into the affection within tenderness, which allows you to feel the full force of the beauty of intimacy with its strobing and stabbing synths that pour reverb over the staccato-funk-spliced guitars. The softness doesn’t take the edge off; it heightens the ache of wanting to hold someone so close in perpetuity that they become your sanctuary. The sharpness of the rhythm section dances in perfect juxtaposition with the featherlight vocal presence, creating a sonic interplay that gently devours attention.

Fortress is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 


Review by Amelia Vandergast