Browsing Tag

Alternative Rock

Mert Spalty’s PODUNK Brought Queens Alt-Rock to a Scuzzy, Sweat-Slick Punk Crescendo

Posted on 20 July 2026

The writing is on the basement-venue wall; Mert Spalty’s LP, PODUNK, is the kind of woozy, scuzz-laced release to get the alt scene moving to the exhilaration of posture-free punk rock again. The Queens-based independent musician has played north of 300 shows since 2022, and that live-wire through dodgy PA conditioning burns straight through the album’s beer-spilt bloodstream.

With the same devil-may-care authenticity as Pavement, the raw emotional accessibility of garage-punk heavyweights Fidlar and inklings of Modest Mouse through the campy eccentricity and existential slacker humour, PODUNK traverses the alt spectrum with unruly purpose. Recorded in a shared practice space and Spalty’s apartment, then self-produced and mixed, the record captures bar basements packed with friends, cigarettes outside and punk rock with a bossa nova flute interlude.

The alt anthems are slick with the sweat of an artist uncaging himself. It just so happens that the outpouring of his fervent candour takes the form of some of the best alt-rock and punk instincts: almost innocently childlike creativity, high-fidelity lines ignored, sanitised mainstream potential kicked aside, reality placed front and centre.

With Fletcher Gull tracking drums in a single day before flying home to Australia, and a sold-out Ridgewood release show already proving the songs’ physical pull, PODUNK feels built for rooms where people remember why guitars and gigs you don’t have to skip rent for still matter.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Juliez Andrewz Cast an Ethereal Post-Punk Spell with the Semi-Lucid Sermon, The Forgotten

Posted on 18 July 2026

If Juliez Andrewz is good enough to grace the stage at the Whisky A Go-Go, they are worthy of a spot on your darkwave playlists. The alternative-rock project, led by guitarist and songwriter Jed Tyler, has been performing since 2018, building a reputation across the U.S. and Canada for professional shows, movement-stirring songs and a catalogue that already includes RocknRoll Girl, Life in Rewind, Other Voices and Something From Nothing.

With a Protomartyr-level of panache to their ethereal take on post-punk in their latest standout single, The Forgotten, the spoken-word lyrics become a semi-lucid technicolour sermon. Reverb glistens through the arrangement that borders on avant-garde art rock, refusing to follow formulaic rules while still giving listeners enough rhythmic pull to sink fully into its strange emotional architecture.

You could almost imagine the single drifting through a soundtrack to an indie arthouse flick in place of Dream Baby Dream by Suicide. The cinematic pull of The Forgotten intensifies through its intoxicating psychedelic swells, proving that Juliez Andrewz know exactly how to achieve the correct dosage when alchemising allegories that hold a mirror to societal atrocities.

After four appearances at the iconic West Hollywood venue, Juliez Andrewz sound primed to convert cult intrigue into wider underground devotion.

The Forgotten is now available to stream on all major platforms. For the full experience, watch the official music video on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Bitten Tongues Become Dreamy Alt Indie Rock Catharsis in Bushwick Princess’ Latest single, Temkins

Posted on 17 July 2026

Brooklyn trio Bushwick Princess channelled the pulled teeth of compromised peace into Temkins, a reverb-rich alt indie rock allegory steeped in post-grunge, melodic 90s rock and shoegazed art rock. The fourth single from their EP carries the strain of relationships stalled by stubbornness, pride and too much shared history, where potential remains visible while honest conversation stays trapped behind bitten tongues.

Matt Francini’s vocals drift through spectral Thom Yorke-esque harmonies and Cornell-reminiscent gravel, holding onto their honeyed vulnerability as angular guitars and choral bass movements swell around him. Kane Delaney’s drums give the arrangement shifting physicality, while Andrew Miller’s bass and synth work deepen the sense of emotional suspension. Every contortion in the production visualises the strain of loving someone through an impasse, accepting imperfection while swallowing the words that might disturb a fragile peace.

Francini’s classical background, years spent moving through blues, rock, alternative rock and industrial music, and later vocal training feed directly into the song’s precision and emotional reach. Recorded through a 100% DIY ethos in his Brooklyn apartment, Temkins carries the intimacy of something lived at close range. Its universalised alienation pulls the listener from a tiny interpersonal world into a spiralling vortex of connection, delivering a deliciously timbral, multisensory, synaesthesia-inducing experience with the philosophical force of discovering Kafka, Camus or Dostoyevsky for the first time.

Temkins was officially released on July 16^th and is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

CIGARETTE AFTER SCHOOL teased their pain into the chill of their sludgy post-punk release, YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND

Posted on 12 July 2026

The Montreal-based Ukrainian breakthrough artist CIGARETTE AFTER SCHOOL bridged the gap between Bauhaus and Nirvana with the standout single, YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND, from their debut EP, NOTHING BUT A GAME. By orchestrating a sub-zero tundra of a sludgy landslide with cold, angular guitars and dense production, backed by deadpan vocals that paradoxically howl, they have unequivocally staked their claim as grungy post-punk fusionists with serious command of their source material.

YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND keeps its edges tetanus sharp; the single sits in the aftermath of late-night conversations and empty streets, where introspection sours into volume and distortion pedals hit like concrete to the nervous system. The band’s bio frames their music as thinking out loud, and the single carries that exact sensation: private turmoil forced into a room too loud to ignore.

Their reverence for both genres never collapses into cosplay. CIGARETTE AFTER SCHOOL know their way around grunge and post-punk down to the smallest footnotes on the map, letting raw energy, theatrical restraint and working-class gloom meet inside a release that feels immediate on stage and brutally internal through headphones.

NOTHING BUT A GAME becomes a grimy, ensnaring, maleficent conduit for the artist’s tumult of pain. If YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND is only a glimpse into the mind of CIGARETTE AFTER SCHOOL, their inner worlds must be a carousel through those seven infamous circles.

YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Dancing in the Fallout by Primordial Alien Carried Good Charlotte Melancholy into Apocalyptic Pop Punk

Posted on 5 July 2026

With a melody that echoes the melancholic weight of Good Charlotte’s The Chronicles of Life and Death, augmented with My Chemical Romance-esque histrionic energy and red-hot guitar work, Dancing in the Fallout by Primordial Alien is the ultimate anthem for anyone feeling the heat of the apocalypse as it approaches.

Answers to ennui feel impossible, so, instead, the single grants permission to loosen your grip on the anxiety attached to our Anthropocene and escape back into emo pop punk as it should be: theatrical and cathartic, with sticky-sweet hooks to pour your heart out to. The riffs carry 00s alternative rock melodrama like a life raft.

Primordial Alien is the alternative rock and pop punk project of Schuylar Holland, professionally known as Infinite, a US Army veteran based in Oklahoma. Since beginning the project in December 2023, Holland has shifted from heavier industrial metal origins into more melodic, narrative-rich releases.

For fans of My Chemical Romance and Green Day, with Panic! at the Disco’s theatrical streak flickering at the edges, Dancing in the Fallout is a cinematic inferno and proof of how seminal Primordial Alien has become to the remit of alt-rock.

Dancing in the Fallout is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Guilty? by Rebel Trust Is Grunge Nihilistically Dragged Back into the Basement

Posted on 3 July 2026

Rebel Trust caustically cut across post-grunge with the single, Guilty?, from their recently released LP, 31 Atlas. Far more gnarled and scuzzed than anything Dinosaur Jr. ever conjured, with the melodic gravity of their most iconic hits, Guilty?, in all of its nihilistic ennui, drags mainstream grunge back into the basement.

The songwriting chops are as sharp as what made the pioneers legends in the 90s, but the punk energy riling the sludgy vocals and instrumentals places Rebel Trust in a far more disenchanted territory, one which reflects the malaise of your own life and the wider world falling apart simultaneously. The riffs stay raw, simple and melodic in the way grunge should be, carrying the brutal honesty of Nirvana’s era without sounding like a museum-piece imitation.

Rebel Trust is a one-man project, created entirely by Robert without AI, made in the slivers of free time left between hospital shifts. That context gives Guilty? a working-life exhaustion and a lived-in strain that cannot be faked. If we are all being honest with ourselves, we can probably all relate to Guilty?, even in an abstract way. All it takes is one first-world problem, and we are spiralling until we are beckoning the apocalypse.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Tokyo Alt-Rock Project Solo Ronin Hit an Immediate Chest-Swelling Force on 10,000 Miles

Posted on 3 July 2026

Emo has reached peak maturity through the debut single, 10,000 Miles, by Solo Ronin. Created by Tokyo-based artist Kris Thiesen, born in Japan and raised in California, the alternative rock project came in hot with a debut that already sounds fully inhabited and emotionally exposed.

After a prelude that instantly throws you back to when you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, the track rips into melodic 00s rock in the vein of Breaking Benjamin 10,000 Miles builds from acoustic-driven intimacy into a full-band alt-rock climax that feels cinematically pit-worthy. Produced and mixed by Aaron Johnson, whose credits include Secondhand Serenade and The Fray, the polish on the single heightens its thematic impact to the nth degree.

There’s no sense of Solo Ronin finding their feet with this debut release or hesitantly approaching the industry; they came in with their soul wide open, exuding the same magnetic resonance as Chris Cornell. Lyrically, the single explores distance, timing and the relationships that keep living inside you long after the practical ending.

With early support from Amazing Radio, Raw Radio, Nova Hits Radio and The Fix on Totally Wired Radio, plus clear appeal for fans of Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, Secondhand Serenade and Cory Wells, the visceral impact of this debut landing will stay lodged.

10,000 Miles is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

LYRA’s ‘English Weather’ Hits Like Alt-Indie Petrichor After the Worst Kind of Goodbye

Posted on 30 June 2026

Metaphorically, when it rains, it pours, leaving us in the damp, morose poetry of petrichor, and no one knows that more than the alt-indie trio, LYRA. In their latest single, English Weather, the breakthrough act summoned a monsoon of meaning, letting grief move through the song as both a weather system and emotional aftermath.

The reverberations from the cavernous piano and guitar textures could move mountains as the lead vocals seductively languish inside the melancholy of the release. Clouds break for moments of gratitude to shine into the vignette of loss and memory, then gather again in choruses commanded with the same dramatic authority as Garbage’s biggest hits. The alt-90s act as a weathervane for this stunning blueprint of emotional attrition, penned in poetry and pain, while LYRA’s soul-inflected indie rock core anthemises the rawest facets of the human experience.

If you know how it feels to want one more day with someone already gone, the resonance in this intimate triumph, which builds around the emotional architecture of Wolf Alice, will hit hard enough to bruise. Produced and mixed by Larry Hibbitt, whose work spans Nothing But Thieves, Marmozets, Boston Manor and Sea Girls, English Weather marks the third single from LYRA’s forthcoming EP.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Riot State’s America, The Ghost (Basement Demo) Brought Denver Punk to the Frontline of American Dissent

Posted on 29 June 2026

To the sound of sirens, America, The Ghost (Basement Demo) by Riot State is incited. The Denver punk band lashes against the violence, control and oppression inflicted upon the American masses with enough force to leave scars across the stoic gaze of the Statue of Liberty.

The track is a red-hot inferno of adrenaline as the punk ethos augments rhythmically high-octane rock; it is a landslide of rolling punches, making the anthem a feeding frenzy of volition. The riffs are wired to the picket line, every vocal strike hits like a body refusing another manufactured crisis, and the basement-demo rawness only sharpens the track’s urgency and importance.

Formed in late 2025, Riot State arrive with serious pedigree across Colorado’s music scene, featuring Ariadnee Ziady on lead guitar, Troy Ten Eyck on bass and Mitchel Paulson on vocals.

For Rage Against the Machine fans searching for contemporary protest voltage, Riot State sound ready to occupy the vanguard. With serious songwriting force hammering out a monolithic sign of the times, this is a protest picket that should send splinters through society.

America, The Ghost (Basement Demo) is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Harper – Anymore: A Distortion-Maimed Shoegaze Hymn of Bloody Valentine-Esque Static Haunted by the Melancholy of Thom Yorke

Posted on 23 June 2026

If Thom Yorke ever lent his voice and rhythmic tendencies to My Bloody Valentine, the alt-indie scene would have imploded through everyone collectively losing their minds; the idea of what that would sound like ripples through Anymore, one of the standout singles, Anymore, from harper’s debut album, Breach.

Languid vocal notes stretch through the arrangement, drifting around the walls of distortion-maimed shoegaze guitars; each time the scuzz slips away, it leaves room for the sublimity within the melody to shine through the production alongside the ethereal voice and timbres of acoustic strings, juxtaposing the no-wavey noise that constantly feeds back floods of caustic energy from the amps.

Anymore is the kind of single that could reach you even in the darkest pit of despair, entrenched in its own sense of cultivated darkness, the kind of darkness which can only belong to the painfully self-aware, which, we imagine, comprises the vast majority of harper’s international fanbase, which they should be taking as a badge of cerebral honour.

The Detroit four-piece spent three years recording Breach, threading hundreds of guitar layers through pipe organ, string octet, piano and harp arrangements until the record became a colossal act of atmosphere. Produced by Nick West under the mentorship of Chris Vrenna, founding drummer of Nine Inch Nails, the album reflects its meticulous orchestration and the band’s obsessive devotion to aural purification.

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

Review by Amelia Vandergast

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