Browsing Tag

Indie Band

Compound Radius constructed a melodic sanctuary for the malaised with their seminal post-grunge single, Hands of Destiny

Posted on 11 February 2026

Compound Radius carries the spirit of Seattle grunge in their core, holding onto the understanding that the visceral aesthetic was more than a moment in time. It is a philosophy for the malaised, and that thread of existentialism runs straight through Hands of Destiny. The track takes influence from Deftones, Alice in Chains, and Incubus before contorting the ferocity into melodic sanctuary for the outliers who were never made to fit the mould, yet pour their blood, sweat and tears into the thankless task of wearing a façade of conformity. You can feel the exhaustion flooding through the energy of the release, imbued with the anger at how outliers can’t be left to find their own sense of peace, purpose, and meaning. It may be an aurally nostalgia-rich anthem, but Compound Radius never lean into sheer assimilation. They just knew what sonic ammunition to pull out to hit the target, and Hands of Destiny is discernibly a bullseye for the duo.

The wider context only strengthens the seminal single. Formed during the global shutdown of 2020, Compound Radius grew from isolation with a sound that refuses confinement. Their wider body of work absorbs funk, soul, folk, baul, Indian classical, electronic textures, melodic instincts, and heavy metal, letting influence move through spiritual vibration and experimentation.

Radius Arnab Datta leads with vocals, guitar, and multilingual lyricism shaped by depth and urgency, while Aditi Datta lifts the emotional reach with her vocals and choreography. Their live history spans high voltage venues, South Asian fusion events, British summer festivals, and support slots for Graham Bonnet. .

Hands of Destiny is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The Going Rate – Road to Nowhere: A New-Wave Ska Riot Fueled by Iridescent Horns

Posted on 10 February 2026
Road to Nowhere by The Going Rate

In The Going Rate’s Road to Nowhere, the galloping guitars rush forward with a momentum, carrying iridescent-with-euphoria horns that flare against the rapturously zealous vocal delivery. There is no separation between voice and instrumentation; they surge together as a single ecstatic force, turning the age-old idiom at the track’s core into a spark of renewal capable of tilting a worldview back toward possibility.

The slightly surrealist middle eight deepens the sense that stepping into The Going Rate’s whirling dervish of a ska world comes with its own rites. Expectation becomes irrelevant when uncertainty is greeted with a smorgasbord of talent, zero restraint, and a vitality that very few outfits inside or outside the ska zeitgeist have the audacity to carry. The vocals act as a steadying force within this sunny side up burst of serotonin, radiating the kind of exhilaration that would surface if Debbie Harry had steered Blondie headfirst into ska. It’s a new-wave riot with its blood up.

The narrative behind the brightness reaches further than the thrill of the arrangement. Road to Nowhere was shaped as an anthem for reclaiming your own direction through doubt, obstacles, and the weight that gathers when you forget your own agency. The horn-heavy progressions and fast-paced guitars pull that intention into physical motion, sending the listener through winding harmonies and straight into an uplifting final chorus. The unresolved closing chord leaves the question hanging in the air, nudging the listener toward whatever comes next.

As a collective, The Going Rate fold their multi gender, multi racial line up into a sound driven by unity, exuberance, and an unwavering support of original music across Long Island, New York City, and the broader Northeast.

Road to Nowhere is now available on all major streaming platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Water Street – Passenger Side: lingering folk melancholia for anyone aching to rewrite the future

Posted on 28 January 2026
Water Street

There’s a reason Water Street have their own coveted corner in the folk-leaning Americana world, and their latest single, Passenger Side, proves exactly why their work lingers long after the final chord settles. The way their melodies refuse to wash over you and drift away, choosing instead to leave traces of emotion suspended behind the progressions, gives the track its slow-burn potency.

Passenger Side transcends rear-view reflection and builds into a past, present and future-crossing allegory of how regret can bleed into meditations on loneliness and stir that familiar ache to steer life somewhere different. Driving as a lyrical conceit may not be groundbreaking, but Water Street folded it into their sonic identity so instinctively that the imagery took on a fresh, emotive weight, pulling you deeper into the narrative with each soft swell and hushed harmony.

As the choruses bloom, the bittersweetness enmeshes with a sense of quiet resolve. Water Street deliver a timeless slice of indie-folk Americana that carries the same heart-bruising appeal as bands who know how to cut straight to the bone. If you appreciate songwriting that leaves Blockbuster-sized marks on your soul, you’ll want to sit in the passenger seat and let the track guide you through its tender turbulence.

Beyond the single, the six-piece band’s ability to merge introspective lyrics with textured touches of jazz, soul and indie rock has already placed them on a promising trajectory, born from their roots in a small New Jersey town and shaped by years of honing their sound from local gigs to festival stages.

Passenger Side is now available on all major streaming platforms. Discover your preferred way to listen via the artist’s website.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Puppies & a Demon blurred psychotropic lines of lo-fi alt-realism in ‘Illusions’

Posted on 17 January 2026

Puppies & a Demon rode the crux of the surf rock wave in Illusions, their psychedelically twisted, lo-fi cruise through grungy indie territory. In one hand, they clutch the kaleidoscopic soul of the 60s, in the other, the sludge of the alt-90s, all while churning up their own brand of sonic dissonance that doesn’t ask for attention so much as it hypnotically absorbs it.

The title may suggest ambiguity, but the creative conviction in the track’s layered textures leaves no room for doubt. Whether you’re new to the idea of reality being little more than smoke and screen, or you’ve been reading behind the veil for years, the impact of this trip is the same. It’s a cosmic exit sign lit by garagey distortion and psychotropic catharsis. The vocals drift between sardonic sweetness and cryptic harbingering, chameleonically slipping in and out of harmony, allowing the freaked-out to be comforted while ruffling the complacent.

Puppies & a Demon are already gaining notoriety for their commitment to sonically warped storytelling. Illusions feels like it bubbled up through the cracks in the pavement after a rainfall of existential dread and came coated in the kind of fuzz that illuminates. There’s method in their madness, but they never let that get in the way of the obscurity. The track’s lo-fi roots hold steady while the band lets their freak flag fly somewhere between the Californian coast and an abandoned squat’s basement speaker stack.

Illusions is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Avantide – Sleep It Off: oceanically woozy indie art rock

Posted on 16 December 2025

Avantide deliver the rare capacity to melodically unfray your nerves while sating even the most voracious appetite for indie art rock aesthetics in Sleep It Off, a track that moves as the mellifluous, oceanically woozy equivalent to hitting the ground running with their LP Keep Running. Formed in Bismarck by down-to-earth music fans who met in a record shop and built a band from shared obsessions, they turned their rise into a slow-burn trail of shows, collaborations and studio hours that shaped the sonic tides they steer through now. Sleep It Off embodies that rhythmic sublimity; the Strokes-y twitch of nostalgia dissolves into cascades of timbre carved from artsy garage rock licks that gently warp the air around them.

The semi-lucid sentimentality of the definitively indie vocals hushes reverie into the kind of recognition you yearn for, a tender understanding and carressive caring that sits beside your idiosyncrasies and self-destructive tendencies without flinching. It is a track for the lovers who wear their hearts on their sleeves next to the culture that keeps them stitched together. Their record shop spawning starts to make all the sense here. To boot, few bands that take influence from the likes of Pavement reach this affectingly experimental place, affirming Avantide as a dying breed that I am going to be inseparable from this LP until the summer.

For this LP, Avantide shaped their material through a process rooted in friendship and persistence, from acoustic skeletons in Mandan rehearsal rooms to full-band arrangements refined alongside engineer Tyler Pilot at Red Dot Recording. Their LP Keep Running has so far earned praise from The Pentatonic and Obscure Sound while landing them shows with Dakotah Faye, The MoonCats and Stephen Steinbrink.

Sleep It Off is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Sun Among Ruins reclaimed the meaning of alt-rock intimacy in the melodic vulnerability of their debut single, Reconcile

Posted on 2 November 2025

If you believe the real measure of a good artist lies in their ability to mend and break hearts in the same lyrical breath, Sun Among Ruins will strike every chord with their debut single, Reconcile. The Philadelphia-based duo, formed by Doug and Kelly, channelled late-night introspection and unguarded honesty into their anthem that flickers between ache and renewal. The track takes alt-rock back to its raw, unfiltered roots while giving the emotional weight room to breathe through a lo-fi lens that feels wholly human.

The intrinsically melodic composition, tenderly rendered, hits that bittersweet balance where longing and resolve collide. The track hits the lo-fi sweetspot; there’s no discordance; just enough scuffed edges to deepen the intimacy of the vignette it paints: the restless push and pull between wanting to exile someone from memory for the pain they caused and yearning for their light when the absence starts to bite. The production doesn’t rush to the catharsis; instead, it lingers in the liminal, where heartache feels like both a wound and a compass.

Beneath its lyrical melancholy, Reconcile holds an unanticipated vitality. Subtle grooves weave through melodic guitar lines and percussive momentum, grounding the emotion in physicality. It’s as if the music itself wrestles with the tension between body and spirit. The duo have created something quietly monumental: an introduction steeped in tenderness, yet carrying the kind of emotional conviction that makes the debut feel like a renewal of what honest alt-rock once meant.

Reconcile 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

Scuzzy Spoken Word Post-Punk Soaked into Alt-Electro Funk Salvation in Hük’s ‘ I Saw the Light’

Posted on 12 September 2025
Hük

With Hük’s latest single, I Saw the Light, the floodgates open on scuzzily debauched alt-electro that carries more funk than a men’s locker room after a spin class. The unmistakable snap of a Manchester accent slices sardonically through synths engineered for the new space age, as I Saw the Light steers murky disco grooves deep into Half-Man Half-Biscuit-style post-punk territory. It’s the sort of track that will have you wondering if Manchester’s own poet laureate has swapped verse for spoken word sermons, as bleakly thematic imagery spills through every menaced syllable.

Instrumentally, Hük masterfully take sounds that would register as a novelty in other hands and rework them into a work of ironic, brain-bending satisfaction. There’s no need to test your IQ in the future, just make sure I Saw the Light sits proudly on your playlists. The four-piece, comprised of Rob Bennett (vocals, guitar, occasional theremin), Jo Wadeson (bass, vocals), John McElroy (synths & samplers), and Paul Gunter (drums), have made a home for themselves in Brighton, but the North runs thick through their sound and attitude. Born as a studio project and now a full live band, Hük prove with this release that post-punk electro funk is alive, bristling, and always smarter than it looks.

I Saw the Light is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen via the artist’s official website. 
Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

Save Oz bridged the generational rock gap with ‘Jaws of Defeat’

Posted on 5 September 2025
Save Oz

Save Oz may as well have strung their guitars with raw nerves instead of steel as they charged into their latest single, Jaws of Defeat. The Hutchinson, Kansas alt-rock outfit has never been shy of throwing punches through their sound, but here, the fury rises with juggernaut momentum. The track spits and sears with brash vintage textures while refusing to lean on pastiche, instead veering into something far stranger, far bigger, with its space-flecked passages that nod to Pixies and The Flaming Lips before being torn apart by protest-soaked refrains and white-hot riffs.

The rawness is carried in Ethan Kaplan’s unflinching vocal conviction, his voice grinding against Dane Power’s searing fretwork, Justin Crane’s heavy-handed bass, and Alan Carlton’s drumming that lands with both force and fever. Together, they summon an atmosphere that sits between combustion and catharsis, a sonic spectacle that pushes beyond nostalgia into contemporary territory where fury feels almost celestial.

Save Oz have already sharpened their edge on singles like That Trick of Silence and Shift in the Tide, but Jaws of Defeat pushes further, showcasing a band unafraid of spilling guts through melody while keeping their footing firmly on the line between classic rock roots and modern alt-rock evolution. With an upcoming EP on the horizon, Save Oz are sharpening their sound into a weapon made for stages big enough to bear the weight of their chaos.

Jaws of Defeat is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen via the artist’s official website, 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

AFTERDRIVE augmented introspection in their curve-transcending indie pop-rock hit, Stick Around

Posted on 6 January 2024

If you’re a sucker for catchy indie pop-rock hooks, evocatively sonorous vocal versatility, and complex layered arrangements, you’re going to want to save a space for the UK’s hottest breakthrough artist, AFTERDRIVE, on your radar. Their standout single, Stick Around, which augments melancholic introspection to anthemic stadium-filling levels, is a testament to the outfit’s ability to craft music with swathes of cross-over appeal.

Opening with choral, reverb-drenched guitar lines that hark back to the dreamy soundscapes of Slowdive, Stick Around immediately sets a tone of profound contemplation. This serene beginning soon gives way to a burst of energy as the song transitions into an electrifying chorus.

With the vocal performance bearing resemblance to the impassioned earnestness of Matty Healy, the single comes charged with emotional depth, which gives even more power to the uplifting and poignant melodies. Even though their music is perfect for live performances where their energy and charisma shine the brightest, Stick Around has all the makings of a playlist staple.

With over 30 gigs in 2023 and a growing presence in the festival circuit, AFTERDRIVE is clearly on an upward trajectory. Their music, as Connor Bennett of BBC aptly put it, is the start of something big. For those who yearn for music that combines the best of indie pop and rock, look no further than AFTERDRIVE’s latest offering.

Stick Around is available to stream on Spotify and all major streaming platforms.

Keep up to date with the latest releases from AFTERDRIVE via Facebook & Instagram.

Review by Amelia Vandergast