Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week, we got new music from The Cure, Chat Pile, Scowl, and more.
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Chat Pile – Cool World
Everything is fucked up, and the four members of Chat Pile are well aware of that. It’s a cruel world we live in, and the Oklahoma City noise-metal specialists made an album about it called Cool World. Their 2022 debut album, God’s Country, abounded with instantly memorable lines about Grimace from McDonald’s and the ever-worsening housing crisis in the United States. On its follow-up, Chat Pile air some more grievances, namely ones about Israel’s ceaseless, brutal violence toward Palestinians, the predatory nature of the military industrial complex, and the inseparability of domestic and international struggles. It’s all set to the grimiest, grittiest music out there, with basslines that hit like sledgehammers and guitar riffs and drums harder than concrete. “No way out,” screams Raygun Busch on the album closer. He may be right, but at least we have Chat Pile to channel our collective anger.
Touché Amoré – Spiral In A Straight Line
Since their 2009 debut, Touché Amoré have rightfully become post-hardcore legends. With every throat-shredding scream, frontman Jeremy Bolm packs an album’s worth of feelings into a single couplet: “Is it enough / To call it off,” he yells in the chorus of opening track “Nobody’s.” Spiral In A Straight Line, the SoCal band’s sixth studio LP, further refines the high-octane hardcore and emotional catharsis they’ve always been known for. Bringing in collaborators like Lou Barlow on “Subversion (Brand New Love)” and Julien Baker on album closer “Goodbye For Now,” Touché Amoré expand their sonic universe, one surefire anthem after another.
Ekko Astral – “Pomegranate Tree”
It’s impossible to ignore Israel’s genocide against Palestine, one that is only getting worse and expanding into other parts of the Middle East, too, such as Lebanon and Iran. The United States has long been complicit in this genocide, actively funding it and aiding yet another Nakba, which displaced over 750,000 Palestinians back in 1948. Jael Holzman and Miri Tyler of Ekko Astral were raised Jewish, and, as Tyler describes in a press statement, “the fact that these atrocities are being carried out in the name of our faith, culture, and community – well, it’s enough to keep us up at night.” Ekko Astral transmit that fury into “Pomegranate Tree,” the D.C. punk band’s latest single. It’s a six-minute art-rock opus that simmers with rage, grief, and dread before it all boils over when Holzman repeats over and over again, increasingly more intense in the song’s final moments, “the district sleeps atoned tonight!”
Jim Legxacy – “aggressive”
Jim Legxacy fused hip-hop, Midwest emo, and Jersey club on last year’s masterful mixtape, Homeless N***a Pop Music. That record earned plenty of deserved attention with the American Football-esque guitars on “dj” and the Miley Cyrus sample-turned Afrobeats bop “mileys riddim.” The rapper, singer, and producer is already back with “aggressive,” his first single for new label home XL Recordings. Taken from his forthcoming mixtape Black British Music (2024) (still no release date, sadly), it’s proof that Jim Legxacy wasn’t a flash in the pan. He’s here to stay and make some of the best pop music around.
Kim Gordon – “Bangin’ On The Freeway”
The Collective, the second solo album from Sonic Youth co-founder and visual artist Kim Gordon, is a clear highlight of 2024. It was released back in March, and Gordon has updated that initial release with a deluxe version, featuring two bonus tracks. “Bangin’ On The Freeway,” the new bonus track, hinges itself on a Jersey club beat gone haywire. Gordon’s frantic delivery of the title and Justin Raisen’s grainy, clattering production fit in perfectly with the world Gordon created on the album proper.
Jeff Parker – “Late Autumn”
In 2022, Jeff Parker and his ETA IVtet released Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy, their first double album, a curation of live sessions recorded at the Los Angeles cocktail bar from which the quartet takes its name. Parker and his band have a special history with ETA, having done a residency there beginning in 2016 until it closed in December of last year. Whereas Mondays was taken from numerous sessions at the bar, the jazz guitarist’s new album, The Way Out Of Easy, was recorded and mixed live in a single night in January 2023. Totaling more than 80 minutes and comprising four discrete pieces of improvised jazz, The Way Out Of Easy celebrates the venue that hosted Parker and his ETA IVtet for seven fruitful years. “Late Autumn,” its 17-minute lead single, captures the camaraderie shared among Parker, saxophonist Josh Johnson, double bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose. From the gentle guitar arpeggios that slowly yield to a gorgeous sax solo near the halfway mark, “Late Autumn” memorializes ETA, yet it also shows that the best music can itself become an act of preservation.
The Cure – “A Fragile Thing”
New music from The Cure is the cure we all needed. “A Fragile Thing,” the latest preview of Songs Of A Lost World, has been in the alt legends’ live rotation for a couple of years now, but at last we finally get to hear the proper studio version. Like previous single “Alone,” “A Fragile Thing” evokes the band’s darker, icier records like Disintegration or a glossier version of Pornography or Seventeen Seconds with its ethereal piano, chorus-soaked guitars, and sweeping wind chimes. Nov. 1 can not get here sooner enough.
Youth Lagoon – “My Beautiful Girl”
Heaven Is A Junkyard was one of the standout indie rock releases of 2023 and marked the grand return of Youth Lagoon. The Idaho-based musician Trevor Powers kept up the momentum with standalone singles like “Football” and “Lucy Takes A Picture” this year, and now he’s back with “My Beautiful Girl.” It relates a story of Powers’ trip to a remote cemetery, where he found a gravestone adorned with only three words: “My beautiful girl.” Like the message that inspired its creation, “My Beautiful Girl” is concise yet no less heart-wrenching. Composed of sparse piano chords and Powers’ hushed timbre, Youth Lagoon’s latest song evokes the haziness of memory and lost love.
Hey, Ily! – “Wind-Up Toy”
If Brian Eno made music for airports, then Hey, Ily! makes music for Super Smash Bros. The emo five-piece’s latest preview of their sophomore album, Hey, I Loathe You!, is a stirring collage of chiptune, post-rock, and math rock. “Wind-Up Toy” shifts gears with the dexterity of an Elite Smash player, making instrumental prowess and simultaneous genre exercises sound easy and fluid. It’s the type of song that only Hey, Ily! could pull off.
Scowl – “Special”
Even with just one full-length LP to their name, Scowl are already stars in the hardcore scene. Thanks to a widely disseminated hate5six video of the Santa Cruz band performing at a Sonic Drive-In, Scowl have captured the attention of not just their punk peers but full-on institutions like Taco Bell and Coachella. Freshly signed to big indie label Dead Oceans, Scowl is back with “Special,” a new one-off single reminiscent of newer groups like Meet Me @ The Altar and Pinkshift while evoking legacy heavy acts like Deftones. Split between clean vocals and screaming, thunderous toms and chugging guitars, “Special” might just be their best song yet.