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 Pup, Youth Lagoon, Ethel Cain, and more.
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Ethel Cain – Perverts
In 2022, Hayden Anhedönia released her debut album as Ethel Cain. Preacher’s Daughter included the glossy indie-pop bop “American Teenager” and folk-horror epics like “Thoroughfare” and “Sun Bleached Flies.” Perverts, its nearly 90-minute follow-up “EP,” shirks the hooks for long stretches of ambient metal in the vein of Midwife or Vyva Melinkolya. Perverts is a deeply transgressive, enthralling work that challenges all preconceived notions of what pop stardom should be. But to read it simply as a rejection of such stardom would be reductive. On its own terms, Perverts unearths Cain’s gifts for doomy drone and spatial tones.
Japanese Breakfast – “Orlando In Love”
It was right there in the album title. 2021’s Jubilee marked Michelle Zauner’s most buoyant, joyous work under the Japanese Breakfast sobriquet to date. Colored by sparkly synths and shimmering John Hughes guitars, the singer-songwriter (and NYT best-selling memoirist) broke through to a new audience through a batch of elastic pop songs. Its follow-up, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), due March 21, is noticeably scaled back. It replaces its predecessor’s doe-eyed romantics with gothic Romanticism. That much is apparent from lead single “Orlando In Love” alone. Zauner’s latest takes cues from Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo as much as it does Fleetwood Mac. Produced by the singular Blake Mills, “Orlando In Love” reveals a darker, mellower side to Japanese Breakfast, akin to cleaning an opulent, golden goblet only to discover a rusted surface beneath.
Destroyer – “Bologna”
In 2022, Dan Bejar released Labyrinthitis, a synth-pop opus and spiritual finale of the trilogy that began with 2017’s Ken. Using the term “eras” these days to describe a musician’s career trajectory feels trite for obvious reasons, but Destroyer, since its inception, has been a project based on discrete sonic experiments that typically last for three or so albums. Dan’s Boogie, out March 28, pivots away from the lush environs of the last few Destroyer entries for something that meets the middle point between the immediate Kaputt and the jangly Rubies. Lead single “Bologna” brims with distant, reverb-drenched hand drums and squelchy synth arpeggios. Much of Bejar’s body of work relies on its blend of inscrutability and accessibility, and “Bologna” is the most cogent argument for that balance he’s found yet.
Youth Lagoon – “Speed Freak”
As Youth Lagoon, Trevor Powers has explored the haunted, desolate corners of American life. When he revived the project in 2023 with the first Youth Lagoon record in nearly a decade, Powers’ otherworldly vocals and sparse electronics resonated with the welcome familiarity of returning to a beloved place you haven’t visited in years. For Rarely Do I Dream, its follow-up due Feb. 21, the Idaho native sifted through a trove of his family’s home videos to build a sonic foundation. Interspersed with childhood memories and re-contextualized within his frame of mind as an adult, lead single “Speed Freak” imagines Youth Lagoon within a new light: the past as a conduit for understanding our present.
Pup – “Paranoid”
The last we heard from Toronto punks Pup, it was for their excellent fourth album, The Unraveling Of Puptheband. Ahead of an arena tour supporting fellow Canadians Sum 41, Pup have shared “Paranoid,” one of the heaviest tunes the band has released to date. Around the halfway mark, a classic pop-punk breakdown ensues with fuzzy guitars and a heavily distorted bass interpolation of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” believe it or not. Whatever the band has in store next, it’s certainly something to look forward to.
clipping. – “Change The Channel”
clipping. have sounded like the future for over a decade now. Rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes have infused their experimental hip-hop with a sci-fi edge and ambition galactic enough to put Ridley Scott to the test. Their new single, “Change The Channel,” once again flaunts the trio’s gift for dystopian narrative arcs, exploring concepts like technological malfeasance and institutional power structures with a fantasy novelist’s penchant for attentive world-building. Diggs’ rapid-fire raps and Hutson and Snipes’ industrial beats complement each other. As a whole, their futuristic sound is tuned directly to the present, collapsing time itself in the process.
(Editor’s Note: Also see Diggs in the best movie of the year, Nickel Boys.)
Panda Bear – “Ferry Lady”
The next Panda Bear album, Sinister Grift, is just a month away from release. Noah Lennox, the man behind the moniker, has shared another preview of the forthcoming record. “Ferry Lady” sees the Animal Collective member entertain his infatuation with dub, simultaneously recalling AnCo’s Feels and the reworked version of his collaborative album with Sonic Boom, Reset In Dub. It’s another track that showcases the myriad interlocking layers of Panda Bear’s music.
awakebutstillinbed – “Sovereign”
A new split EP, appropriately titled fourwaysplit, features four Florida emo bands known for their throat-shredding, screaming vocals. Alongside Aren’t We Amphibians, California Cousins, and Your Arms Are My Cocoon, there’s awakebutstillinbed’s brand-new song, the head-banging adrenaline rush “Sovereign.” Shannon Taylor’s full-throttle intensity propels the track forward at a blistering pace, refusing to let up on the gas for a little over two minutes.
Cloakroom – “Bad Larry”
As Cloakroom lyricist and guitarist Doyle Martin puts it in a press release, his band’s new single, “Bad Larry,” is named after a character who “roams free and wants for nothing; living a life of experience and lives by his own rules and dying on his own terms; a life to vilify or envy.” The song itself contains elements of spectral Americana with its forlorn acoustic guitars and subtle güiro, a notable shift from the heavy, melodic shoegaze of their last LP, 2022’s Dissolution Wave. If the singles have suggested anything, then it’s that the forthcoming Last Leg Of The Human Table will be a sizable level-up.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – “Downstream”
Will Oldham, the folk songwriter otherwise known as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, is on the precipice of sharing his Nashville country record, The Purple Bird. Although Oldham has always incorporated some twang into his music as a lone-wolf (or should I say superwolf?) maverick, he’s fully embracing the capital-C Country of it all on his duet with the legendary John Anderson, “Downstream.” It’s further proof that Oldham’s forthcoming record isn’t pastiche in the slightest. This is as earnest and faithful as you can get.
