Every week, I scour the latest releases from emerging, DIY, and independent artists in Australia. The best of them end up on the playlist.
Follow The Playlist
Listen to this week’s edition here or below, 100% made up of the best brand-new music from the best new artists in Australia – never pay-to-play, and always only releases from the last week (alright, maybe two).
From This Week’s Cover Artist
Mega Fäuna – Heartbeat
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
any young mechanic – there’s a new place on the market
dr. spaceman – lucky
fan girl – easy now
hannah kate – 360
howling bells – sweet relief
kisschasy – your girlfriend
liquid zoo – tell me
mega fäuna – heartbeat
stagger – ever
Indie Punk & Punk
cheap-skate – fallen short
dedpan – k-i-s-s-i-n-g
kirklandd – veneer
loose content – big bright burning sun
runyamouth – dodged a bullet
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
retail therapy – shame
Pop Punk
kevin silvester – bullet for your valentine
phil and the blanks – josiah
teenage joans – bandits
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
about yesterday – lose my mind
banquet darling – dynamite daddy
blokbstr – flight
chloe gill – pushing punishment
excuse for an exit – xtra sweet
gum – celluloid
julius black – yhyh
keli holiday – more
skeleten – cornucopia
the heart shaped aces – sadie
Pop & EDM
alisya rae – same thing
imagine the rapper – girls & boys
new nobility – love is paradise
saint laurence – melancholia
younique – hold me like a feather
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
djanaba – f.u+u+u
Aussie Indie
destinezia – crooked teeth.
last dinosaurs – her mind
pacific avenue – eat me alive
the velvet club – this time
tommy gun – austi
Uptempo Twang
adam newling – foxtrap
arianna – alive
big delicious – city of archangel
pete campbell – once upon a time
staylucky – hold yer horses
Downtempo Drums
aria nova – lover
boysnlove – being alive
butterknife – record player
chuck sics – arms
cooee – welcome
georgia maq – tropical lush ice
holloh – seafoam
julian wa – it’s over
lucy sugerman – he loves me, he loves me not
tulliah – you got it
Unplugged
amelia magdalena – low tide
betty – north
finding better health – the earth
gabriella cohen – thrills
kim yang – forever this way
king howe – veronica
lachlan – sudden end
Rock
avalanche – going for broke
blind eliza – novelties and party tricks
clean tones – beggin please
max jackson – red dirt rocknroll
reflekta – i’ll follow – radio edit
sunbleached – rip
temperate – i’ve lost control
Strange & Heavy
euterpe – let me be your dog (leave me languid)
nth rd – the death of us
same pains – terminal
vicious rain – a spotless mind
Pictured: Mega Fäuna at Metro Social, Sydney
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From here on it’s just an explanation of the genres. You can safely skip this unless you’re a bit weird about this sort of stuff, like me.
Yeah, I know, genres are a bit weird, but it’s a useful way to collect songs together that feel similar. I always wanted the playlist to flow nicely and I probably put more work into that than is a) necessary or b) effective, but this is how I do it, for good or ill. The genres are mostly pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few that aren’t as obvious. If you’re as dorky as me you might want to be clear on the definitions, even if it’s just so you can tell me I’m absolutely full of it.
These are all the genres I use, but they may not all be shown above depending on the makeup of the week’s releases.
Indie Rock
I put this first because I define this one as particularly higher tempo Indie Rock. If it’s slower, it’s most likely in the Downtempo Drums section below.
Indie Punk & Punk
Coming out of the Indie Rock section it stays fast (or gets faster) and also gets a bit spikier.
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
The fuzz and the motorik have seemed to work together in this section, especially leading into the next one – I also bundle them together because they are both relatively rare, so it’s easier to keep them under one umbrella.
Pop Punk
The guitars stay loud but it starts to get shinier with the pop punk crowd, leading us out of the noisier end and into more polished territories.
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
The gentler end of indie lives here, as well as the more alternative, guitar-adjacent (or just place wonky) pop lives.
Pop & EDM
Full on glittering pop explodes at this point, along with any purely electronic artists
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
The tempo cools off a little here, but the beats become that bit more emphatic as hip-hop lands, followed by any R&B or soul artists.
Aussie Indie
This is where the overlap and slightly oddball definitions start – this might not be the best name for it, but it’s what lives in my head when I hear artists with that very specific, sunny, Australian guitar sound, with cleaner guitar tones, and often quite a rich vocal. I’m trying to avoid saying ‘triple J’, but it’s that.
Uptempo Twang
This section is very specifically for artists with both a country-ish twang of all stripes, but which are specifically a bit faster.
Downtempo Drums
This ‘genre’ isn’t genre-specific at all, instead being all about tempo. I have a line in my head which decides whether a song is trying to speed my heartrate up or lower it – if it’s the latter, in lands in this section where lower bpms live, regardless of the genre. All the tracks here have drums in them though.
Unplugged
This one’s simple – anything without drums ends up here, the home of the ethereal and the acoustic.
Rock
I know it seems weird to put ‘Rock’ at the end, while ‘Indie Rock’ goes first, but this is a section specifically for those lovers of 1980s Los Angeles hair rock and all it’s variations. While I think it’s awesome, it is undeniably a bit niche, so it kind of gets tucked away where those in the know can find it. It also just kind of amuses me to launch into it after the acoustic section.
Strange & Heavy
Saving the very maddest for the very last – on the basis that it scares the bejeepers out of most civilians – this is where either the more experimental artists live, or where the heavy and hardcore can make a racket without upsetting the children.
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