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
Dead Witch – Gemstone Eyes
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
big league – why don’t birds suddenly appear?
billy cart – train lady
dead witch – gemstone eyes
dune rats – ratbags!
eddy st – sleeping in
hot glue – all for nothing
santino salvadore – no plan b
Indie Punk & Punk
26 street – the more you drive
cheap-skate – job stoppers
internet romance – the one
rodney starfish – high life
the wolston butchers – last dance
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
airline – boring!
enola – i know you’re leaving
ethereal gone kids – lost and found
hauler – star spangled leech
moler – i just need
our mutual friend – dry my tears
sunsick daisy – waiting for
Pop Punk
chaperone – only in emergencies
nautical mile – daydreamer
sick visor – dumb-bum
sly withers – sick
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
aleksiah – bullsh*t, baby!
byjaye – what it is
grapee – bad ones
jessemelancholy – nineteen
noah calderan – unambitious
scratching – sanity
yagki – charcoal
Pop & EDM
friday* – rituals
ishan – numbers
kai cult – fullmoon!
modern living – a good time
olivia c. dacal – i’ll come back to you
yorke – love on the run (feat. yuka)
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
guano c – the journey
mikky – gimme that
Aussie Indie
peach fuzz – old news
poison oak – melt
the rions – idol
the velvet club – blue
thirst trap – waiting on time
Uptempo Twang
penny deluxe – too good to ignore
Downtempo Drums
buffalo paradise – good nervous
flyss – porcelain (tread carefully)
grace turbo – linear
gum – in life
nana klumpp – sunset
rach – lost in translation
ruby fields – muscle
the slims – stumble
Unplugged
charlotte glover – give me love
imogen clark – stopover
Rock
goldminds – mindreader
mulga bore hard rock – stay
noon shift – prying through
social strangers – pull the plug
Strange & Heavy
as people – post acid
grizzlyshark – desire
inimata – rework
outloved – run
wicked envy – hyde
Pictured: Dead Witch. at OAF Gallery, 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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