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
body type – And What Else
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
body type – and what else?
hot glue – spiders
lucky – perfect pain
rageflower – control
Indie Punk & Punk
cheap-skate – my side
dedpan – i (don’t) wanna go out
domesticated incels – unseen
media puzzle – more horse, less code
pearly stars – cursebreaker
skulls – bills
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
bennetts grove – out in the cold
boats – extreme scream
epworth – wasteland
loose fit – bittersweet excess
stirr – venera 13
Pop Punk
aviva – monsters
dial denial – house of mirrors
hayden mcgoogan – kids in the street
slippery gypsy – kiss me like goodbye
sly withers – setting fires
social strangers – fallen rain
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
any young mechanic – pretty strange world
chloe parché – knots
franjapan – already there
gordon’s grandson – i wanted to kiss you
haley holgate – bloodstream
maxon – strangers
sesame girl – superstar
the remotes – crazy days
your personal chef – snow angels
Pop & EDM
akala newman – shark
ayla – venom
conflikt – amnesia
djanaba – dig us out
jazzy k – bored!
pash – east end girls
squid the kid – timeless
yorke – unfinished business
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
3% – welcome 2 country
wise guy – denim cash register
Aussie Indie
figurehead – heart like a sunset
gilroy – another dream
ultraviolet – one day
Uptempo Twang
ben lunt – island, haven, home
good hounds – lost in traffic
Downtempo Drums
anika louise – thorns
butterknife – november rain
divedown – all for what
red moon cowboy – angel in rewind
scott candlish – steam
thom – ily
Unplugged
emmalisa tilli – lost in la
isabel rumble – patience peaceful breathing slow
oliver beard – nothing goes
tig – morning pages
Rock
jon valenzuela – take(n) enough
the neptune power federation – and the bones decay
the sundials – bareback riding
Strange & Heavy
closure – empty hands
prchr. – feel
tangled in wires – desired abuse
Pictured: Body Type at The Lansdowne, 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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