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
Asha Jeffries – Backwards Baby
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
beddy rays – morning light
binsad – wreckage
cardboard cutouts – cheap shirt
fragile animals – history
jane dire – wrong time baby
kim salmon – fully sick and tired
loose goose – scumbags & warlords
myma – look what you lost
ratsalad. – tune in / zone out
the pretty littles – terracotta
Indie Punk & Punk
a. swayze & the ghosts – is that a prayer?
billiam – pub test
cheap-skate – what am i to do
citizen rat – happy?
kirklandd – painless
media puzzle – new pet
noon shift – breaking, leaving
salty season – overthinking
special guest – the new vr ted bundy biopic
the gnomes – magic man
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
hot glue – keychain
Pop Punk
sly withers – the hallway
yagki – chasing
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
asha jefferies – backwards baby
georgia fields – chameleon
gordon’s grandson – sweet to me
holly hebe – birthmark
jem cassar-daley – speak now
jett blyton – american heartthrob
josh pyke – under the escarpment
michelle sutton – electric toothbrush
nat pavlovic – big heart
ronan maclean – same time tmrw?
scratching – malvern star
Pop & EDM
charley – other side of the room
miya zawa – don’t talk
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
alzzy – one step
bigredcap – meaning of life
dobby – sabotage!
dxvndre – peep the science
grace chia – euterpe
hooligan hefs – sixth sense
mikky – two thumbs up
sf wrens – the finish line
Aussie Indie
day we ran – carolina
highline – dreaming
letters to lions – easy honey
manorism – something i can’t see
tear drive – better off
the slingers – jealousy
thirst trap – dexies and adderall
Uptempo Twang
arianna – hearts collide
Downtempo Drums
jeremy beggs – mess i’m in
kaeda daze – taller
lara anderson – learning to love me
loose content – no one left to call
nocturnal animals – when we were
ruby mae – aunty
tulliah – guilty for being sad
vinted vineer – blocksplitter
Unplugged
garden eyes – contest
Rock
jack biilmann – forbidden fruit
social strangers – when loving you
the neptune power federation – the fuzz
the refuge – overthink//everything
the vandastruts – i like it
we are not robots – piss on the rain
Strange & Heavy
fallweather – kill my doubt
pit – come on in
ratking – violence
Pictured: Asha Jefferies at Factory Theatre, 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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