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
VOH – If We Ever Meet Again
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
concrete surfers – you said
jericho – juno
kayls – don’t think too much
kirklandd – painless
polybius – sun song
teenage joans – coming up from hell
total tommy – pretty little mouth
tshitaki – the mountain
will baker – mr gunslinger
Indie Punk & Punk
cheap-skate – going under
new ghosts – the other ones
the moving principle – hey darls
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
boats – youth drips
faker – partner in crime
horse – under your sun
our mutual friend – hard to sleep
stepdad advice – connell (normal people)
waist – god left (this place long ago)
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
aleksiah – be the diva
dear tommie – the rough
dublin rose – things my parents said
kate moth – too late to go outside
phil and the blanks – good boy – feat. harlum
simon robert gibson – after dark
south summit – heartless
the heart shaped aces – sidewalks
Pop & EDM
arky waters – run it up
breakfast road – my girl is smoking hot
edie – garden of edie
jorj – pretty girls
voh – if we ever meet again
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
grace chia – frost in the december
urthboy – other
Aussie Indie
cheeky leash – easy way out
colleen ave – i can’t believe it
cycad – tasteless
second hand high – cold
Uptempo Twang
any young mechanic – captain and compass
beefheart & mcquinn – six feet under
kieran wallace – shades of shame
rusty pickups – holding onto my hip
Downtempo Drums
appletinis – lovesick
capes and crowns – my first song
chasing astrid – see you there
dumbhead – white knuckles
emma yue – boys club
fragile animals – church st
grace turbo – bleed again
the slims – scorpions
tommy gun – move me
Unplugged
dane tutty – if this is fine, holy shit
duvin – bored
holding – i’ve tried i’ve tried i’ve tried
kaitlin keegan – bassendean station
kim yang – turn on the lights
shannon jade – in this light
Rock
kathleen halloran – nobody’s baby
reflekta – feel the revelry
Strange & Heavy
headwreck – raindrops
hellions – fear flow
la famiglia – pretty on the inside
live like animals – von dutch
melting – the sword
Pictured: VOH at The Duke Of Enmore, 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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