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
FVNERAL feat. Bukowski – landline
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
divedown – picture my life
fragile animals – 4
Indie Punk & Punk
cheap-skate – license plates
deadshowws – criminal
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
blokbstr – 1999
fancy weapon – 27 minutes
middle management – find out
sonic reducer – rosebank
Pop Punk
yagki – morphine
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
erica avenue – one night romance
fvneral – landline
jessica fortuin – no sober
joe mungovan – melodrama
leuras – both of you
lottie mcleod – sunburnt
murphi field – i regret the way we left things
omari – stay
sesame girl – wings of a butterfly
the rubens – are you getting high
tilly fenton – i just wanna kiss you
Pop & EDM
pirra – ours
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
bigredcap – seven nation reggie
christos – feed the flame
tiahn – liar
yoβ’shi – awae (μ μ)
Aussie Indie
ah honey – only man
blind pretty – take the time
polybius – the rain
rodney starfish – waste time away
Downtempo Drums
alli kate – lonely road
angela rose – doomed
angus legg – like i never left
beans – resister
clay pigeons – the flow
isabelle skye – subaru
joel tane – running back (with clare perrott)
lachlan – how long?
mat rigby – holdin’ on to you
mia wray – isn’t it funny
patrick kassas – running with the wind
rowena wise – diamond in the rough
sam green – orange
shai rose – reborn
shel chiffon – twenties
tawa drive – mountains
the tinderboxers – sos
william crighton – destiny
Unplugged
angelina curtis – i caved
fangz – something real – acoustic
september curse – jane
serendipiti – at last
tom woodward – sitting on a railing
Rock
dropsink – bite the bullet
mulga bore hard rock – warna prut
new ghosts – fallout
quiet as a mouse – cocaine soul
Strange & Heavy
51st avenue – self sabotage
jack donehue – cope/seethe
melting – a pathetic excuse for a life
nightdive – placate
ratking – bitter irony
wicked envy – false face
Pictured: FVNERAL at Lazy Thinking, 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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