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
Civic Video – Get Back To It
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
civic video – get back to it
daezy – hot girl summer
gordon’s grandson – sweet to me
radio free alice – lunch money
the pretty littles – animal kingdom
Indie Punk & Punk
bad neighbour – vince pope
cheap-skate – sheep
so i says to mabel – i’m cooking dinner
space&ages – pull the plug
the lizards – no wax
them wolves – i think i’ll just say fuck it and go
wishful thinking – feels alright
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
enola – leave a mark
exiles – persona
horse – gloss
jed bentley – cocaine nosebleed
the whole wide world – mama pharmaceutical
Pop Punk
grapee – apologetic
paperweight – heavy glow
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
any young mechanic – can sardine
billy peril – my kind of madness
chloe parché – deus ex machina
day we ran – used to
drest – pyromania
edie – burning
folk bitch trio – i want you
gypsy lee – what doesn’t kill you costs a lot in therapy
hollie col – i’ll be there
kaiyah mercedes – miss me
katy denney – flowers in my hair
tig – alice says
Pop & EDM
arky waters – just
cvnt clvb – drop dead
gazal – backpack
gemma ylana – a grudge
hellcat speedracer – minutes of you
holly hebe – crying your eyes out
streetflicker – midnight ignition
yorke – break up season
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
chillcheney – underground
mikky – i wonder
pixie minerva – i think
sharon-rose – double up
Aussie Indie
birdland – hold me tight
mitch bartlett and the pool boys – the way you do
the deenys – what did you expect?
Uptempo Twang
alex the astronaut – business man
oliver ashby – who we were
Downtempo Drums
asha jefferies – art of suggestion
asha ryder west – desires
eliza hull – hotel room
friday* – braid
gia darcy – what’s to blame?
julienne harvey – sweet heart
kye arnot – how could it be wrong
muki – my sweet anxiety
neav – forever
phil jamieson – blue as the sunlight
telopia – phone battery
Unplugged
chris rose – by the sea
ess-em – the last standing tree
joely – my rock
the runaway strings – come on feel the algorithm
Rock
danni k – steering wheel
us vs. them – resolution
Strange & Heavy
aviva – panic room
dolls – how do i sit with this?
exit future – doom scroll (loopsnake master)
koh – blasphemous
none for one – no justice (on stolen land)
petrol bomb – witch hunt
planisphere – shadow to sun
Pictured: Civic Video at The Trocadero Room, 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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