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
Saturns Angel – Pretty
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
joint operation – type sh!t
lucienne – rebirth
the valery trails – waiting 2026
vertebrae – on and on
Indie Punk & Punk
cheap-skate – midwaymark
off chops – paper straws
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
doused – hampton
fait accompli – flyin thru
saturns angel – pretty
the engine – punish
Pop Punk
dvnts – almost never
glitch kingdom – royal raceway
headstrong – nothing ever changes
street legal – the barassi line
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
katy denney – seventeen
lily b – show me how
the tambourine girls – all substance no style
Pop & EDM
aliya – sweet desire
cat & calmell – clarity
charlie pittman – chew
emmalisa tilli – iconic – radio edit
julian munyard – get up
monnie – out to dry
nate vae – frame of mind
pretty bleak – if that’s what you want
robert baxter – kitty cat
siena larsson – mr. nice guy
venus – pack it up
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
becca hatch – daylight robbery
bigredcap – throw it back
ella thompson – change of heart
grace chia – guanyin
sollyy – fair dinkum
Aussie Indie
adorn – vertigo
garden eyes – sunshine
kaya byrne – harvest moon
left cassette – round our way
max aurora & the southern lights – picking up glass
the halves – trackstar
the moving stills – rock band
Downtempo Drums
alexandria – justice
anya anastasia – mothership – single edit
holly throsby – hold please
lucy sugerman – lethal pen
oscar ladell – we rise
prchr. – tears
Unplugged
fanny lumsden – difficult woman
gordi – forget about dying
lani faith – swimming
Rock
dial denial – timber hearth
paraphernalia – dagger
poison oak – laser love
suitcase cult – living dead
them wolves – paper trail
vinewood rally – lydia
Strange & Heavy
battlesnake – i killed satan
fallweather – mourn
la famiglia – cycles
ocean sleeper – peace when i’m dead
post script philosophy – waste of time
problem green – pigpen
we set signals – walk away
Pictured: Saturns Angel at Vic On The Park, 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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