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
Lotte Gallagher – WISH
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
bugs – heaven
charlie farmer – escape your feel
eliza & the delusionals – ever
lahgo – what i need
lotte gallagher – wish
the buoys – alone in vegas
Indie Punk & Punk
cheap-skate – reaper
loose goose – bolivian boogie sugar
roomates – take me back
tantichrist – doomsday
worm girlz – broken tooth
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
divebar youth – react
ethereal gone kids – she’s way too cool
heir to the squandered millions – play and share
sex mask – lockjaw
vyvyan hammond – did you think of me?
warwick kennedy – dust
Pop Punk
sick visor – sentimental ratboy
terra rouge – ur the man
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
blake cateris – roots
lily b – lina
lucidbloom – fever dream
munroe – for fiona
park rd – fatal
redd. – better
slim krusty – magpie
sloan peterson – shared location
the jimmy c – are you angry
Pop & EDM
alli kate – playing dirty
ex gratia – pink
fukhed – hold on
headaches – sweeter than this
lonely computer – riven (feat. tbish)
robert baxter – nameless
selfdivision – snake
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
anya alchemy – don’t say you never felt it
baker boy – disappear
drizzz – booga (feat. blazeyl)
miss kaninna – look at me now
vv pete – back into it
Aussie Indie
lapse – hindsight
suitcase cult – after : hours
the colliflowers – don’t mean it
the lazy eyes – i just don’t know you yet
the tullamarines – flight path
Uptempo Twang
adam newling – close your eyes
Downtempo Drums
amalia – wrong place wrong time
bad debts – some salvation
jethro morris – i’ll take you to hobart
maia toakley – everything on fire
navy june – routine avoidance
pixie minerva – wise old man
queenie – deepest richest blue
ruby gill – carol / not carol
the darling hearts – here
the halves – replacement
the tortured souls – gold-lined melancholy
winter mcquinn – exactly the same
Unplugged
angharad drake – blue
emma yue – ethel st
Rock
rose cole – judgement day
snub – d.o.a.
sunbleached – maybe i’ll come around
takeover – loose end
verum – a.t. field
Strange & Heavy
fallweather – once a garden, now a grave
nightlight – rip//it
spouse – the birds are dead along the highway
twinbloom – parasite
Pictured: Lotte Gallagher 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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