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
Bennetts Grove – Mourning Star
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
dempsey – bill me
dental plan – no solution
emma yue – word of mouth
garden eyes – keep close
zach stephenson – broke my jaw
Indie Punk & Punk
l.a.r.m – cult
molly rocket – buzz box
smallways. – see me
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
bennetts grove – mourning star
charles carnabuci – mouthguard
delivery – measuring cup
for clift – boxes
second hand high – overboard
spike fuck – getting sober
Pop Punk
down and out – buried alive
nathan kendall – symptomatic, shoot straight
robbie nolan – comatose
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
bella deer – black dots
boredslide – joe
eliza & the delusionals – dog
japanese heart software – your house
suicide country hour – foolin’
telenova – happy
the deliverables – making hay
Pop & EDM
amanduh – hot head
becca hatch – extra time
bella habib – only promise
ex gratia – daybreaker
jaguar jonze – right side up
jazzy k – lollipop
kwasi – room full of broken hearts
streetflicker – stay awake
velvet trip – fake tree
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
bigredcap – wrecking crew
mikky – where’s the door again
the winfield road experiment – don’t worry baby
Aussie Indie
edgecliff – fade away
flag duty – nothing at all
jericho – pull me under
lapse – trilobites
old mervs – adeline
the colliflowers – unforgettable love
the grogans – country mile
tropical low – stella
vlads – gumball
Uptempo Twang
helen shanahan – my hamartia
Downtempo Drums
asha jefferies – walrus
butter bath – magnets
georgia ray – no god out here
hannah cameron – arm’s length
harrykirby – all your friends
kieran wallace – incredible
lucky governors – turned inside out
mat rigby – till i found you
rayhab – one more hit
sam green – over and over
sienna tenn – are we lovers?
sophia j smith – forget you
team love – a little bit lonely
the hunter express – gold fades
yendys – man on fire
zoë fox and the rocket clocks – coming from the sun
Unplugged
ella hooper – overnight success
shannon jade – haunted house
Rock
bloodyarvo – bite of u
boys at the back – no good for me
cross pollinate – sick day
eyesite – get you
hot machine – shots fired
neon sunset – the other side
simple stone – lipstick cigarette
violet harbour – sirens
Strange & Heavy
alienist – phantom
atticus chimps – cyanide
bring back the kane – bit.flip
cheap-skate – run rat run
dvnts – pass the aux
macëy – fr fr
the local romance – ecdysis
Pictured: Bennetts Grove at The Lord Gladstone, 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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