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
Club Halifax – Hyperfixate
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
about yesterday – won’t wish you the best
april elwyn – tired
club halifax – hyperfixate
the rubens – the cannonball
Indie Punk & Punk
fisher – staring at the sun
mannequin death squad – sky
skulls – anabelle
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
divebar youth – broken
jaded memory – on the big screen
nick carver – railroad
party dozen – full powers
Pop Punk
besties – congrats
darcy baker – deep end
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
alexandria – ghost in my walls
brigitte bardini – lights on
chelsea daghita – baby boy
hallie – sexy once
holly hebe – skipping stones
holly wild – only you would do
kayls – chest!!
lahgo – my 600th letter
lucy sugerman – josie
margo mann – drive the long way
nick ward – making time
ruby gill – jacaranda
san cisco – miles away
sidney – don’t take me home
smusko – vermouth
tegan clark – sick or in love?
the enthusiast – ants on the walls, the floor, the desk
the monty shambles – harlean
tonix – okay okay!
Pop & EDM
albi. – heartbeat
alter boy – babylon
byjaye – half a man
chaii – so what
gazal – this man is a preacher
lili alaska – my little pirate
lizzie hosking – mother is medusa
lucy’s house – alive
selve – weekends
squid the kid – face2face
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
celly – yung blood
dxvndre – loose ends
ella thompson – beloved
harriet wraith – apologies
jj4k – phaethon
olivia escuyos – growing pains
yawdoesitall – let it go
Aussie Indie
kate moth – holly go lightly
lapse – goodbye, polar bear
le shiv – back to strange
oniera – don’t make it dumb
scatter light – the view
streetlights – playground king
Uptempo Twang
whiskey jack – cut to the chase
Downtempo Drums
bec goring – timothy
hannah donnelly – at night
jack donehue – the rut
jupiter saloon – made for me
lara buchanan – anatomy
lola scott – cold turkey
the darlings family trust – in the name of the light
tommy gun – dream on – demo
winter mcquinn – say what you do
Unplugged
sammi heaney – anything at all
tom woodward – bravery of a coward
Rock
boner contention – death march
jaded state – white line fever
trio of misfortune – pineapple chainsaw
Strange & Heavy
broken earth – i let it find me
clamm – no ritual
future static – waterworks
jarr – dwtd
luca ciro – show me what you mean
royal commission – the magyar dancer
wolf whistle wounds – reliable narrator
Pictured: Club Halifax at Dead Set, 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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