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
The Buoys – Take It Over
Tracks (A-Z By Genre)
Indie Rock
beth seymour & the lizzies – my mother’s face
claw machine – that’s too much, man!
failsafe – in my hands
late 90s – can you feel?
space&ages – in your head
the buoys – take it over
total tommy – gutterball
Indie Punk & Punk
billiam – brazen tendencies
cammy cautious and the wrestlers – hot
cheap-skate – somewhere, sometime
drift – the truth in you
handouts – wishbone
reefeater – purgatory
the wolston butchers – sober
Shoegaze & Post-Punk
al carr – take it on notice
chamber lane – patience
charlie farmer – who is she
jacques levy’s desire – safe to say – radio edit
jagged iris – without you now
jane dire – losers, freaks & kings (part 1)
lake crook mouth – you do you
lucy francesca dron – wings
Pop Punk
all hours – everything in between
excuse for an exit – black cat superstar
facelift – vertigo
Indie Pop & Alt Pop
alibii – can’t find a park
boredslide – drip dry
bunny bear – fuck myself
elianie – same mistakes
henry edmondson – i’m taking one for the team
jaded tv – baby come back
lemonise – exogenica
teenage dads – find a way
the darling hearts – one
zach stephenson – jeans in japan
Pop & EDM
alli kate – stuck on you
bread club – cooking up something good
jessica fortuin – do u like scary movies?
jewel owusu – all for you
sweatbaby – you make me
Hip Hop & R&B / Soul
41lowkey – livin it
dyan tai – i wanna be a gyaru
shai rose – black mirror
urthboy – other
Aussie Indie
bigfoot sighting – paper plate cartography
daysea – i loved you (in all the right ways)
lazy ghost – broke man’s money
winnie blues
nana’s pie – till the morning
peach fuzz – waiting here
Uptempo Twang
ben lunt – my gorgeous wife
ruby james – don’t give up on me
Downtempo Drums
annie hamilton – chainmail
charli lucas – grocery store
ethereal gone kids – wasteland
fanny lumsden – by the river
leila – close to me
moonwood – moving on
red hill – sharehouse blues
Unplugged
august is the fireworks – vampire duet
Rock
danni k – wonder
large mirage – watching – radio edit
starcrazy – lazy river
the refuge – false prophet
Strange & Heavy
blacktoothed – gold digger
dead lion – living hell
lost plaza – silhouette
paraphernalia – king & country
relays – saddest people
windwaker – low
Pictured: The Buoys at Enmore Theatre, Sydney
—
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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.