Wow. It’s difficult to know where to begin with Beckah Amani’s Standards. Do I talk first about the beautiful sparse production, the measured guitar playing, her exquisite vocal performance, or the lyrics that cut straight to the heart of the conversation about race, racism, and white privilege? Well, I’ll start with the latter. Written at…

Based in Leeds, Ava in the Dark are a glossy synth pop/rock outfit led by the duo of Kiera Bickerstaff and Tommie James. Taking influence from a range of contemporary artists from the indie pop and rock spheres – including Pale Waves, Pvris, Nothing But Thieves, and Wolf Alice to name a few – the…

No Transformation is exactly what pop music should sound like in 2020. Largely just omnichord and vocal, with occasional synth, it’s a stunning four-minutes-and-twenty-two seconds of deceptive sweetness that demands repeated listening. Taken alongside its video – directed by fellow artist Tony Oursler, whose previous music video collaborators include Sonic Youth and David Bowie –…

“I can paint it red And you can say it’s blue These colours change the view” …So begins the chorus of this, the second single to be taken from Anglo-French singer-songwriter Michael Baker’s forthcoming third LP. I feel a bit like a broken record saying this – but seeing as I only write about things…

Hailing from South Jakarta, Indonesia, SMSR are five friends-since-childhood who often gather together “in narrow and dusty rooms” and create music that is difficult to characterise, but could broadly be called space age pop. Consisting of Rerez (synths, keys, vocals), Ardana (guitar), Arya (guitar), Reygi (bass), and Widan (drums), SMSR experiment with a range of…

We live at a time when there’s probably more music being made and released in the UK every six months than there was in the entirety of the 1970s. Don’t worry though, this is not a post about “the good old days when music was real” or anything like that, but listening to Izzie Yardley’s…

Southend-on-Sea’s in earnest are an alt/indie three-piece consisting of front-couple Thomas Eatherton and Sarah Holburn, and Toby Shaer. Since their formation last year, they have self-released three singles – with the most recent being the excellent 29, released a couple of days ago and already picking up plaudits. The band describe their music as being…

The Anorak Band are one of the more interesting and unusual artists that I’ve stumbled upon over the last month or so, and their debut release – an old school double A-side single, no less – is an utterly charming, double dose of 60s-influenced instrumental surf jazz that feels weirdly timeless. Based in Newport, the…

Loaded with analogue warmth, Things I Tell Myself is the latest single by Copenhagen-based duo, Mikkel Dahl and Jesper Klinge – otherwise known as The Vice. Following on from June’s F.U. and taken from their forthcoming EP, Songs for No One, it’s something of an indie rock tour de force complete with 80s retrofuturistic vibes…

Lovely Assistant sound like a band out of time. As for exactly when time that was it’s hard to say, but they definitely don’t sound like every other indie pop group you come across in 2020. That’s a good thing too. Among other things, they cite “torch songs of the fifties” as one of their…