Few things give me as much pleasure as thumbing my way through old cookery books and marveling at the photos of the food. There’s something about a vividly printed image of a tray of vol-au-vents from the 70s, or a plate of fondant fancies from 1983 that just ticks all the boxes. Anyway, the point…

Revolving around songwriter Paul Bessenbacher, Santa Monica’s Opus Orange have been steadily honing their indie pop chops across four albums and several EPs since 2010. Having spent a lot of time hovering in the background and providing texture for other artists up until then, Bessenbacher (also known as PB) has certainly picked up the knack…

Sometimes when you listen to a band you can hear exactly what’s going on beneath the surface… you can quite easily see how the music was made, and instinctively get your head around how the disparate parts fit together. And then sometimes you find a piece of music that’s just like a living, breathing, constantly…

Opening with gentle washes of psychedelic vocals and an intricate acoustic guitar motif before giving way to an expansive, surprising sound pallet, Get Away is the latest single from South-East London’s Jim Jam (AKA James Newman). It’s an interesting listen – and a timely one, given how 2020 has unfolded so far – capturing the…

Earlier on in the summer, London-based indie duo Dust In The Sunlight released their eponymously named debut EP. Clocking in at fifteen minutes and featuring four sublime (and sublimely recorded) tracks of atmospheric and ethereal pop, Billy Wright and Annie Rew Shaw are a partnership that certainly know their way around a melody.  As do…

Recorded in large part with her band just before the UK entered lockdown measures in March, Gallery is a dreamy, constantly shifting ballad that works its way from a sparse piano-and-vocal beginning through to a glorious full-band resolution. In the press release that accompanies the release, Mercer is quoted as saying it’s a song “that…

“We’re 7 musicians from Italy, the UK and Morocco and we dress like fucking lunatics” Those were the first words that I read about Frances and the Majesties, and they told me everything that I needed to know. It’s really refreshing to find a band that are so unselfconscious and, well, odd. Especially when they’re…

SWiiMS are a four-piece indie band from Toronto, whose sound could loosely be described as a mix of shoegaze, new wave, alternative, and Brit rock. As people always say; first impressions are everything, and bursting out of the headphones like a heady mix of the Cure, Cocteau Twins, early Blur, and DIIV, with smooth feminine…

I love this. The first time I played it I found myself spellbound. Opening with just organ before the band enter one by one, with the lyrics “don’t let me go” bouncing back and forth, it’s a sickly sweet slice of 1960s pop – kind of like Belle and Sebastian dressed as the Mamas and…

Gliding in on a laid-back shuffle, warm bass, and some impressively fluid electric guitar, Sam Seccombe’s Waiting on Your Love is a seriously addictive, sleek piece of modern, post-breakup pop. Entirely self-produced from his bedroom desk in NW London – and complete with slick harmonies and a chorus that will stick in your head for…